Murdoch is in the toilet - time to flush

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Murdoch's Media Empire Might Go Down the Toilet
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Rupert Murdoch has also been paying off Scotland Yard officers, apparently. And, well, we know how many politicians he's bought.

But we've let Murdoch buy so many media outlets that all too many of us get our news from him. How can you expect to learn the truth, when your news comes from people willing to do anything to make money and to push their own right-wing political views?

Murdoch's media empire - including Fox "News" - has been in the toilet for a long time now. It's time to flush.

Are we giving up on the dream?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Final Countdown
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

See if you can find Nebraska

That's a map of the United States as seen by a New Yorker, from Funny or Die. Click on the map to embiggen.

Of course, I had to post it here because of the treatment of Nebraska. (At that, we did better than Iowa, huh?)

The first gay couple in the White House?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Field of Dongs
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

"Pray the gay away"? And these are the people we want in the White House???

I don't usually speculate on anyone's sexual orientation. It's none of my business. And if you're milking it for laughs, that seems to imply there's something intrinsically wrong with homosexuality. There's not.

But when it's one of these repressed loons like Ted Haggard or... Marcus Bachmann, that's another matter. Humor is appropriate here. Ridicule is appropriate. I think the difference is clear, don't you?

Incidentally, Jon Stewart followed this segment with a visit from Jerry Seinfeld for "comedy repression therapy." It continues the theme from this clip, and you can find it here if you wish.

Rick Perry's prayer event

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Nice, huh? These are the people Texas governor Rick Perry has speaking at his loony prayer event - you know, the one he's invited all the other governors to?

Note that Perry is welcoming these religious loons at least in part because he thinks that's his ticket to the presidency. Yes, the GOP base is really that crazy.

But I hope the rest of us remember that George W. Bush was also the evangelicals' preferred candidate. We all know how that turned out. We're still trying to dig out of the hole he dug for us.

(John Darkow)

Republicans just can't help themselves

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Flavery
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Incredible, isn't it? Even as obsessed with homosexuality as these right-wing loons are (what does someone else's sex life matter to me?), they can't help but bring race into it, too.

Think these people aren't racist? Then what does this preamble have to do with gay marriage? Sure, they try to be politically-correct by using the term "African-American" - and I'm sure they're very proud of themselves for that - but just bringing up race all the time shows their racist mindset.

Slavery wasn't so bad, right? Slaves had mommies and daddies, too, didn't they? (After all, someone must have raped slave women in order to produce more slaves.) And we white people know slavery, too. After all, we have to pay taxes! Yeah, think of that! And you think your ancestors had it bad...

That's like the widespread belief these days - and I'm sorry, but I hear it from white men all too often - that white men are the real victims of discrimination in America. Yeah, we've got all the good jobs, and our bosses are all white men, and we live in good neighborhoods, and our median income is ten times the median income for blacks (and we're paid more than white women for doing similar jobs),...

But that's just because we deserve it, right? Yeah, we had to work for that, not like those lucky minorities who get everything they want. Gee, I sure wish I was a minority. Lucky bastards!

Republicans would oppose any Democratic president, of course. And there was no shortage of crazy conspiracy theories when Bill Clinton was president. But the real hysteria today, the complete gibbering lunacy on the right, has a lot to do with the fact that Barack Obama is black.

The right continues to do things like this which clearly show that. But I doubt if they understand why that is. Well, that's because they think it's natural to be obsessed with race, just like being obsessed with homosexuality.

Tax cut religion

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Dancing on the Ceiling - Tax Cut Religion
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

"You call it murder. I call it the market regulating the brother supply."

Debt ceiling minefield

(Steve Sack)

The Harry Potter Book of Mormon parody

Yeah, it's another YouTube video, and another parody, in fact. But isn't this clever?

And the same girl plays all the parts. Really, I had to laugh. She did a great job with this.

The key of awesome

I'm not very musical, but I tend to like parodies. And yeah, I know I've been posting a lot of video clips the last couple of days, but what can I say? I post what I feel like posting.

This video is just one of many in the "Key of Awesome" playlist at barely political. Here's the first, if you want to watch them in order - though I wouldn't say it's one of my favorites. Well, I'm not sure I have a favorite, actually. I like a lot of these.

Um,... note that these aren't exactly safe for work. But then, you shouldn't be watching music videos at work anyway, right? :)

The Manosphere

Sorry, I just think this guy's really funny.

3D printer

Neat, isn't it?

Fox News admits bias?

LiberalViewer does a great job, doesn't he? And so does Media Matters.

Johann Hari on free speech and religious fundamentalism

Great speech, isn't it?

There's a post on Pharyngula (where I got this video clip, too, actually) that's not directly related to this video, but it's still about "making the argument," as Hari says. If you think you've got something to say, say it.

"Fine, make the argument. If you disagree, if you don't like what someone says, argue back. Make a better case. Persuade people. Get it right. Do it better. The best way to discredit a bad argument is to let people hear it."

