World News Korner

Fortunately for me there has already been some reporting on the numbers over at Roll Call.

Here is what they had to say:

Sarah PAC, reported it had receipts of $430,217 and disbursements of $461,368 during the first quarter of the year, leaving $1,086,533 cash on hand as of March 31st.

Small contributions of $200 or less, totaled $344,295. Of the $83,777 that came from 261 itemized donors giving more than $200, the largest amounts came from Florida, California, and Texas. The largest donors were Paul Ellgen, a retired scientist from Fort Myers, Florida, who gave $5,000, and Rhodora Donahue, a homemaker from Naples, Florida, who gave $5,000.

The PAC gave $56,000 to federal candidates during the first quarter, after giving only $10,000 to federal candidates in all of 2013. The PAC gave $5,000 each to Senate candidates Karen Christine Handel in Georgia, Joni Ernst in Iowa, Chris McDaniel in Mississippi, Julianne Ortman in Minnesota, Ben Sasse in Nebraska, Tim Scott in South Carolina, T.W. Shannon in Oklahoma, and Sen. Mike Lee in Utah. The PAC also gave $1,000 to leadership PAC of Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas.

The PAC gave $5,000 to House candidates Katrina Pierson in Texas, and $10,000 to Lizbeth Benacquisto in Florida.

In non-federal elections, the PAC gave $5,000 to Greg Abbott in the Texas gubernatorial primary, and $3,500 to Gov. Nikki Haley in South Carolina.

This increase in donations to candidates is undoubtedly due to criticisms over her stinginess last time around, and charges that her PAC is nothing more than a slush fund for her own personal use. Which of course it is.

A slush fund that is still being whittled away however, as she only took in $430,217, while spending $461,368. Leaving her with $1,086,533 in the kitty.

Of course she is still spending the vast majority of the money on shady expenditures. Such as over $115,000 on "consultants" of one kind or another, and just under $155,000 for some version of "postage."

She also paid $1,500 to Personal Creative for a video. And purchased copies of her own crappy book to the tune of around $20,000.

The usual list of suspects remain on the list, from Aries Petra Consulting to Northstar Strategies, As well as Timothy Crawford, Marilyn Lane, Carol Ryan, Pamela Pryor, and, of course, $13,515.70 to Clapp, Peterson, Tiemessen, Thorsness LLC.

After all SOMEBODY has to pay the lawyers to keep Tripp away from his daddy.

Of course this time around Palin has many more sources of income than simply convincing the paint chip eaters to hand over their spare change. She also has a soon to be cancelled huntin show on the Sportsman Channel, and that "Rogue TV" app thingamajig.

Good thing too, because from the looks of it she is getting a little long in the tooth to keep up this political pole dance much longer.

Update: Oops I almost forgot. Here is the link to the SarahPAC documents so you can do a little investigating of your own.

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Courtesy of yesterday's post on Queen Ester's Facebook page:

Tonight Jewish families all over the world celebrate Passover, the commemoration of their freedom from bondage and their Exodus to the Promised Land. We join with them in spirit in celebrating mankind’s universal aspiration for freedom, and our prayers are especially with our Jewish friends in Israel. May they continue to flourish as a democracy in a region of the world so troubled by despotic regimes. Chag kasher V'Sameach. Happy Passover. And next year in Jerusalem!

- Sarah Palin

Of course as we have discussed here on IM numerous times Palin's support for the Jewish people and Israel has NOTHING to do with any altruistic feelings, and EVERYTHING to do with the Fundamentalist's belief that it plays a very important part in the second coming of Jesus Christ.

She cares nothing for the Jewish people, and instead sees them only as a means to an end. The End Times that is.

Interestingly enough a new show on HBO, Vice produced by Bill Maher, addressed this very situation recently.

Here is a debrief.

Thomas Morton joined a group of born again Christians as they toured the Holy Land and found out the real reason why they support Israel.

It is certainly not shocking to learn that Sarah Palin is a religious nut who supports the oppression of an entire race of people, simply to usher in a supernatural occurrence that she believes allows her access to eternal life. And it offers yet another opportunity to point out that Sarah Palin does NOTHING that does not, in some way, benefit Sarah Palin.

