The Invocation of Senate Rule 14.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, accompanied by Senate Republican leaders, speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill. CREDIT: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais.

While all eyes are on Comey right now, the ever oily ophidian Mitch McConnell is busy making sure that millions upon millions of American citizens will be thoroughly deprived of healthcare. This is the perfect time for sly and sleazy tricks, with all the scandals breaking like so many rotten eggs; and it is summertime, with all its enticing distractions, offering respite from the constant anxieties of American life. It would be so much easier, and nicer, to go off on my new bicycle for a rideabout, than to report on yet more of the machinations of the regime.

Senate Speaker Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said he is striving to get a vote on the Republican health care bill by July 4, before Congress leaves for August recess. As ludicrous as this deadline seems, the Senate could pull it off — but it will be done without much public scrutiny.

Sen. McConnell implemented Senate “Rule 14” Wednesday to fast-track the GOP House health bill. This rule allows the Senate to skip the committee process (goodbye full senate committee debate) and instead “fast-tracks” the bill by moving it on the senate calendar so it can be brought to a vote.

Republicans need to pass a health care bill immediately. And they need to pass a bill that reconciles the needs of both the House and Senate, by September 30th in order to use reconciliation. Reconciliation is a 1974 act that expedites the senate’s consideration of bills that pertain to the budget. While Washington watches James Comey testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senate Republicans leaders and the health care working group will still be meeting for a working luncheon to continue negotiations.

[…]

During a Senate Finance Committee hearing on the Health and Human Services 2018 budget request on Thursday, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) vocalized her frustration with the senate leader invoking rule 14. She asked the chairman, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), if there is going to be a public hearing on the Senate’s secret health bill. A befuddled Hatch said he did not know. “But we have no idea what’s being proposed,” McCaskill exclaimed.

McCaskill makes a valid point. Georgetown University congressional expert Josh Huder says what’s truly remarkable is the Senate will replicate what the House did: push this bill forward with little transparency.

It’s not transparent, but it’s a good way to get health care legislation passed. The Senate is using reconciliation to get this done, which prevents a Democrat filibuster. “This bill will not get 60 votes anywhere. If you want to the bill to pass, this is the only way to do it,” said Huder.

Think Progress has the full story.

“She’ll Cut Your Pee-Pee Off.”

Red Gate Arts.

Wayne Allyn Root is at it again, this time with a dire warning about liberal cat lovers. Well, liberal cat lovers who happen to be women. I guess the liberal cat lovers who are men are okay. Wayne seems to think that liberal cat ladies are all penis whackers. Hackers? Slicers? Dicers? Something.

Root was ranting about a federal contractor who was arrested for allegedly leaking classified information to a news outlet when he went off on a tangent about how liberal women who own cats are all insane.

Hmmm. So, if I say all 55+ white men who have radio programs are insane, that would be okay? Cool.

“Find me a woman who is a feminist and a liberal and likes cats and I will find you someone who ought to be in an insane asylum every single time,” Root bellowed. “Hey guys, if any of you out there are single and you ever meet a woman who admits to being a liberal and hating Trump and when you get to her house, she’s got cats, run for your life. Run, run, run. Like those ads in Britain, run and hide and tell other men to run and hide.”

I’m a feminist. I’m a liberal. I’m a woman. I have cats, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say I like them. I like some of them. I’m not the cat person in the family, I’m more on the dog and rat side. Most of the time, I’m fairly sure I don’t belong in an insane asylum, but we all have our days, do we not, Wayne? I’m thinking you might benefit from a quiet time out.

“No man can ever live with a liberal woman with cats,” he continued. “She’ll cut your pee-pee off, I promise you. Liberals are mentally unstable and mentally insane. They’re unhinged.”

I’m certainly not as unhinged as you are, you inflamed asspimple. I’ve lived with my partner for 40 years, and his penis remains intact. I know, amazing, ennit? Personally, I think anyone who goes on a radio show, no matter how little, and starts ranting about women cutting “pee-pees” off is somewhere in the lunatic fringe region. By the way, Wayne, the word is penis. It’s okay, you can use it.

Via RWW.

Jumping Spiders, Galileo, and Twitter.

Kaldari/Wikipedia.

A fascinating story about a rain of jumping spiders, their penchant for hunting laser dots, scientists being brought together on Twitter, and how Jumping Spider eyes are built just like Galilean telescopes – they can see the moon. If you, like me, start following videos from the main one at the site, you’ll find all manner of people who keep these friendly and smart beings as companions.

The Atlantic has the full story.

