Daily Blend: Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Bruce “Big-Bellied Rapist” Tuck [source: WMCTV]

Can’t wait to start shooting stuff. (Too bad eBay.ca didn’t have the all-black model … or the tactical one …)

• I didn’t know orangutans were into watersports … or that they get that thirsty.
  (via Diaphanitas)

• “Dude, what’d you get three months for?” “Guh, I stole a spider from a library.”

• Adult daughter of Oklahoma judicial candidate John Mantooth, Jan Schill, releases a newspaper ad saying not to vote for her father ’cuz he’s an asshole. Yeah, yhat might hurt.
  (via Fark)

• Cute little lion cubs at Israeli zoo think they’re all that. Intimidating, no; adorable, yes.
  (via Fark)

• “Not News: Bank of America charges $30 to stop a check. News: Every six months. Fark: Forever”
  (via Fark)

• Bruce Tuck, “Big-Bellied Rapist”, claims his confession was coerced when his cruel interrogators plied him with … junk food.
  (via Fark)

• Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declares that it’s your fault if anyone gets hurt by slipping and falling in snow that’s on your property. Bonus quote: “This is a day that all the people of Massachusetts should celebrate, because this is a victory on behalf of public safety.” Saying stuff that conceited and stupid ought to be punishable one way or another.

• Man digs through garage sales, ends up with photos worth $200 million.
  (via Fark)

• Doggy who saved soldier and comrades from a suicide bomber gets adopted.
  (via Fark)

• Livingtston, Louisiana’s Livingston Parish School Board wants to teach that a cosmic fairy abracadabraed the world into existence in six days, as an “alternative” to Evolution.
  (via Fark)

• The ADHD test. I scored 13. What a load of SQUIRREL!
  (via Fark)

• National Organization for Marriage supporter displays sign declaring that the “solution to gay marriage” is hanging gay couples. Aside from his vile and dumbass sign, it’s really quite tragic how religion so effectively wrecks both one’s morals and one’s mind.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• “Obama fruit”? He ought to have been fired just for being that much of a twit.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• I think the point is clear.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Sexy or disturbing? Carell, Stewart and Colbert really blur the line. (Look at li’l Jonny. So cute and tiny. =3)
  (via @jennifurret)

As always, if you have any story suggestions, feel free to send them in.

Tags: orangutans • urine • watersports • Randy Humple • Chilean Rose tarantula • spiders • tarantulas • theft • libraries • John Mantooth • Jan Schill • lions • lion cubs • zoos • Bank of America • Bruce Tuck • rape • Big-Bellied Rapist • junk food • Massachusetts • Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court • snow • private property • Ansel Adams • garage sales • dogs • soldiers • Livingston Parish School Board • schools • Creationism • Evolution • ADHD • National Organization for Marriage • gay marriage • racism • Iraq War • Afghan War • Steve Carell • Jon Stewart • Stephen Colbert

All of you with “politically active”, “foreign” and “feminist” friends hate America!

Ellis Washington [source: [deleted blog]]

This would be a perfect Fail Quote, but I hesitate to create another such post so soon after the previous one. Here, we have Ellis Washington, wingnut columnist at that repository of wingnuts, the WorldNutDaily, pulling an Andrew Breitbart and quoting an excerpt from President Obama’s book, Dreams From My Father, without any context and using the quote-mined passage to try and paint Obama and “his closest friends” as America-haters:

Obama, recounting his formative years, wrote: "To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists." From this we can deduce that Obama and his closest friends all passionately hate America.

Now, there are two things to mention, here. First, if Washington had cared at all about mentioning any proper context for that excerpt, he would have noted that, as Ed Brayton points out:

In that chapter of the book he is recounting, with a good deal of embarrassment, all that he did to fit in with the radicals on campus in his early college days. He talks about the difficulty he was having fitting in because he looked black but had a white mother and was not raised underprivileged, which is exactly why he kept choosing radical friends, to prove his authenticity with those he was trying to impress.

