The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

Remember when Donald Trump senior advisor Kellyanne Conway referenced a Bowling Green massacre which never actually happened? Well, Public Policy Polling (PPP) decided to have a little fun with that slip up, and in a recent poll asked the question, "Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: 'The Bowling Green massacre shows why we need Donald Trump's executive order on immigration?'" Overall, just 23% of polltakers said yes, while 57% responded with no, and an additional 20% weren't sure. Among Trump voters, however, a majority 51% answered in the affirmative. That's right, according to this poll, more than half of Trump voters believe that a fictional attack was reason enough to place a travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries. Due to this, expect to see the following poll results among Trump voters in the future: - 53% believe the Wrigley Field Whack Off resulted in many people going blind - 58% believe the Great Wall of Jina is l...

It's hard not to love hoaxes spread on Facebook, isn't it? The latest one making the rounds says this: "Mark Zuckerberg is going to give away 4.5 million shares of his Facebook stock tonight at midnight; 10% to people like you and me! All you have to do is copy and paste this to your page and post. Facebook is doing this to show what a powerful tool of connection it is !!! Can't wait to see who wins !!! This is not a hoax !!! It's on Good Morning America!!!" Yes, it's just THAT easy!!! Sorry, I felt the need to follow the three exclamation point trend for a moment. I'll stop now. But seriously, while we'd all love for millions of dollars to fall out of the sky onto our laps (yes, even through the sturdy roofs of our homes), unless we get incredibly lucky with a lottery ticket, there's less chance of that happening than a sloth beating Usain Bolt in the 200 metre at the Olympics. Like most such Facebook posts, this one has been debunked more...

Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg wrote an article this morning on which I felt the need to comment, published by the Los Angeles Times  and entitled, "Was Robert Lewis Dear inspired by the Planned Parenthood videos? So what if he was?" Yes, that's the actual title. It only gets better. Goldberg's article starts with this: "'No more baby parts.' As of this writing, that statement by Robert Lewis Dear is the only evidence that the 'Planned Parenthood shooter' in Colorado Springs, Colo., was motivated by anti-abortion rhetoric. Dear's comment came amid a rambling interview, and law enforcement officials have not said what his motivations were." Well, that's more evidence than conservatives have of the controversial Planned Parenthood videos proving the family planning organization sells baby's parts, of climate change being a hoax, or of gun regulation having no impact on gun violence. If the shooter said "No more...

It amazes me how gullible people can be. Just last night, the following status was ubiquitous across my Facebook news feed (and many others' it seems): "Now it's official! It has been published in the media. Facebook has just released the entry price: $5.99 to keep the subscription of your status to be set to 'private.' If you paste this message on your page, it will be offered free (paste not share) if not tomorrow, all your posts can become public. Even the messages that have been deleted or the photos not allowed. After all, it does not cost anything for a simple copy and paste." This same claim was debunked by Snopes.com in 2009, again in 2012, and yet again here in 2015. It was a hoax 6 years ago, 3 years ago, and yesterday, so fellow Facebookers, please don't believe everything you read, stop believing this recycled hoax, and pass this information onto your Facebook friends so they stop believing in and posting it as well. http://www.cnn.com/20...

Watching both Republican debates yesterday, in addition to the first two 5.5 weeks ago, I'm starting to wonder if the party lives in an alternate reality. Once in a while, a candidate would say something which made logical sense, but 9 times out of 10, that simply wasn't the case. Here are just a few examples of what I'm talking about: - Many of the candidates, Jeb Bush in particular, laid claim that we're more at risk today than we were under President George W. Bush and that we're worse off economically than we were under Dubya. They contended that President Obama was the reason for this, and in order to create more jobs, we needed to go back to the ways of W. I'm sorry, but under whose watch did 9/11 occur? It wasn't Obama, who entered the Oval Office almost 7.5 years later. It was George W. Bush. Not only that, but under whose watch did the Great Recession start? Once again, it wasn't President Obama; it was George W. Bush. In this country's 8 ...

It really amazes me how little conservative Republicans seemed to have learned over the course of the past 6.5 years with President Obama in office. Without seeing poll results to illustrate this, I sometimes give them the benefit of the doubt, as I think to myself, "There's no way they still believe those conspiracy theories from 6.5 years ago!" Well, according to the latest Public Policy Polling poll results, I shouldn't have assumed as much. Here are the craziest results from the poll: - Just 29% of Republicans believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, while 44% do not (26% aren't sure) - Only 14% of Republicans believe President Obama to be a Christian, while 54% believe him to be Muslim (32% aren't sure) - 51% of GOPers said they would support altering the Constitution so that children of undocumented immigrants are not automatically citizens of this country, 31% oppose the measure (18% aren't sure) - 47% of Republicans either suppor...

I both love and loathe debating politics with people whom don't know what they're talking about. I love it, because there are occasions when I enjoy schooling people with research/facts and logic, in hopes that it'll prompt them to think more critically and research more thoroughly on a regular basis, and also because I am sometimes humored by their elementary responses. I loathe it because after a while, it can get mighty frustrating trying to argue numbers and logic with bumper sticker slogans and talking points, and also because too many facepalms within a short duration of time can lead to quite the headache. There comes a point in every such debate when a person (or persons) needs to accept defeat and walk away. However, it seems that sometimes, regardless of how badly a person got walloped, he/she just won't admit to being wrong, defeated, and walk away with a shred of class and dignity still left in tact. I've run into just this scenario over the past wee...

Have a crazy uncle who seems to constantly send you political chain e-mails, mainly revolving around President Obama, which can be debunked within 30 seconds via Snopes.com? I know some people like that. I'm THAT guy who takes those 30 seconds to search Snopes.com and provide the link to the sender to illustrate that the claim or story is false. This happened just yesterday when an old very conservative friend of mine shared the following story on Facebook: "CLASSROOM SOCIALISM Is this man truly a genius? An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said, 'Okay, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan'. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fai...