33 Degrees South: Booborowie, Part 1.

From Lofty: A series of pictures from the hilly district 100 miles north of where I live. Booborowie is the tiny town where we started. The country is gaunt yet beautiful. The rainfall is fickle, early settlers had their hopes dashed every drought but the lucky few families survived and prospered into the 21st century. The wind is a nearly constant feature hence the wind farms but on the day we rode there was little wind so they turned fitfully. Properly speaking the photos should have the title 33 degrees south as we are a fair way from home. The third picture is a zoom shot of the falcon in shot 2. Click for full size!

© Lofty, all rights reserved.

Another Nail in the Garden of Eden.

Two views of a composite reconstruction of the earliest known Homo sapiens fossils from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, based on micro computed tomographic scans of multiple original fossils, are shown in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters June 7, 2017. Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA Leipzig/Handout via REUTERS.

The understanding of human origins was turned on its head on Wednesday with the announcement of the discovery of fossils unearthed on a Moroccan hillside that are about 100,000 years older than any other known remains of our species, Homo sapiens.

Scientists determined that skulls, limb bones and teeth representing at least five individuals were about 300,000 years old, a blockbuster discovery in the field of anthropology.

The antiquity of the fossils was startling – a “big wow,” as one of the researchers called it. But their discovery in North Africa, not East or even sub-Saharan Africa, also defied expectations. And the skulls, with faces and teeth matching people today but with archaic and elongated braincases, showed our brain needed more time to evolve its current form.

“This material represents the very root of our species,” said paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, who helped lead the research published in the journal Nature.

Before the discovery at the site called Jebel Irhoud, located between Marrakech and Morocco’s Atlantic coast, the oldest Homo sapiens fossils were known from an Ethiopian site called Omo Kibish, dated to 195,000 years ago.

“The message we would like to convey is that our species is much older than we thought and that it did not emerge in an Adamic way in a small ‘Garden of Eden’ somewhere in East Africa. It is a pan-African process and more complex scenario than what has been envisioned so far,” Hublin said.

Fascinating! I’m sure as soon as all the creationists hear, they’ll be busy cooking up wild refutations of some sort. Full story here. And, from Nature:

Fossil evidence points to an African origin of Homo sapiens from a group called either H. heidelbergensis or H. rhodesiensis. However, the exact place and time of emergence of H. sapiens remain obscure because the fossil record is scarce and the chronological age of many key specimens remains uncertain. In particular, it is unclear whether the present day ‘modern’ morphology rapidly emerged approximately 200 thousand years ago (ka) among earlier representatives of H. sapiens1 or evolved gradually over the last 400 thousand years2. Here we report newly discovered human fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and interpret the affinities of the hominins from this site with other archaic and recent human groups. We identified a mosaic of features including facial, mandibular and dental morphology that aligns the Jebel Irhoud material with early or recent anatomically modern humans and more primitive neurocranial and endocranial morphology. In combination with an age of 315 ± 34 thousand years (as determined by thermoluminescence dating)3, this evidence makes Jebel Irhoud the oldest and richest African Middle Stone Age hominin site that documents early stages of the H. sapiens clade in which key features of modern morphology were established. Furthermore, it shows that the evolutionary processes behind the emergence of H. sapiens involved the whole African continent.

Game Of Thrones: Lego and Fashion.

Matt Omori.

There’s yet to be an official Game of Thrones Lego set for fans to geek out over, so programmer Matt Omori, a.k.a., YouTuber Tusserte, went ahead and built his own. In a project that took him around 18 months and over 100 hours of input, he’s built a Lego replica of the Red Keep throne room.

Omori designed the room from scratch after studying its appearances in the series and watching behind-the-scenes footage. The resulting model used around 15,000 pieces, 1,000 of which are just used as scaffolding for the base and can’t even be seen in the final model. Before it was built, Omori played around with designs in Lego’s Digital Designer software, which helped him nail the design virtually and let him know what specific parts he needed to buy.

You can see and read much more at The Creators Project.

Game of Thrones is a tale told in cloth as much as it is in blood and fire. Between the CGI-heavy battles with White Walkers and wildfire, the politics of presentation is key. Who can forget the end of Season Four when Sansa abandoned her girlish gowns for black leather and feathers, or Jon Snow’s Season Six shift from the black crow cape to the proudly wearing the Direwolf of Winterfell?

Costume designer Michele Clapton, who’s taken home two Emmys for her work on Game of Thrones. She opens up about her past and the creative process behind her most stunning ensembles in a new featurette. Along with nuggets about her fashion school days bouncing ideas off fellow New Romantics Steve Strange and Boy George, she concisely summarizes the role of a costume designer: “You know the story, you know what their relationships are. You need to say that somehow in cloth.”

This post contains minor spoilers for Game of Thrones.

Via The Creators Project.