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Judge Posner for the Win: Drastic Action Necessary To Un-F*ck U.S. Patent Regime

Metavirus — Wed, 15 May 2013 20:47:04 +0000

Sometimes you really have to hand it to Judge Posner.

The sheer number of patents in the U.S. is fueling frivolous litigation and drastic action is needed to make patents more difficult to obtain and easier to invalidate, U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit said Tuesday.Speaking at a debate with two retired judges from the Federal Circuit, Judge Posner said that there were too many patents, particularly on relatively minor software innovations, which “creates confusion and uncertainty about what one can do without running into patent minefield.” He called for sweeping changes to the patent system, including eliminating the presumption that patents are valid once they are issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and shortening the term of patent from the current 20 years.

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Rep. Michele Bachmann Threatens To Leave Minnesota Over Gay Marriage

Metavirus — Tue, 14 May 2013 02:08:26 +0000

So much awesome:

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann threatened to leave Minnesota today if the state goes ahead with its plans to legalize gay marriage. In an interview with a local television station, the conservative firebrand said she believes God will destroy Minneapolis once the legislation is enacted, and wants to be far away when the reckoning happens. [...] “I have a friend from Eden Prairie who’s already packed everything she owns into her car and is driving out to Montana as we speak. These are very scary times. I don’t want my family to be the last ones out.” [...] In a subsequent interview with The Daily Currant Bachmann says she’s not sure where she’ll go if she leaves, but is seriously considering Oregon as a possibility since its constitution bans same sex marriage. “I’ve heard wonderful things about Eugene,” she says, “and I think congressman DeFazio may be vulnerable to a challenge. They’re the nicest people in the world out there, I’m sure we’d be welcomed with open arms.”

4 comment(s) for this post:

Darkprince21:
14 May 2013 [ Comment removed by moderator. ]
Matmos:
14 May 2013 You know, when I moved away from Seattle 10 years ago, I was, like, 40 percent sure Rainier was going to blow behind me. That said, if Bachmann is trying to flee teh ~~zhombeez~~ ghey, I suspect Eugene, Oregon may disappoint -- and hippies, also too:
Eugene was the second home to the rock band The Grateful Dead, thus the reason some people see this city as a "Hippie Mecca."
... Rainier didn't erupt, by the way.
Matmos:
14 May 2013 Oh.......irony. Nevermind. My iron-o-meter always gets broken whenever MB comes up in perlite conversation.

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Polled GOP Respondents Say Obama Hangnail Worse Than Holocaust

Metavirus — Mon, 13 May 2013 23:54:09 +0000

Announcement: Ignorant fucktards who think all this Benghazi bullshit is the worst thing to to happen since Jesus died are required to report to their local suicide booth immediately.

… there’s no doubt about how mad Republicans are about Benghazi. 41% say they consider this to be the biggest political scandal in American history to only 43% who disagree with that sentiment. Only 10% of Democrats and 20% of independents share that feeling. Republicans think by a 74/19 margin than Benghazi is a worse political scandal than Watergate.

Seriously. Print out this post and hand it to any of your asshole in-laws who try to claim that extremists don’t represent Real Republicans.

2 comment(s) for this post:

Matmos:
14 May 2013 Apparently, there's even less "there" there than the previous "nothing there" that it looked like was there. There. Not sure how that sentence should end.
Metavirus:
14 May 2013 but but but, obama's goons just got to abc and waterboarded them to walk it back. wolverines, and such.

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Bioshock Infinite Causes Christian Gamer To Cry And Make Piddles

Metavirus — Mon, 13 May 2013 22:15:45 +0000

Some excitable christian fundamentalist nerd got all worked up into a lather because the game Bioshock Infinite required the main character to undergo a baptism.

“As baptism of the Holy spirit is at the center of Christianity – of which I am a devout believer – I am basically being forced to make a choice between committing extreme blasphemy by my actions in choosing to accept this ‘choice’ or forced to quit playing the game before it even really starts,” Malmberg explained to Kotaku.

“Of course I cannot hold true to my beliefs and also commit this act, so I am therefor[e] forced to not play the game.”

1. Is there any group of people in this country that whine more about persecution than christian fundamentalists? (well, besides paranoid schizophrenics, of course)

2. I really don’t get what is so blaspheme-y about a game character undergoing a baptism. Isn’t getting baptized supposed to be a good thing?

3. The Waaaahmbulance just arrived.

1 comment(s) for this post:

Matmos:
13 May 2013 Mithras called; he wants his religion back. He said something about Sol Invictus reclaiming the halos, also too.
A simulation of death in the Mithraic mysteries, however, is perfectly intelligible. Death was the logical preliminary to a renewal of life; hence the pretence of death by the neophyte was a perfectly natural antecedent to the regenerative experiences of baptism and sacramental communion that followed in the Mithraic ritual. [...] Mithraic baptism, like the later Christian rite, promised purification from guilt and the washing away of sins.

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Please Pardon Our Mess

Metavirus — Mon, 13 May 2013 20:48:36 +0000

As some of you have noticed, the site has been experiencing intermittent availability issues over the past many months. I’ve been working with our hosting company to try to find and fix the problem(s) – but they’ve proven themselves to be feckless, yet earnest. So please be aware that we may be experiencing some hiccups over the next few days/week as I’m going to be working under the hood to see about picking up and moving to a different hosting company. I’m hoping the move will be seamless, but I have always had a curse upon me – to always be plagued only by errors and bugs inexplicable, and never by anything run-of-the-mill. I’ll report back with news, should there be any. Wish me luck. :-| Update: Everything looks to have gone off without too much of a hitch. Let me know if you spot any gremlins.

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Yes, My Husband Beats Me. But I Know I Can Change Him! Someday.

Metavirus — Fri, 10 May 2013 00:57:29 +0000

I swear to motherf’ing jeebus that the Obama administration STILL THINKS that he will someday win over some Republican dead-enders. How else do you explain the DOJ appealing a Judge’s order that Plan B be made available to girls of all ages without a prescription?

In December 2011, Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, blocked a decision by the F.D.A. that would have allowed morning-after contraceptive pills to be distributed to young teenagers over the counter. She said there was not enough data to show that the drug would be safe for girls as young as 11 years old. Instead, over-the-counter access was limited to girls and women aged 17 or older.

In his ruling last month overturning Ms. Sebelius’s decision, Judge Korman was highly critical of the Obama administration, saying it had put politics over science and health. In that ruling, he called Ms. Sebelius’s action “politically motivated, scientifically unjustified and contrary to agency precedent.”

Last week, the F.D.A. agreed to allow the sale of the drug to girls 15 and over, even as the administration sought to appeal Judge Korman’s earlier ruling.

Judge Korman said that move by the F.D.A. was an attempt to “sugarcoat this appeal of yours,” according to The A.P. He also suggested that the administration’s decision to appeal his ruling could have dire consequences for young women. When a Justice Department lawyer asserted that a delay of Judge Korman’s order was in the public interest, the judge replied, according to The A.P., “Is there a public interest in unwanted pregnancies … that can often result in abortions?”

Can we please get a real liberal in the White House sometime in the next 100 years who doesn’t continue to buy into the unicorns-and-puppydogs notion that Republicans will ever stop calling him Hitler? Please??

3 comment(s) for this post:

thesauros:
09 May 2013 “Is there a public interest in unwanted pregnancies … that can often result in abortions?” What's wrong with abortions?
Lev:
10 May 2013 Nothing. Though I suppose using birth control just makes for much less of a hassle all around. And I agree completely with Meta. I have no problem with outreach, but compromising a key policy to avoid offending opponents for no reason...it just doesn't make sense. But expecting anything else from Obama is folly at this point.
Metavirus:
10 May 2013 the thing about all of the birth control nonsense is that the GOP's palpitations over birth control, and abstinence-only sex-ed, CAUSES MORE ABORTIONS. Which do they supposedly hate more? it's just so mind boggling that so many people are so willfully stupid

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Why It’s Important For Atheists To Stop Worrying About Religionists’ Fee-Fees

Metavirus — Thu, 09 May 2013 18:41:26 +0000

Sean Carroll rightly calling on atheists to speak out and stop being polite about it:

We have a responsibility to get the word out—to not be wishy-washy on the question of religion as a way of knowing, but to be clear and direct and loud about how reality really works. And when we blur the lines between science and religion, or seem to contribute to their blurring, or even just not minding very much when other people blur them, we do the world a grave disservice.

1 comment(s) for this post:

Matmos:
09 May 2013 1) Overton window. 2) Everybody should be required to listen to Richard Feynman interviews on the subject, especially the "comfortable with not knowing" one(s): http://youtu.be/E1RqTP5Unr4

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The Loudly Ignorant Become Less So Once Shown They’re Ignorant

Metavirus — Tue, 07 May 2013 00:26:43 +0000

I’m surprised that any of the fervently ignorant people surveyed in this study ever ended up moderating their positions. I wonder if the researchers included teabaggers in the sample population…

Four researchers at three different institutions joined forces to ask a simple question: why is it that people have such extreme positions on subjects that are rather complicated and nuanced? “We hypothesized that people typically know less about such policies than they think they do,” the authors write, going on to discuss their experimental method: asking people with extreme opinions to explain the issue. That brought an end to their subjects’ belief that they actually understood the issue they were otherwise willing to argue passionately about (or, as the authors put it, “undermined the illusion of explanatory depth”). Once people recognized their ignorance, positions tended to moderate.

via

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Turning Our Children Into Robots And Guinea Pigs

Metavirus — Mon, 06 May 2013 22:30:30 +0000

I’ve been getting progressively more alarmed at all of the shameful stories coming out lately on the spread of high-stakes testing into so much of our public school system. The simplistic argument underlying it smells exactly like most of the other simplistic bullshit Republicans incessantly excrete*:

The Bible for opponents of high-stakes testing is a 2010 book called The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, by Diane Ravitch, perhaps the nation’s preeminent education historian. Ravitch, who grew up in Texas and attended Houston public schools, was once an advocate of both high-stakes testing and charter schools. She served as the assistant secretary of education under President George H. W. Bush and was later appointed by President Bill Clinton to head the National Assessment Governing Board. [...]

“Like everyone else,” she told me during a stop in Austin in February, “I was drawn to the idea that schools might benefit from a business sensibility, that we should set goals and then reward high performers and punish low performers.”

Throw our children into the cutthroat world of private enterprise and profit maximization? What could go wrong?

One of the key things that pisses me off when I read yet another story about the harm all of this is causing is that it seems to be the millionth recent example of trying to treat the symptoms without dealing with the underlying disease:

“The number one determinant of how well kids will do in school is socioeconomic background,” Ravitch told me. “It’s not how good your teacher is or which school you go to.” Ravitch makes a convincing case that those pining for a lost golden era of American education are misremembering. Sixty years ago, black and Hispanic kids weren’t allowed to attend public schools—or at least, not real ones—and most didn’t even go to high school. Kids with disabilities were excluded as well, and there were far fewer recent immigrants enrolled. Comparing that system with the one we have today makes no sense.

Why would we want to throw any additional money at alleviating poverty or child hunger, when we can just throw countless $billions at dubious, unproven band-aids that probably aren’t doing much of anything to cure just one of the dozens of symptoms of poverty and child hunger?

… o_o

Read the whole article from which I took the quotes above. It will make you angrier than anything you’ve read recently.

* And yes, Democrats (the “Me too!” party) have, true to form, signed onto the same bullshit.

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Yes, Conservatives Really Are Assholes

Metavirus — Wed, 01 May 2013 23:36:09 +0000

Interesting (and not at all unexpected) finding to come out of a study probing the correlation between political predisposition and openness to energy efficiency:

All participants were asked a bit about their demographic information and their political leanings. Then, one set was asked a series of questions about energy efficiency, which gauged how much the participants valued things like energy independence, limiting carbon emissions, or simply saving money on energy.

In the initial analysis, each of these factors appeared to be a negative for the conservatives, which didn’t make a lot of sense—who actually devalues saving money on energy? But the lack of enthusiasm for curbing carbon emissions among the conservatives was rather dramatic, so the authors separated that out. When it was controlled for, it turns out that the conservatives in the study actually valued energy independence and saving money more than the more liberal study participants. It’s just that they disliked the thought of avoiding carbon emissions so much that it overwhelmed these tendencies.

Anything to fuck those dirty hippies. (via)

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Stop-Motion Video Created With Individual Atoms

Metavirus — Wed, 01 May 2013 23:25:26 +0000

This is pretty freaking cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSCX78-8-q0

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I’ll Say It Until I’m Blue In The Face

Metavirus — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 02:07:34 +0000

As we all know by now, you’re as likely to be injured in a terrorist attack as much as we are likely to ever suffer an appropriate reaction to a mass killing after 9/11. Just sayin’.

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Arrest That Evil Man Who Killed The Person I Told Him To!

Metavirus — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 22:32:58 +0000

The predictability of this makes my already bleeding mind bleed:

Remember those warnings about how instead of welcoming President Obama’s adoption of Chained CPI, Republicans would continue to deny him a budget deal and attack him for proposing to cut Social Security?

Well Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) — who also happens to be chairman of the House GOP’s re-election committee — just showed how it’s done, saying Obama’s budget “lays out a shocking attack on seniors.”

“I’ll tell you when you’re going after seniors the way he’s already done on Obamacare, taken $700 billion out of Medicare to put into Obamacare and now coming back at seniors again, I think you’re crossing that line very quickly here in terms of denying access to seniors for health care in districts like mine certainly and around the country,” he said on CNN Wednesday afternoon.

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Step Right Up! It Cures Gout, It Cures Scurvy, It Even Cures CANCER!

Metavirus — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 21:23:57 +0000

I thought TIME sank to a new low with its cover story claiming that cancer is now curable, but now they’ve really jumped the shark:

(via)

2 comment(s) for this post:

Matmos:
29 Mar 2013 Well, it *was* the April 1st cover....
Metavirus:
29 Mar 2013 fair point

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Timid Lil’ Supreme Court

Metavirus — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 21:27:48 +0000

You know what pisses me off? Any jibber jabber at SCOTUS about hurting the fee fees of backward states like Alabama. The question is whether legislating against gays marrying (like legislating against different races marrying) violates equal protection. None of this has anything to do with whether southern governors will have a Sad, or whether some silly “uniformity” principle is a valid basis on which to discriminate.

Read more on Timid Lil’ Supreme Court…

1 comment(s) for this post:

Matmos:
27 Mar 2013 They're not 'Bama-capped, they're 'Bama-capable. Quick question: what did we invent civilization *for*, if not to protect the weak from the strong?

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If The Tolerators Are Intolerant Of The Tolerant, Will The Intolerators Be Tolerant Once More?

Metavirus — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:59:58 +0000

God’s precious accident, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, had a brain/mouth-leak today about Mean Gays:

“The underlying problem is that there is this very vocal, very litigious minority of Americans willing to legally attack anybody who dares utter a phrase or even a name that they don’t agree with,” he said. “In a twisting of logic, they insist on silencing the religious in the cause of tolerance. Now I ask you, where is the tolerance in that?”

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Our National Shame

Metavirus — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:35:22 +0000

This bit from an article discussing the treatment of torture in the movie Zero Dark Thirty makes me severely depressed.

If I’m…the Screenwriter, the simplest thing to do, is to have the Maya character take some kind of stand…“The reason he’s giving you bullshit is you keep torturing him!”… But the second you do that, guess what you’ve done…you’ve made Maya parrot the Obama Administration line. Being Anti-Torture might be seen as taking a political stance, one in favor of the Obama administration.

Yep, everything is a “political stance” nowadays. Dirty libtards are “pro-Science” and “anti-torture”. But hey, Jesus and Freedom.

Shittiest Places In The U.S. Include…

Metavirus — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 22:52:55 +0000

Guess which geographic area has the most miserable people?

Oklahoma Louisiana Alabama Arkansas Tennessee Mississippi Kentucky West Virginia

So hatred, racism, resentment and missing teeth don’t lead to happiness and contentment??

4 comment(s) for this post:

Matmos:
21 Mar 2013 I'd reckon it's a self-sorting feedback loop type deal. Among other things. Although I remember being awfully pleased whenever I made it out of a Waffle House alive. Holy crap. There's a Waffle House museum. Road trip?
Metavirus:
21 Mar 2013 an ex and i did a road trip from ny to la through the south. we stopped off at a wendys in bumfuck, arkansas to get a beverage. i swear to jeebus that every single person in there was looking at us and sneering. we high-tailed it out of there right quick.
Matmos:
21 Mar 2013 Wendy's? Fancy.

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New GOP Plan To Make People Think They Care

Metavirus — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 21:50:14 +0000

You really should read the new GOP report on why they suck so much ass (via). It’s pretty good. It contains lovely gems like this:

Jack Kemp used to say, “No one cares what you know until they know you care.” … The perception, revealed in polling, that the GOP does not care about people is doing great harm to the Party and its candidates. …

Our policies and actions must take into account that the middle class has struggled mightily and that far too many of our citizens live in poverty.

Our job as Republicans is to champion private growth so people will not turn to the government in the first place. But we must make sure that the government works for those truly in need, helping them so they can quickly get back on their feet. We should be driven by reform, eliminating, and fixing what is broken, while making sure the government’s safety net is a trampoline, not a trap.

If it wasn’t so sad, you could almost be amused by the one-dimensional infantile thinking in there.

“Gee whiz, if we just go in there and (a) help plutocrats become more rich, and (b) reform [i.e., gut] some of that ~~hateful socialism~~ safety net, all those capable, upwardly mobile wage-earners will bounce right off the public dole in a few weeks and go on to make enough middle class money to support a family.”

Oh right, I guess they forgot that the hyper-financialization of our economy over the past few decades has driven a huge share of corporate earnings into executive pay and gargantuan piles of hoarded cash that no one knows what to do with. In a period of never-ending record corporate profits, employment rolls remain frozen (or contracting) – driven largely by employers taking advantage of the financial crisis to squeeze existing workers even harder to make them do more work for the same (often inadequate) pay. Why hire more moochers when you can just add 5 more tasks to everyone else’s job description? After all, they should be thanking Jesus that they even HAVE a job, amirite??

Perhaps Republicans might want to ruminate on the millions of hard-working families who work three or more jobs and still have to collect food stamps because their wages, in real terms, have continued to decline year after year. Maybe they want to ponder the Sophie’s Choice millions of people have to make between relying on public assistance or going to work at a shitty job that pays hardly anything and (naturally) offers no health insurance – in many cases because someone in the family is sick, and the loss of health care coverage would be too financially devastating.

But no, Republicans. Keep on keeping on with your heartless “All people need is a kick in the ass to get them out of poverty and make them stop sucking off the government teat.” Never stop believing that larding up corporate balance sheets will trickle down largesse upon the little people. Continue to have faith that tearing down government will result in the private sector choosing to do the right thing all by themselves.

Because eventually even the idiots who don’t know it yet will catch on.

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Recipe For Long-Term Electoral Success: Rile Up More White People

Metavirus — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 20:59:42 +0000

An oldie but always a goodie:

Reagan’s electorate was 88 percent white, and Romney’s was only 72 percent white, but [South Carolina Rep. Jeff Duncan] hinted at a solution for that. Get more whites to show up! “In Florida, 350,000 white Republicans did not show up on Election Day.”

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Why Are Conservatives Such Sensitive, Delicate Little Children?

Metavirus — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 22:40:28 +0000

Close to the top of my list of things that amuse me about conservatives is their talk-tough veneer of strength, independence and personal responsibility contrasted with their never-ending calls for the waaaaahmbulance every time some mean liberal person says something mean. Case in point: here’s a bit of drivel from The Weekly Standard on the subject of why there’s a dearth of conservatives in academia:

Why is academia liberal, then? Gross’s data indicate that it isn’t because liberals and conservatives have different values or mental habits, or that liberals discriminate against right-leaning graduate students and job candidates. Rather, it is because academia has a reputation for liberalism, and conservative undergraduates decide on their own not to continue in the field. The key moment, Gross maintains, is the decision whether or not to go to graduate school. Young conservatives may not know all that much about academia at the faculty level, but popular stereotypes and a few off-putting experiences in class can sufficiently discourage them from pursuing academia as a site for success. A freshman orientation session that divides white males from everyone else, incessant talk about diversity, multiculturalist reading assignments, and so on may not bother them that much (and they can always find safe spaces such as College Republicans), but such things do convince young conservatives that staying on campus as a career move is foolish. An English major who reveres Great Books needs only one occasion of a teaching assistant ridiculing him for a dead-white-male fixation to decide, “I don’t need this.”

