No wonder the Republican Right wing is so anti-science.  If knowledge about the wonders of nature were to become widely understood, their entire game would be up.  

Just like it took Al Gore and Jerome a Paris to break the delusion of "oil forever" and trigger the decline of the global petroleum oilgarchy, so now the underlying science of another cornerstone of their social and political control has been exposed.  Only now does it finally make sense: how can the remaining loyal Bushies continue to follow The Decider when his failure and incompetence are so overwhelmingly obvious.

A queen bee needs to keep her subjects calm and quiet, and she does so by secreting a scent that prevents worker bees from learning, according to new research.

The study, published this week in the journal Science, found that a component in the queen's pheromone inhibits the sterile worker bees' ability to learn from negative experiences.

http://www.sfgate.com/...

http://www.sfgate.com/...

01-29) 12:54 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) --

The day after her swearing-in as the first female House speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi took time to field questions from a few dozen Internet bloggers on a conference call that was off limits to mainstream media.

Last week, Pelosi's aides arranged for bloggers to question two Democratic House leaders on another conference call shortly before President Bush's State of the Union speech.

Pelosi also hired a full-time staff member this month dedicated to blogger outreach, and is making plans to launch a blog of her own. The day she was sworn in, bloggers were given special accommodations at the Capitol — and fed lunch — to cover the event.

What?  I know that I've been busy lately but I'm still opening my mail and checking my phone messages...

with apologies to Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Weber and Madonna

Politics isn't easy, politics is strange
So I'll try to explain how I feel
I'm still the one you love after all that I've done

You won't believe me
All you will see is a girl you once knew
Although she's dressed in Armani
Now shopping at Target with you

"All that the "Two Americas" really need...

..is a good conditioner."

I'm the first to admit that I haven't been around Daily Kos much since the election, having started a new and very demanding job.

But I wasn't prepared for the public beating I took today over an attempt to interject a little humor into the discussion about John Edwards' candidacy.  In the past when I have pushed the bounds of good taste with my humor, I understood that it may have been a matter of taste or modesty that punched some people's buttons.  And I realized that there is no way to please everyone, and I was able to leave it at that.

As an atheist and lapsed Catholic of nearly four decades standing, a progressive gay man from a conservative family, and something of an anti-materialist, the holidays have long been problematic for me.  As much as I love and appreciate my family, it's hard to deny that each season's hopes for the warm embrace of loved ones and perhaps a wish fulfilled, usually ended in disappointment and pain.

A gesture of familial solidarity in joining them at Midnight Mass would become an attack on my "lifestyle" and lack of "right-living."  A discussion around holiday generosity would become a tirade against the "greedy lazy poor always with their hands out."  The thoughtfully chosen gift of a book or something meaningful intellectually, cast aside amongst all the desperately-sought big-ticket items.  The opportunity to catch-up with distant family and friends becoming a joust of competitive one-upmanship.

File this under the "Tinniest of Tin-foil Hat Conspiricies,"  but like rock n' roll, I like it.  Sorta.

Take one part deliberately screwed-up gambit in Iraq that emboldens Iran, a President devoid of any popular support but who has completely sold his soul to the international oil cartel, a trumped-up crisis over nuclear weapons proliferation....

And, VIOLA!

Global Cooling.  George W. Bush saves the planet!  And makes the Middle East safe for Halliburton and "democracy."

We're down to the last two weeks.

It's time to take the gloves off and
Start hitting Them
HARD
Until our knuckles are bloody and sore.  
And don't stop
Until They can't ever get back up.

We may not know
Exactly what They are planning,
But we know it won't be pretty  
Or rational  
Or even legal.

Just like conventional wisdom has credited the Right Wing's disciplined rise to power to the topdown control of message through AM Talk Radio and the politicization of the evangelical pulpit, so will cultural observers try to explain the shift in support to new methods of addressing the public effectively.  

On Friday the October 13's "Real Time" on HBO, Bill Maher put the absurdity of American media and politics into near-perfect perspective with all the acerbic wit and jaded cynicism they have earned.  

