Organizations working to counter voter rights restrictions

Organizations working to counter voter rights restrictions

http://www.southerncoalition.org/program-areas/voting-rights/

http://www.projectvote.org/

https://www.aclu.org/

http://lwv.org/issues/protecting-voters

http://www.brennancenter.org/

http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/

http://www.commoncause.org/

Grass Roots Resistance

https://dailyaction.org/

https://swingleft.org/

https://justicedemocrats.com/platform/

https://www.runforsomething.net/

https://www.womensmarch.com/100/

Current Trump Troll LIES: refugees

Troll: ""Liberals are exposing themselves again as the hypocrites they are... Obama (a democrat) banned refugees for 6 months from Iraq...Years ago, Jimmy Carter (a democrat) banned Iranians... No problems with that though... No protesters...""

Nope. All LIES. "The only news report that we could find that referred to a six-month ban was a 2013 ABC News article that included this line: “As a result of the Kentucky case, the State Department stopped processing Iraq refugees for six months in 2011, federal officials told ABC News — even for many who had heroically helped U.S. forces as interpreters and intelligence assets.”

The “Kentucky case” refers to two Iraqis in Kentucky who in May, 2011 were arrested and faced federal terrorism charges after officials discovered from an informant that Waad Ramadan Alwan, before he had been granted asylum in the United States, had constructed improvised roadside bombs in Iraq. The FBI, after examining fragments from thousands of bomb parts, found Alwan’s fingerprints on a cordless phone that had been wired to detonate an improvised bomb in 2005.

The arrests caused an uproar in Congress and the Obama administration pledged to re-examine the records of 58,000 Iraqis who had been settled in the United States. The administration also imposed new, more extensive background checks on Iraqi refugees. Media reports at the time focused on how the new screening procedures had delayed visa approvals, even as the United States was preparing to end its involvement in the Iraq war."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/01/29/trumps-facile-claim-that-his-refugee-policy-is-similar-to-obama-in-2011/

Did President Jimmy Carter ban Iranian nationals from entering the U.S. in a manner similar to Donald Trump's proposed ban on Muslims?

WHAT'S TRUE: President Jimmy Carter announced sanctions against Iran in 1980, including the cancellation of visas for Iranian citizens.

WHAT'S FALSE: Carter's sanctions were equivalent to Donald Trump's suggestion that Muslims be banned from entering or immigrating to the U.S.

http://www.snopes.com/jimmy-carter-banned-iranian-immigrants/

FACT: the Trump troll's claim is misleading. 
The "alternative truth" probably originated in a swamp.

Articles:
"Why Trump Keeps Making Up Lies About His Refugee Ban"

"This defense suffers from two enormous flaws. First, it assumes that allowing agencies tasked with security to have input on a policy would be tantamount to publicizing the policy. The president is supposed to be able to discuss plans in confidence without assuming they will be leaked immediately. That is how the federal government works. If the only way to announce a foreign-policy move was to keep new policies a closely guarded secret within the administration, then this kind of amateurism would be standard. There is a long record of American presidents announcing surprise foreign policy decisions that were planned in advance by officials other than a speechwriter in his early 30s and a Breitbart lunatic.

The second problem with this defense is that it assumes terrorists were sitting around the world, planning to enter the United States to launch an attack, and able to enter at any time, but lacking any special urgency. (Perhaps they were waiting for the fares to drop.) An announcement of one week’s notice would have given them just the motivation they needed to hop on a plane.

This bears no relation to reality. People from the countries banned by Trump already face an extensive, 20-step vetting process that can take up to two years. None of them could have legally made it through within a week, or anything close.

And once you realize this, it becomes clear that Trump’s policy was not only bungled in its implementation but conceptually flawed. Trump originally proposed a “Muslim ban.” But he had to back away from this policy given that it is both unconstitutional and transparently unenforceable (how do you prevent a terrorist from lying about his religion?). This forced Trump to relabel his policy “extreme vetting.” But the reality is that vetting is already extreme. Trump has not identified any weak points in the vetting procedure. Indeed, there is no connection whatsoever between his policy and any terror incidents in the United States. Radicalized domestic American terrorists have all come from countries not on Trump’s list. His policy grows out of a need to take some kind of action.

In a way, it makes perfect sense that he would skip the normal interagency review — input from security experts would only reveal that Trump’s plan has no relationship to any security objective. The purpose of this policy is to retroactively justify Trump’s campaign fearmongering."
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/01/why-trump-keeps-making-up-lies-about-his-refugee-ban.html . 

There ain't nothing like a hound dog

Post by RIX FM.

Ambiguity in Titles

Brevity is the source of possible confusion.

"Plants Inherited Ability to Sense Red Light from Ancient Algae"

Did they mean to imply that ancient algae emitted red light?

A longer sentence clarifies that they meant "Plants Inherited Ancient Algae's Ability to Sense Red Light."

"The light-sensing molecules that tell plants whether to germinate, when to flower and which direction to grow were inherited millions of years ago from ancient algae, says a new study released in the journal Nature Communications."



