Republicans Are Trying to Ram Through Crooked Nominees. Here’s How to Fight Them

The Republican party is wasting no time fucking over the country. And they want to make sure they have assholes in place to facilitate their pillaging. They have no interest in governing this country. They have no patience for democratic norms. They don’t give a single shit about ethics.

The Office of Government Ethics is raising alarm over the pace of confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees, saying Saturday that they have yet to receive required financial disclosures for some picks set to come before Congress next week.

In a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., released Saturday, OGE Director Walter Shaub wrote that “the announced hearing schedule for several nominees who have not completed the ethics review process is of great concern to me” and that the current schedule “has created undue pressure on OGE’s staff and agency ethics officials to rush through these important reviews.

“More significantly, it has left some of the nominees with potentially unknown or unresolved ethics issues shortly before their scheduled hearings,” Shaub continued. “I am not aware of any occasion in the four decades since OGE was established when the Senate held a confirmation hearing before the nominee had completed the ethics review process.”

This is the time when we have to resist. They need us to be quiet and compliant. When we rise up en masse, they learn they don’t have the consent of the governed – and sometimes, it makes them change course.

Here’s a handy spreadsheet showing who’s up for confirmation, why they’re terrible, the date of their hearings, and who to pester about it. Get on the phone and make your voice heard. This is our job this week. We sort of have a democracy still, broken and dysfunctional as it is. Let’s remind our elected officials what their job is. Continue reading “Republicans Are Trying to Ram Through Crooked Nominees. Here’s How to Fight Them”

Republicans Are Trying to Ram Through Crooked Nominees. Here’s How to Fight Them
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(Repost) Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education VI: Oceans O’ Creationism

After a long interlude with ACE, we’re now ready to jump in the deep end of our other creationist textbooks. Make sure you’ve got your scuba gear!

Science of the Physical Creation’s on about the oceans now. They begin their section on oceanography with Psalm 104: 24-25, because it has got the word “sea” in it, and sez God made it, therefore “God did it” is Science Fact. I suspect they’re doing this because there are only so many ways to work God into a discussion of seawater. Continue reading “(Repost) Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education VI: Oceans O’ Creationism”

(Repost) Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education VI: Oceans O’ Creationism

Adventures in ACE XXIX: Gusty With a 100% Chance of Drivel

Oh, joy, ACE weather forecasting! I forecast showers of creationist nonsense and gusts of boredom.

Our vocabulary for this section includes such difficult science words as chirp, cricket, mattress, and wispy. Bet you all remember struggling over these in your 8th grade science class, right?

Image is a drawing of a night scene, with stars in the top half, fading to midnight blue skies, and the silhoutte of tall grass at the bottom. At the center, white lowercase letters say "...crickets chirping"
Well, maybe not. But at least, thanks to ACE, we can define that noise and what’s making it.

The cartoon is cutting-edge humor, as always.

Image is a cartoon strip in two panels. The first panel is an aerial view looking down at two boys playing basketball. One is sinking the ball in the basket while saying, "Racer, when you plant a garden, why should you not plant onions next to potatoes?" The other boy is saying, "I don't know, Ace." In the next panel, Racer now has the ball and is dribbling, while we see Ace from the back trying to block him. Ace is saying, "So that the potatoes will not cry their 'eyes' out!" and Racer is saying, "Ha-ha!"
Cartoon from page 12 of ACE Science PACE 1089.

I’m so glad my parents didn’t send me to an ACE school. I’d have either died of pathological boredom or stabbed my eyes out with a pencil. Anything to get away from these awful jokes.

Anyway. So we’re back with Dad and Ace, just after the whole barometer convo, and Dad is keen for Ace to know that there’s more to forecasting than a barometer. He also wants us to know that “the laws that govern weather are orderly.” That’s quite a simplistic view of matters. Or maybe they’re defining “chaos” as “order.” It’s true that we’ve gotten better at forecasting, but even if we become capable of measuring almost every condition at particular moments in time, there will still be a considerable level of uncertainty to our forecasts, because weather is a chaotic system. Tiny perturbations have large effects. Butterflies and all. Continue reading “Adventures in ACE XXIX: Gusty With a 100% Chance of Drivel”

Adventures in ACE XXIX: Gusty With a 100% Chance of Drivel

Saturday Song: Music for the Resistance

This year is going to require a lot of resistance and rebellion. Even if Chitler hadn’t been elected in America, there’s severe inequality, relentless right wing movements, and various bigotries that need good people to stand against.

Music is a necessity in these times. We need songs we can march to. Songs that get our blood pumping. Songs that fire us up. Songs that sustain us. Songs that tell us to get the fuck up and keep fighting when it seems hopeless. So let’s collect those songs here.

I’ll start with one my friend Ingrid posted. It’s pretty damn perfect. Continue reading “Saturday Song: Music for the Resistance”

Saturday Song: Music for the Resistance

Rebellion Against Fascism is Not Optional. It’s Necessity

In just a couple of weeks, Cheeto Hitler takes over the Oval Office. He and his fellow Republicans are already busy undermining our democracy, trying to gut ethics committees, pissing off China, and starting nuclear fights on Twitter. We don’t need to wait to see how much damage they will do. The signs are already there.