Any worries that Bill was "going soft" or losing his edge, or was too interested in appearing "balanced" can be put to rest for at least another week.  I was even impressed that guest Ben Affleck did a fairly good job of shutting down some neocon mouthpiece from the American Enterprise Institute, while Lou Dobbs looked on enjoying it all immensely.

I've posted the transcript from the end-of-show New Rules rant after the jump.

When You're Good to Foley
(with apologies to Queen Latifah and the musical "Chicago">

Ask any of the pages when I gawk
They'll tell you I'm the biggest chickenhawk
I love 'em all and all of them love me
Because the system works
The system called reciprocity...

Got a little motto
Always sees me through
When you're good to Foley, baby,
Foley's good to you.

"Vague"
with apologies to Madonna

Look around everywhere you turn is terror
It's everywhere that you go (look around)
You try everything you can to escape
But we'll know where you go (where you go)

When all else fails and you still won't talk
About what we want you to say
I know a place where we can take you away
It's called Guantanamo, and here's what it's for, so

Many readers no doubt observed that if today's prostate-aged moochers wanted to loaf around all day reading books and tossing off their vacuous opinions into the ether, they should have had the foresight to become newspaper columnists.

Others will note sardonically that the only really vibrant counterculture in the United States today is laziness.

Follow me after the jump to find out why the ever-reactionary Brooks is just following a fine old aristocratic tradition of ignoring basic economics and social history to instead pass a condescending moral judgment on the lower classes.

Fox News, in the form of Reagan-era Republican toady, Roger Ailes, has thrown down the gauntlet and publicly declared that Keith Olbermann has gone "over the line" in his snarky rivalry with Bill O'Reilly.

There's a poll asking whether Keith Olbermann has "crossed the line."  Kossacks, rally your poll-taking digits and show Roger Ailes that Truth, Justice and the American Way still means something, even in the age of Fox News.

The article and poll are here(if you get an error, use your Back button and try again):
http://news.aol.com/...

It seems to be inevitable in American culture, maybe its genius, that no matter how "fringe" or outre a cultural phenomenon, capitalistic forces will co-opt and repackage it, using the power of the market to take what was created for free, for the sheer love of it, and sell it back to the mainstream as a commodity.  It happened to rock n roll and hip-hop, to indie films and the Internet in general.  Now it is going to happen to us Kossaks.

Read some of the scariest words you will find today, even as World War III erupts in the Middle East:

Meanwhile, some former Bush, Clinton and Gore advisers have teamed up to create a political social networking site called HotSoup.com. Yup, even politicians are jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon.

D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey reacted yesterday to a recent surge in homicides by declaring a "crime emergency," a move that gives him the freedom to quickly adjust officers' schedules and restrict their days off.

Maybe I am once again setting myself up to be accused of donning the tin foil, but the timing of this strikes me as a little too convenient, given the upcoming elections and the various protests that have been planned for later this summer and fall.

Haven't we all learned yet that nothing that happens in Washington under the Rove/Cheney regime is what it appears to be?

In his "comeback" effort from historic low approval ratings, Arnold stands a fighting chance of holding onto his job in one of the Bluest of Blue states even in this year of Republican debacle nationwide, effortlessly recycling Steve Westley's attacks on Phil Angelides.

 He has made the standard contrite apologies to the people of the state for his outrageous behavior and statements, hired a lesbian chief of staff(even though he vetoed gay marriage legislation), and taken on a boatload of Bush/Cheney political advisors to revive a political career that just months ago looked as lifeless as his movie career.

As I was getting ready to head out the door to vote a little while ago, I wanted to check the San Francisco Bay Guardian's position for a couple of the local propositions that I had not studied in much detail.

However, the entire Bay Guardian website is inaccessible, producing a "Forbidden, you don't have permission to access.." message and a "404 Not found" error.

I can help but think of the Republican phone-jamming scam in New Hampshire from a few years ago, when Republicans hired dirty tricksters to make it impossible for Democrats to execute their Get Out the Vote strategy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...