Daily Blend: 05/13/13

I’m usually proud of my country, but less so when my government decides to sell out science. ^[pictured] (Doesn’t all research eventually lead to “social or economic gain”?)

So much for the idea that dropping from the blogosphere will remove Jen McCreight from the focus of obsessed slimeballs. How brazenly douchey does one have to be to lecture someone about safety whilst deliberately exposing their location?

It’s sad when a silly screed against “liberals” is too inane to even be worth fisking for the lulz.
(via Right Wing Watch)

And finally, I am reaffirmed in my belief that babies are freaking weird.

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

Minnesota passes gay marriage!

How’s this for a glorious turnaround? The same state that only months ago was deciding whether to impose a constitutional ban atop its existing laws against same-sex marriage now has the bicameral vote – and the governor’s promised signature – to grant marriage equality to LGBT folk:

With deafening cheers and overwhelming emotion, the Minnesota Senate voted 37-30 to legalize same-sex marriage.

[…]

The measure next moves to Gov. Mark Dayton, who will welcome it with his signature in a celebratory ceremony at 5 p.m. Tuesday.

Once it is signed, Minnesota will become the twelfth state to legalize same sex-marriage.

Yet one more state joins the right side of history. How long before the rest of the country – and someday, the civilized world at large – does the same?

(via @breakingpol; RT: @BreakingNews)

Daily Blend: 05/10/13

Fr. Anthony Musaala

Obama administration worsens their crackdown on state-legal marijuana.

Ugandan priest ^[pictured]: “The Catholic Church is still covering up clerical child abuse.” Catholic Church: “You made us look bad! You’re suspended.”
(via Freethought Blogs)

Why do police consult “psychics”? Because people are gullible and prefer false hope to realistic desperation.
(via @radleybalko)

And finally, PZ Myers schools movement skeptics about science and why their mindless dismissal of atheism as “unscientific” is decidedly unskeptical.

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

Current TV’s Fugelsang rips into Sanford and South Carolina

So, South Carolina voters revealed just where their “family values” lie yesterday when they took Mark Sanford, their disgraced adulterous former Governor, and made him their Congressional Representative instead. John Fugelsang of Current TV’s Viewpoint tears him and the state’s long, sad history of political duplicity to tiny pieces in this wonderful rant:

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

[−]

Transcript via Current TV:

JOHN FUGELSANG: Here’s a message from the South Carolina Board of Tourism: From the foothills of the majestic Blue Ridge Mountains to the cobblestone streets of historic Charleston, the Palmetto State is waiting for you.

So maybe it’s time you explored South Carolina’s greatest tourism attraction: our bottomless supply of duplicitous, double-talking, political tea-bags.

From our beloved and racist senator Strom Thurmond, who fought for segregation while secretly fathering a child he had with the family’s black maid — I’m sure it was consensual — to our beloved homophobe and longtime bachelor Sen. Lindsey Graham. From politician Joe Wilson screaming “You lie!” at America’s first black president during a State of the Union address to Sen. Jim DeMint opposing the Matthew Shepard / James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act before quitting his post to be a lobbyist to Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, comparing starving poor Americans to stray animals that breed too much.

In South Carolina, we’ve got a proud heritage of putting our faith in soulless fascists who feed us empty lines about the Bible, patriotism and fiscal responsibility, and that pride flies as high as the flag of the anti-American, enemy nation that rests majestically atop our state’s capitol.

And nowhere are our values more evident than in the political resurrection of former governor and newly elected congressman — and deeply repentant Christian — Mark Sanford, who South Carolina voters have returned to the House of Representatives, where he previously served three terms, in a special election tonight.

Now, lots of politicians commit adultery. But only one voted to impeach Bill Clinton while he was in Congress, then became governor and abandoned his post to visit his Argentine girlfriend using taxpayer funds to subsidize the trip while lying about his whereabouts to his staff, his wife and the entire state. Talk about a multitasker.

And after, he was charged with breaking 37 state ethics laws, was unanimously censured in lieu of being impeached, violated his court orders and child support agreement, publicly humiliated the mother of his children, and trespassed into her home to watch the Super Bowl.

Yes, this man brought sleaze to public life and remained faithful and true to it in the private sector too.

This same governor did all he could to keep federal stimulus funds from helping South Carolina’s unemployed folks and our crumbling public education system and then used taxpayer funds to pay for family vacations and book-signing travel. All this while we ranked No. 2 in unemployment and No. 11 in child homelessness.