Speaking of the End Times now some Fundamentalists are saying that the recent red moon sightings are the newest sign.

And speaking of Passover, it is a celebration of an event that never actually took place.

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Courtesy of the Washington Post:

Fresh off a week in which Democrats made clear that a key part of their midterm message will be equal pay, Republicans are set to begin their own efforts to woo women to the polls, focusing on counties that went blue in 2012 and could tip the balance in November.

In West Virginia on Monday morning, Sharon Day, co-chairman of the Republican National Committee, will launch “14 in ’14,” a program that will focus on younger women in suburban areas that lean blue. The idea is to sign up women who will commit 30 minutes per week in the 14 weeks before the election, making calls, recruiting other women, identifying voters and getting people to the polls.

Republicans have been dogged by criticism that their party is out of touch with women. In a CNN poll in February, 55 percent of respondents said they didn’t understand women, a figure that jumps to 64 percent among women older than 50, a group that has traditionally been more Republican.

Day will announce the new effort in Charleston, W.Va., with Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, who is running for the Senate seat being vacated by Democrat John D. Rockefeller IV, who is retiring.

“Women are a very important part of the electorate and the RNC is very serious about engaging,” Day said. “The Democrats have relied on desperate attacks and we are going to aggressively work to correct the record and build relationships with women voters.”

I have to remain skeptical that such a transparent ploy to seem more female friendly will work, and let's not forget that this is still the party that is aggressively fighting to control women's bodies, votes against bills demanding equal pay for women, and is working to undermine public education which allows many moms the freedom to work outside of their homes.

However I am aware that there is a certain type of woman who still relates to the policies of the GOP, though at this point I have to assume that they are either racist, nostalgic for the Republican party of yore, or are self loathing in some way.

These days a woman supporting the Republican party is not unlike gazelle's protesting for better working conditions for cheetahs.

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Courtesy of TPM:

In its latest projections for Obamacare, the Congressional Budget Office has lowered the law's costs over the next 10 years by more than $100 billion.

Most of the change can be linked to lower spending on tax subsidies for coverage purchased on HealthCare.gov and its state counterparts, which can in turn be linked to lower-than-expected premiums.

CBO projected that the federal government would spend $164 billion less than previously expected on Obamacare subsidies by 2024. It appears that a number of factors contributed to that change. Premiums, especially in the near term, are expected to be lower than previously projected: The office estimated premiums would rise on average by about $100 in 2015. They are still expected to rise over the next decade, but at a lower rate than previously thought.

It's a combination of rising medical costs, a healthier enrollment population in 2015 and the make-up of the Obamacare plans, which have narrower provider networks and lower provider payments than their counterparts in the large-group market, that contribute to the CBO's calculations on premiums. Other changes, such as a smaller under-65 population, also factored into the revisions.

More good news for the Affordable Care Act.

News by the way that can be used to help defuse the Republican attacks against Democrats in the 2014 election cycle.

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Courtesy of the Washington Post:

The Second Amendment expressly endorsed the substantive common-law rule that protected the citizen’s right (and duty) to keep and bear arms when serving in a state militia. In its decision in Heller, however, the majority interpreted the amendment as though its draftsmen were primarily motivated by an interest in protecting the common-law right of self-defense. But that common-law right is a procedural right that has always been available to the defendant in criminal proceedings in every state. The notion that the states were concerned about possible infringement of that right by the federal government is really quite absurd.

As a result of the rulings in Heller and McDonald, the Second Amendment, which was adopted to protect the states from federal interference with their power to ensure that their militias were “well regulated,” has given federal judges the ultimate power to determine the validity of state regulations of both civilian and militia-related uses of arms. That anomalous result can be avoided by adding five words to the text of the Second Amendment to make it unambiguously conform to the original intent of its draftsmen. As so amended, it would read:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms 'when serving in the Militia' shall not be infringed.”

Simple right? Just five little words, and the gun nuts would be shut down completely, and the NRA would lose much of its political influence.

