Thought of the day

Posted on July 7, 2012 by Michael

To review: To review: Republicans ruin economy, lose power, intentionally stall the economy, regain some power, continue to intentionally stall the economy, ask for more power.

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Liars. Liars everywhere.

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Michael

To my count, I have come across four major liars in my blogging career. First up is Jack Hudson. He has the be the worst, but he also may be the dumbest. I’m not sure which part of his personality I dislike more. The next is Christopher Maloney. His lies were in the details of his writings and, to his credit, I suspect some of them were just a result of his lack of understanding of how the Internet works. Then we have Michael Hartwell. He’s a recent addition and generally isn’t guilty of being dishonest, but that doesn’t mean he’s really any better. And finally, we have braggart Roxeanne. She has mostly confined herself to misunderstanding and misrepresenting science, (did you know that because condom usage needs to improve even more in order to better combat infection rates, that means condoms are ineffective and we should advocate abstinence-only programs? Crazy, I know), but now she has ventured into plainly liar territory:

There is a reason why children are nine times as likely to be abused by their mother’s boyfriends or new husbands than by their own fathers, and why biological fathers are an impediment to abuse of children. Predators seek out the vulnerable.

Yet California, land of moonbats, decided to make it easier for non-biological “fathers” to access children. The Golden State is considering letting more than two adults have “parent” rights to a child. Now, any normal person knows that this is going to result in a lot of litigation and some serious trauma for the kid (at best) and sexual abuse (at worst), but the Left is more concerned with eliminating traditional family structures than with advancing the well-being of children. What this state has just told paedophiles is that it’s open season on little kids, and if the mother gets creeped out, said paedophile can sue to have visitation with her child. After all, the former boyfriend/ex-stepdad had a “bond” with that lovely young teen, and such a “bond” should be respected by our legal system.

Well. Isn’t that interesting. It’s like she isn’t even trying to spin her lies in a way that is even remotely plausible. Here is the actual purpose of the law:

[Representative Mark] Leno told ABCNews.com that he recognized a “problem” in the legal system in 2011 when an appellate court placed a girl in foster care when her legally married parents — two lesbians — could not care for her.

The child was taken into state custody when one of her mothers was jailed and the nonbiological mother was hospitalized.

The court did not have the authority to appoint the girl’s biological father, with whom she had a relationship, as a legal parent. That third parent could have “benefitted the well-being of the child,” said Leno.

In other words, two people can have a child, marry separate people at some point, and all four individuals can be given custodial rights. And unlike Roxeanne suggests/lies, all the parents would have to agree before anything could move forward. There is no way some ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend couldn’t sue for custody as a result of this law.

This bill would obviously help in same-sex situations, but I think it would more commonly be applied in cases of heterosexual divorce. That’s just basic statistics. (And even if that wasn’t the case, who cares? Gay couples form families, too.) Furthermore, this would do nothing to benefit pedophiles. That argument is patently absurd and hardly deserves a response. Roxeanne isn’t the shiniest penny in the fountain, but I think she’s just barely smart enough to know she was lying.

This is a good law. Plenty of children are in situations where there are three or four parents involved. At certain times, this can cause undue problems as a result of legal restrictions. That is, a clear authority figure with the child’s interest at heart – a biological parent’s spouse, for example – may be denied from caring for the child, such as we see from the article. That isn’t fair to anyone involved and is more a snafu in the law than anything. The only reason to oppose this is stubborn denial of reality.

Filed under: Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Thought of the day

Posted on July 4, 2012 by Michael

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

Andy Griffith was a swell guy

Posted on July 3, 2012 by Michael

And now he has died at the age of 86.

Filed under: News | Tagged: | Leave a comment »

Affordable Care Act: Romney campaign makes a decision

Posted on July 2, 2012 by Michael

Yesterday I wrote about the lack of choice Republicans were (and will continue) to make regarding how they describe the Supreme Court ruling on the individual mandate from the healthcare bill. They want to call it both a tax and a fine, but those are not the same thing – nor, more importantly, do they have the same ideological basis. If they call it a tax, okay. That fits their (false) rhetoric that President Obama has done anything to raise taxes. But if they call it a fine, that is because they believe it is anti-liberty to force people to buy something. The Romney campaign sees this and has made a choice:

A senior adviser to Mitt Romney appeared to undercut a central argument Republicans hope to use between now and the November election against President Obama — that although his signature health care reform law may be constitutional, it amounts to a tax.

In an appearance on MSNBC’s “Daily Rundown,” Romney strategist Eric Fehrnstrom was asked whether Romney agreed with last week’s Supreme Court ruling.

“The governor believes that what we put in place in Massachusetts was a penalty and he disagrees with the court’s ruling that the mandate was a tax,” Fehrnstrom said.

When pressed by host Chuck Todd about whether Romney supported calling the financial burden placed on Americans who choose not to buy health care “a penalty or a fee or a fine” rather than a tax, Fehrnstrom replied: “That’s correct.”

It’s interesting that they want to call Romneycare a penalty – it undermines his argument that he’s all about liberty and freedom and guns and tits – but it’s a clear choice (at least for now – I mean, this is Romney). Now we just have to see if other Republicans will follow suit.

