In a recent controversy a shcool in Mississippi canceled the Prom because the bigots in the school administration did not want to allow a lesbian to attend with a female date or to wear a tuxedo. The cancellation was to prevent being taken to court by the ACLU, but now they are going to court regardless. Way to go ACLU – replace “lesbian” with black, Jew, Indian, or Amish and you can see how this is clearly discrimination and how it deserves it’s day in court. The move by the school admin is discrimination, and is bigotry. Parents in the Itawamba district need to reconsider what kind of education their children are getting in a district where exclusionary bigotry like this is supported by the school board.
From the article:
Jackson, MS– The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit against a Mississippi school board after a decision was made to cancel the high school prom. The Itawamba County School District’s refusal to change their policy on allowing same-sex dates to be admitted to the dance prompted their decision to cancel the prom altogether. The suit, filed in federal court on Thursday, March 11, 2010, contended the school board violated a student’s First Amendment right to free expression, according to information provided by USA Today.
The hard religious right’s bigotry for science, other religions, lifestyles, and races is like a frozen decay within the Republican party. Slowly and steadily getting worse until spring comes, the ice melts, and someone hoses the ugly muck off the walkway.
Bigots from the Religious right have canceled a school prom when they were challenged by a lesbian who wanted to bring her girl friend and who wanted to dress in a tuxedo. What kind of educators teach gay exclusion and bigotry?
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mark Potok details the rise in militia, patriot, and extremist groups last year. The factor that he misses in this video however is not the rise of these groups, but rather their wider acceptance. Mainstream center right and even right-right politicians of years past would never have spoken at a convention co-sponsored by groups like the Oathkeepers and John Birch Society as this year’s CPAC event was.
These radical right nutballs and dirtbags have always been out there, and Mark even mentions some of the outcomes of the past paranoia uprisings in the video, but they’ve never been accepted by the mainstream right like they have this past year. It’s highly disturbing that fear, paranoia, and angst have replaced leadership, direction, and principle on the right. It’s why I refuse to call myelf a conservative anymore because if Oathkeepers, the John Birch Society and what I saw at CPAC this year are what it means to be conservative, then I don’t want any part of it.
References for those who might not understand some of the Kookspiracy theories and groups mentioned in the video
The Turner Diaries (a book cited and read by many militia leaders and supremacist terrorists like Tim McVeigh)
You should also note that the 9/11 truthers are right in step with this kookspiracy surge, and that there are many crossovers such as Phillip Berg and others.
Lastly, here’s an example of one of the leech pundits, (also a truther) who makes his living feeding this paranoia. Lately you’ve seen him linked by mainstream right news sites like Drudge. His predecessor in the survivalist ’80’s was Howard Ruff — indeed you have to wonder why some of the new paranoia pundits haven’t been sued for plagiarism by the old school doom-criers, since most of the new doomsters are merely retreading old trash.
Bottom line: You have a lot more to worry about from Right wing Whackos like Oath Keepers or this “Operation Exodus” guy forming a police state or militia in your area than you do from President Obama and Fema camps. If the idea of un-elected and unappointed senile old farts with fifty cals thinking they are the law doesn’t bother you then I don’t know what will.
A new video from Peter Sinclair who outlines some of the very basic and elementary facts and proofs of man made global warming, and how they are supported.
I’ve known about man made global warming since the 1980’s, when I used to point it out as a good reason for increasing production of nuclear energy to the biomass and other alternative energy proponents in alt.sci.energy while arguing pro nuclear energy. It wasn’t a very convincing argument back then, and even while making it I thought we had a couple of centuries to get there. I would argue by saying that nuclear was inevitable because in a couple of centuries it was the only reasonable source and we would have to use it eventually anyway — why not start now? Not many bought it.
They weren’t buying it back then since at that point the left was highly populist and anti science. They would chant things like “Split wood, not Atoms!” and “The only physics I know is Ex-Lax” at university speeches when real scientists would try to point out that nuclear energy production wasn’t as dangerous as it was portrayed to be in “The China Syndrome”. That was a loosing battle back then when I watched Amory Lovins and crew shut down Rancho Seco as a large wave of anti-science and unreason swept over the left.
Democrat Bill Proxmire was attacking NASA and other science institutions at every opportunity, new wave cults were taking over the left, and even some secular humanists whom I highly respected were falling sway to anti-science forces for politically expedient reasons around nuclear non proliferation. Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov were not as supportive of increased nuclear energy production as they could have been, and joined with the left on that due to Reagan’s missile defense program among other things. Those were depressing times.
