Grandma Joyce sewed matching ladybug dresses for leena and her dolly in preparation for the little one’s 1st birthday bash coming up in three weeks. Leena was delighted with the look which is nice because the party’s theme will be…you guessed it…ladybugs!

Happy Monday.

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If you’re new to right-wing think, here’s an easy to remember rule of thumb to help you along; any and all evil in the world can be attributed directly to President Obama and/or homosexuals. Really. Every stinking evil. If it isn’t Obama’s fault, then blame it on teh gay.

Military has “crisis” of sexual assault. Major part of that is homosexual in nature. What are they going to do about that?

— Bryan Fischer (@BryanJFischer) May 17, 2013

Male soldiers are raping female personnel and Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association thinks it’s logical to blame homosexuals for the attacks. Moron.

Blue Texan over at C&L notes that the AFA needs smarter bigots. I agree, but I’d take it one step further and suggest that the entire conservative movement needs smarter bigots. The current crop are dumber than a box of rocks.

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I’ve owned a dog and a cat – as well as turtles, goldfish, tropical fish, a parakeet and for a very short time, a rabbit. As a child, (to my mother’s great dismay) the pockets of my jeans were home to frogs, grasshoppers and tiny little grass snakes. And I don’t know how many jars I’ve had with lids punched with nail holes, filled with ants, bumblebees, flies and spiders – as well as an assortment of tasty twigs and luscious grass for my menagerie of insects to munch on.

I now choose to live a pet-free existence.

If you haven’t heard George Carlin’s wonderful take on dogs and cats, find it here.

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Dying here with another lousy head cold and sinus congestion and yes, I get way too many of these. I’ve vowed to stop shaking hands and going with fist bumps from this moment on. I’m predicting that fist bumping alone will prevent me from contracting a good 75 percent of the bugs and viruses I pick up in a year.

Catch up with you tomorrow.

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From a political party overflowing with sociopaths and creeps, none other than Dick Cheney encapsulates to a greater degree what it is the Republican party has become. The blood of 4500 dead Americans and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis is on his hands. Lies and deception are his tools of trade.

Iraq was Dick Cheney’s war. Yet, the fabricated Benghazi ‘scandal’ is the worst incident he can recall.

War criminal and scumbag. Frankly.

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The Dick Cheney source photograph is a Creative Commons licensed image from photographer Gage Skidmore.

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David Horsey

John Cole

And this:

The Internal Revenue Service, under pressure after admitting it targeted anti-tax Tea Party groups for scrutiny in recent years, also had its eye on at least three Democratic-leaning organizations seeking nonprofit status.

One of those groups, Emerge America, saw its tax-exempt status denied, forcing it to disclose its donors and pay some taxes. None of the Republican groups have said their applications were rejected.

…

Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, which is conducting its own IRS investigation, has introduced legislation with Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski to require all groups spending money on politics to disclose their donors.

“These problems will continue as long as there is an absence of clear and enforceable rules,” Wyden told reporters yesterday. “In the absence of clear and enforceable rules the bureaucracy pretty much makes it up as they go along.”

Political spending by nonprofits incorporated under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code has increased since the U.S. Supreme Court (1000L) in 2010 removed limits on independent corporate and union spending and other court rulings paved the way for wealthy individuals to spend unlimited sums in elections.

Outside groups — including nonprofit social-welfare groups that don’t disclose their donors — spent $1 billion in the 2012 elections, three times as much as they did four years earlier, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, based in Washington.

“The real problem is that phony 501(c)(4) groups are exploiting the tax laws to protect donors who don’t want to be held accountable for vicious, deceitful political ads,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

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It can be debated as to whether the filibuster came about as a political accident or was created to give minority parties a stronger say in opposing specific legislation they deeply opposed. Whatever the case, in the hands of Republicans, the filibuster has now become a destructive force being used with the single intent of bringing the Obama agenda (and with it normal governance) to a grinding halt.

