Salt City Sinner

posted 4/22/2013 by the Salt City Sinner  As both of this bloggue’s readers know, I am no great fan of free-market economics. I am also no great fan of climate change deniers. I am, additionally, no great fan of the music of Peter Cetera, but that is beside the point (actually, my hatred of Peter Cetera is never REALLY that far from the front of my mind, but to everything there is a season &c.). Why, then, would I object to an   article  posted on popular liberal blog The Raw Story with the promising title “Study finds belief in free market economics predicts rejection of science” ? Spoiler alert: I object to it because it is total and complete crap. Here’s the methodology that some researchers from the University of Western Australia (GO FIGHTIN’   TRUCKS !) employed: The study of 1,377 people who visited climate change denial blogs found endorsement of laissez-faire free markets predicted the rejection of climate science and other established sc...

posted on 4/20/2013 by the Salt City Sinner A conspiracy theory without Glenn Beck kicking in his two cents is like a kiss without whiskers as the saying goes (or is it a soup without salt?). Joining the illustrious ranks of such deep thinkers as Alex Jones, Beck is now convinced that the official story on the Boston bombings is so much flim-flam and hocus-pocus. Like a newly hatched baby turtle’s irrepressible urge to seek the sea, or a flower’s instinctual strain for the light of the sun, Beck’s internet vanity press, The Blaze, is inevitably advancing the theory that all this Boston carnage has something to do with Benghazi. “Huh?” you say. Well, that’s not really a word, mister, but I’m willing to forgive it in this case because, seriously, huh? It’s not necessarily surprising that Beck’s first and most authentic reaction to the tragedy in Boston was to   use it  to   sell gold  . Glenndolf Beckler is, after all, a good capitalist, although his theory ...

posted on 4/19/2013 by the Salt City Sinner Bombings in Boston. A man with loaded weapons on the White House grounds. Poisoned letters. A massive explosion in Texas. It has been the kind of week that makes you feel like it’s quite possible you’ve simply gone insane; that some fantastic machinery cooked up in the architecture of your sleeping brain must have lumbered into your waking life. Surely none of it is real, right? A lot of Americans (and I’m including myself here) are incredibly poorly equipped to deal with the brutal and unpleasant nature of the world that we have, in part, helped to make the way it is. It’s worth noting that the entire country has apparently lost its collective mind over the attacks in Boston that killed three and horribly injured dozens, but that on that same day in Iraq, a string of bombs in Baghdad killed 55 people and injured countless more. Obviously any connection between the two – Boston and Baghdad – only exists (if at all) in a tenuous and...

posted on 4/17/2013 by the Salt City Sinner ( Editor's Note : It goes without saying that what happened in Boston on Monday is horrific. Three deaths, countless injuries -- what motivated the attacker or attackers is not important. What is important is that we keep the people of Boston in our thoughts.) As I'm fond of saying, "there is no bottom floor in hell." Loosely translated, what I mean by that is that there is no situation in which conditions can't get worse, no level of stupidity that can't get dumber, no plumbed depth that won't look like a dip in a puddle compared to some inevitable later excursion into the watery abyss of crazy. With that in mind, I'd like to say a few words tangentially related to Monday's bombings in Boston, with a massive caveat: there's not much to say, really, about the bombings themselves other than "that is awful" and "nobody knows yet what the h*ck is going on." So this is less about...

posted on 4/14/2013 by the Salt City Sinner Yesterday marked the third annual Salt Lake SlutWalk, a   rally and protest  devoted to women’s issues in Utah – particularly, issues pertaining to sexual violence. The first SlutWalk started in Toronto in 2011 in response to a particularly ass-headed police officer's suggestion that women avoid rape by not dressing like "sluts," and the events have merrily metastasized over our humble continent and elsewhere since then. The event draws its name from both the practice of slut-shaming (best   defined  here for brevity’s sake as disparaging a woman for being sexually active) and for the all-too-commonplace occurrence of people excusing away rape by claiming that a woman’s “provocative” clothing or actions means that she “was asking for it.” Violence against women in Utah is a serious   thing : one third of the homicides committed in 2011 were domestic-violence-related, and almost half of separated or divorced...

posted 4/8/2013 by the Salt City Sinner Baroness Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, passed away Monday morning at the Ritz Hotel in London, following a stroke. The "Iron Lady" will be remembered as a pioneering visionary in both economics and human rights, having been declared Hero of the Soviet Union (Герой Советского Союза) by General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee in 1980. Working-class people in Great Britain remember Baroness Thatcher for her commitment to social justice -- under her leadership, public funding for higher education soared as did approval ratings among young people. Thatcher managed to carefully balance her embrace of trade unions with a steadfast refusal to exploit racial tensions surrounding immigration in Britain. Her policies led to increased wages for workers and a robust standard of living for Britons of all walks of life. Famously, she rejected the extr...

posted 4/7/2013 by the Salt City Sinner In a previous   post  about creative right-wing lies about the Violence Against Women Act and why it's totally not a psychotic fringe opinion or symptom of mental illness to oppose it, I mentioned the term rightwashing, which I defined as "a sub-type of spin; it is the art and science of taking reactionary, right-wing stances and attempting to render them more palatable through misdirection and, often, outright lies." In addition to opposition to VAWA, a second example of rightwashing is busily churning away right now, and in a state both proximate to Utah and near and dear to my heart -- Colorado! Colorado, you see, has recently come down with a bad case of common sense. The once proudly red Centennial State has in the last few years legalized weed ("Rocky mountain high," as they say) and gay marriage and contributed its electoral votes to the Democrat Usurper In Chief. Colorado can now add a reasonable, effe...

posted 4/2/2013 by CrazyPoliticos Imagine if you will, that someone threw a huge gala and celebration with entertainment and speakers, including the Governor, and no one came. I know, right? But this is “almost” what happened to Suzanne and Alan Osmond, who hosted the Celebration of Marriage Rally at the Utah State Capitol last Tuesday evening (March 26, 2013). Governor Gary R. Herbert spoke, the Osmond grandchildren performed and there were even party favors. To wit: a Certificate of Marriage which stated: "Marriage is the union of a man and woman whose marital privileges are based upon their commitment to protect and nurture the children that may be created as a part of their union,” which could then be signed by attendees.  (One wonders if these "privileges" extend to heterosexual couples who are infertile.) Like I said it almost happened that no one came. Okay, so imagine another scenario. You throw a big celebration and while only a few of the invit...

posted 4/1/2013 by the Salt City Sinner "don't worry, folks, your climate is safe with me" Chris Stewart is an upstanding Utahn -- as Utahns measure such things. He's a businessman, a veteran, a New York Times bestselling author with a book that has been   endorsed  by no less an intellectual titan than Glenn Beck, and as of 2012, a Congressman, representing Utah's 2nd congressional district. As a freshman Congressman, Stewart had the good fortune to recently become appointed the chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology's Subcommittee on Environment -- not too shabby for a scrappy kid from the Great State of Deseret. The only problem with this scenario is that Utah's proud new head of a subcommittee devoted to science is a climate change denier. Just as one might expect from a man who earned the Glenn Beck Solid Gold Seal of Approval, Stewart earned his seat the "conservative grassroots" way: he bought it wit...