Friday Canine: So yawns are contagious

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Rhode Island House passes civil unions bill

One more small step for marriage equality, this time in Li’l Rhody:

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Rhode Island's House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed legislation allowing gay couples to enter into civil unions after a last-ditch effort to turn the initiative into a bill that would allow gay couples to marry failed.

Lawmakers voted 62-11 Thursday to endorse the bill, which now moves to the Senate.

The proposal would allow gay couples to enter into civil unions granting all of the state rights given to married couples under Rhode Island law. It was introduced as a compromise after legislative leaders said gay marriage legislation lacked the votes needed to pass this year.

It’s sad the attempt at resuscitating the full marriage equality bill failed (even though polls show a clear majority of Rhode Islanders, even Catholics, are all for it). But, as always, one step in the right direction is better than one step back. After all, a few more steps and we’ll have covered a full leap.

(via Joe. My. God.)

Daily Blend: Thursday, May 19, 2011

John Nolte

• Wisconsin GOP close to cutting $1 million in Planned Parenthood funding.
  (via @BreakingNews)

• Another Breitbart crony [pictured] launches idiotic attack against Roger Ebert, claiming Ebert defends filmmaker Lars Von Trier’s Hitler-sympathizing comments because Ebert’s wife explained how Von Trier suffers from bouts of instability.
  (via @ebertchicago)

• Ann Coulter: Liberals are rapists, or something.

• CNN’s Anderson Cooper goes rogue, places both Donald Trump and “Botox Mom” haters to his RidicuList.
  (via @godlesswoman & @godlesswoman)

• 25 cool pieces of MythBusters fanart.
  (via @BadAstronomer)

• The Onion: Osama bin Laden’s abandoned terror plots.

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

Supplemental tags: Donald Trump • MythBusters • Humor • Botox Mom • The Onion • Satire/Parody • Osama bin Laden

Daily Blend: Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Wayne Grudem

• Theologian Wayne Grudem: 82.5% of heterosexuals (on average) never have affairs, but only 2% of of gay men aren’t unfaithful sluts.

• No, terminally unoriginal religious-Right bigots, Californian schools celebrating Harvey Milk Day will not force students to cross-dress and fake-gay-marry each other.

• “Although we've traditionally dedicated 97 percent of our resources to other important services such as contraception distribution, cancer screening, and STD testing, this new complex allows us to devote our full attention to what has always been our true passion: abortion.”

• Awesome tweet by Secret Service calling out Fox News. Too bad it was deleted.
  (via @todayspolitics)

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

Bill Donohue: Lying, homophobic child molestation apologist

Bill Donohue

Of all the wanking Papists who try their very best to defend the Catholic Church’s utterly inexcusable record of covering up its little “decades (and possibly centuries) of priests molesting children” problem, by far the most prominent attack dog to go after anyone who remotely suggests the Vatican may have some guilt to bear over it all is Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League and likely one of the top reasons why more and more people are leaving the Church in droves.

In addition to his generalized intolerance and pugilistic mindset, his most endearing feature has to be his staunch denial of both the Church’s institutionalized mishandling of clerical child abuse cases – even famously declaring that “no religious or secular institution in the U.S. today has a better record than the Catholic Church” – and the fact that it has everything to do with repressed lust in a forced-chastity setting, a pool of easy victims for predators, and a general lack of accountability – and nothing to do with homosexuality.

Donohue’s long, wretched history of blaming child molestation on same-sex attraction has already been covered at length by a plethora of sources, least of all by me. And now, here’s the latest reiteration of his child-abuse denialism, where he actually engages in some spectacular cognitive acrobatics in trying to distort actual definitions of pedophilia and variants thereof in order to then blame it all on homosexuality (as per usual). Writing in response to a new report by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice on the “Causes and Context” of priestly child abuse:

The report says that fewer than 5 percent of abusive priests were pedophiles. The New York Times takes issue with the report for defining prepubescent children as those age 10 or younger, mentioning that the American Psychiatric Association uses the age of 13. However, the American Academy of Pediatrics says puberty begins at the age of 10. This is important because the lower the age when puberty begins, the more it implies that heterosexuality or homosexuality was at work, and neither the authors of the report, nor the Times, want to squarely address the obvious.

And thus, the contortions begin. The report is only stating the obvious when it declares that not all, or even a majority, of those who molest children are actually sexually attracted to them. Abusive priests target children for the same reason that “regular” rapists (for lack of a better term) target their own adult victims: The vast majority of sexual assaults are all about power and domination, and only rarely about actual sex. This doesn’t change regardless of their prey’s age group; it’s establishing some sick form of control over a helpless victim that gives them the thrill they seek.

Nostalgia Critic: The OTHER Animated Titanic Movie

Maybe it’s because I’m a Titanic fan (of both the real ship and the James Cameron blockbuster, both of which are relevant, here, as you’ll soon see). Maybe I have my bullshit meter wound up too tightly. Maybe it’s just getting really late. Or, maybe this is just the single most stupid, fucked-up, ridiculous and outright retarded thing I’ve ever witnessed. Either way, I just had to blog about the latest Nostalgia Critic review of the animated Titanic kids’ movie. … The other one, that is. The one that’s actually worse than the first one with the rapping dog.

Just … watch:

I like to think I held up admirably well for the first parts … but then came the 9:35 mark and

I’d better not dream about this, or I might just invite Freddy Krueger to kill me for respite.

Daily Blend: Tuesday, May 17, 2011

George Takei

• Is convicted triple-murderer Thomas Silverstein a vile criminal? Yes. Should he be punished? Yes. By spending 28 years in absolute solitary confinement? Fuck no.

• National Organization for Marriage: Plagiarists to boot.

• Two cases giving yet more credence to my proposal to set up a parental licensing program.

• George Takei [pictured] on Trump’s self-firing.
  (via Joe. My. God.)

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

Wisconsin Gov. Walker wants to strip same-sex couples of hospital visitation rights

Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI)

More Republican empathy at work:

Madison - Gov. Scott Walker believes a new law that gives gay couples hospital visitation rights violates the state constitution and has asked a judge to allow the state to stop defending it.

Democrats who controlled the Legislature in 2009 changed the law so that same-sex couples could sign up for domestic partnership registries with county clerks to secure some - but not all - of the rights afforded married couples.

Wisconsin Family Action sued last year in Dane County circuit court, arguing that the registries violated a 2006 amendment to the state constitution that bans gay marriage and any arrangement that is substantially similar.

The rest of the article is devoted to a long-winded detailing of the whole legal mess. I think it’s a rather sad day when the debate over whether to treat human beings with empathy and dignity gets caught up in legal wrangling over institutionalized discrimination. As if it were even any question that gays and lesbians should be allowed to visit their ailing loved ones in the hospital.

But then, they’re teh ghey, after all, so as far as Republicans are concerned, who gives a shit, right? As long as they can indulge in more legalistic games to screw citizens out of their fundamental human rights over bigoted ideology, all’s well in the Republican USA.

(via @todayspolitics)

Bill Maher explains how the Tea Party is a cult

Here’s a segment of Real Time with Bill Maher where he explains why the Tea Party isn’t a movement, but rather a cult, and presents some pretty good arguments in support of this view:

As Maher starts off:

New Rule: Stop calling the Tea Party phenomenon a “movement”. To be a real political movement, you have to, well, move toward some specific legislative goal. The suffrage movement, for example, gave voting rights for women. The civil rights movement outlawed discrimination against Blacks. And the gay rights movement gave us the Winter Olympics.

Whereas, the only direction the Tea Party is aiming for is anything that gets them the furthest away from their chosen boogieman du jour – which is to say, anything at all that isn’t purely pro-guns, Jesus and stoppin’ dem Brownies from takin’ der jerbs!. The whole “movement” is really little more than an incoherent mess of various and conflicting ideals and goals, governed by an omnipresent fear of change and a deep-seated inability to part with old ways of tradition, no matter how woefully antiquated.

(via @todayspolitics)

(Fail) Quote of the Day: Hawking, faith and death

Stephen Hawking

We have a double-header today, with sense and reason followed by some pandering tripe about faith. First, here’s the latest wonderfully blunt declaration by Stephen Hawking, destroyer of gods, on the subject of death and afterlife:

I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

Clear and concise, and with that touch of reality behind it. Perfect Memorable Quotes material.

---

Stephen Green

And then, of course, we have the obligatory Fail Quote where some religious goober takes offense at such a decidedly godless pronouncement and offers this trenchant rebuke:

Stephen Green, director of lobby group Christian Voice, said: "The comparison to a computer switching off shows a man who is only able to think of things in a materialistic way.

"It is a dim viewpoint of a man trying to understand something he is spiritually unable to do. People who believe in the afterlife don't do so because they are afraid of death.

"Belief in God dispels a fear of the dark - of death. I don't see why Hawking finds it such a struggle to comprehend the spiritual dimension."

Well, that sure showed him! Silly professor, thinking his decades of cutting-edge research and genius insight into the physical world makes him more qualified to speak about the nature of reality than some random Christian and his Bible.

Alternatively, here’s a hint, Stephen Green: Hawking perfectly understands the “spiritual dimension”. More precisely, he knows that it is a fairy tale that most people latch onto because they can’t stand the bleak reality of an existence that won’t lead to another consciousness once they’re cold in the ground. It’s only natural that people want to live longer, but it’s irrational to make up silly fables about an imaginary world – for which the only evidence we’re presented comes from ancient texts that have zero bearing on our modern world – and then presume to lecture one of the most brilliant minds of our age when all you’ve got to offer are hopes and dreams with zero substance or evidence to back them up.

Dispelling a fear of the dark is a comfortable thought, but hardly good enough to validate believing in something that you don’t – and can’t – know to be true, especially when it flies in the face of all logic and common sense.

(via @ProjectReason)

Daily Blend: Monday, May 16, 2011 [updated]

“I’m fired! … wait”

Welcome to all Crooks and Liars! … Wait, that doesn’t sound right.

• Donald Trump [pictured] fires himself from his fake presidential run. I’m not sure his stunt got him quite the sort of publicity he wanted. | Update: (05/16/11 7:10 PM) – As I was saying.

• Texas House bans public servants from touching passengers’ privates during pat-downs. Okay, what’s the catch? There has to be a catch. It’s Texas. They can’t pass sane bills.
  (via Joe. My. God.)

• Vox Day: Seven paragraphs of gnashing teeth over how atheists don’t want to debate Christian loons (like himself).

• Rush Limbaugh: Being accused of rape is a resumé enhancement for liberals and Democrats. (Not included: Any credible example.)

• Secular sex survey results: Religious folks have just as much sex as atheists, only with more guilt.

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

Insanity pictured

There are a few ways to spot people who are genuinely, even dangerously, kooky. This is one of them:

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Time to play “pick your favorite”? I rather like the one with Uncle Sam going “Jihad?! I’ll give you jihad you miserable, ragheaded, heathen bastards!” … Such style and eloquence, don’t you think?

(via @todayspolitics)