Not only that but I think it's pretty clear to most people that THAT was what the amendment meant all along, and that the drafters never imagined how it would have been reinterpreted in modern times.

Of course the problem with this is that it is a non-starter.

There will never be such an amendment to add those five clarifying words.

Not in my lifetime anyhow.

And because of those "political realities" we will continue to see a never ending parade of coffins filled with innocent bystanders, children, and crime victims, as politicians wring their hands claiming that nothing can be done to stem the tide of violence.

If Sandy Hook was not enough to shake us out of our complacency and wake up the nation to the just how endangered we are by this amendment, then I simply do not know what it will take.

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Courtesy of Business Insider:

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has started, over the past few weeks, to ratchet up talk of a potential presidential run in 2016. If that's the case, the reaction he received this weekend at a gathering of conservatives in the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire was not what he was looking for.

Bush served as a punch line for — of all people — Donald Trump.

"You know, I heard Jeb Bush the other day," Trump said during his speech at the Freedom Summit, hosted by the conservative groups Citizens United and Americans for Prosperity.

The crowd immediately started to boo and groan upon hearing Bush's name. Trump then referenced comments Bush had made on immigration on April 6, when he said most people who cross the border illegally do so out of "love."

"He was talking about people that come into this country illegally. They do it for love," Trump said as the boos got louder.

"And I said, say it again. I didn't get — that's one I've never heard of before," Trump said. "I've heard money, I've heard this, I've heard sex, I've heard everything! The one thing I never heard of was love. I understand what he's saying, but, you know, it's out there, I'll tell you."

The crowd laughed.

Jeb's name has been popping up with increasing frequency these days, and I agree that he has the best chance imaginable against Hillary.

However this is no longer the Republican party that the Bush family knows so well.

THIS is a party that is split into at least two distinct and adversarial sides.

In order for the next GOP presidential candidate to win the nomination he would have to either unite both sides, or get enough support to shut one side down, as Romney did in 2012.

I seriously doubt that Jeb Bush has what it takes to do either.

For one he has the stink of George W. all over him. Second he is nowhere near ideologically pure enough for the Teabaggers, and third he is too connected with programs like NCLB, Common Core, and Immigration Reform, which are divisive topics that will not help him with certain demographics.

And putting all of that aside, the real problem with his candidacy is that he cannot win, and that his presence on the national stage will open up the topic of his brother's presidency which will lead to more attacks on the Republican legacy in the White House and their history of warmongering.

Ultimately his failed run will further damage the Republican party, and invigorate the civil war within.

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Courtesy of Mother Jones:

When the Supreme Court recently demolished yet another chunk of the nation's campaign finance laws, Dan Backer arguably cheered louder than anyone. It was Backer, a Washington, DC-area attorney active in conservative politics, who had convinced an Alabama businessman named Shaun McCutcheon to challenge the government's limit on the number of candidates, party committees, and political action committees an individual can contribute to in a single election cycle. (The basic limits on how much money that donor can give to each candidate, party, or PAC remain intact.) Backer, who represented McCutcheon, responded to the news of the Supreme Court's decision by tweeting (in apparent reference to William Wallace in Braveheart): "FREEEEDOMMMMM!!!!"

Backer's victory is shining some light on another high-profile cause of his: Convincing Sarah Palin to run for US Senate.

In an email headlined "Palin for Senate" recently blasted out by a PAC called the Tea Party Leadership Fund, Backer writes, "Sarah's the proven leader we need." He goes on, "She has a better grasp on world politics, and she knows what it means to cherish and protect our American freedoms far better than THE MAN WHO IS SUPPOSED TO BE LEADING THE FREE WORLD." Backer slams incumbent Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) for spending "too much time in Washington, DC, begging the Obama administration for favors rather than representing the good people of Alaska." Palin supporters need to act quick, Backer warns: The window for her to get into the race "has almost closed." And so Backer asks recipients to sign a petition and gather enough signatures to "to push Sarah Palin over the top in a critical run for Alaska's Senate seat in 2014."

