Why Carrying A Gun Accomplishes Nothing

From a recent question of mine on Quora...

Bo Schembechler, storied football coach of the University of Michigan was once asked why he ran such a conservative offence rarely throwing the football. His answer was, when you throw the football there are three possible outcomes, two of them are bad. Now this story may be apocryphal but the point is that when assessing options it wise to understand the odds you are up against. 

The notion that more guns in the hands of good people as a general solution to gun violence is crazy in this context. First of all the odds that one will ever get in a situation where having a gun has even the most remote possibility of being useful while you are out in public (let alone saving your life) is spectacularly slim. 

The first rule is, if a place is so dangerous that you feel you need a gun, then it's not safe to be there even with a gun. People carrying a gun tend to feel as if the gun the gun will protect them. Further, most gun crime is criminal against criminal or between two people who know each other. In the first situation "good guys" don't have to worry. Sure you could get caught in the crossfire but your gun won't help you against a random stay round. In the second scenario you are dealing with a friend, family member, acquaintance where you won't really feel threatened until things turn seriously bad. In the overwhelming majority of these situation you are in them because you have failed to extricate yourself from it before things got out of hand. The psychology of domestic violence is only exacerbated by the presence of firearms; firearms are almost never the solution. As all things with guns you can point out the few and rare situations where someone defend themselves successfully from a domestic violence situation but these are not the norm and only serve as the rare exception that proves the rule.

But let's say you find yourself alone, at night, in a bad part of town (this is your first mistake by the way) and all of a sudden you are confronted with a bad guy holding a gun. Here is where the good guy with a gun logic gets turned on it's head. A good guy with a gun is pretty useless if he or she can't shoot. One of the most egregious troupe of films is that one shot from a gun stops an assailant cold. It won't, unless you are a point blank range it's pretty difficult to get off a shot that will stop someone allowing them to shoot back. Most people who carry don't spend an awful lot of time at the range and even fewer have actually shot someone. It very difficult to understand how your emotions will not serve you well when you find yourself in an actual life threatening situation. It is almost inconceivable that, without intense training, most people will do anything other than soil themselves when confronted with an actual life threatening situation. The assailant is probably a sociopath and cares not for you life, or his for that matter. Maybe he or she is a drug addict and is high right now. The point is here are all the things that can go wrong for the "Good Guy"

• You could shoot and miss, and you get shot
• You could shoot and not bring the perp down, and they shoot you back
• you could shoot, miss and kill someone else
• Someone else with a gun could come along and mistake you for the bad guy and shot you
• The perp could take your gun away from you and shoot you with it

One the other hand you could take the assailant down, but statistically the best you will do is frighten them off to try again. The problem of the good guy is that 9 times out of 10 the bad guy will have the drop on you and then you have to count on the assailant  being mind-bogglingly careless to even have a chance. Again people do actually succeed at this and those are the stories you hear about you rarely hear about the other side where the good guy get's it (the media loves a hero).

But let's say you carry a gun all the time and come accross a crime in progress. This is where you can be the hero right? Well first of all carrying a gun is a staggering commitment. Right off the bat let's all hope you actually know how to shoot. I will admit that most people who do this are committed people who follow safe shooting procedures, and sped at least some time at the shooting range. You have to have your gun with you at all times wearing clothes that will conceal the gun. Remember when we talked about the likelihood of being the victim of an armed assailant? Well just randomly coming across a crime in progress is makes the first scenario look like a daily occurrence in comparison. Not bloody likely.

But lets say you do come across a crime in progress, it does happen. Again your heart is pounding, you have to think quickly and clearly (yes I trust the random untrained guy on the street to get this right) but in addition to all the possibilities in the first scenario here are some additional things that could go wrong when coming across a crime in progress (say a hold up):

• You shoot the wrong person (maybe a guy who works there came out of the back)
• Much more likely to shoot an innocent bystander
• You don't know if there isn't another shooter you can see and you get shot (this has happened recently).

In fact in the best case scenario you will only get a shot off at a fleeing suspect which is moronic in the extreme because a fleeing suspect isn't a danger and would never justify deadly force.  But all of this is beside the point, a "good guy" with a gun whose first thought is about trying to defuse the situation themselves is more often a menace to himself and those around him.  He should be using that time to call the police. Any trained officer knows that the first thing you do is call for backup, not pull your gun.

