Wingnut of the Day

World population, 1950: 2.5 billion

World population, 2008: 6.7 billion

I don’t think we have to worry about extinction because of too few people.

I think Least:Wise:Care(tm) would make an awesome, and confusing bumper sticker. Or SnorgT slogan.

What’s wrong with reducing the number of humans to a more manageable number?

Either it’s going to happen the easy way (population control) or nature’s way (aka the hard way aka mass death and starvation and war.)

Many (intentional or unintentional) experiments with flies and rats in jars haven’t been wrong,

something about “golly” and “death and destruction” in the same sentence….can’t watch a clip of of gomer pyle.

@ManchuCandidate: Time for the Malthusian Drills!
I have done my part to save the planet by not reproducing. You’re welcome. Does this mean I can use incandescent bulbs?
Anyone else hear the story on NPR this AM about the evangelical wingnuts trying to take back America–including San Fran!–by breeding as much as possible? One nutjob had had a vasectomy when he and his wife had 4 kids by the time they were, like, 23. He had it reversed (they have special “charities” to pay for that) so they could continue cranking ’em out. They’re now 31, have 8 kids, and no plans to slow down. Until her uterus falls out.

@baked: If I had to watch it, you have to watch it. Seriously though – it’s weapons-grade stupidity. Ya gotta believe.

/breaking – Atlanta Journal-Constitution to cut staff by 30 percent. Buyouts only for staff w/5+ years exp., per industry spies.

@Mistress Cynica: “They’re now 31, have 8 kids, and no plans to slow down. Until her uterus falls out.”

Yet again, I have to say, the vagina is not a clown car.

Don’t they realize how pathetic and out of control all this “sky-is-falling” posturing over total speculation- over dumb bullshit that nobody on the left is even fucking blogging about- makes their side look? I almost feel sorry for these asshats.

Meanwhile, R.I.P. John Hope Franklin.

ADD: Duke has a great tribute to him and his work. Almost makes up for their asshat basketball team.

If you guys will excuse me, I’m gonna go over here and pound my head on the wall for a while.

@Mistress Cynica: Smart people are not reproducing enough, however. Thanks for helping doom the human race.

Oh lord this tool teaches at Arizona State. Well if means more idiots like Idso are canned, I can get behind the 20% budget cuts the state legislature is proposing.

@redmanlaw: That’s because the vagina is a clown car, statistically speaking.

@Mistress Cynica:

Strangely, Seattle is a hotbed of this newish religious extremism. We have a multi-campus evangelical mega church here–one of the least religious places in the world–that’s basically the Christianist flipside of fundamentalist Islamic Wahhabism. Women are subservient to men, not allowed to lead or make family decisions, must be birthing machines, etc. Their stated goal is to have as many children as possible and out-populate the sane people.

It’s a bizarre pyramid scheme-style sham, of course, but it has 5,000 to 7,000 members, tithing a minimum of 10% (and that’s gross, people, not net), many of whom turn out every Sunday to hear how their atheist and humuhsekshal neighbors are ah-gonna fry like bacon in ethernal hayell.

There’s a branch right down the street from my house.

What I don’t get is how the sam-hill they can afford it, like logistically. The cost of housing/living here is notoriously high, and women in their cult aren’t even supposed to work outside the home. Add in tithing and taxes and how the hell much would it even cost to be in that cult anyway? I don’t see how they can make it. What would the husband have to make? $100K? $200K? More? There just aren’t that many jobs that pay that much. They also don’t perform any charity work at their church in any way, I might add.

In related news, Lily Allen has released a spectacular “fuck you” song dedicated to such people, appropriately titled, well, “Fuck You.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg7jA-H-jMo

@redmanlaw: There are two Nabiscitos ready to take on the world in our place. They already seem to sweat equal parts empathy and sarcasm.

@Nabisco: NojoBro and I learned our sarcasm at our father’s knee, much to our mother’s distress.

@nojo: The Hasids are also trying to fuck their way into domination by numbers. Stealing a joke from Leo Rosten: if they are successful, that street in Paris will be renamed “Rue de la Payess.”

@redmanlaw: The dolphins put me up to it.

@Original Andrew: Welfare fraud, the same way the fundamentalist Mormons support their breeding.

We need a space ark.
@Dodgerblue: We have a huge colony of Hassidim in the town of Lakewood, in my county. But that town also has the largest black population in the county, so they have issues.

