Combat! - Page 129 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

Morano on climate change: “Let the public decide what’s the truth”

By Dan Brooks in Epistemology March 9, 2015 3 Comments

I assume that suit salesmen everywhere can spot a liar, and they know what to do when one walks in. “Let me show you the olive brown,” they say. “It looks trustworthy.” Marc Morano is intrigued—not for himself, of course, but as a gift for his mother, who wears men’s suits as a sexual thing. “She’s exactly my size,” he says. Thus do sales associates perform a national service—but do we heed them? We do not. Some of us let Marc Morano of Climatedepot.com talk on our televised current-events shows, and we wind up broadcasting into space messages like this:

Let the public decide what’s the truth.

If the aliens hear that, they’re just gonna lose all hope. Video after the jump.

Friday links! Creeping mendacity edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links March 6, 2015 0 Comment

An ad from the Alliance Defense Fund urges students to report discrimination.

Look at the kicker in that ad: “Deliberate discrimination against Christians is now the official—or unofficial, but actual—policy at an increasing number of publicly funded colleges and universities.” It’s like the copywriter caught himself lying and then convinced himself what he was saying was basically true anyway, all in the space of one sentence. Welcome to the age of creeping mendacity, where telling the truth is less important than getting people to believe what’s true. It’s a subtle difference—so subtle you can use it to trick yourself. Today is Friday, and the truth is too important to let other people sort it out for themselves. Won’t you conflate “correct” and “honest” with me?

Bill to resist Agenda 21 fails MT House

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized March 5, 2015 9 Comments

Rep. Randy Pinocci (R–Sun River,) recently implicated in the conspiracy of the missing fudge

Have you heard about Agenda 21? It’s a non-binding UN plan for sustainable development signed by then-President George HW Bush in 1992. It’s also a plan to abolish private property rights and herd us all into cities under the auspices of a one-world government. Or, as Montana House Bill 583 put it:

Agenda 21…calls for the abolition of private property throughout the world, education for global citizenship, and the use of technology for the management and control of all human activity.

I’m no lawyer, but that means robots will be our masters. Rep. Randy Pinocci (R–Sun River) sponsored this bill, but he is by no means the only member of his caucus terrified at the implications of this non-binding environmental agreement from 20 years ago. At Pinocci’s request, former Madison County commissioner Dan Happel told the House Judiciary Committee that Agenda 21 would outlaw raising livestock and traveling in private vehicles, and that “single-family homes and suburban communities will be eliminated.”

That definitely sounds like something the UN could do and, for that matter, like something the Montana House could stop. Either that or it sounds like a conspiracy theory tailor-made to address everything conservative Montanans love: trucks, the suburbs, using “urban” as a euphemism for “not white.” Sadly, HB 583 has been defeated, and Pinocci et al will have to get back to the extremely boring business of actually governing the state. I wrote about in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. You should check it out and then yell at that guy who keeps posting the same comment about how much money Indian reservations spend. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.

Regarding the moth joke

By Dan Brooks in Theory of Jokes March 4, 2015 58 Comments

Norm Macdonald has been all over the internet lately in connection with Saturday Night Live’s 40th anniversary. One Rolling Stone writer dubiously asserted that he was the 135th funniest of the show’s 141 total cast members—behind Randy Quaid and two people who never actually appeared in any sketches, Laurie Metcalf and Emily Prager. Obviously, John Belushi had the funniest SNL career. But Macdonald remains one of my favorite comedians, partly for his strange delivery but mostly for his pathological commitment to his vision of humor. For me, he is on a short list of uncompromising comic sensibilities with Louis CK and Steven Wright. The infamous moth joke, captured above, is an example of how particular and particularly misunderstood Macdonald’s sensibility can be.

The Times on how much a woman’s life matters in Afghanistan

By Dan Brooks in Ethical Dilemmas March 3, 2015 3 Comments

A father addresses his daughter at a women’s shelter in Afghanistan.

I don’t mean to bum you out, but you should read this incredible article about women’s shelters in Afghanistan, a relatively recent product of Western influence. Honor killings are alarmingly common in the provinces, where resources are scarce, small communities make family reputations important, and a daughter of marrying age is a valuable commodity. The Times piece describes several women who eloped and sought protection from their own families in women’s shelters—including Faheema, whose stepmother burned her face with acid and whose father makes it clear throughout the article that he intends to kill her. Then, near the end, we get this:

Faheema tried to make peace between their two families and braved a phone call with her angry father to beg him to meet with elders from [her husband] Ajmal’s clan. But her father refused to see them and said the only thing that would satisfy him is if they gave him a daughter to marry off to his son or nephew in exchange for Ajmal’s taking Faheema.

That’s the only thing that can keep him from murdering his daughter: fixing up his nephew. Our plan was to teach this man democracy.