But he did the right thing. He told us that Jesus forgave him and said mean things about Nancy Pelosi and Obamacare, proving that it’s OK to be a horrible Christian as long as you’re a good Christian.

So, come on down to South Carolina. And if you’re a lying, cheating, swindling, heartless, hypocrite, political empty suit who tells us what we want to hear, we just might elect you to office too.

And if you ever make a real mistake — like working with Democrats — well, we’ll give you a chance to mend your ways. Take Lindsey Graham, America’s sweetheart. Lindsey used to work with the Democrat Party on issues like immigration and climate change, so we censured him twice as public humiliation. And now he’s like an obedient, right-wing Tennessee Williams heroine who can’t stop screaming, “Benghazi!”

And while we may be ranked the fifth-worst state to make a living, ninth-lowest median household income, ninth-highest percentage of residents living below the poverty line, second-worst graduation rate, second-worst in women killed by men and worst in the so-called union at reprimanding bad doctors — we’ll never hold our Republicans responsible because they tell us who to blame and hate the same people we do.

Because from being the first state to quit America so we could keep slaves to cutting our state’s entire HIV/AIDS budget, we’ve got a breathtaking history of being manly men with a manly devotion to man’s inhumanity to man.

Our politicians believe Darwin was wrong, and we here in South Carolina are here to prove it.

You know when people wryly lament how “these people vote”? This is what they’re talking about.

(via Political Irony)

Delaware reaches same-sex marriage equality

Coming less than a week after the last US state passed gay marriage:

(BuzzFeed)

Zoom, zoom, zoom!

(via @BuzzFeedAndrew)

Rhode Island passes same-sex marriage

And Li’l Rhody makes ten (for now):

Capping a battle that began 16 years ago, the Rhode Island House of Representatives voted 56 to 15 Thursday to pass legislation to legalize same-sex marriage.

[…]

With the bills headed to the south steps of the State House for a public signing by Governor Chafee, Rhode Island joins its five New England neighbors in legalizing same-sex marriage and becomes the 10th state in the nation to do so.

My upcoming weekend plans now include making a beat from all the exploding heads on the homophobic Right. How about you?

(via @breakingpol; RT: @BreakingNews)

Justice Dept. to appeal FDA order on morning-after pill

Less than a month after a federal judge tried to rectify the US government’s pointless mucking by striking down age restrictions on the morning-after pill, the meddlesome fools are at it again:

The Justice Department said on Wednesday that it would appeal a federal judge’s order to make the most common morning-after contraceptive available without a prescription for girls and women of all ages.

The announcement came a day after the Food and Drug Administration said that one well-known morning-after pill, Plan B One-Step, would be made available without a prescription for girls as young as 15 — instead of only to girls ages 17 and over, as has been the case.

The Justice Department’s action will not affect that F.D.A. decision. Rather, the department is seeking to overturn a much broader order by the judge that removed restrictions for all ages and for generic versions of the pill, not just Plan B One-Step.

This is ridiculous. The FDA first advised that the pill should be made available for all ages in 2011 after declaring it safe and effective. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius apparently took exception this, as she then overruled the FDA because “the pill had not been studied for safety in girls as young as 11”. Not yet clear is why Sebelius apparently finds fault with the findings from the government branch strictly dedicated to studying and certifying the safety of ingestible substances, nor why a pill that has no serious or lasting side-effects would somehow be perfectly safe for 15-year-olds but not 11-year-olds, nor why a drug that’s already been in use around the world for years with zero reported casualties of any kind suddenly requires further testing before we can finally be certain of its safety.

There’s a fine line between security-conscious pedantry and playing politics under the guise of medical rigor. Does anyone else detect a whiff of ideological resistance, here?

(via @BreakingNews)

Same-sex marriage sweeps across three more Brazilian states

Though the Brazilian government already allows same-sex couples to marry through a two-step process that involves entering a “stable union” and then petitioning a judge, a rapidly growing number of states are doing away with the needless complication:

Yesterday, marriage continued moving forward in Brazil when the Corregedor Geral de Justiça in two additional states - Paraíba and Santa Catarina (Articles in Portuguese) - authorized marriages between same-sex couples. Now, fourteen of the 27 jursidictions in Brazil (13 states and the Federal District) have approved the freedom to marry. Earlier this month, Rio de Janeiro and Rondônia saw similar developments.

[…]

In these states (and the federal district), couples can marry in Brazil without the two-step process: Alagoas (December 2011), Sergipe (July 2012), Espíritu Santo (August 2012), Bahía (November 2012), the Brazilian Federal District (December 2012), Piauí (December 2012), São Paulo (December 2012), Ceará (March 2013), Paraná (March 2013), Mato Grosso do Sul (April 2013), Rio de Janeiro (April 2013), Rondônia (April 2013), and now Paraíba and Santa Catarina (April 2013).

