Link round-up for 13 October 2013

Aaaargh!  Geography fail.

Check out these monster-enhanced thrift-store paintings (found via Mendip).

Cute gif of the day:  dogs imitate a crawling baby.

Even less likely to show than the Great Pumpkin.

Rule 34 lives! (found via Mendip)

Natural selection strikes again.

Bachmann is following a long tradition of end-times dumbth.

Compromise?  There was already a compromise (found via Squatlo Rant).

A 12-year-old girl pays the price of Republican budget cuts in Pennsylvania.

Mansplainer of the week:  Ben Carson.

Here's the perfect metaphor for what the Republicans are trying to do -- and the perfect cartoon (found via Squatlo Rant).

Meet the genius behind this weekend's DC trucker protest, which was a total fiasco (that link is NRO, but she nails it pretty well).

Hell hath no fury like.....

The rightists are making Obama-Hitler comparisons again, and Green Eagle gives the specifics on just how absurd they are.

The public is now blaming the Republicans for the shutdown by a bigger margin than they blamed them for the 1995-1996 shutdown.

Was this a practice run for a terrorist attack on an airliner?

Krugman assesses the Republicans as bunglers; Zakaria looks at the breakdown of party authority.  Teh Crayzee is now too much even for Jennifer Rubin and Ross Douthat.

Here are some real-life cases of the ACA in action.  And here's a detailed case of how it can sway the Republican-leaning white working class.

Whatever happens now, Boehner's done.

Don't fall prey to cynicism -- it's what the bad guys want (found via Squatlo Rant).

Texas Republicans are royally blowing it with Hispanic voters.

Ted Cruz has a long history with Wendy Davis's likely opponent.

Christianity's symbolism reflects how incoherent it is.

A New Jersey Republican breaks new ground in boosting the party's appeal to women. Booker responds.

Republic of Gilead is reviewing a fundamentalist webinar series on education -- scary stuff.

To win the House, we need better leadership.

Parsley's Pics has a round-up of Republican nonsense and some disgusting campaign buttons.

Big bankers weigh in on default.

Harry Enten explains the Virginia Governor's race, and the Republican implosion, to the British.

In the remote swamps of South America, Mauner Mahecha and his cocaine-smuggling ring built a submarine fleet that many full-size national navies would envy.

Russian ski-resort planners enjoy their work a little too much.

Meet them, greet them, eat them?

Here's more on how carbon dioxide is destroying the oceans.  More here.

The "drunken forest" phenomenon shows the damage being wrought in the Arctic.

Meat production is a big contributor to global warming.

Orangutans make travel plans, and communicate them.

Here's an odd-looking critter.

Those cave artists from 20,000 BC were not quite how you pictured them.

Here are some things you didn't know about octopuses.

We used to think free oxygen on another planet would be a sign of life, but that may not be true.

Researchers in Britain make a breakthrough against Alzheimers.

[Infidel note:  Sorry this round-up is so politics-heavy, but the shutdown/default threat has been preying on my mind -- FFS a couple nights ago I had a dream about John Boehner -- think I need to get away for a while.....]