Chucko pointed out this article on big fucking companies who won’t allow their advertising on Air America.

A few comments. First of all, apparently liberal dollars aren’t good enough for these people? There are huge companies on this list, like McDonalds and FedEx. It is really hard for me to believe that these companies would be so partisan and risk alienating 49% of their customers.

Second, the righties always bitch that academia is on the Left. I’ve agreed with them — academics lean decidedly left, no question about it. Liberal ideas, in the non-political sense of the word, are virtually the definition of academics — learning, being open-minded, trying new things, challenging old ideas. No one should be surprised that academics tend to be liberals.

Neither should we be surprised that corporate big wigs are Right Wingers. They are dollar chasers and they are generally from well-to-do backgrounds and yet believe they have succeeded based solely on their own merits. Thus, they believe that social programs reward failure and all that nonsense.

I am a business owner and a capitalist. I believe in the free market but I believe there is a role for government, lest we descend into plutocracy. Big corporations are literally soulless and they should not be allowed to pillage our country without limit. We need consumer advocates, watchdogs, regulation and other tools of government to ensure that corporations don’t bring us down.

So I am personally shocked and appalled that these lame companies would decide that liberal radio is something they can’t advertise on. I do think it is their decision to make, but I think it is a horrible decision. These guys are being boycotted as we speak and they are going to get a lot of bad press. REI, thank god, is disputing that they requested this.

Some people will say, “Oh, I can see why FedEx would not want to be associated with bashing the President.” That’s a lame excuse. The Right Wingers bashed Bill Clinton constantly, from day one of his administration. President bashing is not something that occurs only on the Left.

I seriously hope some advertising agencies get shit canned for this. If I were the president of Fed Ex I would fire everyone in the chain that put my company’s name on this list.

This is ridiculous:

“So I think we got a real glimpse here of the anti-military attitude that prevails on the political left in the United States.”

The speaker, Gary Bauer of the group American Values, wants to takes John Kerry’s statements and make a conclusion about the “political left”. Even Republicans should think this is moronic. Why not just say that the Left hates their mom and likes to smother puppies?

In regards to Kerry’s comments — they are not untrue! It is a fact that the military is composed largely of people from lower than average incomes and without, in most cases, higher education. Your average platoon is not full of PhD’s. This notion is not one that is disrespectful or anti-military, it’s a fact.

Kerry made a gaff and he should apologize profusely. It was a bad joke, prone to misinterpretation and he shouldn’t have said it. But it is hardly a big deal and it is an obvious political tactic that the Right is trying to make it one.

Study on warming forecasts disaster

Britain issued a sweeping report Monday on global warming, saying the Earth faces a calamity on the scale of the world wars and the Great Depression unless urgent action is taken.

Time for Right Wingers to make up some bullshit or find the one retarded scientist who is in denial of the growing evidence that yes, Virginia, human beings are capable of effecting Earth’s environment.

Do you really thing Liberals want global climate change? You think we enjoy telling the Right Wing that we have a really big and expensive problem to deal with? NO. We just have our heads a little less far up our asses and we want to work on the problem before it is catastrophic.

But then again Britain is biased.

I’m getting pretty sick of this. These religious DOLTS who can’t do their fucking jobs because of their religious beliefs.

Let’s see, we have the Christian Pharmacists who won’t dispense prescriptions. Muslim taxi drivers who won’t drive people carrying liquor. Christian bus drivers who won’t drive a bus with an ad for a gay magazine.

This is insane and we shouldn’t tolerate it. All of these people knew what their job was before they accepted it. The notion that doing any of these activities jeopardizes their religious faith is completely wrong. Look you Christians and you Muslims and all of you other devote religious sorts: you live in a world full of people all who have their own beliefs. We cannot expect all people to accept our version of the truth. This should be self-evident. We have normal ol’ civil laws, which represent our shared duty towards each other. Your religious laws or beliefs are yours, and I respect that, but you cannot have any expectation whatsoever that others will share them. They are yours. They are personal and if you are so fervent that you cannot tolerate people with other beliefs, you should go get a job at a Church or a Mosque or in some place where you can be assured that you won’t have to interact with us sinners and infidels out here. I don’t discriminate against you freaks in my job and expect you not to discriminate against me in your job.

This should emphasize to all the necessity to separate church and state. Either do your job, ALL OF IT, or get another job. Period.

I mentioned in a comment to the previous post the notion of instant run-off voting. From my understanding of it, it is quite simple. Instead of voting for one person you rank the candidates in the order you prefer them.

For example, in the MN governor’s race, I may vote Hutchinson first, Hatch second and Pawlenty third. So imagine you get 3 points for 1st, 2 points for 2nd and 1 points for 3rd. Then you tally everyone’s score and whoever has the most points wins.

Another way to think about it is, if no one candidate has a majority (of votes for 1st) then you keep eliminating candidates from the bottom until someone does. For example, say Hatch got 47%, Pawlenty 46% and Hutchinson 7% of people’s first choice. You would then take the 2nd choice for the people that voted Hutchinson. Chances are, if people like Hutchinson they would have Hatch as a 2nd choice and the outcome would likely be Hatch 54% and Pawlenty 46%.