This is a regime bolstered by white supremacists, fascists, and other assorted scum. This is a regime that will do serious and lasting harm to America and the world. There’s no question.

We don’t acquiesce. We don’t accept. We don’t reach across aisles and attempt to heal divides. The only thing to do in a situation like this is rebel.

Step one: get fired up and ready to fight. To that end, I’ll be sharing some of the best posts on the necessity of rebellion that I’ve found. Here’s our first installment.

Steven Olsen

Taking the high road right now means taking the path of most resistance. We do not capitulate to fascists. We are the goddamn immune system.

Rebellions Are Built on Hope: Why Rogue One Matters Now More Than Ever Continue reading “Rebellion Against Fascism is Not Optional. It’s Necessity”

Rebellion Against Fascism is Not Optional. It’s Necessity

(Repost) “A New and Dangerous Threshold” – Escape Chapter 22: Merril’s Heart Attack

Warren Jeffs is gaining more control over the FLDS daily. In this chapter, we’ll see just how badly his teachings affect women and children, while giving men the freedom to be as terrible as they want to be. And we’ll see why Merril dying would be worse than Merril living. There’s a horrific thought…

Content note for spousal abuse, spiritual abuse, medical neglect, casual ableism

After leaving her teaching job due to Rulon and Warren fucking up the educational system, Carolyn starts a web design business and sells health food online. She’s soon pregnant with her sixth child, which means unremitting sickness. And Uncle Rulon and his horrid son are squeezing the life out of the community.Movies and television are forbidden. The internet is to be used only for business. Various clothing styles and fabric patterns are outlawed, reducing people to only a few types of solid pastels. Long underwear is required at all times for everyone, including toddlers.

Mind you: this is in a desert.

But people accept it, because they’ve been told “that God believed his people were now ready to live by a higher law.” You can get people to subject themselves to nearly any outrage if you can convince them that’s what God wants. Continue reading “(Repost) “A New and Dangerous Threshold” – Escape Chapter 22: Merril’s Heart Attack”

(Repost) “A New and Dangerous Threshold” – Escape Chapter 22: Merril’s Heart Attack

Part 3: The Nazi Conscience Chapter 1 “An Ethnic Conscience”

We’ve seen that the Nazi’s antisemitism was not a deal-breaker for the German people, although the voters themselves were largely not antisemitic. They were interested in “the Nazi’s promise of a radically new order under Hitler’s control.”

If we take Trump voters at their word, they’re not anti-Muslim bigots. They’re not misogynists or racists. They just want change. Okay: if that’s so, they need to be aware of how easily they can be persuaded to cross the line. If bigotry is not something that bothers you enough to reject the people spouting it, you are perilously close to being caught up in their hate.

The Nazis, after coming to power, expended quite a bit of effort to bring people around to their views on “unwanted” people. Anti-Jewish bigotry was the big one, but they also included Romani, gays, disabled people, and prisoners of war in their campaign to eradicate impurities from their volk. And they convinced alarming numbers of their fellow citizens, whether those citizens had voted for the Nazis or not, to go along.

And the folks who went along weren’t just the blatant bigots. Continue reading “Part 3: The Nazi Conscience Chapter 1 “An Ethnic Conscience””

Part 3: The Nazi Conscience Chapter 1 “An Ethnic Conscience”

(Repost) Adventures in ACE XII: Wibbly about Water

It’s about time we finish with the risible ACE PACE 1086, and the subject matter segues nicely into the chapters on oceans we have coming up in our other “science” textbooks. Besides, after last week’s installment, I’m sure you’re all on the edge of your seats wondering if the Loyaltons are about to go splat against a mountain. So let us continue our flyover with them, and see where we end up. Continue reading “(Repost) Adventures in ACE XII: Wibbly about Water”

(Repost) Adventures in ACE XII: Wibbly about Water

Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education XLII: Wherein Creationism Leaves Us Cold

Welcome back to the world according to BJU’s Earth Science 4th Edition!

The Ark has landed, the waters receded, and the animals disembarked. Every living thing is busy making lots of little hyper-evolving babies, which the BJU folks assure us is ever so much more Biblical than plain ol’ slow and gradual evolution.

Now they’re on about Ice Ages. Well, the Ice Age. And it’s hilarious.

You see, ice ages aren’t biblical. And they’re forced to admit that “the Bible doesn’t mention an ice age…” But there’s all this physical evidence, see. Even the “creationary geologists” are forced to admit that they “see clear evidence for a glacial period after the Flood.” They can’t unsee it. They can’t pretend it’s not there, or is actually something else. They look at those old “moraines, U-shaped valleys, and sculpted land features known to be formed by glaciers,” and can’t pretend they’re actually something else. So the “creationary geologists” add an Ice Age to the creation story, even though ice ages aren’t anything God saw fit to mention in the Genesis account.

Gosh. Isn’t there somewhere in the Bible that warns against adding stuff to it? Continue reading “Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education XLII: Wherein Creationism Leaves Us Cold”

Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education XLII: Wherein Creationism Leaves Us Cold