Sully Weighs In

Andrew Sullivan has weighed in on the Phil Robertson flap with his usual fantastic insight. This is a fascinating glimpse into the fundamentalist mind.

You’ll notice that, for the fundamentalist, all sin – when it comes down to it - starts with sex. This sexual obsession, as the Pope has rightly diagnosed it, is a mark of neurotic fundamentalism in Islam and Judaism as well as Christianity. And if all sin is rooted in sex, then the homosexual becomes the most depraved and evil individual in the cosmos. So you get this classic statement about sin: “Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there.”

The reason for this has to do with their own hangups about sex. They are actually the ones obsessed with it, not the ones with which they act as God's personal judges. It makes sense when you think about it because without the threat of hellfire they would lose control of themselves and do God knows what.

This emphasis is absolutely not orthodox Christianity. There is nothing primary about sexual sin as such in Christian doctrine. It sure can be powerfully sinful – but it’s not where sin starts. And to posit gay people as the true source of all moral corruption is to use eliminationist rhetoric and demonizing logic to soften up a small minority of people for exclusion, marginalization and, at some point, violence. 

Indeed. To gauge whether or not this is a valid point, simply read the Bible. Compare what sort of emphasis is given to sex as opposed to helping out your fellow man or loving one another despite human failings. 

He simply assumes that all men must be heterosexual, and that making themselves have sex with another man must be so horrifying it mystifies him. It isn’t logical if it were a choice for a straight guy. But it isn’t. All we’re seeing here is the effect of cultural isolation. The only thing I find objectionable about it – and it is objectionable – is the reduction of gay people and our relationships to sex acts. Mr Robertson would not be happy – indeed, rightly be extremely offended – if I reduced his entire family life and marriage to sex with a vagina.

For the fundamentalist, being gay is all about the sex because that's what they are obsessed with...likely because they themselves desire it so much in some way or another. I wonder how many of them have ever thought about the gay people who live and love together in many other ways besides sex. They probably aren't friends with any gay people so, as is usually the case, they are simply ignorant.

The GOP Conundrum

This recent exchange illustrates the conundrum the GOP faces next year in the elections.

Albright doesn’t want the Affordable Care Act repealed, which Stutzman and the Republican-controlled House have voted to do numerous times. Albright told his congressman that his monthly payment for family health coverage will drop from $3,800 to $1,700 by enrolling in a plan offered through the much-maligned law. 

Albright said most of his dozen employees also are enrolling in Affordable Care Act plans and will have coverage for the first time. “If the Republican Party thinks they’re going to kill Obamacare, you guys need to realize that those nine people that I add on, are they going to vote Republican ever again if you take their health care from them?” 

Stutzman responded: “No, probably not.”

If I were in charge of strategy for the GOP in the 2014 elections, I would find out how many voters in those key swing districts and states are signing up for health care for the first time and compare that number to how many voters are being "screwed over by Obamacare." 

Wow!

US Economy Expands at 4.1 Percent Rate

So much for the apocalypse. How much longer will the bubble hold?

Josh and Jake: The Gun Kids

I had two students walk up to me towards the end of class the other day and ask me a question.

"How do you think we should solve the problem of gun violence in this country?"

As I always do with questions like this I asked them what they would do, politely informing them that my opinion doesn't really matter. They are the ones who will be leading on the issues of the day anyway, right?

The first student, Josh, said that he would ban all guns. The second student, Jake, took issue with this and explained that his family were avid hunters and gun collectors. He spent the next few minutes convincing Josh that all guns should not be banned. I pointed Josh to Scalia's opinion in Heller and noted that banning guns in common use violates the 2nd Amendment.

Then Josh asked Jake a question.

"Shouldn't there be restrictions on who owns a gun, though?"

Jake responded in the affirmative and then went on to describe how he and his family favor universal background checks. He also demonstrated some very deep knowledge of how irresponsible people can be with guns, backing up his assertions with statistics. I was honestly quite astounded because he seemed to know more about accidental gun deaths than I did. When I noted this, he explained that his dad was an avid gun enthusiast and was pretty frustrated with how people like him were portrayed in the media. He also told me that he and his dad have had extensive discussions about why it's always young men that engage in these shooting sprees, citing a need to improve mental health in this country. Jake's dad, like any good parent, worries that his son will be alright.

So, perhaps I have been wrong in thinking that the gun community is made up of people who think like my regular commenters. In fact, it's become obvious to me, after extensive research over the last year and my own personal experiences, that the gun blogger mentality is aging and actually very far in the minority. Honestly, I don't know what I was worried about. I watched as these two young men continued their conversation in front of me and as they left when the bell rang, realizing that the assertions of gun bloggers don't really matter that much in the grand scheme of things and it won't be long now before this younger generation of more sensible people takes over. It might not even take an incident at a gun show for things to change because in 20 years or so, many of the gun bloggers will be gone and we won't have to hear anymore fantasy land nonsense about good guys with guns saving the day.

The youth of today know that John McLane and Jack Bauer aren't real.

How Did We Miss This Part?

More on the Phil Robertson flap...

In addition to his comments about homosexuality, Robertson also spoke about race and growing up in Louisiana before the civil rights era. "I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once," he told GQ. "Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I'm with the blacks, because we're white trash. We're going across the field. ... They're singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, 'I tell you what: These doggone white people' -- not a word! "Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues," GQ quoted Robertson as saying.

Ah, antebellum myths..

The Death Knell for Electronic Voting Machines?

Though it's been more than a month since the 2103 election, the attorney general race in Virginia has only now been decided. The Republican, Mark Obenshain, has conceded to the Democrat, Mark Herring, after a recount that gave Herring a 907 vote margin.

The reason? Democratic areas use paper ballots, which provide a paper trail. Herring received more than 600 additional votes during the recount, mostly due to undervotes that the scanners did not detect originally. These undervotes usually occur when the voter doesn't fill in the oval properly, often by using an X or check mark instead of filling in the oval, circling the candidate's name, or when the ballot is wrinkled, dirty or smudged. Voter intent in these cases is easily discerned by a human reader when the machine isn't programmed to recognize non-standard marks.

Republican areas in Virginia tend to use electronic voting machines, which provide no paper trail at all. That means that there's nothing to recount, and Obenshain got almost no additional votes during the recount. Electronic ballots simply cannot be verified.

Electronic voting was heavily pushed by Republicans in the early 2000s, frequently at the behest of companies that sell electronic voting machines. It is entirely possible that George Bush won the 2004 election due to irregularities in the electronic voting machines in Ohio.

As a programmer I've always been opposed to electronic voting: it's impossible to verify a voter's intent after the ballot has been cast. User interfaces can be confusing, especially for elderly and low-vision voters. Users frequently claim that the wrong candidate was selected (still happening in 2008 and even in Virginia in 2013). Whether this is user or system error doesn't really matter. Sometimes users are unable to change their vote.

It's impossible to detect fraud with proprietary electronic systems since there is no physical paper trail. Some systems provide a "feel good" paper record to the voter: this has nothing to do with what actually gets counted. Finally, just because a user makes a selection on a screen or gets a printed slip of paper doesn't mean that selection was recorded in the computer's memory: the user cannot verify their selection was registered properly.