But note that this is not a concept that only helps the Left. Right wingers would be free to vote even more Right, for wacos like Pat Robertson, and still vote for the mainstream candidate as their 2nd choice, thereby not “throwing away” their vote.

I can’t see any downsides to this, except that it is slightly more complicated to tally. Voters are not going to have a problem understanding that they are rating candidates in order of preference.

Let’s do it and let’s do it everywhere. It might save our country.

Sites like I just mentioned, Moonbattery, and the one I had vomited over a while ago, My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy piss me off because they are so unthinkingly party line. I am an immature vulgarian sometimes and a Lefty to be sure, but I still believe that I assess issues on their merits and am willing to be proven wrong. I agree with the Right to some extent on many issues.

I agree (for the most part) in free markets, I agree (for the most part) on gun ownership. I feel strongly that the only sustainable economic policy is one of fiscal conservatism. I agree families are important and that we have to always be prepared to defend ourselves militarily. I think the less we can pay in taxes the better (for the most part).

You see? You Right Wing bastards? I am trying to show you that there is room for us to agree on a lot of stuff. When I see people, like the afore mentioned, that somehow try to construe Jimmy Carter as evil. Jimmy Carter? The guy’s a fucking pussy who believes in peace. He is working towards peace in the world. How do you take issue with that? Can’t you agree that the guy is at least trying to do something rather than sit on his spoon-fed ass like George H. Bush is doing. To imply that the BBC is a left-wing mouthpiece is insane. It seems left when you are a radial Republican maybe. I read the Economist, which many describe as a conservative publication, and I agree with them all the time (although certainly not on everything). Right-wing English dudes are now considered liberals by the radical Right.

The Right has drifted so far Right that they can’t see straight anymore. They actually take an anti-environment stance. Hello? They take an anti-families stance if the families are not one man one woman. They take an anti-birth control stance when they are abhorred by unwanted pregnancies. They are the party of Jesus and they are pro-war, pro-capital punishment and work against any attempts to pay people more who make the lowest legal wage.

There is a middle path, folks, and it’s not in the middle. It’s a little of each.

Minnesota Stories has a video of Michele Bachmann rattling off the same, lame, unsubstantiated denial of global climate change. The whole audience laughs in her face when she says it.

This is sort of like the evolution debate. Evolution is a fact. Natural selection is a theory that explains those facts. Human-induced climate change is a fact. We pump billions of tons of crap into the air every year. It can’t have no effect. Some would like to believe that the Earth can compensate somehow. I agree, that would be nice. It doesn’t change the very important mission that human beings have in front of us. Our population and technology have advanced to a point that the Earth is no longer big enough to use as a garbage can.

The first step is to realize you have a problem.

In the mood for some shrill, insane, intolerate, over-simplified bullshit from the Right? Stop on by Moonbattery. WARNING: you may lose some intelligence points reading this tired Right Wing hogwash.

Some fucktard said:

My biggest turn off, and issue with Apple, and the community…is in fact the community itself. I have never been a part of such an ostentatious and pretentious community in my life…one that harbors such an arrogance and contempt that it honestly makes it uncomfortable. One need only grace a few blogs such as “Macalope” to see the extent of the asininity that consumes most of the “news sources” that Mac zealots use as primary sources.

This is idiotic. Let’s try an analogy. You have two groups of friends that hang out at two different bar/restaurants. One group is sort of ho-hum on their hangout and the other is ecstatic about theirs. They love the food, they love the people, they have so much fun, they want other people to try it, too.

This might be an incomplete analogy, but the fact of the matter is, Mac zealots are Mac zealots because they love Macs. They love Macs not for some inane reason as implied above — they love them because they are fun to use, powerful, easy, etc.

Now I use Windows and Linux as well and there are very good things about both. My love for Macs is not at the expense of the other good things in the world.

But when you find something people LOVE, something they have incredible zeal about, something that they are compelled to share, LISTEN TO THEM. Don’t look down your snooty nose and assume they are retards. Yes, Windows is fine, but Macs are AWESOME. I do not find people who love Windows like Mac people love Macs. That should be telling you something.

Creationists and advocates of intelligent design (ID) often mention the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics as a reason why evolution can’t be true. The previous link quotes the law as follows:

The entropy of an isolated system not at equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value.

Their logic is that if the entropy (i.e. chaos) in a system always increases it cannot become more complex. The facts show that organisms have gotten more complex over time. This, they claim, proves that this complexity could not have evolved naturally but requires the efforts of a supernatural entity.

This is completely and provably wrong. There is no debate whatsoever in this particular line of reasoning. The reason is the word “isolated” in the above quote. The Earth is not an isolated system. There is this gigantic source of energy shining down on the Earth 24 hours per day for the last 4 billion years. It’s called the sun. When there is energy put into a system, the 2nd law of thermodynamics does not apply.

Creationists are wrong for a whole host of reasons, but they have to cross this one off their list. It makes them sound stupid. The 2nd law of thermodynamics in no way, shape or form undermines the theory of evolution.