Jury in Arias Case Apparently Retarded

Jodi Arias has ADMITTED KILLING Travis Alexander, after radically changing her story completely, multiple times before.  To any intelligent person this would at least indicate perjury.  However, the Arizona jury, now in deliberation is asking questions like, "Dur.....ummm....did police check the alibis of Alexander's friends" (OK, they didn't have the "Dur" or the "ummm" part, but probably only because the questions have to be written, and they couldn't figure out how to spell "Dur" or "ummm", and didn't have a dictionary handy.  That's right, Arizona is one of three states where juries can ask questions of witnesses on their own, independent of those asked by attorneys.  HELLO, she is officially pleading guilty to being the killer, but is merely making an extremely unpersuasive argument that she did it in "self-defense".  Why do they need to check the alibis of friends if she now says that she is the one who did it?  Not only that, but there are F*CKING pictures of her dragging Travis's body, recovered from the camera.  Has the AZ school system really gotten this bad?  Is it something in the water?  Or are they really incapable of thinking that a pretty, dainty little thing like Jodi could do such a thing, even when she ADMITS it?

Mormon murderess Jodi Arias A Real Piece of Work

It seems that Jodi Arias is determined to be the next Casey Anthony.  Poor little Jodi is always depicted in a perpetual state of feeling sorry for herself (for getting caught, at least).  Poor little me.  I've only changed my story a dozen times about what actually happened.  As despicable as Holmes is, at least he has the honesty to crack a grin when looking at the evidence against him now and then, if to say, "effin A I did it, and enjoyed it too".  Not that any mentally sound person could enjoy that sort of thing.  By definition you would have to be perfectly OK with such things.  But whereas Holmes seems certifiably out to lunch and as calm as if he were watching his favorite TV show, apparently Jodi wants to put on Soap Opera theatrics.

On and, as far as the fact that she converted to Mormonism, yes it is technically correct, but she does seem to be way less of a Mormon than Mitt Romney, assuming that such a thing is possible for a man who took both sides of every conceivable issue.  But then along comes Jodi to lower the bar still farther.  She's the kind of Mormon who apparently sleeps around a lot and can casually kill people like it's all in a days work.  Mitt Romney only wanted to outsource your job and steal your grandma's social security, but at least he didn't want to stab you 27 times.  That would be too much work and he might have to momentarily remove that plastic smile from his face while doing it.

James Holmes and the Dangers of Delusion

The well known critic of religion, Friedrich Nietzsche famously commented that "A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith proves nothing".  Indeed, we have only to look to the example of Aurora mass-murderer James Holmes, who is (or at least was) convinced that the world was Batman comic book and that he was the Joker.  Current reports describe the elaborate, though somewhat Rube Goldberg booby trap contraption that he set up at his apartment, hoping it would kill whoever entered it to investigate the loud music. For those who insist that Mr. Holmes is "faking" mental illness, this device clearly demonstrates that he was the "real deal" in terms of being a sociopath, anyway.  

The question of whether we should execute a violent sociopath like James Holmes or Ander Brevik, etc is a separate matter.  I think it would be hard for any reasonable person who knew what Holmes did to ever feel safe around him, even if he were somehow declared "cured" of his illness.  Because of the threat that he would represent to society I think that society could quite easily argue that executing him was a simple matter of self-defense.  Then the issue of his mental state isn't even relevant, because it only matters that he is dangerous, and not whether he is acting out of insanity versus depravity.  

However, what most people refuse to confront in a case such as this, is the clear danger of holding absurd beliefs.  At the very least, the mere act of believing highly paranoid and nonsensical things often forces one to distort ones view of the rest of the world.  When the world is constantly telling you one thing, but you desperately want to believe something else, such as that you live in a comic book, then you will have no choice but to distort the information from the world around you to conform to your agenda.  Of course, it helps if you have a neurological disorder that generates your delusions "naturally", but delusions can come from the outside as well.  