Jonathan Bernstein:

Want a real Washington scandal — one worse than the (phony) Benghazi scandal and the (apparently real, but apparently limited) IRS scandals combined? Try the continuing, and possibly accelerating, obstruction of executive branch nominees by Senate Republicans.

Don’t think it’s a scandal? It’s pretty basic: Republicans, by abusing their Constitutional powers, are — deliberately, in several cases — preventing the government from carrying out duly passed laws.

…with virtually all nominees required to have 60 votes, one can accurately say that Republicans are filibustering every nomination…the worst are the “nullification” filibusters, in which Republicans simply refuse to approve any nominee at all for some positions — the National Labor Relations Board, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — because they don’t want those agencies to carry out their statutory obligations.

In doing so, Republicans are not breaking the rules of the Senate. They are, however, breaking the Senate itself, and harming the government.

From the beginning, Republicans were clear in their intent to obstruct Obama and Democrats by every legislative means at their disposal. Mitch McConnell speaking two weeks before the 2010 midterm election:

“[W]e need to treat this election as the first step in retaking the government. We need to say to everyone on Election Day, ‘Those of you who helped make this a good day, you need to go out and help us finish the job.’ [...]

The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president…. Our single biggest political goal is to give our nominee for president the maximum opportunity to be successful.”

That’s as clear an admission of guilt as you’re likely to find. Writing the day after McConnell’s 2010 statement, Steve Benen peeked into the future with what turns out to be astonishing foresight.

The obvious takeaway here is that GOP leaders have literally no interest in actually solving problems or passing legislation. None. But the larger truth is that President Obama, who’s spoken a bit lately about the need for “humility,” needs to realize that Republican obstinacy and extremist tactics aren’t going to get better after the midterms; they’re going to get worse.

McConnell and his cohorts have made abundantly clear that Americans’ welfare and the nation’s future pale in comparison to the Republican quest for power. The president stands in the way. If he’s not prepared for what they intend to bring, the showdown isn’t going to go well.

Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!

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Almost went though a Monday without posting a Leena pic. Can’t do that.

Here’s the little 48-week-young princess feeling good about her ability to lift herself up from a crawling position. She has 4 weeks left to make my prediction (she’ll walk before her first birthday) true.

Happy rest of Monday.

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Artist’s impression of Mars One’s planned first settlement on the Red Planet

Had enough of right-wing political crap and find yourself with a deep desire to get as far from the madding crowd as you can?

Read on…

The opportunity to travel to Mars is certainly a once in a lifetime offer. More so if you’re accepted to the Mars One project: the journey is a one-way ticket, requiring you to spend the rest of your life on the Red Planet. But the prospect of permanent colonization millions of miles from earth isn’t thwarting the hopeful, reports Time. Almost 80,000 people have applied for the chance in just two weeks.

The ambitious Mars One project plans to establish a human colony on the surface of Mars by 2023. The group began taking applications through its site recently, and expects to receive half a million entrants by the time the application window closes in August.

Departure day is a mere 10 years away, so start packing your bags. I’d join up but I suffer from claustrophobia so there is no possible way I’d survive the trip. Even at warp speed, the voyage to mars is a five month endeavor. The closest I’ve come to experiencing a ridiculous amount of time in the air was a 16 hour flight I once took from LA to Sydney. Aside from having to deal with the confined space, I was locked in coach with a bunch of crying, screaming babies. I love children but there is something unpleasant about being 35,000 feet up in the air, for 16 hours, with dozens of very unhappy babies. Not fun.

But getting back to Mars, how’s this for an idea…say we send some of our favorite space cadets on that one-way ticket to the red planet? It’s a win-win. Mars gets the humans (well, sort of human) it needs to populate the planet and Earth has a few less loons to deal with.

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Me and my mom, Lina – dreamer, thinker, artist, reader, music lover, dressmaker, pastry chef, Avon lady, lover of languages and travel, but most of all, a beautiful, loving, gentle and caring mother who allowed her five children to have a magical, almost perfect, youth.

To all moms out there, Happy Mother’s Day.

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