The Hassidim creep me out. Hey, its not 1850 anymore. Yikes. Its like living in Saint Petersburg, Fl., I imagine, there is this wierd cult, but they are so much more visible, davining their way down the streets, and they tend to run from place to place, in this really wierd crouch-run, for all the world like so many Groucho Marxes running hither and thither.

Considering they fuck through a hole in a sheet, they do a good job at pumping out the offspring.

@Promnight:

Isn’t that an urban legend? They said so on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

What’s wrong with a little overcrowding? Food isn’t an issue. After all Soylent is the sustainable, green food source. Now in crispy Long Pig Bar-B-Q Flavor ™!

@Tommmcatt the Wet Sprocket: Snopes agrees.

Dr. Idso at 2:43 – “We can only hope in this regard that everyone’s future reproductive behavior will continue to be a matter of CHOICE.” Isn’t that precisely what the fundamentalists have been fighting against since forever?

The Pope is running amok telling the people of Africa to avoid condoms because they are making the AIDS epidemic worse. I wonder what Dr. Idso thinks of a world filled with people who are not white American Christians. Somehow I don’t think he has wrapped his mind around that concept.

I have to admit the Oregon State study sounds like one of the great no-brainers ever. They actually figured out that a consuming human being creates a carbon footprint during a lifetime? Impressive.

@Tommmcatt the Wet Sprocket: @blogenfreude:

No way! I know its true, my sister heard it from a friend of hers who heard it from her dental hygenist.

Next you are gonna tell me that its not true that this one time in the 70s, they had to pump David Bowie’s stomach and they got a quart of semen out of him! Totally true. And Mikey died from eating pop rocks.

One thing, though, its totally false that you can make a sea gull explode by feeding it alka seltzer. Nope. They just won’t eat them.

@Promnight: And would someone please weigh in on the Richard Gere/gerbil thing? I need to know.

@blogenfreude: Nope, I know someone who knows someone, who knows that the dude with the gerbil in his butt was Jerry Pinicoli.

Beyond Martinis: Rachel mixes drinks on the Jimmy Fallon show.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/25/rachel-maddow-mixes-cockt_n_178865.html

A nice sharp cheese with apple, or a soft ripened cheese with pear. I’m almost ready to accept the concept of intelligent design because of those.

@redmanlaw: Rachel who? Don’t say Rachel Ray. Please.

@Promnight: My secret lesbainian GF.

@redmanlaw: I will not rest now until I have made and drunk a Bijoux. From what I saw, it is equal parts gin, sweet vermouth, and what was that green shit? Some monk shit.

@Promnight: Speaking of monks, where the hell is RagingMonk after his Elvis appearance a few weeks ago?

Meanwhile, tonight I passed a young woman begging for spare change outside the Muni station with her daughter and son both under the age of 5. She was holding up a sign that said “I need food for my kids and money for a room.” She didn’t look like she was high. I didn’t notice her until I saw the two women stopped in front of her weeping. I cried all the way home on the subway. I felt so impotent. There was a pile of sandwiches next to the kids and I only had 2 dollars in my wallet. (Payday is next Tuesday – whoo hoo!) I would have felt like such an asshole to only give her two bucks. I realized later I could have gotten a cash advance on my credit card at an ATM for her.

What the fuck is going on in this world? In this country?

If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.

And I don’t know what to do other than to cry and self-medicate.

ADD: I normally pass 8 homeless pretty able-bodied men walking from the Muni station to my office. But to see a young woman, with kids, panhandling for change together, I felt as if I were walking around Mexico City.

@SanFranLefty: And that’s just for tonight. That sort of thing cries out for systemic response.

This is exactly why I refuse to become one of those fashionable gay daddies.

I really think at this point you need to have an overwhelmingly socially beneficial purpose to justify carrying to term. If you’re gonna spawn your cute fucking baby better grow up to be John Connor, I shit you not.

Asshats like this make me want to join groups like these.

@SanFranLefty:

I know what you mean, hon. There are so many more people with homes and food than there are without in this country. If we all just helped one person, the problem would go away, wouldn’t it? I really think it would…

@redmanlaw: I realized that the systemic response would be the San Francisco child protective services and Police Department coming to the subway station and arresting her for endangering the welfare of minors and taking her kids away. That’s another reason I cried – not only was I personally impotent, but it’s not like I could call on any entity to help her nonjudgementally.

