Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Let there be snark.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

You cannot shame the shameless.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Everybody saw this coming.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

It’s the corruption, stupid.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

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More Free Speech

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Petula Dvorak must not report to Fred Hiatt, otherwise I have no way to explain this excellent Washington Post piece on the ways that anti-choice protesters targeted the children and neighbors of an reproductive health clinic’s landlord:

The tactical decision to focus on a clinic’s landlord was a clever move, although Stave could handle it. He’s pretty tough after all the years in this fight.

But his tormentors crossed the line last fall when a big group showed up at his daughter’s middle school on the first day of classes and again at back-to-school night. They had signs displaying his name and contact information as well as those gory images of the fetuses.

Stave started a group called Voice of Choice that responded to phone calls to his home by having thousands of people call back with a thank you for the prayers.

Reader Interactions

53Comments

  1. 1.

    geg6

    Stave started a group called Voice of Choice that responded to phone calls to his home by having thousands of people call back with a thank you for the prayers.

    Bwahahahahahaha. I love this guy.

  3. 3.

    El Cid

    Well, no matter how distasteful the tactics of the anti-choice protesters might have seemed, it was the right thing to do, because God told them so.

  4. 4.

    bemused

    They are the direct opposite of being Christians, they are cultists. There should be an easily identifiable name for them like “Moonies” is for Rev. Moon Unification Church zombies.

  5. 5.

    dr. bloor

    by having thousands of people call back with a thank you for the prayers.

    Excellent. At last, something for me to do instead of watching infomercials for Midnight Special DVDs when I can’t get to sleep. At 2:30 AM.

  7. 7.

    Elizabelle

    McClatchey article today: Conservatives have lost faith in science

    …trust in science among conservatives and frequent churchgoers has declined precipitously since 1974 … At that time, conservatives had the highest level of trust in scientists.
    __
    Confidence in scientists [sic?] has declined the most among the most educated conservatives, the peer-reviewed research paper found, concluding: “These results are quite profound because they imply that conservative discontent with science was not attributable to the uneducated but to rising distrust among educated conservatives.”
    __
    “That’s a surprising finding,” said the report’s author, Gordon Gauchat …
    __
    …Gauchat pointed to results from Gallup, which found in 2012 that just 30 percent of conservatives believed the Earth was warming as a result of greenhouse gases versus 50 percent two years earlier. In contrast, the poll showed almost no change in the opinion of liberals, with 74 percent believing in global warming in 2010 versus 72 percent in 2008.

    Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/03/29/143519/conservatives-have-lost-faith.html?storylink=MI_emailed#storylink=cpy

    Seems conservatives were fine with science when it was fixated on rockets and weapons and catching up with or beating the Russkies. When it turned to the environment, like that pesky EPA? Not so much.

  9. 9.

    Elizabelle

    Good catch, mistermix.

    I wish we had the home phone numbers and cells of that nice Phelps family.

  11. 11.

    beergoggles

    Umm Rachel Maddow covered this ages ago. This is a prime example of why bullies need to be bullied back.

  12. 12.

    Punchy

    @Elizabelle: Can you really call them “educated” if they dont believe in GCC, carbon dating, and the like? I mean, a degree from Liberty University in Godbothering means you have a college degree, but there’s no way I’d call them educated.

  15. 15.

    rjv

    I recall a scruffy looking hippie sorta dude once attended church donning a dont taze me bro hoodie. Both sides do it.

  18. 18.

    Culture of Truth

    Seinfeld to telemarketer:

    “Give me your number and I’ll call you back. Oh, you don’t like people calling you at home? Well now you know how I feel.”

  20. 20.

    Schlemizel

    @Elizabelle:
    I’ve mentioned it here before but it fits. A religiously insane co-worker of mine told me that “This country started going down hill when we put science above God and the only way we are going to get it back is if we put God above science!”

    Yeah, we’re screwed as long as thats the official position of one of the two major political parties.

  24. 24.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Schlemizel:

    I’ve mentioned it here before but it fits. A religiously insane co-worker of mine told me that “This country started going down hill when we put science above God and the only way we are going to get it back is if we put God above science!”

    __Jesus, Maria, & Jose. That is depressing. I assume she means it is the Christian god whom I should place above my profession? The only semi useful thing religion has given us is more creative ways to swear. If we have to replace science with it then I am leaving for the Moon.

  25. 25.

    JoyfulA

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent): Or Southern Baptists? “American Baptists” are northern Baptists who are primarily pro-choice, and there are “National Baptists.” But then you leave out all the Catholics, whose clergy typically spearhead these activities, and the lesser known nuts.