People who actually believe elaborately paranoid claims about the Illuminati and the New World Order, under the secret leadership of Muslim Marxist Kenyan-born Barrack Obama, coming to confiscate your gun and your Bible so they can throw you in a concentration camp are holding a belief just as insane as Holmes, even though they may not have the neurologic disorder that Holmes does.  Of course, most right-wingers don't literally believe all of these things.  They just don't like Obama and therefore they are potentially sympathetic to almost anything other people say that is critical of him, even if it's way out there.  

However, the ones we have to be careful of are the ones who that that seriously, because they are the future Timothy McVeighs and James Holmes's of the world.  

christaholic justin bieber caught ogling victorias secret models

On more than one occasion Justin Bieber has been observed ogling and fraternizing with the Victorias Secret models who are part of his stage act.  Any man with a penis would do the same thing, but Justin isn't supposed to be man or have a penis.  That's right, he loves Jebus so much that he wants to take it up the butt from the jay man.  Plus he just broke up with Selena.  So apparently he is having some temptations of the flesh and Jesus would not be happy about that at all.  In fact Jesus would recommend that Justin chop off his shrivelled little boy wee-wee and cast it into the fire, instead of going to hell for being a fornicator.  So I wonder what Justin will do.  My money is that he will succumb to temptation and then expect to be forgiven later. 

Wishful weight loss resolutions Part 2

As noted in part 1, the bottom line to why most people won't lose weight or succeed in their other resolutions is because they approach it from the perspective of magical, wishful thinking.  They want the result, but they aren't really willing to do anything of substance to accomplish it.  They think that wanting something is all that it take to accomplish it, but they have no realistic plan.

It's like a person saying, "I want to climb Mount Everest", who knows nothing about climbing mountains.   We wouldn't take such a person seriously, because we know that it takes experience, and training, and planning to climb Mount Everest. Of course, it sounds rather rude to tell an over-weight person that he or she will similarly not succeed in weight loss because that person doesn't have a plan, and doesn't have the training to know how to lose weight effectively.  Rude or not, however, it happens to be the unvarnished truth.

Also, if your "plan" is to "hire a trainer" or "join a gym" then that is just pretending to have a plan and hoping that the act of wasting money will somehow burn calories.  Nobody ever got thin just by spending money. And if they aren't even willing to do something simple, like change what they drink, they they certainly aren't going to change how they eat or exercise.

As far as exercise, this needs to be addressed too. Many people who aren't even willing to give up sugars and fried foods still vow that they will undertake Herculeanian exercise routines, and that this will allow them to lose weight, while still eating garbage.  It is yet another urban myth that you can exercise weight off without changing your diet.  You can't burn enough calories with exercise to make up for eating all those double-quarter pounders and super-sized fries.  Those few who even try will be too sore to move the next day and that defeat will provide a ready excuse to return to one's old food addictions.

BTW, you may be wondering what the hell I could possibly know about this subject.  Well, I have never been overweight, but I put on a few pounds a year for almost 20 years after high school until I was right on the verge of being obese.  Then, this summer, I decided to do what I know I always should have been doing, which was to cut out carbs, eat way more salads (no dressing) and drink water or tea only.  The result is that I lost 40 pounds.

Everyone I knew was shocked.  "How did you do it", they all wanted to know.  The answer sounds boring, because all I did is what every health professional has always said to do.  I did happen to know some things about health, as it turns out.  My parents always made sure I ate healthy, organic food growing up and I have been a health teacher.  I have tried diets in the past, so I know what the popular systems were, but I never really stuck to them or felt that I needed them.

That's actually the second thing that everyone told me.  "You didn't even need to lose weight".  Well, technically that's not true.  I was way over the weight that I needed to be.  Besides, should I really wait until I put on another 40 pounds and I feel too old and fat to deal with losing 80 pounds.  There isn't a special moment that one needs to wait for to start being healthy.  You can start it any time.

Furthermore, it's not really about weight.  It's just about eating things that contribute to your health and not eating more than you need.  Even though my cholesterol wasn't too high, and my blood pressure was borderline, and my glucose levels were good, I didn't want to wait until they got bad in order to get off my butt and do something.

