New on the US Education Task Force! The Return of Christian Young-Earth Creationism!

So… our Screaming Carrot Demon in Chief announced the name of the man who will be leading his Education Task Force.

If you were expecting someone who was actually qualified, you clearly weren’t paying attention to Betsy Devos. If the name I’m about to give you sounds like “of course. He would pick him.”, then you have been paying attention…

Evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, will lead an education task force put together by President Donald Trump, a spokesman for the university told CNN Thursday.

Len Stevens, the school’s spokesman, said Falwell — the son of Jerry Falwell Sr., the late televangelist — will push to stop regulations coming out of the Education Department, especially those that apply to colleges and universities.

The White House declined to comment.

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Self Care – The Struggle Bus: Sinceriously

Sorry this is going up late. My bad.

This is episode 82 of The Struggle Bus (the most recent episode). From the page:

On this episode Kate and Sally jibber jabber about the state of the US right now and how to stay engaged while taking care of yourself. Then they answer emails about how to bring up ~sex stuff~ with a prospective partner, how to cope when the shit hits the fan all at once, and the best ways to support a loved one who miiiiight be struggling with how to reconcile their sexuality with their religion.

While they do talk about current events and Sir Tony Orange Hands, it’s all in the context of self care, and ways to cope. It’s a great episode, which is why I’m posting it…

Self Care – Astronomy Picture of the Week: The Multiverse

Okay… you might be thinking I’ve jumped the shark with this series now, but before getting back to images of objects within our observable universe, I just have to go here…

You see, I’m fascinated by the idea of multiple universes, especially the idea that there could be an infinite number of universes, because that means that everything is real. In such a multiverse, there is no such thing as fiction or fantasy. I kind of love that. I won’t go into detail, because this is largely an image series, but just let your imagination go wild thinking about this.

It’s awesome.

The following image is an artist’s rendition of one idea born out of various multiverse ideas, including String Theory, Superstring theory, and M-Theory. I got it from an article on The Physics of the Universe.

Artist's visualization of rippling membranes

Artist’s visualization of rippling membranes

I remember seeing this membrane idea described on one of those TV science documentary shows. It was something like this…

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Government Agencies Resist

This is absolutely amazing…

As you know, our Sputum-Filled Orange Julius in Chief has been issuing gag orders and otherwise silencing scientific agencies, especially when it comes to climate change.

And so, in response, multiple alternative resistance accounts have sprung up on Twitter, ready to fight for facts.

This short post is basically just a list of all the alternative Twitters I could find. I want to make this post an official database of all the Alt twitter accounts, so please; if you find any I missed, let me know in the comments so I can update the post. Thank you.

And special thanks to Dana Hunter, at En Tequila Es Verdad, part of The Orbit network, for alerting her readers (myself included) to this…

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From Tony at The Progressive Pub – This can all be traced back to the Civil War

I want to share this post with you, written by Tony at his Progressive Pub, a part of The Orbit network.

It’s a very good, very informative post about where we are today, and where it comes from. It’s both devastating and hopeful.

I’m going to quote just a bit of it (from the middle, not the beginning) below the fold, but please… click on the link and read the entire thing. Thank you…

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So Why am I So Pissed About the Moralizing Over a Nazi Getting Punched in the Face?

Okay okay… I guess maybe I need to explain myself. I’ve been throwing barbs at people whining about a Nazi getting punched in the face all morning.

To be honest, I am really, truly livid at everyone doing this. I honestly thought that this post would be cathartic, but it somehow only made me angrier.

I know it’s going to be hard to believe, but I am, actually, a pacifist. War scares me like you wouldn’t believe, I abhor guns with a passion (I really think they should all be banned, bar none; they had fucking muskets when the 2nd amendment was written; so you know what?… I’ll bend on allowing 18th-century muskets), and I actually do think that, in theory, violence should be a last resort.

But this is not theory.

We are not in a place where we can hold Vulcan-academic discussions about it all. This shit is not just some ivory tower discussion about something that might happen.

This shit is actually happening, in real life, right now.

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Trump is Slashing Federal Funding to Sanctuary Cities… But You’re Mad That a Nazi Got Punched in the Face?

Another thing the Bone-In Ham occupying the White House has done is target sanctuary cities, slashing their funding.