In other words, it’s practically identical to the Shirley Sherrod affair: Both she and Obama were quote-mined (by Breitbart and Washington, respectively) to make it look as though they were racists when they were actually talking about how what they did was wrong and that they’ve since learned to overcome their past biases and prejudices. Pretty much the only difference is that whilst Sherrod was attacked by a moderately well-known dishonest pundit and her life was upended by the debacle, Washington attacking Obama is more akin to an annoying little ant trying to topple the Sears Tower. Seriously, Washington, you could at least have tried not to use the exact same schtick that Breitbart has been so thoroughly hammered with only last week, you dishonest moron.

But perhaps the most poignant part of Washington’s claim that college-age Obama trying to fit in with those “radicals” meant that he and they all “passionately hate America” (note the present tense) is how utterly stupid it is. So, what? Having friends that are politically active, foreign, of Mexican descent, believe in Marxism and in feminism somehow makes one anti-American now? How do any of those beliefs or ideologies contradict American patriotism? If these are all signs of “hating America”, then does loving America mean not bothering with politics or social issues, staying clear of anyone with a foreign origin, adhering strictly to capitalism and believing that women aren’t deserving of equal socio-legal standing to men?

Really, the only interesting thing about Washington’s attack is how it doesn’t make even a shred of sense. But then, neither do most of his writings.

Bonus stupid: Here’s another amusing little line from Washington’s column when he lists how Obama fits within “classical mandates of progressivism”:

3. Anti-Christianity: "Whatever we once were, we're no longer a Christian nation."

So recognizing that the United States is not a Christian nation – which it never was, even if Christians make up the majority of the population – is being anti-Christian? Let’s add Christian Persecution Complex to our long list of What’s Wrong With Ellis Washington.

(via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

Tags: Ellis Washington • Barack Obama • racism • anti-Americanism • Christianity • religion

Fail Quote of the Day: Fox News analyst wants to execute leakers

Lt-Col. Ralph Peters [source: Transnational Middle-East Observer]

From Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, a Fox “News” “strategic analyst”, talking about the damages caused to the US Military by WikiLeaks’s release of tens of thousands of top secret cables revealing countless cases of abuse and lawbreaking:

LT.-COL. PETERS: “Now Laura [Ingraham], you can tell I’m a little hot about this. I do not believe in leaks. I would execute leakers. They’re betraying our country.”

Well, now we know where truth and accountability rank relative to covering up illegal activities and murders in his system of values. I suppose we ought to be thankful that amoral militarists like him don’t have more power over the true heroes that are whistleblowers and their invaluable power for exposing the lies of actual traitors such as him who would gladly kill innocents in the name of preserving the rosy image of an institution that has turned into little more than a machine of bloody war rather than one of defense.

(via @todayspolitics)

Tags: Ralph Peters • Fox News • US Military • WikiLeaks • whistleblowers

Daily Blend: Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Lt. Dan Choi [source: SDGLN.com]

Please, won’t someone drop by and knock my cat out? I love the stupid thing too much to do it, but my ears are about to burst if she doesn’t shut up soon.

• The World’s 13 Most Stunning Bridges. Not if it doesn’t include the Golden Gate, I say.

• Lt. Dan Choi ^[pictured], outspoken gay soldier against “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, discharged from the Army National Guard. Whilst this is as unjust and sad as any other homosexual soldier being kicked out under DADT, it really was plain stupid of him to actually out himself on national television. What chances could he possibly have left then, when he so very publicly “told”?
  (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

• Finally, a sure-fire way to get conservatives to accept manmade climate change: Increasingly failed crop yields throughout Mexico may force millions of Mexicans to migrate into the US.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Sarah Palin candidly (or unwittingly) admits that she quit from Governor of Alaska mostly because of that darned media and its habit of poking around and uncovering her falsehoods.

• When Buildings Come Alive: Welcome to urban projection mapping.
  (via The Agitator)

• Moving story by PersonalFailure about the hypocrisy of pro-lifers (and why I never call them by such a misleading title – they are anti-abortionists and absolutely nothing more).

• Save the Gulf Oil Spill pets!