Of course, the hardest part isn't losing the weight, it's keeping it off.  I may address that in Part 3.

Wishful weight loss resolutions Part 1

Magical thinking is the problem that most people have.  Far and away the top so-called "resolution" of people polled is to "lose weight" .... so long as they have to do absolutely NOTHING to accomplish it.
When people tell me that they want to lose weight I usually advise that they start by drinking nothing but water (or unsweetened tea).  That right there is usually enough to deter most people from losing weight.  "But I LIKE soda...", they tell me.  I don't even bother to explain to them that they don't actually know what they like because they have been programmed by thousands of hours of television advertisement to believe that they "like" whatever Coca Cola and Pepsi tells them they should like.  So, as an alternative, I tell them "then only drink diet sodas".  "But I DON'T LIKE diet sodas".  That's why you're fat.  Because you're not even willing to do something as simple as drink water or diet soda.  Of course some of them repeat the "artificial sweeteners give you cancer" bull$hit urban legends constantly repeated by the sugar and corn syrup industries.  First off, there are sweeteners like Stevia that are completely natural (not that this proves its healthy), but even sweeteners like sucralose or aspartame, no matter how bad you might believe they are, are better for you than the alternative which is obesity causing, calorie rich sugar and corn syrup.  Oh, I know people want to believe that "natural" cane sugar is "better" than corn syrup, and maybe it is on some level, but you still don't want either one.  There will still be the equivalent of 16 teaspoons of sugar or corn syrup in your average "Big Gulp" and you shouldn't be eating that amount of sugar all day, not to mention just at one meal, or several times a day.

Bottom line, if you want to lose weight then you will have to do something.  You have to give up something.  You have to make some kind of sacrifice, compared to your normal routine.  If you can't even give up drinking high calorie sodas, then you will never have the discipline to take things any further and lose real amounts of weight.

Mormon pedophile warren jeffs says world will end 12/31/12

False prophet, convicted pedophile, and barking mad religious lunatic Warren Jeffs, who still leads the Fundamentalist Mormon Church (FLDS) from behind bars, has laughably predicted that the world will end by tomorrow, 12/31/12.  This cultist psychopath revels in exercising mind control over his thousands of followers who dress like they are on the set of _Little House on the Prarie_, and believe in  "plural marriage".  In practice this translates to a bunch of fat, ugly, 50-year-old men using religion to bone a bunch of 13-year-old girls who are basically sex slaves.

Of course, his failed prediction will undermine his credibility, but that was bound to slip eventually, anyway.  In the mean time, this is just one more mind game to keep his followers in a state of permanent anxiousness and emotional chaos.  That makes them easier to manipulate, as I'm sure a life-long conman like Jeffs knows all too well, from constantly manipulating his gullible Mormon minions.

Canda, UK, Australian not dictatorships despite gun control

The NRA assures us that Barrack Obama is gonna "take your gun" and that this will be followed, almost instantaneously, by Nazi-style concentration camps and genocide. Of course, they already assured us that this would happen in Obama's first term.  Now they are absolutely certain that it will happen in the second term.  But there seems to be a problem with their theory in general.  If collecting guns leads directly to tyranny and concentration camps, then why hasn't this happened in Canada, the UK, or Australia.  They all have public health care systems (Obamacare/socialized medicine) as well, I might add.  However, we see no gas chambers or crematoriums.  In fact, Canada, the UK, and Australia, despite having gun control and public health care, which would be branded "communism" by Tea Party fanatics, actually have had "conservative" government of late.  But they haven't always had conservative governments, and they still have higher taxes, both in general, and on the wealthy than are found in the US...all without a dictatorship, or a modern-day holocaust, or cadres of gun-toting civilians to keep the government from being "oppressive".  So what gives?  Why is it that these countries are not dictatorships when the citizens are not armed to the teeth?

