Inhuman Illustrated | Chapter 04 strip [updated]

This entry has been removed from Preliator and can now be found over at Creativitas. (See here for more info.)

Illinois enacts civil unions

Another small but appreciated step in the right direction:

CHICAGO -- Gov. Pat Quinn, saying it was a "day of history," signed legislation Monday legalizing civil unions for gay and lesbian couples, making Illinois one of about a dozen states that extend significant legal protections to same-sex couples.

[…]

The law, which takes effect June 1, gives gay and lesbian couples official recognition from the state and many of the rights that accompany traditional marriage, including the power to decide medical treatment for an ailing partner and the right to inherit a partner's property.

Five states already allow civil unions or their equivalent, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Five other states and Washington, D.C., let gay couples marry outright, as do some countries, including Canada, South Africa and the Netherlands.

[…]

Opponents, including some religious and conservative groups, said the law is a step toward legalized same-sex marriage.

Which, of course, is a good thing.

More hardlined advocates will undoubtedly dismiss this as yet another half-assed attempt to please the LGBT community by extending some, but not all, the rights they deserve to be equal members of society. I do agree to a point, but I also believe in pragmatism over idealism. There are too many conservatives and bigots as it is to push for full-blown legalization across the board, so whatever bits and pieces we can get, we should take. It’s a small step, but small steps do add up over time, until you eventually get exactly what you wanted, even if it takes longer than it ideally should. Longer is better than never.

Bill O’Reilly repeats his clueless arguments for God

Bill O’Reilly [source]

One of Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly’s favorite arguments for the existence of God is about how the tides go in and out, the sun goes up and down, all without any “miscommunication”, which all obviously means, in his mind, that God did it. This is an argument from ignorance on a number of levels: the “God of the gaps” fallacy (“It isn’t scientifically explained yet, ergo, Goddiddit!”), an argument from incredulity/lack of imagination (as is typical amongst Christian ideologues – “The world is so beautiful/complicated/balanced/etc., ergo, Goddiddit!”), and mostly because we know how the tides work and why the sun rises and sets every day. The Colbert Report did a particularly amusing segment on the matter where Neil deGrasse Tyson himself debunked this nonsense.

But, it seems that O’Reilly doesn’t watch The Colbert Report, for he’s now made a little YouTube video – yes, he’s apparently on YouTube – wherein he mocks a viewer who wrote in telling him about how the Moon causes the tides with all the arrogance of ignorance he can muster:

Michele Bachmann plans to cut veteran benefits

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) [source]

As if Republicans’ boilerplating about their support for the troops despite their zeal to prolong ruinous and pointless wars for purely ideological reasons didn’t sound hollow enough, here’s the latest offense by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) as a part of her new plan to cut the deficit:

Tea party favorite Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., has unveiled a plan for cutting $400 billion in federal spending that includes freezing Veterans Affairs Department health care spending and cutting veterans’ disability benefits.

Her proposed VA budget cuts would account for $4.5 billion of the savings included in the plan, posted on her official House of Representatives website.

Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, said cutting veterans’ health care spending is an ill-advised move at a time when the number of veterans continues to grow as troops return from Iraq and Afghanistan. Sullivan said he finds it difficult to see how VA could freeze health care costs without hurting veterans.

Because what better way to cut spending than by taking money away from those who need it most, or to show your compassion for the troops than by metaphorically telling them to fuck off when they come back all banged up from the same pointlessly prolonged and bloody conflicts people like her love to wage?

I’m certainly no fan of the United States’s military, at least not in its currently profoundly overblown state, and I generally think that those who willingly sign up to get sent into bullet-ridden hellholes overseas aren’t so much selfless as recklessly patriotic at best (or downright suicidal at worst). But, despite my disagreements with their motive(s), I do support the troops (even as a foreigner), because I recognize that the majority of them are good people who believe in serving their country, and many of them are true heroes who sacrifice life and limb to help others in the most wretched locales on the planet. They constantly find themselves stuck hundreds or thousands of miles away from home and safety, often for far longer than they even signed up for. And even when they return home, untold thousands of them end up homeless and crippled from various physical and/or psychological issues and find only minimal care, if any.

