This one needs no introduction or comment:
Yearly Archives: 2011
Question: When is Rebecca Watson going to learn to shut up?
De-dum dum…..
Now THAT was funny. Unlike Kurt Metzger. Kurt has suggested that women can avoid feeling sexualized by sticking to purdah. That’s when a woman covers herself from head to toe, inclusively, with cloth. It is a practice of patrarchical, misogynist societies in which women are totally controlled by men, often subject to brutal violence, and even killed for not knowing when to shut up or breaking barbaric and absurd rules. Kurt Metzger is a comedian, so what he said can be taken as a joke. Whether or not it can be taken as funny is an otter matter.
Continue reading Question: When is Rebecca Watson going to learn to shut up?
Great Moments in Presidential Debates: 1988
This is one of my favorites and to me one of the most frustrating moments in American politics. I was in the Congo at the time so only heard about this when I got back.
A little background on my thinking on this one.
Continue reading Great Moments in Presidential Debates: 1988
“AYN RAND’s timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice comes to life…”
Rebecca Watson pointed this out in a snork just now and I had to share.
The movie “Atlas Shrugged” was apparently made (remade, yes?) recently and the DVD is just out. But there is an error on the cover of the DVD that is sufficiently outrageous, according to the film’s producers, to require a full recall of the DVD and a change in company policy to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. Continue reading “AYN RAND’s timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice comes to life…”
Great Moments in Debate History: 1984
Skip to about 1 hour 4 minutes to watch a classic Reagan Moment (the moment is at about 1:06)
Not very impressive, but apparently people noticed. In the following, go right to the end, about 1 hour 23 minutes :
That Pacific Coast Highway bit is said to be irrelevant and rambling, but actually I thin it’s the best thing Reagan ever said. And subsequently ignored.
New Bird Book: Birds of North America and Greenland
Face it. Half the time … most of the time, really … you use your Peterson (or some other favorite “field guide”) as a checklist. You see a bird and you pretty much know in your head what it is, but you need to look it up to see what the three or four similar ducks or woodpeckers or whatever are in your area in order to be sure that it is a Common Merganser or a Red Headed Woodpecker or whatever. All you need is a basic picture (drawing preferred for this sort of thing) the names of the birds and basic range maps.
Continue reading New Bird Book: Birds of North America and Greenland
Great Moments in Debate History: 1976
Western Browsing Rhino Is No More
This refers to a subspecies of “Black Rhino” also known as the “browsing rhino.”
The Western Black Rhino of Africa was declared officially extinct Thursday by a leading conservation group.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature said that two other subspecies of rhinoceros were close to meeting the same fate.
The Northern White Rhino of central Africa is now “possibly extinct” in the wild and the Javan Rhino “probably extinct” in Vietnam, after poachers killed the last animal there in 2010.
A small but declining population survives on the Indonesian island of Java.
Black rhinos are fairly aggressive towards humans. I knew one who was hand reared and very friendly … you could and feed it and pet it and stuff. It lived at a non-profit/private reserve and tourists could park in the nearby lot and go over and see this rhino, as well as a white rhino also hand reared.
Last time I was there both rhinos were gone. The white rhino had been released into the wild and had started her own family. Here’s a picture I took of her when I caught up to her. (Which wasn’t hard, white rhinos are easy to find since they like open country where grass grows.)
The black rhino had been shot. One day he unexpectedly burst through the fence and went on a rampage. He didn’t hurt anyone but he did damage all the cars in the parking lot.
Here is his picture from when he was still alive.
Radar Movie of Asteroid 2005 YU55
No More No More Taxes?
Republican House members are increasingly separating themselves from Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform, the interest group he leads. Specifically they’re disconnecting from ATR’s pledge to oppose any tax increase, The Hill reports.
While some congressmen signed the pledge recently, others did so years ago. Norquist began the pledge in 1986. ATR cites 238 House signers of its Taxpayer Protection Pledge, but several House Republicans accuse the group of being underhanded about it and want to remove their names from the list.
On its Internet display of the pledge’s signers, which includes all but six House Republicans, Americans for Tax Reform includes several congressmen who say they refused to sign it in last year’s election campaigns.
“I haven’t signed it since 1994,” Rep. Steven LaTourette
Read more on Newsmax.com: House GOP To Norquist: Our Tax Pledge Expired
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama’s Re-Election? Vote Here Now!…
Religious Right Reacts To DOMA Repeal Vote
Yesterday, the Respect for Marriage Act, legislation that will repeal the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act, passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on a 10-8 vote, naturally spurring outrage among Religious Right activists. The vote was not a surprise to conservative groups, who told activists to be ready to fight the bill on the floor of the Senate.
Focus on the Family’s political arm CitizenLink blasted the “ironically labeled the ‘Respect for Marriage Act’” and the Thomas More Society warned of the “great legal problems, great confusion” and the “actual human beings who will be hurt” if DOMA is no more.
Family Research Council president Tony Perkins told activists that if the Respect for Marriage Act passes….
What? Then what? Oh … something about your taxes, of course
There is a question about climate change from a gentleman in the fourth row.
He introduces himself as Richard Rothschild. He tells the crowd that he ran for county commissioner in Maryland’s Carroll County because he had come to the conclusion that policies to combat global warming were actually “an attack on middle-class American capitalism.” His question for the panelists, gathered in a Washington, DC, Marriott Hotel in late June, is this: “To what extent is this entire movement simply a green Trojan horse, whose belly is full with red Marxist socioeconomic doctrine?”
Here at the Heartland Institute’s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change, the premier gathering for those dedicated to denying the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is warming the planet, this qualifies as a rhetorical question….
Why Is Atheism a Bigger Obstacle to Political Office Than Mormonism?
” … A 1999 Gallup poll asked Americans whether they would vote for a well-qualified presidential candidate of their own party who happened to belong to one of the following groups: Catholic, Jewish, Baptist, Mormon, black, woman, gay, or atheist. Only 49 percent of Americans said they would vote for an atheist candidate, by far the lowest percentage of all the groups. By contrast, 79 percent said they would vote for a Mormon, and even 59 percent said they would vote for a gay candidate. All the other categories had better than 90 percent agreement.
In 2007, Gallup asked the same question again. In this more recent poll, Mormons’ popularity dropped to 72 percent, but again, the only category that a majority of voters refused to even consider was atheists. … “
at AlerNet
Penn State
A few items.
Does Penn State Actively Condone The Rape Of Children?
And Jon Stewart: Continue reading Penn State
Happy Veterans Day
Hat Tip: Molly