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.

Daily Blend: 04/02/13

Dr. Deandre Poole

So, I guess that should read “exemplary teacher ^[pictured] threatened by student after asking class to step on piece of paper with Jesus’s name in harmless exercise on cultural sensitivity”. And he’s been receiving death threats from those ever-lovin’ Christians, of course.

I was in kinda-sorta-loose agreement with Sam Harris right until he says “[t]here is no such thing as Islamophobia” and that “[it] is a term of propaganda”. Now that’s how you shipwreck an argument, folks. (If he wants to contest the conflation of genuine criticism with bigotry, he should stress that ‘Islamophobia’ only applies to the latter, not that it isn’t actually a thing.)

Reality: Hoaxer dude calls domestic violence counseling line with phony abuse story, repeatedly refuses offered assistance to find free shelter or contact authorities. MRAs: “Abused man ‘denied help’”!

Public Policy Polling does conspiracy theories, reveals an average 10–15% of Americans are effin’ nuts. Not sure why “Bush lied about Iraqi WMDs” is counted as a myth, though.
(via @BuzzFeedAndrew)

And finally, it’s getting almost impossible to tell when Vox Day is being either seriously or facetiously stupid.

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

Alternately: “Obama almost accidentally cleans up news media”

Now this would’ve made for one awesome April Fools: “White House Accidentally Orders Drone Strike on Fox News Headquarters”:

On Thursday, at approximately 2:37 AM, members of the Joint Chiefs alerted President Obama that the Drone Strike System or DSS had activated and that several fully armed drones had been sent to deal with an “immediate threat to national security”. The President, realizing the system’s mistake was able to abort the attack just seconds before missiles would have destroyed the headquarters for the conservative media outlet.

Surprisingly, the strike was not the fault of a programming error. The DSS monitors more than 10,000 specific threat characteristics to determine if an immediate response is necessary. If the system deems that the threat is imminent and that immediate action is vital to protect the nation, it will preemptively launch a strike. “DSS worked the way it was supposed to”, states Chief Engineer Chip Boolean. “Fox hit over 90% of the key threat characteristics created by the Department of Defense.” Some of the threat characteristics picked up by the system included direct threats to the President of the United States, supporting hate groups, perpetuating racism and spreading untruthful propaganda to facilitate public disharmony. Concluded Boolean, “Once Fox hit 9,000 of the 10,000 threat characteristics, the system engaged. Fox News runs 24-hours a day so, DSS saw the threat as imminent and acted accordingly. I would like to clarify that contrary to speculation, one of the threat characteristics was not the canceling of Joss Whedon’s brilliant TV show Firefly in 2002.”

It’s only too bad the original at Free Wood Press has apparently been taken down as of this writing.

Fox News outraged when liberals use Nazi analogies (like Fox News)

You may remember how Jon Stewart took the leaping mickey out of Fox News two years ago when Megyn Kelly actually tried to pretend that the channel never compares its ideological opponents to Nazis & co. Well, it seems the sad clowns posing as journalists there are confused again, as CBS’s Bob Schieffer made a loose (but still inappropriate) analogy between the Third Reich and the gun lobby and they’re now busy denying they ever use such rhetoric at all and trying to climb up on their high horse:

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

[−]

TITLE: Fox News Can't Decide If It's OK To Call Someone Hitler (January 2013)

KIRSTEN POWERS: Speaking of Nazis, a lot of people – these gun rights people think that Obama’s like the next Hitler and they need to have their guns to protect themselves from this tyranny.

MARINE CPL. JOSHUA BOSTON: It’s something we’ve seen happen time and time again in history, with Stalin, happened in Cambodia, and then, of course, the Third Reich. No-one saw that coming until it was too late.

MAN #1: In Nazi Germany, they had a propaganda magazine called Der Stürmer. They had an article that they titled “The Jew Next Door”. The Journal News, their article was titled “The Gun Owner Next Door”.

SEAN HANNITY: You mean that happens? Governments actually become tyrannical, historically?

FOX ANCHOR #1: Of course, we’ve seen this: Germany, Italy, Japan. Yes, we’ve seen it.

MAN #1: These are scary times.

LARS LARSON: Everybody in America who owns one of the guns on the list will be required to go in and give up fingerprints, mug shot, and be entered into a database. It’s be “your papers, please” like Nazi Germany.

STEVE KAUFMAN: I mean, you go back to the 1930s with Hitler, he did the same thing.

HANNITY: Isn’t that what a lot – you don’t talk a lot about – what were the intentions of our founders and framers? We have Stalin, we have Hitler, we have countries, tyrannical, they talk a lot about that, and so people say, if you mention that in this day and age, that’s extreme.

HANNITY: The mainstream media is doing their part to smear gun owners as they are now likening NRA members to Nazi.

HANNITY: Our friend, Bob Schieffer – and by the way, I don’t mind that Bob has an opinion, but he can’t on the one end be a journalist and – it just gets complicated, but he’s now comparing the gun lobby to defeating the Nazis.

CBS’S BOB SCHIEFFER: Surely, passing civil rights legislation, as Lyndon Johnson was able to do, and before that, surely defeating the Nazis, was a much more formidable task than taking on the gun lobby.

RUSH LIMBAUGH: In other words, taking on the NRA is the equivalent of taking on Adolf Hitler.