Daily Blend: Monday, January 31, 2011

Featuring Captain America and his prominent … uh … star

• Hilarious take-down of some typically idiotic Breitbart blogger’s culture war whining about the renaming of the upcoming Captain America [pictured] film in some foreign territories.
  (via The Agitator)

• No, Vox Day, new research concluding that many med students agree to obey unethical orders to perform tests on patients without their consent, disturbing though it may be, does not mean that med students “make good Nazis” and that “most scientists” are perfectly willing to commit bloody genocide.

• So much blue. Especially in Iraq.
  (via @todayspolitics and The New York Times)

• Right-wing media’s latest inane anti-Obama smear: He dares to do things outside the White House during the turmoil in Egypt!

• Newsflash: It’s not “bigotry” for professors to have “negative feelings” towards people who generally act like they wish to turn the world into a Medieval theocracy.

• Recent study indicates successful conception is “more than twice as likely” when a woman is inseminated while laughing. Huh.
  (via The Agitator)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Supplemental tags: Christian Persecution Complex • Christians • Clowns • Weird

Some solar system neighbors at lunar scale

In a move that is intended purely to showcase some interesting content I found (and not at all to merely boost my dwindling posts-per-day ratio), here’s a neat little animation showing the sizes of some of our neighboring planets as they would appear if they were at the same distance from the Earth as the Moon:

Scale from Brad Goodspeed on Vimeo.

I was half-expecting Jupiter to swallow us all at such close a relatively close proximity, but it turns out its radius (44,400 miles/71,500 KM^*) would only span just less than a fifth of the average distance between the Earth and the Moon (238,900 miles/384,400 KM). How disappointing, Jupiter. Some giant you are. You need to eat more planetesimals.

(via The Daily Grail)

* Turns out Googling “radius of Jupiter” instantly gives you “radius of Jupiter = 71 492 kilometers” written above the search results, thus sparing the idle researcher literally seconds of tedious digging. I love Google.

Daily Blend: Sunday, January 30, 2011

Al Jazeera logo

• Electronic Frontier Foundation uncovers upwards of 40,000 FBI intelligence violations since 9/11, amongst other misconduct.

• Al Jazeera [logo pictured], after carrying out thorough coverage of the Egyptian protests, forced to shut down in Egypt in latest government move to stifle communication.

• Meanwhile, here’s an exposé on why Al Jazeera is rejected and demonized in the US (typically by totally-non-bigoted conservatives, of course).
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Amazing: CPAC to present Defender of the Constitution Award to … Donald Rumsfeld.
  (via @ggreenwald)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Daily Blend: Saturday, January 29, 2011

Pictured: Wouldn’t put up a fight, so it’s not really rape — Republicans

• Republicans [pictured] attempt to redefine rape in effort to strip victims of “non-forcible” rape of federally-funded abortion coverage.

• Part of the reason for the dismal level of acceptance of Evolutionary Theory in America is because high school teachers are generally unwilling to endorse it (if they don’t directly preach against it).
  (via RichardDawkins.net)

• Ed Brayton has an excellent essay on how the Left does, and should, view America, compared to the Right’s “light of the world” schtick.

• The 12 Worst Colleges For Free Speech. Was rather surprised to see Yale at #2.
  (via The Agitator)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Stewart demolishes O’Reilly’s defense of his Nazi analogy

Last week, Jon Stewart at The Daily Show criticized Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) for comparing the Republican lies about healthcare reform to Joseph Goebbels’ Nazi propaganda, especially when this came only days after Cohen gave a speech condemning such rhetoric. Naturally, Fox News went into a tizzy of intensely hypocritical outrage, and the ever-idiotic Megyn Kelly even claimed that no-one on Fox ever makes Nazi comparisons. And so Stewart responded by letting her know that, actually, yes, they do. Like, a lot (including on her own show).

Then, Fox’s daddy Bill O’Reilly actually defended his own past use of one specific Nazi analogy, somehow rationalizing the equating of the Huffington Post to Nazis because of one hateful reader comment that was once posted (and later deleted). If that wasn’t transparently moronic enough, here’s Stewart, yet again, to clarify the extent of O’Reilly foolishness and continuing hypocrisy:

Non-US readers: Go here to learn how to enable Comedy Central videos.

My transcript of Stewart’s conclusion:

Fail Quote: WSJ’s Taranto on origin of liberals’ dislike of Palin

Here’s another one for the books, courtesy of Fox News. From the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto, appearing on Hannity:

My transcript of the relevant excerpt(s):

SEAN HANNITY: What is it, James, about liberals hating Sarah Palin? I don’t – I can’t fully comprehend it.

