Post hoc ergo procter hoc

Pennsylvania GOP Now Just Straight Up Electing Actual Curb-Jobbing Nazis

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 10:02:56 -0400

Pennsylvania GOP Now Just Straight Up Electing Actual Curb-Jobbing Nazis:

Well, maybe he’s a reformed Nazi…

nickmcglynn: MY EUROPEAN 30TH BIRTHDAY TRIP! So this year...

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 16:59:38 -0400

MY EUROPEAN 30TH BIRTHDAY TRIP!

So this year on September 9th I am going to be 30, and I have decided to treat myself to a european vacation!

I’ll be gone from August 31st - September 16th.

Here are the places I am planning to go:

Barcelona, Spain

Venice, Italy

Florence, Italy

Pisa, Italy

Rome, Italy

Naples, Italy

Capri, Italy

Sorrento, Italy

Pompeii, Italy

Corfu, Greece

Athens, Greece

If you have any advice, suggestions or want to join, email me.

Wow, I sat in a pub in Limerick, Ireland which I thought was pretty cool. But, you win.

doctorwho: Time Lords never forget to bring a towel A true...

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 16:58:52 -0400

doctorwho:

Time Lords never forget to bring a towel

A true staple in intergalactic travel

you-only-loki-once:

TARDIS towel

New Syria 'massacre' reported; activists say 12 workers executed

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 16:55:13 -0400

New Syria 'massacre' reported; activists say 12 workers executed:

Allegations of a fresh massacre in Syria surfaced Friday as activists said security forces shot and killed 12 factory workers returning home from work in a bus near the town of Qusayr in the restive province of Homs.

The men were traveling home from their jobs in a state-run fertilizer factory on Thursday afternoon when the bus was stopped at a military checkpoint on the outskirts the town, Salim Kabbani of the Syrian opposition activist network Local Coordination Committees told The Times via telephone.

The men were summarily executed there by gunshots, Kabbani said, and their bodies were dumped in a field on the outskirts of Qusayr. None of the men were known activists, and all were buried Thursday evening, Kabbani said.

But the pro-government Facebook page, the Homs News Network, put the blame on the killings on the rebel Free Syrian Army, saying the workers were killed because they were state employees, the Associated Press reported.

The killings again raised fears that Syria was plunging into a cycle of tit-for-tat sectarian massacres and a possible civil war, fears voiced by this week by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

The latest reported massacre remained uncorroborated by U.N. monitors inside Syria, but video was posted on the Internet purporting to show the bodies of at least nine men, wrapped in white sheets, laid out inside a building.

[Updated 10:56 a.m., June 1: The U.N. monitors’ spokesperson said Friday that opposition and government groups confirmed that at least 12 people were killed in the Qusayr area, but the circumstances surrounding the killings are contested by both sides.

The images and other online video of men with grievous wounds said to be victims of the bus massacre could not be independently confirmed.

The incident would be the third massacre reported from Syria in the last week — including the execution-style murder of 13 men near the eastern city of Deir Elzour and the house-to-house killings of 108 people, mostly children and women, in the township of Houla in Homs province.

The Houla massacre has galvanized international public opinion against the Syrian government, but authorities say anti-government “armed groups” carried out the killings, targeting loyalist families, including the family of a member of parliament.

Brig. Gen. Qassem Jamal Suleiman, chief of the Syrian government’s committee probing the Houla massacre, alleged that gunmen gathered inside the town following Friday prayers, along with 600 to 800 fighters from other areas, and began the “onslaught simultaneously,” Syria’s official SANA news agency reported. Suleiman said the goal of the “armed attack” was to bring the area under control of the “armed groups.”

Syrian activists, however, blame the gruesome killings in Houla on the shadowy pro-government paramilitary militia known as Shabiha, from the Arabic word for ghosts. Activists of the Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook page — a driving machine behind anti-government rallies — are urging Syrians to take to the streets Friday in protest for the “Children of Houla.”

Activists also called on members of the capital’s merchant class who shuttered their shops in Old Damascus earlier this week in an apparent protest of the Houla killings to continue their strike. Merchants have been considered a key sector of support for the embattled government of President Bashar Assad.

“These strikes represent a major blow to the now-defunct regime, which had been counting on the masses to maintain their silence,” the Local Coordination Committees said Friday in a statement.”But the train of history is on its way. And this train must stop at the station in central Damascus -– a station that may represent the beginning of the end.”

The latest massacre scenario — with the factory workers said to have been pulled off a bus — matches at least one earlier mass killing in the Homs area. It was unclear Friday if a sectarian motive was involved, but other such cases have reportedly featured gunmen at roadblocks selecting motorists and bus passengers for execution based on their sect.

Homs, like all of Syria, is mostly made up of Sunni Muslims, but the province also has significant minorities of minority Christians and Alawites, the latter an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Assad and much of the leadership of his security and intelligence apparatus come from the Alawite sect.

jasencomstock: lifeaquatic: Uh oh. Looks like Canada has CLITs...

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 16:49:30 -0400

jasencomstock:

lifeaquatic:

Uh oh. Looks like Canada has CLITs but no BL Ritas. F*** me.

BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHRAGHEHGH…

Couldn’t have said it better myself…

This is just to say

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 13:10:55 -0400

lovestreet:

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

- William Carlos Williams

joeross: I don’t usually post political stuff here, but I had...

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 13:03:41 -0400

joeross:

I don’t usually post political stuff here, but I had to mention this.

Click through to read about how 11-year-old Ali el-Sayed soaked himself in his dead 6-year old brother’s blood so the pro-government Syrian militiamen who slaughtered his entire family in a matter of minutes would think he was dead.

I don’t pretend to know what should be done about Syria, but something must be done.

finjangahwa: mashallahblog: Syrian filmmaker Bassel Shahade...

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 12:59:53 -0400

finjangahwa:

mashallahblog:

Syrian filmmaker Bassel Shahade was killed in Homs today. This is a short film he made based on an interview with a child survivor of the 2006 war in Lebanon

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raaji3oon.

This week has shown us children enduring things no child should ever have to go through.

spiegelman: maudelynn: I don’t know what is going on in this...

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 12:57:12 -0400

spiegelman:

maudelynn:

I don’t know what is going on in this daguerreotype, but I like it.

Clearly this man was a time-traveller.

Peril-sensitive sunglasses, no doubt.

rosa—sparks: riversideandstockton: ipomoeaandthestarsteal...

Thu, 31 May 2012 15:52:40 -0400

rosa—sparks:

riversideandstockton:

ipomoeaandthestarstealers:

justaturnofthedial:

maxistentialist:

Han Nguyen:

“Amercia‬” is one reason why the Romney campaign needs a new copy editor. Here’s another.

that parallel structure will get you every time

and so will your family members apparently

That is not the Amercia of my dreams.

I don’t know, some Thanksgivings I just want to go all Dangerous Game on my kin.

Amercia - Land of the Free and Home of the Heavily Armed Granny Agnes.

"The original Indiana Jones trilogy are actually the dreams Han Solo has while he’s encased in..."

Thu, 31 May 2012 13:31:40 -0400

“The original Indiana Jones trilogy are actually the dreams Han Solo has while he’s encased in carbonite.”

- What ‘fan theories’ have blown your mind with their devastating logic?

YES.
(via redking)

cresscross: Texas voters, even in the midst of a so-called...

Thu, 31 May 2012 13:27:20 -0400

cresscross:

Texas voters, even in the midst of a so-called “conservative uprising,” managed to elect the first openly gay woman to the Texas House on Tuesday night.

Mary Gonzalez, to be more specific, will be both the first woman to win House District 75 in El Paso and the second openly gay candidate to secure a House seat. Gonzalez, a doctoral student at the University of Texas-Austin, beat two opponents in the Democrat primary and has no opponent in the fall.

“She didn’t run as ‘the gay candidate,’ but she didn’t avoid the topic of her personal life,” wrote supporter Celia Israel, who organized a fund-raiser on Gonzalez’s behalf in the more gay-friendly environs of Austin. “She was open and honest, and she worked hard to get the vote out. This is the first time in Texas history we will have a GLBT woman be represented in the Texas Legislature.”

Gonzalez, who ran in an open seat against a school board member and college district trustee, will replace outgoing Rep. Chente Quintanilla, who decided to depart the House after 10 years and take a run at county commissioners court.

This election cycle, Texas had a historic high of four openly gay candidates running for office, including well-known Houston gay activist Ray Hill’s unsuccessful effort to unseat incumbent Rep. Garnet Coleman. Elsewhere in Houston, Democrat Ann Johnson will face conservative Rep. Sarah Davis, whose district includes West University.

Long-time Fort Worth incumbent Rep. Lon Burnam fended off gay activist Carlos Vasquez’s challenge in the Democrat primary. On his website, former Fort Worth ISD trustee Vasquez protested that Burnam had been a well-intentioned but highly ineffective lawmaker and promised he would tout education.

The legislature has gay members, but the policy amongst the press corps has generally been of the “don’t ask don’t tell” variety. The last, and only, openly gay member was Austin Rep. Glen Maxey, who left the House in 2003.

duck-and-penguin: talix18: crabby-cakess: kittykittybangbang: ...

Thu, 31 May 2012 13:17:36 -0400

duck-and-penguin:

talix18:

crabby-cakess:

kittykittybangbang:

madthoughts:

From the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony from 2004, Tom Petty, The Heartbreakers, Jeff Lynne, Steve Ferrone and Dhani Harrison, along with inductee Prince melt YOUR FUCKING FACE with their rendition of George Harrison’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

Seriously? How did I not know this existed? Prince fucking kills it. I desperately want to hear a hard guitar album from Prince now. Let’s get Prince in a studio with Jack White and Rick Rubin as soon as possible.

One of my all time favorite songs. I love this performance and I can’t believe I never made Jason watch it before tonight.

Every single thing about this is amazing.

Everything they said (except I don’t know Jason). Seriously. Prince.

AS I WAS JUST SAYING ABOUT COUSIN ROGER
This is my second favorite performance of this song. My fave is still the one from The Concert for George with a lot of the same people, and Clapton … talix18 knows this already but I just completely lose it when McCartney hits that opening piano bit … every time.

"The cost of appearing with this bloviating ignoramus is obvious, it seems to me. Donald Trump is..."

Wed, 30 May 2012 15:54:36 -0400

“The cost of appearing with this bloviating ignoramus is obvious, it seems to me. Donald Trump is redundant evidence that if your net worth is high enough, your I.Q. can be very low and you can still intrude into American politics.”

- Noted conservative GEORGE WILL, on Romney’s campaign appearance with Donald Trump, on ABC News This Week

(via The Colbert Report)

UN observers uncovered evidence of another massacre in Syria, with the discovery of the bodies of 13 men with their hands tied behind their backs in a clear sign they had been executed.

Wed, 30 May 2012 15:44:06 -0400

UN observers uncovered evidence of another massacre in Syria, with the discovery of the bodies of 13 men with their hands tied behind their backs in a clear sign they had been executed. :

Maj Gen Robert Mood, the chief United Nations observer, was “deeply disturbed by this appalling and inexcusable act,” after being shown the bodies in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour, a statement said.

However, he was careful not to ascribe the killings to either side in the conflict, calling on “all parties to exercise restraint and end the cycle of violence.”

Opposition activists were quick to claim the 13 bodies were victims of a new regime massacre.

“These men were probably soldiers in Bashar al-Assad’s army who were going to defect and join the Free Syrian Army,” an activist, Abu Yousef, said.

However, there were no eyewitnesses to the killings, and the victims had no identity papers, making it hard to tell to which side they belonged.

Activists also said that no one from al-Sijr, the Sunni village where the bodies were found, had reported a loved one missing.

Last night, Syrian rebels gave Pesident Bashar al-Assad 48 hours to abide by an international peace plan to end violence or face the consequence.

“It ends on Friday at 1200 then we are free from any commitment and we will defend and protect the civilians, their villages and their cities,” said Col Qassim Saadeddine.

Although the vast majority of human rights abuses have been ascribed to the government, some rebel brigades are also known to have executed captives, especially men from the Shabiha, or pro-Assad militia, accused of the worst atrocities.

Russia and China both refused yesterday to shift their position on UN intervention in the country, despite worldwide outrage over the massacre of more than 100 people in the town of Houla at the weekend, including 49 children and 34 women.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said: “It would make sense to expect a continuation of the Russian Federation’s consistent and well-argued line” on Syria, adding that any pressure on Moscow is “hardly appropriate”.

Moscow also condemned the coordinated decision by western countries on Tuesday to expel Syrian diplomats as “counterproductive”, saying it closed down channels for dialogue.

Instead they continued to put their weight behind the peace plan of the UN envoy, Kofi Annan.

Other members of the UN security council, meeting behind closed doors in New York on Wednesday, seemed close to despair.

Mark Lyall Grant, the British member said that due the “escalating levels of violence” the council was discussing whether to withdraw observers from the country, saying it was “not sustainable for us to have observers on the ground where violence continues”

The council is debating whether to send more observers, on top of the 290 already there. Some fear doing so would create false hope for Syrians who might expect them to stop the violence, even though there is little they can do.

Others argue that having more in the country would at least mean the violence being meted out by the regime could be documented by impartial observers, one senior diplomat said.

Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, said that certain countries spoke of their opposition to sanctions at the meeting.

She said she believed that the most likely outcome now was “escalating conflict” which she feared could spread outside of Syria.

