Bill O and the tides

Happy new year, everyone. And man, this year is already off to a good start!

Yes, it seems that Bill O’Reilly is trying to improve ratings on his show by appealing to a certain segment of today’s hip youth: ICP fans. Keen to play off of their lack of knowledge on how magnets work – and more importantly, their mistrust of scientists – BillO tried to prove God exists through logic:

I’ll tell you why [religion’s] not a scam. In my opinion, all right? Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that. You can explain why  the tide goes in… #

Surely science cannot explain the tides! Except for that whole moon thing. But you can’t trust the scientists.

January 6th, 2011 - Posted in politics, stupidity |

Strange bedfellows

Politics have seriously gone off the deep end in the last week or so. Obama has capitulated to the Republicans by extending the Bush-era tax cuts, but also stacking on his own for the middle class. I don’t really have an opinion on this, though I’m mildly concerned how the government is going to take in any money. But whatever!

Anyway. The backlash against the president has been, well, crazy. There were a whole lot of posts on DailyKos about how the president sold them out, how he’s a traitor and a turncoat, and that he’s all noise. One particularly hilarious post was written by someone who unsubscribed from the Organizing for America mailing list, and then proceeded to weep about it. It’s true that some senators and representatives have been rather upset about the president as well, but they’re keeping it in line a little bit better.

The thing I find funniest of all is that opposition to the tax cuts bill comes from two very different groups: the progressives, and the teabaggers. Yes, apparently the teabaggers also oppose the bill, though for different reasons. I can only imagine what’s going through the mind of the crying unsubscribe guy when he reads that article – and he will, because it’s at the top of dKos right now. Must be a strange feeling to be united in a front with your mortal enemy. But really, what does that say about the viewpoints of the two respective groups?

I’ve looked at dKos at least once a day for roughly five years or so, and it’s very interesting to me how it’s melted down since then. The actual rhetoric there is gone; anyone who dissents from the perceived majority opinion is downvoted pretty hard. Actually, there’s been an uptick in the number of flounce posts (referred to there as GBCW, goodbye cruel world) written by more moderate people who basically think that the site has really lost the plot. An article titled Is Barack Obama Stupid? made it to the Recommended list rather quickly the other day, though the author received a huge number of downvotes for the title – not the content. That doesn’t change the fact that it made it to the recommended list in the first place.

Personally, these days I find ThinkProgress and Little Green Footballs to be among the more sane sites out there. Strange times indeed.

December 9th, 2010 - Posted in politics |

Oh come on Democrats, this should be easy

Two reports came out today that I think need to be emphasized. I really do wish the Democrats would start fighting back harder rather than just rolling over and taking it, but what can you do.

The first is that 45 senators voted to block a bill that would promote less outsourcing. Now yes, five of them are Democrats (actually four, and whatever Joe Lieberman is) but still. These are people who are okay with taking jobs away from Americans. If that doesn’t scream “I’m paid off by big business” then I don’t know what does. There’s no way those senators are voting in the best interests of their constituents. And in those states where those senators are from, why can’t the Dems run ads saying “Senator X is okay with taking away your jobs and keeping unemployment high”? Just repeat that statement over and over ’til you win.

Number two – and this one is considerably more disturbing, I think – is that 112 78 of the GOP candidates running in November are against abortion at any time. That includes rape, incest, and cases when the pregnancy endangers the mother. One hundred and twelve. That is… absolutely staggering, and horrendously appalling. How you can be that cruel is beyond me. And don’t give me this “it’s God’s plan for us” bullshit – your Christian god isn’t nearly that cruel. I also find it hard to understand how the GOP/teabaggers’ claims of less government also translates to harsher laws, but whatever. Here’s another place where the Democrats should just spam an ad saying “Candidate Y is against abortion even if a person is raped”.

Just being louder about how far right these people are is bound to scare the moderates in the GOP. At best those people will vote Democrat, and at worst they’ll just not vote overall.

Seriously, Democratic Party, I really hope you’re reading this post. (Probably aren’t, though.) There is no reason why we should lose control to these people who have quite clearly gone off the deep end.

(update on oct 2: LGF originally reported 112, but rawstory looked into it and showed it was 78. so updated.)

September 28th, 2010 - Posted in politics |

Bring it on home, Westboro!

Yes, everyone has heard that the asshole who was going to hold a Quran book burning has decided to cancel, as long as the imam that’s behind the community center near Ground Zero moves the center’s location. Now the guy says he won’t move and blah blah, they’re going to have a meeting, whatever. Honestly it seems like blackmail to me: either you move the center, or we burn the Quran. Maybe we should issue something like that to the Tea Party. Disband forever, or we’ll set some crosses on fire. … Then again, maybe not.

Anyway. Where one crazy person disengaged, another crazy has stepped up to fill the void. Westboro Baptist Church, my favorite group of people of all time, will burn the Quran instead. According to one of their blogs (I won’t link to it because they don’t deserve the clickthroughs):

The Westboro Baptist Church will burn the Quran and doomed-american flag on 9/11/2010.

The false prophet Terry Jones caved-like all false prophets do, and like we told you he would.

We will burn your Quran on 9/11/10 to tell the world that the Muslims are the servants of God-and they will bring the final affliction to Israel and the Jews according to the promises of God.  … Meanwhile we will also burn the flag of this doomed rebellious disobedient nation of proud sinners.  While you sissy brats browbeat and jockey with the false prophet Terry Jones-pretending like the lives of those soldiers are your political and personal pawns-we will tell you the truth.

Now here’s the conundrum. They’re going to simultaneously burn the Quran and the American flag. Crazy Christians were going to burn the Quran, and crazy Muslims burn the American flag. Crazy teabaggers who hate Muslims want to see the Quran desecrated, but they’ll have to do it while watching their flag be desecrated – and people who want to see the American flag in flames will have to do it at the risk of watching their own holy book burn. It’s so crazy!

Actually, I have to commend Westboro for achieving what seems to be rather impossible: somehow pissing off everyone at once. At the same time, they’ve also made it easier to write them off – hell, most of us have already acknowledged that they’re batshit crazy. So will enemies join forces against a common threat? The heat will be on!

September 9th, 2010 - Posted in essays, politics |

To anti-Park51 Fox News watchers

Are you against Park51, the new Muslim community center in lower Manhattan? And do you watch a lot of Fox News? Then this post is for you.

Al-Waleed bin Talal is a Saudi prince. He’s also the second largest shareholder of News Corp, the guys behind Fox News. And guess what? He has donated more than $300,000 towards the community center.

Yes, that’s right. Those guys you’ve been watching who are complaining about the community center are also being funded by someone who is giving money to that community center. If that’s not hypocrisy, I don’t know what is.

Look, I know you like your Fox News. But I think you have to admit that there’s something really wrong here. And I think you have to make a choice: ignore the hypocrisy and keep tuning into Fox News, knowing that you’re silently accepting it; or you can stop watching and go find a news organization that doesn’t talk out of both sides of their mouth. The choice is yours.

8/24 Update: I think Jon Stewart said it best:

If we want to cut off funding to the terror mosque, we must, together as a nation, stop watching Fox.

August 22nd, 2010 - Posted in politics |

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Hey there. I'm a web developer who works and lives in New York City.