Friday Open Thread
Welcome to your Friday open thread. Well, yesterday certainly was one of the strangest days I’ve ever seen in politics. I hope today is a little calmer. Plus, it’s Friday so it can’t be all bad.
A Fox News anchor asks about moon volcanoes and how they mean global warming isn’t happening. Luckily Bill Nye is there to set him straight.
Transcript:
JON SCOTT: Does it go, you know, anywhere close to the climate change debate that’s underway here on earth? I mean, you know, if the moon had —
BILL NYE: Well, it does for me.
SCOTT: — had erupting volcanoes, a few years, well, a few million years ago, however you want to put it —
NYE: No, billion.SCOTT: — you know, it’s not like we’ve been up there burning fossil fuels.
NYE: Uh, no, volcanoes are not connected to the burning of fossil fuels, it’s connected to mining, but the big thing for us, on my side of this thing, is the science is true, and so when you discover — the people who got really got involved in climate change, got involved in it often by studying Venus, the planet Venus. So the physics, the science that happens on Venus, is the same as the science that happens on the earth, the science that happens on the moon, in this case the geology the study of rocks, that happens on the moon, is the same science that happens on the earth. So when you say to yourself, well, I’m going to ignore all the evidence of climate change, you’re saying, I’m going to ignore the best ideas anybody’s ever had, that’s science. And so this is quite troubling to those of us on our side of it.
SCOTT: Why aren’t they erupting now?
NYE: Well the moon cooled off, that’s a great question. That’s a fabulous question. The moon is quite a bit smaller than the earth so it cools off faster.
Fox News obviously has trouble with the moon in general (how do the tides work?) but this one is a real head scratcher. Reading between the lines, is the anchor saying that global warming makes volcanoes erupt?
Have you heard about this Tea Party Republican freshman who doesn’t pay his child support?
Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), who has made the media rounds bashing President Obama on the national debt, is being sued for $117,437 in back child support he allegedly owes his ex-wife and their three children, the Chicago Sun-Times reported, according to divorce documents filed in court in December.
…
“I dispute that he owes the child support that she’s claiming or anywhere near that amount,” R. Steven Polachek said. “Joe Walsh hasn’t been a big-time wage-earner politician until recently — he’s had no more problems with child support than any other average guy.”
Walsh reportedly told his ex-wife that he was out of work or between jobs before he was elected to Congress in November and therefore couldn’t make child support payments. So his ex-wife said it was news to her when she learned that he made a sizable personal loan to his campaign.
“Joe personally loaned his campaign $35,000, which, given that he failed to make any child support payments to Laura because he ‘had no money’ is surprising,” Laura Walsh’s attorneys wrote in a motion filed in December. “Joe has paid himself back at least $14,200 for the loans he gave himself.”
Walsh has a job now that pays him almost $200,000/yr. Are you at all surprised that a deadbeat dad wants to turn the US into a deadbeat nation?
Tags: Open Thread
Anti-gay “preacher” Bradlee Dean is suing Rachel Maddow and MSNBC.
Axe murderers are now extinct in Delaware.
A1: And Jack Markell apparently feels it’s good for business. His office put out two mealy-mouthed statements washing his hands of the whole thing.
I know, Geezer. It is sad that Markell won’t help Delaware make state-sponsored killing a part of its past..
I am not against every execution. But I think the standard of “beyond reasonable doubt” used for conviction is too loose for execution. That standard should be “beyond ALL doubt.”
State police closing troop at Brandywine Town Center
Wasn’t this substation one of the requirements for approval of Brandywine Town Center?
Puck, I think every requirement for approval of that town center has been discarded, waived or just disregarded outright. You may remember that it was originally supposed to have high-end retail tenants and no big-box stores. A community meeting place. (I think that is actually there, but it is certainly not prominent.) Better landscaping out front. A food court.
I’m kind of happy to have Target, though.
Target IS high-end for Delaware. It helps to pronounce it Tar-JAY.
It’s funny that the rich have more money than ever but they STILL won’t come to Delaware for tax-free shopping.
FYI, my son got violently ill on the movie-theater popcorn butter there. I knew not to eat it and I was fine. Guess how I knew not to eat it. Now my son knows too.
Police substation was not a BTC requirement. It was something the Rollins people put there because they thought the public would want it. (If it was really wanted, NCCPD would have taken it because it’s the county that controlled the zoning issues.) Ditto the community meeting place, which is still there but seldom used because the county, in its wisdom, tells anyone who wants to use it that they have to drive down to the Government Center on Reads Way to pick up the keys and to bring them back the next day.
Just heard on MSNBC that Sen Mitchell said the Repubs will.filibuster Reid’s debt ceiling bill and that he won’t negotiate with Reid. If this happens and persists, economic armagedon begins next week unless Obama employs the 14th.
I’ve decided that Republicans want him to employ the 14th so they can begin impeachment proceedings.
Boehner’s bill just killed in the Senate by a bipartisan vote 59-41
Republicans are giving me whiplash: Obama won’t lead! I can’t do my job without Obama!
Pandora, you could easily be correct.
Maybe that’s what Obama wants too.
December 1998: Clinton approval rating up in wake of impeachment
Repubs should think twice before they start a budget shutdown and impeachment with a Democratic president who is ten times smarter than them. Some people are so dumb they have to touch the hot stove twice.
I was in that wave of people who were disgusted by the Starr investigation and impeachment hearings and helped Clinton’s approval ratings go up. I was a Democrat before but I thought I was smart enough to split my ticket sometimes. But after Whitewater/impeachment, I vowed never to vote for a Republican again. Of course, it helped that Republicans became even meaner and crazier.
Here’s the difference between the Clinton impeachment and one that would occur now. The economy was doing well under Clinton; it’s not under Obama. So unless the American people can separate their feelings about the economy from their feelings about impeachment proceedings against Obama, then the proceedings (though the matter will fail in the Senate) can have a damaging political effect.
Yeah, the economy is the brick wall Obama has to hit no matter what else happens. Clinton was smart enough to pass his economic plan right away while Dems still controlled Congress, and he reaped the benefits through the rest of his Presidency. Obama, not so much.
Default is at least legal.
Obama has worked hard to shift the media narrative to make this all about the Republicans. The minute Obama invokes the 14th, Repubs are excused from their responsibility to govern, and it all becomes about Obama.
At least one good deal went down this weekend. Hunter Pence is a Fightin’