JAMES TARANTO: […] I did a long analysis of this last week. It actually all comes down to sex. It originates with the liberal women, and it’s because they’re – she is a threat to their sexual identity.

There are some things you just don’t quite know how to respond to, least of all with a straight face. I presume he’s referring to the fact that Palin is generally thought of as an attractive woman, but even then, how “sexual identity” (does he even know what that means?) comes into play with people’s opinions of her is beyond me.

(via Media Matters for America)

Daily Blend: Friday, January 28, 2011

David Kato

It’s like this blog has become Li’l Joé’s Musical Exposium or something. (Also, my third horse-riding lesson today. Wheee!)

• Tragically predictable: David Kato [pictured], Ugandan gay rights activist who sued local tabloid for identifying homosexuals (including him), murdered at his home.
  (via @BreakingNews)

• I fully support the Park51 Islamic cultural center, but this gay-bashing imam needs to either get a clue or be released. (Park51 asserts over Twitter that he’s only one advisor and that those remarks are his personal, unaffiliated opinions. In that case, do they really need someone whose beliefs embarrass them so?)
  (via Right Wing Watch)

• Christian maturity and sensibility on display at OneNewsNow.

• English airport declares a three-inch plastic gun on a figurine a “safety threat”, forces tourist to mail it overseas separately. Imagine what the TSA would’ve done.
  (via The Agitator)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Whispers of the Night

This entry has been removed from Preliator and can now be found over at Creativitas. (See here for more info.)

Friday Canine: Good thing no-one’s around or we’d just look weird

[source | full size (900×600)]

Utah lawmakers propose official state gun

Pictured: Utah representative

From the files of immunity to common sense and irony:

The Utah House passed a bill by a 51-19 vote Wednesday designating the Browning pistol as the official state gun.

Around the country, this story has been stirring up a lot of attention during the last 24 hours. The New York Times, for example, ran an op-ed piece Wednesday wherein Gail Collins poked fun at Utah for its firearms predilection. (Note: the Collins piece ran in anticipation of but before the legislation passed the House on Wednesday.)

On Monday, the Utah State Capitol celebrated Browning Day, honoring John Moses Browning, native son and maker of the nominee for Official State Firearm. There were speeches, a proclamation, a flyover by a National Guard helicopter, and, of course, a rotunda full of guns. "We recognize his efforts to preserve the Constitution," Gov. Gary Herbert said, in keeping with what appears to be a new Republican regulation requiring all party members to mention the Constitution at least once in every three sentences.

Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, sponsored the Official State Firearm legislation, HB219. This is the same Carl Wimmer, by the way, who believes that Utahns should be allowed to carry concealed weapons without a permit and who owns a tremendous mustache.

Because having a state flag, bird and flower obviously weren’t enough. (Or, those are sissy, hippie things.) Not to mention that gun nuts apparently think the best way to dispel the notion that they’re, well, ‘gun nuts’, is to have the state declare its appreciation for the same type of weapon used in the Tucson, Virginia Tech and Fort Hood massacres, among others.

But hey, if it’s gonna be that way, then I call dibs on the RCP-120 FN P90 for Québec. If we’re gonna be symbolized by killing machines, might as well do so with style.

(via Political Irony)

Guitar Rhapsody

This entry has been removed from Preliator and can now be found over at Creativitas. (See here for more info.)

Fail Quote of the Day: Hannity claims Obama gave “shout outs to his favorite Communist regimes”

In case you thought there was the slightest risk that Fox News’s most inane twit (a title with some fierce competition) would react to President Obama’s eloquent and well-received State of the Union speech with a modicum of honesty and common sense, here’s Hannity to prove you wrong:

My transcript:

[Begin clip of Obama’s SOTU address]

OBAMA: Half-a-century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik, we had no idea how we would beat them to the Moon. The science wasn’t even there yet. NASA didn’t exist. But, after investing in better research and education, we didn’t just surpass the Soviets. We unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs. This is our generation’s Sputnik moment.

