Joe Washington

Watching and documenting the liars for Jeebus crowd has my bullshit sensitivity meter locked in so tight I can smell a flea fart from forty paces, so it was nearly impossible for me to miss this more blatant bit of right wing inspired poppycock when it hit my Facebook feed:

The propensity of the Conservative party to lie about every other subject, coupled with the certainty that good old George never said anything of the sort set me to Googling. A search on that exact phrase, if it is indeed a Washington quote, should render hits from a plethora of serious presidential scholars. So, what were my results :

The quote is superimposed on one YouTube video:

It appears to be taken from a Christian Fundamentalist web page (Powered by “the Holy Spirit” the light within) posted by some guy named Joe Spenner, who apparently thinks putting quotes in the title of his web page makes his lunatic rambings attributable to Washington:

Be on guard for this kind of right wing tripe. It is pervasive and obnoxious but people are quite easily led astray by Republicans who then attribute it to the devil, or Obama.

Enjoy.

In No Rush to Pack

Hop, Skip and a Jump versus Science Reality:

The most distant space probe, Voyager 1, was about 17 light-hours away from the Earth as of December 2012. It will take about 17,500 years to reach one light-year (1.0 ×100 ly) at its current speed of about 17 km/s (38000 mph) relative to the Sun.

Do the math. 17,500 years to get ONE light year away from Earth means twelve times that many years to get to this suspected habitable zone.

Roughly a couple hundred thousand years in your spaceship to get there.

We are in the only habitable zone that humanity will likely ever know at this very moment. Perhaps we ought to take a minute and look around to see if we are doing everything we can think of to try and protect it? Makes more sense than dreaming of an irrational escape from the living hell we seem determined to inflict upon ourselves in one form or fashion, be it in the form of global warming or the more upbeat happiness of a warm gun.

Enjoy.

Evidence of Bankster Evolution

Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) — “I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.

They don’t call them the smartest guys in the room for nothing.

Enjoy.