conuly

Here's one on Texas schools being required to teach the Bible. I'm sure it'll collapse soon enough.

You know, my father was from Texas. It was a big part of his identity. He's actually buried over there. Must be spinning in his grave. I wouldn't be surprised if he got up and started walking to march on the capital either!

And here's one about a bunch of whiners complaining that people wonder WHY, exactly, they felt the need to bring guns to a presidential event.

"I still have some freeeeeeeedoms!" they declare. I think the following comment sums it up:

Let's make sense of this. Wear a John Kerry shirt to a Bush rally and get arrested. Carry an assault rifle to an Obama rally and you are a Freedom Fighting Revolutionary.

Wait... hasn't slavery already been abolished?

Well, the short answer to that is not exactly.

So yes. Let's get on that and free the slaves. I don't really have anything else to say on the subject that isn't self-evident, like "because slavery is kinda wrong, you know".

I mean, if it's not black children being told not to sit on the back of the bus, then it's black people being told they're not welcome in a church anymore.

Or it's a hundred thousand other things that are telling me that maybe, just maybe, it's time to pack a bag. Pity I have obligations here. And no passport. I should really get on that last one, shouldn't I?

They're not dogs. That's why we generally don't make shock collars for children.

On the same subject (but not nearly as severe), your typical three or four year old child doesn't need to get high-fives and GOOD EATING!!!!!! for munching on some glorified potato chips. Either they're hungry, and they eat, or they're not hungry, so they don't. (Or they're hungry and they don't eat, which sucks, but assuming you haven't made something you know they can't/won't eat, that's probably a temporary situation.)

Praising a kid for eating. Eating snacks, of all things. Now I've seen everything.

Once again, a useful entry by kevinleitch.

The whole idiocy is summed up in one comment down the page (which I'll further sum up here): Target is spending a whole lot of money in a lawsuit, when it'd cost barely anything to get a competant web designer to alter their site. At the same time, they're not only losing money from blind customers (and, quite probably, their indignant families and friends who know better than to use inaccessible sites) but they're creating general ill-will which will cause them to lose even *more* money - or, at least, to gain less than possible, which is almost the same thing.

Brilliant move, Target.

First things first, I'll clear out my bookmarked links. I don't have credit-ing ability for most of these, so comment if you recognize one you think I snatched from you. Or don't. Whatever.

A recap (hysterical!) of the State of the Union. Thanks, literalgirl!
Mario 64 in 16 minutes (and a few seconds). Frankly, some of those jumps this guy made scare me. *shudders* Thanks, maladaptive! (I think)
On the clumsiest loss of historic vases ever. Like something out of a cartoon. *giggles* Thanks, whoever you are!
The Very Old Warning To Pat Robertson, who has abandoned science. Thanks, whoever you are!

Now, on to some more full-fledged articles.

On the increase of criminals in the military

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On people who way overspend on their babies

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People who kill foreign soldiers are apparently not themselves bound to the same laws as the rest of us.

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First things first, fugaciouslover has a discussion loosely related to the Holocaust that some of you may be interested in, asking "how much is too much?"

Danish comics anger Muslims, and related conversation.

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And on a Muslim funeral home.

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An editorial on the Wilmington coup in 1898

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Historically, people have invented work songs. Whether or not people actually sang while they worked is up to interpretation, but I suspect at least some people did. It sets a nice rhythm, and it keeps you from being bored stiff while doing boring, repetitive tasks.

So I'm sitting here trying to figure out why a song invented and sung by black slaves is now offensive to black people. Yes, it's talking about slavery - that's what the people were doing when they sang it.

Of course, the comments to the story are enough to make me weep. Sure, white males, they're the most discriminated group in America. Uh-huh. Go tell me another one, why don't you?

Or how about "As far as the 81 year old aunt who has a bad back due to cotton picking, she had a choice to pick the cotton, slavery was banished long before she was born." Riiiiiight. And what else, pray tell, was she to do? Are we to believe she chose that job because she prefered it to the other options? Or maybe her option was to have no job, not pay the bills, starve.... Great. That's a choice, all right!

It's like people just turned off their brains....

Oh, and on the subject of "things Connie doesn't get", when we're in class reading an excerpt from "Kaffir boy", and somebody asks what the word "kaffir" means, and we've been using that damn word all class, and I define it, correctly as the Afrikaner equivilant of "nigger", don't tell me not to use the word "nigger" unless you're saying to everybody else "don't use the word kaffir". I'm not calling you a nigger, or any other sort of slur. I'm using the word as a definition, because that's what the damn word means. I know it's a charged word, but I'll be damned if I'm going to revert to childhood and start calling things "the n-word". I guarantee you that I'm never going to use the word in anything other than a quotative (or, apparently, definitive) fashion, and you know that, so....

First, the conservative boycott. I never had one of those dolls, but I wanted one. Or all of them.... And I don't agree with this boycott, so I think I may call to give my *support* for their choice. Not buying a doll to support them, though - kinda lack money, y'know? Perhaps I'll make a donation to the other group involved personally....

I saw the article in liberal. Now, ignoring the entire rest of the thread, the commenter here makes a good point - liberals boycott stuff *all the time*. Why aren't conservatives allowed to do the same thing for their values? Sure, that being the liberal comm, many people disagree with the values behind that boycott, but it's not like the conservatives are bombing the American Girl store or anything. They're just... calling to complain and refusing to buy their products (man, I wish I had the money to refuse to buy AG products :P). Not really the height of evil here.

I had the same thought a year back. There had been, within a few hours of each other, two posts in feminist about protests regarding abortion. One person had pictures of her and her kids marching to support abortion, and another had a news article which had pictures of people on the other side marching *against* abortion, some of them with kids. And the first person was congratulated for having her kids with her, but the second group of pictures was "shameful", doing that to little kids.

Why?

It's not like the anti-abortion group was bringing their kids along to be evil, they were doing it because of a lack of a sitter and to teach their kids their values - just like the first group!

But no, it was *such* a different thing. Or something.

Gah.

(Regarding the tag, the right to protest is a civil right)