Too Stupid for Words category archive

Over at Scientific Blogging, the Rubyologist tees off on the anti-vaccine zealots:

Now, we sit in the midst of a swine flu pandemic with a shortage of vaccine. There are a number of reasons for the shortage. The Obama administration blames the manufacturers, but, as this Wall Street Journal article discusses, part of the problem is that we gave in to anti-vax fear-mongering.

The fact that the purported thimerosal-autism link has been completely disproven, has not stopped the anti-vax ideologues. If the science does not support using single dose vials with reduced amounts of preservative, why did we decide to forgo use of mutli-dose vials, which can be produced and distributed more efficiently? May I suggest fear?

In a country that likes to bill itself as the most techologically advanced (it isn’t), the willingness of Americans to embrace and perpetrate fear based on ignorance and lies is quite astounding.

The Booman asks:

What is the difference between rape and forcible rape? That’s a question Bart Stupak wants you to know the answer to before you go trying to abort a pregnancy that has resulted from rape. He also wants your insurance company to ask you and your doctor whether your rape was really, truly forcible.

I know a few women who have been raped. (Hell, I may know some men who have been raped, but, if so, I don’t know about it.) I think they would say that trying to differentiate between rape and forcible rape is just too Stupak for words.

and points out that, once again, working persons are getting the shaft.

There was column in today’s local rag suggesting that walkouts should be banned and that transit should be thrown open to competition.

The reason that SEPTA and other transit agencies exist is because the profit-making railroads and bus companies no longer wanted the business.

The writers conceded that the transit agency had been underfunding the pension fund (the primary issue in the strike, though not the only issue).

I worked in the passenger transportation industry for a long time. I did not work on the road, but I worked close enough to the road to know that it is damned hard work that goes on 365 days a year, with screwy hours and often obnoxious cargo that wants first class service at fourth class rates and thinks it is entitled to treat the employees like dirt.

But God forbid transit employees should expect to be treated like decent human beings and have management honor its promises, like, for example, just to mention one pulled out of thin air, to fund their damned pensions.

In other words, to put it bluntly, workers should just bend over and take it.

That about providing good value for the money?

Nah. Too simple.

From Facebook to Twitter to YouTube, retailers and food chains plan to use social media this holiday season to get their brands in front of consumers and possibly win a bigger piece of their limited shopping budgets.

Never has one of my posts’ titles been so appropriate.

Twitter, Inc., shut down 33 fake Twitter accounts created by Republicans using the names of Democratic (Connecticut) state representatives. The Republican scheme was to send out posts under the Democrats’ names mocking the liberal tax-and-spend bastards.

(snip)

According to Twitter, Inc., the fake posts violated the immensely popular social networking system’s anti-impersonation policy.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

A catchphrase with credentials: BS, MS, PHD.

Warning: Language

Karen regales me with this picture from a grocery store somewhere in the Wild West, where she resides:

The “Pay Extra for Saran Wrap” movement is growing.

Gag me with a spoon.

Except when the trigger finger combines with reckless dumbness:

A Florida man shot and killed his fianceé early Friday morning after mistaking her for an intruder.

This idea that some have that arming more yahoos with fireamrs somehow increases public safety is farcical.

It has no support in fact, only in ideology and wishful thinking.

Afterthought: Come to think of it, it’s sort of like Republican economic theory.

I thought white potatoes came ready to microwave right out of the ground. Just wash them and poke them a few times with a fork.

Apparently not.

The “microwavable potatoes” are two for three dollars.

Regular Idahos are $1.49 a pound (Idahos, not red russets or plain ole low-brow round lumpy white potatoes).

Figure about three Idahos per pound and do the arithmetic. That’s awfully expensive Saran Wrap.

Addendum:

I received an email from someone what has tried these thingees, which says, in part,

Yukk.

Trying to follow Republican reasoning (emphasis added):

You were born a Christian, not born gay. Religion is not a choice.

Or so the spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) would have you believe. Questioned about why the House’s top Republican opposes a hate crimes bill penalizing violence against gays, his spokesman said he “supports existing federal protections (based on race, religion, gender, etc) based on immutable characteristics,” just not protections for things like being gay — which conservatives occasionally claim is a choice.

. . . thereby saying that religion is an immutable characteristic.

Guess all those missionaries might as well come home and get jobs at Mickey Dee’s.

(Given the hate-full antics of some who call themselves “Christian,” I can well understand why some who were born with that “immutable characteristic” have indeed chosen not to label themselves as such, despite the immutable fate imposed by their Boehner-Boner Christian gene. I still remember the surprise on the faces of some of my leftie friends when I mentioned that I had a pastor.)

Why on earth anyone would chose to be homosexual is beyond me. And thinking that sexual orientation is a choice, rather than a trait, betrays a gross failure to understand the world.

I don’t know any heterosexual persons who have ever been able to describe “choosing” to be straight; they just knew.

I do know gay persons who fought the knowledge that they were gay for years, often with great pain and loss because of bad decisions they made to pretend, to themselves and others, to be something they were not.