But don't keep other people from saying their piece. And don't huddle in secret meetings, afraid to let your ideas meet the light of day:

The Intelligent Design creationists have been having a secret meeting in Italy, where they claim to be challenging Darwinian orthodoxies. Well, semi-secret: they brought in David Berlinski's daughter to pretend to be a "journalist" and throw gentle little softballs in youtube interviews, but many of the attendees are anonymous, the meeting program is not available, and the place is stocked with devotees of religious orthodoxy who are singularly clueless about science. What it really is is a great big creationist circle jerk where everyone is free to say stupid things and not have one of those annoying evidence-based scientists in the audience asking difficult questions, and also avoid real journalists who might publicly expose their inanity. ...

Yes, their careers are in danger, because disciplines that value rigor and evidence and science are not going to be impressed at all by deluded cowards who hide in closets and whisper oft-debunked stupidities at one another. If you've got the goods, stand and deliver; show us your evidence, explain your reasoning, persuade people who disagree with you with the strength of your argument. They can't, so they scurry off to picturesque villas in Tuscany, shoo away those difficult criticisms, and sit and reassure each other that they are very clever indeed while mangling information theory and biology.

My favorite quote from Darwin's Origin is so appropriate here.

It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as the "plan of creation" or "unity of design," &c., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory. A few naturalists, endowed with much flexibility of mind, and who have already begun to doubt the immutability of species, may be influenced by this volume; but I look with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality. Whoever is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by conscientiously expressing his conviction; for thus only can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.

There was an orthodoxy in Darwin's time, too, and it was the dogma of creationism. Darwin's advice to young scientists was to conscientiously express their convictions, and to get out and publish, publish, publish their observations. That's how science progresses, by wrestling with disagreement and confronting it with evidence and experiment.

OK, I didn't originally intend to combine these two things, but I thought they fit. There's a culture that believes in free and open expression, a clear-eyed, courageous, stand-up face-to-face look at our ideas and our beliefs,... and then there's a culture of dogma and faith, afraid of other ideas which might prove better.

I know which culture I prefer.

Black economic gains reversed in the Great Recession

The headline in The Washington Post says it all: "After decades of hard-fought progress, black economic gains were reversed in the Great Recession."

But the figures are just astonishing:

Economists say the Great Recession lasted from 2007 to 2009. In 2004, the median net worth of white households was $134,280, compared with $13,450 for black households, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by the Economic Policy Institute. By 2009, the median net worth for white households had fallen 24 percent to $97,860; the median black net worth had fallen 83 percent to $2,170, according to the EPI.

Algernon Austin, director of the EPI’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy, described the wealth gap this way: “In 2009, for every dollar of wealth the average white household had, black households only had two cents.”

Since the end of the recession, the overall unemployment rate has fallen from 9.4 to 9.1 percent, while the black unemployment rate has risen from 14.7 to 16.2 percent, according to the Department of Labor.

After generations of slavery, segregation, and institutional bigotry, blacks had started clawing themselves out of desperate poverty. Keep in mind that these were often people raised in poverty, people who knew no other life, poorly educated in bad schools, raised in crime-ridden slums, and still suffering from widespread bigotry.

Look at those figures again. Look at the difference between white and black households. Even before this economic collapse, the difference was incredible - and shameful. And now, with giveaways to the wealthy (overwhelmingly white) paid for by cuts in social programs and jobs,... well, as an American, I'm deeply ashamed.

Is it any wonder that people give up?

You know, we didn't lose the war on poverty. We just quit.

GOG.com's "hidden gems" sale

So, now GOG.com is having a "hidden gems" sale. Every day for the next 18 days, they'll have a different "lesser-known" classic computer game on sale.

It's not exactly what I need, since I'm currently (re)playing both X-Com: UFO Defense and Fallout, two of the greatest games of all time. But it's hard to resist...

Today's game is Sanitarium:

A frightening look into the mind of madness, you find yourself continually wondering, as you make your way through the five worlds that your insanity takes you to: is this encounter real, or only the product of a fevered imagination? You are a recent victim of a car crash, and one who has complete amnesia. You awaken in an insane asylum, and immediately you must fend for yourself in a world gone mad—unless it’s you who’s gone mad, and the world is just a reflection of that.

I've never played that one before. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever heard of it. Well, that's the whole point of these "hidden gems," I guess.

These are old games, of course. This one was first released in 1998, so it's not as old as many of the games GOG.com sells. But like all the rest, it's cheap. On sale, it's less than $4. How long would you have to play that game to get your money's worth?

Sanitarium is a point and click adventure game, not normally my favorite kind of game, but it certainly looks like it would be fun for a change. But as I say, I'm already playing two games (actually, far more than that, if you consider all the games on my computer that are half-finished).

But I wonder what's going to be on sale tomorrow...  :)

The new "bridge to nowhere"

(Pat Bagley)

Payback time for Sen. James Inhofe?

