US vs ME

 

Stan Lee

I do not have to be tolerant of your intolerance.

Additives, maps and books

Additives in our food.

Undercover Agents Infiltrated Tar Sands Resistance Camp to Break up Planned Protest  TransCanada and Department of Homeland Security keep close eye on activists, FOIA documents reveal and what fracking is doing to Texas.

Being tolerant in gaming is hard.

The Onion is real news, right?

How to prevent rape.

Maps that can change your perception of the world.

Crimes against humanity.

And, sorry Australia, for shooting one of your baseball athletes.  We have these gun laws you see....

Finally... recommended books published after 2000.

Anchor teaches a bully a lesson

And it's only Tuesday...

A true believer for the second Gilded Age.

Daily sexual harassment of women.

Nothing to see here. Just mutated Japanese moths near Fukushima.

Funniest tweets about Paul Ryan.

Environmentalists are ruining the pipeline scheme.

White Dudes Unite!



Social Security facts:

 

Weird, wise and wonderful... and simply stupid

21 Pictures That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity

Dog

The dangers of privatizing things that governments do.

Solar cell breakthrough taps previously unused energy source

11 Bizarrely Wrong Beliefs Americans Have About Themselves

Throwing trash into a volcano as an experiment. I'd be freaked out.





11 facts about the Affordable Care Act

Krugman:

None of this should be happening. As in 1931, Western nations have the resources they need to avoid catastrophe, and indeed to restore prosperity — and we have the added advantage of knowing much more than our great-grandparents did about how depressions happen and how to end them. But knowledge and resources do no good if those who possess them refuse to use them. And that’s what seems to be happening. The fundamentals of the world economy aren’t, in themselves, all that scary; it’s the almost universal abdication of responsibility that fills me, and many other economists, with a growing sense of dread.

I'm going to have to shop at J C Penney now...

Because the One Million Moms group is trying to start a boycott of the store for daring to use Ellen DeGeneres as a spokesperson. J C Penney has refused to submit to bullying and will continue to use DeGeneres. Ellen DeGeneres believes in honesty, equality, kindness, compassion, treating people the way you want to be treated and helping those in need. Apparently to some people her being gay negates all those 'Christian-claimed' traditional values.

Update: new video.

Not being able to punch school-aged gay kids

Is being threatened by tolerance!!

Who will the poor bullies be able to threaten then? Who's thinking of THEM???

Lions and tigers and bears...

Oh my!

Rescued eight years ago during a police drugs raid in Atlanta, Georgia, the three friends were only cubs at the time and barely two months old.

They had been kept as status symbol pets by the drug barons.

Delivered to the Noah's Ark animal rescue centre in Locust Grove, Georgia, the decision was made to keep the youngsters together.

"We could have separated them, but since they came as a kind of family, the zoo decided to keep them together," said Diane Smith, assistant director of the Noah's Ark zoo.

"To our knowledge, this is the only place where you'll find this combination of animals together, they are our BLT, (bear, lion and tiger).

Living with the zoo's founders for the past eight years, Shere Khan, Baloo and Leo have now moved to a purpose built habitat were the US public can now witness first hand their touching relationship.

There's a lesson here, but I just can't put my paw on it...

Update: More Interspecies interaction

Apples and oranges

The elephant and the dog

Maybe the Republicans can learn something...


Watch CBS Videos Online

Red shirt, blue shirt

Throw dirt, get hurt.

An experiment by an eighth grade student in a pro-Obama school shows intolerance and hate:

"They said, 'You can't make up your mind. You can't wear a McCain shirt one day and an Obama shirt the next day.' "

But she sure did, and she turned her journal into a report for her history teacher, earning Catherine extra credit. We asked the teacher, Norma Cassin-Pountney, whether it was ironic that Catherine would be subject to such intolerance from pro-Obama supporters in a community that prides itself on its liberal outlook.

"That's what we discussed," Cassin-Pountney said about the debate in the classroom when the experiment was revealed. "I said, here you are, promoting this person [Obama] that believes we are all equal and included, and look what you've done? The students were kind of like, 'Oh, yeah.' I think they got it."

I have to admit I am guilty of such prejudice and anger. My only excuse is... they started it first!