In an interview, Backer said almost 100,000 people had signed the Palin for Senate petition. If Palin did enter the race,he said the Tea Party Leadership PAC would bolster her candidacy with direct mail and radio ads. "Nobody's going to be a greater agent for change than Sarah Palin from Alaska," Backer told me. "She will bring something to the race and she will disrupt the Senate. And disruption is good."

I guess this guy did not think he had done enough damage to the country through this Supreme Court decision, and has now decided to release the Kraken.

The problem with that plan is that she has no intention of running, and I doubt that anything this guy could say or do would convince her otherwise.

However let me just say that if her few remaining supporters are aware of his aggressive promotion of her candidacy, and she does not take the bait, that it will be MUCH harder for her to trick them into giving money to SarahPAC.

Even the horniest guys in the strip club will lose their chubby once the dancer loses her grip on the pole and tumbles into the audience. And essentially that is what is happening to Palin, albeit in slow motion.

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Courtesy of TPM:

Iowa state Sen. Joni Ernst (R) has said she's missed votes because of National Guard duty, but a review by The Cedar Rapids Gazette of Iowa suggests that Ernst's National Guard duties actually haven't kept her from attending that many votes in the Iowa Senate.

Ernst, according to the Gazette, has repeatedly cited National Guard duty to defend herself against criticism that she's been missing too many votes in the state Senate. But a report by the Gazette on Monday said there's actually "very little overlap between Iowa Senate votes and her National Guard service."

"I don't know what the actual count is," Ernst said in an interview with WHO-TV. "I know I have missed five days for other campaign reasons, but what they've included in those votes is time I've been serving on orders with Iowa Army National Guard."

The Gazette, through a Freedom of Information and Iowa open open records request of the Iowa Senate Journal, found that 12 of the 117 votes Ernst missed were on days when she was on active duty.

So only 12 of the 117 votes she missed were due to her duties with the National Guard?

Then what, pray tell, were the other missed days due to?

When Ernst was pressed on whether she had missed some votes because of campaigning, Ernst said she had.

"Yes they were," Ernst said of the missed votes because of her Senate campaign. "They were for other scheduled activities, and not knowing what the debate calendar is before they come up, it is hard to schedule if you are out of town."

"So yes, a few of those votes were due to other activities," Ernst added.

You know missing votes is one thing, but using your military service to cover for them is pretty damn low.

Of course she realized that the demographic she was attempting to attract would accept her bullshit about military responsibilities, at face value.

Sadly for her the "lamestream" media in her area is less easily manipulated.

Yep, another loser for Sarah Palin's stable of "also rans. "

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Courtesy of Liberals Unite:

Yes, over 50 substantial Limbaugh sponsors have not been heard in months. This number is in addition to the thousands of national and local sponsors who have already pulled ads from radio’s most hateful talk show host, Rush Limbaugh. The boycotts, petitions, and protests continue to kick his ad revenue, as well as the assets of the radio networks that carry him. More and more consumers and activists are jumping into the protest via BoycottRush, StopRush, and FlushRush.

According to the StopRush Database, here are some of the major sponsors that have not been heard on Limbaugh’s show for at least 60 days. As of April 12, 2014, they include:

No Ads Heard For 2 Months

Dish Network
Discovery Channel
Arizona Western College
Comcast Business
Comcast Xfinity
Papa Murphy’s
LA Dodgers
Blue Emu
St. Louis Rams
Anaheim Ducks
Pearl Vision
Boise State University
Vermont Teddy Bear
Kent State University
Michigan State University
Advance Auto
Tulsa Hurricane University
NFL Monday Night Football
Carl’s Jr.
Cleveland Browns
Miami Dolphins
Pajamagram

Here are the advertisers who have not been heard on the Limbaugh program for 3 months:

Sodastream
Club Glove
Fin Electric Cigarettes
Mannheim Steamroller
Kars4Kids
Sears
Olivet Nazarene University
Taco Bell
Jewelry Exchange
National Association of Realtors
Frontier Communications
SweetJack
New Vitality
Greenlight Financial Services
Stanley Steamer
Chrysler

And for the last six months these advertisers have been MIA:

Midas
San Diego University
University College-Washington
Oregon State University
Income At Home
Verengo Solar
Taste Of Home
San Diego State University
Gold Bond
Reagan.com
University of Iowa
Blue Bell Ice Cream
Hammermill Paper

As the Liberals Unite page points out many of these were long time, hard core, Limbaugh supporters, and yet the boycott and barrage of negative attention forced them to jump ship, and stay overboard.