[End clip]

HANNITY: […] By the way, the Space Race was the result of the Cold War, not indiscriminate government spending. [Who the hell ever said it was?] But the President’s shout outs to his favorite Communist regimes didn’t end there. He also found time to lecture all of us on the exceptionalism of China. Watch this:

Daily Blend: Thursday, January 27, 2011

Ken Cuccinelli

• Perhaps the reason why US Border Patrol agents never speak ill of the War on Drugs is because they immediately get fired when they do.
  (via The Agitator)

• Phil Plait points out that while reprimanding Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli [pictured] for his anti-global warming witch hunt is a good thing, taking away his legal recourses – thus removing his ability to prosecute actual fraud – isn’t a very good idea.

• Bill O’Reilly: Someone said something stupid and mean about Nancy Reagan in a Huffington Post comment (that was later deleted), ergo, my Nazi comparison was okay.

• And the religious-Right’s efforts to stuff Creationist bullshit into science classrooms starts anew.

• G. Wayne Clough, the spineless head of the Smithsonian Institute who caved in to pearl-clutchers and censored a “blasphemous” art exhibit, needs to be replaced.

• 10 Creepy Plants That Shouldn't Exist. I don’t even know what to think of #2.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Supplemental tags: Smithsonian Institute • Botany • Cracked.com

Request: Gene Burmington | Munchhausen’s Theme

This entry has been removed from Preliator and can now be found over at Creativitas. (See here for more info.)

Request: Veritas | McGuire is Terrible Theme

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Daily Blend: Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Free Speech

• Almost satirically perfect example showing how whenever someone says “there oughta be a law”, there really shouldn’t be. [pictured]
  (via The Agitator)

• Latest faux right-wing outrage: State dinner pianist chose a Chinese song! Anti-American!

• Fake sex trafficker tried to pull a James O’Keefe on Planned Parenthood. It didn’t work.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Excellent and insightful post by Jen at Blag Hag debunking the latest insane WorldNetDaily tripe about how gays may use genetic screening to abort heterosexual babies.

• Iowan Christians to gays: “Here, have a cookie while we try to take away your hard-earned right to marry.”

• Oh, the startling maturity of Fox & Friends.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Supplemental tags: Gay marriage • Iowa • Fox & Friends • SOTU

Faraway

This entry has been removed from Preliator and can now be found over at Creativitas. (See here for more info.)

Fail Quote of the Day: Roger Ailes accuses MSNBC of partisanship?

Roger Ailes

From an extended Esquire interview with Fox News president Roger Ailes:

You have to be able to allow both points of view. Look at MSNBC. They have nobody on that doesn't agree with them. Nobody. I never see anybody who disagrees with them. I don't know whether their egos can't handle it or whether their... I don't get it. They absolutely despise anybody with a different opinion.

Not only is this patently false (any 30-second Google search will reveal plenty of instances of various MSNBC anchors and contributors featuring diverging opinions on various issues), but this is actually coming from the guy who heads Fox News. And he’s saying that other (liberal) channels don’t allow balanced debates with various differing political ideologies.

Let that sink in for a minute.

(via Media Matters for America)

They’re just doing their job of not giving a f*ck

The GOP’s primary platform as they swept the November ballots was about bringing their focus on jobs, jobs and more jobs. So, naturally, what have they been up to in the weeks since taking office?

Cartoon for 01/25/11 by Jim Morin

Anyone who voted for these demagogues has no right to turn around and complain about the treatment they now receive. None at all.

(via Political Irony)

Fox News doesn’t make Nazi references? Jon Stewart disagrees

Yesterday, in the wake of the little orgy of brazenly hypocritical faux outrage that erupted over at Fox News over the news that Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen (TN) compared the perpetual Republican lies over healthcare reform to Nazi Germany’s chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels, The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart aired a clip showing Fox’s Megyn Kelly actually having the balls to claim that even though she watches Fox’s programming “every day”, she’s never seen any of her fellow anchors or contributors make Nazi comparisons, thus leading us to wonder just how much glue she’s apparently been sniffing over the years. Jon Stewart bats this softball right out of the park:

Non-US readers: Go here to learn how to enable Comedy Central videos.

Did she seriously expect not to get called out on such easy nonsense? Or does she just not give a crap, along with what’s evidently the majority of other pseudo-journalists that call Fox home?

Daily Blend: Tuesday, January 25, 2011

William Kilgore, arrested for recording cops

For the sake of convenience and not drowning my readers in music (however wonderful and brilliant it may be^*), I will spread the remaining song updates out in twelve-hour increments to give other content a chance. So you know.

