Month: May 2016

 
From Max’s Dad:

If you can’t smell the sulfur coming off that photo get your smelling checked. As Bob Dole once said its evil eviler and evilest or something like that. Ted Cruz picked a running mate for his imaginary presidential campaign this week and picked an imaginary human to boot. Carly Fiorina, a woman who makes Heidi Cruz seem like a grinning morning show host, is the perfect match to Cruz’s vampire like persona. If he finally did bite her on her neck, what would come out? Vinegar?

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From Tommy Christopher at Mediaite:

A viral video showing a lesbian woman being kicked out of a women’s restroom by security guards who mistook her for a man has been burning up social media recently, mostly in response to recent anti-transgender “bathroom bills” and Target’s announcement of its inclusive bathroom policy. On Friday’s edition of The View, co-host and “member of the LGBT community” Raven-Symoné weighed in on the video in a way that might surprise folks who expected her to be supportive of the woman:

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From Michael John Scott at MadMikesAmerica:

The families of three Florida teens who drowned in a stolen car are suggesting sheriff’s deputies could have done more to save them, the Miami Herald reports.

The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office has released hours of dashboard footage of the March 30 tragedy, which shows officers taking off clothes and equipment, and trying to rescue the girls.

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From PZ Myers at Pharyngula:

Neil deGrasse Tyson led a debate on whether the universe is a simulation. He took the affirmative side. He agrees that there’s no way to prove it one way or the other, but he claims that the probability that we may be part of a simulation “may be very high”. Aargh. Facepalm.

Lisa Randall is the voice of reason who says she thinks the question is only interesting if we have a way to test it. You go, Lisa Randall. That’s how a scientist should think, and she finds the whole argument hilarious.

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From Stephen Cooper at The Moderate Voice:

Sometime soon in the 31 states that have not abolished the death penalty, leaders at the highest levels of state government, men and women — mostly men and mostly white — will hold private, closed-door meetings, in which they will discuss the most secretive, most cost-effective, most media-friendly way to go about killing one (or more) of its citizens. Study after study shows that, more likely than not, this majority white group of deathly decision makers will be planning the killing of a man or a woman, though usually it’s a man, and usually it’s a black man.

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From Jon Perr at Perrspectives:

President Obama’s forceful statements in support of the UK remaining in the European Union made waves on both sides of the Atlantic. Brexit leader and London Mayor Boris Johnson protested Obama’s “hypocrisy” on an issue of UK sovereignty, attributing Obama’s firm position to the “part-Kenyan President’s ancestral dislike of the British empire.” But here in the U.S., the conservatives from whom Johnson appropriated his Birther talking point regurgitated their own misguided sound bite. As Larry O’Connor of Hot Air put it:

Brexit hypocrite: Remember when Obama accused Netanyahu of meddling in America’s affairs?

I remember it quite well.

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• At Crooks and Liars, Frances Langum, the artist formerly known as Blue Gal, goes shoopin fleurpty!
   
• The Big Empty has excellent advice for Democrats.
   
• nojo at Stinque provides 10 ways we all can recognize that the apocalypse is upon us.
   
• Last Of The Millenniums looks into North Carolina’s new bathroom law and reports on the real meaning.
   
• At Wisconsin Watchdog.org, James Wigderson brings forth a controversy at Marquette University. Seems students sometimes help pay for post-graduate education by serving as part-time instructors. One was holding a classroom discussion about philosopher John Rawls. She reportedly stopped an extended interruption by a student who wanted to talk at length about his opposition to gay marriage. She promised to hold that discussion in a later class, and did.
   
  A political science professor was later told about the incident and accused her of closing off free discussion because it might disturb other students. He attacked her for violating the student’s free speech rights, providing her name in an article on a conservative blog site. She became the target of email attacks from all over. The professor apparently has a history of attacking students in print, identifying them by name. There were other incidents. Marquette University suspended him.
   
  James recounts the situation and concludes that it is an issue of free speech and tenure rights: that of the suspended professor.
   
  It might be an issue of university policy that prohibits public attacks by professors on students in which their names are used, but James doesn’t get into that.
   
  James may also have space limitations. He does not have room to mention the fact that the class was on a separate topic, the offer to hold the discussion later, that the promise was kept, that the instructor was a student, or the previous attacks on other students.
   
  A little unusual for James.