Subway murderess hated muslims and hindus

The woman who allegedly confessed to pushing a man in front of a subway train this past week, Erika Menendez, says that she did it because she hates "Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers".  Of course, if any Hindu had been involved in the 9-11 attacks, this is the first anyone has heard of it.  The person she murdered, Sunando Sen, was a Hindu, but Tea Party know-nothings have worked very hard to make sure many Americans think that anyone with brown skin is a "muslim".  They certainly worked hard to portray the man who beat them in the last presidential election was a "muslim, socialist, dictator,..." despite the fact that they don't understand what any of those "big words" actually mean.  So Mrs. Menendez, with her obvious lack of intelligence, poor education, bigotry, and religious intolerance would make a great addition to the Tea Party.  Perhaps they can run her when or if she ever gets out of prison.

NRA wants Santa and Elves Armed

In response to recent gun violence, which the NRA insists has nothing to do with guns or their policies of making them more easily accessible, Wayne "Call me Crazy" LaPierre has now decided that the Christmas holiday season will never be safe until Santa and his elves starts carrying guns.  "The only thing that can stop a Grinch with a gun is Santa with a gun!" LaPierre declared.  As to why Santa has never needed a gun in the past, the NRA blamed violent video games, rap music, and especially President Obama, though he was at a loss to say exactly how gun violence was Obama's fault.  "Whenever anything bad happens," he assured reporters, "it's always Obama's fault."

NRA will now demand firefighters be armed

The latest news that 4 firefighters were shot and two killed in a trap set for them by a rifle-wielding psychopath will probably cause "call me crazy" John Wayne LaPierre to demand that all firefighters carry assault rifles strapped to their backs.  This is the quagmire that the NRA has created through the intentionally proliferation of guns into the hands of every lunatic in America.

Pro-gun lobbyist headquarters in Newtown

Many people have not heard that the second most powerful pro-gun nut lobbying PAC in the country, The National Shooting Sports Foundation,  is located in Newtown, CT, just free miles from where the Sandy Hook massacre took place.  Now, if there were really a God then we would expect that all the children killed in that massacre would be the sons and daughters of people who work for the NSSF.  That would be divine karma, and it might be a lesson that could get through even their hard heads.  However, so far as we have heard, none of these gun-pushers had children who were killed by the unregulated gun trade policies and glaring loopholes that these people were instrumental in pressuring Congress to adopt.

On the NSSF website, the CEO, Patrick Rothwell, rehashes a lot of the same tired, straw-man arguments, that a gun can't be "good or bad" because it's not a person, blah, blah, blah.  Of course this idiotic argument ignores the fact that tools are created for specific purposes or "jobs".  You can tell me that you are buying a half-million dollar John Deere agricultural combine just to look at it, or to mow your backyard, but the purpose/job for which this tool was designed is to harvest hundreds or thousands of acres of crops.  Likewise, the purpose/job for which a high-capacity, rapid-firing rifle was built to to kill a lot of people quickly.  Now, clearly, we recognize the need for the job to get done of harvesting crops.  It's less clear that we want the average person equipped with a tool whose primary purpose is to kill a lot of people in a short amount of time.  So, perhaps they should be restricted to people who actually need these tools, like police and SWAT team members.  Of course, if you can demonstrate that you have a compelling need, as a fire arms instructor, body guard, etc, there should be a process where you can apply for a license anyway.  But why should be just let anyone who wants on buy one, especially through loopholes at "gun shows" where no background check of any kind is required, and person acquiring it might be mentally ill, for example?

Dude Where's My Mayan Apocalypse

Oh well, another ridiculous Apocal-Oops has come and gone.  12/21/12 was as good a day as any, I suppose.  There have been all kinds of numerologically-plausible sounding end times, such as the year 1666 or 1999 or 06-06-06, or 10-10-10, or 12-12-12 or whatever.  As people with even a modicum of common sense have pointed out for a very long time (OK, that's just like me and six other people), the beginning of each century is fraught with all kinds of strange-looking dates with small numbers that look somehow significant.  But they aren't.  Doomsday prophecy necessarily has had a 100% failure rate, proving that none of these individuals have crystal balls or psychic/spiritual connections to anything approaching an intergalactic internet (as the Beastie Boys might call it).  Of course, the cottage industry of making up future dates continues harvest bumper crops of bumpkins and assorted idgits.  I'm sure that a few dozen new books are already in the works.  Too bad there can't be an end time for end-timers and their retarded predictions.

