I continue to improve, but my back pain is still a bit too severe tor me to sit up for the 8+ hours it normally takes me to research, write, and distribute.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:48 (average 4:29). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From NY Times: IF President Obama blocks the Keystone XL pipeline once and for all, he’ll do Canada a favor.
Canada’s tar sands formations, landlocked in northern Alberta, are a giant reserve of carbon-saturated energy — a mixture of sand, clay and a viscous low-grade petroleum called bitumen. Pipelines are the best way to get this resource to market, but existing pipelines to the United States are almost full. So tar sands companies, and the Alberta and Canadian governments, are desperately searching for export routes via new pipelines.
Canadians don’t universally support construction of the pipeline. A poll by Nanos Research in February 2012 found that nearly 42 percent of Canadians were opposed. Many of us, in fact, want to see the tar sands industry wound down and eventually stopped, even though it pumps tens of billions of dollars annually into our economy.
The most obvious reason is that tar sands production is one of the world’s most environmentally damaging activities. It wrecks vast areas of boreal forest through surface mining and subsurface production. It sucks up huge quantities of water from local rivers, turns it into toxic waste and dumps the contaminated water into tailing ponds that now cover nearly 70 square miles…
Here in the US, we don’t often get to see Canadian perspectives on this issue, beyond the false claims that Harper’s harlots try to shove down our throats. This editorial is excellent.
From Huffington Post: Every time I write about the GOP’s image problem with Latino voters, some conservative sends me an angry missive insisting that it’s all the liberal media spreading lies. I discover that not only does the Republican Party respect Hispanics, but it has their best interests at heart. The missive usually ends by telling me that Republicans are actually the most open-minded and tolerant of Americans.
And then approximately 14 minutes later, a GOP leader will say something like this:
"My father had a ranch. We used to have 50 to 60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes."
That’s Alaska Representative Don Young, a Republican, who recently said this during a radio interview…
Young certainly personified Republican thinking on the issue. What’s next? Will Lindsey Poo be describing who was picking cotton in his antebellum youth?
From Think Progress: A Texas district attorney and his wife were shot to death in their home in Kaufman County last night, the latest instance in a recent spate of suspicious shootings of law enforcement officials. The deaths of Mike and Cynthia McLelland follow the shooting of a Kaufman County assistant district attorney in January, which stoked suspicions of a conspiracy to target law enforcement officials by a white supremacist group.
The assistant district attorney, Mark Hasse, was killed on the same day the Justice Department released a statement noting the Kaufman County district attorney’s involvement in a racketeering case against the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist group based in Texas. The FBI had also begun investigating links between Hasse’s slaying and last week’s shooting of Colorado prison chief Tom Clemons by a member of another white supremacist group…
There is no definitive proof here, but this is starting to look like what leading Republicans often call a Second Amendment Solution.
Cartoon:
9 Responses to “Open Thread–4/1/2013”
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3:45 I speak 'frog' but not 'ribbet'!
3:07 Jump, Froggy!
2:27 Quick, huh?
APRIL FOOLS
3:24 really!
You had me fooled until I scrolled down to leave a congratulatory reply. Good one, Jerry!
NY Times ~ If Pres. Obama blocks the Keystone XL Pipeline once and for all, he will be doing the whole world a favor, not just Canada. The environmental damage done is far-reaching and affects the entire world, not just our hemisphere. Is it worth the few dollars it pumps into the economy? Most of the money just lines a certain few people's pockets.
HuffPo ~ Who will mow our lawns? pick our food from the fields? clean our houses and pools? watch our children? build our fences to keep illegegals out? Oops, they really didn't mean to say the last one.
Think Progress ~ Send lawyers, guns & money. The shit has hit the fan!
Cartoon ~ It looks like a wonderful place. I never even knew about it. http://www.nunavuttourism.com/
Never heard of Nunavut either. You learn something new everyday.
Puzzle — 3:45 I speak 'frog' but not 'ribbet'! (no offence intended)
NY Times — An excellent article from a Canadian I had never heard of but he is covered in Wikipedia and is quite notable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Homer-Dixon
I am surprised the opposition is so low. But then it does create jobs and money in the coffers so that will persuade many to be in favour. In some ways, I am of mixed feelings, but ultimately, if the planet is rendered uninhabitable, or a portion of it so, then the billions in the economy will be lost. Better to be proactive about renewable energy.
Doesn't that sound like the Republican/Teabaggers that Harper and his harlots worship!?!
But it is a start. Canada needs your help to kill the Enbridge Northern Gateway, the Kinder Morgan twin pipeline (one is already in place), and any eastern route through Québec. I have and will contine to sign everything I see to oppose the Keystone XL as well as the Canadian pipelines.
Huffington Post — People, I think, are smarter than the Republican/Teabaggers give them credit. The GOP is doing nothing but what they do best (other than straight lying), buying, or at least attempting to buy the Hispanic vote. Of course, in the process, they are also lying. They are the party of bigotry.
That is the big group hug that is NOT going to come your way Republican/Teabaggers!
Think Progress — Such ignorance and arrogance from Lindsey Poopy-head! Still standing for no background checks for private sales among other things. You know, the 2nd amendment makes reference to a "well regulated militia", but does not define 'regulated'. Is it just possible that 'regulated' could mean gun ownership regulations instead of the free for all that seems to be happening with the pro-gun lobby?
Cartoon — I'll have Nunavut! Thank you TC for featuring a part of Canada today! Did you know:
1) the only way to get goods and supplies into the people is by cargo plane or ship, there being no land link;
2) the flag contains an inukshuk while the coat of arms contains, in addition to the traditional royal crown, a cariboo and a narwal, and an inukshuk;
3) Canada's third territory, it was carved out of the Northwest Territories as part of the land claims settlement by the Nunavut Act and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act;
4) it is Canada's largest and most northern province/territory but has the smallest population at about 32,000;
5) between April and July 2010, Nunavut had the highest population growth rate of any Canadian province or territory, at a rate of 1.01% — hey, you have to find something to do during those long cold winter nights!
Have a read at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunavut for more interesting information.
The far north can be a cruel lady,but very beautiful.
The pipeline rupture in Arkansas ought to serve as a graphic object lesson in what we will be letting ourselves in for if the Keystone XL pipeline is approved. I lived in Arkansas for 7 years (that was where I learned that damn and yankee were one word) and boated and fished on Lake Conway many times. Every time someone tries to say something positive about Keystone, they should be made to watch the video of that tar sands crude flowing down a residential street on its way to what will no longer be a beautiful lakeshore. It isn't a question of "if" the pipeline will rupture, it's a question of "when."
It might make a difference now that some of the rich folks swimming pools are filling up with the lovely stuff.
The pictures looked lovely. It's going to take a lot of Latinos to get those pools cleaned.