It has been a few months since I have caught part of a Rush Limbaugh radio broadcast (In fact I thought for awhile he was off the air, but according to KENI 650 he is still around.), but when last I did it seemed that ALL of his advertisers were talking about home security, internet safety, and aluminum siding for your home.

It was not long ago that Rush Limbaugh seemed to be the de facto head of the Republican party, now it seems his influence has diminished greatly. Of course so has that of the Republican party itself.

Maybe if we keep up the pressure we can make them both go away.

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Courtesy of the YouTube page:

"Fast forward to January 2016," Carville said. "The most likely, though not the only scenario is Hillary Clinton is the presumptive nominee. Everybody's going to have a poll in the field showing how they fare against Hillary. They're not going to not nominate somebody because of Common Core [i.e., Jeb Bush]."

"Trust me," Carville warned. "The party knows, and I use this word advisedly, that if it loses the 2016 presidential election, the Republican Party as we know it today will be extinct."

"We heard that in 2008, too," Laura Ingraham said.

"This will be the sixth out of seven elections in which they've lost the popular vote," Carville replied. "The Republicans want to win this. That will be the biggest issue in January 2016: how can we beat Hillary Clinton?"

I am going to go on record and agree with this assessment.

I think the Republican party will still be able to win local elections, especially in red states, but even that could start to fall off if their national image is one of the always second place opposition party only.

I also think that if they lose in 2016 there will be a legitimate opening for a third party.

Not a Tea Party either, they are too enmeshed with the GOP, I think if a true competitive third party emerges it will have to place itself somewhere within the ideological chasm which separates the Democrats and the Republicans.

That's my opinion, anybody have a different one?

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Courtesy of KCTV 5:

A man yelled, "Heil Hitler," after he was taken into custody in connection with the fatal shooting of three at two Jewish-related sites in the Kansas City area.

Two males were killed outside the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City. A female was killed a few minutes later in the parking lot at Village Shalom, an assisted living facility.

The suspect shot at two other people, but the bullets did not hit them, said Overland Park Police Chief John Douglass.

The victims apparently did not know their killer, Douglass said.

The suspect is a man in his 70s who wasn't known to Overland Park authorities before Sunday. He is not from Kansas. His vehicle apparently had Missouri plates.

Douglass wouldn't say whether the man, who is being held at the Johnson County Jail, is from Missouri. Douglass also wouldn't say whether the shootings were anti-Semitic hate crimes. He said authorities are evaluating comments that the suspect made after he was arrested.

I understand the police wanting to err on the side of caution, but since this guy went to two different Jewish sites to kill, and then yelled "Heil Hitler" upon arrest, I am going to suggest that these shootings might just be defined as anti-Semitic.

I saw the video and the guy looks like your typical old asshole, angry at the world, who suddenly snapped and decided to act on his violent fantasies.

One of the victims is reportedly a 14 year old boy.

Just another example of how gun ownership makes all of us safe.

Update: The man has now been identified as Glenn Frazier Miller, a long time anti-Semite.

Update 2: The Daily Beast has more:

The man accused of shooting three at Jewish centers in Kansas has a long résumé as a neo-Nazi and KKK grand wizard who once created a points system for murder. The sole suspect in a shooting that left three dead at two Jewish community centers outside Kansas City on Sunday is a former Ku Klux Klan “grand dragon,” neo-Nazi, and ex-con named Frazier Glenn Miller.

The guy is a Vietnam vet and well known racist who has a history of racism.

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You would think that once you are passed the age of ten that you would no longer use magic, or the existence of supernatural forces, to explain ANYTHING.