Trying to dress bigotry in reason and make it presentable in polite company makes for unreason.

The moral of this story is that, if you are a fugitive on the lamb for bank fraud, don’t “friend” U. S. Government employees.

In fact, it’s probably not a good idea to Facebook at all.

. . . when they can’t think for themselves?

Granted, a six-year old should not be trucking around unsupervised with a Boy Scout knife, even if it’s just because he’s excited about joining the Tiger Cubs. At the same time, divining someone’s intent without taking into account behavior, but only from measuring the size of the knife, is really dumb.

It would not be allowed in criminal court; that’s why there is a difference between “involuntary manslaughter” and “first degree murder.” But schools know not due process.

It is typical of many policies in schools and in other organizations, private and public. It relieves the persons who are paid the middle-sized bucks to make the middle-sized decisions from having to, well, decide and then be held accountable for their decisions. (The rule was made so arbitrary because administrators were making bad decisions. Easier than expecting them to make good ones.)

Because the district’s Student Code of Conduct bans dangerous instruments regardless of intent, the district could not take into consideration Zachary’s age or why he brought the camping utensil to school, said Wendy Lapham, the district’s spokeswoman.

“We have to follow the policy as it is written consistently because this is the code of conduct that is applied to all of our students in our district,” she said. “It’s never a question of a child’s character or comparing one child to another.”

The sophistry is mind-numbing. I guess the rules sprang full-blown from the mind of Zeus and are therefore immutable.

Read more »

We wouldn’t have doctors.

Frankly, this is sick-making.

In a letter to the editor in today’s local rag, the writer says:

It seems obvious that the United States has had a bloodless coup in the form of the Democrats’ having control of all three branches of government.

Wingnut spelling bee:

Coup.
E-L-E-C-T-I-O-N.
Coup.

Wingnut arithmetic:

Legislative Branch = 1
Executive Branch = 1

1 + 1 = 3

Afterthought: That’s the kind of arithmetic behind voodoo economics.

I have discussed the Republican fascination with sex before.

One time, many years ago, I was teen-aged boy. I was normal. I was fascinated with sex.

I didn’t know what it was, but I was fascinated with it. I devoted lots of energy to finding out what it was.

But my fascination with it was normal.

Not morbid.

Like this.

Steve has the IQ dump.

Yeah, the links check out.

Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up.

Up is down, in is out, and the sky is green.

It’s a wingnut world. Tra-la-la and a hey-nonnie-nonnie.

(Can you tell I’m down to my last nerve?)

It used to be considered bad form to advocate the violent overthrow of the government of the United States of America (although the wingnut in question claims to merely musing . . . .)

Indeed, it was considered an “unAmerican activity.”

The right wing in this country is profoundly disturbed by the scary black man in the White House.

Addendum:

Eating Choking on their words. From Josh Marshall:

As you can see, the angle Newsmax is taking on this is to suggest that Perry doesn’t really have anything to do with them, that he’s just an “unpaid blogger.” Now I think we all understand that there are many sites — Kos, Redstate, even TPM — where readers are allowed to set up their own blogs or diaries and write their own stuff. These are essentially discussion areas. And it’s a cheap shot when someone finds some nutty diary on Kos and says DailyKos published such and such. Newsmax is claiming that that’s what’s happening here. But we’ve taken a close look. And I think it’s clear that that is not true. Perry has written a weekly column for the site going back to at least 1999. And he’s prominently listed on the bio page of all Newsmax columnists, along with Dick Morris, Dr. Laura, Grover Norquist, Lanny Davis, Michael Reagan, Rep. Ernest Istook, etc.

It’s not a good idea to joke about assassination, though the wingnut brigade seems to think it is.

(Link fixed.)

Those Secret Service folks take their jobs very seriously:

Facebook Inc., the most popular social-networking Web site, said it pulled a third-party program from the service that asked if President Barack Obama should be assassinated.

Facebook is working with the U.S. Secret Service, which is investigating the matter, company spokesman Larry Yu said today. The application, which allows users to conduct surveys of Facebook members, was used to create the Obama poll.

“We take any threat against our protectees very seriously, and we will investigate it thoroughly,” Darrin Blackford, a U.S. Secret Service spokesman, said in a telephone interview, adding that the investigation began Sept. 26.

My guess is that it was one of those quizzes like the new one, just released, “Which Bunk Do You Want?”

Aside: I do not recall lefties joking about assassinating elected officials in the preceding eight years. Sure, I heard a lot of lefties say a lot of unpleasant things about what Bush, Cheney, and their accomplices did. I said my fair share.

And, ya know what? We were right.

They did do all the things we said they did.

But I did not hear or read anyone who wished or even joked about their being assassinated, just who wanted them out of office.

Now it seems that you can’t turn around without hearing someone joke about assassinating President Obama.

What the hell is wrong with these people?

Josh Marshall comments:

With Sen. Kyl pointing out that men have no interest in having insurance cover child birth, no doubt women will note that they have little interest in covering prostate and testicular cancer. And surely men will get back into the act and want to get out of under the cost of covering breast cancer, which very few men get.