From TPM:

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) is pushing a bill that would protect pilots from "agency overreach" by the Federal Aviation Administration, in response to his own experience at the mercy of the FAA after he "scared the crap out of" airport workers last year when he landed his Cessna on a closed runway. ...

Inhofe agreed to and completed a "program of remedial training" in place of legal action in December of 2010, according to an FAA report, after he landed his plane at Cameron County Airport in South Texas last October on a closed runway marked with a large X. ...

Audiotapes of a call from Sidney Boyd, who was supervising runway construction, to the FAA identify Inhofe, and describe how he "sky hopped" over six vehicles and construction personnel on the runway, before he landed. The landing "scared the crap out of us," Boyd said.

Any other pilot would have lost his license right there. But Inhofe is a powerful Senator. So, not only is he still flying, he's trying to punish the FAA for objecting to his reckless actions at all.

Well, I've never understood how Oklahoma could elect an ignoramus like Inhofe, anyway.

Weevils evolved a screw-and-nut joint

(Science News)

From Science News:

Back when hardware meant bony plates and flesh-rending teeth, a living version of the humble screw evolved naturally in, of all places, the leg joints of weevils.

The legs of at least 15 kinds of weevils have tapering, threaded, somewhat pointed ends where their legs meet their bodies. As the leg shifts position, the threaded tip tightens or loosens along a ridge on the inside of a rounded hollow structure, researchers in Germany report in the July 1 Science. “This is the first description of a true screw and nut in an organism,”...

Neat, huh? Of course, their legs don't unscrew completely, since they've got muscles attached to them. But apparently, this screw-and-nut joint allows for some real flexibility in leg positions.

As one scientist notes, "It does confirm my notion that just about anything that is possible, insects will have evolved."

(This reminds me of the g'Keks, who are aliens with biological wheels instead of legs, in David Brin's Brightness Reef. Of course, that's science fiction. And it actually wasn't clear that they'd evolved that way naturally.)

Michele Bachmann surging in the polls

"Bachmann surging" is not a headline you want to read if you care about America, and indeed the world. But here it is in the latest poll from Public Policy Polling:

When PPP polled New Hampshire in April Michele Bachmann was stuck at 4%. She's gained 14 points over the last three months and now finds herself within single digits of Mitt Romney. Romney continues to lead the way in the state with 25% to 18% for Bachmann, 11% for Sarah Palin, 9% for Ron Paul, 7% for Rick Perry and Herman Cain, 6% for Jon Huntsman and Tim Pawlenty, and 4% for Newt Gingrich. ...

Romney's starting to show some signs of weakness in New Hampshire. His support is down 12 points from 37% on the iteration of our April poll...

OK, so it's not the Apocalypse yet, but who else is there? I'm not surprised Romney's support is fading. He's such a phony that it's hard to believe even Republicans would go for him. (Of course, that's not actually the problem. The problem is that his health care reform plan has now become "Obamacare.")

And look who else is in double-digits: Sarah Palin. But Palin is unlikely to run - and give up all of that loot? no way! - and all of her fans are likely to switch to Bachmann. (Can you believe there are that many loons in America?)

Leaving aside the gut-wrenching implications for my country, this poll also shows other interesting results:

Usually a 12 point drop would qualify you as the biggest loser in the poll but Romney's still in first place so that designation probably deserves to go to Gingrich, who's at 4% and in 9th place now after being at 14% and tied for 2nd place on our previous poll. He's the only candidate besides Romney who's seen a double digit drop in his net favorability. It was +9 at 45/36 in April and it's now gone down 27 points to -18 at 33/51, making him the least popular out of 17 people we polled on.

Another big loser on this poll is Tim Pawlenty. His name recognition has sky rocketed from 48% to 72% with New Hampshire primary voters over the last three months. But his horse race support has only gone from 5% to 6%.

So the Gingrich campaign has been a complete train-wreck, right from the start. I don't think I've ever seen a campaign crash and burn so quickly. Hey, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy, huh?

And Pawlenty's name recognition has surged, but when people get to know him, they apparently don't like him. That's never a good sign for a candidate. Really, if Pawlenty could run using just his campaign ads, without voters ever seeing or hearing the guy himself, he might have a chance. But the man in person is just hilarious - inadvertently - if you've come to expect anything like the video clips.

It's hard to really identify any 'winners' on this poll other than Bachmann.

But there are sure plenty of losers, including the entire American people. Really, this is the worst bunch of lunatics I've ever seen run for public office - any public office. George W. Bush might even look good compared to most of them.

As far as I can tell, the only one who isn't completely crazy is Jon Huntsman, and he's sitting at a whopping 6% (PPP notes that it's "better than he's done anywhere else we've polled"). Of course, even Huntsman would have to act crazy in order to keep the support of the Republican base. For better or worse, every candidate runs with party backing.

What depresses me is that the Republicans don't seem to be losing support among ordinary Americans. With extremists like this leading them, why not? Has all of America gone completely batshit crazy? What has happened to us?

I'd hoped we might have learned something from the Bush Administration, but instead, we seem to be doubling down on right-wing crazy.