BRENT BOZELL: And there, in the same sentence as ‘Nazis’. This should be insulting.

ERIC BOLLING: What is the liberal media doing instead of “fair and balanced” reporting? Guys like Bob Schieffer are running around comparing the NRA to Osama bin Laden and Adolf Hitler.

MSNBC’S MARTIN BASHIR: If anyone deserves to be equated with Hitler on the issue of firearms, then it’s not the President, it’s the NRA.

LIMBAUGH: Now, is there room for that in our discourse? Why is that not an example of just over-the-top defamation?

HANNITY: By the way, conservatives use the word ‘Hitler’, and there’s a total liberal, Left meltdown like Alka-Seltzer in water. Left does it, it’s fine.

FOX ANCHOR #2: Think of if conservatives used that language to describe liberals on the same policy, then there would be collective outrage on the front page of the papers and demands for people to resign and apologize.

JIM PINKERTON: He’s given himself a little bit of wiggle room, Bob Schieffer, just a little bit of wiggle room. “Oh, I didn’t exactly compare the NRA to the Nazis; I sort of threw ’em in the same pot and let the people on^[sic] the audience sort it out.”

FOX GUEST #1: There’s clearly an inference that the NRA is the equivalent of the Nazis, and I do think it raised questions about whether or not he was just a little bit too opinionated.

PINKERTON: George Orwell, back in 1946, in the famous essay, said, “The word ‘fascism’ should only be used for people who – Hitler, Mussolini, so on, and not just thrown around all the time.” That was 1946. Seventy years later, we’re still doing it as much as ever.

FOX ANCHOR #2: We should take Hitler and Nazis off the table and our – if they really wanna have a dialogue, as Robert Redford said, then let’s just stop – can we just, like, take [?] off the table.

FOX ANCHOR #3: Why bring that into the comparison? I mean, it was clearly –

FOX GUEST #2: Well, first of all, never bring up Nazis. Like, that’s the big mistake. Never.

Fox isn’t angry at liberals for using such rhetoric because it’s wrong, but because they’re worried about patent infringement.

(via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

Jon Stewart slams failure to talk about gun control

Just last month, Jon Stewart of The Daily Show tore into the reactionary airheads at Fox News for steadfastly refusing to ever talk about the U.S.’s absurd gun culture and necessary, commonsensical measures for reducing gun violence. Now, he’s back for more and lays down what may be the authoritative hammering of the Right-wing’s continued failure to accept that their blind infatuation with firearms may be stinting their ability to recognize that which is overwhelmingly obvious to everyone else (parts one and two):

Non-U.S. readers: Click here to learn how to enable Comedy Central videos (Firefox only)

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

[−]

JON STEWART: In the wake of some events that have happened – Newtown, Aurora, Portland, Tucson – it’s a 22-minute show, so I’m not gonna list everything. But finally, everyone from the NRA to the Marin County Kumbaya Patrol is ready to talk about gun violence. Though, to be fair to Kumbaya Patrol, they’ve been ready for quite some time, now.

So let’s have that conversation, people. Nothing’s off the table, no bad ideas, a safe space. Let’s start the discussion on gun violence. Let’s start with the discussion of gun control.

NRA EXECUTIVE VP WAYNE LAPIERRE [12/23/12]: Gun control […] it’s not gonna make any kids safer. We gotta get to the real problem, the real causes.

STEWART: Oh, I’m sorry. I just assumed that beginning the conversation on gun control meant starting with … guns. But you, uh … you wanna talk about the non-gun causes of … gun violence. Well, you know what? It’s a conversation. No bad ideas. Maybe there are other factors we should look at. Let’s see – what other non-gun causes are we talking about, here?

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN [01/06/13]: With have so much violence surrounding us that we think is okay.

LAPIERRE [12/21/12]: Violent videogames with names like Bulletstorm […] Grand Theft Auto […] Mortal Kombat […] Splatterhouse […] Blood-soaked films out there. […] American Psycho […] Natural Born Killers[.]

STEWART: Natural Born Killers and American Psycho? Holy …! Has it been that long since we’ve had a conversation about gun control? Been that long since we deflected the gun control argument with the “corrupt Hollywood media culture” argument?

But actually, you know what? That French guy has a point. It may be an indirect influence, but there is no question that we glorify violence in our culture and it’s something we have to consider. If a massacre occurs in a schoolhouse and TV network heads have to scramble to see if that storyline’s gonna bump up against the network’s prime-time episodic schedule, that’s a [fucking] problem. “Oh, is this terrible massacre gonna affect our new show, Massacre, Fridays at 8? The hot new lead-in to Corpse Raper Intent: SVU? Starring …” I dunno who that is. Nick Carter and young Gallagher.

Look, man. As for violent videogames, yeah, I guess they’re out there, but then again, the Dutch spend more than twice as much on videogames as we do and have less than a tenth of the gun violence. Although, to be fair, most of their games are of the first-person dike-plugger genre.

So, yeah. Maybe we need to talk about whether our culture is adding to the soup. That’s gotta be on the table. But if we’re gonna talk about that, let’s look at all of our culture. The Right likes to talk about Hollywood’s influence on that, but are there other media influences that must also be examined?

