The Republican descent into insanity continues

Would believe they’re afraid that people are filling their lettuce with vaccines? Publish one little paper suggesting that plant tissue could be a source of pharmaceutical mRNA, and some right-wing dingbat immediately assumes that there’s a nefarious plan afoot to inoculate good god-fearing anti-vaxxers with stuff that might make them resistant to disease. We’d never do that! Besides, it would be pointless to use lettuce as a vector, since we all know they only eat red meat. Or, it was red until they cooked it to the texture of shoe leather. (Ooh, sudden thought…maybe we could smuggle mystery chemicals into their food via ketchup.)

Getting into more serious territory, Louisiana, the worst state in the union by nearly all metrics, now wants to criminalize the American Library Association. They must really hate the ALA, because this is what the law proposes.

A. No public official or employee shall appropriate, allocate, reimburse, or otherwise or in any way expend public funds to or with the American Library Association or its successor.
B. No public employee shall request or receive reimbursement or remuneration in any form for continuing education or for attending a conference if the continuing education or conference was sponsored or conducted, in whole or in part, by the American Library Association or its successor.
C. Whoever violates this Section shall be fined not more than one thousand dollars or be imprisoned, with or without hard labor, for not more than two years, or both.

It’s not clear what has pissed off the Republican sponsors so much that they would sentence librarians to hard labor for joining the organization. It’s probably because the ALA opposes book banning and endorses literacy.

The big surprise this week is Arizona. The Republicans have a one seat majority in the Arizona house and senate, and they used it to pass a near-total ban on abortion. They got the assistance of the looney-tunes Arizona Supreme Court.

Arizona’s Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the state’s 1864 law banning all abortions, except to save the life of the mother, is now, enforceably, the law of the land. It is now a felony for a doctor—or anyone else—to assist a woman getting an abortion, punishable by two to five years in prison.

Arizona is a microcosm of what America would look like if the Republicans grab just a few more seats. There’s more that they have accomplished!

For example, the GOP-led legislature recently passed House Bill 2843 that would allow property owners to shoot and kill undocumented immigrants who simply walk across their property. This followed a border property owner’s arrest after he allegedly shot and killed an undocumented migrant walking on his land. Gov. Hobbs vetoed the bill this week.

Also this week, some MAGA legislative extremists were rolling on the Senate floor and speaking in tongues as they prayed for their bills to pass.

Of course, there’s also the usual Biblical shenanigans.

With a one-seat Republican majority in both the House and Senate, the legislature recently passed a bill that will allow teachers in public and charter K-12 schools to post and read the Ten Commandments in class.

The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Anthony Kern—a candidate for the U.S. Congress, currently under investigation as one of Donald Trump’s “fake electors” that falsely asserted Trump won the state in 2020—now moves to Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ desk, where a veto is expected.

Imagine if the federal government were under the thumb of the holy rollers and racists and know-nothings — they’re close to a perfectly legal take-over.

I hope you’re all planning to vote in November.

You must remember this: our opponents aren’t particularly bright

If you’ve never heard of Ian Miles Cheong, count yourself lucky: he’s nothing but an obsessed right-winger spewing noise non-stop onto social media. It’s still sort of satisfying to see that he’s actually rather dull.

Excuse me, Apple, why is the calculator wrong?
When you key in 50 + 50 and hit the equals key, it’ll give you 100. Multiply that by 2 and you get 200. That’s correct.
But type in 50 + 50 * 2 and it spits out 150. What gives?

It’s not Apple. Try it on any calculator. There are rules about the order of operations, where multiplication is done before addition.

I think I learned that in 5th or 6th grade, or thereabouts.

Chemtrails? Seriously?

The Republican party is expanding their brief further and further into the looney demand. They’re legislating against a nonexistent phenomenon: chemtrails. They’re just condensing vapor from jet engine exhaust, people!

SB 2691, sponsored by Sen. Steve Southerland (R-Morristown), never specifically mentions the dubious claims made by conspiracy theorists about the dangers of so-called “chemtrails,” however, when speaking about the bill, Southerland directly mentioned “chemtrails.”