"Group gathers to protest unveiling of Baphomet statue with prayers"
I've never heard of prayers lifting a cover from a statue (or anything else, for that matter)

Predictably, the article was about hysterical Christians who can dish it out (erecting religious statues on government property) but cannot take a joke (a satirical statue of Baphomet at Bert’s Marketplace in Detroit).

Theistic Tactics Illustrated

I compiled the following explanation in response to a comment on an atheist community: ""angry atheists" thing that is so heavily associated with us"



Incoming missiles!

Labeling us as "angry" is part of the theists' campaign. This is how I see the strategy over time:

1) Losing the “argument”, theists screech about "militant" atheists, vilifying Dawkins particularly.

2) Knowing that atheists tend to despise obdurate ignorance and react to specific triggers, theist trolls (dimwits who love to cause trouble) deliberately incite ire—making atheists angry.

3) Hypocritically ignoring their own tactics, theists whine ad nauseam about both “militant atheists” and “angry atheists”.

4) Atheists begin to tell other atheists to behave.

5) Theists pose as atheists to add their “atheistic” criticism to the complaint.

6) “Atheists” and atheists tell other atheists to behave.

7) Theists join atheist communities to post inflammatory questions that are guaranteed to invite differences of atheistic opinion. (The theists rarely participate in the subsequent discussion.)

8) “Atheists” and atheists tell other atheists to behave.

9) Theists who have joined atheist communities make posts whining about “angry atheists”.

10) “Atheists” and atheists tell other atheists to behave.

11) Ultimately, atheists need no prompting to whine about “angry atheists”.

I Believe Not God

The concept I’m about to describe is really quite simple, yet mistaken statements abound.

The world abounds in claims about which I have neither heard nor will ever hear. About those claims, I have no belief.

Babies have no belief in gods because they are not cognitively capable of making a decision based on the lack of evidence. Babies are not atheists, they are simply not cognizant. Equally, trees, rocks, and nematodes do not believe in gods, but they are not atheists.

Technically, atheism is equivalent to the belief that there is no god. For some reason, non-believers use waffle language that panders to religious hypersensitivity.

  

We have all heard hedging statements of the form: “I’m not saying that God does not exist, I’m saying I lack belief.”

Sorry, fence-sitter, you might be saying you feel uncertain, or you might be trying to dodge the illogical demand to prove a non-existence, but you are actually flunking Logic 101.

Rationally, we should not believe in anything for which there is no evidence. Further, only a concept can be argued into existence. Yes, there is abundant evidence of the god concept, but no good evidence for the existence of a deity, particularly an interfering deity.

Even more damning, believers have searched and searched and searched for valid evidence, but cannot produce any. Most damning of all, Christian apologists now emphasize Fideism—belief not only despite absence of evidence, but Faith touted as more admirable because it is held in the face of zero evidence. I can think of another term for obstinately clinging to a belief despite the lack of evidence, and despite repeated refutation of all apologetic arguments. However, the term is not flattering, so let's settle for "deluded".

I could say ‘I don’t believe in fairies’, but I am actually saying that I hold the mental state that fairies do not exist. In other words, saying that I do not believe in fairies is logically equivalent to saying that I hold the belief that there are no fairies.

The same holds for deities: “not belief in god” is logically equivalent to “belief of not god”.

A belief is not a fleeting idea or vague opinion, subject to forgetfulness or rapid change. Instead, it is a persistent mental state, the manifestation of relatively fixed neural circuits. In other words, whatever we believe persists whether or not we are thinking of it at a given moment. A believer in A will be a believer in A when he falls asleep and when he wakes in the morning.  

Time, evidence, and persuasive arguments might convince a person to abandon a belief in A and realize that the reality is not A. However, the process is often slow because the neural “belief-circuit” and associated circuits must be rebuilt.

Light dawns slowly, if at all, for believers because they have a strong emotional investment in maintaining a delusion that promises eternal life—and all for so little effort. Simply believe in the unbelievable, and you too can comfort yourself with the illusion of being Special to a Fickle, Narcissistic, Punitive Parent, who will eternally cook you—and, as a bonus for the malevolent, your enemies—if you fail to believe.

Cognitive Distortions

I'm repeatedly struck by the irony inherent in whining that atheists denigrate the cognitive capacities of religious fundamentalists, while proclaiming that belief in a flawed ancient text will ensure that the believer—and only the believer—will defy the laws of nature and live when dead.

How to become a religious fundamentalist:

[under construction]

1) Early indoctrination helps, but is not essential.

2) The following does not apply to all believers, but to the worst religionist fundamentalists. These types exhibit a cognitive disorder characterized by:

a) Emotionality versus Thinking.
b) Narcissism versus Humanism.
c) Authoritarianism (RWA, SDO) versus Tolerance.
d) Defective Moral Compass.
e) Deception versus Truth.

In keeping with these problems, religious fundamentalist take pride in emotionality, fail to recognize their narcissism, take pride in authoritarianism, label those with subtler moral attitudes as "sinners", and refuse to recognize or admit that they heap one logical deception upon another.