FOX ANCHOR #1 [02/26/03]: Are there terror cells in your neighborhood?

FOX ANCHOR #2 [11/06/12]: The New Black Panther Party’s outside a polling place.

DICK MORRIS [08/18/10]: These Sharia mosques have become the command centers for terrorists.

SEAN HANNITY [04/07/10]: The end of Capitalism in America.

RUSH LIMBAUGH [11/08/12]: We’re four years into tyranny winning!

HANNITY [09/24/12]: This is indoctrination of kids.

GLENN BECK [11/07/12]: If you live in the East, may I recommend: Get the hell out of the East.

BILL O’REILLY [08/04/08]: It’s gonna be Armageddon.

BECK [11/07/12]: Your religion is gonna come under attack.

HANNITY GUEST [10/01/12]: If Obama’s reelected, this country’s over!

Stewart clutches toy AR-15 assault rifle in fear.

STEWART: What? I’m not sure what happened; I’m sorry, I blacked out in the middle of that and woke up with an AK in my, I dunno! Or whatever this is. I’m sure I’ll get letters about what this really is … which is plastic, is what it really is.

Stewart puts the gun away.

STEWART: But it puts us back to the more direct issue of guns.

FOX GUEST [06/29/10]: Gun control doesn’t work.

STEWART: … Or not. I keep forgetting. What else?

LAPIERRE: We have a mental health system in this country that is completely and totally collapsed.

STEWART: Okay, okay – again, 100% correct. Thank you, Wayne LaPierre, for bringing this up. We closed the mental institutions in many respects, and now, our mentally ill live on the streets or are in prison, and it is untenable. It is up to us to help them find compassionate, proactive care. This is what we have to address in our mental health system. I’m assuming that’s what you mean.

LAPIERRE: We have no national database of these lunatics.

STEWART: Or that. Or that. I was gonna say compassionate, total care of mental illness, or … “lunatic database”. Although, isn’t that what the Internet is? Isn’t that a national lunatic database? What would be the criterion for the lunatic database? What are the kinds of things you would say to get on it?

LAPIERRE [07/05/12]: Americans don’t wanna be added to that pile of dead people that have been left defenseless by the U.N. policies.

STEWART: [writing on paper] “LaPierre” with two ‘r’s or one?

Look – I don’t wanna kill the conversation before it starts. Yes, mental healthcare absolutely has to be on the table, has to be improved. But someone’s always gonna slip through the cracks, and our mental health problem leads to other problems: crime, guns, violence …

MIKE HUCKABEE [07/21/12]: Ultimately, we don’t have a crime problem, or a gun problem, or even a violence problem. What we have is a sin problem.

STEWART: [beat] Is this about me masturbating? Is that what this is about? Look, I didn’t know … that that is considered a national issue.

Look. We can dance around the issue all we want. We can blame movies, or videogames, or the mentally ill, or God – it’s a complex problem and all solutions have to be on the table, but it is time we talk about guns.

ERIC BOLLING [12/17/12]: I don’t wanna do this. I don’t wanna do this gun control discussion right now. There’s a day, a place and a time for all that […]

STEWART: It’s today. Right now. It is absolutely time to talk about gun control, and nothing is – [puts finger to ear] Wait, I’m sorry. I just heard we need to take a commercial break. Guess we’ll talk about guns when we come back. We’ll be right back.

---

STEWART: We’ve learned in our conversation about this country’s staggering number of gun-related deaths that it’s based on a surprising amount of non-gun factors: God, media, and crazy people.

GRAPHIC: God, cable news channels, and man in straightjacket

STEWART: Wow. That’s a pretty busy graphic. Can we streamline that, and yet also represent all three constituencies?

CLIP: Mike Huckabee talking on Fox News.

STEWART: There you go. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that this conversation is taking place between parties of good faith, and that all of us, on any side of the debate, are anti-massacre. If some commonsense firearms regulations might cut the number of these killings, why not try?

SHERIFF JOE ARPAIO [01/07/13]: We have many, many laws pertaining to guns already. We oughta enforce those laws.

MAN [01/07/13]: We already have laws banning murder, but we still have murders.

JESSE VENTURA [09/17/12]: Drunk driving. Do we go to the Ford Motor Company and tell them “stop making these automobiles because people get drunk and kill people in cars”?

STEWART: No, but we do enact stricter blood-alcohol limits, raise the drinking age, ramp up enforcement and penalties insurance, charge bartenders who serve drunks, and launch huge public awareness campaigns to stigmatize the dangerous behavior in question, and we do all those things because it might just help bring drunk driving down, I don’t know, by 2/3 in a few decades.

GRAPHIC: Drunk driving rates: 7.5% in 1973, 5.4% in 1986, 4.3% in 1996, 2.2% in 2007

STEWART: Like magazine sizes. Smaller magazines for guns make these crazy people have to reload more.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC) [12/23/12]: Changing a magazine, I can do that pretty quick.

STEWART: Yeah, but you’re Fast-Fingers Graham! The foremost gun enthusiast-slash-speed origami champion in the world! He made that in three seconds. How he uses his heavily callused gun hands to make such delicate paper art … why, it’s a mystery.

All right, magazine restrictions won’t help. How ’bout we keep all the guns except weapons designed purely to efficiently shred enemy soldiers?