Paper ballots have their problems, but voters can just look at their ballot and see that their vote was registered as intended. Ultimately, humans will be able to perform a manual recount, even if the optical scanners are buggy or intentionally producing fraudulent totals.

The interesting thing about this is that Mark Obenshain knew electronic voting machines were a problem, as stated on his website:

In 2000, a member of my own party, President George W. Bush was elected by a razor-thin margin in Florida, an election ultimately confirmed by multiple recounts but certified by the Supreme Court amidst significant controversy. Subsequent elections have been similarly contentious, with partisans on both sides expressing concern about the integrity of our election process, raising concerns about registration fraud, voter fraud, and reliance on electronic voting machines that lack a voter-verified paper trail [emphasis added].

and

Here in Virginia, we’ve taken voter confidence seriously. We’re phasing out electronic balloting in favor of voting methods that include a paper trail, we’ve worked to create greater uniformity in election deadlines and to streamline overseas absentee balloting, and now we’re addressing legitimate concerns about the lack of safeguards at the polls themselves.

Since the early 2000s Republicans have been making it more difficult for minority, student and elderly citizens to register to vote through onerous ID requirements, all in the name of reducing "fraud." At the same time, they've been spending hundreds of millions of dollars on overpriced electronic voting systems that were technologically obsolete even before they were installed. Worse, these proprietary systems make it possible to commit completely undetectable fraud on a massive scale.

Maybe now that these electronic chickens are coming home to roost they'll see the error of their ways.

Once Again, The Adolescents

Dean Obeidallah put up a great piece after I had put up my take on the Phil Robertson flap. Much better points than I made...

Attention conservatives: you have the right to hate any group you want. Blacks, gays, Muslims, Jews, other sects of Christians, whoever you like. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court has noted numerous times that the First Amendment guarantees “freedom of thought” in addition to freedoms such as religion and expression. Consequently, you can think as many hateful thoughts as you choose. 

But here’s the thing: if you voice those hateful views publicly, you will be held accountable. That’s called personal responsibility. You would think people on the right would be familiar with that concept since they idolize Ronald Reagan, who famously said, “It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”

And words as well. But adolescents don't get this reality.

More good things...

The First Amendment does not provide you immunity. It simply means that the government can’t prevent you from expressing yourself. But once you say something, you will be called to answer for it. This is the same reason Alec Baldwin was fired last month from his MSNBC show for making gay slurs. (Despite claims from the right, Alec Baldwin was indeed criticized publicly by GLADD for his comments.) And it’s the same reason Martin Bashir was pushed out at MSNBC for his horrible comments about Sarah Palin.

Interesting to read of Palin's reaction...

Never one to miss a chance for publicity, Sarah Palin posted on Facebook: “Free speech is an endangered species. Those ‘intolerants’ hatin’ and taking on the Duck Dynasty patriarch for voicing his personal opinion are taking on all of us.” (Only Palin could claim that a person who has just voiced intolerant comments like Robertson is being attacked by “intolerants.”) Of course, when Martin Bashir made despicable comments about Palin, she didn’t defend him by saying, “Free speech is an endangered species.” Nope, instead she slammed Bashir’s comments as being “vile” and “evil.” And officials at Palin’s political action committee demanded that MSNBC punish Bashir.

Again, adolescent...will they ever grow up?

I would like an answer to Obeidallah's question about the Right and their obsession with other people's anuses. Anyone?

Sowell A Go Go

If you are having a discussion with a conservative these days (at least the ones that think they are intelligent), it won't be too long before the name of Thomas Sowell comes up. I've never done a post about Sowell so this is way past due. He certainly has the credentials of a brilliant man and is highly regarded in the community of higher education but there are key problems with his core philosophy which I will illustrate below.

Dr. Sowell is an American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author. Currently he is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution out at Stanford University. His book, A Conflict of Visions, is the work most frequently noted by conservatives as to why there is so much conflict between liberals and conservatives. To hear them proselytize about it, one would think it has as much regard as The Bible or Atlas Shrugged. Sowell's text defines two competing visions of political thought. They are summed up nicely in this table. 

There is also this excellent summation.

The Unconstrained Vision 

Sowell argues that the unconstrained vision relies heavily on the belief that human nature is essentially good. Those with an unconstrained vision distrust decentralized processes and are impatient with large institutions and systemic processes that constrain human action. They believe there is an ideal solution to every problem, and that compromise is never acceptable. Collateral damage is merely the price of moving forward on the road to perfection. Sowell often refers to them as "the self anointed." Ultimately they believe that man is morally perfectible. Because of this, they believe that there exist some people who are further along the path of moral development, have overcome self-interest and are immune to the influence of power and therefore can act as surrogate decision-makers for the rest of society. 

The Constrained Vision 

Sowell argues that the constrained vision relies heavily on belief that human nature is essentially unchanging and that man is naturally inherently self-interested, regardless of the best intentions. Those with a constrained vision prefer the systematic processes of the rule of law and experience of tradition. Compromise is essential because there are no ideal solutions, only trade-offs. Those with a constrained vision favor solid empirical evidence and time-tested structures and processes over intervention and personal experience. Ultimately, the constrained vision demands checks and balances and refuses to accept that all people could put aside their innate self-interest.

Conservatives continually assert that they are in the constrained vision column whereas liberals are in the unconstrained vision camp. Sowell himself has always been quick to point out that labels should not be applied or equated to his vision. Yet, I have to wonder...why would he set up such a dichotomy in the first place if that was not his intent? Couldn't he have saved a lot of time by simple saying "Liberals are stupidly naive and conservatives are intelligently grounded in reality?"

Our nation unfortunately has to live with Sowell's sort of hubris and bloviation every day (at least for the next seven years or so:)). Being the author of this preposterous ideology, Sowell is, of course, the most responsible. I say preposterous because, as a black man in the United States, it was the unconstrained vision that allowed him to become who he is today. Someone with Sowell's constrained vision would have ignored the injustices of civil rights and likely even slavery, dismissing them as the flawed nature of man and, oh well, there's nothing to be done about it. The constrained vision sees itself as grounded in reality yet how can equality be achieved without freedom of choice?

The biggest flaw, however, in Sowell's philosophy is that he rejects John Locke (in so many ways the original father of our country) stating that humans are naturally prone to error, are selfish and will never change. Locke believed (as do I), that people are born with the inherent right of freedom, liberty and property. From that point, the tabla rasa is filled in with an individual's unique nature and the environment in which they are socialized (both nature and nurture). Not every person is exactly the same, as Sowell posits.

The correlary between conservatives and the constrained vision is really a giant pile of crap. Their vision is so ridiculously unconstrained it's laughable. They have a utopian fantasy of the free market that solves all problems and in which people magically behave themselves without regulation. Further, they don't rely on empirical evidence on the major issues of the day. If they did, they would not have built The Church of the Climate Skeptic or be ass hats about gun violence. They are extremely loathe to compromise as is evidenced by the latest budget negotiations. Ironically and in many ways, they are the ones who are naive about human nature, thinking that the less laws there are, the better!

