I know it’s a bit long, but you have to watch this video by John Oliver about the mind boggling scams that American (tele-) evangelists perpetuate on the public by abusing the trust people put in them.
And on top of that, they also scam the rest of the population by taking advantage of the ridiculous (and very lax) rules that exempt religious organizations from paying taxes.
It’s jaw-dropping shocking:
And it’s all real. And it’s all legal.
That’s what one Bryan Fischer opined in relation to the effort to overturn Mississippi’s gay adoption ban:
“Ladies and gentlemen. That is just a form of tyranny. When you compel people to do things contrary to their will, contrary to their conscience, that’s slavery as well as tyranny. So you think about it, who’s bringing slavery back to the south? Who’s bringing slavery back to the Confederate States of America? It’s the homosexual lobby. When you compel people to provide services against their will, that is involuntary servitude, that is slavery. I submit to you that it is the homosexual lobby that’s single-handedly bringing slavery back to the Confederate States of America.”
If you can stomach it, Towleroad has the video of the crazy rant.
In the last few months a string of racial incidents have come to light all across the US that have made crystal clear that the country has not yet overcome its past and its differences when it come to whites and minorities, especially African Americans.
I came across this article on Rawstory and was blown away by how messed up, inappropriate, outrageous, and just plain wrong what this journalist had to say was:
A white Chicago Tribune columnist is sparking outrage after writing a Thursday column expressing “envy” over Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest natural disasters in U.S. history as the anniversary of the storm approaches.
Katrina, which made landfall on August 29, 2005, killed almost 971 people in its direct aftermath. According to Louisiana’s Department of Health and Hospitals, the majority of the victims were elderly black people.
“Envy isn’t a rational response to the upcoming 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina,” Tribune editor Kristen McQueary writes in the column originally titled, “In Chicago, wishing for a Hurricane Katrina.”
[…]
“I find myself wishing for a storm in Chicago — an unpredictable, haughty, devastating swirl of fury. A dramatic levee break. Geysers bursting through manhole covers. A sleeping city, forced onto the rooftops,” McQueary wrote. “That’s what it took to hit the reset button in New Orleans. Chaos. Tragedy. Heartbreak.”
McQueary apparently yearns for Katrina-scale death and destruction in Chicago because New Orleans city leaders used the storm as an opportunity to furlough and fire city employees, and convert the public school system into a private venture.
“Chicago is so good at hiding its rot,” she writes. Its gravest issue — more than crime, education and poverty? Overspending.
“You’d never know it by the casual approach of government, both at City Hall and Chicago Public Schools, toward spiraling debt, and our elected officials’ continued practice of the risks that got us here,” McQueary writes.
One commenter on Twitter had the perfect retort:
"I wish the Enola Gay would fly over Chicago and drop its payload. That's what it took to hit the reset button in Japan." -Kristen McQueary
It just seems incredible that someone could say something like what McQueary said. But the most worrisome thing is that these people really do feel and think like that and occasionally their insanity, hatred, and racism bubbles up. But it’s always there.
An even scarier thought? These people live amongst us. And they vote.
Apparently not that much if you’re looking for a job. Watch this:
From Towleroad.
Another very interesting and cool video with the same handsome model featured in my last post:
Warning, the following video might induce salivation and/or dry mouth symptoms:
An influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration:
“A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.”
That’s the conclusion of a new study reported by ThinkProgress:
The observations show that “the rates of early 21st-century [glacial] mass loss are without precedent on a global scale, at least for the time period observed and probably also for recorded history,” according to the study from the World Glacier Monitoring Service, based in Zurich.
[…]
The melting is speeding up. Glaciers are now losing mass twice as fast as they were in the period from 1901-1950, three times as fast as in the period from 1851-1900, and four times as fast as in the period from 1800-1850, the researchers found.
And the glaciers will continue to recede, even if global temperatures stabilize, the study’s lead author, Michael Zemp, told Climate News Network. “Due to the strong ice loss over the past few decades, many glaciers are too big under current climatic conditions. They simply have not had enough time to react to the climatic changes of the past,” he said.
In other words, the Earth’s glaciers are melting to keep up with temperature changes that have already occurred.
[…]
“It takes time for the warming to whittle down the ice sheets,” he said. “But it doesn’t take forever. There is evidence that we are likely seeing that transformation begin to take place now.” Carlson told ThinkProgress that “we are nearing one degree Celsius warming,” and that the “worst case scenario is what we are already on.”
Are we doomed because of the inability of our political class to say “Enough is enough” to the powerful Dirty Energy industries?
I read this article on Rawstory and it was an eye opener. This paramedic from Texas is amazed by how easily common workers are manipulated by those in power to fight against each other while they reap all the benefits:
“Look, if any job is going to take up someone’s life, it deserves a living wage. If a job exists and you have to hire someone to do it, they deserve a living wage. End of story. There’s a lot of talk going around my workplace along the lines of, “These guys with no education and no skills think they deserve as much as us? Fuck those guys.” And elsewhere on FB: ‘I’m a licensed electrician, I make $13/hr, fuck these burger flippers.'”
He continued, “And that’s exactly what the bosses want! They want us fighting over who has the bigger pile of crumbs so we don’t realize they made off with almost the whole damn cake. Why are you angry about fast food workers making two bucks more an hour when your CEO makes four hundred TIMES what you do? It’s in the bosses’ interests to keep your anger directed downward, at the poor people who are just trying to get by, like you, rather than at the rich assholes who consume almost everything we produce and give next to nothing for it. ”
Pretty solid argument in my opinion.
Watch this video from The Daily Show. It perfectly puts in perspective how ridiculous the religious right’s arguments that they are persecuted by LGBTs are and shines a light on their desperation for predominance over a culture and a nation that is (hopefully) slowly leaving them behind in the past:
If you happen to hear some fervent believer railing against marriage equality and how the LGBT minority is victimizing them, point them to this excellent video:
From Towleroad.
