RationalWiki:What is going on in the blogosphere?/June 2014

June 2014
Nearly 80 gays served in Dubya's White House. What they experienced. Look at all the female Democratic votes, they're falling from the sky! Dear Sam Brownback: Stay in politics for as long as you possibly can. Reason magazine and Ralph Nader see eye to eye. The interesting paradox of the incoming Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores holding: If the Four Horsemen want to avoid a political landmine, they may have to tacitly endorse single-payer health care in the process. Strangely moving account of the "First International Conference on Men’s Issues" day one by the SPLC Men expose themselves to women, often quite young, and masturbate on a regular occurrence. No women are surprised at this. Some men feel the need to defend or deny this behavior. "Dear 1%ers, many of our fellow citizens are starting to believe that capitalism itself is the problem. I disagree, and I’m sure you do too... [but] these idiotic trickle-down policies are destroying my customer base. The pitchforks are coming for us plutocrats." How Conspiracy Nuts Are Duping Well-Meaning Liberals Ann Coulter: less political commentator, more polemic performance artist and satirist.

Cracked: 16 Famous Mysteries That Everyone Forgets Have Been Solved. Spoilsports. "Until recently, America's minorities had widely differing political allegiances... (b)ut over the last few decades, these diverse minorities, with the exception of Miami's Cubans, have converged on the Democratic Party and have given it a large political advantage in national and some state elections over Republican candidates." The Republican Scandal Machine modus operandi 101. A Facebook page dedicated to smearing Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl gets goated. Even made news in the LA Times. Surprise, surprise. Climate Change Deniers Using Same Methods as Tobacco Industry, Says Physicist ISIS has learnt how to astroturf on twitter.

A Channel 5 documentary alleges that Hitler was a serial tax evader. No comment.

TED's introduction of what gives money its value. There is only one way Obama will get Republicans to accept global warming: He must become a denier himself. Ken Ham's Ark appears to be floundering. Pigs are flying: A bipartisan group of Senators found a legitimate problem in Obamacare and are trying to pass a bill to fix it. Whether Congress actually does anything is uncertain. So let's get started. Why isn't the Supreme Court ruling on Second Amendment cases? (Anthony Kennedy seems to be breaking from the conservative wing again.) Very interesting statistics for Hillary Clinton's interview on Faux News. Sexist trolls wreck social network Could we get Justice Cromwell to speak a little more slowly when delivering the court's reasons? Harper seems to be having difficulty understanding him. Musician Jello Biafra interviews Unarius UFO cultists.

10 Scientific Ideas That Scientists Wish You Would Stop Misusing. Yes, 'Quantum' is on the list. A Muslim law student sits in on a Benghazi pep rally hosted by the Heritage Foundation. Fill in the blanks. Real atrocities and easy fantasies&mdash;careful what you retweet. Since You-Know-Who is the latest to violate James Fallows' Law of Iraq Pundits, here's a surprising list of liberal hawks who should also take pause. Fundraiser to send Sworebytheprecious to Detroit to report on AVFM conference (and get a possible source on it that isn't written by an MRA) How to make a paranormal event sound believable. Step 1: fake skepticism before the event. ("Dear Penthouse: I never imagined it could happen to me, but...") Sovereign citizen loses drivers license, walks everywhere with an assault rifle. "We have reached the moment that skeptics of the 2003 United States invasion warned about all along: the implosion of the country, and, possibly, the entire region."  Brookings Institution: The Tea Party has a losing record for 2014. Paleo is the Scientology of diets. (And that's a blog called "SixPackAbs" saying so.) Participating in deception: ‘Narrative can become fact’: how some murderous, delusional behavior resembles a role-playing game gone horribly wrong. Open-carry nuts. "Everything about this man is so beautifully, gloriously wrong, I half suspect Sacha Baron Cohen is hiding in there." The stupidest thing you will have read today: "what would happen to 'the millions we have sent to hell' for using contraception if the teaching were suddenly changed?" We all talk about the GOP's clown car of candidates... but just how bad would the Dems be if Hillary doesn't run? "I chatted with the chatbot Eugene Goostman, and was not impressed." - When Ray Kurzweil says you're full of shit... The WaPo op-ed section is having a very bad week. My Conversation with “Eugene Goostman,” the Chatbot that’s All Over the News for Allegedly Passing the Turing Test "Project Lebensraum," black-on-white cannibalism, threesomes with L. Ron Hubbard, and worse: Heinlein's descent into madness. The Goat Brigade continues to troll Facebook conservatives. In this issue, their secret identity is almost exposed! Thought experiment: you are pro-homeopathy blather-monger Nancy Malik. You set up a website. You apply to the Health on the Net Foundation for approval under 'HONcode', their seal of approval for medical websites and are granted it. Then people start arguing about it and ask for the site to be reassessed. What do you do? If your answer is change the link to a screenshot of the HONcode badge when you were approved, congratulations, you too have the dishonesty necessary to be an alternative medicine shill. "...when old-school atheists attempt to dismiss social justice issues as "mission drift," it seems like a betrayal of the very principle that was most attractive about standing up and identifying as an atheist in the first place..." I blame those annoying gender people, ruining skepticism for everyone. Ham Rove made Americans smarter, unlike the real one. After making a lot of noise, presuppositionalist Sye Ten Bruggencate finally gets his long-demanded debate with Matt Dillahunty of The Atheist Experience. One guess how well that goes for Bruggencate. In the face of the facts and his own history regarding POW swaps, John McCain reaches a brand new low. Cracked looks at MRAs. (The author apologises to the reformed neo-Nazi for making him read so much Reddit.) Sanal Edamaruku is still stuck in Finland The net neutrality debate summed up by John Oliver. Update: The FCC website has crashed. Vladimir has been feeding his trolls. Stuart Robbins from the Exposing PseudoAstronomy podcast has released a video entitled, "The Cydonia Region of Mars Explored" that looks into the claim by Richard Hoagland and others that the Cydonia region of Mars (where the "Face" is) shows geometry that could only have been designed by an intelligence. #YesAllMen The NRA now says that gun activists who open-carry into restaurants and other public places to make a political point are "downright weird," " just not neighborly," "(defy) common sense," and show "a lack of consideration and manners." Update: "Our job is not to criticize the lawful behavior of fellow gun owners." The "solar roadways" hype gets dissected step by step. (By Mother Nature Network of all places.) Seymour Hersh's reporting on Syrian gas attacks gets taken apart.