“If you look at a thousand planes, you won’t see one (chemtrail). But then all of a sudden you see one,” Southerland told the Tennessee Lookout. “So we’re just asking the question: Are they putting anything in the air that could be toxic?”

The “chemtrails” conspiracy theory is the belief that condensation trails or vapor trails left in the sky from aircraft flying at high altitudes are actually some form of chemical or biological agents, which are being purposely released into the atmosphere for nefarious purposes including weather modification, phycological operations, or even population control.

I’ve heard this chemtrail nonsense for as many years as I’ve been on the internet, but now 6 states are proposing legislation to stop the laws of physics which cause hot gases from cold air at low pressure. These are now entirely backed by Republican party apparatchiks, where once upon a time there were plenty of people on the looney left who would babble about chemtrails. Give ’em time, they’ll take on every science-based policy we’ve got.

The language in these bills appears to based on model legislation created and promoted by fringe conspiracy theorists, and connected to group which operates a website that claims to advocate for “shutting down pollution-generating atmospheric modification schemes”: Zero Geoengineering.

In addition to promoting conspiracy theories about “chemtrails,” the group operates a network of connected websites that promote conspiracy theories about 5G networks and WIFI, food and other products produced using genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

You know, if you’re concerned about people injecting bizarre chemicals into the environment, you’d be better off tackling fracking. That’s a real witch’s brew of toxic nastiness being injected into our water table. But of course, fracking is backed by industrialists, there’s real money there.

Big tough TV cowboy

Forrie Smith is a regular John Wayne — all hat and no cattle, nothing but air and noise pretending to be a cowboy. He’s on some show called “Yellowstone,” and he’s been making a fuss about vaccines and masks and all that right-wing BS. He’s taken it a step further than most, though, insisting that not only will he not wear a mask, but he will get mad if you wear a mask.

On March 24, Smith posted an Instagram story with the caption, “You need to hear this story.” He then proceeds to delve into the story of how he was kicked off an airplane. In the video, he appears intoxicated and disoriented, even expressing confusion about which city he is currently in. The video is filmed from the Houston, Texas, airport, where he claims, “I just got kicked off a plane … because I told them that I didn’t feel comfortable sitting next to somebody with a mask on.” Smith also revealed the staff cited his intoxication as the reason for kicking him off the plane. While he admitted he had “been drinking,” he insisted he wasn’t intoxicated.

He claimed the real reason he was kicked off was “because you people won’t stand up and tell everybody what bulls**t this is. I just told them I didn’t feel comfortable about sitting next to somebody that had to wear a mask, and I’m off the plane.” The incident may have gone unreported if Smith hadn’t posted it on social media. However, he seemed to think the video would garner sympathy or make some kind of point about vaccinations. Instead, it just made him look like a fool.

This is a new level of stupid. So he’s drunk — he mentions sitting in an airport bar for 3 hours — and he’s offended that he would be asked to sit next to someone wearing a mask. That’s bad enough, but then he goes on Instagram thinking he will be inspiring the people to rise up and complain right alongside him that someone dared to mask up in his presence.

I didn’t need to hear his story, but now that I have, I know to never pay attention to his pretentious, entitled, ignorant ass ever again.

Another conservative grifter gets a legal slapping

It’s beginning to look like just being a Republican is an admission of guilty participation in a scam that netted millions of dollars. Justice has taken a small step in giving Wayne LaPierre of the NRA what he deserves.

After a bitterly fought six-week civil trial, a New York jury on Friday found ex-National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre liable for improperly spending millions of dollars of the pro-gun group’s money on luxuries such as private jet flights, extravagant vacations, and sun-soaked stays on private yachts.

LaPierre’s profligate ways violated his fiduciary duties and cost the NRA some $5.4 million, the jury determined. He has reimbursed the organization $1.5 million, thus far.

Jurors deliberated for five days before returning their verdict on the state’s allegations of brazen corruption by the 74-year-old LaPierre. In court, prosecutors from the New York State Attorney General’s Office laid out a broad array of evidence to demonstrate what they described as a high-living chief executive using the NRA as his own personal slush fund.

LaPierre delivered the most unlikely justification for his years of theft.