NRA PRES. DAVID A. KEENE [12/23/12]: We’ve had a so-called assault weapons ban for ten years. […] The Justice Department, others who study it, said it made no difference.

FOX GUEST #2 [12/24/12]: The original assault weapons ban was ill-conceived and didn’t work properly.

STEWART: Well, you know what they say: If at first you don’t succeed, [fuck] it.

Again! None of these will ever be perfect! We’re not looking for some magic … flying, solving projectile. We’re looking for a series of steps for different areas that, over time, can improve the situation. As opposed to what we have now, which is legislative riders snuck into appropriations bills that prevent the ATF from inspecting gun dealers’ inventories, and bills that make it harder to put disturbed individuals on “do not buy” lists, and laws exempting gun-makers from any legal accountability for their product.

I mean – people, God forbid McDonald’s doesn’t tell you how hot their hot, steaming coffee is! That happens, and you’re taking the money train to McPunitive Damage Town. But an epidemic of gun violence? “Oh, we can’t! Our hands our tied! We can’t do anything!” We are a nation of overreacters to everything. We have, step-by-step, child-proofed this entire country. Twenty years ago, a guy threw a rock over an overpass and it hit a car windshield, and now, every overpass in the country is like a Habitrail! It’s just got a giant [?]! Football stadiums have giant nets behind the goalposts so you don’t get hit by the ball you’re supposed to be watching!

We can’t do anything about this? How about we make assault weapons available, but only at shooting ranges? Make guns less sexy so they won’t be considered so cool by young people? The next Jason Bourne movie stars Woody Allen, how ’bout that? “I’m not really a gun person. It’s not so much the killing, but the loading and the cleaning; it’s just – it’s a lotta work.” Or even better: creative sound editing to take away the “cool gun” factor.

MONTAGE: Movie shootout scenes with gunfire replaced with random amusing sound effects.

STEWART: See? Those silly sound effects completely dulled my desire to get caught in a violent and bloody three-way Mexican standoff.

And if you don’t like any of those solutions, please, we’d love to hear yours! There are no bad ideas.

REP. LOUIE GOHMERT (R-TX) [01/04/13]: I refuse to play the game of assault weapon because that’s any weapon. It’s a hammer, it’s – article came out this week; the massive number that are killed with hammers […]

STEWART: Okay, uh … if you wanna regulate … hammers, we could try that. Would it be possible also to regulate bags of hammers, or anyone as dumb as that?

But aside from hammer control – which, by the way, was a great MC Hammer album – do you have any other ideas for reducing gun violence?

LAPIERRE [12/21/12]: The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

STEWART: So, the school principal with a gun is gonna stop a guy with an assault rifle and a bulletproof vest? You know, I don’t think Principal Belding is as badass as you think he might be.

Here’s the problem. Technology has democratized carnage. And it’s very weird to me that gun enthusiasts won’t even entertain – let me amend that: some gun enthusiasts won’t entertain the idea of commonsense law enforcement supporting small-bore, so to speak, moves to try and reign in this violence. What’s really going on, here?

REP. RICHARD HUDSON (R-NC) [01/06/13]: We have Constitutional freedom – the right to keep and bear arms in this country.

STEWART: Yeah, yeah, “for a well regulated militia”, not a personal arsenal free-for-all. There’s all sorts of stuff you can’t have already: tanks, F-16 fighter jets, surface-to-air anything. When that Constitution was written, people had muskets. So … okay, you can have all the muskets you want. You can even have assault muskets for all I care. Jazz it up with a bayonet. Go [fucking] nuts. But why is it that there is no other issue in this country, with as dire public safety consequences as this, that we are unable to make even the most basic steps towards putting together a complex plan of action to stop this epidemic’s spread? What is really going on, here?

STEVE DOOCY [01/07/13]: I think you, like a lot of people, Joshua, are worried that the federal government’s gonna come after our guns.

STEWART: Now we’re getting somewhere. So, this isn’t really about the Constitution, or efficacy of regulation, or intruder defense. It’s about how perilously close some people in this country feel they’re living to a tyrant’s rule.

MARINE CPL. JOSHUA BOSTON [01/07/13]: It’s something we’ve seen happen time and time again in history, with Stalin, happened in Cambodia, and then, of course, the Third Reich. No-one saw that coming until it was too late.

ALEX JONES [01/07/13]: Hitler took the guns! Stalin took the guns! Mao took the guns! Fidel Castro took the guns! Hugo Chavez took the guns! And I’m here to tell you: 1776 will commence again if you take our firearms!

STEWART: Holy [shit]! No-one’s taking away all the guns. But now, I get it. Now, I see what’s happening. So, this is what it is. Their paranoid fear of a possible dystopic future prevents us from addressing our actual dystopic present. We can’t even begin to address 30,000 gun deaths that are actually, in reality, happening in this country every year because a few of us must remain vigilant against the rise of Imaginary Hitler.

The only nits I have to pick are with Stewart’s uncritical usage of the vague and misleading “assault weapons” term (there are “assault rifles”, but virtually any item can be labeled an “assault weapon” by parties seeking to restrict their availability) and his repeated assertion that gun violence is an “epidemic” in the U.S., given that gun-related homicides and other violent crimes have been steadily decreasing for decades. It’s always important to remember that as horrible as they are, one of the reasons these mass shootings are so shocking is precisely because they’re outliers.