Oh. my. gawwwwwd!, Becky!! Conservatives don’t enter academia because of “popular stereotypes,” “a few off-putting experiences,” “talk about diversity,” and being subjected to fleeting instances of ridicule at the hands of the all-powerful Guild of Teaching Assistants!?1? How terrible!! {faint} Wait… what? It really all boils down to a fear that other faculty members will poke them in the ribs once in a while and give them the academic equivalent of a nurple? Really?? I don’t know about you, but most of the insidiously liberal people I know who’ve gone into academia do so partly to (a) gather a huge arsenal of knowledge about a particular subject, and then (b) proceed to fire tremendous salvos of their own brand of such knowledge at anyone who dares to enter their field of vision. I can’t say that I’ve ever run into any academic who doesn’t love diving into a scrum, getting as good as he/she gets and otherwise reveling in the cut and thrust of competing ideas. Have you ever been to a theoretical physics conference?? I haven’t, but I hear they’re EPIC! Stephen Hawking in particular is known to wield a +5 Staff of Ignominious Beatdown. So, let’s compile an alternative analysis of why conservatives don’t want to join an institution based almost entirely on the raucous competition of ideas and the associated jabs one often needs to throw other peoples’ way in order to have one’s theories rise above the din:

Conservatives are nervous, frightened little children who spook at the slightest whiff of ill will. Criticism drives them to hide under a blanket. Challenging their ideas prompts them to run for the hills like the devil himself was chasing them. And making a joke at their expense causes them to spontaneously lose bladder control and wet themselves.
In order to succeed in academia, one needs to become an expert in a field and gather fact-based evidence to undergird the theories one is trying to assert. Wandering around mumbling to oneself about the world popping into existence 6,000ish years ago, with your only evidence being a dusty old book written thousands of years ago by people who probably also thought that meteors were a sign that Lava God had a nasty cold, is likely to draw the scorn of geologists who have a tiny bit more evidence based on credible sources. Scorn is also likely to cause bladder issues – see point 1 above.
Those few intrepid conservative souls who are able to hike up their Huggies and slog their way through Liberal Hell to an advanced degree are presented with a cornucopia of follow-on, free market options that are often way more lucrative than a stupid faculty post at some publicly funded (!) state university. Just think of the possibilities! “Think” tanks, Koch-funded “academic centers,” research institutes catering to a single powerful interest group and front-groups trying to obscure religious bullshit with a veneer of scientific respectability. You can do all sorts of “SCIENCE!,” without ever being challenged by your friendly colleagues or ever-benevolent benefactors. It’s a warm, womb-like bubble in which never is heard a discouraging word, and the cash flows like water all day.

h/t Frum

3 comment(s) for this post:

Lev:
18 Mar 2013 4. This is aggression masked as victimhood, intended to work the refs and make universities hire more wingers so as not to be accused of "bias". Probably won't work though. It's not as though there's a blacklist--there were Republican professors at my college. They were there because they were smart people who could do the work, same as everyone else. If other Repubs were to put in the same level of hard work, no doubt the market would reward them...
Metavirus:
18 Mar 2013 an excellent addition to the list. i knew i was missing something underhanded and machiavellian.
Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Career opportunities:
19 Mar 2013 [...] why I find the conservative obsession with LIBERAL ACADEMIA a bit puzzling. Metavirus at Library Grape points me to the latest, a conservative study on why conservatives don’t go to graduate [...]

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Jeb Bush, R.I.P.

Metavirus — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 15:19:48 +0000

Guess who just self-immolated at CPAC by giving a speech that easily could have been delivered by Sen. Bernie Sanders or Rep. Barney Frank?

Jeb Bush, speaking at CPAC about how Republicans are essentially backwards, racist, nutjob assholes:

“All too often we’re associated with being ‘anti’ everything,” Bush said. “Way too many people believe Republicans are anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-science, anti-gay, anti-worker, and the list goes on and on and on [ed. couldn't have said it better myself]. Many voters are simply unwilling to choose our candidates even though they share our core beliefs [ed: um, didn't you just list the GOP's core beliefs?], because those voters feel unloved, unwanted and unwelcome in our party.”

And Bush also threw cold water in the face of conservatives who espouse a strict up-by-the-bootstraps doctrine of individual responsibility, and who ascribe failure only to personal failure. Life, he said, is increasingly more difficult for those who aren’t born with built-in advantages.

“It is not a validation of our conservative principles if we can only point to the increasingly rare individual who overcomes adversity and succeeds in America,” Bush said. “Here’s reality: if you’re fortunate enough to count yourself among the privileged, much of the rest of the nation is drowning.

“In our country today, if you’re born poor, if your parents didn’t go to college, if you don’t know your father, if English isn’t spoken at home, then the odds are stacked against you. You are more likely to stay poor today than at any other time since World War II,” he said.

Goodbye, dear Jeb, we hardly knew ye.

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And Lo, Their Shameful Lack Of Empathy Is Again Laid Bare

Metavirus — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 20:35:46 +0000

So Republican Senator Rob Portman is now a big maverick because he’s doing a 180 and coming out in support of gay marriage (because, WHAM, his SON became a GAY!). Yet again, this is a stellar example of how Republican politicians don’t have a shred of empathy.

If you don’t understand how shitty it is to discriminate against gays until your flamer son one day belts out the riveting tune “I’m Coming Out, Miss Crawford” from the off-broadway hit Fabulous! The Musical, you’re an asshole without any ability to effectively consider how different groups of people experience hardship in their lives.