When questioned on the stand about receiving luxurious gifts including Italian suits worth nearly $300,000, LaPierre insisted he considered the clothes to have been “work items.”

“I did all the television for the NRA,” he testified, explaining that his publicist wanted him to look good onscreen.

Seriously, dude? You’re the most Lon Chaney looking motherfucker on the planet. You always looked like a raging lunatic, and you thought you were looking good?

For comparison purposes:

But seriously, he shouldn’t be penalized for being a funny-looking guy (neither should I!), and being convicted of embezzling is the least of his crimes. He should be imprisoned for his long career of promoting mass murder and irresponsible gun ownership.

Let’s all get disappointed in humanity

I thought everyone knew by now that the whole “bumfight” concept was repugnant and deplorable, but it seems to have gotten some new life from technology. A few sick people are harassing unhoused people with drones. See, bullying in total safety! There’s an amazing amount of cowardice behind this behavior.

The TikTok account was called “BumsnDrones,” and its previous name was “Bad2TheDrone.” Similar accounts are active on YouTube and Instagram under the same name, and a new account with the “BumsnDrones” name was active on TikTok as of Friday evening.

…

In two separate videos, the drone hovers above individuals for an unspecified period of time and distance and appears to provoke them by flying up and down. Other videos show individuals throwing projectiles at the unmanned aircraft system, such as rocks, water bottles and sticks.

“It’s really disappointing to see the way this individual is harassing and bullying people experiencing homelessness,” said Cathy Alderman, chief communications and public policy officer for Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. “It was difficult to watch people put in humiliating and exposed positions.”

In nearly all of the videos posted on each channel, music plays in the background, seemingly for comedic effect. Many of the individuals filmed in the videos attempt to flee the vicinity of the drone or seem agitated by its presence.

Multiple videos appear to show the operator of the drone mocking or taunting the individuals by flying close to them before bolting in another direction either vertically or horizontally when the individuals reach for it.

The drone bullies are calling these “pranks”. I’m getting tired of that word — “prank” seems to be a synonym for cruelty.

Some of these accounts have been taken down, but as the quote above mentions, they just pop up again with a new synonym. It was easy to find lots that are still active — here’s one called “abnormal humans”. I don’t think the creators realize how self-referential that name is.

One such video had 59,000 views and 226 comments, and the comments were as vile as the video. No, I’m not linking to it. Go google your own bullies!

Do I have to do this again?

I should warn you, I’m not in a good mood. The Xmas season does that to me, I’m soured on the ugly combination of raging religiosity and constant consumerism, and then the elevated expectations that the holiday never meets, and the fact that it’s just a brief break between labors that I have to spend getting prepared for the next semester. Just call me Scrooge, and I don’t believe in ghosts, so I don’t expect redemption.

Another thing that doesn’t help is other humans. See that grinning fellow on the right? That’s Richard Eggleston, retired ophthalmologist, and shallow Christian. Also a colossal motherfucking dumbass idiot who used his holiday to write a long cliched letter to his local newspaper in which he declared “We are seeing the last few gasps of macroevolution” and parrots the dumbest, most thoroughly refuted canards of the last 60+ years of creationism, failing to acknowledge even the slightest doubt his dogma.

Before I vomit all over it, let me say that I don’t think most Christians share his views. Most citizens of this country broadly accept the general idea that the Earth is very old and that life has changed over that long history, although many will try to vaguely credit some kind of god as having a poorly-defined role in somehow guiding it, and they may also have a reluctance to say humans are directly a product of that process. We’re special, you know. There is, however, a cult-like subset that actively and stupidly denies pretty much all of science in order to prop up their benighted beliefs about Jesus. Richard Eggleston represents these cancerous polyps growing in the feculent muck of intellectually impoverished Christianity.

He’s also a terrible writer who can’t maintain a train of thought for more than a sentence.

Here’s his opening argument, for instance.

Why do evolutionists spend so much time and effort attacking intelligent design? Not because they think it is wrong and want to “save science” but because they know it to be true and that it will demolish their humanistic world view beliefs. When questions are allowed, it is science. When not, it’s propaganda. True science is evidence-based, as is Christianity. Centuries-old prophecies, of which more than 300 about Jesus were fulfilled, and 1,500 others were mostly fulfilled. The rest are waiting for the apocalypse.

