31 January 2016

Link round-up for 31 January 2016

Check out these unusual sculptures.

Ali Davis ranks the candidates by their usefulness in a bar fight (found via Mock Paper Scissors).

Trump gets pwned on Twitter by Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal.  Here's a full listing of Trump's Twitter insults -- it's yuuuge!

Good time for a quick U-turn.

Here's a handy check-list for your next militia take-over.

Which half of the list has the best countries?

This map of abortion laws frankly holds few surprises.

Watch this SF short film on the use of virtual reality as an outlet for violent impulses, with a sinister twist.

A cat in motion is a wonder to see.

If that new planet beyond Pluto really exists, here's the perfect name for it (found via Mendip).

See the real-world inspirations behind the visuals in Avatar.

Winter brings snow, snow brings socialism.

Republicans not conservative enough for you?  Check this party out.

It's too late to undo the worst consequence of the faked Planned Parenthood videos.

Here's what National Review was really saying.

Italy grows more defiant toward the EU.

I notice they didn't shoot this one down.

Here's some more World-War-II-era giant-tank lunacy (link from Nick M).

Lesser Republicans learn to grovel before their new master.

Christian counselors tried to "cure" a gay man by.....isolating him from women (found via Republic of Gilead).

An anti-vaccine nutjob learns from bitter experience.

Libertarian schmibertarian -- Rand Paul takes a hard line against abortion.

Faye Kane explains the Republicans. Here's a summarized history.

The Oregon "occupation" flounders in grandiose self-delusion.

Porn is more popular than ever, and most young people see nothing wrong with it.

A few Texas Republicans are trying to bring the party around on marijuana.

Religion is now a pretext for stiffing waitresses.

Here's what's waiting at the end of the anti-gun road.

A Christian activist calls for a "warrior mentality" against the Satanic gay movement (found via Republic of Gilead).

Obama considers his possible successors.  Here are some thoughts to consider.  Hillary represents the audacity of realism.  The haters are getting desperate.

Palin meddled in her son's military service, apparently.

Here's a look ahead at the madness of the caucuses and primaries.

A Florida priest does the right thing and gets punished.

The victor in Thursday's debate was the man who wasn't there.  If Trump wins Iowa tomorrow, he may be unstoppable -- feckless party leaders will not have the guts to stop him.  His nomination may be good for us Democrats and for the country.  The very strategy that's kept him ahead in the primaries will sink him in the general, likely taking the Republican Senate majority down with him.  Rod Dreher, Rich Lowry, and Tucker Carlson assess Trump's appeal, and here's an Australian view (found via Crooks and Liars).  Booman looks at why even Nate Silver misjudged him.

A bizarre mailing from Cruz's campaign appears to be backfiring.

The 2016 "March for Life" promotes Orwellian distortions of feminism.

The wingnut media are as wingnutty as ever.

Regulation, what is it good for?  Then there's this (link from Ahab).

Ah, sweet dreams.

Oklahoma Republicans think they can abolish secular marriage (found via Progressive Eruptions).

Holocaust Memorial Day evokes disturbing echoes in the present.

A blogger is stabbed to death for criticizing religion.

These two skeletons are different, yet fascinatingly similar.

A wolf pack is better organized than you'd think.

Photos recall the Challenger explosion 30 years ago.

2015 was a year of environmental breakthroughs.

Bring back teh shrooms!

11 Comments:

Blogger Ranch Chimp said...

Just a couple of comments here ...

I didnt know how to take the "Christian Party" (political party) thing ... if it was a joke or real? But I wouldnt be surprised there is a bunch like that.

The ancient mushroom piece was a fascinating piece of interest to look into ... when I hear folks talking about travelling in time, it is usually about wanting to ravel to the future to see it ... for me it is reverse, I have alwayz wanted to travel back! I would love to see what this planet was like 100's of millions of years ago or even a billion years ago! But speaking of mushrooms, back in the 1970's a guy I was playing music with took me outside Houston to a town called Humble Texas, he told this old guy owner who owned a big cow ranch, that he was a student of the University of Houston wanting to do research on his pasture ... we went to cow patties (shit) to look for certain types of mushrooms (psilocybin) after it rained, and collected all these mushrooms and took them home and made tea with them, I mean like gallons of tea, bottled it in quart glass jars, added sweetener and lemon and drank it for recreation ... it would make you hallucinate like you would with LSD/ acid ... anywayz ... this was potent to, I even experimented with experimental music and new equipment at the time while using it using various instruments ... what a trip and memory that was!

31 January, 2016 07:27  
Blogger Paul W said...

Thanks for the link, Infidel!

31 January, 2016 13:24  
Blogger Ahab said...

Thank you for the shout-outs, as always.

The Flint water crisis continues to horrify and disgust me. Oh, and those water filters that HHS gave to Flint residents? They're useless. Faucet filters can't cope with the high levels of lead found in Flint's water.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/flint-water-crisis-high-lead-levels-with-filters/

If I saw a flood of that magnitude racing toward my car, I'd have a flood in my pants!