• Reckless Stupidity of the Day: Federal biologists release thousands of endangered baby sea turtles into western Gulf of Mexico in hopes that BP will have cleaned up oil spill by the time the turtles reach the now-affected areas.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• Real-life drowning people are much more still, quiet and helpless than Hollywood would have you believe.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• How much of your viewership is Black? MSNBC: 19.3% (145K/751K) | CNN: 20.7% (134K/648K) | Fox “News”: 1.38% (29K/2,102K). No surprises there.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Tennessee Republican gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, joining in with an intolerant crowd complaining about plans to build a local mosque: “Not sure” if Freedom of Religion also applies to Islam and Muslims as theirs is less a faith and more a “cult”.
  (via @todayspolitics)

As always, if you have any story suggestions, feel free to send them in.

Tags: bridges • Dan Choi • Don't Ask, Don't Tell • DADT • Mexico • agriculture • Sarah Palin • urban projection • pro-life • anti-abortionists • children • hypocrisy • Louisiana • pets • BP Oil Spill • Gulf of Mexico • sea turtles • drowning • Black people • MSNBC • CNN • Fox News • Tennessee • Ron Ramsey • Islam • Muslims • mosques

Mitchell & Webb explain why NASA needed to keep the successful Mars landings secret to fake the Moon landing video, on the Moon

Need I say more (other than that That Mitchell and Webb Look is a satirical British show that I’ve never heard of until now)? You know you’re gonna watch it.

It’s always great to have satire make us laugh as it points at the lunacy of denialists and cranks.

(via Bad Astronomy)

Tags: That Mitchell and Webb Look • Moon landings • Moan hoax

Fail Quote of the Day: McCain says “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq War!

It’s celebration time, people! The Iraq War is over and the US won!

Wait, haven’t you heard? Of course the US won the war – just take it from Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona)!:

On July 15, I [Marjorie Cohn, professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law] attended a reception in Washington DC to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the normalization of relations between the United States and Vietnam. Geoff Millard and I spoke to Sen. John McCain. When Geoff introduced himself as chairman of the board of Iraq Veterans against the War, McCain retorted, "You're too late. We already won that one."

See? It’s true! Woo-hoo!

Unless … wait, what’s that? Déjà-vu, is it called? I see something … a banner … a stupid speech … a failed promise … oh, there it is:

“MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: Not Exactly” [source: QuarkScrew]

(via @todayspolitics)

Tags: John McCain • Iraq War

Daily Blend: Monday, July 26, 2010

BP logo [source: HiLobrow]

Sorry for the lateness. I was shanghaied into visiting some relatives, and only just recently managed to escape (though I did catch a sight of my uncle’s fantastic Mercedes-Benz SLK 350, 2008 model. The hidden car enthusiast in me got a bit of a mental hard-on). Now onto your regular programming.

• FEATURED: Remember how WikiLeaks was rumored to release 260,000 top secret US Military cables exposing tons of abuse and lawbreaking? That was a lie … They actually just released 91,000+ instead.

• New British coalition government plans to revamp the nation’s socialized healthcare system. … By transferring more power down to local doctors and abolishing layers of bureaucracy. What, you didn’t think they’d turn to private health insurance companies, did you? ’Cause that’s just stupid.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• This is all kinds of cool and freaky.
  (via The Agitator)

• Roger Ebert asks why BP and corporations in general have received unofficial immunity from paying for when their trees fall on his lawn.

• British government drops plans to grant anonymity to men suspected of, or charged with, committing rape. I have nothing with naming names when the accused has been proven guilty, but I strongly oppose revealing the identities of those who have merely been accused before they’ve been formally charged. You’d think they would at least make sure that the accused truly was guilty before launching that social wrecking ball. (See my previous comments, here.)
  (via @todayspolitics)

As always, if you have any story suggestions, feel free to send them in.

Tags: WikiLeaks • US Military • top secret • Britain • government • National Health System • socialized healthcare • Kiss • tattoos • Roger Ebert • BP • corporations • corporatocracy • rape • legal rights

Daily Blend: Sunday, July 25, 2010

F-18 jet crashing during air show [source: Photoblog]

Did you mark your calendar? Today is Preliator’s 1^st blogiversary!