Quote of the decade

“When we find ourselves believing that killing a man makes us more of a man, but loving a man makes us less of a man, it’s probably time to reexamine our criteria for manhood.”

And proud of it!

(stolen from American Street)

Gay earthquakes, the new terrorist threat

An Israeli MP has blamed parliament's tolerance of gays for earthquakes that have rocked the Holy Land recently.

Shlomo Benizri, of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas Party, said the tremors had been caused by lawmaking that gave "legitimacy to sodomy".

Israel decriminalised homosexuality in 1988 and has since passed several laws recognising gay rights.

Two earthquakes shook the region last week and a further four struck in November and December.

Well, there's a whole lot of shaking goin' on:

OSLO — A magnitude-6.2 earthquake, the largest ever recorded on Norwegian territory, hit off the Arctic Svalbard islands early Thursday, the national seismic monitoring center said. No casualties or damage were reported.

The quake could have been catastrophic if it had hit a more densely populated area, said Conrad Lindholm, senior researcher of the seismic institute NORSAR.

And in Nevada:

WELLS, Nev. - Windows shattered and building facades and signs fell, but no one was seriously injured when a powerful earthquake shook this rural northeastern town on Thursday.

The quake, which had an estimated magnitude of 6.0, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo., struck at 6:16 a.m., near Wells in a sparsely populated area near the Nevada-Utah line.

Elko County commissioners declared a state of emergency. "Almost all of the businesses are shut down. We have no services and no fuel," Commissioner Mike Nannini said.

Damn those gays! We told them to keep the stereo down and not to jump up and down on the ceiling after 10pm...

Well, MY God is better'n YOUR god....

The fight for the soul of the nation, the very fount of federal funds for the faith-based initiatives, the right to speak down to the masses atop the pillar of righteousness....

The battle to decide which church is the right church has begun.... battles that Europe fought, won, and lost centuries before. Which church will be able to claim that its translation of the Bible is the proper and only correct version?

Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee: Round One.

Pastor Bush is pleased:



This is what you get when the wall between church and state is broken: bizarrely ridiculous unsolvable arguments about God that devolve into pointing out the peculiarities of the opponent's religion.

This is why Europe is littered with thousands of dead throughout history from thousands of wars fighting over which religion is the right one.

This is what the Bush administration has so carelessly activated.

Update 12/14:
And since we're talking about peculiarities of each of the candidate's religions....
Mormonism

If you think that Adam danced with dinosaurs....

Via Rook's Rant, the Evil Bible helps you identify whether or not you are a fundamentalist:

Top Ten Signs You're a Fundamentalist Christian

10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.

9 - You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.

8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.

7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" including women, children, and trees!

6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.

5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.

4 - You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most "tolerant" and "loving."


3 - While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in "tongues" may be all the evidence you need to "prove" Christianity.

2 - You define 0.01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.

1 - You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian

Narrow mind, wide stance

Steve Benen at Talking Points Memo notices a pattern:

I think there's a pattern here for conservatives and their social attitudes. They don't mind restrictions on free speech, until they have something provocative to say. They want to restrict reproductive rights, until someone close to them has an unwanted pregnancy. They want to break down the church-state wall, until they feel like their faith is in the minority. They want to treat embryos as people, until they suffer from an ailment that could benefit from stem-cell research.

And they balk at the idea of equal rights for gay people, until it's their daughter who is looking for equality.

The key to social change in this country seems fairly straightforward: wait for conservatives to have more life experience.

Some people just sail through life oblivious to the humanity and needs of others, others are born with innate empathy and tolerance. Some start out with a kind heart which is broken by life's experiences, others lurch from a home of intolerance and hate and are able to love.

What helps keep people tolerant and understanding?

Education. Education teaches respect and understanding of other religions, other ethnicities, other countries. Education teaches tolerance and appreciation for nuance and subtlety. Education allows one to see the entire picture and where one fits into it.

This explains why there is the mockery of the sciences and the universities, the vilifying of gays, the letting loose the hounds of fanatical religion, the rising up of racial hatred, the celebration of war: all these things are activated to force progressives into a defensive crouch.

Luckily you can educate people out of stupidity... sometimes. Conservatives need educating.

The right of the People to buy and consume bacon shall not be infringed

Thus says Tbogg.