News - A Tippling Philosopher (Page 5)

(<a href="https://unsplash.com/@johnprice?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">John Price</a>.) A happy church in Atlanta.

Right-Wing Meme Stupidity

I'll give you 5 seconds to work out the complete stupidity and ignorance in the following meme (that's not to say all memes are perfect, of course): Yeah, that wasn't hard. It's so depressing. Indeed, I would actually call this a form

Brexit

Turns out I Was Right about Brexit. A Lot.

"Project Fear, you Remoaner!" I've heard it for a number of years, since before the vote. And when Project Fear didn't happen, Leavers got even more vocal. Of course, it didn't happen because it took us this long to leave the EU

COVID crisis

Texas: "The Pro-Life Movement Is Winning"

My friend and blogger (Smilodon's Retreat) Kevin McCarthy lives in Texas. Texas is involved in a legal sh!tshow. Things are not looking good there in terms of women's and reproductive rights. Here, Kevin is nailing his various comments on Facebook to various GOPers. To which

News

Afghanistan. Oh Dear.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. What a sh!tshow. And the blame game starts. But let's look at what led up to this. 1) We (the US and its lackeys, the UK) went in there, arguably for very dubious reasons, using bad intelligence.

AGW

Exponential Change

Humans are prone to overshoot - acting only when it is too late. Take climate change or population growth or both or similar. Imagine there is big old pond in your back garden. On the first day there is 1 lily pad, the next day 2, the day after 4

80 trading 24, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

AGW

Debating Climate Change

There is no debate. Past that, there are idiots who still like to debate it, some will infest these threads, and media channels still try to present both sides by giving them equal air time. Some of you might say "Well, that is no way to try and change

evangelicalism

"Evangelicalism is One of the Most Hated Religious Sects in America, And They Only Have Themselves to Blame"

My friend Bruce Gerenscer recently wrote a letter to his local newspaper and I asked if I could repost it here; he kindly agreed: Letter to the Editor of The Bryan Times. It was published on July 8, 2021. Dear Editor, Evangelicalism is one the most hated religious sects in

Trump

"Russia Collusion Is a Hoax!" Hmm, Not So Much.

This piece is in response not just to some commenters here, but in light of a leak from a couple of days ago from Russia that may have been lost in the news noise and coronavirus world we live in. There are a few right-wing crazies on these boards who

cancel culture

Culture Wars as a Cynical Strategy in the Face of a Lack of Economic and Social Policy

I have been arguing elsewhere with a good friend about identity politics and culture wars. I have written before about the culture wars narrative, in which cancel culture features so heavily. This discussion went something like this [excuse typos and grammar as lifted from Facebook and Messenger]: JP: Ok, business

cancel culture

The Left and Their Cancel Culture!

Goddamned lefties and their cancel culture, as the Boston Globe reports: As the debate over the teaching of critical race theory in the classroom intensifies across the country, the firing of a Tennessee teacher last month emerged as a flashpoint in the discussion over the weekend. Matthew Hawn, who had

Democratic Party

Texas More Democrat Than Florida?

Discuss. Beto O'Rourke has a lot to answer for, too (in a good way).

secularism

Humanists Condemn Supreme Court’s Adoption Case Giving the Church Privilege to Discriminate

This is from the American Humanists Association: The American Humanist Association (AHA)’s leaders expressed disappointment in today’s 9-0 Supreme Court decision in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. “While the Supreme Court avoided overturning precedent that is vital to maintaining church-state separation, we are nonetheless stuck with a

2020 Election

Trumpian Conspiracy Theories Fuelling Insane Republican Big Lie Advocacy

As I discussed the other day, things are getting progressively worse in the US as half of the country are happy to let it slide towards fascism, and the other half appear powerless to stop it from doing so. Insane conspiracy theories are being used to fuel dangerous voter suppression

democracy

The GOP Sustained Assault on Democracy

There are some really terrible moves being made by the GOP at all levels of politics in the US. This has arguably been going on for decades, but most pointedly so since Trump's election in 2016. There is a very good case to suggest that the GOP is

COVID crisis

Open Satan Statue Season in Greene's Georgia

Majorie Taylor Greene is never far away from controversy, never far from rank hypocrisy, utter stupidity and vile immorality. No wonder some of the commenters here like her. Another embarrassing video has emerged whereby she would not demand that a hypothetical statue of Hitler or Satan be taken down. They

News

Tim Ryan, Benghazi, and the Insurrection

This is a brilliant speech, not least because it shows Tim Ryan really does care about what is right and what is moral. If I get the chance later this week, I am going to detail the rank hypocrisy that the Republicans have shown in the context of Benghazi and

BBC

Right-Wing Bias in the MSM? Reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian Problem

We so often hear about left-wing bias of the mainstream media from those on the right. But there have been very salient examples of right-wing, imperialistic bias from these same sources. And people are calling them out on air. These examples are brilliant, as are the analyses from Novara Media.

Conservatives

What's Wrong with the Left: The Mechanisms of Voting and Rigging the System

This is part two in my series on the subject. The first started with: I was asked the other day “what is wrong with the left?” or “where has the left gone wrong?” This is presumably in the context of the UK since this is quite a different political environment

GOP

The Big Lie Lives on: Cheney Is Ousted for Telling the Truth

I am no fan of Liz Cheney - she is a hardcore conservative. Conservative voters should love her. Unfortunately, she's also a fan, recently, of...truth. And conservative voters appear to have become, in the main, a cult. A cult of personality. Of Trump. And now, because she

Conservatives

What Is Wrong with the Left?: The Mechanisms of Messaging

I was asked the other day “what is wrong with the left?” or “where has the left gone wrong?” This is presumably in the context of the UK since this is quite a different political environment to the US, although there are obvious similarities. Let me answer this question in

Rose Lincoln/Harvard University, CC BY 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

News

Going Nuclear

Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now is proving to be an interesting and thought-provoking read. In this excerpt, he gives an account of how some of our energy and carbo problems are necessarily solved by nuclear energy. This is from his chapter on The Environment, and starts with a look

Conservatives

Disenfranchised and Disenchanted: Reflections on the UK Local Elections

Things are bleak in the UK. We are in a very desperate situation whereby we are still, after 11 years, being ruled by an incompetent, corrupt right-wing populist party with our own British Trump (the difference being that he can read Classics) fooling the British people with his buffoonery that

Trump

Election Fraud!

We have had to listen to too many people spread too many lies for too many months. The Big Lie needs to be locked up, the key needs to be lost forever, and the US needs to move on. But still, it persists. But still, the GOP insist on shenanigans

AHA

National Day of Reason Resolution Introduced in the US House of Representatives

This is from the AHA: Today, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) introduced a resolution to recognize May 7, 2021, as a “National Day of Reason.” The resolution is co-sponsored by fellow Congressional Freethought Caucus members Representative Jared Huffman (D-CA), Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Representative Hank Johnson

Demographics of Religion

Nonreligious Americans Are A Growing Political Force

I posted from a recent written article that touched on this, the other day. Here's a very interesting podcast discussing the political importance of the nonreligious demographic in US politics.