And yet fully grown, seemingly reasonable, people do it everyday, in every part of the world.

I had a good friend in high school who used to do amazing sleight of hand magic tricks.

One day a fellow student, whose mind had just been blown by a disappearing balloon, said "That's impossible, it MUST be magic."

My friend looked him straight in the eyes and said "Just because you are not smart enough to figure it out, doesn't mean it's not something that can be learned."

If you think that a simple magician's trick could not make even the most intelligent among you at least briefly consider the supernatural, then you have not seen the right trick.

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So apparently this Tammy Bruce woman had a home invader the other day.

She tweeted the entire thing.

I think my apartment is haunted. Seriously.
— Tammy Bruce (@HeyTammyBruce) April 13, 2014

Then her dog, Syd, started to act a little nervous.

Oh great, Syd's now *growling* into the living room! :(
— Tammy Bruce (@HeyTammyBruce) April 13, 2014

Hmm, Syd's now barking at *the floor.* There's a basement here. Calling police...
— Tammy Bruce (@HeyTammyBruce) April 13, 2014

Cops on the way. Syd's growling at the floor. I sure hope someone's in the basement. The alternative is a shack exorcism...
— Tammy Bruce (@HeyTammyBruce) April 13, 2014

Talked to bunch of officers, they're now heading to basement's outside door...
— Tammy Bruce (@HeyTammyBruce) April 13, 2014

Syd's barking at the floor again, cops yelling something...
— Tammy Bruce (@HeyTammyBruce) April 13, 2014

Oh freaking jeez, SOMEONE'S IN THE BASEMENT FOR SURE!!
— Tammy Bruce (@HeyTammyBruce) April 13, 2014

As it turned out it was a homeless person who found the door unlocked and decided to make himself at home.

There was no indication that he wanted to do either the home owner or the dog any harm, but still it is a frightening situation.

Afterward Tammy Bruce tweeted this.

Tweeps, if you live alone having a firearm is good but it won't warn you about the #jerk in the basement. Yay Syd! pic.twitter.com/NeaDNV9fjP
— Tammy Bruce (@HeyTammyBruce) April 13, 2014

Exactly! I have little doubt that Bruce had weapons in the house, as she is always going on about gun rights. However her revolver certainly could not have picked up on the fact that there was somebody inside her home, who may have wanted to do her harm. For that she needed Syd.

In fact with her dog, Bruce really did no even NEED to get her gun.

The dog alerted her to the danger. She called the police, The police arrested the vagrant. And nobody had to get shot.

In other words this is the kind of situation that the NRA NEVER wants to see take place.

So the moral of the story is that maybe owning a firearm will make you feel safe in your bed at night, but a good dog will ensure that you ARE safe in your bed at night.

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Courtesy of Mother Jones:

We all know the Darwin fish, the car-bumper send-up of the Christian "ichthys" symbol, or Jesus fish. Unlike the Christian symbol, the Darwin fish has, you know, legs. Har har.

But the Darwin fish isn't merely a clever joke; in effect, it contains a testable scientific prediction. If evolution is true, and if life on Earth originated in water, then there must have once been fish species possessing primitive limbs, which enabled them to spend some part of their lives on land. And these species, in turn, must be the ancestors of four-limbed, land-living vertebrates like us.

Sure enough, in 2004, scientists found one of those transitional species: Tiktaalik roseae, a 375 million-year-old Devonian period specimen discovered in the Canadian Arctic by paleontologist Neil Shubin and his colleagues. Tiktaalik, explains Shubin on the latest episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast, is an "anatomical mix between fish and a land-living animal."

"It has a neck," says Shubin, a professor at the University of Chicago. "No fish has a neck. And you know what? When you look inside the fin, and you take off those fin rays, you find an upper arm bone, a forearm, and a wrist." Tiktaalik, Shubin has observed, was a fish capable of doing a push-up. It had both lungs and gills. In sum, it's quite the transitional form.