• House of Representatives passes a bill that makes it easier for Native American women who are raped by non-Natives to have their day in court. So, of course, all 92 who voted against this bill are Republicans. See the roll call of shame here.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Another reason to legalize marijuana: Regulating and taxing pot would potentially increase state revenues by “hundreds of millions of dollars”.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Rush Limbaugh attacks Fox “News”’s Shepard Smith and Bill O’Reilly for “caving in” when they finally admitted they were wrong about Shirley Sherrod and should’ve researched the Breitbart video.
  (via @ebertchicago)

• Petite woman bumped off Southwest Airlines flight to accommodate an obese passenger who required an extra seat. Because they couldn’t just have the latecomer take another flight or something. Best part of all? Said overweight individual is 14 years old.
  (via Fark)

• Sonographers want you to know that pointing a cellphone or camcorder at the monitor while they perform an ultrasound should be stopped is very very distracting and can cause them to “miss vital signs of problems in the developing baby”. (No mention of the fact that it could provide evidence should they commit malpractice.) I’m not saying that patients should have a film crew in the room or anything, but still, if you’re so easily unsettled by someone pointing a small handheld camera at the monitor that you manage to miss an erratic heartbeat or some deformation and you also can’t figure out to simply play back the recording to do away with any lingering doubts, then you are one pathetic practitioner.
  (via Fark)

• Coolest (and freakiest) photos of an F-18 pilot ejecting splitseconds before his/her jet smashes into the ground you ever did see.
  (via Fark)

• Remember that iconic Internet Tough Guy with the fat, bespectacled geek smoking a cigarette at his computer? Yeah, he apparently grew up. Not sure if it’s really him, but still, neat.
  (via Fark)

• How very much utterly pathetic.
  (via Fark)

As always, if you have any story suggestions, feel free to send them in.

Tags: House of Representatives • Native Americans • rape • Republicans • marijuana • Prop 19 • Rush Limbaugh • Fox News • Shepard Smith • Bill O'Reilly • Shirley Sherrod • Southwest Airlines • obesity • sonograms • hospitals • F-18 • airplanes • fighter jets • crashes • Internet Tough Guy • children • clothes • Marks and Spencer

Cake, candles and (hopefully) presents: Preliator turns one

First Birthday [source: Psychology Today]

In the midst of July of 2009, I was already growing weary with my then-blog, Respectful Defiance. (Yes, I know I ought to be stoned for that title; please have mercy). The template had incrementally progressed further and further away from what I desired, and my months of hackneyed tinkering with the HTML had rendered it just about unsalvageable. Add in some other multitudes of minor issues, and I just really needed to scrap it and get myself a new outlet.

And so, on July 25 of 2009, Preliator pro Causa saw the light.^[1]

I figured the best way to commemorate this milestone – how many blogs, in all, stay online and active with several posts each day for a year and more? – was with another traditional Top Posts list. (Because who can ever get enough of those?) For the sake of refreshing memories, awakening nostalgia and increasing pageviews, here’s what the fantastic tool that is Google Analytics informs me are the 12 most visited posts in the past year since Preliator’s inception. Why 12? Because 13 is just too much.

All figures and statistics taken at today (07/24/10) at 8:50 PM EST.

#12) Christian bigots resort to their usual dirty tricks
Published: Sunday, February 07, 2010 | Pageviews: 101
A Florida judge granted a lesbian couple the right to formally adopt an infant son. So, naturally, the Religious Right has its usual little freakout and does its best to smear the loving and caring couple as grotesque, carpet-munching lezzies and so on.

#11) Another rant on how not all animal sex is animal abuse
Published: Saturday, December 19, 2009 | Pageviews: 101
In light of a case of bestiality where a man had sex with horses on several occasions during summer nights, Goshen, NY Police Chief James Watt actually compared the harmless activity to convicted fighter and killer of dogs Michael Vick. Also includes a sorta-rant of mine on how bestiality is not animal abuse in and of itself and those who engage in it ought to be left the hell alone unless they commit some actual and verifiable harm to animals.

#10) Meet Glenn Moon, candidate for Supreme Kook City Council of Livonia, Michigan
Published: Sunday, August 23, 2009 | Pageviews: 120
Über-nut Glenn Moon’s ad for his campaign for City Council of Livonia, Michigan. He sounds about as loony as that other Glenn we all know of. Or possibly even more (quite a feat). Be thankful for his quick defeat, at least.

