This is retarded

Posted on February 2, 2010 by Michael

Rahm Emanuel recently said this.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Emanuel, exasperated upon learning that liberal special-interest groups were planning to run ads against conservative Democrats not supportive of health care reform, blasted the plan as “f—— retarded” over the summer.

This prompted Sarah Palin, that beacon of hope for morons everywhere, to say this.

In a post titled “Are You Capable of Decency, Rahm Emanuel?,” Palin wrote, “Just as we’d be appalled if any public figure of Rahm’s stature ever used the ‘N-word’ or other such inappropriate language, Rahm’s slur on all God’s children with cognitive and developmental disabilities — and the people who love them — is unacceptable,” adding, “it’s heartbreaking.”

I’m always amazed when I see people trying to make such tenuous connections. The reality is that the only thing that connects “retard” and racial slurs is that both are meant to be offensive. Why each one is offensive is another thing.

“Nigger” is meant to disparage a person based upon race as if there is something inherently negative about being a certain color. Since reasonable people tend to agree that skin color has no normative value, the word can be rejected because it is offensive in a wide array of contexts (though not when specifically defined). “Retard” and its derivatives, on the other hand, are meant to disparage a person for saying or doing something unintelligent, as if there is something inherently negative about not being smart. Reasonable people tend to agree that there is something negative about a lack of intelligence.*

There is, however, a narrow band of usage where “retard” might be considered legitimately offensive to people who are actually retarded. This would be when one uses the term to reference the goodness or general value of a person. Emanuel didn’t do this, instead referencing the quality of the idea of weakening the Democratic party with the goal of passing healthcare. (And he’s right – weaken the Democrats and who do these people think will take power?)

I hate political sensitivity at the expense of linguistics.

*Boy! I can’t wait for the first Clever Carl who disagrees with me to come by and turn this one around on me! Internet. Scoff.

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From the Leader of the New Creationists

Posted on November 20, 2009 by Michael

Official New Creationists Newsletter

Fellow New Creationists, our strength to undermine science grows stronger every day!

As you know, I have just released my version of events in a new book. In this New Creationist document, I distance myself -and thus our ultimate goals – from “wild-eyed fundamentalists”. I stake claim to a position of “nuance”. I have taken a fundamental step in achieving the plan laid out in our mission statement; I have shown just how easy it is to Reach a Middle Ground.

In lieu of our stated first step to use Christian scientists to espouse our coy creationism, I have put myself in the forefront of political and media life to carry out this goal. I have spoken of my upbringing by a father who was a science teacher. This, fellows, is what the American people want. I have suggested my background makes me sympathetic to science. What I say must be viewed as a reasonable Middle Ground; I hate not science (as the public believes) yet I do not shy from entering theology into the discussion. QED.

As is par for the course, I have advocated “teaching both sides”, a key component in Reaching a Middle Ground, but I have furthered our cause by bringing a classic bait-and-switch back into the game. “Microevolution” is perfectly acceptable to all New Creationists. How can we reject it? We can’t. And so we actually embrace it. We are so amiable to science that we have taken the time to investigate – through Academic Freedom, no doubt – the important distinctions in biology. We have concluded (for the sake of the public’s eye) a most reasonable Middle Ground position. “Macroevolution” is simply the stuff of those religious New Atheists. They haven’t bothered to adopt a position as “nuanced” as ours.

We are the New Creationists.

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Bragging about stupidity

Posted on September 6, 2009 by Michael

Steven Anderson is some crazy, religious windbag. That doesn’t really narrow the field, I know, but his claim to fame is publicly praying for Obama’s death by natural causes.

But that’s not what’s interesting about him. That belief sets him apart from much of mainstream Christianity (though the Bible and theology offer no methods to internally condemn his interpretation of God’s will). What’s interesting is what holds him close to the mainstream Bible thumpers. Of course there are the usual positions: he hates abortion, liberalism (which is just reality), and – of course – da gays. But then there’s this subtle piece that gets ignored far too much.

Pastor Anderson holds no college degree but has well over 100 chapters of the Bible committed to memory, including almost half of the New Testament.

