I got a fair bit of Twitter hate yesterday for saying that Republicans hate children. That’s absurd, Republicans said. So I have to clarify, especially now that Jon Stewart has explained it to me.
Republicans only hate your children. Your kids can go eat tainted meat or die of cancer, but compromising their children’s field trips? Unforgivable.
I’d vote for her.
What else have the Republicans shut down? Treatments for kids with cancer.
At the National Institutes of Health, nearly three-quarters of the staff was furloughed. One result: director Francis Collins said about 200 patients who otherwise would be admitted to the NIH Clinical Center into clinical trials each week will be turned away. This includes about 30 children, most of them cancer patients, he said.
The Republican-led government shutdown has also shut down the NSF.
National Science Foundation: Pretty Much Screwed. The NSF is the organization in charge of doling out government dollars to valuable scientific research that could cure fatal diseases, improve quality of life, or create new amazing things. Lest you forget, the MRI machine, voice control, multitouch displays, the internet, GPS, and many, many more advances were funded all or in part by the NSF. This isn’t frivolous. This is important work that will grind to a halt. The NSF will stop making payments to researchers, and government-funded programs the researchers need, like websites and document downloads, will not be operational.
They’ve also sent NASA and all of their active projects off on a vacation.
That now includes the Mars rover Curiosity, which has been shut down, taking a furlough in safe mode like 97 percent (!) of NASA employees. (Safe mode, which Curiosity has gone into for technical glitches before, means it won’t be completely turned off, but won’t be collecting new data, either.) More or less everyone who isn’t working on keeping the International Space Station astronauts safe will be receiving an unexpected vacation.
And have you seen the banner on PubMed?
Due to the lapse in government funding, PubMed is being maintained with minimal staffing. Information will be updated to the extent possible, and the agency will attempt to respond to urgent operational inquiries.
Updates regarding government operating status and resumption of normal operations can be found at http://www.usa.gov.
Thanks, you bastard shit-sucking dumbass Republicans!
Oh, and how about the USDA?
Due to the lapse in federal government funding, this website is not available.
After funding has been restored, please allow some time for this website to become available again.
This is embarrassing.
Our broken party of ignorant zealots, the Republicans, have shut down the government in a tantrum over our very limited healthcare proposal. Here’s what we can expect to see happen:
State department will be able to operate for limited time
Department of defence will continue military operations
Department of education will still distribute $22bn to public schools, but staffing is expected to be severely hit
Department of energy – 12,700 staff expected to be sent home, with 1,113 remaining to oversee nuclear arsenal
Department of health and human services expected to send home more than half of staff
The Federal Reserve, dept of homeland security, and justice dept will see little or no disruption
US Postal Services continue as normal
Smithsonian institutions, museums, zoos and many national parks will close
I might have seen a bright side to this if the military and homeland security had felt the bite, but no — health and human services, the department of energy, education, and our parks and museums are being hit. It’s always the stuff that makes us better people that suffers the first cut when the Republicans have their way.
There is no further excuse for them. The Republican Party must wither and die. It is no longer the loyal opposition, the party of conservatives, or the cautious, fiscally responsible party: it is the fringe party of lunatics, demagogues, and irresponsible lackwits.
By they way, if you go to Google right now, their doodle is celebrating the 123rd anniversary of Yosemite National Park.
Why do the Republicans hate Yosemite?
It darn well better be good advice, because I’m following it.
Although “Step Seven: Better Call Saul” is a little worrisome — I don’t know how much my lawyer knows about money laundering or setting up fake identities. We seem to be committed to following the rule of law and conventional operating procedures here.
Oh, man, I can’t endorse this action by Lakota and Dakota women. I think people have a right to do as they please (as long as it doesn’t harm others) on their private property — that goes for worshipping Jesus or Thor, desecrating Bibles, or even flying Nazi flags. (All bets are off if the Nazi sympathizers in Leith, ND, who were trying to stage a takeover of the local government, were flying that flag as representative of the city.)
So I can’t support seizing the Nazi flag and burning it, if it were someone else’s private property. But I still look at this picture and think…whoa, but they are badass.
Lakota and Dakota grandmothers captured the Nazi flag hanging in Leith, ND and burned it. Warriors!
I watched this ghastly video supported by the Koch brothers, and my jaw dropped and I said “Holy shit.” Literally. Not a metaphor.
They are trying to scare women away from getting a Pap smear and turning gynecological exams into a creepy episode, all in the name of squashing government-insured health care.
We’re just going to have to face it. Republicans are simply awful human beings.
My daughter moves to Boulder, and what happens? The worst storm in a century. I’m not saying there’s a causal relationship, but you know we sent her far far away for a reason, right?
Actually, I’m pretty sure she had nothing to do with it. But there are things we could have done and should be doing right now.
As I wrote late last week, thanks in part to climate change, the odds are shifting toward more frequent extreme weather events like this. We all watched as the Hurricane Sandy relief bill languished in Congress for months. An economy on the doorstep of recovery doesn’t need yet another surprise $20 billion tab to pick up. Action on climate change would also help to prevent future disasters.
However, perhaps a more ominous takeaway is that the torrential rain in Colorado wasn’t well-forecast. The first flash flood watch was only issued by the National Weather Service on Thursday morning, less than 24 hours before the peak flooding. At the time, the forecaster on duty remarked “rainfall amounts today not expected to be as great as those observed during the past 18 hours.”
At the very least, Republicans should stop trying to dismantle the national weather service. Optimistically, they should stop dragging their heels on environmental issues. Once upon a time, Republicans could be relied on to snap to attention when a problem threatened to cost big money if not addressed; no more. Ideology is all.
Good news: Larry Summers has withdrawn his candidacy for chairman of the Federal Reserve. Just the fact that Obama keeps propping up this banker mentality for his economic advisors calls his judgment into question, but at least this is one rich gomer who won’t be calling the shots. Let’s have no illusions: the rich have gotten richer under Obama, and the poor have only gotten poorer at a slightly slower rate than under the Republicans.
We’re also spared the spectacle of seeing the lady bankers shooed away to play with little pink dolls.