If — only after your daughter marries a kind, hard-working undocumented immigrant and bears you a wonderful grandchild that is in peril of losing its father because immigration is snooping around his neighborhood – you start to rethink your abhorrent reactionary brainfarts about building electric fences along the border to electrocute those swarthy job-stealing wetbacks, you are a stupendous asshole and should be kept at least 500 yards away from schools and playgrounds.

If you think you’re “down” with the Blacks and believe that racism against whites is now a MUCH bigger issue than racism against blacks (because “my friend who is black” [and also a self-hating Republican token] told you so), just kill yourself.

I know, I know – it’s great to have all sorts of mavericky Republicans coming out of the woodwork and helping to shift the Overton Window toward justice. But I’ll be damned if I ever stop heaping scorn on a bunch of stratospherically self-righteous assholes who only come to realize that they’re being gigantic assholes when the things they’re being assholes about come to affect their lives in some way.

Anyone still up for requiring Republican congresscritters to refuse their communist government-run healthcare? What about exempting their children from the ban on health insurance plans discriminating against people with preexisting conditions? Let’s see how quickly the conversation would change then…

via mistermix

Update: Also this:

Rob Portman on Civil Rights:
Voted YES on Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex marriage. (Sep 2004)
Voted YES on banning gay adoptions in DC. (Jul 1999)
Rated 7% by the ACLU, indicating an anti-civil rights voting record. (Dec 2002)
Supports Amendment to prevent same sex marriage. (Aug 2010)

Update 2: More:

If Will hadn’t come out, or if he’d been as straight as Nebraska highway, Portman wouldn’t have cared about the sons and daughters and brothers and sisters of all the other Dads who love them and want them to have the same opportunities? It’s not just the implied notion that discrimination is OK unless it inconveniences Sunday dinner with the Portmans. It’s also the relentless banality through which even “decent” Republicans struggle to come to simple humanity. Does any group of people have dark nights of the soul that are so endlessly boring and transparently insincere? It’s like listening to Kierkegaard sell flatware.

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Slavemaster-Run Healthcare Keeps Blacks Addicted To Government Teat

Metavirus — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 23:26:30 +0000

There was a brouhaha at CPAC when some rednecks asserted that slaves had it good cuz their owners put a roof over their heads – but this bit in particular stood out for me, from a presenter opining on Frederick Douglass’s upbringing:

Douglass was “born below poverty”. What does that mean? “Slavemaster-run health care,” Smith says. “Slavemaster entitlements. Douglass was a 47 percenter. Slavemasters were Democrats.”

4 comment(s) for this post:

It's Shit Like This.... | Library Grape:
15 Mar 2013 [...] Slavemaster-Run Healthcare Keeps Blacks Addicted To Government Teat [...]
Matmos:
15 Mar 2013 "Douglass was a 47 percenter." Wait, what? Man, that WaPo article just kept going and going and going....I thought it funny, and sad, but mostly funny the way it showed how all the Cletus-speak was alienating the young people in the audience in real time, like a political scared straight program. CPAC should be forevers.
Metavirus:
15 Mar 2013 it's like watching The Psychotics perform at The Schizo Show at the Klan meeting at the Crystal Meth Convention Hall. any serious effort to TRULY understand these people would necessarily invite madness.

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by Metavirus @ Library Grape - The Best in Politics, Culture and Delicious Snark

Oh, Come ON! You Stereotypical Gays.

Metavirus — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 00:53:43 +0000

Survey says: my gay brethren like some sadly predictable stuff.

Self-identified gay users were unlikely to spend the time liking obviously gay-friendly groups like the No H8 Campaign, so the authors had to sharpen their predictions using things such as Wicked The Musical, Britney Spears, and Desperate Housewives.

At least Cher and Madonna didn’t make the top three this year.

1 comment(s) for this post:

Matmos:
15 Mar 2013 Personally, I like Hello Kitty, but I didn't "like" like it. I'd ask what liking K-pop means, but I'm pretty sure I already know what it means, so pay no attention.

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We’re for austerity too, but with 10% less arsenic!

Metavirus — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 20:21:01 +0000

Lev’s post about Obama’s frustrating “me-too!” obsession with deficits put me in mind of a cartoon I’ve always wished someone would come up with. … So I just came up with it myself.

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Silly Negroes Too Stupid To Realize That Obama Is Actually Crushing Them

Metavirus — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 20:44:40 +0000

Nothing like an article by some conservative white lady telling blacks which blacks they should like to bring out the kkklassy folk:

Why does obama have 88% of the black vote? Because 88% of them are low information voters or they vote skin color or sadly they think that obama cares. Most are too stupid to realize of all the people that this administration is hurting, it is crushing black americans

via

2 comment(s) for this post:

Matmos:
12 Mar 2013 Your quote sounds like she just plopped the "88%" in there because "47%" worked so well for the other guys, therefore math == zinger. Revenge percentage. Also, since 88 is double 47, it is double the zinger. ... No, 88 *is* double 47, when you correct for reality's liberal bias.
Metavirus:
12 Mar 2013 math = science, science = evil, therefore math = evil

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A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Metavirus — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 23:27:46 +0000

The Democrats’ staggering inability to extol the inarguable virtues of the 2009 stimulus package is on my top-20 list of the worst instances of political malpractice in the 21st century.

Sometimes a graph really makes the entire argument for you.