• Tarpon Springs, Florida cops arrest college student [pictured] for recording their activities, then confiscate friend’s phone for recording said arrest.
  (via The Agitator)

• Illinois State Senate votes (32-25) to abolish death penalty.
  (via The Agitator)

• Hawaii Senate becomes the first state legislature to openly ban daily prayers.

• Noted anti-abortionist crank Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) claims abortion is “unacceptable bigotry” and wants to form a new protected class for “immaturity” – literally, for fetuses.
  (via Right Wing Watch)

• Good write-up about how fetishization of religion in America from an Australian point-of-view. Bottom line: We need more like Ricky Gervais.
  (via Pharyngula)

• Columbia, SC woman hangs and burns a “devil dog” to death for chewing on her Bible.

• Thomas Edison in 1911, speaking about 2011. Not as creepily accurate as Arthur C. Clarke’s predictions, but then, Clarke did have a 60-year head-start.
  (via The Daily Grail)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

* Pretentious? Moi?

Supplemental tags: Miriam Smith • dogs • Thomas Edison • cool

The Path to War Soundtrack | And So They Came

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Forget what I tweeted about my computer being “endearing” …

Two-and-a half hours, fifteen songs and exactly 24 Firefox crashes later (it’s my increasingly deranged computer’s fault, not the browser’s), I’m officially calling it a night. Will resume updating my songs tomorrow morning (which is whenever I wake up) after the obligatory Daily Blend.

Fifteen down, *counts* 29 more to go … I might not survive this. Pray for me. Or not. Better yet, buy me a new computer, at which point I’ll track you down and marry you and love you forever and ever.

(Title is in reference to this. But then, being a loyal Twitter follower of mine, you already know that, don’t you?)

The Path to War Soundtrack | Traveling Theme

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The Path to War Soundtrack | Melancholy Theme

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The Path to War Soundtrack | Sad Theme

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The Path to War Soundtrack | Liliane’s Theme

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The Path to War Soundtrack | Rebels Theme

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The Path to War Soundtrack | Asmodai’s Theme

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My Music Update: Changing to a new player (+ new editions)

A long time ago (in a bedroom not that very far away), I decided to begin showcasing my music (amongst other things) on my blog. Unfortunately, at the time, the only method I could find that allowed me to do so was by first going through the tedious process of creating a video for every individual song, uploading it to YouTube, and embedding the result. But, hey, it worked, so I persevered.

But thanks to the magic of teh Google, I just found out about the magical little gem that is Little MP3, a website that allows you to upload any MP3 song from your computer and then provides you with a cute little audio player, as such:

10 cookies to whoever identifies this song.

It seems to be working perfectly for now, though I’m not convinced about its reliability. So, at any rate, I’m now starting to convert every song I posted onto this blog into this brilliant little player, which has the added benefit of allowing me to quickly and painlessly upload every new revision and edit of my songs without having to create a whole new bloody video for them each time.

Daily Blend: Monday, January 24, 2011

Republican stance on … everything

• Workers for all things cultural and scientific progress, beware: The Republicans [pictured] are coming.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Artist and former stripper charged with recording on-duty Chicago cops, could be sentenced to up to 15 years in jail. Radley Balko has more details.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Anti-Defamation League, which has notably opposed the Park51 Islamic cultural center (“Ground Zero Mosque”), now quietly advocating for other opposed mosque projects across the country.
  (via @religionnews)

• UK government plans to force ISPs to (futilely) block all porn websites by default, requiring that users phone in to request unblocking – all “for the children”, of course.
  (via Gene Burmington)

• I think there might be a square millimeter of King James Bible this article doesn’t slobber over. (I’m all for the recognition of great religious works, but this is just shameless idolatry.)
  (via @religionnews)

• Time marches on: 17 Images That Will Ruin Your Childhood.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Supplemental tags: Bible • Robert McCrum • Cracked.com • History • Sad

“Crime-infested drug haven” Netherlands forced to close empty prisons

If this amusing report isn’t one to send the Drug Warriors digging for yet more excuses:

For years prohibitionists, including our own Drug Enforcement Administration, have claimed — falsely — that the tolerant marijuana policies of the Netherlands have made that nation a nest of crime and drug abuse. They may have trouble wrapping their little brains around this:

The Dutch government is getting ready to close eight prisons because they don’t have enough criminals to fill them. Officials attribute the shortage of prisoners to a declining crime rate.

