CHRISTIAN IMBECILITY: Dusty Smith / “Fuck Katt Williams!”
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Monthly Archives: August 2012
CONSERVATIVE MISOGYNY: “A Simple Flowchart For Anyone Who Feels They Are Entitled To Legislate A Vagina”
h/t: MoveOn.org
MUSIC – JAZZ: Nina Simone / “Feeling Good” / 1965
Birds flying high you know how I feel
Sun in the sky you know how I feel
Breeze driftin’ on by you know how I feel
(refrain:)x2
It’s a new dawn
It’s a new day
It’s a new life
For me
And I’m feeling good
Fish in the sea you know how I feel
River running free you know how I feel
Blossom on the tree you know how I feel
(refrain)
Dragonfly out in the sun you know what I mean, don’t you know
Butterflies all havin’ fun you know what I mean
Sleep in peace when day is done
That’s what I mean
And this old world is a new world
And a bold world
For me
Stars when you shine you know how I feel
Scent of the pine you know how I feel
Oh freedom is mine
And I know how I feel
TEA PARTY: The Newsroom / “Tea Party is the American Taliban” / “The Tea Party and Koch”
TEA PARTY: The Newsroom / “The Tea Party and Koch”
REPUBLICAN FEAR: “Why Republicans Fear Same-Sex Marriage”
h/t: Planet Atheism
h/t: unreasonable faith
REPUBLICAN XENOPHOBIA: “Chris Matthews Calls Out GOP Chairman Reince Priebus on Xenobhobia”
INDEPENDENT MOVIE: Trailer / “Compliance” / 2012
h/t: Planet Atheism
h/t: Arizona Atheist
Film highlights the temptations and perils of blind obedience to authority
Indie film Compliance recalls notions that the past decade’s worst events are explained by failures to oppose authority
[…]
It is difficult to overstate the impact of this authority-serving behavior from the very institutions designed to oppose authority. As Zobel, the writer and director of Compliance, notes, most people are too busy with their lives to find the time or energy to scrutinize prevailing orthodoxies and the authorities propagating them. When the institutions that are in a position to provide those checks fail to do that, those orthodoxies and authorities thrive without opposition or challenge, no matter how false and corrupted they may be.
As much as anything else, this is the institutional failure that explains the debacles of the last decade. There is virtually no counter-weight to the human desire to follow and obey authority because the institutions designed to provide that counter-weight – media outlets, academia, courts – do the opposite: they are the most faithful servants of those centers of authority.
[…]
Of course people who think and behave this way encounter no oppression. That’s their reward for good, submissive behavior. As Rosa Luxemburg put this: “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” They are left alone by institutions of power because they comport with the desired behavior of complacency and obedience without further compulsion.
Related articles
- ‘Compliance’ Director Craig Zobel On Courting Controversy And The Insidiousness Of Chick-Fil-A (movieline.com)
- “I was just following orders” (salon.com)
- Chilling Realities, Beggaring Belief In ‘Compliance’ (wnyc.org)
- ‘Compliance’ depicts prank-driven assault (sfgate.com)
- Chilling Realities, Beggaring Belief In ‘Compliance’ (npr.org)
- The Year’s Most Controversial Film (thedailybeast.com)
EVOLUTION: Bill Nye / “Creationism is Not Appropriate for Children”
“And I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that’s completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that’s fine, but don’t make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can—we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems.”
h/t: Planet Atheism
h/t: Friendly Atheist
IN REMEMBRANCE: Anthony Arnove / “Howard Zinn Turns 90: The Great Legacy of the People’s Historian”
Howard Zinn would have turned 90 this Friday if his seemingly boundless energy and youthfulness had not been cut short in January 2010.
[…]
It’s worth remembering that A People’s History of the United States first came out in 1980 as a tide of reaction was seeking to bury the social movements that inspired Howard’s book and which he saw as the hope for the future.
[…]
Howard challenged these ideas in a terrific speech he gave in 1970: “If you don’t think, if you just listen to TV and read scholarly things, you actually begin to think that things are not so bad, or that just little things are wrong. But you have to get a little detached, and then come back and look at the world, and you are horrified. So we have to start from that supposition—that things are really topsy-turvy.”
Howard had that rare ability to step back and help us understand our topsy-turvy world primarily because he approached politics and history from the standpoint of someone who thought it was possible to turn our world right side up — to put people before profit, the environment before the interests of mining companies.
¡Howard Zinn presente!
Related articles
- Lies the Debunkers Told Me: How Bad History Books Win Us Over (theatlantic.com)
REASON: Bill Maher / “My New Rule for Todd Akin and the Republican Party”
. . . Here’s the only thing you need to know about Todd Akin and human anatomy: he’s an asshole. What I want to talk about is how it’s not a coincidence that the party of fundamentalism is also the party of fantasy. When I say religion is a mental illness, this is what I mean: it corrodes your mental faculties to the point where you can believe in tiny ninja warriors who hide in vaginas and lie in wait for bad people’s sperm.
Evangelicals might like to pretend that the magical thinking that they indulge in at home doesn’t affect what they do at the office, but it absolutely does. The brain that believes in angels and miracles and Jesus riding a dinosaur is trained to see the world not as it is, but as you want it to be.
[…]
. . . [B]ecause we’re already such a religious country, our minds are primed for magical, fantasy thinking. The gullibility comes factory-installed. They’ve learned that you appeal not to an American’s head, but to his gut — it’s a much bigger target. But here’s the problem: life is complicated. I mean, I know we know some things for sure, like why Jesus put us here on Earth: to watchHere Comes Honey Boo Boo on a 50-inch TV screen. But what about the Chinese slaves who made the TV? What about carbon from the coal that generated the electricity? What about the Walmart where we bought it, where the workers don’t have health insurance? What about racism, or the oceans turning into nail polish remover? The grown-up answer is: identify problems scientifically, prioritize and solve. The Republican answer is: there isn’t a problem. And anyone who tells you different is a liar who hates America. We don’t have to make hard choices. We just have to ignore the science and the math — that’s why God gave us values.
Always Question Authority 