The great thing about the internet and blogs in particular is that it enables immediate feedback and criticism. Most authors welcome this by enabling comments but even those who do not allow comments (Andrew Sullivan at The Dish is one such prominent blogger) get rapid-fire feedback from other blogs. Once you enter the blogging world, you must expect criticism, sometimes in quite harsh terms. It simply goes with the territory. [Read more…]
The late Carl Sagan was much sought after by the popular press to comment on science issues and he would rightly be cautious about expressing opinions about things that were unknown. He would sometimes be pressed to provide a more definitive response, being asked what his ‘gut feeling’ was, to which he replied “But I try not to think with my gut. Really, it’s okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.” [Read more…]
At a recent campaign meeting in which Rick Santorum was speaking, two men stood up and started kissing each other. [Read more…]
Most middle-class, law-abiding people think of the police as being on their side, protecting them from criminals. Hence if a police officer should, for any reason, request to talk to us about a crime or request a search of our car, home, or person, we would likely consent, thinking that it must be due to some misunderstanding that will soon be cleared up and would likely be a good story to tell one’s friends later. [Read more…]
The Daily Show takes to task the White House press corps for their focus on trivial trash-talk politics while ignoring the important issues that are right under their noses.
Famously thin-skinned Sarah Palin gets a lot of flak from liberals and Democrats about which she whines incessantly.
But getting dissed by Ann Coulter and having it implied that she is a self-promoting charlatan has got to really hurt since they are both conservative flame throwers and presumably cheering for the same team.
Ball is in your court Sarah.
The Republican-led legislature in Arizona is nearing passage of a bill in which “Women in Arizona trying to get reimbursed for birth control drugs through their employer-provided health plan could be required to prove that they are taking it for a medical reason such as acne, rather than to prevent pregnancy”, because we all know that there is nothing that any woman likes more than discussing the most intimate details of her life with her employer. [Read more…]
The Daily Show had a terrific two-part series on the US cutting off all funds to UNESCO because they admitted Palestine to that organization, thus hurting many programs whose goals are to try and meet the needs of desperately poor children around the world.
Note how former congressman Robert Wexler, supposedly a progressive Democrat, supports this inhumane action. When it comes to kowtowing to the Israel lobby, so-called progressive Democrats toe the line as dutifully as anyone else.
Part 1
Part 2
(These clips appeared on March 15, 2012. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)
I am pro-choice and like practically everyone who gives themselves that label, I fervently hope that no woman I know will ever have to confront that agonizing decision of whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.
Most of the time, I can understand the position of those who call themselves pro-life even if I disagree with them. But I will never understand, or forgive, those who think that it is right to put women through the kind of extra agony that this woman in Texas had to undergo as a result of new laws that seek to add misery upon misery upon them.
These are just awful people.
These are the rules that the comic strip Doonesbury has been satirizing all this week and here’s a MoveOn.org ad that drives the point home.