Just for fun, let’s compare the Netherlands to California. With a population of 16.6 million, the Dutch prison population is about 12,000. With its population of 36.7 million, California should have a bit more than double the Dutch prison population. California’s actual prison population is 171,000 ^{[PDF, 67.47 KB]}.

So, whose drug policies are keeping the streets safer?

I think the answer to that is becoming increasingly clear, especially given the increasing levels of desperation the prohibitionist US government is displaying when demonizing these drugs.

(via @todayspolitics)

Jon Stewart blasts hyperbolic rhetoric from the … Left

In what will certainly (*snorts*) lay to rest the nonsense about how Jon Stewart supposedly only attacks the rabid Right, here’s a segment from last Thursday’s episode where the “radical Leftist” strongly criticizes Rep. Steve Cohen from Tennessee for using Nazi comparisons to smear his political opponents only days after he originally made a speech condemning such rhetoric. The thing, of course, is that Rep. Cohen is a Democrat:

Non-US readers: Go here to learn how to enable Comedy Central videos.

Hypocrisy and hyperbolic or violent imagery need to be denounced and discouraged on all sides of the political spectrum, even if it’s your own ideological camp. Jon Stewart is one of the most consistent and dogged demonstrators of this ideal, constantly declaring that both Liberals/Democrats and conservatives/Republicans are so often in the wrong (even if conservatives/Republicans seem to make a competition out of it). Accusations of him being, himself, partial and biased to the Left are simply ignorant and false … not that it stops so many Rightists and false “centrists” from making them.

(via Political Irony)

Doggycide: Cops blast apart pit-bull for “target practice”

Niko the pit-bull

All (of the many, many) stories of innocent dogs being injured or slaughtered by incompetent or aggressive cops are sad and infuriating, but this one is just downright outrageous:

UNIONTOWN, Pa. -- A woman in Fayette County said police used her dog for target practice when she called them for help.

Elizabeth D'Auria said she and her sister found their two-year-old pit bull dead after calling 911 for help.

"There were pieces of the dog here. They didn't leave a note. They didn't leave anything," said D'Auria. "He died on that fence over there because he was trying to get away."

D'Aurio said she called Uniontown police after someone attempted to break in to her Evans Street home. She said at first the dog chased the person who tried to climb through a window.

"They told my sister that he wasn't trying to bite them and that he growled at them when they tried to put the noose around him, but they couldn't catch him and they were tired of messing with him and they just shot him," D'Aurio said.

D'Aurio said the dog was not being aggressive and thinks that police crossed the line.

"They shot him six times with a pistol and once with a shotgun. They took the dog and we asked them if we could have him back to bury him and they won't give him back to us," said D'Aurio.

There is so much that’s spectacularly wrong with this story that it’s almost difficult to parse. As with nearly all doggycide cases, the dog wasn’t even being aggressive; the officers’ own testimony confirms this. The animal was just being recalcitrant as they were trying to catch him … at which point they saw fit to obliterate him with pistols and a fucking shotgun, even as the poor beast was trying to escape the barbaric onslaught.

If this isn’t a clear-cut case of animal cruelty, I don’t know what is. Nothing the dog did (again, by the cops’ own admission) justified any use of violence at all, much less the ridiculous level of force that was employed. But, of course, don’t be holding your breath for anything like a reprimand.

(via The Agitator)

Daily Blend: Saturday, January 22, 2011

Bill Donohue

• Howdy ho, it’s that “Renew the Fuck the Fourth Amendment ‘Patriot’ Act” time again.

• Bill Donohue [pictured] still trying to get the Smithsonian Institute to kiss his whiny ass for having the gall to present an art exhibit that offended pearl-clutchers.

• MSNBC and Countdown’s Keith Olbermann abruptly part ways without any explanation. Now for false-equivalence twits to rejoice over the end of “the Left’s Glenn Beck” …

• Now that’s a hell of a hole-in-one, mini-putt version.
  (via The Agitator)

• The 11 Most Retarded Fictional Weapons.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Fail Quote of the Day: Vox Day on PZ’s supposed immorality

Abortion

Yesterday, PZ Myers received another one of those deranged emails he loves to share, this time from an anti-abortionist kook who tried (unsuccessfully, as PZ promptly deleted the link) to resort to the usual anti-choice tactic of flooding their opponent with graphic imagery of aborted fetuses in the hopes of spawning a visceral reaction of disgust. (As if that was in any way a rational, logical or at all convincing argument against anything.) PZ informed the hapless crank that as a biologist who’s dealt with far more blood and gore in his line of work than most others ever do, he’s left utterly unimpressed by such a cheap tactic, if not irritated at the idea that it would even work in the first place.