Asked about whether Iran was partly to blame for Sunday’s massacre Ms Rice said that Iran had bragged about arming Syrian fighters and added: “They are very much compliant in what is going on.”

Mr Annan’s deputy, Jean-Marie Guehenno, earlier said that direct engagement between the Syrian government and the opposition was “impossible at the moment”, according to diplomats.

He also expressed “serious doubts” about the commitment of the Assad regime to the Annan plan.

doctorwho: “Step into the Home of Doctor Who” (video of Matt,...

Wed, 30 May 2012 13:16:45 -0400

doctorwho:

“Step into the Home of Doctor Who” (video of Matt, Arthur, and Karen at the new Roath Lock Studios)

For those of you who have asked that we embed the actual video of Arthur, Matt, and Karen at Doctor Who’s new studios at Roath Lock, here is an embed of the actual video of Arthur, Matt, and Karen at Doctor Who’s new studios at Roath Lock.

Why Is the Conservative Brain More Fearful? The Alternate Reality Right-Wingers Inhabit Is Terrifying

Wed, 30 May 2012 13:10:26 -0400

Why Is the Conservative Brain More Fearful? The Alternate Reality Right-Wingers Inhabit Is Terrifying:

Consider, then, what it must be like to be a true-blue Rush Limbaugh fan, or someone who thinks Michele Bachmann is a serious lawmaker with a grasp of the issues – put yourself into that person’s shoes for a moment, and consider what a nightmarish landscape the world around them must represent:

The White House has been usurped by a Kenyan socialist named Barry Soetero, who hatched an elaborate plot to pass himself off as a citizen of the United States – a plot the media refuse to even investigate. This president doesn’t just claim the right to assassinate suspected terrorists who are beyond the reach of law enforcement – he may be planning on rounding up his ideological opponents and putting them into concentration camps if he is reelected. He may have murdered a blogger who was critical of his administration, but authorities refuse to investigate. At the very least, he is plotting on disarming the American public after the election, in accordance with a secret deal cut with the UN and possibly with the assistance of foreign troops.

Again, these ideas are not relegated to the fringe of forwarded emails. Glenn Beck talked about FEMA camps on Fox News (he later debunked them, which only fueled charges of a media coverup); dozens of Republican elected officials have at least hinted that they are birthers, while an erstwhile front-runner for the GOP nomination has repeatedly claimed that Obama is not eligible to be president. The head of the NRA, and the GOP’s presidential nominee have both claimed Obama is plotting to take Americans’ guns.

In reality, Americans are safer and more secure today than at any point in human history. But inhabitants of the world of the hard-right are surrounded by danger – from mobs of thugs at home to a variety of powerful and deadly enemies abroad.

May you live in interesting times…

Romney Suggests US Should Work With UN Partners To Arm Syrian Opposition Groups... In A Related Story: Three Days Previous Obama Administration Pledges To Work With UN Partners To Arm Syrian Opposition Groups

Tue, 29 May 2012 15:22:49 -0400

Romney Suggests US Should Work With UN Partners To Arm Syrian Opposition Groups... In A Related Story: Three Days Previous Obama Administration Pledges To Work With UN Partners To Arm Syrian Opposition Groups:

joegressivism:

Romney is really committed to his strategy of suggesting policies that already exist.

bylinebeat: Most Houla victims killed in summary executions:...

Tue, 29 May 2012 15:21:17 -0400

bylinebeat:

Most Houla victims killed in summary executions: U.N.

Most of the 108 people killed in the Syrian town of Houla were civilians, nearly half of them children, and entire families were shot dead in their homes, the U.N. human rights office said on Tuesday.

Witnesses and survivors have told U.N. investigators that most victims died in two bouts of summary executions carried out by “shabbiha” militiamen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in the nearby village of Taldaou last Friday, U.N. rights spokesman Rupert Colville said.

Fewer than 20 of the 108 deaths can be blamed on artillery and tank fire, according to preliminary information, he added.

“What is very clear is that this was an absolutely abominable event that took place in Houla, and at least a substantial part of it were summary executions of civilians - women and children,” Colville said.

Photo Credit: (newvision.co.ug)

Anyone paying attention yet? Maybe you have some stern words or statements to read to Damascus? Maybe recalling your ambassador will make everything all better?

jtotheizzoe: A 7 year-old asks Neil deGrasse Tyson what would...

Fri, 25 May 2012 16:20:07 -0400

jtotheizzoe:

A 7 year-old asks Neil deGrasse Tyson what would happen if two black holes collide.

It’s wonderful. You da man, Clayton.

Oh, and the answer will make your head spin in the all the best ways.

(by KaluzaPryme)

I would like to know more about this…