    We need a more generic name.

  27. 27.

    Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity

    A religiously insane co-worker of mine told me that “This country started going down hill when we put science above God and the only way we are going to get it back is if we put God above science!”
    __
    Yeah, we’re screwed as long as thats the official position of one of the two major political parties.

    @Schlemizel: It was the official position of both major parties until the 1950s.

    There’s no reason that couldn’t be the case again. There are as many crazy “woo” believers on the left as there are on the right, the ones on the left just don’t feel quite as confident letting their freak flags fly.

  29. 29.

    Satanicpanic

    @Culture of Truth: But America isn’t going to guarantee me an eternity of relaxing cloud-sitting and harp lessons. Or punish me in a burning lake of fire FOREVER.

  30. 30.

    Lancelot Link

    I think we can all learn a lesson from what Jesus Christ said about abortion;
    NOTHING.

  32. 32.

    Brian

    This is why this is a hard fight to win. The opponent have no moral and there are no lines they are not willing to cross. It is like struggling to get a B in a class… you can only get so good of a grade to bring it up, but you sure as hell can get a 0 to drag it down.

  33. 33.

    bemused

    @Schlemizel:

    So science and God are incompatible. Funny, I’ve always thought if there is a God, the all knowing is waiting for foolish humans to get edjumacated on all this sciency stuff.

  34. 34.

    Smedley the uncertain

    @Schlemizel: god created religion to explain the unexplainable and it was good for the priests for a few thousand years. Then the masses began to figure things out on the own; a consequential result of the tree of knowledge debacle. And soon logical and empirical explanations appeared and science arose…
    It’s been down hill ever since for religion.

  37. 37.

    gene108

    The hardest people, I’ve ever had to deal with regarding Global Warming/Climate Change skeptics are engineers. It has little to do with their politics, but the fact they know enough about math and science to feel they are entitled to an expert opinion on the subject, even though they don’t know much about geology or meteorology per se, they feel they know enough about statistics to argue about the assumptions made in graphs, charts, etc.

  39. 39.

    Svensker

    @JoyfulA:

    And I just met with a guy from the Canadian Baptists — totally lefty antiwar church.

    The Southern creeps get a lot of attention.

  41. 41.

    lou

    Yep, Petula doesn’t work for Fred. Works for the Metro section.

    Unfortunately, usually her columns are often drecky. This is the best one I’ve seen.

  42. 42.

    liberal

    @gene108:

    The hardest people, I’ve ever had to deal with regarding Global Warming/Climate Change skeptics are engineers.

    There’s a name for this, I can’t recall—something like “The So-and-so Effect.” Can’t recall the name. Engineers are overrepresented among creationists, too, IIRC. Maybe even among Al Qaeda members at the top at least.

    (Yes, I know—there are plenty of non-crackpot engineers out there.)

  43. 43.

    liberal

    @Punchy:

    …they dont believe in GCC…

    They don’t believe in the Gnu Compiler Collection? What a bunch of asshats.

    :-)

  44. 44.

    liberal

    Stave started a group called Voice of Choice that responded to phone calls to his home by having thousands of people call back with a thank you for the prayers.

    Too bad he doesn’t live in FL. Could just shoot them dead. Problem solved.

  47. 47.

    JoyfulA

    @Svensker: I’ll make a note for any further defenses of non-Southern Baptists that may be required. The American Baptists I have known have been very lefty and simultaneously very devout, but they have a congregational structure, where different congregations may differ in their opinions and no bishop issues orders—like the Southern Baptists used to be before the takeover.

  50. 50.

    Mike S

    @liberal: You might bethinking of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The tendency of unskilled people (in a given subject) to over estimate their expertise.

  52. 52.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Jerzy Russian:

    Jesus, Maria, & Jose.

    Just FTR in da parta Joy-Z where la mia famiglia lives, that’s Gesummariagiusep’! Get wit’ da pogrom, ya Red! ;)

  53. 53.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @gene108: Overrepresented in the glibertarian ranks as well. Same cause as doctors who specialize in “diseases of the rich”:

    Since I was intelligent enough to learn how to [insert specialized engineering/medical skill here], I can understand everything without any specialized background–so if I can’t understand it, or don’t like the implications, it must be wrong. Oh, and I’m also so smart I should be allowed to take advantage of anyone I want to whenever I want to, and not only should I not have to pay taxes, you people ought to have to pay me for the privilege of having me in your society.

    At best, antisocial idiots savants. At worst, overeducated imbecile sociopaths.

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