March For Science date has been set for April 22

So now we have a dilemma, or at least some of us do. I have already RSVP'd to travel 325 miles to the People's Climate March in D.C. on April 29; yesterday the organizers of the March for Science finally announced that their march date would be one Saturday earlier on April 22, which is a date with a ton of symbolic importance and historic significance, being Earth Day.

I'm not going to be the only one trying to choose between the two (I might be tempted to do the drive on both weekends if I weren't already committed to being in D.C. on May 6th as well). I just put up this quick 24-hour poll on Twitter to get some sense of where other people were leaning:

If you can only travel to D.C. for one, will it be the @ScienceMarchDC on Saturday 4/22 or the @Peoples_Climate March on Saturday 4/29?

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) February 2, 2017

Of course, if you live in or near Washington, D.C., you have no excuse not to be at both marches.

Exposing the Other EPA, the "Environmental Policy Alliance"

It's important to look behind the curtains to expose the paid political consultants doing the bidding of corporate interests in ads like these:

Of course it's ridiculous to paint those concerned about the effects of fracking on the environment as the flat-earth science deniers when that crown belongs to those who stop their ears and scream to avoid hearing about climate change, but big lies repeated often, and broadcast on TV, have a way of working their way in the public conversation. So who are the people behind that other EPA, the "Environmental Policy Alliance," which created this ad about Colorado citizens who voted against fracking? It's a front group of a well-connected Washington PR firm, Berman & Co, which also operates front groups defending corporate interests in all areas from tobacco to liquor to dietary fat to oil and gas fracking. Here's its leader, Rick Berman, smirking his way through an interview with Rachel Maddow in 2010.


And here's a long list of Berman & Company's current list of front organizations polluting the public debate with corporate money.

Other Berman Front Groups

• ActivistCash.com
• AFT Facts
• American Beverage Institute
• AnimalScam.com
• Big Green Radicals
• Center for Consumer Freedom
• Center for Economic and Entrepreneurial Literacy
• Center for Organizational Research and Education
• Center for Union Facts
• CREW Exposed
• CSPI Scam
• Defeat the Debt
• EmployeeRightsAct.com
• Employment Policies Institute
• Enterprise Freedom Action Committee
• EPA Facts
• Green Decoys
• Hands Off My Bacon
• HumaneWatch.org
• Interlock Facts
• Interstate Policy Alliance
• LaborPains.org
• LEED Exposed
• Maternity Pens
• MinimumWage.com
• NegligentDriving.com
• No Drink Tax
• ObesityMyths.com
• PETA Kills Animals
• Physician Scam
• Protecting Bad Teachers
• Responsible Limits
• Rethink Reform
• Rotten ACORN
• SEIU Exposed
• Sweet Scam
• Teachers Union Exposed
• The New Prohibition
• Tipped Wage
• Unite Here Exposed
• Vote Our Future
• WorkerCenters

"... a Goddess descended from light to Matter." Happy Transit Day!

I'm celebrating the Transit of Venus taking place on the 5th and 6th of June 2012 by reading the essential fictional account of the Transit of Venus observed and measured by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in Cape Town on the 5th and 6th of June 1761 (a few years before they drew the line across America that symbolically separates us from our less-liberal brethren).
Turn the first hundred pages of Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon for more reading pleasure and information about tangency, parallax, and the movement of heliocentric bodies, but here's a short paragragh from that long book to whet your appetite:

"Ladies, Ladies," Mason calls. "--You've seen her in the Evening Sky, you've wish'd upon her, and now for a short time will she be seen in the Day-light, crossing the Disk of the Sun, -- and do make a Wish then, if you think it will help. -- For Astronomers, who usually work at night, 'twill give us a chance to be up in the Day-time. Thro' our whole gazing-lives, Venus has been a tiny Dot of Light, going through phases like the Moon, ever against the black face of Eternity. But on the day of this Transit, all shall suddenly reverse, -- as she is caught, dark, embodied, solid, against the face of the Sun,-- a Goddess descended from light to Matter." (page 92 of Henry Holt hardcover)