In contrast, I look at the unconstrained vision and don't really see much of myself at all and, again, see conservatives. Human nature is certainly malleable (we are in a constant state of evolution, after all) but not perfectible. And who gets to define who is the "strongest" and "most capable?" And what is the metric for this? One look at our leaders in Washington will illustrate that many are not the strongest or most capable. That could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you want to look at it. There is plenty of human action that is motivated by selflessness and sincerity. I am assured by many of my conservative colleagues that this is at the core of their ideology. This is especially true of Christians, right?

Not every bad thing has an explanation (poverty, war, crime) and sometimes it is best to simply try and manage the complexities. Of course, this doesn't mean that all bad things are a giant question mark (again...why have laws?...conservatives seems to always ask these days). I don't see market economies catering to a particular interest and don't think that most of them should be tailored to serve the public interest. Some of them, like health care for example, need to have more government regulation due to the inefficiencies that arise based on fundamental economics. The free market does work out in markets where there is more elasticity and many buyers and sellers.

In looking at these competing visions, one has to wonder if Sowell really thinks these things or if he is simply trying to make money in the willfully ignorant market of true believers. I think conservatives like to use him to make themselves seem smarter than they actually are. Perhaps they should take an honest look at the competing visions and reflect a little while on where they truly fall in terms of the characteristics. Then we can leave Thomas Sowell behind and engage instead in less restrictive thinking.

Grounded Duck

I knew it wouldn't be long before one of the stars of A&E's Duck Dynasty spouted off some redneck bullshit about the gays. One of the show's stars, Phil Robertson, apparently didn't get the memo that we live in a tolerant society now and recognize that the Bible is wrong about some things, including homosexuality.

In an interview with GQ, Robertson said. "It seems like, to me, a vagina - as a man - would be more desirable than a man's anus. That's just me. I'm just thinking: There's more there! She's got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I'm saying? But hey, sin: It's not logical, my man. It's just not logical." Asked what, in his mind, is sinful, Robertson replied: "Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men."

Right, because having sex with an animal is the same as two consenting adults...sheesh. A&E has suspended Robertson indefinitely as a result of these comments.

As expected, the right wing media industrial complex has rushed to his defense, citing "freedom of speech." The conundrum for them, however, is that corporations (see: Worship Immediately, no assembly required) are private entities and are free to hire and fire people based on their views. Now, if they suspended Robertson because he was white or heterosexual, then they might have cause for complaint. Or if they refused to provide him with service because he was a man, then we'd definitely have a civil rights violation on our hands. As it stands now, thought, the cries of freedom being taken away are full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I wonder if Robertson believes that women should be subservient to men as this directive is mentioned far more often than homsexuality...

What Do Women Want?

According to this book, it's SEX. And they are very hungry for it!! In what would make a great stocking stuffer this year, author Daniel Bergner writes about how our view of women is all backwards.

Bergner, and the leading sex researchers he interviews, argue that women’s sexuality is not the rational, civilized and balancing force it’s so often made out to be — that it is base, animalistic and ravenous, everything we’ve told ourselves about male sexuality. As one researcher tells Bergner of all the restrictions put on female sexuality: “Those barriers are a testament to the power of the drive itself. It’s a pretty incredible testament. Because the drive must be so strong to override all of that.”

“Women’s desire — its inherent range and innate power — is an underestimated and constrained force, even in our times, when all can seem so sexually inundated, so far beyond restriction,” he writes. “Despite the notions our culture continues to imbue, this force is not, for the most part, sparked or sustained by emotional intimacy and safety.” In fact, he argues, “one of our most comforting assumptions, soothing perhaps above all to men but clung to by both sexes, that female eros is much better made for monogamy than the male libido, is scarcely more than a fairy tale.”

I agree and my first hand experience tells me that this is certainly the case. Our society needs to throw our preconceived and male centered views of sexuality out the window. 2000+ years is more than enough, thank you very much!

What? You mean there isn't a War on Christmas?!!?

Dammit....

Russia Applying the Lessons of Capitalism

A couple of weeks ago my wife noticed that a grocery store that sells organic food was selling orange juice for $5.99, while Cub (a store that usually has lower prices) was selling exactly the same thing for $7.99. I wondered if the dreaded orange juice price increase that has been predicted for the last year or so had kicked in.

But the other night she went to Cub and found that same orange juice "on sale" for $5.99, $2.00 off the "regular" price. So the price increase was only made so that they could have a sale. This is now standard practice for all retailers, especially around the holidays, when bargain-hungry shoppers snap up anything that promises big savings, even if those savings are total lies.

It has been more than 20 years since communism collapsed in the Soviet Union, and the unbreakable union -- союз нерушимый are literally the first two words of the Soviet-era anthem -- splintered into 15 different countries. The Russians have adopted capitalism with total abandon, and they've been spending billions of dollars on foreign real estate, primarily to convert their ill-gotten gains into tangible assets that the notoriously fickle Russian government can't touch. This has annoyed to no end people in places like New York, London and Paris, who hate how Russian billionaires have jacked up real estate prices while paying nothing in taxes.

Now there's some other real estate that the Russians want: Ukraine.

Ukraine has been undergoing massive protests while the country has been debating whether to join the European Union or side with Russia. The EU has made Ukrainian membership contingent on cleaning up their act: no more political prisoners. In particular, the EU demanded the release of Yulia Timoshenko, the former prime minister who was jailed on trumped-up charges of embezzlement in a natural gas deal made with Russian company Gazprom.

Russia has been jerking Ukraine around over natural gas prices for years, cutting them off completely in the middle of winter in 2006. But now Vladimir Putin, the former communist KGB official, has totally embraced the capitalist spirit: like American retailers on Black Friday, Putin is offering Ukraine a Christmas sale on natural gas, plus $15 billion worth of holiday cheer. All for the low, low price of renouncing their freedom and submitting to the Russian yoke once more.

Why does Russia want Ukraine? The country has some natural resources. Ukraine was called the "bread basket" of the Soviet Union. Some of it is pride: Russia has lost its empire, and the influence and economic power that goes with empires, and they want it back. They're setting up their own customs union, and they don't want to lose Ukraine to the EU.

Some of it is history: Kiev was the original capital of Kievan Rus', the original Slavic state founded by the Viking Rurik. Some of it is family: there are many ethnic Russians still living in Ukraine. About a sixth of Ukrainians are Russia, and another sixth are Ukrainians who speak Russian. This Washington Post article describes the ethnic split.

After independence, ethnic Russians lost their lock on political control of  Ukraine. Power has been shifting back and forth between ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians. That split between ethnic Ukrainians who wish to remain independent of Russian hegemony and ethnic or cultural Russians who want the security of big brother standing behind them is the basic source of the current fight.

Viktor Yushchenko: before and after poisoning

And ethnic Ukrainians have good reason to fear Russia: the Kremlin doesn't mind getting its hand dirty. Viktor Yushchenko, the leader of the Orange Revolution, was the victim of an apparent assassination attempt during an election in 2004. He was poisoned by dioxin that left him disfigured but alive. He managed to beat his Kremlin-backed opponent.

