The full quote is, “I’ve spent 90% of my money on women and drink. The rest I squandered.”

Cheers to the end of a hellish week.

If you don’t believe climate change is real, just because Fox News and Sarah Palin told you it’s snowing out, now might be an excellent time to reevaluate your position (i.e. remove your head from your ass).

The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world’s oceans,” said Shakhova, a researcher at UAF’s International Arctic Research Center. “Subsea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap.”

Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It is released from previously frozen soils in two ways. When the organic material—which contains carbon—stored in permafrost thaws, it begins to decompose and, under oxygen-free conditions, gradually release methane.

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Raising our premiums was not something we wanted to do,” Angela F. Braly, president of WellPoint (parent company of Blue Cross Blue Shield), said. “But we believe this was the most prudent choice, given the rising cost of care and the problems caused by many younger and healthier policyholders dropping or reducing their coverage during tough economic times. By law, premiums must be reasonable in relationship to benefits provided, which means they need to reflect the known and anticipated costs they will cover.”

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I love the way the frame it as if they’re just barely staying afloat. I’m guessing they also didn’t “want” to make close to $4 billion last year on the backs of these higher premiums.

From the science-may-be-slightly-more-complex-than-making-a-sandwich-that’s-why-we-have-scientists department:

Most don’t see a contradiction between a warming world and lots of snow. That includes Kevin Trenberth, a prominent climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

“The fact that the oceans are warmer now than they were, say, 30 years ago means there’s about on average 4 percent more water vapor lurking around over the oceans than there was, say, in the 1970s,” he says.

Warmer water means more water vapor rises up into the air, and what goes up must come down.

“So one of the consequences of a warming ocean near a coastline like the East Coast and Washington, D.C., for instance, is that you can get dumped on with more snow partly as a consequence of global warming,” he says.

So global warming or no, please stop saying that the billions of tons of CO2 our civilization has pumped into the atmosphere is having no consequences just because it’s snowing. Your ignorance is making my head hurt.

My god do I ever hate this time of year. Cold, windy, haven’t ridden a bike outside in two weeks. Drinking on patios is limited to huddling around propane heaters, inside saran-wrap enclosures. The hotel Subaru, view from which is pictured above, is closed for the season, as that parking spot is covered in about 10′ of snow. Swimming in BArton springs would be near-suicidal. It’s just not fun.

If in addition to Santa bringing me a Karl-Rove-Divorce for Christmas, we could get a Dick-Cheney-really-is-a-CIA-robot story, my holidays would be pretty much perfect. Texas Monthly sums up nicely.

Apparently Karl Rove, the champion of traditional marriage, is getting his second divorce. Yes, not one but TWO women in this world were willing to marry Karl Rove. You have no excuse for being single.

After 24 years of what I can only assume was marital bliss, Rove and his wife Darby were granted a Texas-sized divorce last week. Dana Perino, the family spokesperson, said that the couple “came to the decision mutually and amicably, and they maintain a close relationship and a strong friendship.” Wait. Dana Perino as in former White House press secretary Dana Perino? And now she’s reduced to being a family mouthpiece? Damn. Is no one safe from this shitty job market?

The saddest part here – multiple affairs ending in quickie-no-fault-divorce are fine in this state as long as it’s between a man and a woman. But god forbid we legally allow a loving marriage between two people of the same gender.

Connecticut would barely make county status in Texas, yet their jackass senator is doing his best to pass a bill that contains a mandate to buy insurance, but no public option, thereby affecting the lives of many million of his non-constituents, as well as getting the insurance companies a really nice Christmas present. In some ways I’m starting agree with Howard Dean –

This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. Honestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill.”

…Dean essentially said that if Democratic leaders cave into Joe Lieberman right now they’ll be left with a bill that’s not worth supporting.

Can we strip Connecticut of state status, for the crime electing this jackass, thereby fixing the problem?

Lieberman has decided, in his infinite fuckheadedness, that any public option and any expansion of Medicare — the two last vestiges of hope for an even slightly helpful bill — is too much. Yesterday he went on CBS’ Face The Nation and said he couldn’t vote for the bill in its current form. More…

Well, it’s becoming clearer that this is not going to happen. I’m healthy 30-year-old who, should I change jobs, would not be able to afford regular health care coverage out-of-pocket. The premiums would be more than my rent and my car payment combined. Should serious illness our injury strike me, my only recourse would be personal bankruptcy. In this-day and age, living amongst the vast wealth of this country, that’s a damn crime. The Republican party ought to (as usual) be ashamed of itself – they’re trying to break the President politically over an issue that effects the health and well-being of millions of their fellow citizens.