Nonetheless, the U.S. will never gain any foothold on the path to exorcising its gun-related demons until the Second-Amendment-fetishizing camp decides to start acting like reasonable adults and open the lines of communication.

Daily Blend: Tuesday, January 01, 2013 – Bienvenue à 2013!

Happy new orbital revolution! [source]

Quick note: I now make it my policy to automatically delete empty or otherwise illegibly glitched comments (as now noted in the Commenting Rules). Just so you know. Carry on, then.

Old but important: Anti-abortion activists actually tried to get a doctor fired for refusing to force a mentally ill 10-year-old incestuous rape victim to endure her pregnancy. I couldn’t find any word on whether Dr. Neuhaus won her appeal in the end.
(via Uzza)

And finally, I am satisfied to learn that Fox News’s Sean Hannity lost over half his audience after it was revealed last November how impressively full of shit he is.
(via @BuzzFeedAndrew)

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

Jon Stewart hammers Fox News’s refusal to debate gun culture

The inane talking heads posing as journalists over at Fox News recently got their Second-Amendment-embroidered undies in a bunch when NBC sportscaster Bob Costas dared to break lockstep with the punditry’s complacence with the United States’s pervasive gun culture. As always, leave it to The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart to attempt to hammer home some basic common sense, not that he has much of a chance with their skulls so abnormally thick. Parts one and two:

Non-U.S. readers: Click here to learn how to enable Comedy Central videos (Firefox only)

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

[−]

JON STEWART: But recently, the sports world has suffered some tragic off-the-field incidents. The Dallas Cowboys lost a player in a drunk driving accident this past weekend; a murder-suicide involving a Kansas City Chiefs linebacker the weekend before. That led to sports commentator Bob Costas commentating on this during halftime in the Cowboys-Eagles game.

BOB COSTAS [12/06/12]: You want some actual perspective on this? Well, a bit of it comes from the Kansas City-based writer Jason Whitlock. […] From the end of his article: “Our current gun culture,” Whitlock wrote, “ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy.” […] “In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions and their possible connection to football will be analyzed. Who knows? But here,” wrote Whitlock, “is what I believe. If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Cassandra Perkins would both be alive today.”

STEWART: “And now, the marching band!”

All right, obviously, there’s a tragedy, it’s more complicated than that, and if we’re gonna start addressing issues, we can begin with gun culture, but you gotta talk about domestic abuse, mental illness, the head trauma, football, the drugs they give the guys for pain; I’m assuming Costas was leaving that to Cleatus, the Fox Robot, to take care of. But still!

What he was doing was trying to start a conversation, and … he succeeded.

LAURA INGRAHAM [12/04/12]: That belonged on NBC cable channel, I mean, you kinda expect that over there. You don’t expect that during a football game.

ERIC BOLLING [12/03/12]: It’s NFL Sunday, it’s halftime, ‘God Bless America’’s playing in the background. Do I really want Bob Costas giving me a dissertation on the Second Amendment? […] I wanna watch football!

STEWART: Really? ’Cause that’s when I go take a piss, but okay.

Yes, an NFL halftime show is no time to talk about violence in the NFL! It’s a time to watch endless slow-motion replays of that day’s hardest hits. “Zoinks! That was a great hit! Yeah, I think the guy’s brain came out of his ear-hole on that one! Suck it up like a man! Of course, he’ll never be the same again. All right, well done.”

---

JON STEWART: So, halftime isn’t the right time. Now, what about at a press conference? Like after the Aurora shootings, when the Mayor of New York called for an examination of gun laws?

KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE [07/23/12]: There were also bodies not even out of the theater, Dana, before he started to jump in this debate. Now, I think there is some level of political protocol that you need to have in a tragedy like this where you wait.

JUDGE JEANINE PIRRO [07/27/12]: Be quiet for 24 hours, at least!

STEWART: Clearly, in that situation, it’s not where it is being discussed, it’s when. I’m assuming that the venue was good; just that the mayor did not obey the commonsense waiting period we place on gun … conversations. You don’t want somebody in an emotional state just shooting off their … mouths.

But of course, it’s not just the “where” and the “when” of the conversation about guns; it’s the “who”!

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN [12/03/12]: Is this what you really wanna hear at halftime, sportscaster Bob Costas lecturing football fans – that means you – about gun control?

LAURA INGRAHAM [12/04/12]: Mr. Costas, you don’t know that much what you’re talking about, so stick to the area that you’re really smart about, which is sports. […] I wrote a book called Shut Up and Sing; this would be “Shut Up and Commentate on Sports”, because we’re not really interested in what Bob Costas thinks about guns.

STEWART: Right, but … why do you get to talk? ’Cause I – if I may, very quickly, no disrespect – I don’t much care what you have to say about anything. Yet, whenever I turn on the TV, you’re there, talking about everything. That’s the subject of my book, “Shut Up and Shut Up.”

So clearly, sports commentators, they don’t get to comment about gun violence, and singers don’t get to comment about gun violence, either, right, Fox?

FOX HOST #1 [12/03/12]: Ted Nugent issued a quote, saying, “We thought Bob Costas was smarter than that. Only fools blame tools instead of human failings.”

