Be careful what you wish for when legislating morals.

If you missed the PBS series "Prohibition" you missed perhaps the best Ken Burns documentary ever.  Tucked in among the interesting facts was a real zinger today's moral majority/tea baggers/anti-tax/anti-federal government club should know about.  Federal income tax, you know that stuff they hate and call redistribution of wealth, that stuff the democrats are always tormenting you with, well why do we have it?  We have it because the bible thumpers wanted it, insisted on it, and forced the laws through to implement it.

From the early days of the nation, tax on alcohol was the giant piece of the pie running the government.  Often over 50% of the revenue was from booze.  The church, and the temperance movements had to find a way the government could survive without the tax on hooch.  Income tax was hatched as the alternative, and in the early 1900's it was passed into law.  The zealots got what they had wished for, income tax, the gateway drug to prohibition.  I don't think they are trying to disavow responsibility for it, they just don't know it was their own kin that put the yoke on them.  Of course, they could just cheat on it.  Naw.

Germany can move forward because they are Koch free with an educated public.

“The state government of Baden-Württemberg is extremely committed to the transition towards a low-carbon economy,” Franz Untersteller, state minister for the environment, climate and energy, said yesterday at the Center for American Progress. “We aim at decarbonizing our economy by midcentury.”


“The great advantage we have in Germany at the moment is we really have the broad consensus in society that corresponds to the size of the task we face,” said Ulrich Luscher, who represents the CDU, the conservative party, on energy issues. “I definitely agree … that we have enormous possibilities for the economy in that [clean energy] sector.”


“We don’t have the situation like you have in the U.S., where you have this Koch brothers,” Untersteller said, referring to the billionaire heirs of Koch Industries.

Hacked Squatlo's bird picture stash

Squatlo, what kind of bird is this?  Is it sleeping or did you dart it?  If I tried to take pictures of her she'd have more fingerprints on her ass than a mime's window.

It's a step forward in accepting the evidence but makes even less sense if you refuse to help fix it.

Chrisie baby sweet cheeks, this observation by GOPer Ingles is to your fund raising, as Niggerhead is to Perry's minority appeal.
"Thankfully, some are beginning to take a conservative approach rather than a populist approach. Governor Chris Christie, the effective, deficit-cutting governor of New Jersey, has joined presidential candidates Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney in saying that climate change is real and is caused, in part, by human activity. That Christie said those things while removing his state from a cap-and-trade compact is no contradiction. Most of us conservatives think that cap-and-trade is the wrong answer."


Explaining this positon to the big doner/deniers will have sweet cheeks squirming like a gnat with his asshole stretched over a pin head.

Found it, the Death Star, and it's right here, in my town.

My Wichita paper did not carry the story or even a mention, but there is a hugh story, link on Huffington Post and Bloomberg news, about the Koch Brothers breaking of laws in France and other countries, stealing oil, trading with Iran against the nations current laws, firing it's own people when they complain of it.  Koch's have paid fines (negotiated down to a fraction of the official fine and set in a way they can take it off their taxes) for stealing oil from Indian lands, underreporting and underpaying oil they pick up at the well for transport, spills and pollution over and over and over again, of course they hate the EPA.  The congressman from this district, Mike Pompeo, was given one of their top pollution lawyers as his chief of staff in DC, plus the most money of any congressman they give to and boy they give lots to lots of them.  His chief of staff made hundreds of thousands working for Koch, how could she make such a switch in pay grade???  Pompeo complains that nationwide he is referred to now as "Pompeo (R-Koch)", that is really getting him riled, he says he is R-KS, that he does nothing for Koch, nothing at all.   He is currently in the process of bringing a number of bills up to punish the EPA.  One, so petty, to bar the EPA from using interns, unofficially he says on the stump it's on the grounds it trains them to look at pollution as something bad, and that they are more likely to be people who might favor Obama's point of view.

P.S., 300 million.  That's what the brothers grim and C. Rove project they will give to Reichwing PAC's to defeat Obama.

from "Silent Spring"

“But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.” 
― Rachel Carson

Your car tires are low, I'm pretty sure of it, go check.

The last 3 months we had temps up to 108°F 3 days, and over 95 almost every day.  Finally this week relief, temps in the 70's and high 40's at night.  Most of the nation has had a summer about like this.  This morning I thought of tire pressure on the two vehicles.  Instead of the usual 34 it's 25 & 26 on all 8.  Got busy and puffed'm right up again.  Low tires eat up to 5% of your gas, buy 17 gallons but it burns like 16.    

When it dips another 30 degrees, the same thing happens again, the air shrinks in the tire.   In the spring the opposite happens, well we don't usually have to let air out though since all tires leak slowly, and faster at high pressure.  Air expands and contracts with temperature.  This simple rule is another of the scientific reasons we know global warming is not a hoax.  As the global average temperature is increasing the atmosphere is expanding.  (note I said global, not local, this would be the total of earths surface temp averaged for the year)  Clouds cannot leave the atmosphere, they cannot rise above a certain atmospheric limit, yet Thunderstorms are reaching higher altitudes all around the world these last few years as the atmosphere has grown, or inflated.  These taller storms contain more energy and destruction.   So, check your tires and burn less gas, create less greenhouse gas.

The end of my public announcement, your welcome, send me part of your savings.