NRA vision of Armed waitresses, and gun turrets everywhere

Imagine walking into a restaurant and being greeted by a hostess wearing combat fatigues, with an M-16 strapped to her back.  Imagine the waitress taking your order with her trigger finger itching on her Glock.  This is the NRA vision of the armed hellhole that they want to this country into, all so they can continue the gravy train of billions in payola from gun manufacturers.  They inundated the country in guns and then say that the remedy is way more guns absolutely everywhere.

Imagine going to church now and the preacher laying his pistol down on the altar, in case he has to shoot his way out Dodge.  Yes, this is really what they would like to see things come too.

Instead of those camera domes in stores, perhaps they would like to see them turn into gun turrets, nervously trained on the customers.

Will all vehicles now need to be up-armored with 50-cals on the roof and side sponsons to lay down firepower while merging?

If it sounds absurd that's because it is  supposed to, for anyone who is sane, but it sounds perfectly reasonably if you're an NRA lunatic like Wayne La Pierre.  They took a whole week to formulate a plan that called for playgrounds being turned into paramilitary bootcamp/prisons.  If the kids aren't paying attention in class that day, they might not know the right code word to pass through the checkpoint and then they might have to get "ventilated" with automatic weapons fire, or at least waterboarded until they learn to pay attention to the passphrases during morning announcements.

Of course, we could get real here.  Too many guns are creating the problem, and most people don't need to carrying them on their person unless they have some compelling need, like a job as a body guard, not just waitressing at Village Inn.

NRA sez arm schools, theaters, restaurants, supermarkets...

In more of their trademarked absurdity impersonating serious, adult public policy-making the NRA said that the cure for gun violence is (BIG SURPRISE!) an a$$load more guards in schools.  They think that hundreds of thousands of schools now need to have round the clock armed guards.  Pre-schools, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, trades schools, barber colleges, etc.  But we can't stop there.  What about theaters.  We need armed guards there.  And what about restaurants.  People get shot at McDonalds, and Denny's too, so I guess they need full-time armed guards.  Then there's churches.  They will need a bunch of armed guards patrolling the pews.  And what about supermarkets.  They usually just have a few burly high school students who played football, but now they will need to be slinging assault rifles.  How about libraries?  How about gyms?  There's really no end to where people will need armed guards carrying automatic rifles to protect them.  All from the terror that the NRA unleashed on them in the first place by making guns too easy for irresponsible people to get their hands on in the first place.  And they did it for the money that comes from the gun manufacturers, and the money from the irresponsible people who want guns kept easy to get, and the power that comes with leading an unofficial army of authoritarian dip$hits.

This is the protection racket treadmill that the NRA has devised.  Create the threat in the first place and then justify more armament to protect you from the first bunch.  Then you need protection from the second bunch and the third bunch, ad infinitum.

The general problem is their philosophy.  Even if 99% of people carrying weapons are sane and responsible (which if much higher that in reality) it only takes 1% or so to totally destablize things.  Remember that many of these people are already SUICIDAL.  Therefore the fact that they might get shot during their rampages is an unlikely deterrent.  They can easily kill a few dozen people who are caught off guard before they are stopped.

Philosophically, the problem is that the more people who you entrust with guns the more likely you are to get unlucky and have those guns and that security duty entrusted to someone who is a psychopath.  It's no secret that psychopaths are attracted to things like guns because it gives them the instant, unearned authority and power that they crave.  Why would a bully not be attracted to a gun?  It's a great way to bully and intimidate others who are less aggressive than they are.

