May 5

NH Republican Rep. Stella Tremblay Questions Legitimacy Of Boston Bombing Victim's Loss Of Both Legs

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With Bags of Cash, C.I.A. Seeks Influence in Afghanistan

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Some Conservatives Turned Off by Helping Environment

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It's always too soon to talk about gun control.

A five-year-old boy in the southern US state of Kentucky has accidentally shot dead his two-year-old sister at the family home. He had received the rifle, specially made for children, as a gift last year.

Now I'm no neuroscientist, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, and can safely say that most 5 year-olds have anger management issues and handing them loaded fucking guns is a money-back guarantee that shit will happen. Assholes.

I think Sir Charles puts it best:

If your culture demands that, in the face of a general national outrage over the killing of other children, your politics work to loosen the gun laws you have, as they apparently did in Kentucky, then your culture is making your politics stupid and wrong and you should change them, too. I do not have to understand these people any more, and it is way too early in the day to be drinking this much.

Preach, brother. Preach.

And then this: NRA 'Home Defense' Course Instructs Audience To Store Guns In Kids' Room

Also, the NRA has apparently decided that too few children are being shot these days. 

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China's Food Safety Horror Show Continues: Rat Meat Sold As Lamb On The Black Market

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Willard's Life Lessons - The Stench gave an inspiring speech to magical panties wearing cultists at Southern Virginia College that consisted of,Get Married and Start Pumping Out Babies. NOW! There is something gross, thinking about The Stench's quiver full of arrows which will put me off my feed. (Mother Jones)

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Rush Limbaugh has the sads because people who talk about tolerance won't tolerate his intolerance and are, therefore, intolerant themselves. I'd try to rearrange that sentence so it made a little more sense, but unfortunately it can't be done. It's complete nonsense. It's the biggest stretch in reaching for the victim card I've seen this week.

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Here's a Great Idea - And by great I mean terrible.

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More fantastic news for Rep. Steve Stockman who wants more babies to have guns.

Question: how many children stab themselves to death with knives every week?

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Infrastructure? Who needs it?

Warning: this is a very disgusting story

According to Climate Central, over 10 billion gallons of sewage spewed into waterways and streets during and after Hurricane Sandy.

Over 10 billion gallons of raw and partly treated sewage gushed into waterways and bubbled up onto streets and into homes as a result of Hurricane Sandy — enough to cover Central Park in a 41-foot-high pile of sludge, a nonprofit research group said in a report released on Tuesday. [...]

The Climate Central report, which is accompanied by an interactive map, found that about one-third of the overflow — nearly 3.45 billion gallons — was untreated sewage. The rest was partly treated, meaning it was filtered to some extent and was perhaps chlorinated.

In New York, the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant on Long Island was probably the hardest hit, according to the report. As much as 2.2 billion gallons of partly treated sewage poured into the Rockaway Channel until the plant was fully brought online nearly two months after the late-October storm, the report said. Over a billion gallons of untreated sewage flowed into the Hudson River from the Yonkers Joint Wastewater Treatment plant, in Westchester County.

Obviously monster storms like Hurricane Sandy aren't an everyday occurrence, but rising water levels combined with more powerful storms brought about by climate change could certainly increase their frequency. And it may not even require a hurricane to cause similar incidents in the future. A powerful Nor'Easter combined with rising tides could overwhelm our flagging system of infrastructure.

Alyson Kenward, the principal author of the report, said in a teleconference that rising seas and strengthening storms, a result of climate change, could increase the threat of similar spills in the future. She urged an overhaul of the region's wastewater infrastructure.

"Our sewage infrastructure isn't designed to handle this type of storm surge," Dr. Kenward said. [...]

Any changes will be extremely expensive, and with sea levels rising and weather patterns changing, it is unclear what can be done to eliminate the dangers, Dr. Kenward said.

Sweet dreams. Hurricane season begins June 1st.