Ethnic Russian Ukrainians are making a deal with the devil: instead of opting for a free and fair country run by the rule of law, with equal protections for all, they're opting for an oligarchy backed by naked Russian power. Some day the Russians will be busy with their own problems, and ethnic Russian Ukrainians will find themselves outnumbered two-to-one by angry ethnic Ukrainians unfettered by the niceties of EU human rights policies.

I suppose Putin using capitalist tricks to ensnare Ukraine is better than a tank invasion or assassination. But I'm guessing this is just posturing during the delicate time before the Winter Olympics in Sochi. I'm afraid the former KGB man will revert to form once the Olympic torch has gone out.

Too Cool

I'm a big fan of old things...living history, if you will. So, when I saw the interior of this house for sale I was completely blown away. Talk about a time capsule!

I've always romanticized the 1940s all out of proportion but this is just too fucking cool...

How Does A Flipped Classroom Work?

Many teachers already do something quite similar to this in one way or another. I do it all the time and it works quite well.

An Excellent Summation

I can't think of a better summation of the gun community in everything they do.

A whole lot of money for an ideological fraud!

Cheer Up

Without the continued promises of looming apocalypse, the Right wouldn't have much to talk about these days. "Tough history coming" is what Kevin Baker calls it. A recent cartoon he posted illustrates this mentality perfectly. But reality says otherwise.

All in all, many economists now see economic growth climbing to a solid 3% next year, a significant improvement from the 2% average annual pace that the economy has been stuck on for the last 4 1/2 years. An acceleration to 3% would probably push up U.S. job growth to 250,000 a month on average, from a monthly average of 190,000 over the last 12 months, Kleinhenz said. At that pace, the nation would recover all the jobs lost in the recession by the end of 2014. And it would push down the jobless rate closer to the 5.5% to 6% range that some now see as the potential long-term unemployment rate. 

My home state is certainly feeling this reality as well.

With an improving job market and overall economy, families are once again splurging on big-ticket recreational items, spending $3,000 or more on snowmobiles and ATVs made just for kids. The trend is being thoroughly enjoyed in Minnesota, home to two of the nation’s largest recreational vehicle makers and some of the snowiest turf in the country.

One wonders how long this charade of impending doom will hold. Certainly, there will be an ample supply of frightened old baby boomers for the next couple of decades but how many of them will give into their irrational emotions and fear when the facts say otherwise?

So, given these economic indicators, this recent piece by Edward Carr is my message today to Kevin and the other members of the apocalyptic cult masquerading as conservatives: cheer up.

American fears about the future are also distorted. Nobody doubts the significance of China’s economic rise, but economic prosperity does not automatically translate into geopolitical power. If China wanted to challenge America, it would not only have to sustain its stellar growth for a long time but also to transform its capacity to project power abroad.

Similarly, although countries like India, Brazil and South Africa will want to get on in the world, they also have a stake in the system that America has created. It is unsafe to extrapolate trends into a distant future when America loses its supremacy, not least because rising prosperity will change those other countries beyond recognition. Moreover, until the others eventually catch up, America will remain the global superpower. Could it not turn that position to its advantage?

It is time to cheer up. The world America faces today may seem cussed and intractable, but the world America looked forward to shaping after the fall of the Soviet Union was never as pliant and welcoming as it imagined. And America’s strengths are as impressive as ever. On every measure of power it remains dominant. With a revived foreign-policy agenda, Mr Obama could begin to put the misadventure of Iraq behind him. With creative and energetic diplomacy, he has scope to get plenty done. With more effort to build coalitions and work with allies, American power can once again be decisive. But this can happen only if Americans rediscover the will to lead.

So, why don't people like Kevin have the will to lead anymore? I think the answer is the same response as to why they continually insists that we are heading towards doom.

Because they are afraid that the ideology they vilify is working.

A Tale of Two Governors

Now that the hysterical hyperventilation over the Affordable Care Act has passed, we are starting to hear about the more positive ways in which the law is being implemented. It's very interesting to note how two red states, Nevada and Kentucky, have chosen to tackle the rollout.

As noted in this piece, Governor Sandoval (R-Nevada), is all in.

Sandoval is the only Republican governor whose state is both running its own health insurance exchange this year and expanding its Medicaid program under the health law. He’s arguably doing more to put the Democrats’ signature law into place than any other Republican.

Why?

“I opposed the Affordable Care Act from its inception,” he wrote in an email. But he’s a former federal judge and in his view, once the Supreme Court upheld the legislation, “the Affordable Care Act became the law of the land.” 

Apparently, his constituents appreciate his adult behavior.

Even after sticking his neck out on Obamacare — which few others in his party would consider amid fear of a conservative backlash — Sandoval is overwhelmingly popular in Nevada. State lawmakers backed his Obamacare approach on a bipartisan basis, and he’s cruising toward reelection next year with no formidable opponent in sight. 

Huh. So, moderating and actually accomplishing the business of government works. So does "stamping Obamacare to his forehead." Whoda thunk it? Well, considering the ACA was a Republican idea in the first place...

Governor Steve Beshear, a Democrat in the (not much longer now) red state of Kentucky has also fully embraced the ACA.

The way Beshear tells it, “this” is enrolling 69,000 Kentuckians in newly available health coverage programs, a number that has grown steadily and that the Democrat expects to “surge” in the final weeks of the year. As the only governor of a Southern state who has both set up a state insurance exchange and green-lighted an expansion of the Medicaid program, Beshear represents a painfully rare bright spot in the landscape of Obamacare implementation. The state exchange, dubbed Kynect, has been a model of smooth enrollment compared to the federal government’s version, and has absorbed 550,000 web visitors and 180,000 phone inquiries so far. 

Hoo boy...so much for the boiling pit of sewage. Governor Beshear has even been calling out folks like Mitch McConnell on all the lying over the ACA.

“I have a U.S. senator who keeps saying Kentuckians don’t want this,” Beshear said. “Well, the facts don’t prove that out. There’s about 550,000 on our website right now who want it — and some 65,000 to 69,000 that have signed up. So Kentuckians do want it.” 

"I want to publicly invite our entire federal delegation to come back to Kentucky as [Democratic Rep.] John Yarmuth does all the time and come over to our center, our nerve center where we’re running this program and see for yourself what is going on,” said Beshear. “When you see that, I think you’ll quit saying this will not work and Kentuckians don’t want it.”

Governor Beshear also notes that the issue of the ACA is going to come back and haunt McConnell in his already tough reelection battle next year. I agree. In fact, I'm going to predict right now that McConnell loses that race because the far right in Kentucky is pissed off at him and won't turn out. Heck, he might not even make it out of the primary. Alison Lundergan Grimes is a very popular, moderate Democrat currently serving as Secretary of State for Kentucky. She will pull GOP voters to her side, given the Kentuckian embrace of the ACA.

Republican governors and Democrats in southern red states embracing the Affordable Care Act? All this bipartisanship makes me warm and fuzzy. I wonder how it makes the Tea Party feel these days...:)

I don't think the man on the right could ever be accepted as our savior by those who believe in Republican Jesus.

