Wingnuts react to new birth control guidelines

Sandy Rios

Rightists really don’t like birth control. Which has been made all the more apparent – if possible – by the Obama administration’s introduction of new guidelines requiring insurance companies to cover extended birth control methods without co-pay costs. Naturally, this has sent the far-Right into a tizzy, calling the new law anything from pointless to the end of humanity as we know it.

First, here’s Family-Pac Vice President Sandy Rios calling the policy “ridiculous” on the grounds that:

"We’re $14 trillion in debt and now we’re going to cover birth control, breast pumps, counseling for abuse? Are we going to do pedicures and manicures as well?”

Because safe sex and therapy for rape victims, or having pretty nails and exfoliated skin – totally the same thing. And the idea that birth control and counseling are things that one should be worried will be significantly harmful to the nation’s overall economy is just ludicrous. More than that, it’s petty partisan bullshit.

"Having a baby is not the worst thing. I think having multiple sex partners without any kind of restraint or responsibility is much more damning."

“Hey, lady. I see you’ve got too many little mouths to feed and your salary barely covers the costs of vomit clean-up. Good on you! Oh, wait – you’re on your second boyfriend? No, your third? Damn you, irresponsible harlot!”

Rep. Steve King (R-IA)

However, for as stupid and vile as that was, it just can’t compare to Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who let loose this mother of all hyperbole:

"If you applied that preventative medicine universally what you end up with is you've prevented a generation. Preventing babies from being born is not medicine. That's not -- that's not constructive to our culture and our civilization. If we let our birth rate get down below replacement rate we're a dying civilization," King said on the House floor on Monday night.

That’s right, folks: The new establishment Republican argument against birth control is that it will bring about the end of humanity. (As we know it?) Which only explains, of course, is why human populations have only been growing higher and faster than ever since the introduction and increasing use of contraception.

… Wait.

Oh, it’s probably just Satan screwing with our statistics again. You know, like he does with evolution. The devilish pest.

Tags: Sandy Rios • Steve King • birth control • contraception

Daily Blend: Wednesday, August 03, 2011

• Win for equality: After betraying its promises and forcing Rock Beyond Belief [pictured] to cancel earlier this year, Fort Bragg has finally approved the on-post atheist concert.
  (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

• The Onion takes on the pathetic budget “deal” between Congressional leaders.

• Goddammit, (sexist morons on the) Internet.

• A rare valid reason for ducking a police ticket.
  (via Uzza's Notes)

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

Tags: Rock Beyond Belief • Fort Bragg • atheists • debt ceiling • US Congress • John Boehner • The Onion • Rebecca Watson • Skepchick • memes • objectification

US media ignores heroic Norwegian lesbian couple

Hege Dalen and Toril Hansen

It’s those filthy, immoral, society-burning gheyz again. When they’re not busy kicking puppies and orchestrating the pulverization of Christendom, you can always count on them to be up to absolutely no good, such as … risking their lives to save dozens of teenagers during a terrorist rampage?:

Hege Dalen and her spouse, Toril Hansen were near Utöyan having dinner on the opposite shore across from the ill-fated campsite, when they began to hear gunfire and screaming on the island.

“We were eating. Then shooting and then the awful screaming. We saw how the young people ran in panic into the lake,” says Dale to HS in an interview.

The couple immediately took action and pushed the boat into Lake Tyrifjorden.

Dalen and Hansen drove the boat to the island, picked up from the water victims in shock, the young and wounded, and transported them to the opposite shore to the mainland. Between runs they saw that the bullets had hit the right side of the boat.

Since there were so many and not all fit at once aboard, they returned to the island four times.

They were able to rescue 40 young people from the clutches of the killer.

“We did not sleep last night at all. Today, we have been together and talked about the events,” Dalen said.

Of course, it’s clear how this latest bit of unbridled selfless heroism was really just a publicity stunt to promote their evil ways. Which is obviously why, as I write this, the US mainstream media hasn’t uttered a single peep about it; they’re far too cunning and journalistically ethical and honest to fall for such a sleazy bid for attention as repeatedly putting oneself in mortal danger to save dozens of young lives from a gun-toting madman. That’s just amateurish.

Just you wait. Next thing you know, these same-sex perverts are gonna go and single-handedly fix the global economy and wrestle Cthulhu back into the pits of the ocean. Let’s hope the brave US media doesn’t mention them then, either.

(via Pharyngula)

Tags: Hege Dalen • Toril Hansen • Anders Breivik • Norway • CNN • ABC News • MSNBC • Fox News • The Washington Post • The New York Times

Washington’s Suquamish tribe approves same-sex marriage

Who knew some small Native American tribe would beat the vast majority of the modern world (including the United States) to marriage equality?

On Monday, the Suquamish Tribal Council formally changed its ordinances to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples.