On Wednesday, Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at cracking down on so-called “sanctuary cities,” which limit cooperation between state and local law enforcement and federal immigration agents. It follows through on his campaign-trail promise to withhold federal dollars from such cities, which might jeopardize support for services including education, health care, and housing for millions of American citizens.According to the executive order, dubbed “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States,” cities that do not comply with federal immigration enforcement agents “are not eligible to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes by the Attorney General or the Secretary.” It also notes that the director of the Office of Management and Budget will be responsible for obtaining and providing “relevant and responsive information on all Federal grant money that currently is received by any sanctuary jurisdiction.” It is not clear, however, which grants are at jeopardy.

Earlier in the day, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said at the daily press briefing: “We’re going to strip federal grant money from the sanctuary states and cities that harbor illegal immigrants. The American people are no longer going to have to be forced to subsidize this disregard for our laws.”

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Trump Outright Lied About the Existence of Voter Fraud and “Plans” to “Combat” It… But You’re Mad That a Nazi Got Punched in the Face?

In case you forgot, the Failed-Steak-Salesman-in-Chief is an out-and-out bald-faced liar. And at least one of his lies will have devastating effects for citizens of the United States:

After His Claim of Voter Fraud, Trump Vows ‘Major Investigation’

President Trump intends to move forward with a major investigation of voter fraud that he says cost him the popular vote, White House officials said Wednesday, despite bipartisan condemnation of his allegations and the conclusion of Mr. Trump’s own lawyers that the election was “not tainted.”

In his first days in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump has renewed his complaint that millions of people voted illegally, depriving him of a popular-vote majority. In two Twitter posts early Wednesday morning, the president vowed to open an inquiry to reveal people who are registered to vote in multiple states or who remain on voting rolls long after they have died.

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Self Care – The Great Bagel Debate

Ah, bagels. The world’s greatest comfort food (for me). Nothing, and I do mean nothing, beats a fresh-out-of-the-oven everything bagel, sliced horizontally, and topped with plain cream cheese, thick tomato slices, raw red onions, belly lox, and, if available, capers. But short of all that, even a good bagel by itself can make me feel wonderful…

J. Kenji Lopez-Alt of Serious Eats seems to agree with me. In fact, he wrote an entire manifesto about what makes a good bagel, and it’s a thing of beauty. To be fair, he put it up in May of 2015, but I only found it recently.

I’m much pickier about my bagels now than when I used to be. And this manifesto is a great breakdown of why…

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The Dakota Access and Keystone XL Pipelines Have Been Given the Go Ahead… But You’re Mad That a Nazi Got Punched in the Face?

So… His Lowness, Keeper of the Doritos, Trumplethinskin signed an executive order green-lighting DAPL and Keystone XL.

As he signed the paperwork in an Oval Office photo op, Trump said his administration is “going to renegotiate some of the terms” of the Keystone project, which would carry crude oil from the tar sands of western Canada and connect to an existing pipeline to the Gulf Coast.

The pipelines had been stopped during the Obama administration. The State Department rejected a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, and President Obama ordered work halted on the Dakota pipeline after Native American groups and other activists protested its route near culturally sensitive sites in North Dakota.

DAPL, if you will recall, was halted because they were going to build it through Native American land, violating treaty rights:

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which protested the Dakota Access pipeline, said it will take legal action to fight Trump’s decision, saying the pipeline “risks contaminating tribal and American water supplies while disregarding treaty rights.”

More about DAPL:

President Obama said in an interview published this week that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was considering rerouting the Dakota Access Pipeline to accommodate the “sacred lands of Native Americans,” sparking speculation over the fate of the controversial crude oil pipeline.

But it also prompted some to point out that the current path of the pipeline is actually a reroute itself, with critics calling this reroute an act of “environmental racism.”

A previously proposed route for the 1,172-mile pipeline had it crossing the Missouri River north of Bismarck, North Dakota, according to a document filed as part of the permitting process. The eventual route that was decided on, and is currently in construction, moved the water crossing of the crude oil pipeline south of the North Dakota capital, to just upstream of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s reservation.

And here is a PDF of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s call to action.

So now these environmental travesties are going to be built, violating land treaties with Native Americans and likely making Climate Change worse…

But it’s the Nazi getting punched in the face that’s the big problem, here…

Kid rolling eyes