So, naturally, cue our favorite point-missing anti-atheist, Vox Day:

It's probably a good thing he is an atheist without any moral standards, otherwise he might demonstrate at least a modicum of conscience for the bloody acts in which he appears to take such pride. And if he happened to take any sexual gratification from them as well, who can say it is wrong from his perspective, given his total lack of any moral or ethical code. If he feels no revulsion at looking at the pictures of butchered babies, then he likely feels no revulsion and sees only meat when looking at pictures of dead Jews and murdered Ukrainians as well. The awful thing is not that the pictures do not frighten him; they do not frighten me either. The awful thing is that he does not find them revolting like any normal human being with even a minimal amount of empathy would.

Shorter Vox: “PZ’s not disgusted at something that I think is disgusting, so he’s eeevil!”

Seriously, could Vox have missed the point any more entirely? Here’s a tip: If PZ says he’s so unperturbed at graphic imagery of dead fetuses, it’s because that he, unlike ignorant reactionaries such as Vox Day and pretty much all anti-choicers, knows and accepts that the fetuses don’t, and can’t, feel pain of any kind as their pre-born lives are terminated. A fetus is not a baby; a baby implies a fully-developed infant whose brain and nervous system are properly functioning, thus allowing the transmission of various physical stimuli such as pain. A fetus doesn’t have such capabilities during the timespan where the vast majority of elective abortions are carried out. In other words, there’s nothing amoral about not feeling moral revulsion or horror at the idea of killing something that would never even know the difference.

Colbert takes on Limbaugh’s mockery of Chinese speech

Leave it to satirical sweetheart Stephen Colbert to promptly puncture the racist sack of diarrhea that is Rush Limbaugh over his idiotic mockery of Chinese President Hu Jintao's speech, in addition to a few other targets Limbaugh’s taken to crudely mock over the years:

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I am satisfied with the level of disgust implied in Colbert’s riff.

(via Media Matters for America)

PZ Myers has it right about the Dr. Kermit Gosnell case

Dr. Kermit Gosnell

When I first heard about the gruesome affair of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the abortion “doctor” who operated a horrific abortion mill in Philadelphia, PA, my first thought – after the natural revulsion and sadness at the harm he’s caused, of course – was about how long it would (or wouldn’t) take before the the fervently irrational anti-abortionist legion seized the story as another opportunity to claim that all “abortionists” are supporters of child-killing and so on and so forth, as such vultures are apt to do. Naturally, I wasn’t disappointed.

I also wasn’t disappointed in PZ Myers’ response, though. He’s got another dead-on post explaining just why the ghoulish Dr. Gosnell has nothing to do with the pro-choice movement and how his brand of hack-and-slash “medicine” is exactly what pro-choicers fight against:

Gosnell is precisely the kind of butcher the pro-choice movement opposes. No one endorses bad medicine and unrestricted, unregulated, cowboy surgery like Gosnell practiced — what he represents is the kind of back-alley deadly hackery that the anti-choice movement would have as the only possible recourse, if they had their way. If anything, the Gosnell case is an argument for legal abortion.

That last bit is particularly poignant. Anti-abortionists like to live in a fantasy world where criminalizing abortion would simply stop women from terminating their pregnancies, something that anyone with a shred of common sense will tell you is utterly delusional. If the anti-choice zealots had their way and trained and carefully regulated abortion providers were outlawed, all that would be left for women in dire need of terminating their pregnancy would be any random back-alley dweller with a hacksaw. The result would be safe abortions going down, but gruesome butchery and crippled, sterile or dead women skyrocketing by the thousands.

What pro-choicers want is safe abortions for needy women. We don’t encourage women to terminate pregnancies willy-nilly, contrary to what the obtuse anti-choicers love to believe. (That’s why the term “pro-abortion” is simply wrong.) Conversely, what the so-called “pro-lifers” want is to get rid of any safe recourse these women may have, forcing them to either seek out less-than-qualified pseudo-physicians in unsafe settings, or worse yet, leaving them no choice but to do it themselves.