Once again do not misunderstand me, I am completely aware that people can, and do, stop crime with their guns. My argument is that those cases, though they seem to happen pretty regularly, when you break it down on an incident per 1000 basis it's just not all that common; not close to anything like common . Further when you take into consideration whether or not they actually saved a life, even rarer still. Criminals are every bit as stupid as everyone else. Most of the time they are just as untrained as the guy who carries a gun, but rarely, if ever, actually spends time at the gun range. The Media loves to glorify these accounts due to the obvious heroics of the people involved (which is why you can find a lot of stories like this which make it seem like it's happening all the time in the aggregate)  but on careful reading  of these accounts you find some similar threads:

• Involvement of active duty or ex military or law enforcement
• Shooting at fleeing assailants
• Shooting at unarmed assailants (or at least those without a gun)
• And the fact that they are very very rare in the overall scheme of things
• or mistakenly innocent people which are almost never reported in the media (but in fairness these cases are pretty rare too)

The cases the media doesn't like to report are situations where the good guy loses like this: Family mourns man killed while trying to stop shooting spree. Or the cases where no one was really in danger as they were fleeing at the time  (they do get reported but they understandably tend not to make headlines 86-year-old won't be charged in concealed carry shooting, prosecutors say).
 
The point of all of this is that whatever the solution to gun crime in america is, it's definitely, most assuredly not putting more guns in the hands of untrained citizens who have no background in dealing with high stress situations with dangerous tools that they are ill prepared to wield safely and accurately. Google Gun went off at gun safety demonstration.

I believe, and current 2nd amendment jurisprudence backs this up, that states have the right to set the terms and conditions under which a person can legally carry a firearm in public. And that those conditions should be strengthened not relaxed as the current trend seems to be.  Guns may not be the problem per se, but I'm pretty sure they aren't the solution are not the solution. And the idea that founding fathers thought that strolling around target with a loaded AR-15 slung around your back is an appropriate expression of your 2nd amendment right is just off the scale crackers. 

People ask me if I think gun control (whatever that means) is the answer. I think that is a complex question given the penetration of firearms in this country. But here are a few things I do know:

• If you look at all of the mass shootings going back to the 1966 clock tower shooting at U of T, not one of them has been perpetrated with a very heavily regulated fully automatic weapon. Not one and that God.
• The best defense against being the victim of crime is Situational Awareness is Everything. This one thing will cut your chances of being a victim in half or more.
• We simply cannot not and should not accept a world where carrying a gun is the solution to crime. That is the mindset of surrender

Finally (Did you think this was ever going to end?), Crime is down, vastly down, we are living in an era that has less overall crime then at any time in recent history while at the same time individual gun ownership is at an all time low (gun sale are conversely at an alltime high, chew on that for just a moment and draw the inescapable conclusion). I'm not in anyway saying that this is the reason for lower crime, that would be nonsense,what I am saying is that the problem of crime tends to stem from culture and you can't fix that with more guns.

And my comment...

Fantastic points! They really align with objective reality. Unfortunately, reality is not where gun rights folks live. A tremendously insecure lot, the gun gives them the illusion power they so desperately need. This fantasy continues as they all believe they can be Jack Bauer or John McLean, saving themselves or others in an active shooting situation. 

But when you break it down so logically as you have here, their illusion shatters

Good Words

Donald Trump, finally a candidate whose hair gets more attention than mine. But there’s nothing funny about the hate he is spewing at immigrants and families — and now the insults he has directed at a genuine war hero, Sen. John McCain. 

It’s shameful, and so is the fact that it took so long for his fellow Republican candidates to start standing up to him. The sad truth is if you look at many of their policies, it can be hard to tell the difference. (---Hillary Clinton, at a recent Democratic Dinner in Arkansas)

Indeed. And that's because they are essentially adolescents.

Trump's Bridge Too Far?

Okay, Republicans. Is your infantile fascination with Donald Trump over yet?

On Saturday Trump said of John McCain:

“He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

John McCain isn't my favorite guy. He's egotistical, selfish, self-centered and constantly blustering about attacking any country that looks at the United States sideways. But you can't criticize his war record.