Good Words

“We have become used to the suffering of others. Has any one of us wept for these persons who were on the boat? For the young mothers carrying their babies? For these men who were looking for a means of supporting their families? We are a society which has forgotten how to weep, how to experience compassion… the church is with you in the search for a more dignified life for you and your families.” ~Pope Francis, taking up the plight of immigrants and the poor, July 2013

It's Cool Now

A year after the Sandy Hook massacre and we haven't progressed at all. In fact, we've gone backwards in some ways. School shootings happen about once a month now and I have to wonder just how much of this is the media's fault. Every time there is a shooting, it's instantaneous, wall to wall coverage as we saw yesterday with yet another shooting in Colorado. If there was less coverage, or none at all, would there be less school shootings?

Somewhere along the way in these last two decades, it became alright to walk into a school with a gun and start shooting. Heck, it's cool, right? Because it's on TV and everyone gets excited about it. For those mentally ill individuals, this is their chance to have people finally attention to them. And they think it's socially acceptable because of the regularity with which it happens. Worse, people seem to be OK with it and that is just terribly disturbing. The only good thing (if you can call it good) that has come out of Newtown is the gun community has shown what truly ugly people they are. Their response to this tragedy was so profoundly disgusting that, in many ways, they are going to deeply regret their words and actions. As I have stated previously, it's only a matter of time.

The Christian Science Monitor has a series of articles up that are very worthwhile reading. In addition to political analysis, they offer some great perspectives on where we are culturally that need attention. Here's an example...

• One in three people in the US knows someone who has been shot.

• On average, 32 Americans are murdered with guns every day, and 140 are treated for a gun assault in an emergency room. 

• Every day on average, 51 people kill themselves with a firearm, and 45 people are shot or killed in an accident with a gun. 

• The US firearm homicide rate is 20 times higher than the combined rates of 22 countries that are our peers in wealth and population. 

• Although guns can and have been used successfully in self-defense in the home, a gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used to injure or kill in a domestic homicide, suicide, or unintentional shooting than to be used in self-defense.

For our country as great as ours, this is simply piss poor. And it obviously goes way beyond guns. Why are we such violent culture? It's not simply one reason and I think once we get a handle on the complexities of this answer, we can define the various reasons and implement solutions.

I think we should start with why it's cool now to shoot up schools.

Who is John Galt?

Or, in this case, Jon Gault? 

Well, he is a man who is very grateful for the Affordable Care Act.

Some nights, when Jon Gault felt his worst, he wondered if he would live long enough to see his 17-year-old son go to college or to walk his daughter, now 8, down the aisle.

Although many have reported problems with the federal HealthCare.gov site, Gault says Washington’s site was surprisingly easy to navigate and he was quickly approved. The price came as a pleasant surprise also. Thanks to federal subsidies, Gault will not have to pay for his coverage.

“I went from being denied health insurance several years ago to actually having it now,” Gault says. 

“It’s kind of nice.”Many of his Republican friends have dismissed his newfound hope, and he has stopped trying to argue with them. They are not seeing the bigger picture, he says. It’s not about how much it will cost; it’s about those it will help. Everyone will benefit at least indirectly, because people they love and care about will benefit. 

As for him, he says he no longer has to choose between providing for his family or taking care of himself. 

Oh, the sweet, sweet irony!

Growing Up

It appears as though some Republicans are finally growing up. Check out what Paul Ryan had to say recently.

As a conservative, I deal with the situation as it exists. I deal with the way things are, not necessarily the way I want them to be. I’ve passed three budgets in a row that reflect my priorities and my principles and everything I wanted to accomplish. We’re in divided government. I realize I’m not going to get that.

Ryan took to the House floor yesterday and noted that "elections have consequences." Wow! There goes his Obama-hatin' card!!

John Boehner has also chimed in, wondering just exactly the Tea Party is trying to accomplish. "Are you KIDDING me?" was his question and the response is quite simple.

When your throw your lot in with adolescents, you get temper tantrums.

Good Words

“In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid. And when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith: he is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought… For this reason Jesus said to them: ‘You have taken away the key of knowledge.’ The knowledge of Jesus is transformed into an ideological and also moralistic knowledge, because these close the door with many requirements. The faith becomes ideology and ideology frightens, ideology chases away the people, distances, distances the people and distances of the Church of the people. But it is a serious illness, this of ideological Christians. It is an illness, but it is not new, eh?” ~Pope Francis, (October 2013)

Hmm...sounds most familiar...

The Adolescent

I've written previously about the modern day conservative as adolescent but this last week has certainly crystallized this theory and so a new tag is born, "The Adolescent." Once again, I was defriended by a conservative on Facebook. Reverend Jim said sayonara to Markadelphia after long exchanges over health care and race issues. Apparently, he and his wife (my first girlfriend) have had trouble signing up for health insurance on the federal exchange and blame me for it. They were in the individual market and were absolutely apoplectic about what the federal government was "making" them do.

Of course, the act of defriending itself is adolescent and, oddly, senior citizen-y (which is sort of the same thing when you think about it). Doesn't Reverend Jim know that you can delete someone from your news feed still remain friends? Man, working the computer machine is tough! Ah well, at least the bubble's integrity can remain intact. Thank goodness! Odder still, its that they tagged me in their health care rants, calling me a "box of turds" and "an idiot" for supporting the president and a political class that "lords over them, forcing them to live in servitude." The more I responded with the facts, the worse they got. Granted, the missus, who is still friends me with me on FB, has infinite leeway with me because she was the first love of my life but did they honestly want me to not respond? Again, adolescent:)

There were so many irrational and hysterical comments in those threads that it was hard for me to keep track but the one thing that struck me about all of them was how decidedly un-Christian they were. They were so self absorbed with their frustration with the web site, did they ever stop to think about these people? They are bitching about a buggy web site and the people in this link had nothing except life threatening illnesses. When Reverend Jim and the missus finally found out that they qualified for subsidies and would actually save money, suddenly they were happy. My oh my, how the emotions swing with teenagers! All talk of people "spooning off of the American taxpayer" went out the window as they finally happily got signed up.

This selfishness, aside from being un-Christian, is yet another strong indicator of a brain and higher reasoning not fully developed-just like an adolescent). They don't think rationally at all. Reverend Jim bemoans liberals that take offense at everything yet thinks conservatives that take offense at everything are justified. He vilifies our self esteem culture and the fairness for all attitude that goes along with it yet rips me when I say conservatives are far worse than liberals and...(not shockingly) gets massively offended himself. Again, the world revolves around them and only them.

It reminds me a great deal of the conversations I've had over the years with teenagers who take great umbrage with the fact that our society has rules and sometimes they aren't fair. As adults, one would think conservatives would have learned this by now but, as I have stated previously, something must have happened to them in their childhood to have so much trouble with authority. Because these sorts of conversations, with both adolescents and the modern day conservative, invariable end with an outburst followed by a stomp down the hallway, a door slam, and yelling about how I "think I'm so smart" and I'm always "talking down to them" like they are a child.

Well, perhaps they should stop acting like one:)

Oh. My. God.

Jesus was white? Wow...

Time's Man of the Year: "Fake" Christian

Well, Time magazine went and done did it. They named Pope Francis the Man of the Year. As the image below aptly notes, Republican Jesus believers don't much like the new pontiff and his "socialist" ways (see: helping the poor, healing the sick, championing equality aka what Jesus actually taught) so this has got to be a real ass chap for them. The world is moving away from the hatred, anger and fear.

