Americans: Picking themselves off by passing repressive laws

How long before this passes from cynical prediction to reality?

Transcript: (click the [+/-] to open/close →)

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PATRIOTIC MAN: (reacting to Boston bombing) We must not succumb to tragedy.

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PATRIOTIC MAN: We’re Americans.

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PATRIOTIC MAN: (comforting weeping bald eagle and Lady Liberty) Let’s pick ourselves up. Dust ourselves off.

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PATRIOTIC MAN: (as SWAT trooper brandishing shock baton; drone flies in BG) And pass some repressive laws.

Considering how the surviving suspect, a Chechen-born naturalized US citizen, has already had his Miranda rights suspended (raising the question of why they’re even called “rights” if they’re ignored so easily and routinely), probably not very long at all. If there’s one thing the US has a proven knack for, it’s ignoring the cautionary words of its own beloved Founding Fathers.

Matt Bors adds a little commentary (it’s a few days old, before the alleged terrorists were identified):

As news of the Boston bombing was coming in I was this rush to assign blame to either right-wing patriot types or Muslim terrorists depending on if you were a liberal or conservative. I guess the idea was to score some political points off the dead blown apart bodies by demonizing an entire group. I won’t be surprised if it’s either group, but maybe we should wait until there’s a shred of evidence pointing to a culprit before we make ourselves look like a horse’s ass. There will be plenty of time in the coming weeks for demonizing, overreaction, and further militarizing our local police forces.

(via @ggreenwald)

From reasonable regulation of dangerous instruments to tyranny

Yet again, nothing tears through wingnuts’ delusions like a little bit of satire. Here’s Tom the Dancing Bug’s take on all the raging and whining from gun nuts who can’t possibly see reasonable gun control as anything else than an insidious government plot to ban all guns (presumably to leave the sheeple defenseless against a UN invasion to bring about a New World Order, or something):

Transcript: (click the [+/-] to open/close →)

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BLOND-HAIRED MAN: I’ve heard tell that private citizens were once allowed to own them.

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BLOND-HAIRED MAN: How did we Americans lose that precious right of ownership?

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BLACK-HAIRED MAN: I know not. Let us ask the very old one. Perhaps he remembers.

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BLACK-HAIRED MAN: Very old one, how did it happen? How did the government…

VERY OLD MAN: Shhh! There are government ears everywhere!

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VERY OLD MAN: Long ago, we were happy and free. Responsible owners made sure they were stored and used properly.

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VERY OLD MAN: Then the government said we’d have to register each and every one of them.

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VERY OLD MAN: It seemed reasonable. They are dangerous things. But I know what the government really wanted.

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I and others fought it with all our strength. But the feds needed this foothold and would not be denied.

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VERY OLD MAN: We lost. And the government had taken the first step on its inexorable path.

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VERY OLD MAN: Soon after the registration requirement, sure enough, suddenly you needed a license to use one.

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VERY OLD MAN: Next you were prohibited from owning one without holding insurance! Then came the final step that brought us to today…

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VERY OLD MAN: The illegalization of car ownership!

BLOND-HAIRED MAN: The fools! Reasonable regulation of dangerous instruments always leads to tyranny!

(via Political Irony)

If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide … right?

Zach Weiner at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal goes political:

© Zach Weiner

Transcript: (click the [+/-] to open/close →)

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AERIAL SURVEILLANCE ROBOT: Hello citizen. I'll be monitoring you on your walk today! Enjoy your safety.

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CITIZEN: What? That's a violation of my privacy.

ROBOT: If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide

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CITIZEN: Everyone has something to hide and usually no one cares. By surveilling everyone, you catch the benign breaches of law and taboo. If the public are all guilty, the executive part of the government can selectively enforce laws, essentially giving them both judicial and legislative power, which defeats the whole point of separation of powers.

Be sure to see the rest for the punchline (and don’t forget the red button!). Of course, my go-to reply to anyone who tells me I’ve got nothing to hide if I’ve done nothing wrong is to immediately demand to see their bank statement and online passwords. After all, any flustered reaction can only be a sign that they’re hiding their wrongdoing! QED.

(via The Agitator)

Regulated rights are not violated rights

Why is it that so many who likely agree that prohibiting people from making death threats or yelling “fire” in a crowded theater are reasonable limits to the First Amendment also believe that any restrictions on what firearms the masses should be allowed to tote are a violation of the Second Amendment? Ruben Bolling explores:

by Ruben Bolling

Transcript: (click the [+/-] to open/close →)

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‘The NRA of counter-earth's extremist view of the first amendment’ | Tom the Dancing Bug (by Ruben Bolling)

There circles the sun another Earth, a Counter-Earth, whose diametrically opposed orbit keeps it forever beyond our detection.

Let us explore this strange world that is not quite the opposite of our own… but somewhat dissimilar in certain ways!

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CAPTION: On Counter-Earth, the National Rhetoric Association (NRA) pushes an extreme interpretation of the First Amendment.

NRA SPOKESMAN VERNES PETERS: Our Founding Fathers gave us "freedom of speech," and any limitation is an affront to America's values. And by the way… FIRE!

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CAPTION: Yet the pro-gun lobby is utterly powerless.

PRO-GUN SPOKESMAN: But we have the "Right to Bear Arms"!

JUDGE: What part of "well regulated militia" don't you understand, you bed-wetter?

PRO-GUN SPOX: Hey, that's slanderous!

JUSTICE: Ha!!

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PETERS: Free speech means free, no matter what harm could result. You can't stop me from saying that the launch codes for a U.S. nuclear attack are B39TJD882X…

AUDIENCE: Gasp! Stop!!

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AUDIENCE: If there are no limits on speech, people will be killed!

PETERS: Words don't kill people! Various traumas to the body kill people!

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PETERS: The solution to someone yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is not prohibiting that speech. It's hiring fact-checkers in every theater. FIRE!

FACT-CHECKER: Hmm… I'm giving that outburst three and a half "Pinocchios"!

Legal rights and protections are not universal guarantees, and nor should they be. There are reasonable exceptions to any rule, and anyone who opposes that is, by definition, unreasonable (and most likely some sort of fundamentalist zealot).

(via Political Irony)

Someone get the MythBusters on this pronto

Testing the limits of Pavlovian conditioning:

Transcript: (click the [+/-] to open/close →)

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We see a subwoofer next to a bread-crumb dispenser with local wildlife nearby.

“Every few hours, subwoofer plays throbbing bass for 10 seconds… / …then bread crumbs are dispensed into box”

Caption: “Protip: Leave this device in your yard for a week, then watch as the problem of loud music from passing cars solves itself.”

Don’t miss the (atheist-certified!) hover text.

2012 in Crazy: A reality-biased recapitulation

It’s the most wonderful time of the year … when This Modern World’s Tom Tomorrow releases his annual recap of all things stupid, ignorant and downright crazy:

Daily Blend: Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Matthew Inman

Introducing @Dronestream: Twitter feed of every reported U.S. drone strike since 2002.
(via @ggreenwald)

Another hapless critic, this time a BuzzFeed contributor, goes after The Oatmeal’s Matthew Inman ^[pictured]. It doesn’t end well (for the first guy).
(via @AdamSerwer; RT: @radleybalko)

What’s more popular than the “rapidly growing” men’s rights movement? Just about anything (including horse porn).

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

How to use the gays’ disastrous powers for good

Zach Weiner has figured it out:

Transcript: (click the [+/-] to open/close →)

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PANEL 1 —

MAN: Mr. President, it’s clear to me – the reason we have natural disasters is that we let the homos practice their UNnatural lifestyle.

PRESIDENT: My God … How come no one told me?

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PANEL 2 —

PRESIDENT: Why … if that’s true …

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PANEL 3 —

(SOON …)

The President addresses silhouettes that wear rainbow flag patches.

PRESIDENT: Welcome to the C.I.Gay. You are an elite force of the gayest individuals in America. You are a lightning rod for God’s wrath, and it’s up to you to use that power for good.

What devious ways shall be devised? Find out when SMBC returns! … Or just go see the full comic right here.

(via Pharyngula)

Daily Blend: Monday, October 29, 2012 – Frankenstorm edition

Rev. John McTernan

Looks like we have a new Storm of the Century on our hands, though my area will escape the brunt of it. Be smart and stay safe, everyone.

I wonder if there’ll ever be a day when we look back and wonder why the hell we thought sponsoring educational institutions to encourage teenagers to destroy themselves for the public’s entertainment was okay.
(via Pharyngula)

Alternate headline: Religious fruitcake John McTernan ^[pictured] still thinks blaming gays for bad weather is à la mode.

And finally, here’s a dog with spaghetti (because why not):
(via @radleybalko)

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

Daily Blend: Thursday, September 20, 2012

Ken Ham

Happy one-year-anniversary, totally and predictably non-apocalyptic repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell!

Today in schadenfreude: Biblical Creationists ^[pictured] are stompin’ mad that modern science says dinosaurs were actually quite feathery.
(via @rdfrs)

Proud Christian man wants everyone to know that he got married “the right way” and that the rest of you are just floozies and losers.

And finally, here’s an awesome map of the awesome latest xkcd strip, ‘Click and Drag’.
(via Rob F)

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

Tags: Don't Ask, Don't Tell • U.S. Military • Creationists • Ken Ham • Answers in Genesis • Steven Crowder • Christians • Christianity • xkcd

‘The Oatmeal’ on the paradox of dogs

Canine companions are a living contradiction. Just consider the following:

See? Weird. (Then again, my little kitty Kaylee – dammit, I still miss her – reacted much the same way when I accidentally rolled my computer chair over her paw, the poor thing. Maybe pets are just both stupid and overly devoted.)

The rest of the comic just makes me want to give my pets a hug. Until I remember that I don’t have any. *le sobs*

(Meanwhile, why isn’t The Oatmeal in my RSS feeds? That is so getting fixed.)

(via @ggreenwald)

Tags: dogs • The Oatmeal

In which ‘xkcd’ makes me wonder if I have ADD

This is so absolutely and incontrovertibly me that it’s almost frightening:

Click to see the whole thing. Being diagnosed with three relatively rare and unrelated conditions (Asperger’s, Tourette’s, and a variable stutter), I sometimes wonder if I don’t have some mild form of ADD or OCD to boot as an explanation for some of my miscellaneous peculiarities, such as the fact that I find it annoyingly (and perhaps increasingly) difficult to focus on more than one or two things at once, especially when under any kind of pressure – which includes merely trying to hold a conversation whilst cooking. (I can’t say how many times I found myself about to put the milk in the damn cupboard.)

Then again, I’m probably just paranoid. Yeah. That’s it.

Tags: xkcd • ADD • OCD

SMBC explains why we aren’t being probed by aliens

You know who doesn’t want aliens visiting Earth and anal-probing its moderately evolved citizenry? The aliens:

Transcript: (click the [+/-] to open/close →)

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PANEL 1:

ALIEN 2: You do know the humans are like… 25 light years away, right? It’ll take at least 30 generations to get there.

ALIEN 1: Then our descendents will CONSUME THE HUMANS.

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PANEL 2:

ALIEN 2: The humans evolved separately from us. They probably won’t be tasty or nutritious, and they might be poison.

Go forth and read the rest – and don’t forget to hover your mouse over the red button^*. So very true.

(via Pharyngula)

* Wait – a little red button that provides otherwise secret enjoyment if one knows the quasi-secret method for interacting with it? I mean, come on.

Tags: SMBC • Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal • UFOs • Unidentified Flying Objects

The Second Amendment scoreboard

Posted without comment (other than to note the ever-growing incongruity of a legal right originally intended to empower the populace to deal with the eventuality of a tyrannical government in an age where a massively overgrown federal military would make any attempt at rebellion utterly futile):

© Tom Toles @ 08/05/10

I’m not for gun prohibition, but I sure as hell am for reasonable gun control. Roger Ebert lays it out plainly – and I can practically hear the Breitbart baboons a-hollerin’ over it already.

It’s always amazing how so many Americans love to blame these shooting tragedies on everything except guns.

(via Joe. My. God.)

Tags: Aurora, CO shooting • Roger Ebert • assault rifles • mass shootings • USA • United States • Americans

Poll: Record heat wave pushes global warming acceptance

People are such a fickle breed, with everyone but the True Believers^TM changing their minds about virtually anything the moment they catch wind of conflicting evidence. For example, though an approximate and tepid 65% of poll respondents said they believed in anthropogenic global warming earlier this year (correlated here), the recent record-shattering heat wave that turned large swaths of the United States mainland into a drought-stricken wildfire arena has since pushed that number up to 70%:

In a poll taken July 12-16, 70 percent of respondents said they think the climate is changing, compared with 65 percent in a similar poll in March. Those saying it’s not taking place fell to 15 percent from 22 percent, according to data set to be released this week by the UT Energy Poll.

Following a winter of record snowfall in 2010, the public’s acceptance of climate change fell to a low of 52 percent, according to the National Survey of American Public Opinion on Climate Change, which was published by the Brookings Institution in Washington. After this year’s mild winter, support jumped to 65 percent, the same as that found by the UT Energy Poll in March.

Of course, those midwinter poll results would’ve been quite different if people actually understood that extreme cold weather is just as much a sign of man-caused climate change as extreme hot weather is in summer. There really needs to be more of an effort to dispel the notion that global warming is all about warmer weather, given how the point is that gradually rising average global temperatures will lead to extreme swings in weather in both directions on the thermometer. Then again, scientists are having a hard enough time even convincing people that global warming is a reality at all, so maybe this is more of a mixed blessing.

And as always, it’s all about politics:

The latest University of Texas poll also found a sharp divide between political parties, with 87 percent of Democrats saying climate change is taking place compared with 53 percent of Republicans. In March 45 percent of Republican respondents said climate change is happening.

Among independent voters, those saying temperatures are rising jumped to 72 percent in July from 60 percent in March.

Partisan affiliation is the best predictor of someone’s belief in climate change, [U-MN Prof. Barry] Rabe said.

Fail Quote: Limbaugh thinks ‘Batman’ villain’s name is liberal attack on Romney

Rush Limbaugh

I’m again breaking my sorta-rule of not reporting on Rush Limbaugh’s ceaseless bilious flow out of amusement at his latest overly moronic conspiracy theory:

Have you heard, this new movie, the Batman movie -- what is it, the Dark Knight Lights Up or something? Whatever the name of it is. That's right, Dark Knight Rises, Lights Up, same thing. Do you know the name of the villain in this movie? Bane. The villain in the Dark Knight Rises is named Bane. B-A-N-E. What is the name of the venture capital firm that Romney ran, and around which there's now this make-believe controversy? Bain. The movie has been in the works for a long time, the release date's been known, summer 2012 for a long time. Do you think that it is accidental, that the name of the really vicious, fire-breathing, four-eyed, whatever-it-is villain in this movie is named Bane?

… “Lights Up”? Really?

Of course, I’m sure Limbaugh also has a perfectly reasonable explanation for how Bane could be an attack directed at Romney’s vulturistic firm despite the fact that the character first appeared in the Batman universe in 1993, almost two decades before anyone even heard the name Bain Capital. Then again, maybe Limbaugh realized how stretched his line of unreasoning was, given that he then frantically tried to backpedal the very next day.

You know, that may well be the very first time El Rushbo’s ever let those “facts” things decide what he should or shouldn’t say on the air. And even then, his only attempt at righting his remarkable wrong is to try and deny that it ever happened in the first place. Don’t ever change, Rush. (You might just eventually lose your job that way.)

[source]

Transcript: (click the [+/-] to open/close →)

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PANEL 1: (Batman) “Not only does ”Bane” represent “Bain”, but the hero is the “Dark Knight.” Dark. Like President Obama?”

PANEL 2: (Superman) “America’s greatest superhero is an illegal alien? Good luck convincing me that’s not a liberal plot!”

PANEL 3: (The Hulk) “So he gets angry, dumb and destructive. It’s an obvious Hollywood liberal diss of the Tea Party.”

PANEL 4: (Spiderman) “Mary Jane loves Peter Parker, but is engaged to John Jameson and kisses Harry Osborn? What a slut!”

Edit (07/18/12 5:26 PM ET) – Fixed “a decade” to “two decades”.

Tags: Rush Limbaugh • The Dark Knight Rises • Batman • Bane • Bain Capital • Mitt Romney

I know the feeling

From today’s Garfield:

Transcript: (click the [+/-] to open/close →)

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Garfield stares at a laptop computer.

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JON (passing by): Why not turn the computer on?

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GARFIELD: And ruin a perfectly good day?!

Tags: Garfield

Daily Blend: Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Hamza Tzortzis

Senators: We want the NSA to reveal how many U.S. citizens it illegally spied on. NSA: That would violate their privacy.

How to tell if a controversial claim is scientifically true. Includes lots of Phil “Bad Astronomer” Plait, always a nice bonus.
(via Bad Astronomy)

Noted Islamic Creationist hack ^[pictured] plagiarizes from noted Christian Creationist hack to “critique” Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion.
(via Pharyngula)

xkcd’s being awesome again, exoplanets edition.

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

Tags: National Security Agency • NSA • Ron Wyden • Mark Udall • FISA Amendments Act • Lifehacker • Phil Plait • Bad Astronomer • David McRaney • Alan Henry • scientific method • confirmation bias • Hamza Tzortzis • Islam • Creationism • William Lane Craig • Richard Dawkins • The God Delusion • xkcd • comics • exoplanets

Why they *really* oppose same-sex marriage

If only it were this simple to get them to admit it:

My transcript: (click the [+/-] to open/close →)

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MAN: I’m against same sex marriage.

PIG: On what basis?

MAN: ’Cause traditional marriage is one man and one woman. The Bible says so.

PIG: Actually, King Solomon had 700 wives.

PIG: And traditional marriage according to Deuteronomy means that a man who rapes a woman must marry her, so try again.

MAN: I think gay people are icky.

PIG: There you go.

(via Friendly Atheist)

Tags: The Atheist Pig • Bible • gay marriage • same-sex marriage • marriage equality • Christianity • homophobia

SMBC on those poor, persecuted, child-rape-covering-up priests

An oldie (a year old, actually), but such a goodie that I figured I’d post it right here:

I know, it’s, like, a total mystery.

To be clear, though (as if this hasn’t been hammered home quite enough already): The reason secularists are so vocal in attacking the Catholic Church over the clerical child abuse scandal isn’t just because some priests rape kids; after all, child abuse can occur anywhere, and I haven’t seen any data indicating that clergymen are any more likely to bugger minors than any other group. (And no, it’s also not – mostly – because the Church is basically the ideological arch-enemy of secularists.) The real outrage is the systematic and decades-long cover-up, the explicit silencing of victims and constant reshuffling of sexual predators from parish to parish, and the deliberate orders from top church leaders never to report abuses to local law enforcement, thus allowing the problem to continue unabated indefinitely. No other groups or organizations have gone to anywhere near the lengths the Church has to try and sweep the whole mess under the rug for so long. And now, they act surprised when they’re the prime target for people’s ire?

Anyone not sickened to their heart by such a spectacle – or better yet, who spends their time excusing it and attacking the actual victims – should immediately turn in their humanity card and take the next rocket ship into the Sun.

(via Friendly Atheist)

Tags: Catholic Church • priests • Catholic priests • clerical child abuse