Brian Barrett at Wired finds the threat of an electro-magnetic pulse from North Korea "overhyped." The 90 PERCENTZ DEADZ IN A YEARZ!!!! number you've heard actually comes from science fiction, not science -- EMPs are real, as you know if you've ever lost a radio signal while driving under a power line, but the hysterical death/destruction numbers aren't, and they'd have to be for North Korea to even try blowing up a nuke over the United States, because if you don't take out our nation's entire counterstrike capability, well, you've lost.
Now Saudi Arabia wants to embark on an allegedly peaceful uranium extraction program, for the purpose of creating nuclear energy. Without even ruling out the possibility that they'll develop nuclear weapons, a prospect that doesn't seem to chill the hearts of American right-wingers as much as Iran developing nukes. Indeed, I've heard just about nothing from the right-wing usual suspects about the possibility that Saudi Arabia would develop nuclear weapons.
Workers at the Gothamist and DNAInfo voted to unionize, and then their owner, TD Banknorth CEO Joe Ricketts, shut them both the hell down, and thus Kate Aronoff suggests that Mr. Ricketts is a "Walking Case for a $1 Million Maximum Income." A 91% tax bracket on millionaire income would have essentially the same effect, and before your Tea Party uncle calls it "class warfare," remind him (as Ms. Aronoff reminds us) that the Republican tax "reform" plan would reduce Estate taxes on wealthy folks while restricting the ability of working families to take tax breaks on their property taxes and on state and local taxes, which is a better way of describing "class warfare."
It's entirely true, as Tegan Jones says at FAIR, that the "liberal" media have been making excuses for President George H.W. Bush's "cop-a-feel" attacks on women, but the really stunning thing, to me at least, is the excuses Bush the Better's handlers make -- that he's wheelchair-bound, that "his arm falls on the lower waist of people with whom he takes pictures," that "he has patted women’s rears in what he intended to be a good-natured manner." These sound totally like '80s excuses! Haven't they looked at the man currently occupying the Oval Office and realized that you can say fuck-you-I'm-the-President and get away with it?
In a peripherally-related note, Energy Secretary Rick Perry says that fossil fuels can help prevent sexual assault. Because they keep the lights on! Jesus Mary and Joseph is it possible he was actually trying to tell a joke? If so, it's nowhere near as funny as a Dad joke. (Right-wingers, don't object that he was really talking about energy problems in Africa, as he'd obviously stopped talking about Africa at the point he tried to make his attempt at a joke, or whatever that was. Juxtaposition does not automatically create context.)
Finally, Shoshi Parks at Yes! magazine tells us about the ancient acequias system of water management in the Southwest, which aims to distribute water resources democratically, in stark contrast to Colorado and New Mexico law, which allows water owners to sell their water to the highest bidder. That latter system, of course, favors big mining and big agriculture concerns over smaller farmers. And yet today's right-wingers, presented with these concepts, will not only conclude that the mammon-worshiping system is superior to the democratic one, but would scoff at anyone who thinks we should do anything for any reason other than money. They'll get their punishment at the Pearly Gates, but they'll punish us in the meantime, so let's keep fighting them.
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