Now, nearly 60% of the population of Brazil live in states where same-sex couples can marry without the two-step process.

An increasingly large part of the rest of the world is looking at you, “Land of the Free”.

(via Joe. My. God.)

Daily Blend: 04/29/13

James McCormick

Canada is apparently eager to show that it can pass horrible and repressive laws in the name of “national security”, too.
(via @ioerror; RT: @ggreenwald)

A win for reality: James McCormick ^[pictured], who made millions by selling completely useless “dowsing rod”-style bomb detectors, is finally convicted of fraud (after hundreds have already perished).

LGBT history milestone: NBA center Jason Collins becomes first active US big-league sports player to come out as gay.

And finally, Glenn Beck tragically wins wrong kind of Darwin award.

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

‘The Daily Show’ compares gun control in US and Australia

Nothing brings the US’s struggles with adopting even the most rudimentary gun safety measures into perspective better than taking a gander at other countries that have already enacted sensible gun control. Here’s a very revealing three-part series from The Daily Show where John Oliver heads goes Down Under for one heck of a study in contrasts, both societal and political:

Left & Right: Boston bombing caused by our pet causes

Tamerlan & Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Whether it’s from boxing-induced brain damage …

Could the amateur boxing career of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the deceased suspect in last week’s Boston Marathon bombings, have had a role in the massacre? That’s a question leading brain researchers at Boston University’s School of Medicine hope medical examiners look into when they perform an autopsy of the 26-year-old who was killed during a firefight with law enforcement officials early Friday morning.

[…]

“Is it possible that some changes might have gone on in his overall functioning due to his boxing and potentially related brain disease? Yes,’’ said [Dr. Robert Stern]. “Anything is possible. But to then jump to the disease leading to well-planned behavior like this, I couldn’t go there.’’

… or marijuana-induced brain damage …

Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid is citing reports that the two Boston marathon bombers may have been drug dealers and that “the younger brother was a pothead” to argue “that dope’s effect on the brain is what may have led him into his brother’s terror activities.”

… it’s always reassuring to watch both the Left and Right go to ridiculous lengths to try and shoehorn an as-of-yet unexplained act of terrorism into their pet issues, especially if it allows them to eschew any uncomfortable discussion about possibly complex and nuanced factors in favor of a lazy and uselessly simplistic answer like “their brains work wrong!”.

Daily Blend: 04/20/13

With that hurdle out of the way, time to play catch-up:

Only functioning abortion clinic in Mississippi gets a temporary reprieve from being shut down by anti-abortion legislators.
(via @breakingpol; RT: @BreakingNews)

Rio de Janeiro becomes tenth Brazilian state to legalize same-sex marriage.
(via Joe. My. God.)

Imagine that an eighth-grader gets suspended, arrested and charged for wearing an anti-gun shirt to school. Now, imagine it’s a pro-gun shirt. Any difference?
(via @radleybalko)

And finally, the Family Research Council gets busted for blatantly bullshitting about the Boy Scouts. Why, exactly, does anyone still take these pathological liars seriously again?
(via Joe. My. God.)

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

Americans: Picking themselves off by passing repressive laws

How long before this passes from cynical prediction to reality?

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

[−]

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

---

PATRIOTIC MAN: We’re Americans.

---

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

---

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)

Arkansas Republican mocks pro-gun-control “Boston liberals”

Rep. Nate Bell (R-AK)

I don’t have anything noteworthy to add regarding the almost Kafkaesque week the US is going through (not to mention that I’ve been unusually busy with a quasi-secret project that I’ll be unveiling soon). At this point, the most that any rational and decent people can do if unable to offer any direct assistance to those affected in Massachusetts, Texas, Illinois and wherever else calamity has struck in the last few days is to send their hearts and thoughts out to the victims and their close ones.

Or, in the case of Rep. Nate Bell (R-AK), mock them:

I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine? #2A

— Nate Bell (@NateBell4AR) April 19, 2013

Because the only thing to help in a massive police manhunt over an act of violence is a terrified and outraged mob taking to the streets with even more fucking guns.

Better yet, Bell later non-apologized for the timing of his statement, rather than having said such a ludicrously inappropriate thing at all. Because taunting the victims of terrorism should always be kept until after all their blood and tears have ceased to flow. Like, give it a week or something.