Today, most Baptist churches are started by Bible Colleges. However, the Bible makes it clear that the church is the pillar and ground of the truth, not a school. Faithful Word Baptist Church is a totally independent Baptist church, and Pastor Anderson was sent out by a totally independent Baptist church to start it the old-fashioned way by knocking doors and winning souls to Christ. This is the scriptural method.

There isn’t really much reason to talk about not having a college degree. There shouldn’t be any pride in that. But for Christians and conservatives, it’s a point on which they puff their chests. Anderson is actually bragging about having no degree. He’s proud that he’s doing it “the old-fashioned way”, which is through willful ignorance. This should be roundly condemned.

Being proud of having a lack of education or feeling a sense of victory at criticizing intelligent people for using big, scary, intelligent words is why people like Larry the Cable Guy have been successful. (It certainly isn’t because he’s funny.) But this allegiance to stupidity is a blight on U.S. politics, too. Sarah Palin almost got elected to a national office. She’s one of the most genuinely stupid people to be given a voice. Her failure to think critically and to keep up with the clearly smarter people on the left is what lifted her up so high. Her simplicity appealed to the high number of simple people in the U.S. Bobby Jindal will probably become a big star for the same reason soon.

It’s pride in stupidity that keeps the idea that faith is a virtue alive. It’s pathetic.

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All it takes to refute something…

Posted on June 3, 2009 by Michael

…is for some journalist to say you did. According to the headline on that article, James Perloff refuted evolution at some half-baked meeting.

Perloff tried to draw parallels throughout history, attempting to connect individuals such as Andrew Carnegie, Karl Marx, Josef Stalin and Adolph Hitler with the teachings and rationales of Charles Darwin. He also told of his own life’s inner conflict, saying he was briefly turned into an atheist at a young age due to Darwin’s theory.

Perloff went on to say, “Survival of the fittest does not explain arrival of the fittest,” and that, “[the theory of] evolution is just speculation on the past and should not been seen as scientific fact.”

There you go. EVILution has been defeated. Good job, Perloff. Honestly. It should be clear to everyone. If someone can make bogus, tinsel thin connections between ideas and people Real America loathes, then the idea must be false. Just pretend that logical fallacies don’t exist and the argument is air-tight.

The event was held in front of a small gathering and was kicked off with a prayer along with the Pledge of Allegiance led by Harold Shurtleff of West Roxbury, regional field director for the John Birch Society.

I remember as a very young kid playing Street Fighter. When the levels got too hard or my older brother beat me a bunch of times in a row, I’d start up a game just by myself. I would have a Player 2 set up, but no one was controlling it. I’d just wail all my 32 bits on that character. It made me feel good. Does anyone get the feeling that conservatives have the same frustration? I mean, the exact same frustration – one born out of immaturity and a lack of rationale. These people are kicking and screaming their prayers and flag-based prayers all over the place because it makes them feel good. Of course, I was a child when I did it. What excuse do these people have? There are more examples.

Take Sean Hannity. He’s a huge idiot. (I heard him say in the middle of a broadcast, and I paraphrase, “…that isn’t an arrogant statement. America saved the world from Totalitarianism. It did this multiple times. The world has us to thank. That isn’t an arrogant statement.”) He refuses to refer to Obama as “President Obama” in virtually every instance. He insists on calling him “The Annointed One”, or “The One” for short. You can feel his anger and immature frustration. People very rarely identify whining correctly (they tend to conflate it with active disagreement). This is not one of those cases. Sean Hannity and the new breed of ultra-radical conservatives are big, fat whiners.

Conservapedia is another great example of a bunch of crybabies. Their page on evolution (which is just a page on creationism) has a section titled “Creation Scientists Tend to Win the Creation-Evolution Debates“. I kid you not. This is their version of 32-bit wailing. They absolutely cannot win. Rather than to accept reality, they set up these conversations in their own heads where they win every time. Sean Hannity does it. John McCain did it. Dubya definitely did it. This is the path of conservatives in America. Yell and whine and if that doesn’t work, beat the crap out of Blanka.

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Glenn Beck is such a huge idiot

Posted on May 4, 2009 by Michael

I, for whatever inane reason, find myself listening to conservat…sorry, fair and balanced news. From what I gather, the station is a combination of FOX Noise radio and a local conservative station, probably a FOX affiliate. It basically consists of four shows: Hannity, Beck, Carr, and some automotive show for whatever strange reason. Beck has the most charisma, so I find listening to his outrageous opinions to be the most tolerable. UPDATE: It turns out they’re all intolerable. And Carr has more charisma.