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Friday Music Party: Konichiwa Bitches

Metavirus — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 23:08:30 +0000

It’s been a while since I offered up some truly mindless aural curiosities. I’d never heard of this “Robyn” character prior to a couple of days ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdTucUya9YE

2 comment(s) for this post:

Matmos:
08 Mar 2013 Prepare to have your Mind. Blown.
Metavirus:
08 Mar 2013 O.o i sometimes wish that my exceptionally fun youthful dalliances with LSD in the 90s could have happened in our more modern CGI era. i wonder how deliciously traumatizing Resident Evil games on my xbox would become?

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What Will Joe Blow Think of the Sequester?

Metavirus — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 20:36:53 +0000

One of the big things that’s worried me about the sequester is the very real possibility that: (a) it happens, (b) the world does not come to an end, and, thus: (c) Joe Blow comes to the conclusion that “yeah, that bloated government really CAN function with a smaller pot of cash.”

1 comment(s) for this post:

Lev:
14 Mar 2013 Increasingly, that this is what is happening. Sometimes I feel like I've written too much about the debt ceiling crisis, but these days, I feel like I haven't. We're only now eating the rotten fruit from that tree.

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Free Business Advice You Really Ought To Know Already

Metavirus — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 00:08:42 +0000

It still amazes me that some worker bees don’t realize that their cutesy email signatures automatically cause many co-workers to think less of them.

1 comment(s) for this post:

vjack:
08 Mar 2013 I agree completely! I see these far too often at work. One's work email is not the appropriate place to express one's individuality. While I find the cutesy signatures far less annoying than those who try to use some sort of background image (i.e., stationary) in all their email, it is a close second. And yes, I absolutely do think less of those who do this.

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Is The Washington Post “Pro-Negro”?

Metavirus — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 01:57:23 +0000

By Patrick B. Pexton, Washington Post Ombudsman

As Re-Imagined by Metavirus (see Original Article)

I get a steady stream of e-mails and phone calls from readers who assert that The Post has a “pro-Negro agenda” and publishes too many “puffy” stories about interracial marriage, and that it even allows too many interracial couples to appear in the Date Lab feature in Sunday’s WP Magazine.

“The white supremacist side gets short shrift,” as one reader recently put it, and The Post “caters slavishly to Martin Luther King Boulevard.”

Indeed, that reader got into a vigorous three-way e-mail dialogue with a Post reporter and me over the issue, an exchange that goes to the heart of the question of whether The Post, and journalists in general, are hopelessly liberal and genetically tone-deaf to white supremacists.

Here are excerpts from that dialogue, with the reader’s and reporter’s names kept out of it at their requests.

The reader wrote that Post stories too often minimize the white supremacist argument: “The overlooked ‘other side’ on the Negro issue is quite legitimate, and includes the Pope, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, evangelist Billy Graham, scholars such as Robert George of Princeton, and the millions of Americans who believe in traditional marriage and oppose redefining marriage into nothingness. . . . Is there no room in The Post for those who support the gender purity, anti-miscegenation model of marriage?”

Replied the reporter: “The reason that legitimate media outlets routinely cover Negroes is because it is the civil rights issue of our time. Journalism, at its core, is about justice and fairness, and that’s the ‘view of the world’ that we espouse; therefore, journalists are going to cover the segment of society that is still not treated equally under the law.”

The reader: “Contrary to what you say, the mission of journalism is not justice. Defining justice is a political matter, not journalistic. Journalism should be about accuracy and fairness.

“Good journalism also means not demeaning white supremacists as ‘haters.’ ”

The reporter: “As for accuracy, should the media make room for Christian supremacists, i.e. those people who believe that only Christians should be allowed to marry in this country? Any story on people of other faiths wouldn’t be wholly accurate without the opinion of someone who wants to exclude non-Christians from marrying, right?

“Of course I have a bias. I have a bias toward fairness,” the reporter continued. “The true white supremacist would have the same bias. The true white supremacist would want the government out of people’s genetics, and race out of government.”

That discussion is most revealing about journalists.

Most journalists believe that through writing about life as it is, showing people’s struggles and contradictions, we get closer to the truth. The democracy, being more fully informed, then makes better decisions, and perhaps people’s lives improve as a result.

Alongside that do-gooder instinct is a strong desire for fairness because, being out in the world, reporters encounter a great deal of unfairness. We want to expose that and even rub your noses in it. In a way, we’re shouting, through our stories: “This is unfair! Somebody do something!” White supremacist and “pro-Negro” journalists alike feel this way.

And because our profession lives and dies on the First Amendment — one of the libertarian cornerstones of the Constitution — most journalists have a problem with white supremacists telling people what they can and cannot do. We want to write words, read books, watch movies, listen to music, and have sex and babies pretty much when, where and how we choose.

Yet many Americans feel that allowing Negroes to marry whites diminishes the value of their marriages and leads to the dilution of the purity of the white race. I don’t understand this. The interracial parents down the street raising two kids or the mixed race couple across the hall in your condominium — how do those unions take anything away from the sanctity, fidelity or joy you take in your same-race marriage? Isn’t your marriage, at root, based on the love and commitment you have for your spouse, not what you think about the neighbors?

That’s why many journalists have a hard time giving much voice to those opposed to interracial marriage. They see people opposed to the rights of Negroes today as cousins, perhaps distant cousins, of people in the 1820s and 1830s who, citing God, Natural Law and the Bible, opposed Jews teaching their children in school or running for political office.

