Teaching Kids

Divine Irony:

Designated Driver

Divine Irony:

Never Trust

Divine Irony:

(Source: noimaginaryfriend)

The Excuse

From commenter Callyson at Wonkette:

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The Losing "goddidit" Argument

It's just as obviously false and pointless as the SODDI (Some Other Dude Did It) claim by criminal suspects.

It has no place in politics or public life.  Confine it to the toilet from which it came.

The Rude Pundit:

It's a nonsensical thing that religious right-wingers of all stripes do, bringing G/god into an argument that G/god has no place in, If your G/god were real, he'd probably think, "The fuck I got to do with that? I made your fuckin' planet. Deal with it." Instead, we get, for example, Rep. Paul Ryan, who said in 2012, "Our rights come from nature and God, not government." How did they come from God? Or does he mean the Bible? Conservatives say this shit and don't think about the implications.

Whether it's your G/god says to blow yourself up on a bus or your G/god thinks gays getting married is icky, what you're really saying is that your almighty being is either too lazy or too weak to do shit himself. Or he's an asshole who does things on his own time. And you better shut the fuck up and smile because here's some figs or here's a red-hot anus-poker. Which do you want?

Hard Truth

Divine Irony

The hard truth seems to be this: We live in a vast and awesome universe in which, daily, suns are made and worlds destroyed, where humanity clings to an obscure clod of rock. The significance of our lives and our fragile realm derives from our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life’s meaning. We would prefer it to be otherwise, of course, but there is no compelling evidence for a cosmic Parent who will care for us and save us from ourselves. It is up to us.

Carl Sagan

How Religion Corrodes Civil Society

That religion is a net negative to society is a given among atheists, but now Andy Norman at Free Inquiry has made the effort to explain why and how.

If the gods were not passengers on the earliest human attempts to resolve differences with words, they soon hitched a ride. Ever since, religious pronouncements have been part of public discourse. Such talk can induce feelings of religious solidarity, and this reinforces the impression that religion is conducive to moral and civil order. In fact, though, religious talk is profoundly corrosive of civil society. By quietly subverting expectations of rational accountability, religious talk undermines reason’s power to reconcile, civilize, and humanize us. In this article, I mean to illuminate the mechanism by which religions compromise our prospects for truly civilized existence. Protecting public discourse from the deleterious effects of religious piety, it turns out, is a job that cannot be left to the so-called “wall of separation” between church and state, because the U.S. Constitution’s anti-establishment clause is woefully inadequate to the task; a considerably higher and sturdier barrier is needed. The time has come for a more far-reaching principle, one that insulates politics from all forms of unaccountable talk. The solution lies in the promotion and collective embrace of an idea central to humanism—the idea that each of us has a profound moral and civic obligation to yield to the force of the better reason.

SNIP

He concludes:

Should the introduction of religious pronouncements into public discourse, then, be considered a punishable offense? No. I am not suggesting that we introduce legal or constitutional restrictions on religious speech. Indeed, the right to speak freely—even in a religious modality—should be viewed as fundamental. It doesn’t follow, though, that we are obliged to listen to such speech or treat it as germane to public policy issues, still less that we give it “equal time.” A truly civilized people will regard the insertion of theology into politics as faintly ridiculous—as worthy of bemused disdain. (And sometimes worthy of ridicule, the ridiculous being—by definition—that which calls for ridicule.) Such a people will enforce rational accountability with politeness and good humor but also with seriousness, vigor, laughter, sarcasm, and irony. They will take a stand for the force of the better reason and recognize that doing so will sometimes offend the delicate sensibilities of the faithful. The making of a truly sustainable and prosperous civilization requires that we renew our collective commitment to rational accountability.

Get-Out-of-Responsibility-Forever-Free Card

Divine Irony:

godlessmen:

How did you get into heaven?
Source: Source and comments

The born-again freakazoids are even worse: you don't have to repent at all before you die.  Once you're "saved," even if you're only 10 years old at the time, you're saved forever.  No amount of sin, crime, or cannibalism can keep you out of "heaven."

Fortunately, there is no heaven, and Dahmer is just as dead as his victims. 

Guntard Logic Also Defends Drug Dealing

Now I understand why Kentucky lawmakers were stepping on each others' heads to accomplish two things at once:

 - remove even the tiniest restrictions on gun purchase, carry and use

 - make it next to impossible for anyone to obtain pain-relieving drugs with a legal prescription.

For the repugs, freakazoids and guntards, it's always about abdicating personal responsibility.