Oh well.

Great News!

Two great things have happened in the last 24 hours. We have thankfully returned to a core tenet of Glass Steagal and enacted the so called Volcker Rule which prohibits banks from using customer money to trade for their own gain. I can't understate how integral this is to bringing stability to our economy and, by extension, the world economy.

And we have a deal that looks like it will pass by houses of Congress and fund the government through 2015. Republicans saw what happened when the shut down the government recently and realized it was time to put the short wave radio crowd back in the garage. They were facing disaster in the 2014 elections and now, with the help of the poor rollout of the ACA, they are doing much better. While there will likely be some return to idiocy, electorally speaking, over the next few months, GOP leaders can see a path to holding ground in the House and maybe picking up some seats in the Senate. Of course, things look pretty bad for them in 2016 as 24 Republicans look to hold on to their seats while only 10 Democrats do the same. But who knows what could happen in 3 years?

So, great times, folks in terms of our economic path. It's going to be interesting to see how our economy does now that both of these issues are out of the way. GDP is up, unemployment is down, and consumer confidence, heading into the final stretch of the holiday season, is at a five month high.

Great News!

Responsible Gun Owners?

3-Year-Old Fatally Shot Near Broad Ripple Park After Gun Fell Off Counter

A neighbor to the family said "I've known they had guns; they've carried them in public on their side, they've got permits for them and I just thought they always were a little bit more responsible than that." 

I guess not.

Just Wait For It

Spy vs. Spy: Elf vs. Orc

Not content with monitoring domestic phone calls, email, Internet searches, and porn habits, during the Bush administration the NSA decided to spy on people playing World of Warcraft. The New York Times reports the latest embarrassment from the Edward Snowden document dump:

Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents.

Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels.

This is silly. Anyone who plays these games knows that there's no privacy. The companies running them are constantly on the watch for suspicious activity, because of rampant theft of game accounts, credit cards and in-game items and virtual currency. The companies log all communications, and monitor all activities to determine the best way to make money off their players.

There were so many NSA and GCHQ (British SIGINT) guys doing this that they had to develop protocols to avoid spying on each other.

This is another sign of the excessive amount of time and money we are wasting on supposed security threats. The bosses at the NSA are either completely stupid or ridiculously naive if they can't see that their employees were just looking for an excuse to play games at work.

No wonder Edward Snowden could just waltz in and steal them blind.

Citizens of the World

The recent cover story in the Christian Science Monitor illustrates just how much the world is changing. Retirees in this country are leaving the Unite States for Latin America in their golden years. Why? Their money lasts longer there with cheaper goods and more affordable health care.

The exodus south is being driven by a confluence of factors. The baby boom generation – the largest in history – is reaching retirement age, and millions are looking for places to spend the next phase of their lives. As the most educated, well-traveled, and adventurous generation in history, many of these boomers are deciding to retire outside the country – including in Latin America. They're also looking for places that will allow them to stretch their 401(k)s after they lost a lot of money in the last stock market collapse. With the US economy remaining so tentative, and health-care costs so aggressive, retirees want to live where they can afford greens fees and where a trip to the emergency room won't bankrupt them. 

It really helps to live in countries where the opposition party isn't trying to actively sabotage your health care system.

The bigger view of all of this, though, is how people are moving to consider themselves citizens of the world and not citizens of a particular country. I was particularly stuck by the story of James Cummiskey, the 20 year marine veteran who now owns his own coffee exporting business in Columbia. In the age of globalization, business can be conducted virtually anywhere so it makes sense to live in a country where you can make your dollars last longer.

As the article indicates, it isn't just Latin America. American retirees are moving all over the world. Perhaps that should tell us something about our current standard of living.

Why Do Those Charities Want Your Old T-Shirts?

We still have a landline phone, and 19 out of 20 calls are either 1) a scam for ripping off the elderly with a "free" health monitor that will cost them thousands of dollars, or 2) a notification that a truck from some charity or other will be in the neighborhood to collect old clothing.

I might be weird, but I wear my old clothing until it's worn out. I wear t-shirts until they get holes in the armpits, sweatshirts till the cuffs are frayed, and jeans till they get holes in the seat. Then I turn them into rags and use them to dust and clean my bike chain. Anyway, who could possibly want my old t-shirts?

Now I know who: people in Africa. From a story on NPR:

Jeff Steinberg had a maroon and white lacrosse jersey that he wore for years. It said "Denver Lacrosse" on the front and had his number, 5, on the back.

Then, one day, he cleaned out his closet and took the shirt to a Goodwill store in Miami. He figured that was the end of it. But some months after that, Steinberg found himself in Sierra Leone for work. He was walking down the street, and he saw a guy selling ice cream and cold drinks, wearing a Denver Lacrosse jersey.

Our old t-shirts are being packed into container ships, exported to Kenya where they sell for 15 cents. Often they are cut, resized (all those XL and XXL shirts are way too big for Africans), washed, ironed, tailored, and ultimately resold for a couple of bucks.

Over the years I've noticed on the news that people in other countries wear American t-shirts a lot. Why, I wondered, are so many Africans fans of the Chicago Bulls and the New England Patriots?

It turns out they're not. These countries are so desperately poor compared to us that they have entire industries based on the stuff that we just toss out.

I guess it's great that this stuff is being recycled. It's a lot more benign than the nasty recycling of electronics, in which circuit boards are sent to third-world countries and burned to recover precious metals, exposing the workers -- frequently children -- to highly toxic fumes.

But it really puts into perspective how wealthy the average American is compared to the average Kenyan.

And then you realize that there are some Americans who are almost as badly off as those Kenyans, who get their pick of our castoffs before we ship them off to Kenya. And they work for Walmart and McDonalds.

The Metric of Success

A commenter recently asked what my metric for success was in terms of the Affordable Care Act. I've answered this question many times in posts and comments and one need only click here to peruse my answers over the last couple of years. In fact, I recently highlighted one such quantification that bounced off the bubble into outer space. Oh well.

Yet, unlike my conservative colleagues, I strive to be reflective. So, it is in that spirit that we start today with a new tag called "health care success." Today, I will highlight two main metrics of quantitative success that will be integral in judging the effectiveness of the ACA. As the numbers start to come in showing increased enrollment in health care insurance, we will be able to see the number of people insured in this country rise. Right now we stand at 84.6 percent insured. So, the first metric of success is to get as many of that 15.4 percent uninsured to have coverage. If we can have a total of 95 percent of the nation covered with health insurance by 2016, I'd say it was successful. That's about three quarters of that 15 percent or 30 million people. We may not be able to know this for certain until the next census (2020) but I think there will be plenty of data by the next presidential election to give us a clearer picture.

But what about that last five percent? Well, that's where my second metric comes into play. Those that don't get insurance will have to pay a fee which will offset the costs of the program. Will that fee and all the newly insured people be able to achieve the overall goal of the ACA in reducing the amount of money we spend on health care? Currently we each spend $8,233 per year and the U.S. health care costs now eat up 17.6 percent of GDP.  How does that compare with other countries?

