Wise Words

“The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy.”

— George W. Bush in 2003

— George W. Bush in 2007, “The United States government does not torture”

See also: Quote For The Day, On Torture, We Elected a Reformer, Not an Avenger…a different take on torture, Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach Richard Cheney. Impeach Donald Rumsfeld. Impeech Condi Rice. Impeach Them Now, Torture timeline: when did we know it?, Cheney, Rice, Ashcroft, Gonzales Signed off on Torture, Releasing Memos, The only question that matters re Cheney and Lieberman, Pelosi, “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques”, and Hypocrisy, Who Authorized The Torture of Abu Zubaydah?, The Unvarnished Truth about Torture, Who Would Jesus Torture?, and Time for Democrats to Forget Past and Lead.

Creationist Science Class For Congress

A couple of points from Pharyngula:

* She repeats over and over that CO2 is a natural gas. Yes, we know…no one is claiming otherwise. (Also, what would an “unnatural” gas be, anyway?) Nitrogen is also a natural substance, it helps plants grow, and we produce perfectly natural nitrogenous materials from our bodies — so does that mean that we should stop sewer services and allow everyone to wallow in their poop?

* She claims that not one study has ever been produced to show that CO2 is harmful, and she goes further to claim that CO2 is a harmless gas. We could correct that in just a few minutes: give me a large tank of CO2 and a small room containing Michele Bachmann, and we’ll give her a personal experience.

* The atmosphere is 3% CO2? Is she really that ignorant? It’s more like 0.03%. And again, no one is arguing that CO2 is evil — it’s that its concentration has distinct effects on the temperature of the planet, and that concentration is changing.

See Also: The Express Train to Crazytown, Republican catechism vs science, Neocarbon, Replace Michele Bachmann, a bad week for science in politics, “Actually, we need more carbon emissions”, Bachmann-the-Nut, Scientist, Michele Bachmann: A Byproduct of Oxygen Deprivation, and Stark, Raving Mad.

I Will Fight Anyone Who Accuses Of Us Of Stealing From Busted T’s

If anyone raises the idea again that we stole this sweet ass blog name from Busted T’s, I will literally hunt you down and fight you. We registered this domain 6 years ago, long before the Dane Cook of T-Shirt creation fucking made that dip shit t-shirt. Fuck you if you think I would stoop to stealing our name.

Marx On Choosing A Profession

“In the August of 1835, a young German-Jewish boy, a student at the Friedrich-Wilhelm Gymnasium at Trier on the Moselle, composed a theme for his final examination. It was called Reflections of a Young Man on Choosing a Profession, and it was radiant with those lofty ideals which are in order on such occasions and which in the present case have attracted attention only for the reason that the aspiring young man managed to live up to his aspirations. In choosing a profession, said Karl Marx at seventeen, one must be sure that one will not put oneself in the position of acting merely as a servile tool of others: in one’s own sphere one must obtain independence; and one must make sure that one has a field to serve humanity–for though one may otherwise become famous as a scholar or a poet, one can never be a really great man. We shall never be able to fulfill ourselves truly unless we are working for the welfare of our fellows: then only shall our burdens not break us, then only shall our satisfactions not be confined to poor egoistic joys. And so we must be on guard against ourselves to fall victims to that most dangerous of all temptations: the fascination of abstract thought.”

— Edmund Wilson in To The Finland Station [Ergo: Exhibit A]

We Also Make Miniature Flags And Hot Dogs Out Of Squirrel Meat, Thank You Very Much

See Also: CEO Pay 2008 (NYTimes), Natural Resources: How Long Will They Last?, OUR DRUNKEN BOWLING LEAGUE ECONOMY, and “The Recovery to Come”.

[tags]us economy, american economy, what america makes, produces, industrialization, american industry, modern economy, comics, political cartoon, united states, goods, markets[/tags]