In sum: he knows what ‘evolutionists’ believe; we know that Christianity is true; we are afraid that our “world view” will be destroyed if we admit it. None of that is true. One of the hallmarks of the True Christianity is a complete inability to see the world from another perspective.

It’s the Christians who don’t allow questions…or rather, only tolerate one answer. In that infamous Bill Nye/Ken Ham debate, it was Nye who was willing to change his mind given evidence, while it was Ham, who seems to be the source of most of Eggleston’s ideas, who refused to consider the possibility. Eggleston then wanders off into Christian propaganda, claiming that “predictions” from a holy book are evidence, rather than ambiguous claims that have been extensively reinterpreted by apologists, and somehow we’re supposed to believe in an upcoming apocalypse. Focus, man, focus. There are at least a half-dozen assertions in that one paragraph and he can’t back up any of them.

The rest of his long op-ed consists of a string of creationism’s dumbest hits: all of the animal phyla appeared in the Cambrian explosion, there are no transitional forms, quote-mines to claim that well-known evolutionary biologists, like Charles Darwin, Colin Patterson, and Jenny Clack denied the evidence for evolution, and gross misunderstandings of what evolution claims. For example,

They believe billions of years of DNA mutations from nonliving goo somehow spontaneously, in a magical moment, eventually brought humans into existence, a process termed abiogenesis. The evolutionists will cite examples of microevolution as being macroevolution to falsely support their position. Most mutations are fatal.

Nope. No one believes in his “magical moment” that transformed goo into humans.

It’s just too tedious to dissect. And then he ends on nonsense about abortions because, of course, he’s just regurgitating familiar fundamentalist bullshit, and that’s part of the litany.

I am so fed up with the never-ending flood of lies pouring out of stupid old farts like Eggleston, or young farts who have been infected with the pathological poison of this peculiar literalist sect that just shrieks the certainty of their dogma but never pauses to think, and evaluate, and question. A child could see through the entirety of his opinions.

Why is my bedroom so crowded?

I was on the Oregon Trail in reverse for the last couple of days, it took so long to get home. I had to change planes once with the most awkwardly timed layover, and then I had to take a long shuttle ride with a couple of transfers, and then one of the oxen died and I was laid up with dysentery. Finally, though, a kindly lady picked me up and took me home to my home and my bed.

Except, then…

OK, not really (I also didn’t really get dysentery — was being dramatic). The “Modern Crusaders” are not getting anywhere near my house, but instead, are thriving on Twitter. They don’t seem to be trying to be ironic at all. Looking at their Twitter feed, which I am not linking to, their latest post announces that “There is no salvation outside the Catholic Church,” they include a link to a Telegram channel that declares their goal of “Elimination of the demonic forces dominating our people politically and spiritually. Promoting the establishment of a Catholic monarchy,” and what follows is a welter of posts declaring that “Abortion is Jewish,” linking to Nick Fuentes, and engaging in Holocaust denial and Hitler apologetics.

So…just ordinary Twitter, then.

I’m happy to have left that shithole, and I don’t understand how anyone can be a fan of that hateful twerp, Nick Fuentes.

The rising of the full loon

If you’re really curious, my recent debate with Hendricks is now online as a video, with the full Q&A. It’s a cell phone video, so not great quality, but the whole thing is there.

But I want to talk about another problem with doing debates: it stirs up the crazies. I’ll give you some examples. This is an email I got the other day.

For what science and religion, not to mention the rest of us, thought impossible has now happened. History has its first literal, testable and fully demonstrable proof for faith and it’s on the web.

The first wholly new interpretation for two thousand years of the Gospel
and moral teaching of Christ is published and on the web. Radically
different from anything else we known from history or tradition.
Redefining all primary elements including the very nature of Faith, the
Word, Law, Baptism, the Trinity, the Holy Spirit and especially the
Resurrection, this new moral teaching is predicated upon the ‘promise’ of
a precise, predefined, predictable and repeatable experience of
transcendent omnipotence and called ‘the first Resurrection’ in the sense
that the Resurrection of Jesus was intended to demonstrate Gods’
willingness to reveal Himself and intervene directly into the natural
world for those obedient to His Command, paving the way to confirm and
justify, by faith, to the power of divine Will, Purpose, Law, covenant,
and the absolute certainty of ultimate proof!