So here we are – thirty years later. We got the worst of outcomes from the left going populist and the right giving up for fiscal reasons – it was cheaper to burn coal. Meanwhile the Nuclear proliferation Djinn was out of the bottle even back then – Pakistan and India now have nuclear weapons, as does North Korea. Iran is on fast pace to get them as well. We also use more of the dirtiest source of power, coal, than ever before.
Politically the forces of populism that created this worst of both worlds scenario have flipped topsy-turvy – the left got a new generation of pro-science rebels and in the face of reality even old guard environmentalists like Patrick Moore who founded Greenpeace, and Stewart Brand of Whole Earth Catalog fame have converted to pro nuclear energy. Some defense oriented Democrats are even beginning to see sense in missile defenses shared with our allies and have put aside knee-jerk complaining about missile defense.
On the right, religious fundamentalists now rule the Republican roost and anti-science populism has now infested my party. So here comes my mea culpa — for political expediency and because I don’t agree with the approach of cap and trade, because I thought we had much more time, I’ve spoken out against the Anti-AGW movement.
My best attempt at convincing myself and others was back here, and as you can see from the strikeouts, and the other arguments since deflated many times, I didn’t do too great a job. You can even see me repeating denialist talking points in the comments, even though I was really trying to cut down on alarmism. Again, this was wrong.
If there were an article I could retract from my blog that would be the one. I can’t with any integrity just pull it however, I like truth best – so there it is, my guilty moment. Where I didn’t speak whole truths, where I omitted the fact that AGW is very real and measurable right now. It’s made me unhappy for a long time that I would subsume science to politics so easily, so consider this my confession and my attempt to make it right.
My stance on the issue still hasn’t changed much mind you – I think that the answer lies in high energy environmentalism. If we are to live on a clean planet then cheap and clean energy is the only reasonable means I see to getting there. I can’t support starving people to fight AGW, but I recognize we have to do something and quickly. We can’t wait another century as I had thought — we must start now.
No matter what the fellow at True Slant says you have to admire The Sandpit from the sheer amount of labor and love that went into it. Just because Bill likes the scenery chewing Snowstorm as an actor better than both Night and Day doesn’t mean that Coney Island is really better. I mean some people like William Shatner more than the whole cast of Firefly because it’s just so much easier to understand where Shatner is headed no matter what the scene calls for.
I still prefer The Sandpit but would others like it better if it had an occasional close up of someone’s tatts and some sidewalks and a rainstorm? Hard to say. Much more on how The Sandpit was made in this interview with the artist. More on Tilt shift lenses and process at Wikipedia.
There are a lot of synergies at work here – “A flicker and it’s gone” is sung as we see the night lit construction scene at ground zero, and for some others there are probably strange flash backs as different scenes take them back to chapters in Grand Theft Auto IV.
Tonight’s moon – these moon photos I post are pretty large, so when you click on the thumbnail to blow it up, try ctrl and the plus key together a few times to see the real definition.
In the mounting brouhaha over Marco Rubio’s personal expenses being charged to GOP credit cards Hot air has been fast to leap to the defense; after all the darling of the CPAC convention is a true fiscal conservative in the “Duke” Randall Cunningham and J.D. Hayworth mold…
Florida Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio charged grocery bills, car repairs and a number of other personal expenses to a GOP-issued credit card during his tenure as speaker of the state’s House, according to a report in the Miami Herald.
The take on this from Charles Crist, Rubio’s opponent here
Scientists believe that the strange formations of the Icepaw range that resemble a demonic lion’s face or J.D. Hayworth talking about birth certificates were actually created by a large meteor shower. In this aerial photo you can see the formations completely. Local Legend has it that the Spirit of Kasey created them as she chased the evil Squirrell god across the plains….
/ seriously this is a retouched photo of Kasey’s pawprints in ice on my patio…
Kudos are due Mark Levin for calling out the Bircher Co-Sponsorship at CPAC, and refusing to speak there because of it. Mark and I probably don’t see eye to eye on some things (Discovery Institute issues likely) but you have to point out when someone’s doing something right.
Of course we also have to point out when Huckabee and Palin are right in the same way…
That helps explain why the industry reacted so aggressively to the legislation. Among the moves it made:
— Resurrected annual fees.
Annual fees, common until about 10 years ago, have made a comeback. During the final three months of last year, 43 percent of new offers for credit cards contained annual fees, versus 25 percent in the same period a year earlier, according to Mintel International, which tracks marketing data. Several banks also added these fees to existing accounts. One example: Many Citigroup customers will start paying a $60 annual fee on April 1.
— Created new fees and raised old ones.