The Suquamish ordinance means gay couples are afforded all the rights heterosexual couples are allowed on the reservation and other places in which gay marriages are allowed.

[…]

The new law allows the tribal court to issue a marriage license to two unmarried people, "regardless of their sex," if they at least 18 years old and at least one of them is an enrolled member of the Suquamish Tribe.

Funny, how those once derided as “savages” so often end up progressing faster in terms of equality and fairness than those supposedly superior pale-skinned encroachers.

(via Joe. My. God.)

Tags: Suquamish tribe • same-sex marriage

Daily Blend: Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Pamela Geller

• Islamophobic blogger Pam Geller [pictured] tries to defend her being praised by Anders Breivik by justifying his youth camp slaughter of kids who were “more MIddle ^[sic] Eastern or mixed than pure Norwegian”.
  (via @ggreenwald)

• Today in regulation madness: Elderly Jackson, MN man fined and sentenced to jail for improperly shingling his roof.
  (via @aipfan)

• Maybe I’m just ignorant, but “The Spirited Atheist” at WashPost seems to make some good points against American Atheists’ lawsuit over the “Ground Zero Cross”.
  (via Project Reason)

• Intelligence cap? Scientists: Physically impossible for human brain to become any more powerful without better supply of energy and oxygen. (Daily Mail caveat.)
  (via The Daily Grail)

• British academic takes pride in backlash from calling Prince Charles out on his sympathy for homeopathy.
  (via The Agitator)

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

Tags: Pamela Geller • Anders Breivik • Norway • racism • Jackson, MN • Andrew Espey • Susan Jacoby • Ground Zero Cross • American Atheists • David Silverman • 9-11 • brain • Simon Laughlin • Edzard Ernst • Prince Charles • Duchy Herbals

Newt Gingrich continues to crumble: Twitter edition

Newt Gingrich

It seems that trainwreck-of-a-politician Newt Gingrich (R) is guilty of massive Twitter fraud:

Gingrich complained yesterday that the press is ignoring his prodigious Twitter audience: "I have six times as many Twitter followers as all the other candidates combined, but it didn't count because if it counted I'd still be a candidate; since I can't be a candidate that can't count." Which is true! Gingrich currently boasts 1,325,842 followers, whereas competitors Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann have yet to crack 100,000.

But if Newt is winning the Twitter primary, it's because of voter fraud. A former staffer tells us that his campaign hired a firm to boost his follower count, in part by creating fake accounts en masse:

Newt employs a variety of agencies whose sole purpose is to procure Twitter followers for people who are shallow/insecure/unpopular enough to pay for them. As you might guess, Newt is most decidedly one of the people to which these agencies cater.

About 80 percent of those accounts are inactive or are dummy accounts created by various "follow agencies," another 10 percent are real people who are part of a network of folks who follow others back and are paying for followers themselves (Newt's profile just happens to be a part of these networks because he uses them, although he doesn't follow back), and the remaining 10 percent may, in fact, be real, sentient people who happen to like Newt Gingrich. If you simply scroll through his list of followers you'll see that most of them have odd usernames and no profile photos, which has to do with the fact that they were mass generated. Pathetic, isn't it?

In a realm where image is more important than your own mother, what does it say about a politician’s credibility when they can’t even attain popularity on Twitter without resorting to transparently dishonest tactics?

Gingrich: A presidential candidate without a team, with even less of a team, and without a valid following. When can we expect his inevitable (yet ostensibly humbling) statement of defeat already?

(One question, though: Why are some reports claiming that Gingrich’s Twitter account has lost 20,000 followers in one week based on Twitter Counter stats that show he’s only lost 300–400? Or is my math really that bad?)

(via Pharyngula)

Tags: Newt Gingrich • Twitter

Media bullshit: Violent 4-year-old edition

There truly are two sides to every story: the truth, and the bullshit. (Hey, no-one said they had to be equally valid sides.) Here’s a perfect example: Watch how a story about gun violence is reported by a CBS affiliate … and then what really happened. (Hint: No, the 4-year-old boy did not want to grow up to be a gang-banger.)

My transcript: (click the [+/-] to expand/collapse →)

[−]

Relevant excerpts:

CBS REPORTER: And kids on the street as young as four were there to see it all [the gun violence] unfold and had disturbing reactions.

[START VIDEO: Interview with 4-year-old boy]

BOY: I’m not scared of nothing.

[cut]

REPORTER: When you get older, you gonna stay away from all these guns?

BOY: No.

REPORTER: No?

BOY: No.

REPORTER: What do you wanna do when you get older?

BOY: I’m gonna have me a gun.

[CUT]

FEMALE WITNESS: Because I live right here and I don’t want none of my family members to get shot.

[END VIDEO]

ANCHOR 1: That is very scary indeed.