STEWART: How come that guy doesn’t have to shut up and sing? Or shut up and whatever it is that he does?

I’m beginning to figure out the rules, though. If you wanna talk about gun violence, gun culture, gun control, you gotta be a gun expert. You can’t just be some sportscaster or musician. And even the right person can’t talk about it if it’s too soon after a tragedy; it’s disrespectful. How long do you have to wait to say there should be more guns after a tragedy, like the shooting in Oslo?

FOX CONTRIBUTOR [07/24/11]: You have 600 people there, Geraldo –

GERALDO RIVERA: On that island.

CONTRIBUTOR: – on that island, and the security procedures that were there were noneffective. […] If you have a gun, Geraldo, you don’t have security. I have a big laugh when they ask me for a security guard, “but we don’t want them to have a gun.” If you don’t want security to have a gun, then you’re not having security.

STEWART: “That’s the thing about these Norwegians, lemme tell you somethin’. They don’t understand how much they need guns. It’s a harpoon culture. D’you understand what I’m sayin’? They shoot whales! They don’t know [?].”

That was about the mass killing in Norway, but at least they respectfully waited until … 48 hours afterwards. See, in fact, if you wanna have a conversation about our gun culture, you better make sure you’re being tasteful and respecting the victims and their families. Of course, if you’re trying not to have that conversation …

ERIC BOLLING [12/03/12]: This guy, six- – I dunno, 6’4”, 320 [lbs], he could’ve killed her with his bare hands. It wasn’t a gun that killed her, it was Jovan Belcher that killed her.

INGRAHAM [12/04/12]: I guess Costas does not think Belcher is strong enough to asphyxiate his girlfriend, or smart enough to hook up a hose into his garage and kill her through asphyxiation.

MEGYN KELLY [12/03/12]: Look at O.J. Simpson. […] He went over there with a knife, he murdered his ex-wife and her friend.

SEAN HANNITY: Was Nicole Brown killed with a gun, or was she killed with a knife?

STEWART: Yeah! Knife! Knife! Knife! Knife! Nicole Simpson was murdered with a knife! Does Costas wanna ban knives? ’Cause then, we’d have to cut steak with our guns, and that would be terrible!

Still, I think I get the rules now. I’m just trying to get the rules. You can talk about guns, just not in the immediate wake of any event involving guns. But with approximately 30 gun-related murders daily in the United States, when will it ever be the right time to talk about the issue?

CNN HOST [11/29/12]: A rare moment in New York City. Police say there were no reported slaying, stabbings, shootings or knifings during a 36-hour period from Sunday night to Tuesday morning.

STEWART: Aah, it was two weeks ago! We missed the [fucking] window! But why ruin the celebration?

“[W]hy do you get to talk? ’Cause I … don't much care about what you have to say about anything. Yet, whenever I turn on the TV, you’re there, talking about everything.” Perfect.

Unbelievably juvenile Fox Nation headline of the day

You know, when I first saw this, I truly thought it was a photoshopped image. There’s just no way even the embarrassments to humanity at Fox News/Nation would stoop this low, is there?

Apparently, I had momentarily forgotten how the joint’s run by a bunch of ten-year-olds.

(via @BuzzFeedAndrew)

Stewart on Fox’s “War on Christmas” & O’Reilly’s philosophy

Last night, Jon Stewart of The Daily Show once again took Fox News to task for its ridiculous one-news-channel campaign against the mythical “War on Christmas” by those annoying iconoclastic atheists, and then rounded on Bill O’Reilly over his even-stupider-than-usual declaration that Christianity is somehow a “philosophy” rather than a religion.

(The segment does include a couple of swipes at atheists which, while presumably intended as humorous and satirical, kind of miss the point – secularists are only interested in upholding the Establishment Clause in order to promote fair and equal treatment for all. It would’ve been helpful if Stewart had acknowledged that little detail.)

Daily Blend: Monday, December 03, 2012 – Sleepless edition

Rick Santorum

The fun thing about trying to forcibly rearrange your sleep schedule is that for a few days, you effectively have no sleep schedule. Oy.

Owners of Mississippi’s only abortion clinic go to court in hopes of preventing its demise.
(via @BuzzFeedAndrew)

Unbelievable: House Oversight Committee flacks lecture vaccine-advocating scientists about all the usual anti-vaccination myths and delusions. Where’s that basic science litmus test for elective office?
(via @BadAstronomer)

Meanwhile, climate change denialists lie their asses off in yet another garbage-packed opinion letter that gets just about every single thing wrong.

Wow: Freethought Blogs’ Ashley Miller was just disowned by her redneck father for dating a Black man. ’Scuse me while I go check my calender.
(via @jennifurret)

And finally, the only thing remotely surprising about Rick Santorum ^[pictured] joining the WorldNetDaily is that it took this long.

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

Daily Blend: Friday, November 30, 2012

Bill O’Reilly

Awesome: New law demands that all free public schools in England must teach proper Evolutionary Theory or lose government funding.
(via @BadAstronomer)

Today in less-than-good news: New international study shows Antarctic and Greenland ice is melting faster than ever, contributing to rising sea levels. Evidence so damning, even this Fox News talking head has stopped calling global warming a “conspiracy”.
(via @JFitzsimmons7)

And finally, yes, Bill O’Reilly ^[pictured] actually thinks that Christianity is not an “organized church”, but a “philosophy”. I’m not even touching that one.