Adam Lanza's killing spree only took minutes.  Even there had been an armed guard, there is a good chance that he wouldn't have responded until it was too late.  Cops are already armed, but they can't be everywhere at once.  Most of the time they are responding after the fact, when all they can do is mop up the mess.  

The NRA's crazy solution is to do more of the same and to make the mess even bigger.

Mayan Apocalypse on my Day Off! Dang It!

Wouldn't you know that the first day I take off in the last two months falls right on the so-called "Mayan apocalypse" 12/21/12.  It better not cheat me out of a little rest and relaxation.  I was planning on getting my final x-mas shopping done.  It would be a real disaster if I don't have a gift for my mother-in-law.  Then the world probably will end on 12/25/12.

If gun nuts are right, no gun restrictions are allowed

It's common sense to say that a five-year-old shouldn't bring a loaded machine gun to school.  But according to those who ignore the first part of the Second Amendment and just say, " (dot, dot, dot) the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed", five-year-olds should be allowed tote around loaded machine guns.  That's right.  The Second Amendment says nothing about the age at which a person can own a gun.  It says nothing about machine guns either.  The five-year-old should be able to take a bazooka to school too.  For that matter, the Constitution says nothing about stopping felons or the mentally ill from having guns.  According to a strict reading of the above quote, it would be unconstitutional to prevent mentally ill people or felons from having guns.

Of course, all that relies on you not seeing the "dot, dot, dot" part at the beginning of the quote, which is why I spelled it out.  The intentional use of ellipsis on this part is a trick that the NRA has been using for decades that more and more people have finally caught on to.  That first part says that gun ownership is permitted in the context of a "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state".  So, for those who think that the primary purpose of having a gun is protecting themselves against the government, no, this right, granted by the government, is intended to be regulated by the government.  If you plan to use your gun to overthrow the government then that is not covered by the 2nd Amendment.  Also contrary to conventional gun-nut rhetoric, you will note that the purpose of the 2nd Amendment is not to provide for individual protection, but rather, it is explicitly to provide for protection of the state against those who would undermine it.  

As to the issue of 5-year-olds with machine guns, the state can regulate that precisely because no well-regulated militia would want or need infants carrying firearms.  Likewise, none of them want the mentally ill to  be toting around massive fire power.  Congress has the power and the responsibility to regulate fire arms, and lets hope that they finally do their job adequately, and intelligently this time.

Adam Lanzas massacre tame compared to Bible

Mike Huckabee doesn't think that Bushmaster assault rifles, or rapid-firing, high-capacity pistols like Glocks and Sig Saeurs had anything to do with the massacre of several dozen people at Sandy Hook Elementary this last Friday.  So what was the catalyst for it, in Huckabee's narrow, religiously-fanatic mind?  Why he thinks it's just that kids haven't had enough compulsory prayer and religious indoctrination beaten into them by the school system.

But actually, if Huckabee bother to read his Bible, instead of just beat on it, he would discover that there are plenty of massacres described in the Bible.  Moses and Joshua routinely slaughtered men, women, children, and even livestock ( Joshua 6:21, 8:26, 10-28-40; Numbers 31:16-18; 1 Samuel 15:3).  King Saul was ordered to commit massacres (1 Samuel 15:2-3) and when he wasn't sufficiently bloody, he was replaced by King David who was just a boy, probably about the age of Adam Lanza.   David was more than willing to kill in the name of his God (1 Chronicles 20:3, 2 Samuel 12:31).  Many other "heros" of the Bible including Samson, Gideon, Jehu, and on and on, were all too happy to commit mass slaughters.

So maybe it's a good thing that Huckabee's Bible God has been taken out of schools, before he inspires even more killing.

Huckabee says Sandy Hook Massacre "NO SURPRISE"

The brain-dead Fox News commentator Mike Huckabee got his crazy on this Saturday when he claimed it was "NO SURPRISE" that a massacre took place at Sandy Hook Elementary" because prayer was no longer compulsory in public schools.  I SEE.  So if it was really NO SURPRISE then Huckabee should have alerted authorities ahead of time to be ready for the gunman.  Huckabee later tried to backpedal on this moronic talking point, of course, claiming that he didn't really think there was a "cause an effect" relationship.  In other words, he's a lying sack of $hit who doesn't know what the F*CK he's talking about about.  There's really no other way to put it charitably.