 

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

This is a weird story, but it totally makes sense that a doctor handing out illegal prescriptions would use this argument:

SNIP

I mean, if gun makers and gun dealers have no responsibility for what people do with a gun, why should doctors have responsibility for what their customers do with drugs? Maybe the patients are making art out of the pills. Why not apply NRA logic about responsibility to the rest of society? Why punish bartenders if they serve obviously inebriated customers who then get behind the wheel? Why go after cigarette companies for marketing to children? It’s strictly the responsibility of the user!

To be clear, I certainly don’t agree with this doctor. He deserves punishment. But it’s also hardly surprising that other distributors of dangerous materials would abdicate responsibility based upon NRA arguments about gun use.

Finally, Some Accountability on Tasering

For years, multi-million-dollar lawsuits have failed to force local police departments to discourage knee-jerk uses of tasers, much less discipline officers who electrocute people who are sick, mentally ill, rude or plain innocent.

Maybe the example of one courageous town will start to turn the tide.

Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars:

This may not be the first case in the country, but it's the first time that I know of that a police officer is being disciplined for misusing a Taser. This is a small, gritty town on the Philadelphia border that's seen quite a few ups and downs over the past several decades, and in the past, has had a lot of problems with their police force:

The acting head of the Colwyn Borough Police Department was suspended today while borough and county officials investigate an incident involving a juvenile who was Tasered while handcuffed in a holding cell at the department.

Deputy Chief Wendell Reed is the second person to be suspended for the April 24 incident, said Mayor Daniel Rutland. The officer who allegedly administered the shock, Cpl. Trevor Parham, was suspended earlier this week and a third officer who was allegedly present when it occurred is expected to be suspended as well, according to sources and Rutland.

State police were called to the scene today for back up as Rutland delivered the news to Reed, but Reed left on his own accord.

Detectives with Delaware County's Criminal Investigation Division, who act as Internal Affairs investigators for the county's police departments, were also on scene and removed computers and a Taser from the department.

Rutland said no documentation of the incident was made and the proper procedures were not followed. He said he only found out about it after receiving calls from concerned citizens. He said the only person from the department to notify him was Lt. Wesley Seitz, who will now act as head of the department.

Rutland said "there was word" that Reed had been planning to suspend Seitz today for investigating the incident and reporting it.

I am especially encouraged that the head of the department was held accountable for refusing to discipline the perpetrators on his force.

Meanwhile, we now have scientific proof of the obvious: tasers kill.

Digby:

I'm fairly sure nobody will pay the least bit of attention to this:

The electrical shock delivered to the chest by a Taser can lead to cardiac arrest and sudden death, according to a new study, although it is unknown how frequently such deaths occur.

The study, which analyzed detailed records from the cases of eight people who went into cardiac arrest after receiving shocks from a Taser X26 fired at a distance, is likely to add to the debate about the safety of the weapons. Seven of the people in the study died; one survived.

Advocacy groups like Amnesty International have argued that Tasers, the most widely used of a class of weapons known as electrical control devices, are potentially lethal and that stricter rules should govern their use.

But proponents maintain that the devices — which are used by more than 16,700 law enforcement agencies in 107 countries, said Steve Tuttle, a spokesman for Taser — pose less risk to civilians than firearms and are safer for police officers than physically tackling a suspect. The results of studies of the devices’ safety in humans have been mixed.

Medical experts said on Monday that the new report, published online on Monday in the journal Circulation, makes clear that electrical shocks from Tasers, which shoot barbs into the clothes and skin, can in some cases set off irregular heart rhythms, leading to cardiac arrest.

“This is no longer arguable,” said Dr. Byron Lee, a cardiologist and director of the electrophysiology laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco. “This is a scientific fact. The national debate should now center on whether the risk of sudden death with Tasers is low enough to warrant widespread use by law enforcement.”

The rest of the experts interviewed (aside from the Taser international representative, of course) suggested that the use of tasers be limited in light of these findings. As I have said many times before, if tasers were a drug that killed this many people they would have been banned long ago.

This is simple common sense. And not just because they quite obviously are deadly to some people, although that should put any further debate to rest. The fundamental reason they should be limited is because in a free society the police should not be allowed to inflict terrible pain on citizens for any reason they choose, no matter how petty or inconsequential. If police are to be allowed to carry tasers they must be strictly controlled. At the moment, this is far more common than not:

Click here for the disturbing videos.

The Chronic Irresponsibility of Freakazoids

It's hilarious when freakazoids bleat about "personal responsibility," because they are the last creatures on earth to ever accept any.