@SanFranLefty: I was pondering on the innate fear we have as US American Citizens, about all the truly fucked up things that can happen to us simply because We, as a society/nation, have not embraced the idea of a social safety net.

Seems to me, it should be embarrassingly easy for us to create a nation where everyone is guaranteed shelter, food, clothing, health care and even education.

What with the trillions of dollars we’ve conjured up to save the banking “industry” and for “economic stimulus”, we could have paid for everyone to have at least a bottom-line social safety net, easy. (Not to mention that if we simply halved the “defense” budget we’d be rolling in the $$”).

I see virtually nothing in the Unicorn’s prescription for prosperity that might actually benefit “Joe Six-Pack”, much less “Joseph Latte”.

“We” are desperately trying to prop up and reinvigorate a system that is fundamentally bankrupt.

I want The Unicorn to hold a press conference and tell us all something like:

“Hey, we’ve lived the high life for decades because we rapaciously exploited limited resources which are now at their limits. The US American Way of Life is negotiable. If we don’t start negotiating, it will be negotiated for us. The carrying capacity of the planet has been reached — perhaps breached. We need to focus on re-localizing our economies, our means of living. Start a kitchen garden, like Michelle and I have done at the White House. It may be your only hope.”

@SanFranLefty: A 48 yr old homeless woman died from exposure here last week. The problem is everywhere– small towns as well as cities. Meanwhile, Paris Hilton has diamonds inlaid in the dashboard of her Bentley. Where are those guillotines?

@Promnight:
prommie, you’re right. they are the weirdest cult on the planet, and oh do they replicate themselves! the women are always wheeling, carrying a gaggle of kids ..and always always pregnant!
grow them IDF’s!!!!! and they’re poor. the super religious support them i think, or maybe bibi.

i had one child, a much better version of myself, my conscience is clear.

And the NYT reports on the new Hoovervilles.

@Mistress Cynica: Diamonds have no intrinsic value outside of their utility in industry.

I can’t wait for Paris to pull up in her Bentley and tip the valet with a few crumbles of coin. Then she goes into the club where suddenly celebrity becomes a liability and the hungry hordes press up and chew on her flesh.

Never underestimate the vengeance of Zombie Hordes!

@baked: I was wondering what they do to support themselves. I suppose the ones I see around here are all studying in the yeshiva in Lakewood, so they are poor students. They are all in their 20s and already the dozens of kids.

@baked: Ohh, I just remembered, about a year ago, we had the strangest story here. It seems that some dude from Ohio, a gentile con-man, was pretending to be a hassidim, and he had duped the community into supporting him, he enrolled in the yeshiva, and this went on for months, like, undercover goy. Sounds like a great movie plot.

@Mistress Cynica: Yeah, I read that the day after the NYT ran the self-serving “I Quit” editorial by the AIG executive who was a sad panda because he was going to have to return his $700 K + (after tax) bonus and was mad because he had worked so hard, his 12 hour days, to earn that money. Like the rest of us who make a twentieth of that in a year don’t work just as hard.

@Prommie: Wasn’t that a subplot in season 2 of Weeds?

@SanFranLefty: NAACP LDF just circulated the following short tribute (good for uneducated folk like me who hadn’t heard of him and want just the facts, ma’am):

John Hope Franklin’s service to scholarship, to the black freedom struggle and the expansion of opportunity in the United States, and to America as a whole is profound, perhaps even incalculable. He was a historian of the first rank whose books on Southern history and the history of African Americans brought to light facts and perspectives that help fill in many of the missing spaces in the conventional telling of American history. And he was a patriot of the first rank as well who refused to believe that the American nation was condemned to endlessly recycle the sins of its past.

Beginning in the late 1940s, John Hope Franklin brought both those exquisite qualities to bear on the work of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, helping LDF attorneys understand the intellectual ramifications of racism and discrimination, and testifying as an “expert witness” for LDF in case after case, including, of course, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. In the foreword to the authoritative history of LDF, Crusaders in the Courts: How a Dedicated Band of Lawyers Fought for the Civil Rights Revolution, by Jack Greenberg, Franklin offers a succinct, compelling description of that small, dedicated corps that Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall had gathered from the 1930s to the 1960s. With typical self-effacement, he downplays his own importance within that group. But John Hope Franklin’s contribution to this institution and to the cause of freedom in America cannot be obscured. It will be celebrated as long as freedom itself exists.

@mellbell: Yep. Among other things, one of the most important expert witness in the history of U.S. jurisprudence.