I was listening to the jackass last night and he was going on about science – no doubt, Ben Stein’s definition of science. This is what he said (paraphrased).

We all know Earth didn’t just come into existence by magic by some invisible guy in the sky! No! It was when two rocks collided that Earth was created!

The sarcasm dripped.

Surely what Beck was referencing was the well-established fact of the accretion process. Apparently this is just too absurd for the man. From what I can tell, the guy has some smarts about him. He managed to attend Yale shortly before dropping out. Really, that’s the problem. A stupid creationist isn’t as common as one might think; what we’re seeing are ignorant creationists. These people, for whatever reason, refuse to educate themselves. That in itself is stupid, but their lack of knowledge is ignorance. It’s no crime, but these people shouldn’t be getting talk shows and Vice Presidential nominations.

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Stop it, Texas

Posted on March 19, 2009 by Michael

From having a creationist-dentist on the Board of Education to churning out the likes of Dubya* (a prime example of why abortion should be legal) to being an all-around bag of assholes, Texas has a lot against it. State Rep. Leo Berman (R-Tyler) is just another mook on the merry-go-round.

A Texas legislator is waging a war of biblical proportions against the science and education communities in the Lone Star State as he fights for a bill that would allow a private school that teaches creationism to grant a Master of Science degree in the subject.

State Rep. Leo Berman (R-Tyler) proposed House Bill 2800 when he learned that The Institute for Creation Research (ICR), a private institution that specializes in the education and research of biblical creationism, was not able to receive a certificate of authority from Texas’ Higher Education Coordinating Board to grant Master of Science degrees.

Berman’s bill would allow private, non-profit educational institutions to be exempt from the board’s authority.

That’s exactly what creationists need to do. It’s sad, really. In order to grant their pretend-science degrees, they need to be exempt from any standards or realities. It’s the entire basis of the creationist life.

“I don’t believe I came from a salamander that crawled out of a swamp millions of years ago,” Berman told FOXNews.com. “I do believe in creationism. I do believe there are gaps in evolution.

Good, Leo. I don’t believe I came from a salamander either. But the reason – and it’s a real kicker – I don’t believe that is because I’m not fucking stupid.

“But when you ask someone who believes in evolution, if you ask one of the elitists who believes in evolution about the gaps, they’ll tell you that the debate is over, that there is no debate, evolution is the thing, it’s the only way to go.”

Still with this “elitist” stuff? It seems like that’s just code for “people who aren’t as dumb as Sarah Palin”. But ya know, maybe those silly conservatives are on to something. Who wants “elitists” around anyway? They make us feel inferior and force us to appreciate that there are people better at things and more knowledgable than we are. I say do away with all the elitists. The NBA? Get rid of Paul Pierce. The NHL? Get rid of Zdeno Chara. The NFL? Screw Tom Brady. The MLB doesn’t need David Ortiz. Do away with them all.** And in the colleges and universities? Same policy. I want my education to be as good as an over-40 league game of softball played on a rocky, unpainted field that has a ratty glove standing in for third base.

The ICR issued a statement affirming that it is a legitimate educational institute that employs credentialed Ph.D. scientists from around the country. It insisted that the “THECB [Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board] has acted discriminatorily against the ICR’s application both in process and in the substance of fact,” and it said “THECB allowed influence of evolution-biased lobbying efforts to influence process and outcome.”

Good. I like my education biased toward reality.

Berman sees the board’s decision to deny ICR certification as a double standard.

“If a school’s teaching all evolution, would that be a balanced education?” he asked. “So it’s the same thing on both ends of the stick.”

This presumes that teaching creationism qualifies as education. If it does, teaching Alice in Wonderland as fact qualifies as well.

_____

*Yes, he was born in Connecticut.
**Yes, I have a Boston sports bias.

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More news from John Lott

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Michael

John Lott has an article up attacking Ashley Judd. She does not favor aerial hunting of wolves and is part of an organization that is active against what they say are practice encouraged by Sarah Palin up in Alaska.