These include a $1 processing fee for paper statements for cards issued by stores such as Victoria’s Secret and Ann Taylor. Another example is a $19 inactivity fee Fifth Third Bank now charges customers who haven’t used their card for six months.
Other banks increased existing fees. JPMorgan Chase, for instance raised the cost of balance transfers from one card to another to 5 percent of the transfer from 3 percent.
— Raised interest rates.
The average rate offered for a new card climbed to 13.6 percent last week, from 10.7 percent during the same week a year ago — meaning cardholders had to pay almost 30 percent more in interest, according to Bankrate.com.
For millions of other accounts, variable interest rates that can rise with the market replaced fixed rates. The Fed is expected to start raising its benchmark interest rates later this year, which would likely trigger an increase on those cards.
Besides making credit more expensive, banks also made it harder to get and keep credit cards. One big reason: Since the financial meltdown, many credit card issuers have been trying to reduce risk.
“We can’t keep on being mired in the same old stale arguments between the left and the right.” This is all too true – we have to have cheap clean safe energy in plenty if we are to cope with the problems of our future.
Once again I have woken early on a rain dark morn while a distant train blares it’s horn across the plains as it hauls its hundreds of carloads of coal to the reactor for burning. This time I’m not pondering mortality but rather the depths of depravity that my political party has sunk to.
I watched bits and pieces of CPAC over the past few days in alternating bouts of despair and disgust. This is not the Republican party of the past, where people were pro capitalism, pro defense, and pro-liberty but generally minded their own business otherwise. This is the barking ugly underbelly – with Birchers invited openly, and even rumors that Nick Griffin of the openly Supremacist BNP was going to attend. (you can find reference to those unsubstantiated rumors at Stormfront, Amren, and in a press release from the newly formed “Sons of Liberty” at MSU – I refuse to link to those batshit sewers of hate and paranoia – if you don’t believe dig yourself, there are enough keywords in this parenthesized section to find what I’m referring to through Google easily enough.)
I’ve already spoken about what I think of politicians who would speak at this forum here , and here, but now it’s time to talk about the pudding head pundits who appeared. I watched Glen Beck play Kermit the doomsayer, and I watched him hearken back to one of our greatest presidents while trashing other great Republicans in direct opposition to Reagan’s dictum of never speaking ill of another Republican. Meanwhile Andrew Breitbart brayed in the lobby still fending off the accusations against him and his Alinksy-Right political operative, James O’Keefe. The Oil and Coal lobbies were certainly well represented on the Global warming panel, but reason and science were certainly absent as one courageous questioner from the audience had the temerity to point out.
Early on in the conference Michelle Malkin was congratulated over the sale of Hot Air to Salem, and now there’s few voices on the right who are not owned lock stock and barrel by the religious right. This is why you see Jerome Corsi and the whirled nuts daily crowd widely accepted while the other right wing blogs make faint disclaimers to the general press (wink wink, nudge nudge.) This is why you see the nativist Vdare and Birchers accepted with open arms, and this is why you saw Glen Beck skate along the edge of the New World Order conspiracy theory chasm at several points during his speech. The fundamentalist right loves that stuff. When you look at Beck you have to say “There but for the grace of a bigger microphone and a bit of polish goes Alex Jones…” Then when you look at one of the spokespeople for Young Americans for Freedom, Ryan Sorba, you have to say “WTF, is that a member of Westboro Baptist?” At some point you have to ask yourself “if Glen Beck, Ryan Sorba, and James O’Keefe represent the future of the Republican party, what kind of debacle are we headed for?”
I’ve lived through dim times for the Republicans before. It was a disheartening day when political operatives nick-named “The Plumbers” tarnished the whole party and caused the resignation of a sitting Republican President. It was dark times when the only widely heard voices on the right were populist piss and vinegar pundits like Joe Pyne, and his obverse, the overly erudite William F. Buckley who turned average Americans off. I fear we are headed to those days again as I look at the plumbers who are now widely embraced by the right, and the Tit for Tat tu quoque instead of direction and principle from the major outlets of the right. I see those days coming again as I watch Christians lie for the cause and throw principles and morals overboard in search of ends that justify their evil means.
It doesn’t phase me much, because I know that truth does win out over time and the American public will see through phonies like these eventually – for these hypocrite holy and culture warriors cannot help themselves from going many steps too far, and their support and funding will be drying up over the next few years since the fully fundamentalist loons are truly a dying demographic. At some point in the next decade or two the old curmudgeons will all be dead, and there’s going to be as many pundits on the right who wished they hadn’t destroyed all of their credibility during this period as there are people on the left regretting that tattoo they got. Personally although I choose neither, I’d rather have tattoo regret than to know my life was one big lie after another.
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