Father most certainly does NOT know best.
Some men go to strip clubs at least in part because they don’t know how to tell their guy friends they like them.
The link above explains that women are glue. This also suggests that women most certainly aren’t people.
Jimmy Carter publicly denounces Southern Baptists because of their misogyny.
Who’s lying about climate change?
Money is the only good reason to get married.
Conservatives haven’t changed much at all since the New Deal.
Oh so true snippets of fundie culture.
The Princeton Guide to Ecology just went to the top of my wishlist. Yes, even above the lovely shoes I posted earlier this week.
“Government-run” health care has problems, but it still works better than private insurance:
Compared with the employer-coverage group, people in the Medicare group report fewer problems obtaining medical care, less financial hardship due to medical bills, and higher overall satisfaction with their coverage.
Conservatives freaked out about Obama’s speech encouraging kids to work hard in school, calling the action “unprecedented.” I guess they weren’t paying attention during similar speeches given by Reagan and George H. Bush. (Though perhaps if they’d paid better attention in school they would have developed some critical thinking skills and we wouldn’t have to deal with their craziness.) I think the response of the right in this situation is very telling – they disagree with Obama, so they won’t listen to anything he says. This is why Republicans have blocked health care reform at every turn, why Republicans have become the party of “no.” I’m reminded of a child being told something she doesn’t want to hear who covers her ears and yells.
There isn’t much justice in our justice system. How many innocent people have we executed?
The myth of overspending:
Whether families are spending more than they should according to some moral notion—consuming too much of the world’s resources or buying things they could easily live without—is not the issue at hand. These data give us no clue about the right amount of spending. But they give us powerful evidence that excessive consumption is not why families are going broke. There is no evidence of any “epidemic” of overspending—certainly nothing that could explain a 255 percent increase in the foreclosure rate, a 430 percent increase in the bankruptcy rolls, and a 570 percent increase in credit-card debt. A growing number of families are in terrible financial trouble, but despite the accusations, their frivolity is not to blame.
A lot of people claim that being queer is wrong because it isn’t “natural.” Weird how different cultures consider different sexualities “natural.”
Ecological/environmental refugees are becoming much more common.
A corporate sponsor of the Tea Party Express, many of whose members believe that health care reform is “a secret plot to kill old people”, is paying millions of dollars for killing old people.
A ton of feathers – why micro-inequities suck.
We desperately need better health care in the US. As a queer woman with a chronic illness, it’s a very personal issue for me. Reforming health care in the US is complex and faces a lot of opposition from people concerned about personal freedom and insurance companies worried about profits. I certainly didn’t expect health care reform to be easy.
But what I didn’t expect (naively), was the nature of the debate. Many people aren’t interested at all in facts. They’re violent and more than a little crazy and don’t seem to recognize at all that they’re being manipulated.
We should be having a very vigorous debate about health care and working hard for a better system that serves more people more efficiently. Instead, we’re seeing people go completely unhinged and screaming about how health care reform is really a plan to kill old people. Too bad so few people seem to have actually read the bill…
Lesbian stereotypes are so much fun to play with.
The conservatives on the Supreme Court think pregnancy discrimination is ok. I don’t get it – shouldn’t they consider it double discrimination?
Fathers with daughters often become more liberal. I’d say that’s good evidence that current conservative policies hurt women. Of course, you could also say that spending too much time with women makes men too “soft.”
Choosing Sotomayor was a pretty good political move.
A memorial day thought that made me cry.
PZ on the horrific crimes of the Irish Catholic Church: Can we stop equating religion and morality now? They never seem to have much to do with one another.
This woman deserves to go to jail for murder. And maybe her pastor, too.
The Sri Lankan government has been leveling all sorts of terrible accusations against the Tamil Tigers. Looks like the pot was calling the kettle black.
How to get straight couples to understand why the right to marry is important.
The Christian god isn’t the only real god according to the Bible. He just thinks he’s better.
Delara Darabi – if there had been more news coverage in the West, she may have lived.
I think The Onion does a good job summarizing my views so far on the Obama Presidency: Obama Revises Campaign Promise Of ‘Change’ To ‘Relatively Minor Readjustments In Certain Favorable Policy Areas’
A beautiful post on hierarchies and judgement within marginalized communities.
The Skeptic’s Book of Pooh-Pooh points out an awesome news story on the danger anti-vaxers create for children in their communities. The anti-vaxers hypocrisy is also on display in their support of chemical castration for autistic boys.
We can’t expect toxic products to stop coming from China anytime soon. Honesty and transparency are impossible with a government that actively represses knowledge of its own history.
Women continue to be kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and brutally murdered in Mexico. Despite the hundreds of victims that are likely the victims of one or more serial killers, the police aren’t doing anything about it.
As the AZ legislature slashes education funding across the state, especially at the university level, the AZ Republic has a timely article about the importance of research – even if it sounds ridiculous.
“Justice.”
Lindsay Beyerstein explains that we do still need journalists and should be paying them – most bloggers provide commentary and synthesis, not reporting.
The role of partisanship in California’s economic crisis.
Something to have nightmares about: the rise of private policing in the US.