See, this is just a standard right-wing talking point every time people state the obvious fact that assault rifles that can spray 100 rounds in half a minute make massacres a wee bit too easy.  The NRA solution is either doing nothing, and/or advocating that everyone from the kindergartners on up starting to pack heat ... because what could possibly go wrong with a brilliant plan like that...except everything?

Why not regulate that the militias that represent the gun owners in the US on at least basic things, like whether they need virtually machine guns to "hunt" or "defend themselves".  

Huckabee Blames No School Prayer for CT Massacre

It's getting harder and harder to be a moron these days, by Mike Huckabee made sure to spout the same tired, Republican line that school shootings are not because of mentally unstable people with access to assault rifles -- oh no!  The only reason that there are school massacres is because schools no longer force students to say a Hail Mary and an Our Father every morning.

Of course, now, even Huckabee is trying to walk back this moron mantra that has been used since Columbine, with less and less credibility.  The idea that guns have nothing to do with school shootings is a tough sell to begin with.  When you can fire 100 rounds in less than the time that it took the founding fathers to load a musket, guns have got to be part of the problem.  No they are not the entire problem, but they are an enabler.  One would be hard-pressed to find another way to kill several dozen people so easily.  Perhaps one could make a bomb, but that would require some thinking, whereas these are off the shelf.

Jindal Pretends Abstinence Only GOP is Pro-contraception

Bobby Jindal lives in a land of bizarre denialism, advocating contraception in the party that invented the idiocy of Abstinence Only.  Democrats have finally gained the upperhand on the issue of reproductive rights, perhaps because the pro-longed recession has made it impossible for people to ignore the financial realities of failing to use contraception when they cannot afford to support more kids.  However, in Jindal's mind, he can't comprehend the religious fanaticism that has lead his party into its current state of misogyny and compulsory pregnancy policies.
That's right, when you try everything to prevent access to contraception and abortion (which is the ultimate form of "birth control") then you become the party of compulsory pregnancy.
Furthermore, when you have a philosophy that contraception is a *BAD* thing and that we should ONLY abstain from sex then you also become the anti-sex party.  What's unsexier than that, besides Bobby Jindal himself, perhaps?
So I am glad that Jindal is finally OK with contraception being sold over the counter, but that hardly means the rest of the religious fanatics in the GOP will accept it.  They are still through the looking glass in Abstinence Wonderland.
Of course, the same "logic" that allows them to advocate abstinence would also tell them that we should not wear seat belts or bullet proof vests.  After all, these devices are not 100% reliable.  The only 100% reliable thing is not getting in a car wreck or being shot respectively.  I have already discussed the bulletproof vest analogy here.  The seat belt analogy is more interesting, because driving is a far more common, but high risk activity.  Almost everyone accepts that we should "use protection" of some sort, while driving.  The fact that we use this "protection" while driving, however, does not make us more promiscuous about slamming into other random drivers.  We still tend to be careful.  The seat belt just makes it less likely that we will be killed.  So when Mr. Jindal starts explaining this to his own party then we might know he is serious about creating a change there.  Until then, he is just flapping his gums about issues beyond his understanding.

