The public is largely unaware of this because the conservative establishment in both Washington and the press has been relentless in its effort to separate the G.O.P. from the excesses of the Palin-Fox-Beck-Breitbart bomb throwers and from wacky Tea Party senatorial candidates like Sharron Angle of Nevada and Rand Paul of Kentucky. To hear most non-Fox conservative pundits tell it on Sunday talk shows or op-ed pages, these unruly radicals are just a passing craze. The new post-Bush G.O.P., we’re told, is exemplified by responsible, traditional small-government conservative governors like Mitch Daniels (of Indiana) or Chris Christie (of New Jersey).

But it’s Daniels and Christie who are the anomalies.

Whenever I start to hyperventilate about the state of the US if the Tea Party gets their way (think pre-Victorian England -- no education or voting rights for women or non-white people, a two class system where the rich aren't taxed to provide basic services for the desperately poor (or themselves, for that matter), and a judicial system based on the Old Testament), I think it must be because I haven't experienced politics for that long. Surely once you've seen 20 or 30 years of the back biting and a certain party trying to return us to the fabled "good ole days" with idiotic rhetoric, you get used to it.

It just doesn't feel that way, though. It feels like the pendulum is swinging backwards a lot more than it's swinging forwards. 41% of Republicans think Obama isn't a citizen, for Christ's sake! That's a seemingly insurmountable propaganda machine if we've ever witnessed one.

-janelane, the glass is half-full of Gulf coast oil-water

Op-Ed Columnist - How to Lose an Election Without Really Trying - NYTimes.com

The race has drawn high-profile endorsements from several presumed 2012 presidential hopefuls. While Ms. Palin, the former vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor, campaigned for Ms. Handel, who would have been the state’s first female governor, Mr. Deal received endorsements from both Mike Huckabee, the former presidential candidate and governor of Arkansas, and Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House.

Ah, I pity the Republicans. Their main choice was between a woman endorsed by that flaming idiot Palin or a man endorsed by that flaming asshole Newt Gingrich. One's empty upstairs and the other's corrupt as fuck. Go Georgia!

-janelane

Georgia’s Gubernatorial Primary Is Too Close to Call - NYTimes.com

McCain and Coburn, both Republicans who voted against the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act last year, named their report “Summertime Blues: 100 stimulus projects that give taxpayers the blues.”

Their list includes Georgia Tech professors who received federal stimulus funds to understand how jazz, avant-garde art and Indian classical musicians improvise. The report cites an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article that describes the $762,372 study, which involves using brain imaging to learn how musicians do their work.

The researchers hope their project will help develop new technologies that support creativity in music, education and other areas.

“How will this help pull the United States out of an historic economic slump?” McCain and Coburn’s report asks.

Also making the senators’ list is another Georgia Tech project, also highlighted in the AJC article, that was granted $427,824 in stimulus funds for a study on elderly people playing video games, including the Wii Boom Blox game. The researcher hopes her work could help create guidelines for developing other "brain games" for seniors.

Georgia Tech issued a statement in response, saying such research is “necessary for the long-term economic success of our state and our nation.”

“Federal agencies funded research projects at Georgia Tech because they determined that the projects meet the appropriate criteria for stimulus funding,” Georgia Tech spokesman Matt Nagel said. “The fruits of this research are new industries and companies. For example, we are proud that our Center for Music Technology has already developed two new companies with this type of research."

The senators also highlighted a $677,462 research project at Georgia State University to study “why monkeys respond negatively to inequity and unfairness.” Asked about the project, the university sent the AJC a news release from last year that said the research “will hopefully answer questions about the evolution of responses to reward inequality -- including those responses in humans.”

Additionally, McCain and Coburn's report lists an $897,000 stimulus grant awarded to the Georgia Forestry Commission for tree planting. The commission's chief said the plantings are helping the environment and are expected to directly create 20 full-time jobs, plus other jobs in nurseries and related businesses.

Fuck McCain. And fuck all the other Congressional republicans who can't get their heads out of their asses and save teacher's jobs FOR FREE.

-janelane

Georgia stimulus projects make list of 100 that "give taxpayers the blues"  | ajc.com

As the pill marks its 50th anniversary this year, the Catholic Church is making renewed efforts to persuade the faithful to practice natural family planning, arguing that artificial birth control not only violates church doctrine, it harms women's bodies and the environment.