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

‘The Daily Show’ dismantles the Right’s anti-Obama “bombshell”

If there’s anything that’s more predictable and satisfying than seeing the far-Right flame out over yet another failed attempt at discrediting President Obama or other prominent Leftists with “explosive” videos that invariably turn out to be complete duds, I’ve yet to experience it. Here’s Jon Stewart & co. of The Daily Show taking a rather amused look at the recently (re-)revealed video that purports to show a 2007-era then-Senator Obama (D-IL) at his class-warfare-est – when all he does is reiterate what everyone else was already saying at the time (including one then-President Bush).

Part 1:

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Part 2:

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

[−]

[VIDEO 1: “Oh the Spew-Hannity”]

JON STEWART: Just a short time ago, Barack Obama and Gov. Romney wrapped up their first debate – if they had their first debate. I don’t know. It was scheduled. The show was obviously taped before that debate, and who knows if they even had the debate after what happened with yesterday’s bombshell: Full-day, Drudge-con-1, blue-siren-alert, Obama race video. Hannity had the exclusive:

SEAN HANNITY (10/02/12): Tonight, you will hear from Barack Obama like you have never heard from him before. […] A video has been uncovered from a campaign event in 2007 of then-Candidate Obama. […] It contains some of the most divisive class warfare and racially charged rhetoric ever used by Barack Obama.

STEWART: “Casually tossing out words like ‘cracker’, ‘honky’, “White trash”, ‘[?]’. SPF-45-wearing-mother—!”

And even though, as it turned out, the video-in-question had been widely covered when the event occurred back in 2007, that doesn’t matter! ’Cause – I’ll let Hannity’s guest, Tucker Carlson, explain:

TUCKER CARLSON (03/02/12): People say, “This has already been reported.” Well, actually, it hasn’t been reported, and I know, because I reported on it the first time.

Beat.

STEWART: So, let’s see some of the highlights of this explosive video.

CHRIS ROCK (during comedy routine): Cracker ass cracker! I’ll put my foot in the crack of your ass, cracker-ass cracker! I wish that cracker would’ve said some [shit] to me, saltine-ased, mother[fucking] cracker!

STEWART: Obviously, that’s just Chris Rock, one of his fine comedy skits on racial relations in America. I showed that in lieu of the Obama tape, because the Obama tape is far more explosive. In it, Barack Obama discusses how the events of Hurricane Katrina and that regions entrenched poverty has a racial component and advocates for concerted effort to rebuild the area, including these grenades:

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL) (06/05/07): We don’t need to build more highways out in the suburbs if we have people in the cities right now who wanna work, but have no way to get into those jobs. […] We should be investing in minority-owned businesses in our neighborhoods so people don’t have to travel from miles away.

JON STEWART: It is a volatile point-of-view, first expressed by this notorious Black liberation theologist speaking from New Orleans in 2005:

FMR. PRES. GEORGE BUSH (09/16/05): There’s also some deep, persistent poverty in this region as well. That poverty has history in roots of racial discrimination. […] When the streets are rebuilt, there should be many new businesses, including minority-owned businesses along those streets.

STEWART: “You see, what I’m trying to say is this: We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock, you see, won’t get landed on again. Hehehehehe.”

So, despite the fact that what Barack Obama was was saying in that speech kind of echoed the sentiments of other, more acceptable mainstream politicians of that era, and despite the fact that what Barack Obama was saying in that speech was echoed in his own speech that he gave in 2007 that actually aired live on CNN, Obama’s real crime here was not the content and the message, but the rhythm. Ooh, the rhythm. The rhythm is gonna get you.

HANNITY: You notice a change in the way he delivers this speech before a predominately African-American audience? […]

CARLSON: They speak a different language. Different cadences, different accents, different gestures. I mean, the falseness here is overwhelming. […]

HANNITY: We’ve got the accent, we’ve got anger, we’ve got ra— “They-don’t-care-as-much-about-you”.

STEWART: “We’ve got jive talk! We’ve got ‘No Justice, No Peace’! We’ve got ‘by any means necessary’! We’ve got ‘Say it out loud, I’m Black and I’m proud’! All this and more on K-Tel’s Now That’s What I Call Race-Baiting.”

By the way, if you actually do believe that a candidate speaking “Black” before Black voters disqualifies them from being president, I have unearthed a video that just might turn this entire presidential race upside-down.

MITT ROMNEY (01/21/08): What's happenin’, got some bling-bling here too, look at that. […] Who let the dogs out, who, who?

STEWART: “Who let the dogs out?” Did you know Mitt Romney was one of the original Baha Men? Not the band, he just keeps his money in Baja.

All right, here’s what’s crazy about this. If I’m not mistaken, Sean Hannity, you believe this president to be what?:

HANNITY (01/13/12): He’s the worst President we’ve had in my lifetime.

HANNITY (07/18/11): He is the worst President on record.

HANNITY (04/06/10): […] a worse President than Jimmy Carter.

HANNITY (04/06/12): This is the worst President America has ever had.