I, frankly, don’t give a damn. It’s an uninteresting issue. John Lott, on the other hand, does care. His interests are of a lesser quality, it seems.

Yet, sometimes the emotional response isn’t the most responsible one. In this case, hunting is done to keep animals from dying from starvation and to maintain higher quality populations. The problem is that in the wild, animal populations go through what are called “boom and crash” cycles – animal populations expand to consume the available food supplies and when those are exhausted, the animals starve and the populations crash. Starvation also makes the animals more susceptible to disease. Hunters stabilize populations, and keep those problems from recurring.

It’s probably safe to assume Johnny is just getting his information from the official website of Alaska, which he cites in his article. Okay, dandy. Population control is done for a good reason. That isn’t Judd’s argument, but whatever. It’s a boring issue. I’m just giving you the jist of it. Next.

As it is, since 1972, the federal government has heavily regulated aerial hunting of animals – only allowing it for predators by government employees or licensed hunters and even then, contrary to last year’s campaign ads and Judd’s latest, animals can’t be shot from the air. While the planes can be used to find and track or chase the wolves, the wolves can only be shot by hunters who are on the ground. The pictures used in the ads inaccurately depict the policies that have been in effect for the last 37 years.

This isn’t so misleading, but it is inaccurate. It is illegal and the act does state that no person is allowed to hunt by aircraft. However, after stating that it is illegal, the act also says this:

“This section shall not apply any person if such person is employed by, or is an authorized agent of or is operating under a license of permit of, any State or the United States to administer or protect or aid in the administration or protection of land, water, wildlife, livestock, domesticated animals, human life, or crops, and each such person operating under a license or permit shall report to the applicable issuing authority each calendar quarter the number and type of animals so taken.”

Clearly, the act does not only state “animals can’t be shot from the air”. Relatively minor issue, but still worth noting. Given the fact of notability, I let Johnny know this. You see, we’re dear friends on Facebook and Johnny posted the link to his article on his status. I left him a comment telling him that he should be more accurate. I also responded to this from the end of the article:

Possibly the most telling point of Judd’s ad is that the ad first mentions Sarah Palin and not the wolves. But how often are fundraising efforts directed against the losing candidates in recent national elections? Never? The ad probably says more about Democrats still viewing Palin as a credible future opponent than it does about the Defenders of the Wildlife and Judd’s inaccurate claims about hunting.

I informed John that Ashley Judd and her wildlife organization are not representative of Democrats. He left a response to my point about the act, telling me that it is clear in what it says. I told him I agree and posted the section concerning the exceptions to the law.

So what was Johnny’s response?

…

No, he didn’t leave three dots. And it wasn’t simply nothing. I presume he wrote something. Or maybe he deleted everything. No one likes to be embarrassed afterall. Of course, I cannot actually confirm any of this. You see, Johnny and I are no longer friends. Our promise to be BFFs has been broken. WHY, JOHNNY! WHY!

Indeed, embarrass John Lott by simply reading a file to which he originally linked and he ain’t nobody’s BFF.

BFFs no more

BFFs no more

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

Watch out for this guy

Posted on November 12, 2008 by Michael

Bobby Jindal is currently the governor of Louisiana. There’s been quite a bit of talk about him making a run for the presidency in 2012. Aside from being a Republican and thus inherently wrong a vast majority of the time, he is also known to support creationism. He has come out in support of intelligent design. Worse yet, he’s anti-science when it comes to just about everything else that contradicts his distorted view of reality.

Gov. Bobby Jindal attracted national attention and strongly worded advice about how he should deal with the Louisiana Science Education Act.

Jindal ignored those calling for a veto and this week signed the law that will allow local school boards to approve supplemental materials for public school science classes as they discuss evolution, cloning and global warming.

…

Political observers said Jindal’s signature will please one of his key local constituencies: conservative Protestants in north Louisiana.

Doesn’t it seem strange that the bill focuses on a few issues with which conservatives object? Actually, no. It isn’t strange at all. This is a man that is willing to sacrifice quality science education for his own selfish political ambitions. He signed a bill which undermines education in biology and on the climate, among other issues. He hates science. He loves getting backward-thinking hick votes.

Think of Sarah Palin with a funny name and a penis.

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