But the church has an uphill battle, Catholic leaders say.

Polls show that Catholics overwhelmingly reject the Vatican's views on birth control. And about half of American Catholics who leave their faith cite their unhappiness with the church's teachings on birth control as a reason they left, according to a survey last year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Seriously?! At this point, how many death knells does the Catholic Church need?

Somehow they're managing to leave behind their followers while becoming more in line with the rabid American conservatives that preach abstinence. Looks like another Catholicism-American government conspiracy is order.

-janelane

Forget contraceptives, go natural, church teaches | freep.com | Detroit Free Press

Mr. Bozich says the factory’s cost will be $4.80 a T-shirt, 80 cents or 20 percent more than if it paid minimum wage. Knights will absorb a lower-than-usual profit margin, he said, without asking retailers to pay more at wholesale.

“Obviously we’ll have a higher cost,” Mr. Bozich said. “But we’re pricing the product such that we’re not asking the retailer or the consumer to sacrifice in order to support it.”

Knights plans to sell the T’s for $8 wholesale, with most retailers marking them up to $18.

This is important. To pay a living wage costs $0.80 more per T-shirt than to force garment workers to live in abject poverty. That's $0.80 for a T-shirt that Barnes and Nobel at Georgia Tech will sell for $18.00.

So, let's agree: 1) no more bullshit about how much it costs companies to do what's right for 3rd-world workers and 2) no more bullshit about how Americans can't afford to pay living wages for producers of their consumables.

-janelane

An Apparel Factory Defies Stereotypes, but Can It Thrive? - NYTimes.com

But without that animating tension, or any real tension, this year’s Warped Tour, which featured around 80 bands on 7 stages — a grab bag of stalwarts from a range of styles — felt unmoored. What good is punk with nothing to be mad about?

WTF?! Well, I've got plenty to be mad about:

> 3,500 dead in the WOT
> Untold millions in environmental damage in the Gulf
> Texas Republicans rewrite history
> 9.3% unemployment and no end in sight
...

Music Review - Metalcore, Screamo and Hugs - NYTimes.com

Turtle

Men who spent more than 23 hours a week watching TV and sitting in their cars (as passengers or as drivers) had a 64 percent greater chance of dying from heart disease than those who sat for 11 hours a week or less. What was unexpected was that many of the men who sat long hours and developed heart problems also exercised.

What a counter-intuitive result...you can't sit for hours at a time even if you exercise regularly. Looks like I need more trips to the coffeemaker!

-janelane

Phys Ed: The Men Who Stare at Screens - Well Blog - NYTimes.com

It's no surprise the new company has removed all traces of "Ticketmaster" from the new name. Over 30 years, the brand has come under fire from big names in the music business, from Pearl Jam in 1995 to Bruce Springsteen in 2009. Fans have also endured their price-gouging methods and instant sellouts. Under Ticketmaster's reign, ticket prices rose 160 percent since 1999 (well over the pace of inflation)--not to mention the cost of the shirts, beers and hot dogs Live Nation sells at a premium to smitten fans.

Ah, that explains a lot. The not-so-hard-won market prowess of a monopoly.

-janelane

Ticketmaster-Live Nation Merger: The New Monster That Controls Concerts

The truth is that we care mightily when BP wreaks havoc in the Gulf of Mexico, but we pay scant attention when Shell harms Nigeria, when Chevron pollutes Ecuador, when PDVSA stains Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, when Suncor extracts oil from tar sands in Canada. It’s understandable that as we watch the live webfeed of the gusher, we want to know what BP officials knew and when they knew it, and we want to know why the Obama administration didn’t react sooner. But if we don’t broaden the horizons of our questions, we run the risk of reinforcing a fairy tale that says we can have our oil and our environment, too. The worst outcome of the mess in the Gulf would be the perpetuation of the conceit that error and greed can be regulated out of the worldwide oil industry.

In other words, we need to change the oil-centric paradigm of our times. It is broken. We must deal with BP, but we must also channel the power of our anger toward reducing consumption of fossil fuels. Smaller cars, less driving, more carpools, public transportation, better home insulation, smaller homes, less meat, more renewable energy—these are the sorts of useful things we can do. It little matters whether we fill our tanks at BP or Exxon stations. What matters is that we visit gas stations less often.

Nuff said.

-janelane

To BP or Not To BP | The Big Money