Thus ‘faith’ becomes an act of trust in action, the search along a defined
path of strict self discipline, [a test of the human heart] to discover
His ‘Word’ of a direct individual intervention into the natural world by
omnipotent power that confirms divine will, law, command and covenant,
which at the same time, realigns our flawed mortal moral compass with the
Divine, “correcting human nature by a change in natural law, altering
biology, consciousness and human ethical perception beyond all natural
evolutionary boundaries.” This is the discovery of the ‘true self’ and
thus is a man ‘created’ in the image and likeness of his Creator.

So like it or no, and most won’t, a new spiritual teaching offering a
testable, predictable, moral wisdom not of human intellectual origin,
transcending subjectivity, wholly testable by faith, meeting all
Enlightenment criteria of direct, evidence based causation and definitive
proof now exists, and carries all the implications that suggests. Nothing
short of an intellectual, moral and spiritual revolution is getting
underway.

Links on request.

I did not request a link.

I think this is a guy trying to stir up interest in his peculiar Christian cult. I made the point before that these debates are often a conflict between certainty and doubt, and here comes someone offering the absolute certainty of ultimate proof! No thanks.

Here’s a fun YouTube comment. Try and figure this one out:

Unfortunately its 2 archytypical minds at work in believers & non believers. In both camps this gets in the way often.

And you must understand current concesus science was authorativly imposed through actvist judges and politics it did not win over the arena of thoughtful science. It violated America’s main rule that we would never impose physical prescriptions upon each other because they was a aware of newtons infinite sums of approximating probability and was very aware of how hard it is to tell where physicalism begins and ends. Interpretations are not hurtful but physical prescriptions are damaging to society and nations.

Its the wrong question, this is typically only formulated by a chaldean mind or thought.
What isn’t God ,is the correct formulated question to ask.

This is hard for a Babylonian deterministic quantitative evolutionary mythological Euclidean mind to think of because its dictated by a radicalized environment governed by these extreme physical lawism structuralisms.
It rather stay in platos cave granting unification & simplicity in the top of the higher archy even if its made up , it needs to connect dots and force the evidence to fit the grand theory of everything to fill in missing links.
It rather live in complexity of many different disciplines cults within cults. Its unaware of its triality navagating this dualistic system.

War time powers of Ww2 & the modernization act traps America back under this chaldean mind model because the classical American mind triality recognized such necessary evil structuralism must give the unity & simplicity to the top so that 18 year old troops deal with Entropic turn over of infinite sums of approximating probability & complexity .

This type of believer says God is universe big bang with math & time is his actual fingertips and through mult verses he chose this one here etc etc etc.

The classical American mind is the only one to ever escape the chaldean mind or platos cave.

It state man made language, time & maths are inspired by god, only by his grace do we have a mind that can read his left over fingerPRINTS that’s legable.
This mind follows the evidence where it leads it knows the human dashboard can never removed from the system thus this system is the proper place to unify individual systems .
God is not in a rock or under a rock he was separated from his creation at different points but through us thy will be done. Through Jesus salvation the unification of tripartite nature of man past present and future. It is the grand unification of objects physica cause l,subjective secondary effect & idealogical minds. Mind body and soul. You know whole deal ,father ,son holy spirit represents the 3 natures of our reality .

What kind of archytypical mind do you have, a chaldean mind, a Babylonian deterministic quantitative evolutionary mythological Euclidean mind, or a classical American mind triality?

What if two of the most annoying people in the world had a conversation?

This is how I like to see conservatives represented: briefly, and distilled down to the essence of their lunacy. I guess Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones sat down together for a tête-à-tête, with Carlson being fawning and praising Jones, and Jones being mutedly rabid. You couldn’t pay me to sit through the whole thing, but here it is edited down to 56 seconds.

It’s rather revolting watching Carlson sucking up all the shit Jones is spraying all over the place, so under a minute is right there at the limit of my tolerance.