31 January, 2016 15:52  
Blogger Comrade Misfit said...

Thanks for the link.

31 January, 2016 17:36  
Blogger Shaw Kenawe said...

Great links. I posted the one about Australia.

01 February, 2016 15:41  
Blogger Green Eagle said...

I loved the link to the Christian Party. Never heard of that one before. I've got to say, they are certainly not afraid to say what they are really thinking.

It's on my Wingnut Wrapup master list, in the lunatic section now.

01 February, 2016 23:39  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Ranch: Heartbreaking, isn't it -- all those forests of giant mushrooms and nobody around to get high on them.

Paul & Misfit: Thanks for the posts!

Ahab: I think the flood was part of the Fukushima earthquake tsunami. Must have been quite a shock to those drivers.

Shaw: I saw it. We'll see more and more such articles -- just imagine how the rest of the world feels about the most powerful country on Earth seriously considering Trump as a leader!

Green: We'll probably see more and more talk like that. Trump is emboldening the freaks to "say what they are really thinking."

02 February, 2016 04:43  
Blogger Green Eagle said...

Infidel, as I have said before, I have been following the right since the 1960's. Even at the earliest time, I saw every bit of this sickening garbage, in publications like the Thunderbolt, and what was available at the time from the John Birch Society. For a while I had a job a few doors down the street from a JBS bookstore- if you think what you have heard from them is bad, you should have seen what they were selling there, to fellow wingnuts. The only real difference is that what was at one point a conclusive sign of deep mental disturbance has worked its way farther and farther into the mainstream, so that things I would have to listen to in the middle of the night on Hunt brothers owned KXEL in Waterloo Iowa, are now being spoken on the floor of Congress and in Republican Presidential debates. My interest at the time was motivated primarily by curiosity; now it is motivated by fear.

03 February, 2016 11:59  
Anonymous Zosimus the Heathen said...

I've got to admit that that map of abortion laws held a few surprises for me. One was seeing that abortion on demand is offered throughout the whole US - something I didn't realize was the case given how many states currently seem to be trying to put as many obstacles as possible in front of women seeking the procedure (here's hoping their efforts ultimately fail). Also surprising was seeing how many Communist (and former Communist) countries also permit abortion on request (particularly astonishing was seeing that North Korea is one of those countries - that must be one of the very few freedoms its citizens enjoy!). I also found the map instructive in that it showed me what the current laws in my own country are (I actually didn't know); also, I found it interesting that Australia and Mexico seem to be the only two places where the laws vary depending on which part of the country you're in.

On the subject of abortion (and the weekly link round-up), yeah, it's true that pro-lifers have a very warped view of feminism, especially when you consider some of the things their ideology has led to eg women being denied abortions even when they'll die without them, women being denied access to reliable birth control, rape victims being forced to carry their assailants' babies to term (and, even worse, being then forced to give said assailants visitation rights), women being thrown in prison after having miscarriages, pregnant women denied the right to take life-saving medication if it's deemed to pose a danger to their fetuses, and brain-dead women being kept "alive" if they happened to be pregnant when they died. Hard to see how any of that is compatible with feminism in any meaningful sense of the term. I've often heard religious fundamentalists claim to be the "true" feminists, though; perhaps the most egregious example I can think of is some science fiction writer (and all-round whackjob) called John C. Wright, who once posited something called "fifth wave feminism" that's so patently ridiculous it has to be seen to be believed (to read his idiotic proposal, go to http://www.fstdt.com/QuoteComment.aspx?QID=97775).

Also on the subject of things from Republic of Gilead, that story about the gay man being isolated from the female members of his family was something else. As I said on Ahab's site, what's the bet the "therapists" who prescribed that "treatment" all consider themselves "pro-family"?

04 February, 2016 03:30  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Green: I think Obama's election unhinged a lot of the real racists enough to bring them out into the open, and the fundies have been in the same position even longer, since the gay movement started picking up steam. Now, of course, Trump is making bullying bigotry seem all the more respectable since he's a major candidate whose leading in the polls (of Republicans) by appealing to it.

A Trump Presidency would be a terrifying prospect, but any Republican President would be a disaster. The only effect of some of them hiding their radicalism is to give themselves a better chance of being elected. I'd rather have Trump out there bellowing, and all these crazy bigots and theocrats coming out of the woodwork, to make it clear to the voters what the right wing is really about.

04 February, 2016 04:20  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Zosimus: I think that map is based on strictly the legal situation in each jurisdiction, even though the situation on the ground may vary in practice. The legal situation in the US under Roe v Wade is that almost no legal restrictions on abortion are allowed. The restrictions the Republicans have passed in a lot of states would probably be struck down if challenged in court, but that will have to wait until someone actually launches such a challenge. Forcing most abortion clinics to close, as they're doing in Texas, isn't technically a restriction of the right to abortion itself even if in practice it makes them much harder to get.

The practical effect of enforcing the right wing's fetus fetishism would be to reduce women to the position of domestic animals. Which, as I've long argued, is its real purpose.

04 February, 2016 04:26  

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