[…]

[START VIDEO: Unedited interview with 4-year-old boy]

REPORTER: […] When you get older, you gonna stay away from all these guns?

BOY: No.

REPORTER: No?

BOY: No.

REPORTER: What do you wanna do when you get older?

BOY: I’m gonna have me a gun.

REPORTER: You are? Why you wanna do that?

BOY: I’m gonna be the police.

REPORTER: Okay, well, then, you can have one.

[END VIDEO]

Journalism, eh?

(via Political Irony)

Tags: CBS • guns

Vox Day continues to expose his own scientific illiteracy

Xiaotingia zhengi (by Xing Lida & Liu Yi) [full size (550×289)]

As the more scientifically inclined of you may have heard, the paleontological and biological communities have been in a fuss over the recent discovery of Xiaotingia zhengi, a dinosaur-era fossil that has forced evolutionists to reconsider the early phylogenetic roots of birds. You can read PZ Myers’s take for an expert analysis of the new-found specimen and its impact on modern science.

Predictably, anti-evolutionist cranks immediately took to the finding to declare that newly discovered evidence leading to a reevaluation of modern scientific conclusions somehow indicated that science was wrong and that evolution is false, despite the fact that studying new data and drawing revised conclusions from it is exactly what science is all about in the first place.

Cue our favorite ankle-biter, Vox Day:

That's an interesting claim. Precisely when has any evolutionist reconsidered either a) the basic hypothesis that species evolve into different species through natural selection or b) the corollary and requisite hypothesis that life evolved from non-life, as a result of the falsity of one, ten, or even a hundred predictions that relied upon one or both of them? If it weren't for DNA, which was not discovered or developed with any assistance from evolutionary theory, evolutionary biology would already be openly recognized by every intelligent, rational, science-literate individual as being about as useful as phrenology and astrology.

Vox does love demonstrating over and over again why no-one of any reputation takes him at all seriously when it comes to matters of science. Despite his claims of possessing some academic degree or other (I keep forgetting which it is), no-one could make it clearer just how ignorant he is of the very basics of the discipline he so loves to criticize than he does through his own writings. Nonetheless, I’ll still bother to point out that anyone who claims to know anything about science at all will be aware that its most fundamental principle – and it’s greatest strength, setting it apart from other practices of faith – is its self-correcting mechanism. Scientists’ ability to discover new evidence, glean new data that complements or contradicts previously existing findings, and consequently drawing new and revised conclusions from continually improved streams of information is precisely what makes it the incalculably valuable tool in the arsenal of human reason. (Along with making it dogma’s single greatest foe, obviously. Something that continually corrects and improves itself? Oh, my!)

And yet, Vox calls this self-correcting mechanism, the utmost fundamental of the discipline, an “interesting claim”. And he then charges that if it were true, then the recent reevaluation of Archaeopteryx in light of the discovery of Xiaotingia should somehow lead scientists, not to question their previous conclusions about the evolution of birds and to correct this relatively tiny (but nonetheless important) detail in modern Evolutionary Theory, but to … question the very existence of evolution at all. Which is in no small way similar to finding that your old Volkswagen had a different engine assembly than you had assumed, so therefore, the very idea of powered vehicular travel must be put in doubt.

In case it isn’t clear yet: Scientists made a new discovery that showed them to have made a mistake (a microscopic one compared to the rest of the body of evidence for evolution) and consequently amended their ideas about the earliest evolution of birds. And now, Vox is declaring that, no, the entire theory “should be called into question”!

What a lame farce.

Tags: Vox Day • PZ Myers • Archaeopteryx • Xiaotingia zhengi • Theory of Evolution

Scott Clifton continues to expose William Lane Craig’s dishonesty

Here’s intellectual atheistic dreamboat Scott Clifton (aka TheoreticalBullshit) continuing his dissection of famed Christian debater William Lane Craig’s increasingly arrogant and dishonest rejoinders:

My transcript: (click the [+/-] to expand/collapse →)

[−]

Brief summary: William Lane Craig responds to Scott Clifton’s previous arguments – which Clifton had explained in excruciating detail, paragraph after paragraph – by completely misrepresenting Clifton’s positions and claims, in addition to casually insulting and dismissing him outright despite failing to understand virtually any of Clifton’s points. Clifton now goes to great lengths to painstakingly quote and refute Craig’s dishonest replies whilst ignoring his attacks, exposing Craig as a lying, arrogant hack.

It’s rather clear why Craig is always said – by Christians, that is – to “win” his debates. Strawmen don’t typically put up much of a fight.

Isn’t it revealing how Christian icons of intellectual/philosophical enlightenment always end up crumbling under any amount of scrutiny?

(via Diaphanitas)

Edit: 10/20/11 8:48 PM – Minor transcript phrasing edits.

