Thursday Open Thread
Welcome to your Thursday open thread. *Checks temperature* *whimper* Stay hydrated folks!
Al Franken was right – Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot. He now thinks the heat index is a government conspiracy. This is one of the guys who thought winter snow proves global warming is not real.
Rush Limbaugh: They’re playing games with us on this heat wave, again. Even Drudge, drudge getting sucked in here. Gonna be a 116 in Washington. No, it’s not. It’s going to be a 100, maybe 99. The heat index, manufactured by the government, they tell you what it feels like when you add the humidity in there. 116 – When’s the last time the heat index was reported as an actual temperature? It hasn’t been. But it looks like they’re trying to get away with doing that now.
I don’t understand what Limbaugh is going on about but I usually don’t. Go read the link, it explains heat index, what it is and how it came about.
Speaking of Al Franken, I’m not sure if you’ve seen the sweet takedown of a Focus on the Family witness at the DOMA repeal hearing:
Steve Benen provides a description of what happens in the video:
It’s tough to provide a detailed transcript for those who can’t watch clips from your work computers, but Minnery argued in his statement for the committee that there’s documented proof that children raised in a household with a mother and a father are infinitely more likely to be better off than in any other family structure. As proof, the Focus on the Family leader cited a study published by the Department of Health and Human Services late last year.
“I checked the study out,” Franken said with a smile.
The Minnesota senator proceeded to explain that Minnery misrepresented the report’s contents in a rather dramatic way. What HHS actually found is that children do better in two-parent households, but whether those parents are of the same gender or not was irrelevant.
“The study defines a ‘nuclear family’ as one or more children living with two parents who are married to one another and are each biological or adoptive parents to all the children in the family,” Franken concluded. “And I frankly don’t really know how we can trust the rest of your testimony if you are reading studies these ways.”
Chris Coons also played a big role in the DOMA repeal hearing. Here’s a video of his opening statement:
I doubt DOMA repeal has a chance of passing this session but I’m glad they are talking about it. Thank you Senator Coons, Senator Franken and Senator Leahy!
Tags: Open Thread
Al Franken is awesome. And I love what he did here — check their sources. Because the world isn’t oriented the way that conservatives claim, you always check when they provide you with some claim that it is.
Has anyone been reading about what’s happening in Memphis to the school system? Apparently, the city isn’t giving the school system sufficient money to operate because it can’t afford to and the school system has closed the schools as a consequence. This is like a depression era story.
In the article it briefly notes that the shortfall was caused by tax cuts. Well, at least Memphis probably got a lot of jobs in return for the tax cuts… right?
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2011/jul/21/trading-punches/
It is 100, maybe 99 in the fold under Rush’s left mantit, but it feels like 116.
Well this explains alot, actually — Teajadis think that walking out on a $600K debt is fiscal responsibility.
The Memphis schools has a multiple year shortfall of funding from the city. And apparently the city has a lawsuit to try to get out of its funding obligations.
This is really emblematic if the current era — not the Depression. We have the state, the county and the city all in a tug of war over their funding obligations to this school system. So while politicians make a stand over who knows what, the kids suffer because of ideological battles.