06 October 2013

Link round-up for 6 October 2013

This handy religion/afterlife chart (click to enlarge) shows the absurdity of Pascal's wager (found via Deity Shmeity).

The law as yet offers no protection from anti-brony discrimination.

Is religious faith so feeble that it needs to be backed up by lying about a movie?

Here's an entertaining blog of bad real-estate photos.

The Westboro Baptist Church gets wankingly pwned.

Republicans have backslid into the same self-delusion as before the 2012 election.  Paul Waldman thinks the madness will never end, not even after their inevitable defeat.

A famous but long-debunked fake quote from James Madison is still being used by the Christian Right.

A Republican Congressman acts like a complete asshole to a park ranger over the shutdown his own party caused.

The memory of a real immigrant experience gives the lie to Dana Perino's sneer at foreign languages.

Jim Wright at Stonekettle Station pulls no punches on Republican hypocrisy and cowardice.  He also reviews the latest eruptions of crazy.

Self-censorship to avoid offending moderate religionists is a very bad idea.

Another reason for the shutdown:  hostility to birth control.

This could be huge -- business is losing faith in Republican management of the economy.

Bayou Corne, Louisiana, is being slowly eaten by an underground toxic waste dump.

Here is the Republican Wendy Davis will need to beat -- and here's some hopeful background info about the race.

Pat Robertson is an evil man (like we didn't know that already).

Ted Yoho exemplifies the new Tea Party breed of Congressman -- serenely arrogant and utterly ignorant of how anything actually works.

Now that some Republicans find they're liking the ACA, maybe they'll reconsider some of their other attitudes.  Krugman explains why the anti-ACA campaign is doomed.

A whooping-cough outbreak in California resulted from anti-vaccine idiocy.

Green Eagle's latest Wingnut Wrapup finds the right wing falling off the cliff of crazy.  A few moderates are making a last stand in Kansas.

Wal-Mart moves 35,000 part-time workers back to full-time status -- its efforts to screw them out of ACA benefits were hurting business.

As Hispanics assimilate American values, becoming more socially liberal and less religious, they're turning more and more against the Republicans.

Faye Kane has a must-read post on the insanity of trying to live exclusively by reason and suppressing feelings (NSFW).

The Canadian media seem to understand very well what's going on in Washington.

The separatist movement in Catalonia is getting serious, presenting new challenges to the EU.

The Catholic Church was a major backer of Portuguese fascism and imperialism.

Republican debt-ceiling brinkmanship is damaging American credibility in East Asia.

A Saudi cleric plumbs new depths of dumbth about women drivers -- time to spray.

Aviation authorities in Swaziland have decreed that witches on broomsticks are not allowed to fly higher than 150 meters altitude.  No, this isn't a joke.

A bizarre lake in Tanzania petrifies animals (photos may be disturbing to some).

South Korea has built a jellyfish-shredding robot to fight that jellyfish overpopulation problem I linked to a few weeks ago.  I think they'd need huge numbers of the things to make a dent, though.

Brain research is zeroing in on the causes and nature of near-death experiences.

7 Comments:

Blogger Kay Dennison said...

Fascinating!!!!!

06 October, 2013 05:28  
Blogger Ahab said...

Pat Robertson's prosperity gospel and general theology was always distasteful, but his words to the woman with a sick husband were out of line. What kind of sociopath would tell that to a struggling family with a sick family member?

As for the man fired for his love of My Little Pony, his employers were in the wrong. Plenty of cartoons have adult fans, and it's perfectly normal.

06 October, 2013 08:21  
Blogger Shaw Kenawe said...

Paul Waldman's article is depressingly accurate:

"It's the fact that this period in our political history—the period of lurching from absurd crisis to absurd crisis, with no possibility of passing a budget let alone legislation to address any serious problems we face, with a cowardly Republican leadership held hostage by a group of insane political terrorists who think it's a tragedy if a poor person gets health insurance and it's a great day when you kick a kid off food stamps, a period where this collection of extremists and fools, these people who think the likes of Michele Bachmann and Steve King are noble and wise leaders—this awful, horrific period in our history, when these are the people who control the country's fate, looks like it will never end."


I've said time and again that there is no hope in a country where millions of people believed Sarah Palin was qualified to be president.

That is true mental illness, and too many of the folks Waldman targets suffer from it.

06 October, 2013 11:42  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Kay: This zany world always provides me with plenty of material.

Ahab: Sickening indeed (Robertson). He is, as I said, simply an evil man.

Shaw: I have hopes that it will finally end next year. The latest poll results suggest that the Republicans could lose their House majority over this, even with the gerrymandering. Let's hope for it -- and work for it.

06 October, 2013 15:26  
Anonymous Bacopa said...

I am totally psyched Wendy Davis has officially announced her run.

Higher Hispanic turnout and a big gender gap could easily make her the next governor. I believe we can do it. And send her money if you don't live in Texas.

And if you live in Texas, don't let your enthusiasm for Davis keep you from making your contributions to Planned Parenthood of the Gulf Coast and KPFT.

06 October, 2013 21:04  
Blogger Ranch Chimp said...

Wanting to make a couple comments as I go through these thing's, and a pretty nice round- up of interest's I may add .... But WBC caught me, because I feel it is past due attacking Freddie Phelps (aka '$5 Fag Freddie' for his cheap suits and obssession with attacking gayz by me) as far as the porn flick got on church grounds, and I am usually against that sort of thing, but this WBC INSPIRED ALL they get over their year's of relentless attacks on Americans, including our troops and children, various artist's, etc, etc. (BTW, the punk band 'Get Shot' sounds pretty damn good too) I even use what you may call (another link) 'self- censorship' to a degree that is, only because so many folk's I know and familia are christians and muslims, so simply out of respect, they dont knock me for being a member of the Church of Satan either (and for those who think I worship Satan, think whatever you want, thats not the reality though). But the religious folk's that are friends and so forth are not famnatic in it, ya know ... I mean they indulge in the normal good thing's in life like me, like porn, beer, hookers, football, etc, etc the normal God given fruits of life in other words (by their obvious standards) at the same time though, I refuse to do ass- kissing, especially for these muslim immigrants who abuse our culture and people/ women with their uptight rules ... and yeah, I'm a gun toting segregationist Texas redneck at heart.

I feel so sorry for this guy if he really got fired over it as far as the 'My Little Pony' piece in "Crokked Timber' I mean, thats the kind of stuff my little 10 year old granddaughter has me watching too.

Yeah, I now about ole Greg Abbott in Texas, and all the GOP here in Texas been doing is highsiding like their all 'this and that', got it all wrapped up and saying Wendy is a lightweight, Barbie, Bimbo, etc, etc bragging in a way that they 'have no competition' ... and thats fine, brag all ya'll want, but still many of us are going to wait in line to vote for Wendy too. We even got out of state support too.

Later Infidel ....

07 October, 2013 07:10  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Bacopa: The party needs to go all in on supporting her. Texas is the key to the whole national situation. If we can pull that state with its huge haul of electoral votes out of the Republicans' column, it's game over for them.

Ranch: The lawn-wank video isn't 1/100th as offensive as the stuff the WBC does. Serves them right.

I agree about not bringing conflicts of opinion into family situations, but they're more talking about public statements. There are things I wouldn't say to someone in person, just to avoid conflict, but I'm not going to self-censor on the blog.

07 October, 2013 08:14  

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