I, Equitator: Day Two (w/ photo)

I, Equitator: Day One • Day Two • Day Three • Day Four • Day Five • Day Six • Day Seven • Day Eight • Day Nine

And so, horseback-riding lesson number two of ten just ended, and it could not have gone better.

We arrived a few minutes late due to a transportation hang-up, and we went straight to brushing my Great Big Lady, Charlotte (hereby known as GBLC), who had apparently taken to rolling around in the snow and ice. Animals, they be weird.

After a while, it was time to ride. So I was taught how to mount a beast whose shoulder I could barely look over, especially with someone as limber and agile as I am (hurk). Who knew something so terrifying could also be so fun and satisfying?

Anyway, I learned how to work and relax the right muscles for a more comfortable riding experience, and at the end of it all (during which we mostly walked in circles, not that I grew even remotely bored by it), I had my teacher, Chantal, take a quick pic of me, my GBLC, and my tutor, the comically little Natalie (well, compared to GBLC, anyway):

[full size (1200×900)]

Daily Blend: Friday, January 21, 2011

Gulet Mohamed

• Gulet Mohamed [pictured], US teen who was kidnapped to Kuwait, tortured and secretly placed on the no-fly list, now set to return home at last thanks to the courts. Absolutely no thanks to President Obama or any hand he commands. What a fucking disgrace.

• Republican anti-science demagoguery marches on, now threatens to defund CIA climate monitoring and analysis program.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Conservapedia tries to list some examples of Wikipedia’s “liberal bias, deceit, frivolous gossip, and blatant errors”. Three guesses how that goes.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Lemme help you with this quandary, pearl-clutchers: If there’s no actual porn, then no matter how debauched it may be (at least, to you), it’s not fucking child porn. For fuck’s sake.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Friday Canine: Wait, lemme just get that tick out first

[source | full size (850×567)]

Inhuman Illustrated | Back cover illustration [updated]

This entry has been removed from Preliator and can now be found over at Creativitas. (See here for more info.)

Daily Blend: Thursday, January 20, 2011

• Hospital visitation rights for same-sex partners now entering into federally mandated effect [pictured]. About damn time. Here’s hoping travesties like these never happen again.

• Guess who spent nearly $200 million to pay for replacements for perfectly good assets unfairly kicked out under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”?

• Tea Party unpopularity at an all-time high.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• The Buffalo Beast has a list of the 50 most loathsome Americans of 2010. How the hell is Rush Limbaugh not featured? Seriously?
  (via Pharyngula)

• Fair! Balanced! Derp!

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Inhuman Illustrated | Chapter 01 strip [updated]

This entry has been removed from Preliator and can now be found over at Creativitas. (See here for more info.)

Fail Quote of the Day: Limbaugh attacks educated speech

From the perennially anti-intellectual Rush Limbaugh, attacking a Fox News panel’s positive reactions to President Obama’s Tuscon shooting memorial speech:

LIMBAUGH: They were slobbering over it for the predictable reasons: it was smart, it was articulate, it was oratorical. It was, it was all the things the educated, ruling class wants their members to be and sound like.

“Godammit, we don’t want no smarty-pants, fancy-talkin’ edjumacated President! We want a loudmouthed, hillbilly dumbass like the rest of us!”

Though, given the majority of the US citizenry these days, that does sound closer to fair representation.

(via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

Daily Blend: Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Sea Captain

• Oopsie: Newly revealed letter reveals the Vatican’s active role in deliberately hiding clerical child abuse cases from the proper authorities.

• South Carolina GOP want women who want an abortion to be forced to consider “fetal pain”.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• US Supreme Court refuses to allow bigots to force Washington, DC to hold a referendum on its gay marriage law.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• More good news from over the border: Canadian Supreme Court rules that religion cannot be used as a reason to refuse to marry gay couples.

• Ladies & gents, religion: The 6 Strangest Ways Anyone Was Ever Mistaken for a God. The “cargo cults” one was rather amusing.
  (via @PersonalFailure)

• Dating website for sea captains [representative pictured]. … Yarr?
  (via The Agitator)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Supplemental tags: Websites/Blogs • Humor