Still, just as I have written that The Post should do a better job of covering and understanding the anti-abortion movement, The Post should do a better job of understanding and conveying to readers, with detachment and objectivity, the beliefs and the fears of white supremacists.

Patrick B. Pexton can be reached at 202-334-7582 or ombudsman@washpost.com.

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In Which the Author Got to Hug Andrew Sullivan | Library Grape:
01 Mar 2013 [...] Is The Washington Post “Pro-Negro”? [...]

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Perfect Encapsulation of Republican Hatred of Obama

Metavirus — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 01:24:52 +0000

In a snippy nastygram about Michelle Obama appearing on the Oscars, Jennifer Rubin again offers up a perfect example of mindless hatred and partisanship uber alles:

No one, it seems, gets within a mile of the White House with any sense of restraint. No one there would dare suggest nearly half the country didn’t vote for him and doesn’t much like him and might want to be left to their small daily pleasures.

So there you go. Obama and half the country should fuck off and leave Real Americans alone to polish their guns and pout.

2 comment(s) for this post:

Matmos:
28 Feb 2013 I want to hear more on these "small daily pleasures" she mentioned. Are we talking, say, a box of choc-o-diles with Mall-o-mars melted over top, or are we talking something more prostitute-y or Ted Haggard-y....with Mall-o-mars melted over top? I'm tempted to mention other "small daily pleasures" certain segments of our society get up to, but I'm starting to get pissed, so might as well drop it.
Metavirus:
28 Feb 2013 {rinsing out brainpan after thinking of jennifer rubin and a certain kind of small daily pleasure. it burns}

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Three Cheers For The Death Of Old Media

Metavirus — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:28:58 +0000

Fun Quiz! Try to guess whether this was written by (a) a Serious, impartial journalist, or (b) some wacky wingnut:

Chuck Hagel’s rocky and inauspicious path to leadership of the Pentagon could haunt him if he doesn’t watch his step. [...]

The task for Hagel, 66, going forward is to swiftly move past the protracted nomination battle, prove himself a strong and capable Pentagon chief, and repair relationships on Capitol Hill, said Fran Townsend, a former homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush. [...]

His shaky performance at his confirmation hearing and the subsequent fierce political wrangling over his selection and on unrelated matters did not help his case. [...]

Bad feelings about Hagel stem, in part, from his 2007 comments that the “Jewish lobby intimidated lawmakers.” Republicans who are already uncomfortable with Obama’s policies toward Israel are uneasy about a defense secretary holding such views.

See how the author is hardly even trying to inoculate the inflammatory bits by attributing them to some “Republican strategist”? She just puts it right out there, in her own voice, that Hagel was a shaky character who courted controversy and did nebulous bad stuff to hurt his own case.

The best bits are found in the tantalizing wingnut linkbait regarding some vague, undefined (but obviously controversial!):

Obama administration “policies toward Israel” (ed: um, which policies?, Obama handing out free USAID popsicles to Kibbutzers, or it is his policy of drone-killing the first-born child of every conservative Israeli PM?), and, even better,

Hagel holding some scary-sounding “VIEWS” (!!) about (presumably) sainted well-meaning Jewish lobbyists who intimidate lawmakers (ed: what, with this harmless kvetching you have problem? maybe it’s all that “guilt-laying” you accuse us of? it’s a shanda the way you hurt your mother in this way!)

I also like the part where the author selectively picks out those scary “2007 comments” as the most important part of the reason why his nomination sparked “bad feelings.” Hey, I know you’re constitutionally incapable of ever giving Republicans a Sad, but at least try to find a way to obliquely suggest that naked political opportunism was at least a significant factor driving the opposition (irrespective of whoeverthefuck was sitting in the hot seat).

Always remember, it’s the Democrats’ fault if they aren’t able to wave their +2 Staff of Calming and successfully lull Republicans into such a trance that they temporarily forget to run around rabid and bite someone’s nuts off. After all, those negligent Democrats should maintain better control over their adorably wacky Republican beasts.

Also too, Daddy Obama needs to take the reins, snap the riding crop and exercise LEADERSHIP, dammit!

(via)

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Why Do We Still Get Nearly All Of Our Energy From Steam?

Metavirus — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 21:20:08 +0000

I’m sitting back and again remarking to myself how absolutely loony it is that nearly all of the world’s energy needs are fed by steam.

Steam power got dreamed up 2,000+ years ago, fer fuxake! Archimedes came up with a steam cannon back around 200 BCE. Leonardo da Vinci trod the same road in 15th century Italy (decades before Galileo hurt Baby Jeebus’s feelings by showing that the Earth revolved around the Sun!).

It boggles the mind that, for all our advances in other fields of science and engineering, nearly every power plant you’ll ever see runs off an old-timey steam turbine. We can put a man on the moon but we can’t come up with a large-scale replacement for a bunch of huge clunky magnets spinning against some boring ol’ copper wire!? Even the gargantuan avalanches of energy released in the process of splitting the atom inside a nuclear reactor get channeled into a stupendously disappointing process that sparked in someone’s mind around the time that Moses came down with the tablets.

C’mon… The best we can come up with are solar cells!?, which convert the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect? Where’s my gravimetric field displacement manifold??, which would channel the energy released in a matter-antimatter annihilation directly into a given power grid/warp field?

Grumble… and I still want my rocket pack too…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1YHL2E2sR4

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