Recent Comments

1. 4 months ago on Mike Luckovich

   When president-elect Trump announced that he would refuse to put his business interests in a blind trust as other presidents-elect, Democratic and Republican, have done, that put him on a collision course with both the foreign and domestic emoluments clauses of the Constitution – and the Electoral College, often “justified” as a last check against an “unfit demagogue” taking office, should have disqualified him.

   The Electoral College, created as a “compromise” to keep southern slaveholding states in the Union, disenfranchises people for having too many neighbors (a Wyomingite gets 3.7 times the presidential voting power of a Californian), and results in tens of millions of wasted votes that don’t help the voter’s candidate in their or any other state; votes that literally don’t count (27,439,074 wasted votes in 2016, 26,013,665 in 2020).

   It’s time for the undemocratic Electoral College to go.

   (The National Popular Vote interstate compact, on its way towards being joined by states with an EC majority, is a workaround that doesn’t require a constitutional amendment. See >

2. 4 months ago on Kliban's Cats

   More in the vein of ”Happy Mew Year!”

3. 5 months ago on Michael Ramirez

   99% of the time Ramirez lives in far-right opposite land. Occasionally, as now, he sees reality.

   ”Reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

4. 5 months ago on Tim Campbell

   As the T-shirt says: ”I’d rather be an American than a Republican.”

5. 5 months ago on Clay Jones

   Reminds me of the cartoon with a professor or teacher with a bold statement on the blackboard:

   ”*EVERYONE WHO CONFUSES CORRELATION WITH CAUSATION DIES.*”

   Also reminds me of an example in a class I took:

   A study of elementary school students showed a strong positive correlation between the lengths of their middle fingers and their mental age as measured on an IQ test. Does having long fingers make you smarter, or does being smart make your fingers grow longer, or what?

   [And it wasn’t something weird in the town’s water: the study would probably be very easily replicated at other elementary schools, anywhere in the world.]

   [And a tech note: GoComics automagically italicizes text surrounded by underscores, and bolds text surrounded by asterisks.]

6. 5 months ago on Clay Jones

   But somehow he wouldn’t want to have those benefits as a slave himself!

7. about 1 year ago on Michael Ramirez

   You’re welcome!

   The link with the “big-whoop” tag gives you the chapters in reverse order, and omits Chapter 1. (Hopefully there won’t be any religious wars about the “mearning” of that! :-) It was easier than copying and pasting five separate links.

   A good order to read them is as the King told the White Rabbit in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: “Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

8. about 1 year ago on Michael Ramirez

   Yup. Or even more concisely:

   Don’t be an αssholε.

   (Coincidentally seen both in a cartoon of “Atheism’s One Commandment” and in “The Big Whoop Book”, the scripture of the one true god, who also, unlike most other deities, cheerfully and unapologetically acknowledges that he does not, in fact, exist.)

   The Big Whoop Book, Chapter 1: https://houseofthedread.wordpress.com/2018/02/08/the-big-whoop-book-chapter-1/

   The Big Whoop Book, Chapters 5, Four, 3, and 2: https://houseofthedread.wordpress.com/tag/big-whoop/

9. about 1 year ago on Michael Ramirez

   Every accusation from the right is a confession.

   Ramirez occasionally displays the broken clock syndrome, but 99% of the time he’s firmly in far-right opposite land, diametrically opposed to reality.

10. about 1 year ago on Michael Ramirez

    Exactly. It’s become a tenet of Republican faith to fiercely protect zygotes, embryos, and fetuses, wanted or not, so more babies can be born only to become children gunned down in school shootings.

    (Or if they survive, they become cannon fodder or wage slaves.)

    Back to abortion: Roe was wrongly decided, only because it didn’t go far enough in affirming the personhood and autonomy of the person who’s pregnant.

    I’ve come to believe that abortion should be available at any stage, on demand, without apology. Here’s why:

    (h/t Eileen McDonagh, “Abortion Rights After South Dakota”, Free Inquiry, June/July 2006)

    Pregnancy imposes such major changes and burdens on the person’s body (even when there aren’t medical complications, which are a significant risk) that, without consent, it’s an injury. (Imagine a man being forcibly given an injection causing months of bloating, nausea, morning sickness, difficulty moving, other discomforts…) The person who’s pregnant has the absolute right to defend herself from such an injury. (And consent to sex does not equal consent to pregnancy!)

    We recognize the right to self-defense in other contexts, whether the attacker is a person (like an attacker with a knife) or not (like a rabid dog).

    Moreover, public money should be available for abortion, just like it’s used to defend other victims using the police and courts.

    There’s a flowchart that concisely shows my thinking:

    “Is the fetus inside your body?”If yes: “You get to decide what happens.”If not: “Fυck off.”