I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

GG - thank god you discovered the mold before you bought the house.  Looks like you have good options coming up.

Athena..sure wish your pain meds were doing decent things for you. 

Blue..pics are as pretty as ever.

I thought about not putting this in here......against the odds, I have continued to hope the GOP would find some way to stop being the party of no, along with not being the party of glaringly stupid.  It just doesn't seem to let up.

Republicans learned a number of lessons from the 2012 elections. They learned they need to reach out to Latinos. They learned that younger Americans aren't too fond of them. And they learned a lesson that was summed up in three words: "No more Akins." That would be Todd Akin, the Missouri Senate candidate whose bid was torpedoed when he shared with the voters his colorful views on the likelihood of rape resulting in pregnancy (almost non-existent, he said, if in fact it's a "legitimate rape," because "the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down"). There was also, don't forget, the equally gynecologically insightful Richard Mourdock, who opined that if you're raped and become pregnant, "that is something that God intended to happen." One party strategist after another whispered frantically, "Ix-nay on the ape-ray!" to no avail.

Jackie -- Who was it who said "You can't fix stupid"?

Wish I had something like this in my back yard:

Breaking news:  Supreme Court rules human genes cannot be patented:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-says-human-genes-cannot-be-patented/2013/06/13/f7681b22-d436-11e2-b3a2-3bf5eb37b9d0_story.html?hpid=z1

That IS good news, RL!  However, I was also thinking that Myriad was more concerned with patenting the "process" or technology they used to isolate the DNA, rather than the DNA itself???  Should have taken more science classes....

Now here is something that I find quite scary, because these idiots' "friends" have made their way across your northern border....

Courtesy of Emily Bazelon from Slate:  

At a congressional hearing Wednesday, Rep. Trent Franks, a Republican from Arizona, argued against an exception for rape and incest victims from a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. He said, “Before, when my friends on the left side of the aisle here tried to make rape and incest the subject—because, you know, the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low.” He is of course following in the footsteps of former Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri, who said that women can stave off pregnancy after a “legitimate rape.” (He apologized but that didn’t save him from losing his next election.) 

These claims are false, of course, or as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists puts it, “medically inaccurate, offensive, and dangerous.” That is not all that’s wrong with the claims. They originate with Nazi experiments on women in concentration camps. Here’s what I wrote about this last November “

In the aftermath of Akin’s statement, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on a 1972 essay by an obstetrician named Fred Mecklenburg, who cited a Nazi experiment in which women were told they were on their way to die in the gas chambers—and then were allowed to live, so that doctors could check whether they would still ovulate. Since few did, Mecklenburg claimed that women exposed to the emotional trauma of rape wouldn’t be able to become pregnant, either. (He also argued that rapists are infertile because they masturbate a lot.) The essay was published in a book financed by A.U.L.” 

A.U.L. is Americans United for Life, a pro-life advocacy group with increasing clout because of its success in drafting model state laws to restrict abortion. The line from the Nazis to Mecklenberg to Akin and Frank runs through Jack Wilke, a doctor who is the former head of the National Right to Life Committee. He said, "What is certainly one of the most important reasons why a rape victim rarely gets pregnant, and that's physical trauma." 

So.......what is it about ovulation and the timing of fertilization do these dipshidiots not understand? And why aren't they treating rape as an act of violence, instead of just a woman (oh yes, probably a slut) getting laid by someone she doesn't like?  Hmmmmm?

Athena - will pm you re: acupuncture in your area

HL - thanks for sharing the link.  I read the article and it went on to say that their process (isolating the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene) could be patented - which seems fair to me, but what do I know....

Blue - gorgeous, gorgeous pictures as always.

Athena - so good to see/hear/read you, and so very sorry that you are experiencing difficulties with the pain meds.  I can't take those things as they make me go off kilter - hate 'em - but when you're in pain, well, you're in pain, and you've got to have something!!  Do try the acupuncture.  I've also experienced a small measure of relief with arnica, so you might give it a go - but it is small.

Kam - I enjoyed looking for about 1 day - since then it's been sheer drudgery.  Hoping it's over soon!!

Another little thing from ringside Seat today:

THE METAMUCIL CONSPIRACY

While there are a few foundations that give awards for service to the cause of liberalism, most of the cash prizes top out in the four figures. Which is why we might be just a tad jealous that our conservative friends, if they play their cards right, might grab themselves a Bradley Prize, given to those who have gone above and beyond the call of conservative duty; it comes with a check for a cool $1 million. This year's awards were given out last night, and one went to Roger Ailes, the CEO of Fox News, who certainly deserves it. Ailes did say he'd be giving the money to charity, which is nice, and given that his total compensation last year

In his speech blasting the Obama administration and liberals in general, the head of the "fair and balanced" news network took time to repeat one of the most oddly persistent conspiracy theories about the Affordable Care Act. "The federal government is about to hire 16,000 more IRS agents to enforce health care," Ailes www.politifact.com/rhode-islan...>this explanation. As you can gather, one fact-checker after another has debunked the idea. And yet it persists, not just in the fever swamps, but among people like Ailes, whom you could argue is the most influential Republican in America.

So we'd say to those conservative friends of ours: This is why we liberals charge that you're more dishonest than we are. It isn't that  you can't find examples of prominent Democratic politicians saying things that are untrue. You can. But this kind of thing—when someone on the right makes up a phony number or a phony claim or simply an outright lie, and then one Republican after another picks it up and repeats it again and again and again—sure seems to happen a lot more on the right. But maybe we're wrong. Maybe there are lots of examples of provably false claims running around in elite circles on the left, getting passed on to the public by important politicians and people with big media megaphones. But it's awfully difficult to think of any.

I'll probably get the dreaded marks as well.

Jackie

Edited by Mods to fix the post's formatting effect on the board