Tags: Scott Clifton • William Lane Craig • William Craig • semantics

Peter LaBarbera’s anti-gay group now gets to pay taxes

Today in delicious schadenfreude [sans links]:

According to the IRS, the tax-exempt status of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) was revoked on 5/10/2010 (PDF). The reason for this action is listed by the reporting organization Guidestar as a “failure to file a Form 990, 990-EZ, 990-N, or 990-PF for 3 consecutive years.” These forms are required of legitimate non-profit organizations for review by the IRS and the public.

While the current incarnation of AFTAH appears to have been active since 2006, we found only one form 990-EZ on file — for the year 2009 (PDF). In this, total receipts are listed as $110.000, out of which Peter LaBarbera received a salary of $75,000. For perspective, this is approximately the same salary plus benefits claimed by Exodus president Alan Chambers. Exodus lists eleven employees and a million dollar budget.

According to the IRS documentation on revocations (PDF), AFTAH can no longer be considered a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization, and there is no process for appeal.

[…]

Thousands of organizations exist which claim that homosexuality is a sin or otherwise immoral, only eighteen are listed as true hate groups by the SPLC. AFTAH is one of them.

Only too good for these parasites.

(via Joe. My. God.)

Tags: Americans For Truth About Homosexuality • AFTAH • Peter LaBarbera • IRS

Congress wants to spy on your Internet habits (for teh kidz!) [updated]

NOTE: (08/02/11 3:35 PM) – As Guest helpfully points out in the comments, the actual text of the bill merely directs ISPs to keep logs of IP addresses themselves, and not what sort of browsing history users with those addresses may have. In other words, it’s like asking the DMV to keep track of which license plates it issues to which customers, rather than actually spying on their vehicular travels. I can’t be certain there isn’t more to this that I’m not seeing, but for now, it seems like I really, really need to learn to read the actual material, rather than the opinions of less-than-reliable tabloids.

It’s already a rather prickly (and increasingly moreso) affair to shield one’s Internet browsing habits from unwanted observers and intruders. But, whereas these spies are generally viruses or spambots and only (more) rarely actual humans, Congress has it in mind so that Americans would soon have to add another threat to their online privacy: the cops. And, of course, it’s all ostensibly for the children:

If Congress had to name laws honestly, it would be called the "Forcing Your Internet Provider to Spy On You Just In Case You're a Criminal Act of 2011" -- a costly, invasive mandate that even the co-author of the Patriot Act, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), says "runs roughshod over the rights of people who use the Internet."

But because it's disguised as the "Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act," the House Judiciary Committee approved it last week by a wide margin -- even though it's got little to do with child porn and won't do much to protect kids.

The centerpiece of this ill-conceived law is a sweeping requirement that commercial Internet providers retain a one-year log of all the temporary Internet Protocol addresses they assign to their users, along with customer-identification information. The Justice Department says this will help track down child-porn peddlers by linking online activity and real-world identities. But the government would be able to access that sensitive data for all kinds of investigations, most of which would have nothing to do with child porn.

This is wrong on any number of levels. In addition to the obvious – that it’s a violation of the Fourth Amendment (though the idea that legislators care at all about that anymore is laughable), a betrayal of customers’ expectation of privacy, and that the idea that all Internet users are to be treated as potential child pornographers by default is sick and ridiculous – there’s also the whole rationale behind the bill, this silly idea of “linking online activity and real-world identities”, which is foolish on its face. People who create, propagate or consume child porn (and don’t even try to sell me the crock that this would only be used to target creators) don’t have flashing “CHILD PORN” signs on their foreheads, and nor do they leave any sort of equivalent signals in their activity, whether online or off. Child porn users are anyone; hell, I’ll even hazard a guess that most of you are friends with at least one person who indulges in child porn without you knowing it. Any amount of research into the matter will tell you that it really is that pervasive.

Daily Blend: Monday, August 01, 2011

Jenny McCarthy

• Some good news on the anti-vaccine front: third-rate twit Jenny McCarthy [pictured] walks away from promise Oprah Winfrey show (and possibly takes it to NBC instead).
  (via Bad Astronomy)

• Majoritarily Black/Latino Bronx school headed by White supremacist principal who tried to ban MLK biography. Oh, dear.
  (via @PersonalFailure)

• 220-pound former football player texts in a theater. 136-pound woman taps him on shoulder, asks him to stop. He charges her with assault. (Lesson: Turn your fucking phone off at the movies.)
  (via @ebertchicago)

• This is either the most inane poll in history, or incredibly brilliant (… somehow).
  (via Political Irony)

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

Tags: Jenny McCarthy • Oprah Winfrey • Oprah Winfrey Network • OWN • NBC • Frank Borzellieri • Our Lady of Mount Carmel School • Bronx • White supremacy • Dale Fout • Brenda Godwin • movie theaters • Public Policy Polling • God