The Adventures of Tobasco da Gama

First thing’s first. “Assault” is not the right term for this, but only because it carries a specific legal meaning that requires physical contact. But that doesn’t justify waving away the situation I’m about to discuss as no big deal, because it is.

The Escapist has a news post entitled “Female Gamer ‘Sexually Assaulted’ While Playing PS3“. According to the original posting on the Playstation forum, a female player (the poster’s roommate) was harassed by another, male player, who insisted on following her avatar around and crouching behind her, as if staring at her ass. He didn’t stop after being asked to stop or after the female player (and others present) threatened to report him, which she and several others eventually did.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was going to write a snarky post here, in reference to Ray Comfort’s hideously dishonest mangling of The Origin of Species, in which I declared my intent to publish an abridged version of the Bible that cuts out everything except the parts where God orders the Israelites to commit genocide and maybe that one part where Jesus has the badass line about bringing not peace but a sword.

Then I remembered that the Conservative Bible Project already exists.

One of the shitty things about living in funky urban neighbourhoods is that you have to deal with assholes who come into said urban neighbourhoods because they hear people talking about how great they are, then are shocked, shocked at all of the horrible moral deparvity going on around them. My god, people are drinking the demon rum! They’re having parties! They must be stopped.

This kind of bullshit shut down one of my favourite bars, Cambridge’s B-Side Lounge, and apparently there’s a stuck-up prick trying to bring the same teetotaling assholery to Davis Square. I don’t know much about Ward 6′s current alderwoman, Rebekah Gewirtz, but she’s gotta be better than this Campano joker:

“I don’t like the way the square is going. Whenever you have that many liquor licenses, drugs and violence follow,” said Campano. “I would like to see mercantile and retail — a nice mix.”

Maybe he hasn’t noticed, but that’s what’s already there. But I guess we don’t have a fucking Wal-Mart, so we’re not “mercantile and retail” enough.

These prudish fucks need to just move out to the exurbs where they don’t have to endure the horror of horrors that I like to call “having shit to do after 6 pm”.

Я очень болеть всех этих Русский спамеров.

So, earlier today I Twittered™ about Glenn Beck’s ridiculous frog video, which got linked on Skepchick. I was working under the assumption that he actually killed a frog on TV, which seems crazy: but, hey, it’s Glenn Beck. Anyway, various people have pointed out that he appears to grab a rubber frog and that you can’t actually see anything go into the pot of boiling water, two things that I missed from the low quality YouTube version.

Since I have to leave for karaoke with Rebecca Watson in a few minutes, I’ll just ask a question instead of writing up my full thoughts on the matter: does pretending to boil a fake frog on TV rather than actually boiling a live frog on TV make Glenn Beck any less crazy?

Discuss amongst yourselves.

I didn’t create this “Questions” post category to not use it. Anyway, today’s question comes from Matt Lauer:

Is it worse if some of this opposition to President Obama is fueled by outright racism, or is it worse if some liberals, in an attempt to defend President Obama and his plans, invoke the charge of racism to discredit the critics?

The former, Matt. Being racist is worse than pointing out when other people are acting like racists. (Incidentally, this is exactly what his guest says.)

Thanks for playing, folks! See you next time, when the question will be, “Is it worse if Hitler exterminates a shitload of Jews, or is it worse if some guy calls Godwin’s Law in an argument?”

So, apparently, an abortion clinic run by Women’s Health Services is moving into an empty building in Brookline, which used to house a Hollywood Video. Some asshats brought up a lawsuit to prevent them from doing so. What may surprise you is the justification:

“If you ever have observed protesters at an abortion clinic, they carry signs, which are alarming in their graphic detail of aborted fetuses. They have life-sized statues of the Virgin Mary, and they usually have somebody dressed as the grim reaper,” said May. “I don’t know how the town could have overlooked the emotional harm that could come to children by allowing the clinic to operate at that location.”

Yes, that’s right. Women’s Health Services can’t put their clinic there because ZOMG ABORTION PROTESTERS ARE SCARY THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!! As amusing as it might be to hear people call out abortion protesters for the violent, insane motherfuckers they are, this just plain pisses me off. Why are we punishing Women’s Health Services for the actions of a bunch of looney idiots with more hate and free time than good sense? If the protesters are such a goddamned dangerous nuisance, maybe we should, I dunno, do something about them. Like maybe arrest them for vandalism when they break windows or disturbing the peace when they disrupt city council meetings:

The lawsuit notes that protesters have already picketed community meetings held to discuss the clinic’s plans, while vandals smashed several windows at the property shortly after it was announced that it was the possible site of a clinic offering abortions.

It’s tempting to cite free speech and then run screaming from this issue to avoid attracting the attention of the buzzing, angry hornets, but this goes well beyond the protections of the First Amendment. Violence and threats are not free speech, they’re terrorism. There’s no other way to explain it. The anti-abortion nutjobs are using intimidation tactics and vandalism and inciting fear in order to obtain their desired political goal. That’s the textbook definition of terrorism, right there, and it’s about fucking time that we started treating these people like the terrorists they are.

Correction: I originally cited “Planned Parenthood” as the owner of the proposed clinic. This was incorrect. The clinic would actually be run by Women’s Health Services, a local health provider.

From Amanda Marcotte‘s Twitter feed, this:

If you like the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they’re run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government.

Ok, yes. So the obvious mistake is that, well… MEDICARE AND MEDICAID ARE ALREADY RUN BY THE GOVERNMENT. But if you’re anybody other than Arthur Laffer — yes, the economic genius whose greatest accomplishment is a curvy line on a chart that he pulled out of his ass one day — you knew that already.

“But wait,” the ghost of Billy Mays’ beard says, “there’s more!”

The DMV, maligned as it is, is run by the state governments. You can’t just blithely generalise a state-run office to a federal project like the health care public option. After all, the federal government has established some efficient, well-run, and beneficial agencies in its time. Like, you know, the United States Postal Service. When was the last time you lost any mail sent by USPS? Can you even remember? Sure, the price of stamps keeps going up, but so does the price of everything else. The biggest problem with the USPS is that they continue to deliver unsolicited bulk mail, but anti-regulation asshats like Laffer would consider that capitalism at work.

So, yeah, if Obama’s health care works as well as the USPS, I say bring it the fuck on.

I’m busy planning for a vacation and a move, but I’m a little sick of having nothing but Twitter digests on my site. So, here’s a link to Harry Reid being a cowardly douchenozzle who can’t answer a simple, straightforward question.

Fuck that guy.

But just to cheer everybody up, let’s pair that with this post from John Cole. Think maybe the two things might be related? Perhaps. Cowardice never pays.

Via publius, I learn that the Obama administration has successfully agitated for a cap on executive pay for banks receiving bailout money. Makes sense, and the cap is set at a generous $500k. Combined with the previous story about Obama sending his peeps to shut down Citigroup’s purchase of a new private jet using bailout funds, this is fucking great news. It means we finally have a President who’s willing to stand up to the welfare queens of Wall Street.

It also means that we get to enjoy epic lulz like this:

“That is pretty draconian — $500,000 is not a lot of money, particularly if there is no bonus,” said James F. Reda, founder and managing director of James F. Reda & Associates, a compensation consulting firm.

I believe The Heavy has something to say about this: