NBC sports show on legal elephant hunt outrages Twitter

http://twitter.com/#!/CNAMOS/status/383090624179613696

The latest social media outrage surrounds a controversial episode of NBC’s sports show “Under Wild Skies,” in which NRA lobbyist Tony Makris shoots an elephant in Botswana, and afterwards drinks a glass of champagne to celebrate.

Huffpost at least was honest enough to report on the legality of the hunt, and how it actually helps fund conservation:

Controlled big game hunting still goes on in Africa and many reserves are set up by governments, who use money paid by rich safari hunters to fund broader conservation efforts. Elephant numbers in Botswana, however, have declined so greatly that a ban on hunting has been legislated. That ban won’t come into force until next year.

But other media outlets spewed only outrage and few facts under headlines like, “NRA Lobbyist Shoots an Elephant in the Face Then Drinks Champagne to Celebrate His Kill.”

http://twitter.com/#!/BauervanStraten/status/383022735292526593 http://twitter.com/#!/phubar/status/383003010789416961 http://twitter.com/#!/MissAbsinthe/status/383011611453046784 http://twitter.com/#!/bunster10/status/383001182869803009 http://twitter.com/#!/NakedAxiom/status/382971860142391296 http://twitter.com/#!/MelissaEGilbert/status/383031845065326592 http://twitter.com/#!/MCL1VE/status/382850221304057856 http://twitter.com/#!/Oshianna2U/status/383005793550749697

Really? People in all countries other than the U.S. oppose Big Game hunting? That guy needs to stop watching MSNBC and get out more.

Then there’s this charming woman, whose reaction to the show was to hope that Africans starve:

http://twitter.com/#!/sandrabooker/status/382921065632391168

At the time this post was published, a petition being circulated had gathered only 2,141 signatures to cancel the show.

Read more: http://twitchy.com/2013/09/26/nbc-sports-show-on-legal-elephant-hunt-outrages-twitter/

WaPo: Hey, isn’t it time we linked Romney to an 1857 Mormon militia massacre?

http://twitter.com/#!/SonnyBunch/status/204545549972676608

Mitt Romney didn’t just perform an unauthorized haircut 40 years ago. He’s also a member of the religion responsible for the “first 9/11.” (Cue the scary attack ad music.)

On Sept. 11, 1857, a wagon train from this part of Arkansas met with a gruesome fate in Utah, where most of the travelers were slaughtered by a Mormon militia in an episode known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Hundreds of the victims’ descendants still populate these hills and commemorate the killings, which they have come to call “the first 9/11.”

Thanks, WashPost, for a half-page A6 article about a Mormon militia massacre from 1857 with "Romney's faith" in the headline.

— jimgeraghty (@jimgeraghty) May 21, 2012

The "objective" @WashingtonPost is so zealous to support Obama, that they're attacking Romney over the Mormon Militia from *150 years ago*

— Ed Shahzade (@Ed) May 21, 2012

Yes, more than 150 years later, the Washington Post reports on this tragedy in an article titled “Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith tangles with a quirk of Arkansas history.

There aren’t many places in America more likely to be suspicious of Mormonism — and potentially more problematic for Mitt Romney, who is seeking to become the country’s first Mormon president. Not only do many here retain a personal antipathy toward the religion and its followers, but they also tend to be Christian evangelicals, many of whom view Mormonism as a cult.

You know who likes to spread the idea that Mormonism is a cult deserving of “antipathy”? Obama donor Bill Maher.

Has writer Sandhya Somashekhar reported on Maher’s anti-Mormon bigotry? Or is she too busy writing disdainfully about the backwards rubes in this community “where people teach their children to hunt raccoons” and are “”related to their neighbors”?

Funny, she didn’t include this tidbit:

Study: Conservatives who were told about Romney's Mormon faith were much more likely to support the candidate http://t.co/Fnj9iKhw

— Anthony De Rosa (@AntDeRosa) May 21, 2012

And as it turns out, Somashekhar is ultimately forced to admit that people in the region probably won’t base their votes on Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith.

None of that history, though, including the massacre, may make much of a difference at the polls.

Then why bring it up at all? Just asking questions again, WaPo?

https://twitter.com/#!/MrPartisan/status/204559777957818369

Just so we’re clear, the media position is that Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s anti-American views are off-limits. But the 1857 slaughter of 120 people—authorized by a renegade militia, not Mormon leaders—is part of the vetting process?

The @washingtonpost now going back to 1857 to smear Romney. Well played, #LapDogMedia. http://t.co/ineV1xgD

— Slublog (@Slublog) May 21, 2012

Obama’s media lapdogs have been pushing to make attacks on Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith fair game. Apparently, that push is no longer necessary. Now, anything goes in the quest to tarnish Obama’s opponent, including the not-so-subtle bigotry of dredging up this horrible incident that occurred 90 years before Romney was born.

If an author wrote a fictional account of a biased news organization and based it on the disgraceful Washington Post, reviewers would call the plot implausible. The book would be panned as another example of unfounded right-wing hysteria about the corrupt media.

But there’s no need for such a book. That story plays out every day in the pages of the Washington Post.

Lead story in every issue of the @WashingtonPost through Nov. 6 will be either "OMG! Mitt's Mormon!" or "OMG! Romney's Rich!"

— jon gabriel (@exjon) May 21, 2012

Read more: http://twitchy.com/2012/05/21/wapo-hey-isnt-it-time-we-linked-romney-to-an-1857-mormon-militia-massacre/

Ex-‘Ghost Hunter’ Kris Williams grills NH GOP gov candidate on O-care, voter ID

http://twitter.com/#!/AndrewHemingway/status/487272737816453120

Former “Ghost Hunters” and “Ghost Hunters International” investigator Kris Williams asks; New Hampshire gubernatorial candidate Andrew Hemingway answers:

http://twitter.com/#!/AndrewHemingway/status/487273430799360001 http://twitter.com/#!/KrisWilliams81/status/487274470558543873 http://twitter.com/#!/AndrewHemingway/status/487275018607673344 http://twitter.com/#!/AndrewHemingway/status/487275585442689024 http://twitter.com/#!/AndrewHemingway/status/487275800287539201 http://twitter.com/#!/AndrewHemingway/status/487276230199488512 http://twitter.com/#!/AndrewHemingway/status/487277446853832704 http://twitter.com/#!/AndrewHemingway/status/487278455105810433 http://twitter.com/#!/KrisWilliams81/status/487278561120636928 http://twitter.com/#!/AndrewHemingway/status/487279802345615360

Related:

Former ‘Ghost Hunter’ Kris Williams sees VA scandal as peek at future of Obamacare

Read more: http://twitchy.com/2014/07/12/ex-ghost-hunter-kris-williams-grills-nh-gop-gubernatorial-candidate-on-obamacare-voter-id/

Search continues for missing IAF plane AN-32 – Times of India

The search operation was going on in full swing on Saturday for the AN-32 aircraft that has been missing over the Bay of Bengal with 29 on board since Friday. However, there were no sightings of any aircraft debris in the Bay of Bengal by the search team so far.

Read more: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Search-continues-for-missing-IAF-plane-AN-32/articleshow/53351545.cms

Stupidly? NASA faces wrongful termination lawsuit from intelligent design believer

http://twitter.com/#!/news_fst/status/179221313108455425

Did this somehow affect his work performance? CBC News:

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has landed robotic explorers on the surface of Mars, sent probes to outer planets and operates a worldwide network of antennas that communicates with interplanetary spacecraft.

Its latest mission is defending itself in a workplace lawsuit filed by a former computer specialist who claims he was demoted — and then let go — for promoting his views on intelligent design, the belief that a higher power must have had a hand in creation because life is too complex to have developed through evolution alone.

David Coppedge, who worked as a “team lead” on the Cassini mission exploring Saturn and its many moons, alleges that he was discriminated against because he engaged his co-workers in conversations about intelligent design and handed out DVDs on the idea while at work. Coppedge lost his team lead title in 2009 and was let go last year after 15 years on the mission.

Opening statements are expected to begin Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court after two years of legal wrangling in a case that has generated interest among supporters of intelligent design. The Alliance Defence Fund, a Christian civil rights group, and the Discovery Institute, a proponent of intelligent design, are both supporting Coppedge’s case.

“It’s part of a pattern. There is basically a war on anyone who dissents from Darwin and we’ve seen that for several years,” said John West, associate director of the Centre for Science and Culture at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute. “This is free speech, freedom of conscience 101.”

The National Centre for Science Education, which rejects intelligent design as thinly veiled creationism, is also watching the case and has posted all the legal filings on its website.

Litmus testing must be confined to Christian god-botherers and conservatives. Oddly, one of NASA’s new missions is to boost the self-image of Muslims by helping them go to space. I have the feeling a few of them might reject Darwinian evolution. Of course, James Hansen’s pseudo-scientific Gaiaism is beyond reproach.

Even Darwin admitted it was impossible not to consider some form of hidden teleology when reflecting on how the human eye might have evolved, but then again, he was too scientific to have committed the sort of epistemological closure some of his followers have.

Read more: http://twitchy.com/2012/03/12/stupidly-nasa-faces-unfair-termination-lawsuit-from-intelligent-design-believer/