Maddow on the Obama Paradox

Here’s another bit of Rachel Maddow being her usual in-depth and savvy self as she examines the political climate, staged by the Right and spinelessly enabled by the Left, that makes it so that no matter how much legislative progress President Obama actually makes, few will ever hear or know about it.

It’s all just a game. The Republicans know it, the Democrats know it; everyone with half a brain and an ounce of political insight knows it. It’s no more than a political game, meticulously orchestrated by the right-wing political class and its cheerleaders (notably Fox “News”) to undermine Obama and his administration at every single turn, no matter what he does or how far out of his way he goes to try and appease both sides at once like the hopelessly bipartisan centrist he is. The day that the Democrats finally get a stick rammed up their rears to act as a substitute spine and that they finally rally up and hammer the demagogues on the Right into their rightful places is the day that peace, balance and efficiency will have returned to US politics, and not a second before.

(via Political Irony)

Tags: Rachel Maddow • Barack Obama • Obama administration • Democrats • Republicans • GOP • lies

Rewarding those who do nothing: Unemployed vs. Republicans

“Rewarding people who do nothing” | Tom Toles

Actually, I disagree that they do nothing: They actively oppose legislative progress and do their best to screw everything up. Is there also a corresponding reward for people whose efforts aren’t just zero, but actually into the negatives?

(via Political Irony)

Tags: cartoons • Tom Toles • Republicans • GOP • unemployment

Daily Blend: Saturday, July 24, 2010

North Korean anti-American propaganda poster “When provoking a war of aggression, we will hit back, beginning with the US!” [source: California Literary Review]

• Federal judge strikes down the Stolen Valor Act, which made it a criminal offense to lie about one’s military service. Claiming to be a war hero shouldn’t be a legal offense but an ethical one, and deserves shaming, not fines or jail.
  (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

• Ed Brayton quotes at length from two rational conservatives, Daniel Larison and Conor Friedersdorf, who blow rhetorical flamethrowers over all the demagogic bigotry playing in favor of jihadists over the proposed and misleadingly labeled “Ground Zero Mosque”.

• “In a statement Friday, the Rome diocese denounced those priests who were leading a "double life," said they shouldn't have been ordained and promised that the church would rigorously pursue anyone who is behaving in a way that wasn't dignified for a priest.” They were talking, of course about gay priests. Because no other sweeping problem requires such a direct intervention, right?
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Excellent post up at Slate debunking Andrew Breitbart & co.’s latest defensive argument: that their point wasn’t to attack Shirley Sherrod, but to show how the NAACP itself was racist. With all sorts of false claims, of course, that are disproven simply by watching the full video in question.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• A study of an annoying gnat repeatedly attacking a toughened elephant’s ass. Seriously, they only just recently conducted their very first nuclear tests, and now they imagine they can threaten a country that can turn them into a molten crater a hundred times over with a flick of a switch?

• Although, North Korea’s anti-American propaganda posters certainly are telling.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Top government official: “[… P]erhaps one day he will account for his role in the most disastrous decision of all: the illegal invasion of Iraq.” That, of course, is British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg speaking about then-Prime Minister Tony Blair. And the silence from American officials drags on.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Mark Twain lashes out against YouTube and the BP Oil Spill whilst applauding healthcare reform in his soon-to-be-released autobiography. What a dosh-garn liberal.
  (via @ebertchicago)

As always, if you have any story suggestions, feel free to send them in.

Tags: Stolen Valor Act • war heroes • free speech • Daniel Larison • Conor Friedersdorf • conservatives • Ground Zero Mosque • Islamists • jihadists • Roman Catholic Church • gay priests • Andrew Breitbart • Shirley Sherrod • NAACP • racism • lies • Slate • North Korea • South Korea • USA • nuclear bombs • stupid • propaganda • anti-Americanism • Iraq War • Nick Clegg • Tony Blair • Mark Twain • Samuel Clemmons • YouTube • BP Oil Spill • healthcare reform • The Onion