Category: Uncategorized

 
From PZ Myers:

Remember when Francis Collins published a book containing his goofy, ridiculous testimonial about how he became a Christian because he was out hiking and saw a waterfall in three parts, demonstrating the Trinity? Oh man, that was stupid. Then he became director of the NIH.

Remember when Francis Collins announced that equality in science was so important that he was refusing to speak on non-inclusive science panels?

“It is time to end the tradition in science of all-male speaking panels, sometimes wryly referred to as ‘manels,’” Dr. Francis Collins wrote in an online statement this week. “Too often, women and members of other groups underrepresented in science are conspicuously missing in the marquee speaking slots at scientific meetings and other high-level conferences.”

“When I consider speaking invitations, I will expect a level playing field, where scientists of all backgrounds are evaluated fairly for speaking opportunities,” he continued. “If that attention to inclusiveness is not evident in the agenda, I will decline to take part.”

Good for him. That’s the right decision.

Hey. Hey…remember when swarms of popular atheists proudly declared that god is a fiction, and that feminism is a cancer and women can’t be funny and atheism doesn’t have the estrogen vibe that would encourage women to disbelieve in gods? Remember that?

– More –
 

• The Borowitz Report has the story: Kellyanne Conway will soon be promoted. She will leave her post working for President Trump to begin a more prestigious job with Mr. Trump’s employer at the Kremlin. Okay, okay, it’s satire.
   
• Senator and Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren favors impeachment. Congressional Representative and Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi does not. Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post considers the arguments and sides with Warren. Jack, and Senator Warren, are wrong, of course. But you can’t say he doesn’t respectfully consider an opposing view from … well … me.
   
• North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz very much wants and needs to mourn the personal tragedies that afflict virtually everyone. As would most people my age, I empathize from personal experience with his pain at the death of a parent. He wants those for whom he cares to have the freedom to mourn normal, intense, losses that are part of human experience. But Reverend Pavlovitz finds himself, and those he counsels, devoting more and more of their grief to harm that is publicly directed at innocents, to damage inflicted on the country they love, by a renegade President. He wants room and time for more normal, private grieving.
   
• News Corpse looks into my President’s strange reasons for accusing his own former White House Council Don McGhan of criminal perjury.
   
• In Scotties Toy Box, Scottie is inspired by my President’s trip to the United Kingdom to bring us a fun fact about the Queen of England, Donald Trump, the rest of the Trump family, and the armed forces.

Continue reading “K-K-Kellyanne, Impeach, Grief, Trump v. McGhan, Fighting Queen”

 
From Frances Langum:

YouTube doesn’t even follow their own guidelines if a channel is making them money. And now we find out their algorithms point pedophilia-types to home videos of younger children?!?

Here at C&L we’ve been following the story of Carlos Maza versus a specific YouTube channel that engages in anti-gay harassment specifically of him, by name.

This week Samantha Bee focused outrage on YouTube’s continued hosting of those videos, as well as YouTube’s algorithm allegedly encouraging pedophiles with “suggested” home videos of younger and younger children.

– More –
 

 
From Michael John Scott at MadMikesAmerica:

It should come as no surprise that Chick-fil-A has a fan in Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. On Monday he signed into law a bill that blocks “adverse action” against the restaurant and other businesses and persons for contributions to religious groups. Chick-fil-A is a notorious hate organization that embraces the bible like an alcoholic embraces the bottle.

The bizarre “Save Chick-fil-A” law will take effect Sept. 1 and it stems from a decision to block a Chick-fil-A restaurant from opening at San Antonio’s airport. In March, councilman Roberto Trevino reportedly said the city did “not have room in our public facilities for a business with a legacy of anti-LGBTQ behavior,” referencing donations to Christian groups including the Salvation Army, per Fox News.

– More –
 

 
Cost and benefit: What politician wouldn’t like to publicize a benefit and keep the cost a secret?
– Ray
 
From Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson:

Gov. Scott Walker lost narrowly after opposing increases in transportation spending and taxation. His successor, Gov. Tony Evers, would like to raise the gas tax.

Republicans in the legislature are opposed to raising the gas tax, including many Republicans who actually supported a gas tax increase prior to the last election. Now Republicans would like to raise fees and borrowing to cover increased transportation costs.

Those are all debatable positions and here at RightWisconsin we have published articles from all sides of the transportation funding issue. We’re confident that the political process of the state budget will play out with some sort of compromise, even if that compromise leads to a renewed debate prior to the 2020 legislative elections.

That’s the way the process is supposed to work, even if it isn’t pretty or convenient to politicians.

Nearly hidden in the transportation budget passed by the legislature’s Joint Finance Committee (JFC) is a provision that would allow the committee to implement a mileage-based fee on drivers by 2023. The decisions to create the fee, how it would implemented, and the amount of the fee would all be in the hands of the 16-member JFC instead of the full legislature and the governor.

There are legitimate privacy concerns as well as concerns about the cost of the mileage fee. But those pale in contrast to the very idea that the mileage fee could be implemented without the consent of the full legislature, and in turn the consent of the governed.

– More –
 

 
From Infidel753:

I don’t have a preferred candidate for the Democratic nomination yet (it’s way too early), but if I had to make a prediction today, I’d say that Biden will probably get it. This isn’t just based on his huge current lead in polls of Democrats. One can point to many earlier instances where the clear front-runner so long before the actual primaries didn’t get the nomination. However, Electoral-Vote today made this point:

The Democrats’ problem is that collectively they appeal to far more than half the voters, but individually they don’t. While Sanders is strong with blue-collar men, he is extremely weak with blacks. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) does great with blacks, but very poorly with blue-collar men. Elizabeth Warren does well with college-educated suburban women, but is nowhere with blue-collar men or blacks. Pete Buttigieg is the choice of many millennials, but is not so hot with Latinos. The only candidate who seems to do reasonably well with all Democratic constituencies (and who is hated by none) is Biden. In the end, this may make him the most acceptable compromise candidate.

This could help explain why, while polls show several Democrats beating Trump in key states, they almost always show Biden doing so by the largest margin (Quinnipiac even has him four points ahead of Trump in Texas). Polls of the general election ask voters to envisage a candidate as already being the nominee and potentially becoming President. Black voters’ lack of enthusiasm for Sanders, or blue-collar voters’ suspicion of Warren, etc., may well dampen support in such a scenario. But every major group in our coalition would turn out for Biden.

This may also account for his higher perceived “electability”, a word which it has recently become fashionable to disdain.

– More –
 

 
From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:

We might have mentioned that in addition to a bringing bucket of fried chicken to a congressional hearing, the Dems thought that exhuming John Dean—Tricky Dick Nixon’s former White House Counsel (fired)—was a masterstroke of political theater, except for the part about anyone under the age of 65 knowing who he is, or even caring. We thought for sure this would be a snooze-fest that would fall on it’s face.

We were wrong.

– More –
 

 
From Ted McLaughlin:

Texas has been a very red state for more than two decades now. It is a state that Republicans rely on for statewide offices and to send a majority to Washington. So one might think that Texans would agree with right-wingers on the issues of LGBT rights and abortion rights.

But a new poll shows that’s just not true.

– More –