Mass Killing in Connecticut

It is being reported that 27+ people, including possibly 10 children are dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT.  I am not against guns.  I own several.  But the huge unanswered problem we have in our society is how to prevent guns from being used by crazy people.  The gun fanatic answer is "everyone should be armed to the teeth".  That's right, their solution to preventing elementary school shootings would be for the kids on the playground to be packing, as well as the teachers, and well ... everyone.  Of course it is much easier to see the idi0cy of the position when we think about elementary schoolers carrying guns, but even if we excluded them for the obvious reason of DUH, there would still be a problem with everyone else packing.  The problem is that having 20 or 30 times more people carrying increases the odds that some of these people will be mentally unstable.
Of course the fantasy of gun nuts is that they will alway beat the other guy to the draw.  But, it is often harder than people think to tell a "crazy" person from a sane one, most of the time, except when they start acting crazy.  That's because, most of the time, these "crazy" people act perfectly normal.  Contrary to myths, most of these people are not crazy 24/7.  They just have episodes.  One second they are perfectly fine, and the next minute they are shooting people.
Now the big solution of gun loonies is that, if the crazy person starts shooting, that they will shoot the other person.  However, note that this solution does not prevent people from being killed in the first place.  Furthermore, many of these crazy people often commit suicide anyway, often fairly rapidly after their actions.  Theoretically, having a bunch of other people around them who can shoot back might limit the amount of damage these people can do, but in practice it hasn't seemed to work well so far, and most of these shooters aren't that effective anyway.  Also, as we noted, it is bought at the expense of potentially encouraging far greater quantities of crazy, irresponsible, or just plain dumb people to carry weapons all the time.  Anyone who thinks that will result in *less* shootings, as opposed to *way more* probably needs a head exam anyway.

Oregon Mall Shooter Almost Takes Out Santa

There's yet another gun nut with an assault rifle, who shot up a mall in Clackamas, outside of Portland, Oregon.  Even the mall Santa had to run for his life.  Yet somehow the culture that fuels gun violence and presents it as the simple-minded solution to every problem always marches on to the next slaughter, making excuse after excuse to allow it to continue.  The favorite one is that, "if only everyone had a gun then...."  If that were the case then people would be getting shot over everything, all the time.  And one can only imagine the "circular firing squad" scene that it would produce.  As usual with all things gun-related, the simple-minds who love them never consider the the next move or the next three moves away on the chess board.  They are always focused on their supposed "checkmate in one move" solution which is "fire my gun", but beyond that, consideration of all the consequences seems utterly beyond them.

12-12-12 like 6-6-6 with double the hype

People often point out that dates like 12-12-12 only come around once in a century and is "once in a lifetime". Of course EVERY fricken calendar date is likely going to be once in a lifetime, given that life expectancy is less than 100 years.  There is nothing particularly remarkable about these inevitable dates that happen every century.
A huge amount of hub-bub was made about 6-6-6, a few years back, especially due to ignorant Christian fundamentalists believing that it has some relation to the end of the world.  In reality 6-6-6 is not even an accurate transcription of Revelation 13:17-18, because the oldest sources render it as 616 and nobody thought that June 1st, 2006 was a particularly big deal either.
Thus, while people are trying feverishly to imbue 12-12-12 with special significance, I want to go on record as saying that, in all likelihood, nothing remarkable will happen then, and, if something coincidentally does happen of importance then people will twist all kinds of facts and invent previously unknown quatrains of Nostradumbass, or some other false prophet,  in an attempt claim that they knew it all along.  Naturally, they only "knew it all along" after the even occurred, which is worthless, as far a prophecies go.

Rubio Finally Figured Out How Old Earth Is

Last month right-wing extremist Marco Rubio made headlines by pretending that he "wasn't sure" how old the Earth was, as a sop to know-nothing Creationists and other religious extremists who make up his political base.  Now, after widespread mockery, Rubio has apparently decided that it wasn't so hard after all, and that he doesn't need a time machine to travel back and verify that the Earth is around 4.5 billion years old.  Most people were reconciled with this information in a Middle School Earth Science class, but apparently, it has taken Rubio all this time to figure out basic results of science.  Naturally, however, he has decided that this new information cannot possibly conflict with Roman Catholicism.  What a surprise.  The Earth has been around for billions of years, while the church has only been around for less than two millennia, but apparently all those billions of years were just wasted until Jesus came along and founded his fortune cookie religion. Jesus even makes reference to the days of Noah, but this doesn't bother Rubio, because fortune cookies can always be read in very vague ways, especially if one squints.