Right wing extremists kill more law enforcement officers.
Dr. Isis’s fantastic post Boys Talk About How Girls Should Talk About Science…
It’s easy to consider a civil discourse when you’ve never had your ass grabbed by a colleague, been called “young lady” in front of your peers, or been asked about your reproductive plans. It’s easy to ask the participants to be calm, and minimize profanity, when you don’t have to keep in the back of you mind which which men to avoid at a meeting when they’ve been drinking.
FSP on “us and them.”
The next cake I’m going to bake.
Pennsylvania is starting to look like the deep south half a century ago.
Losing your house because the economy sucks? Hoping to vote for someone who’s going to do something about the sitution? Guess what? The Republicans are going to make sure you don’t [via Feministing].
The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County, Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.
“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,”
Bonus points if you can guess what racial group is disproportionately affected. Surprised?
From what I observed growing up in the South, I’d say this has a lot more to do with racism than class.
Sarah Palin charged rape victims for their own rape kits. As Majikthise puts it
Do fraud victims have to pay for forensic audits? Do banks have to pay the police to watch the security video after they’ve been robbed? Of course not. There is absolutely no way in good conscience that a mayor could force victims to pay for the own rape examinations.
A great analogy to the creationist argument [via Pharyngula]
The theory of childhood, also known as child origin, is a damnable, loathsome and indefensible lie. How can any thinking person suppose all humans used to be babies once? Just consider these arguments:
There is no development path from babies to adults, no transitional forms between these two species. Show me even one baby with the head of a grown man on his body. Can you? No? Not even a bearded toddler? No adults with unfused skullbones, outside unfortunate disorders? Not even a tiny little newborn girl suddenly sprouting a respectable bosom? You can’t find them, because they don’t exist. There isn’t a single transitional form between children and adults, and you will never find one because the theory simply is an unscientific lie.
A fantastic new blog-find: LundBlog.
Warmongering
The latest A Softer World comic:
PZ Myers points to a video of Sarah Palin telling an Assembly of God church that the Iraq war is “a task from God.
Obama answers some important questions about science and policy.
Dooce tells Republicans to live up to those compassionate principles:
Because Leta was diagnosed with plagiocephaly when she was two months old, she cannot qualify for private insurance until she is thirteen years old. So the only insurance we can get her is high-risk insurance that costs us upwards of $300 a month. Just for her alone. And even then that insurance won’t cover anything until she has reached a $3000 deductible. I am fortunate enough to have grown up in a white, middle class family who could afford to send me to college, as did my husband, and we have enough work experience to run a business that makes it so that we can afford this insurance for our daughter. We don’t have to make the choice between buying food or insuring our daughter. We are really fucking lucky.
Edge of the American West points out some problems with Palin.
The BBC interviews Republicans. I’m very very embarrassed to share a country with the people interviewed: ["My belief in the Bible informs my politics."] Really embarrassed.
That’s how right-wing crap works. It’s not meant to advance or even partake of discourse; it’s meant to end it. One can argue the worth of Hillary’s policies or her voting record or her position on the war till the cows come home; but when she’s reduced to being a bitch, that pretty much ends the discussion. And when it’s as pervasive as it’s become in the past decade, its effects are paralyzingly toxic.
These numbers are particularly maddening given how debilitating the condition can be: Women with really bad vulvodynia can become unable to walk, wear pants, or sit without pain, and it can last for years or even for a lifetime. Imagine, by contrast, how the medical community would approach a disorder that made any friction unbearably painful for one in six penises.
Now I do speed read. Sometimes I miss the nuance of a sentence and need to go back because it is too complex to fly through so quickly. This one I staggered through several times not because of speed but out of sheer goggling.
Pharyngula reminds us we’re all going to hell.
Georgia: even more of a backwater than you thought.
Read a book, plant a tree. I need a lot of these.
You don’t believe in evolution. You just believe it.
To believe in something takes faith, trust, effort, strength. I need none of these things to believe evolution. It just is. My health is better because of medical research based on evolution. My genetic code is practically the same as a chimpanzee’s. My bipedal feet walk on an earth full of fossil missing links. And when my feet tire, those fossils fuel my car.
I was told that Australia was wider/larger than the continental US. But that’s not true! They’re just about the same size. The continental US is 8,080,464.25 km² and Australia is 7,617,930 km². Whew! I was worried about my knowledge of geography for a few days.
World’s best headline: Republicans Vote Against Moms; No Word Yet on Puppies, Kittens. And it just gets better. This reporter is angry, and rightfully so.
Neither is Boehner likely to be helped by a Senate ethics committee decision yesterday exonerating Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) over his use of the “D.C. Madam’s” call girls. The Senate cleared him because the prostitution occurred when he was in the House — and the House can’t punish him because he left for the Senate. The madam, meanwhile, killed herself by hanging last week.
Dear animal rights activists against all animal testing, you aren’t allowed to go to the doctor ever again.
You thought Jeremiah Wright was a problem? John McCain refuses to renounce a man he calls a moral compass even though he argues for the murder of millions of people, just because they’re Muslim.
Ok, so maybe this is the world’s best headline: Great tits cope well with warming.
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