Only the most recent example, from Rumproast:

This weekend, Buffalo Bills receiver Steve Johnson dropped a pass that would have resulted in a game-winning touchdown in overtime against the Steelers. He blamed God:



That’s kind of refreshing since athletes like to credit Jesus for wins; shouldn’t He get the blame for losses too? However, after getting raked over the coals all over Twitter, Johnson issued a clarification:

Johnson dropped that ball - and bounced another to the opposition for an interception - because instead of focusing on his own skills and ability to play well, he expected an invisible sky wizard to do the work for him.

This kind of abdication of personal responsibility is endemic among the freakazoids, and yet more proof that you cannot trust them with anything. They will either passively wait for their invisible sky wizard to fix it for them, or else falsely attribute success to that invisible sky wizard, thus denigrating their own abilities and those of teammates, not to mention the doctors, engineers, scientists and other experts who do all the real work.

Regulation, Litigation and Liberty

Kevin Drum muses on the intersection of regulation, litigation and freedom:

Matt Steinglass is in Amsterdam, and he's pleased to find that his daughter can swim in the Amstel River if she wants. "If I'd tried letting my daughter do this in, say, the Potomac River in Washington, DC," he says, "I would have likely been arrested." Why the difference? Because in America everyone is afraid of getting sued, so they insist on putting in place ever more restrictive rules on what we are and aren't allowed to do:

The reason you can [swim freely in public waters] in the Netherlands is that if anybody tried to sue the city of Amsterdam because they or their child had been injured while swimming in the river, the suit would almost certainly be dismissed....Essentially, you still have the freedom to swim in the river in Amsterdam because people assume you have the common sense to avoid stupid behaviour, like diving in when you don't know what's underneath, or not keeping to the sides of the river during barge traffic hours. And if you don't, it's nobody's fault but your own.

But there's another reason why I can let my daughter swim in the Amstel, and that is that I'm pretty sure that in a well-regulated country like the Netherlands, the water is reasonably free of heavy pollutants and raw sewage. (I would not, for example, let her swim in the Mekong.) This, I think, outlines a useful distinction between different kinds of regulation....To generalise: for risks I can assess myself, I don't want regulations that prevent me from doing as I please just because I might end up suing the government. For risks I can't assess myself, I do want regulations that give me the confidence to do as I please. One kind of regulation stops me from swimming in a pond in Massachusetts. The other kind lets me swim in a river in the Netherlands. One kind of regulation makes me less free. The other kind makes me freer.

It's worth digging into this a bit. Why is America more litigious than Europe? With the obvious caveat that not every country in Europe does things exactly the same way, here are a few reasons:

SNIP

* Largely thanks to conservatives, America has developed a litigation culture rather than an enforcement culture. In Europe the tradeoff generally goes the other way: they have more rules and tighter enforcement of those rules, which means that private litigation is less necessary.
* On a related note, Sean Farhang argues that at the level of federal legislation, Congress actively encourages private litigation as an enforcement mechanism because it doesn't trust enforcement to the executive branch (which might be headed by someone who prefers to take it easy on favored constituencies).

Long story short, this difference between Europe and the U.S. is so deeply rooted that it's not likely to change — and it's not really due to a national culture that promotes a refusal to accept personal responsibility or anything like that. It's mostly institutional in nature, and the incentives of our institutions point in the direction of more lawsuits instead of more regulations. Conservative tort reform advocates are huge fans of implementing a European-style loser pays rule in America, and I might be too if they were willing to make the other half of the bargain and support European-style regulation and enforcement designed to make our institutions safer and fairer in the first place. But they're not.

Litigation makes up for lax regulation. Which is of course why anti-regulators are also anti-litigators. The only thing standing between the American people and widespread deaths from dangerous products, contaminated food, disease-ridden water, toxic pollution and other injury inflicted by powerful corporate interests is trial lawyers. So those who try to shut down trial lawyers through forcing harmed consumers into rip-off mediation or promoting fake issues like "tort reform" are doing the work of corporate criminals.

Speaking of which, can we please put an end to the use of the "McDonald's Coffee Lady" as an example of frivolous litigation, windfall awards and lack of personal responsibility?

Despite the lies spread by anti-consumer corporate apologiest, the truth is that the coffee's temperature really was far above safe levels, the woman was burned so severely she required skin grafts, and the lawsuit award was average, not a windfall.

If you need an example of lack of responsibility among Americans, use Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, who murdered 29 men this spring in his West Virginia coal mine, where he had ordered mine managers to avoid any safety measures that slowed the production of coal.)

We define personal liberty by the balance we, as a society, create between regulation and litigation. Eliminate both regulation and litigation in the pursuit of personal liberty, and you destroy any chance of obtaining it.