Terrible. Just terrible. This is why we had to have health care reform. Obviously, the goal here is to control growth, as I noted the other day, and the ACA is already doing that. Now we have to look at the goal numbers in terms of dollars spent per person and our GDP (adjusted for inflation, of course). A minor success would be for us to spend $8,232 per person-1 dollar less than we are now. A major one would be for us to spend as much as Norway does at $5,388 per person. I'm going to set the goal of $6,700 dollars per person which falls right in between as my measure of success. With GDP, a minor success would be to get it to 16 percent. A major success would be 11.5 percent, putting us right in the middle of many European countries. I'll set the goal here at 14 percent of GDP. \

Of course, quantifying health care success is only one piece of the puzzle. What about quality of care? We could meet these goals but what if the care level falls? In the coming months, I'll be discussing other metrics that will indicate success in terms of our new health care law. Look for the tag "health care success!"

Parroting Atheists

It seems that some Christian conservatives aren't the only ones that think Jesus would have carried an AR-15. I guess atheists do as well.  You know that you are in trouble as a devout Christian when you are parroting atheist talking points.

As I have mentioned previously, the "but to bring a sword" has to be looked at in context. Here is the rest of the quote.

For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.

So, the word "sword" is a metaphor for conflict between familial relations over the new word of Christ.

Here's another great explanation of the meaning and context of the verse. 

'Tis The Season

It's the holidays and that means it's time to give back to those less fortunate than ourselves. With this spirit in mind, I thought I would answer all of the questions that a commenter (Not My Name) has been asking this year and give not only him a Christmas present but the four people that read his comments a gift as well. I've already answered many of them in posts or comments previously but he seems like he needs the attention and is lacking something pretty significant in his social life to spend as much time as he has writing in my comments section. So I thought one post with all my answers would be a great way to lift him out of his depression.

Question: Is the Constitution law? 

The context of this question was the 2nd amendment and I have already answered it pretty thoroughly. Yet there is a more concise way to answer...

Answer: Yes, the perfectly legal to amend and continually open to interpretation, as evidenced by 200+ years of tort, United States Constitution is law.

Question: Why would an uninsured person going to the ER cause insurance rates to go up?

Answer: Because they often can't pay and due to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), a law signed by Ronald Reagan and a bipartisan Congress, every person must be cared for regardless of their financial situation. The story of Sharon Ford was a primary driver behind this law. Note the pro life tone to what transpired and consider this recent post of mine. As the link notes, taxpayers pick up the cost via public dollars or raised rates that stem from cash strapped hospitals picking up the tab.

Here NMN assumes that he has led me down a path that will show me that the government is the problem. Yet this same government stepped in to pass this law so we could save lives. Would NMN get rid of this law and let unborn babies like Sharon Ford's child die? I suppose only he can answer that but a reversal of this law would save taxpayers money so I guess he has a real puzzler on his hands. Maybe he should consult the Bible. On second thought, maybe not, as we can see from the next two questions.

Question: Faith in what? 

Answer: Your faith in Jesus and God. It's very, very weak. That's why you need others to believe exactly as you do lest you be tempted to stray from Republican Jesus. You claim to be a "rugged individualist" yet positively can't stand the fact that someone might think differently than you not just with your religious faith but your political faith as well. Like the communists and socialists you decry, you want everyone to believe exactly as you do otherwise you condemn them. You also make the mistake of having faith in conservative political leaders and ideologies. Faith is reserved for spiritual matters not for issues like the economy or health care. Even here your faith is weak as well. I'm not responsible for your insecurities. You are. And Jesus is very clear about people that judge and cast the first stone.

One other note on this question. NMN has refused, despite repeated queries, to outright reject the various sects of Christianity that don't conform exactly to his warped version of it. He's certainly rejected my Christian beliefs. I wonder why he hasn't rejected the Unitarian Church, for example. Or the peace churches.

Primary Question: Authors of words have a meaning they intend to communicate, and that meaning is the only valid "interpretation" of any writing. Do you agree or disagree? 

Related Questions: What makes you think God is UNABLE to do what mere humans can do—get someone to write what they want written? So you're claiming that the Jeremiah 31:33-34 prophecy has already come to pass? That every single person in the world sees and accepts Yahweh as his/her God, even Juris Imprudent? That there is no disagreement about God because we all know Him directly?   

Answer: As a writer myself, I say no to the primary question because maybe someone else can dream up something even more wonderful than I intended. Being a reflective person, I welcome it, of course:) Perhaps I could inspire someone to a higher meaning, right?  The other day in class I was offering a critique of John Maynard Keynes and a student raised his hand and said, "It seems that you are saying that Keynes' theories are too psychologically based." I hadn't actually said that but he took what I was saying and brought it to a higher level. It was magnificent. But really, it depends on the author. Bob Dylan would say yes. John Lennon would say no. NMN also seems to be lacking here in his understanding of the use of metaphor. Perhaps he doesn't understand symbolism either.

Anyway, the context of this question and the related ones is the Bible and the author's intent. As with all of his Bible, legal, constitutional, and morality related questions, NMN assumes he is the authority on the author's intent and proceeds (as always) with great hubris. He recently intimated that he is a more valid interpreter of the Bible than the pope. Wow, he's smart!

So, the question he lacks the courage to ask is "Am I the authority on Biblical interpretation, constitutional interpretation, and morality in terms of spiritual and civic law?" Or, more briefly, "Do I know what God is thinking?" The answer is no (and it's no for me as well) because he continually makes false assumptions based on emotions and a completely instransigent ideology. The failure is not with the authors but with NMN himself because he misinterprets, either purposefully, through ignorance or both, the author's intent. And, as I have mentioned far too many times, he also purposefully misinterprets what I say and turns my writings into gotcha questions (so, how long have you been beating your wife?) in order to go for the win and show off for the TSM people that read his comments. Does he know any other way? Thus far, the answer is no.

Primary Question: Do you think it's okay to punish a child for the parent's crime?

Answer: No, but I wish it were OK to punish parents for children's crimes. There would be a lot less gun deaths and spree shootings if that were the case. Perhaps parents would think twice about having guns in the house with their mentally ill child if their asses were on the line.

The background to this question is abortion and NMN falsely assumes (more on false assumptions aka lying below) that the moment of inception equals a child. It does not. Science (remember facts, evidence and logic?) shows us that there is not a fetus until the 10th week of development. The link above has detailed images of development and people can judge for themselves as to what constitutes a "child." For me that's towards the end of the first trimester which is why I have no problem with a federal ban on abortion extended to include the 2nd trimester. I'd even consider going back earlier with a ban when brain, heart and lung functions are more fully developed. A question that NMN or other pro life folks need to answer...is something human if it has no heart?