Shubin's bestselling book about his discovery, Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body, uses the example of Tiktaalik and other evolutionary evidence to trace how our own bodies share similar structures not only with close relatives like chimpanzees or orangutans, but indeed, with far more distant relatives like fish. Think of it as an extensive unpacking of a famous line by Charles Darwin from his book, The Descent of Man: "Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin."

The PBS series based on Neil Shubin's incredible work is due to premiere Wednesday. So of course it has irritated the proponents of Intelligent Design/Creationists.

As some of you may know Creationists love to harp on the gap in the fossil record as proof that Evolution does not prove that man evolved over time from more primitive life forms.

To be honest it has always confused me as they choose to completely ignore the overwhelming evidence in the fossils we HAVE uncovered, and focus instead on the ones that they believe are still missing. Kind of like if you were putting a jigsaw puzzle of a jaguar together, and though the assembled pieces clearly show that it is in fact a jaguar, because there are one or two missing pieces certain people refuse to see it.

That is why this discovery is especially consternating to the Creationists, as it adds yet another important piece to the puzzle.

So of course it must be refuted.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

Prominent creationist Elizabeth Mitchell reviewed the show for Answers In Genesis, and she was unimpressed by the manner in which Shubin allegedly “juxtaposes factual human anatomy with tiresome tales that misleadingly suggest [his] evolutionary interpretations superimposed on the fossils, genetics, embryology, and anatomy in the episode are as trustworthy as the observational science.”

The common design of of Tiktaalik limbs and human hands “is consistent with the biblical account,” she wrote. “It only makes sense that a wise Creator, the Common Designer of all living things, would use this versatile, stable skeletal pattern in countless different kinds of creatures.”

Mitchell then tackled Shubin’s claim that the location of the male reproductive organ on the outside in humans is evidence is another indication that “flaws in the human body, like our susceptibility to hernias, remind us that we’re all adapted from ancient ancestors; we are, every one of us, just a jury-rigged fish.”

She found “several problems with that statement,” foremost among them — that it contradicted the Bible. “God designed a perfect human body along with a perfect world in the beginning,” she wrote.

Part of my problem with the Creationists, besides the fact that they insist that every question as yet unanswered by science proves the existence of God, is their contention that we were created perfect.

This idea of perfection, is decidedly imperfect.

For instance as human beings our olfactory nerves are pathetic as compared to many of our fellow mammals, our eyesight is a joke, our physical strength would put us quite near the bottom of the food chain if our brains did not compensate so well, and our bodies are fragile machines prone to malfunction, disease, and an expiration date after only about 75 years or so.

There is nothing perfect about us.

In fact as most evolutionary biologists know, we are a transitional lifeform ourselves, as are all creatures on the planet.

And recognizing that fact means that learning we have evolved from apes, fish, or ultimately single cell creatures, should not be seen as an insult, but rather an amazing accomplishment.

Unlike religion, science does not define mankind as a fallen race, in need of salvation from a micro managing sky daddy, but rather a miracle of evolution for whom the journey toward the eventual destination of our species is really only just beginning.

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Here was what the young father posted along with this picture:

My 10 week old daughter and me at an open carry walk today. She's of course also carrying.

I am trying to determine what about this photo bothers me the most.

The fact that this man brought his infant daughter to protest where she would be surrounded by automatic weapons.

The fact that she must share a house with him that is undoubtedly full of automatic weapons.

Or the fact that he will raise her to think that it is perfectly natural to own a large number of automatic weapons.

I'm going to go with all of the above.

I should clarify this by saying that I really don't have an issue with somebody owning a handgun that they keep safely locked up in their homes for personal protection.

I personally think that a good dog, pr perhaps an alarm system, is a much better deterrent against burglary or home invasion, but to each their own.

But in my mind there is NO justification for this desire to walk along the streets of a city or town, with a military style assault weapon strapped to your shoulders.

To my mind that is an indication of an unhinged mind, and possibly somebody who is looking for a confrontation in order to have an excuse to use their weapon against another human being.

And I don't give a shit about what these assholes say, there is NOTHING in the 2nd Amendment that protects their right to be such obvious douchebags.

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