News Roundup for 5/11/12

Differently hydrated landscape

-Headline of the Day-
"Lawmakers avoid buzzwords on climate change bills."

Remember when being "politically correct" was all the rage? People weren't "handicapped," they were "physically challenged" or "differently abled" -- you know, crazy stuff like that. For everyone else it was just being polite, but to the right it was the worst thing ever!

That's all changed now and Republicans have their own version of being politically correct. Usually, it involves believing a whole passel of bullshit, but sometimes it just means avoiding certain words that suggest certain things that are happening are happening. Things like global warming.

Take the Virginia legislature, for example. According to the report, "State lawmakers ran into a problem this year when recommending a study on rising sea levels and their potential impacts on coastal Virginia.... It was not a scientific problem or a financial one. It was linguistic."

See, it turns out that if you describe rising sea levels as something obvious like "sea level rise," that's communism. So say the local Tea Party nutjobs. You can measure sea level rise, it's actually happening, and it's like super-important to a coastal state like Virginia, but admitting reality is politically inconvenient. So "sea level rise" becomes "recurrent flooding." See, that's so much better because it doesn't suggest a cause -- it's just this crazy thing that keeps happening and no one knows why. Other terms being thrown around by 'baggers are "increased flooding risk" and "coastal resiliency."

"Sea level challenged" apparently hasn't occurred to anyone. (Virginian-Pilot)


-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, Dogboy and Mr. Dan are back and they're going to explain why we keep taking out al Qaeda's number two. Yay!


Click for animation

OK, when Obama and Mr. Dan are on the same page, we've got real trouble. (MarkFiore.com)


-Bonus HotD-
"Rove group jokes Obama official who had seizure was drunk."

Because Karl's classy like that. (Raw Story)