Filed under: Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Higgs boson virtually discovered

Posted on July 2, 2012 by Michael

This is one of the cases where the circumstantial evidence is overwhelmingly convincing – the gun has smoke and fingerprints, we saw the murderer buy it, we saw him take it with him, we know he was at the scene, and we know he wanted to pull the trigger, but we didn’t actually see him fire the gun:

To the layman, the Higgs boson is the “God particle” and a key puzzle piece in the scientific explanation of the origin of the universe. Physicists around the globe—and perhaps elsewhere, given the size of the universe—have invested billions of dollars in research and have been hunting for the Higgs boson for decades.

Researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (or CERN) are expected to announce Wednesday that they have proof of its existence, reports The Associated Press.

The Higgs boson appeared 13.7 billion years ago in the chaos of the Big Bang and turned the flying debris into galaxies, stars and planets.

Its formal discovery, according to a broad scientific consensus, would be the greatest advance in knowledge of the universe in decades and a key to confirming the standard model of physics that explains what gives mass to matter and, by extension, how the universe was formed, according to the AP…

[S]cientists are in a bit of a quagmire, according to the AP. While they appear to have enough evidence to report the existence of the “God particle,” they still hedge on whether to report “a discovery.” It’s a fine line, indeed, but one that scientists will likely continue to debate.

“I agree that any reasonable outside observer would say, ‘It looks like a discovery,'” British theoretical physicist John Ellis, a professor at King’s College London who has worked at CERN since the 1970s, told The Associated Press. “We’ve discovered something which is consistent with being a Higgs.”

I’m actually not sure if my analogy does all this justice. They may be closer than any layman really knows. And since my whole thing is biology, I’m not going to bother trying to dissect it all. I will, however, be ready to post whatever great explanations I do find on this. (I’m look at you, Ethan Siegel.)

Filed under: Astronomy/Cosmology/Physics, News | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Is it a tax or a fine? You can’t have it both ways, Republicans.

Posted on July 1, 2012 by Michael

The Republican outrage to the Affordable Care Act prior to the Supreme Court ruling was primarily premised in the idea that it was a fine. That is, Republicans argued that by being fined for not having healthcare, they were being coerced into something. And, of course, that is inherently anti-liberty. That was the issue. Now, however, the Court has called the act a tax. Naturally, Republicans are pounding that phrase into the ground. It makes sense since President Obama hasn’t raised taxes, despite that being all we’ve heard for nearly four years. (In fact, he has lowered them.) They finally have the ammunition they want. (Except that the tax increases primarily go towards insurance companies, the wealthy, and certain other groups. The middle class isn’t terribly affected, and even for those that are, they only face a 1% increase.)

But this raises a serious problem. If this is a tax, then it cannot also be a fine. And if it isn’t a fine, it is not an attack on anyone’s liberty. (Unless someone is ready to argue that all taxes are anti-liberty, I suppose.) The Republicans need to make a choice here: They can call this a tax; They can call it a fine; They cannot call it both. Of course, I know they will not make that choice. They will continue using both lines of rhetoric – because honesty is hard, amirite? – but logically speaking, their hands are tied one way or the other.

Filed under: News, Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Advice to bad lawyers and people who become Internet famous

Posted on June 30, 2012 by Michael

Shortly after Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal mocked some shitty website for threatening to sue him for some silly reason, the lawyer for said site of shit, Charles Carreon, went on a rampage. He started saying all sorts of stupid stuff, like that he was going to sue a couple of charities because Inman was raising money for them out of spite for Carreon. This has naturally only given the Internet more reason to hate assholes. Now push has come to shove and a suit has actually been filed against Inman. He sums everything up in his opening statement:

Dear Charles Carreon,

You’re making things worse.

As someone who has had experience with attempts at intimidation via legal shenanigans, I am quite familiar with this line of thinking. I used to often write that my legal opponents, Christopher Maloney and his terrible lawyer Maeghan Maloney, could never make things better. The best they could ever do was not make things worse. By continuing to chirp, they would (and did) only make life all the shittier for themselves. I was entirely right. I think Charles Carreon would do well to understand that.

Filed under: Legal | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

Thought of the day

Posted on June 30, 2012 by Michael

Maine recently legalized fireworks. Given the fun it sounds like my neighbor is having and I am not, I’m not sure if I fully support this any longer.

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

5-4

Posted on June 28, 2012 by Michael

As always, we got rousing coverage from the cable news networks:

The Supreme Court upheld the individual insurance mandate of President Obama’s “Affordable Health Care Act” in a 5-4 decision on Thursday, sending cable news and Twitter into a frenzy.

Moments after the 193-page ruling was released by the court, several media outlets–including CNN and Fox News–erroneously reported on-air that the mandate had been struck down.

“BREAKING NEWS: INDIVIDUAL MANDATE STRUCK DOWN,” CNN’s on-screen scroll blared. “Supreme Court finds measure unconstitutional.”..

CNN, though, was not alone in its rush to report the news.

“Fox News was so eager to see the healthcare mandate fail they forgot to read past the 1st page of the ruling,” Jason Keath wrote, pointing to a screengrab of the network’s breaking news stumble.

Filed under: News | Tagged: , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

« Previous Page — Next Page »