Monday Open Thread
Welcome to the Monday edition of your open thread. Spill your guts below.
Are you confused about what the election means and need someone to put it in perspective? Let Gin and Tacos explain. h/t Daily Kos
The 2010 midterm elections were a mandate for the new GOP sorta-but-not-really majority in Washington. The American voter has clearly demanded:
1. Social Security reform that guarantees my current level of benefits, alters someone else’s, and cuts everyone’s Social Security taxes to boot.
2. A world-class national infrastructure that can be built and maintained without tax dollars.
3. A balanced budget that doesn’t sacrifice any of the government programs – especially the sacred military-industrial complex and the various old age benefits – that we like.
4. Clean air without pollution controls, clean water with a neutered and underfunded EPA, and businesses that do socially responsible things without any regulation whatsoever.
5. Consumer goods at Made in China prices that create high-paying jobs in America.
…
9. Wars against every enemy, real or imagined, all of the time, with no U.S. casualties and no effect on the budget.
10. Incredibly rich and rewarding professional lives while supporting our employers’ right to do whatever they want to us without recourse.
11. A vibrant, consumption-based U.S. economy with good jobs for anyone willing to look for one resulting from free trade policies that encourage money and capital flows to cheap labor markets.
12. A highly educated workforce produced by a school system that requires no tax dollars to achieve excellence, students who have no interest in learning, and a virulently anti-intellectual society.
…
It couldn’t be any clearer: we want a government that will resolve every problem we currently face with solutions that require no effort, no sacrifices, and no money. And I have no doubt that we have elected a group of people brave enough to promise exactly that.
It can’t get any clearer than that. I’m ready for the GOP to deliver on these promises. Plus I want a unicorn and 0% taxes.
Scientists studied how a cat drinks water to learn about fluid dynamics. Pretty awesome.
Scientists used high-speed cameras to study how Cutta Cutta and other cats lap up water, and the answer, reported online Thursday in the journal Science, was a surprise:
A cat’s tongue scarcely brushes the surface – not scooping up liquid like a dog, but pulling it up from above, in a manner that seems to defy gravity.
More explanation later, but briefly: With each darting flick of the tongue, the animal relies on the property of adhesion and Bernoulli’s principle – the same phenomenon involved in making baseballs curve and airplanes fly. Lions and other larger cats do it, too, though their larger tongues lead them to do it fewer times per second, at a speed the researchers were able to predict with a mathematical formula.
Cat scientists? They’ve got the aloof personality for it, that’s for sure.
Tags: Open Thread
That California Missle? Aliens shot it down.
Must see TV.
It turns out that of people who disapprove of Obama, one-fifth disapprove because he is not liberal enough.
Apologists + purists = Dem victory.
Apologists – purists = Republican victory.
Have you hugged a purist today?
If purists help elect President Palin, I will not hug them. I will punch them.
The difference between pragmatists (which you call apologists) and purists is not a policy one. It is a strategic one. It is a different way of thinking.
I was a pragmatist when I voted for Kerry ….. and I got 6 years (and counting) of the Bush agenda.
If purists help elect President Palin, I will not hug them. I will punch them.
Now you know how I feel about the Dem “pragmatists” who helped elect a Republican House.
Del Dem, I hope that you and your children enjoy getting irradiated and/or sexually assaulted by Obomba’s government agents any time you want to fly on a plane. So-labeled-by-you as “purists” like me think an American Police State where government agents feel-up children and adults is a bad thing, whether it is under a Democrat or Republican.
TSA = Total Sexual Assault.
Primary Obomba in 2012!
http://www.ourlittlechatterboxes.com/2010/11/tsa-sexual-assault.html
delacrat. shoulda voted for Howard Dean.
We’re flying out of the country this weekend… should be interesting. I’ll report back on our security experience.
pandora- I’m considering a flight to somewhere, anywhere….
Those new security pat-downs…..?
I am so lonely.
As humans we ache for the touch of another however brief and in passing.
Instead of playing doctor, kids can now play “airport.”
pandora, are you going to choose to be irradiated and leered at or fondled?
Go for the fondling.
I am shocked at what I’ll tolerate for this vacation.
Not too long now before we all fly naked.
“TSA founder: ‘Nobody likes having their 4th Amendment violated going through a security line, but the truth of the matter is, we’re gonna have to do it'”
Nobody likes to be sexually assaulted by the government, but the truth of the matter is, they’re gonna do it.
oh relax. It isnt sexual assault. Sexual assault also isn’t something you should trivialize or use to make your anti everything arguments.
leave it to repressed Americans to assume everything has a deviant motivation.
oh relax. It isnt sexual assault.
Go do it to a cop, or to a random stranger, and see what you get charged with.
So it isn’t sexual assault when a stranger uses intimidation and threats to publicly probe the genitals or breasts of people, including children, as long as that person is a government agent?
“oh relax. It isnt sexual assault.”
I wonder how many date rapists have said the exact same thing.
You’re an Orwellian nightmare, a.price.
TSA = Total Sexual Assault.
a1, you clearly don’t know anyone who has actually been sexually assaulted or you wouldn’t be ranting like such an unhinged moron.
You see conspiracies everywhere don’t you. You think Obama is behind the 2 way mirror watching the pat downs like it is a peep show i bet. Just for second drop the “im a righteous douche” act and actually think about what you are saying….
You are saying date rape… or any other rape is the same as a security pat-down. That is stupider than comparing a presidential address to school children, to a Hitler youth video. It is puffery and posturing and does a disservice to the people effected by the actual crime.
a.price, I guess you didn’t read the article I linked to @7:57. Some people are funny about having their genitals publicly fondled by total strangers, or having their children’s or spouse’s bodies fondled.
It is appalling how you feel that you can determine for someone else whether or not they have been sexually assaulted. It is amazing how little respect you have for other peoples’ sense of modesty or privacy and how non-chalantly you would permit the government to willy-nilly violate even the most basic freedom of who, where, and how we let other people touch our bodies.
You’re truly an authoritarian dream-come-true, a.price.
TSA = Total Sexual Assault.
better keep the doctors away from this one. Hernia checks are just some Big Brother pervert scam.
Let me help you, a.price…
http://www.tsa.gov/join/careers/become_part_of_the_tsa_team.shtm
dude, i see your argument. Im just saying you are being ridiculous. Call it an invasion of privacy if you want, but you are like the boy who cried police state with this crap… or in this case the malcontent who cried rape.
I would love to see your suggestion for non invasive security screening, but I doubt you have any solutions….. about anything. Until then i suggest putting a cucumber in your pants and having some fun with it…. or use your free market power and freedom as an american citizen to choose another method of transportation.
anonone, a. price,
In the future, we should expect (and will be expected to accept) that Children and Women (Sometimes in Labor)
Strip Searched, Cavity Searched in the Homeland.
and if you REALLY wanted to change things, YOU would get the job at TSA, rise through the ranks and change the system from within… but then you would have nothing to complain about and that stick that keeps your upright might fall out.
last time i checked, Israel wasnt beholden to the US constitution…. maybe you are advocating “bringing american democracy” to that country?
Israel strip searches women and children… and all you can say is “Israel wasnt beholden to the US constitution”.
a. price, That’s lame. but I suppose that explains why you’re so blase about what’s coming to an airport near you.