(via ThinkProgress)

New Zealand legalizes same-sex marriage

And the land of orcses and Hobbitses makes 13:

New Zealand's parliament has legalised same-sex marriage, the first country in the Asia-Pacific region to do so.

Lawmakers approved the bill, amending the 1955 marriage act, despite opposition from Christian lobby groups.

The bill was passed with a wide majority, with 77 votes in favour and 44 against.

This comes less than a week since Uruguay became the 12^th country to pass LGBT marriage equality, following Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, and Sweden. (Johnny Cash would be proud.) Meanwhile, gay marriage is all but imminent in both France and Britain as well.

Sure sucks to be homophobic these days, don’t it?

Daily Blend: 04/12/13

Audrie Pott (15)

Understatement of the Day: “It turns out that the Obama administration has not been honest about who the CIA has been targeting with drones in Pakistan.”
(via @ggreenwald)

I just don’t have the patience (or stomach) today to write about the horrific Kermit Gosnell case, other than to affirm how it’s the perfect argument for why abortion should be fully legalized and easily accessible to ensure women never need to resort to such barbarity out of desperation.

Ditto with Vox Day’s predictably pathetic rant about how pro-choicers are all worse than Nazis and so on.

Another teenaged girl ^[pictured] commits suicide to escape persecution resulting from the publicization of her student gang-rape. Now to watch the rape-culture-soaked media fret over those poor arrested rapists. (Again.)
(via Pharyngula)

Appeals court denies Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli’s petition to bring back anti-sodomy law.
(via Joe. My. God.)

Uruguay becomes latest country to legalize same-sex marriage.

And finally, Cracked presents some popular online myths, revised for accuracy.

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

Ted Nugent tragically still not “dead or in jail” like he promised

Ted Nugent

Dammit, wingnuts always break their promises. Here’s rabid gun nut and all-around crazypants Ted Nugent addressing the NRA exactly one year ago this Sunday:

"If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year. Why are you laughing? Do you think that's funny? That's not funny at all. I'm serious as a heart attack."

*glances at calendar*

To be fair, the Nuge should probably be used to people laughing whenever he’s around.

(via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

France foots the whole bill for abortion and birth control

While some places are still struggling to provide half the population with proper reproductive healthcare, France has it figured out:

As of April 1 the French state will reimburse 100 percent of the cost of abortions while teenage girls will be offered free and anonymous contraception.

The French state will reimburse 100 percent of the cost of abortions beginning April 1, while girls aged between 15 and 18 will be offered access to free and anonymous birth control.

The change comes as a law approved in late 2012 comes into force.

Until now, French women over 18 could only receive up to 80 percent of the cost of the procedure, which can run up to 450 euros.

Better yet, the new president, François Hollande, seems to grasp the simple logic that sadly evades all but precious few politicians:

And by coupling it with free contraception for younger girls and women, France hopes to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, and thus the number of abortions.

RAmen.

(via ThinkProgress)

Handy GOP-to-English guide

Ever find it confusing to translate all those illogical Republican talking points and dog whistles into plain English? Well, worry no more:

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

[−]

GOP Translator

“Family”: The War on Gays

“Pro-Life”: Pro-War, Pro-Death Penalty, and Pro-We Choose For You

“Religious Freedom”: Freedom to Spread Christianity

“War on Religion”: It’s unacceptable that our laws and culture aren’t based solely on my interpretation of the bible^{[caps sic]}

“Capitalism”: A market economy that’s rigged towards the “Job Creators”

“Job Creators”: The source of lobbying funds that keep the system rigged

“Class Warfare”: Stop pointing out that the system is rigged

“Elitist”: Educated

“Liberal bias”: The facts don’t fit our narrative

WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/KFV3Z

It truly is a scary, bizarre world they live in.

(via Political Irony)

Daily Blend: 04/05/13

Joe Rogan

PZ Myers voices my exact thoughts concerning Sam Harris vs. Glenn Greenwald on “New Atheism” and Islamophobia.

Benevolent sexism in a nutshell: Compliments are nice; applying them to stereotype an entire category of people is less so. (See: “Asians are good at math”, “Blacks are good at sports”, etc.)
(via Pharyngula)

Phil Plait (the Bad Astronomer) isn’t happy with all this anti-vaccination, anti-global warming, anti-Constitution bullshit going around.

Today’s proudly bigoted “comedian”: Joe Rogan. ^[pictured] He’s since continued on Twitter, naturally.

And finally: “Give me a napkin quick. There's a turd floating through the air.” “I didn’t do it. It ain’t one of mine.” — actual astronauts aboard Apollo 10.

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