laughable

Describes motivation process for creativity with emphasis on intrinsic motivation by Corey K Katir

The impact of the rising biofuels market on global food prices is much worse than predicted. According to an as yet unpublished study commissioned by the World Bank, biofuels have caused food prices to rise 75%. The World Bank completed the study, which has been leaked by the Guardian, at the end of April but has [...] Related posts:

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At Carectomy, we’ve spent significant ink (err… pixels) lambasting the “solution” that biofuels provide. Now, as the NY Times reports, consumers are getting fed up with the ethanol mixed in with their gas to boot. It’s not an awakening of conscience; they just don’t think the stuff works. From the NY Times: Many consumers complain that ethanol, [...] Related posts:

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Romney’s prep-school behavior fair game

It’s laughable for Kathleen Parker to ask if Mitt Romney’s prep-school prank (which would now be classified as a hate crime in many states) is an appropriate presidential campaign issue. [“Hero vs. bully? Let’s get real,” Opinion, May 14.]

Supporters of candidate and President Obama have had to endure years of public questioning about his ancestry, his birth place, his church, his college and law school accomplishments.

When Republicans begin treating President Obama as the legitimately elected leader of our country, instead of some political anomaly, then we’ll give candidate Romney a pass. Until that day, Romney’s mean and boorish prep-school behavior is fair game.

— Karen Knutson, Seattle

Lack of character

Kathleen Parker’s characterization of the incident where Mitt Romney instigated the forcibly holding down and the cutting of a classmate’s hair as a “prank” shows a great lack of understanding on her part of how traumatic and life-changing this extreme type of bulling can be.

Mitt Romney’s total lack of recall of the incident, while others involved apologized to the victim and still feel remorse, shows an extreme lack of character on his part. This lack of character renders him unfit to be president.

— John Douglas Locatelli, Maple Valley

Word for gays did exist in ’60s

Kathleen Parker says that Mitt Romney could not have been an anti-gay bully back in his 1965 prep school because the word gay as a term for homosexual was not in common use back then.

As a member of that generation, I have to agree: The word was “fag,” and it was because we were “fags,” not gays, that we were beaten, harassed, ostracized, given the occasional compulsory haircut, etc.

This tended to make high-school years a lonely and fearful time, often resulting in a lifelong trauma that went a long way toward ensuring an early death for the victims, as so many of my dead fag (not gay, fag) friends could attest if the dead could speak. But, true, Ms. Parker, they were never called “gay.”

Talk about a distinction without a difference!

Thank the Lord for the Democrats’ and President Obama’s moral leadership here. Maybe this will result in a lot fewer prematurely dead “gays” (or should I have said “fags”?).

— Lee Cronbach, Mountlake Terrace

Pranks aren’t relevant

First, let me state that I am a Democrat, and this fall I will be voting to re-elect President Obama. Having said that, I feel compelled to respond to the article on the “Close Up” page of Friday’s edition of The Times. [“Classmates recall Romney’s pranks — and darker incidents,” News, May 11.]

I feel it is absolutely silly and ridiculous that Mitt Romney is being scrutinized by the media, and is having to apologize publicly, for a few stupid pranks he carried out in high school nearly 50 years ago.

While the pranks that were described were definitely mean-spirited, the fact is that almost all of us did brainless things at that age that we later regretted. This is a normal part of growing up.

I certainly did some stupid and mean things as a teenager, and there are a few people out there whom I would apologize to privately if I ever see them again. But this has little or no relevance to the person I am now, and the pranks that Romney did as a kid have no relevance to his ability to lead us now.

Let us judge our candidates based on what they stand for, and their leadership skills, and not their misbehavior in school decades ago.

— Jason T. Judd, Lake Stevens

With just days to go before Tuesdayas Michigan primary, the GOPas two leading candidates, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum today appealed for support from Tea Party devotees and further attempted to burnish their conservative credentials. At an event in the working-class Detroit suburb of St. Clair Shores, Santorum mocked the former Massachusetts governor for questioning his conservative record. aItas laughable for Mr. Romney to suggest that I am not conservative,a he said, and referred to his main rival for the Republican presidential nomination as aa liberal governor of Massachusetts.a

Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ:

The Catholic Church’s U.S. hierarchy warned Tuesday that without quick action by Congress, it will sue the Obama administration for mandating that insurance plans provide birth control to women without a co-pay.

“[F]orcing individual and institutional stakeholders to sponsor and subsidize an otherwise widely available product over their religious and moral objections serves no legitimate, let alone compelling, government interest,” lawyers for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote in a letter to federal regulators.

Talk about sore losers. The bishops had their chance to weigh in on the Obama administration’s new policy to require health insurers to cover birth control without co-pays. The Obama administration generously carved out a boatload of exemptions for them to address their “concerns.” The bishops even got their puppets in Congress to introduce bills on their behalfawhich the American people overwhelmingly opposed. They even got themselves invited to the boys-only congressional hearing on birth controlabecause who understands birth control better than a bunch of supposedly celibate men?

At the end of the day, though, they lost. They made their case that basic health care for women violates their “religious liberty” and makes Jesus sadaand they lost. They launched a charm offensive to “set the record straight,” arguing that the Catholic Church totally loves women’s health care and has been “the most effective private provider of such care anywhere around,” and people better stop saying mean stuff about them or they won’t be able “to live out the imperatives of our faith to serve, teach, heal, feed, and care for others.” And no one bought it.

You’d think, after such a resounding “fuck off” from the American public, the bishops might leave women’s health care alone and go back to focusing on those important things they claim to care about. But when the Administrative Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), led by Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, archbishop of New York and the president of the bishops’ conference, met to decide whether to accept defeat or keep whining, they of course decided to keep whining, even as they concluded:

Prayer is the ultimate source of our strengthafor without God, we can do nothing; but with God, all things are possible.

Well, apparently their prayers didn’t work, so they’ve decided to scrap the God plan in favor of litigation:

“We believe that this mandate is unjust and unlawful a it is bad health policy, and because it entails an element of government coercion against conscience, it creates a religious freedom problem,” wrote Anthony Picarello, USCCB associate general secretary and general counsel, and Michael Moses, associate general counsel. “These moral and legal problems are compounded by an extremely narrow exemption that intrusively and unlawfully carves up the religious community into those that are deemed ‘religious enough’ for an exemption, and those that are not.”

That would be the same Anthony Picarello who introduced the world to the laughable Taco Bell theoryathat the boatload of exemptions to this mandate do not cover someone who opens a Taco Bell and thinks his employees should not be allowed to use birth control because of Jesus ‘n stuff. Yeah, he’s a real legal eagle, that one.

Given that one federal court has already ruled against the bishops’ absurd argument that their definition of religious liberty trumps all else, any future lawsuits are most likely destined for the same fate. But since stopping women from having access to affordable health care has now become the Most Importantest Issue Evah!, little thingsalike being completely wrongaprobably won’t stop the bishops from continuing to stamp their feet like petulant two-year-olds who don’t want to take a nap.

Because that is totally what Jesus would do.

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