I’M MISSISSIPPI, B!TCH!!!

Several states with Republican-led legislatures have passed laws in recent months that purport to expand the range of things people in those states can do while pretending that it’s due to their religion. This is presumably because the Republican base has reached a point of no return, and it is only a matter of time before they are clamoring for the actual flesh of those they deem unworthy.

The good news is that the Republican Party is still also the party of rich people, and money still talks. This led Kansas and Arizona to kill their bills.

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What I’m Reading, March 24, 2014

Neil deGrasse Tyson at the Big Bang (with sunglasses)

Via imgflip.com

Neil deGrasse Tyson Squashes Creationist Argument Against Science on National TV, Dan Arel, AlterNet, March 17, 2014

Watching the Christian Right, especially the creationist wing, struggle to counter “Cosmos” each week is like watching a frightened, cornered animal that knows it is about to die. What else could explain the weekly grasping at straws, and the unremitting blasting of social media links meant to reel their following back in as their eyes are opened to the scientific method’s greatness.

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Creationism’s days are numbered. “Cosmos” frightens the conservatives more than anything has in a very long time. Every day their numbers grow smaller and their grasp on America becomes weaker.

The time is now for a scientifically literate America to return, for scientific innovations to flow out of our borders and spread around the world. We can no longer take a backseat to the world of science and must return once again to the driver’s seat.

Terrifying Precedent: Woman to Be Tried for Murder for Giving Birth to Stillborn When She Was 16, Nina Martin, ProPublica, March 19, 2014

The case intersects a number of divisive and difficult issues — the criminal justice system’s often disproportionate treatment of poor people of color, especially in drug prosecutions; the backlash to Roe v. Wade and the conservative push to establish “personhood” for fetuses as part of a broad-based strategy to weaken abortion laws. A wild card in the case — Mississippi’s history of using sometimes dubious forensic evidence to win criminal convictions over many years — could end up playing a central role.

Ignoring Fox News’ Racism is Good for Democrats but Bad for the Country, Isaac Chotiner, The New Republic, January 27, 2014

Fox still has, as far as cable news is concerned, a giant audience among all Americans—especially Republicans, conservatives, and influential businessmen and businesswomen. It still has major power within the Republican Party. To say that Fox’s bigotry should just be discounted is therefore odd. I am sure Rich has spent some time watching Fox News, so he must be aware of how toxic it is. Putting aside its top-down class warfare, segment after segment is meant to scare its white audience into believing that African Americans, or Muslims, are out to get them. This is not some random nut on Twitter: no, this is real bigotry transmitted to a large audience, and it must be combatted.

Michelle Alexander: White Men Get Rich from Legal Pot, Black Men Stay in Prison, April M. Short, AlterNet, March 16, 2014

Alexander said she is “thrilled” that Colorado and Washington have legalized pot and that Washington D.C. decriminalized possession of small amounts earlier this month. But she said she’s noticed “warning signs” of a troubling trend emerging in the pot legalization movement: Whites—men in particular—are the face of the movement, and the emerging pot industry.

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Alexander said for 40 years poor communities of color have experienced the wrath of the war on drugs.

“Black men and boys” have been the target of the war on drugs’ racist policies—stopped, frisked and disturbed—“often before they’re old enough to vote,” she said. Those youths are arrested most often for nonviolent first offenses that would go ignored in middle-class white neighborhoods.

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This Week in WTF, August 3, 2012

Russia_stamp_no._1030_-_2012_Summer_Olympics_bid– Conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron disses presumptive presidential candidate Mitt Romney:

“We are holding an Olympic Games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world. Of course it’s easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere.”

So does London Mayor Boris Johnson.

– Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA) likens the Obamacare contraception mandate to the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. No really, this happened.

– A former Chick-fil-A employee is suing the company because of reasons:

Former Chick-fil-A employee Brenda Honeycutt is suing the company for gender discrimination, alleging that owner and operator of Duluth, Georgia’s Chick-fil-As, Jeff Howard, fired her so that she could be a “stay home mother” despite her “satisfactory-to-above-satisfactory employment history with the company.

“During the Plaintiff’s employment, Defendant Howard routinely made comments to the Plaintiff suggesting that as a mother she should stay home with her children,” the lawsuit states.

– A church in Mississippi, one of the states composing our allegedly post-racial nation, refused to marry a couple because they are black:

A black couple in Crystal Springs, Mississippi says that a predominantly white Baptist church refused to let them get married because of their race.

Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson told WLBT that the day before they were to be married, the pastor of First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs informed them the ceremony would have to be moved due to the reaction of some white church members — even though the couple had attended the church regularly.

“The church congregation had decided no black could be married at that church, and that if [the pastor] went on to marry her, then they would vote him out the church,” Charles Wilson explained.

We have to respect the delicate feelings of “some white church members,” amirite? I can’t wait to hear if there’s a non-discriminatory explanation.

– A small airplane towing a banner with a marriage proposal crashed in Rhode Island, after the pilot had to ditch. The pilot was found uninjured, after his apparently genius 8 year-old son helped the Coast Guard locate him. No word on whether the intended recipient of the proposal said yes.

– A puppeteer on a Christian-themed children’s show in Florida is arrested for conspiracy to kidnap children and, uh, other stuff. It sounds like police have evidence of some pretty heinous stuff, but it is not clear exactly what he actually did regarding the kidnapping conspiracy charge, versus what he just talked about doing. Technically, “extensive Internet chats about eating children” are not illegal in and of themselves without taking a furher step……you know, I don’t really want to talk about this.

– Some Breitbartian named John Nolte thinks that a new Skittles ad promotes bestiality or something. In other words don’t chase your Chick-fil-A sandwich with Skittles. Or Oreos. I’ll have to get back to you on which candies and cookies have the Almighty’s stamp of approval.

Photo credit: ‘Russia stamp no. 1030 – 2012 Summer Olympics bid’ by Russian Post/Beltyukov V., painter [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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