As many of you know, I work with the Foundation Beyond Belief. Dale McGowan and the other senior staff spent half the night researching relief organizations in Oklahoma to decide which ones to send contributions to help the victims of yesterday’s horrific tornado damage. We have selected Operation USA and the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, both of which are on the ground providing crucial food, shelter and medical care to the victims. Please go to our donation page and help out if you can and please share this on your own blogs, Facebook pages and other social networks. Every dollar will go directly to those organizations. This is another opportunity for the atheist, secular and humanist community to step up and show the world our compassion and generosity.
May 21 2013
Demons to Blame for Incident That Never Happened
You may have heard the brief religious right freakout a couple weeks ago over a high school track athlete allegedly disqualified from a race after he won and gestured toward the sky to thank God. Since that fed right in to the persecution complex, it spread like wildfire. But then the family pretty quickly admitted that this isn’t what happened at all and it all died down. But not for our old pal Gordon Klingenschmitt. Not only is he still repeating it, he’s got an explanation for it — the same explanation he has for everything he doesn’t like, “demonic spirits.”
May 21 2013
Beck and the Art of Quotemining
I remember one of my favorite high school teachers (also my debate coach) talking about out-of-context quotes, using the example of those little three word snippets they use in movie ads, like “a daring thrill ride — Time magazine.” She pointed out that many times, they cut out things like “The director clearly intended to make a daring thrill ride of a movie, but instead it drags along for far too long.” Here’s Glenn Beck doing exactly that to Obama:
May 21 2013
Awww. Bradlee Dean is Upset
Minnesota became the 12th state to legalize same-sex marriage the other day and the terminally stupid Bradlee Dean is predictably freaking out. Gov. Mark Dayton, he says, is a criminal. But my favorite part is when he says that “they do it covert-like.” Because apparently elected officials passing a bill with the attention of the whole state being paid to it is being “covert.”
May 20 2013
Welcome, Tauriq Moosa
We have another new blogger at FTB, Tauriq Moosa. You may well have seen his work at Big Think, where he will continue to post, but he’s now joining us as well with a new blog called The Indelible Stamp. We’re excited to have him at FTB, of course, so go visit him and give him a welcome.
May 20 2013
MI School: No Baby Bumps in Yearbook
White Cloud Public Schools, about an hour from where I live, is forbidding two pregnant seniors from having pictures that show their bellies out of a ridiculous fear that this will “promote” teen pregnancy. Yeah, just like the other pictures are “promoting” stupid haircuts.
May 20 2013
Holder 1, Gohmert 0
I’m not a big fan of Attorney General Eric Holder. In fact, I think he’s been pretty much a disaster. The DOJ’s position on about a dozen issues has been flagrantly opposed to civil liberties. But this exchange with batshit crazy Rep. Louis Gohmert is simply awesome. Holder gives an entirely coherent answer to Gohmert’s claim that the FBI didn’t do a thorough investigation of the Tsarnaev brothers due to “political correctness” and Gohmert simply has a meltdown. The funny thing is that the chair of the committee, Bob Goodlatte, is a very conservative Republican himself and he’s trying to get Gohmert to stop. And at the end, Gohmert actually says that Holder has “cast aspersions on my asparagus.”
May 20 2013
Wingnut Delivers a Non-Sequitur Fest
Rep. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota (state rep, not federal) delivered the commencement address at the University of Mary, which, you may have guessed, is a Catholic college. What he delivered was a series of bewildering non-sequiturs that added up to little more than a list of complaints about how the world wasn’t the way he wanted it to be.
May 20 2013
A New Way to Leak
With the Obama administration’s furious war against whistleblowers who reveal abuses and illegality by the government, especially the executive branch, the New Yorker is rolling out a new way for sources to turn over incriminating evidence that the public should know about. It was coded by the last Aaron Swartz, the open-source crusader who committed suicide a few months ago.
May 20 2013
Another Crazy City Council Candidate
If you thought Princess Anna Pierre was bad, wait till you meet Richard Sheridan, a candidate for the Dallas City Council who received a whopping 28 votes for that office and then unleashed a bigoted tirade on a voicemail left for a local reporter.
May 20 2013
Another Daily Caller Thud
Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller has quickly distinguished itself as an online news source full of people just like Carlson — tired hacks with little intellectual integrity. Patrick Howley, who dubs himself an “investigative reporter,” breathlessly exposes the “strong Obama connections” of the husband of Lois Lerner, the IRS official who apologized last week for that agency’s targeting of conservative groups for additional scrutiny. Here’s what he managed to come up with:
May 20 2013
The Convenience of Political Scandal
As the media and politicians explore three stories — Benghazi, the IRS targeting of conservative groups, and the DOJ’s seizure of AP phone records — Ryan Lizza points out something very important, that these scandals really only have two results: a media feeding frenzy and convenient political posturing. Actual solutions have no part to play in this well-worn drama:
May 20 2013
Ooh, America Under Influence of Satan
Dan Delzell, an “exclusive” columnist for the Christian Post, is always good for a chuckle or two. On first read, his new column might appear to offer a classic fallacy of the excluded middle because he claims that you’re either influenced by Jesus or Satan, no other possibilities in between. But since neither of those people/entities actually exist, it’s more like a fallacy of the excluded reality.
May 20 2013
What Is ‘Primarily Political’?
The Inspector General for Tax Administration at the Treasury Department has issued a preliminary report on the IRS’ targeting of Tea Party and “patriot” groups that applied for 501(c)(4) status. You can see that report here. The report does conclude that inappropriate criteria was used, but finds no evidence that it was anything other than bureaucratic incompetence that caused it:
May 20 2013
A New Book on Atheist Parenting
My friend Aubrey Adrianson, the faculty adviser for the SSA club at Ferris State University, is working on a new book called A Secular Parent’s Guide to Teach Religion. She’s got a Kickstarter project set up for it, through which you can get a free copy of the book when it’s finished. And you can read a sample chapter here.
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