STEWART: The worst! Ever! In your lifetime! On record! Ever, ever, ever, ever! And on the eve of the first presidential debate, the best, most explosive critique that you could deliver of the worst president we have ever had in this country, is treating us to some reanimated bull[shit] video already been seen, as though it were the Rodney King tape in reverse.

---

[VIDEO 2: “The Great Black American Panel”]

STEWART: For more, we’re joined by our Great Black American Panel: Senior Black Commentator Larry Wilmore, Senior Black Correspondent Wyatt Cenac, Junior Black Correspondent Jessica Williams. Watching that Hannity piece, it’s almost unbelievable to see such naked race-baiting on television. Black people talk weird? What is that?

WYATT CENAC: It’s some bull[shit]!

JESSICA WILLIAMS: Yeah! [Fuck] Hannity! Your October Surprise is that the President is Black?

LARRY WILMORE: They are some desperate mother[fuck]ers.

STEWART: Um … What about this attempt to portray a relatively middle of the road left-of-center technocrat as some kind of angry Black radical?

CENAC: It’s some bull[shit]!

WILLIAMS: Yeah! [Fuck] Hannity!

WILMORE: They are some desperate mother[fuckers].

STEWART: Ah, that’s the same thing you said. Do you not want to talk about this?

CENAC: No, Jon, we love being part of your Great Black American Black Panel of Blacks. Black.

STEWART: Would it be better to have this discussion without the White guy moderating?

WILMORE: [all three nod their heads] No, Jon, this is your show. [points for Jon to leave] You should stay here and moderate this Black discussion.

STEWART: All right, I’ll be over here, it’s fine, I’ll read. [puts on headphones] You guys can just talk amongst yourselves. It’s fine. [starts reading Philip Roth’s ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’]

WILLIAMS: Can he hear us?

CENAC: I don’t know, let’s see. Jon, I’ve been siphoning gas from your car!

STEWART: [removes headphones; tinny music is heard] What? Did you call me?

CENAC: Nope. Not at all.

Jon puts his headphones back on and returns to his book.

WILMORE: He can’t hear.

WILLIAMS: OK. So, how do you feel? Does it make you angry?

CENAC: It’s not really angry as much as it’s depressing. I mean, this is the same dog-whistle stuff they've been pulling all the time, like, it’s, you know, ACORN and Shirley Sherrod and Common at the White House. It’s the same stuff.

WILMORE: Was he listening to ‘Fiddler on the Roof’?

WILLIAMS: You know, seriously, I cannot believe that they say [shit] like that out loud sometimes. I mean, it’s just desperate.

WILMORE: Yeah, I can. Look, when you’ve got no rational argument, okay, you have to bypass that part of the brain that processes rational arguments, right? You just stick the probe straight into the medulla, you know, the reptile brain. And you just jolt it with enough coded language and racial imagery to trigger the fear response.

WILLIAMS: By the way, is there a reason Jon can’t hear this conversation?

WILMORE: Nah … please.

CENAC: We just want more airtime. Speaking of, should we probably …?

WILMORE: Yeah, wake him up.

Wyatt throws ball of paper at Jon and accidentally misses. Jon pretends to jump in surprise and tries to keep a straight face at the mishap.

STEWART: Hey, what’s up? So, uh … [tinny music lasts a couple seconds too long before being silenced] So, thanks. You guys done rappin’ and jammin’?

WILMORE: Yes, Jon, we’re done rapping and jamming.

WILLIAMS: It’s all good.

STEWART: All right! Hey, I think it’s informative when we can discuss these things with a panel of people directly affected by them. Just wondering, how do you think your conversation will be seen by people who read the Drudge Report and watch Hannity?

CENAC: I don’t know, let’s run it through the old Drudgity Cam and see how it plays.

STEWART: Oh, right, the lens they filter all their information through. I forgot we had one of those. Can you cue that up?

Cenac, Williams & Wilmore look through ‘Drudge Report’-style frame.

CENAC: We’re in your front yard and we’re still mad about slavery!

WILMORE: Yeah, bitches! We’re gonna buy crack with the food stamps you’re payin’ fo’!

WILLIAMS: And then, we’re gonna rape your White babies!

CENAC & WILMORE: Hey, whoa!

WILLIAMS: What?

CENAC: Calm down!

WILMORE: It’s too much!

WILLIAMS: I’m sorry, this is my first Black Panel, you guys, I’m really excited.

WILMORE: It’s too much!

JESSICA WILLIAMS: It’s really nice to be here.

A general tip, folks: When the people behind a video they claim will totally shock everyone with hitherto unrevealed information about a given public figure decide the best person to make the revelation is Sean Hannity, you might wanna let up on the hype just a bit lest you end up with yet another batch of singed eyebrows.

Headline of the day: WND plays “GOP women are prettier” game

There’s a new study floating around that purports to find how female Republican lawmakers are supposedly more “feminine” in appearance. The study authors, a couple of university psychology researchers, postulate that this is a result of conservative voters preferring political candidates who have more “gender typicality” – ie. who conform more to traditional gender roles. Democratic voters, apparently, aren’t so stuck up about appearances and prefer to be swayed by policy over physical attributes.

Meanwhile, how did that esteemed conservative publication known as the WorldNetDaily react to these findings?

Thus providing more evidence to support the long-running theory that a number of Right-wing outlets are secretly curated by horny fifteen-year-olds.

(via Joe. My. God.)