Of course, there is no such thing as compromise in NMN's world. Even I have to consider that my views may be wrong. Can the child survive outside of the womb? When? What of the mother's rights? Is her body now a ward of the state? This is a gray area because it's not as cut and dried as human-not human. And the Right doesn't do well at all with gray areas. It's not a person at every stage of neonatal development and even when it is in my view, should the fetus really be granted 14th amendment rights? Consider as well that the same argument against banning guns (only criminals will have guns) applies here. Only criminals will provide abortions and there will have to be funds for enforcement and personnel assigned to police it. Who is going to pay for it? Imagine what happened during Prohibition with liquor happening with abortion in terms of crime. Witness what is happening now with drugs. It would be a nightmare. NMN, like many on the Right, don't really think before they bloviate about nearly all of the issues facing our country today. Recall this as well. 

If we left behind the rock solid stubbornness of both sides in the abortion debate, we might actually be able to solve this problem. Abortion is not birth control and it should be harder to obtain. Single woman in their 20s are the group that need to be targeted as they have the most abortions. At a certain stage (earlier than what is legal now), they should not be allowed to have an abortion unless their life is threatened. If they are raped or a victim of incest, they should use the day after pill or terminate in the first couple of weeks. Family planning and sex education need to be improved. People have to behave more responsibly when it comes to sex. Overall, there needs to be societal shift so demand for abortion is reduced it not all together eliminated. As with most issues, the Right can't help but focus on supply when they should be focusing on demand. Get rid of the demand and you get rid of abortion.

Primary Question: Is "false" equal to "truth"?

Related Questions: Even Joe Biden admits that the administration's gun control actions won't stop the shootings. So why do those things? Since the leaders of the Democrat's effort to implement universal background checks say that "any bill without a records provision would be as toothless as an honor system", do you still assert that "[n]o one is talking about universal registration" and/or that it can be implemented without registration?

Answer: No, false does not equal truth and NMN does an excellent job of illustrating this given the content of the primary question and the related questions. Honestly, all of his questions are, in one way or another, based on false assumptions about the issues of the day or, in this case, me and what I am asserting. With me, that's part and parcel to his childish games.

The context of this specific line of query (along with all of the other gun questions he asks) is based on the false assumption and an inconsolable paranoia that the federal government is out to get our guns. For NMN, any changes to gun laws will result in tyranny. Our system of checks and balances make this highly unlikely. Consider how difficult it is to pass something as simple as a budget let alone a new law on the regulation of guns. A tyranny assumes swift and decisive action not government by sedimentation which is what we have now. He pulls half truths, spins, or simply lies with this category of questions.

Joe Biden's comment is quite different than what NMN has described and essentially (and hilariously) asks, "Why even have laws?" In fact, this very question is at the root of conservative whining. Like the adolescent that simply can't take the rules of the house, conservatives grouse about having to follow rules they don't like. New rules are the worst, man! They suck, and like, the Right doesn't want to do them and stuff. Of course, the rest of the adults in our country recognize that as our society evolves, problems arise and sometimes need to be addressed with (gasp!) new laws. Pretending that a problem doesn't exist or will magically go away (the conservative go to thinking these days) doesn't work.

The background check question is a half truth at best and based on opinions and heresay, not the actual law or an evidence based argument. The Manchin-Toomey bill is available here for review and a Google search (unaided by someone as biased as me:)) will show the full story on his related questions. And why can't we figure out a way to improve gun safety while honoring the 2nd amendment? We are the greatest nation on the planet, aren't we? I find it amusing that someone such as NMN decries those who "hate America" yet appears to be doing just that. Clearly the thinks very little of the leaders of this country and the people in it but that's the adolescent problem with authority again. Equally as amusing is the fact that NMN spends a lot of time and energy debunking things that Democrats say, accusing them of being incompetent liars, but on the issue of universal background checks, they are now suddenly "telling the truth." Wow...it's a Christmas miracle!!

Will NMN accept this gift in the spirit of the season and be gracious? Will his obsession with me continue? Or something else? Or will he reject my gift, take it back, psychotically keep asking the questions over and over again, circle jerk for juris, GD, 6Kings and Larry, and pretend that I never answered the questions? Honestly, it doesn't really matter.

Because in the final analysis we will never, ever see the kind of our nation he claims he wants. The trajectory of our country is evolving to fit the age of globalization and leaving behind backwards, hateful, and ignorant thinking. NMN's comments and questions are great examples of the fear that only comes with the realization that old ideologies are quickly becoming irrelevant.

Anecdata

Remember all those Obamacare horror stories? Not looking so bad now.

Oh, really? Why? Well, read the piece. But how did this happen?

The failure of the exchanges created an information vacuum as far as Obamacare successes went; in rushed the individual stories of those who claimed to have been hurt by the changes to the market. It didn't matter that these stories are, even without enrollment numbers from the exchanges, demonstrably unrepresentative! 

In steps...anecdata!

Statisticians dismiss the practice of using personal stories to argue about an objective reality as "anecdata", but it might be more accurate to call the "Obamacare horror stories" that have taken over social media "urban legends". There are urban legends about a lot of things – from spiders in hairdos to red velvet cake. Some are funny, some feature a satisfying come-uppance, but folklorists agree that the stickiest of them, the ones that last for generations and resist debunking are the ones that live off ignorance and feed off fear. As one researcher put it: "It's a lack of information coupled with these fears that tends to give rise to new legends. When demand exceeds supply, people will fill in the gaps with their own information … they'll just make it up."

I can't think of a better description of the conservative media ecosystem at the moment. 

Neither can I.  I quite enjoyed the torpedoeing of some of the more prominent "horror" stories. 

Careful What You Wish For

This recent piece from the Christian Science Monitor illustrates the pitfalls of requiring a photo ID to vote.

As Wisconsin implements its law, it is opening a window into why a photo ID can be so difficult for the elderly to obtain. But it is also highlighting what some activists are calling a "war against the Greatest Generation" as federal and state budget cuts fall disproportionately on the elderly. Whether it is the government shutdown making it harder to obtain veteran's benefits or cuts to food stamps or state welfare programs, many in the Greatest Generation feel that they are now being left in the cold. 

So, they might end up alienating their own base? Wow. That's rilly smart!  Well, folks like Genevieve Kujawski can rest assured that Democrats will protect their right to vote even if it is against them. 

A Very Overheated Religious War

The situation in the Central African Republic is simply terrible. Roving gangs of Christian extremists in the capital of Bangui have been targeting Muslim neighborhoods and wantonly killing people in the name of their God for retribution against Muslims gangs that have done the same. I'm not sure what God they worship but it certainly isn't the Christian one. Thou shall not kill, remember?

French troops are arriving in the coming days to hopefully keep the peace. They are also sending air support to hopefully quell any future uprisings. AP is reporting that the French are reluctantly going in which strikes me as complete bullshit as they are partly responsible for the situation on the ground. The CAR has never gotten over the Scramble for Africa. French meddling in the region created the power struggles that we see today. So, this is largely blowback from colonization over a century ago.

It's going to take a lot more than 1200 troops to stop what is now clearly genocide. The United Nations needs to have a robust and permanent presence there and the French need to invest far more resources (especially financial) than they are now. It's very quickly becoming too late and far too many people have died.

3.6 Percent

The United States Economy grew at the much faster pace of 3.6 percent in the third quarter than originally thought. Second quarter growth was also revised upward to 2.5 percent. The reasons for this growth include private inventory investment, personal consumption expenditures, exports, and state and local government spending.

Very welcome news indeed!