Author: Stable Genius

I am the very model of a Stable Genius Liberal.

Obama poster artist says president is a disappointment

Obama has had a really tough time, but there have been a lot of things that he’s compromised on that I never would have expected. I mean, drones and domestic spying are the last things I would have thought [he’d support]. (via Hope dashed: Obama poster artist says president is a disappointment | US news… Continue reading Obama poster artist says president is a disappointment

A Woman Tweets #KillAllWhiteMen and the Internet Explodes

A Woman Tweets #KillAllWhiteMen and the Internet Explodes

Mustafa is not the first to have her reputation raked across the Web on account of some lousy tweets. But she may be the first to crumble over a case of ironic misandry, a tongue-in-cheek form of discourse favored by the young feminist Internet natives. You may have spied them on Twitter or Tumblr, working on their “KILL ALL MEN” cross-stitch or sipping from a mug labeled “MALE TEARS.” Ironic misandrists say they’re poking fun at long-standing stereotypes about militant feminist man-haters. That seems to fit Mustafa’s tweets. In a statement to Goldsmiths students, she owned up to using the hashtags, calling them “in-jokes” between herself and other members of “the queer feminist community.” If some people failed to get the joke, well, that was kind of the point.

I think many people would recognize this overreaction to a bad joke as political correctness. Chalk this up as yet another underreported case of right wing political correctness given a pass.

Why You Can’t Have “Family Values” Without Valuing Fathers

Why You Can’t Have “Family Values” Without Valuing Fathers

When my wife was pregnant and I realized I would need to be home, I discovered that Time Warner had this strange policy under which anyone could get ten paid weeks, unless you were a man who impregnated the mother of a child. I went, in private, straight to [the Time Warner] benefits [department] and said, “I’m sure this is an oversight and you didn’t mean to exclude dads.” They wouldn’t give me an answer for months. Then my daughter was born in an emergency delivery, and eleven days later I’m home holding my four-pound preemie, messaging benefits, saying “Hey, I need an answer.” That’s when they wrote back to say that they would be unable to give me paid leave benefits. I decided to file a suit with the EEOC for gender discrimination.

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Paid leave is not a law requiring businesses to pay you when you’re out. Paid family leave is an insurance system that would tax 20 cents for every $100 you make. Studies show that when people find out what paid leave is, they support it.

Maher did it again

Maher did it again

Bill Maher has been raked over the coals on his irrational, anti-scientific attitude towards vaccines; his own guests have scorned his views on his own show; he’s been confronted repeatedly with the evidence and the rebuttals. He’s got to know by now that there is no rational justification for claiming that vaccines or thimerosal cause autism, or that the drug companies are profiting hugely by including poisons in their vaccines (which makes no sense, even if you do believe in greedy pharmaceutical mega-corporations).

So what does he do? He invites anti-vax crank extraordinaire, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to sit around and commiserate with one another about how they’re called cranks and liars for merely denying the scientific consensus.

Maher wants it both ways. He want to be just an comedian and also a serious public intellectual. The last one to pull that off was Mark Twain and he is no Samuel Clemens.