And Donald Trump, in particular, has absolutely no right to criticize McCain's war record: Trump got four college deferments and a "medical" deferment, like all rich white boys in the Sixties all did (I'm talking about you, Mitt Romney, Dick Cheney and all the rest of those chickenhawks).

Trump is a total dick, the worst kind of vile New York street thug. He claims to have the bestest, most fabulous business acumen, yet he was forced to declare bankruptcy four times, screwing creditors and investors in his casino and real estate scams out of millions of dollars.

Trump is a rich (though not as rich as he says) narcissist who doesn't give two craps about anyone but himself. He threw all Mexicans under the bus because he thinks that will make the racist base of the Republican party swoon over him. Now he does the same to John McCain for stating the obvious about Trump's pretend presidential campaign.

Exactly who does Trump think this criticism of McCain is going to impress? He gets the lead in the national polls and the first thing he does is turn the campaign into a kindergarten name-calling contest. And McCain isn't even running against him.

Trump is either the biggest dick on the national stage, or he's trolling the Republican Party to see how far he can sink them in order to give the White House and Senate to the Democrats.

Actually, it's probably both.

The Most Consequential President in US History

Vox has a great piece up regarding the president and his now very consequential place in US History.

Obama has reestablished productive diplomacy as the central task of a progressive foreign policy, and as a viable alternative approach to dealing with countries the GOP foreign policy establishment would rather bomb. He established a viable alternative to the liberal hawks that dominated Democratic thinking during the Bush years, and held positions of influence on Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign. And he developed a cadre of aides who can carry on that legacy to future Democratic administrations, and keep a tradition of dovishness alive.

History tends to more prominently note those presidents who achieve great diplomatic goals. Cuba is opening for business as well. Add in that the president has literally saved people's lives with health care reform and, more or less, saved the economy, and the GOP's worse fears have come true.

Barack Obama is a massive success.

Still #1!!!

Donald Trump is still #1 in the GOP nomination according to yet another poll, this time from Fox News. He is most definitely resonating with the GOP base and sucking away support from the likes of Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Chris Christie. In fact, he's really made this a three horse race now and defined an elite tier (himself, Bush, and Walker).

Even more interesting is that he's not really spending any money and getting all sorts of free press. I guess I'm wondering (still) if the average conservative voter realizes that this type of candidate has virtually no chance of winning the presidency. It's fun to hang out in the clubhouse where mouths foam and bowels are blown but anger, hate and fear don't play very well with the general election voter, especially the folks that make up the demographic of his pet cause-immigration:)

So, NOW It's Terror

I guess when a guy named Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez goes on a shooting spree, it's terror. When thousands of other Americans do it, we have either shrugs, oh wells, or fucking crickets. Check out the headline on Fox News

TERROR STRIKES CHATTANOOGA 
 Kuwaiti-born gunman opens fire on Tenn. military centers, kills 4 Marines

And Drudge...

MUHAMMAD SHOOTS UP MARINES IN TENNESSEE; 4 DEAD'MOTIVATED BY ISLAM'

And any of the other right wing sites...

Sense a pattern yet?

Oh, and were there guns at either of the military facilities? Y'know...the whole gun free zone dealio...

If conservatives are serious about stopping guys like Abdulazeez from shooting people, maybe we should refine our gun laws. Once again, another example of someone who not have been allowed to own a gun had we passed Manchin Toomey.

I Wonder Which Political Party They Belong To...

In Oklahoma, protesters greet Obama with Confederate flags 

San Francisco Dude Kicks Fox News' Ass

Check out this story...

He didn’t want to answer the questions because he knew Fox News was not going to make a good faith effort to cover the issue. He didn’t want to just duck his head and hide, because he knew how that looked on TV. So he addressed Fox News directly: “Fox News is not real news. And you’re not a real reporter.” This short clip has made Wiener a hero in his city. The response in San Francisco has been “overwhelmingly and enthusiastically positive. People are thrilled. There is such a deep seated frustration with Fox News and the fringe it represents,” Wiener said, saying he’d also received messages of support from around the country.

And, not surprisingly...

Response from Fox News fans has been less positive. His social media feed has been flooded with “really extreme fringe hateful” posts. His office voicemail is also filled to capacity.

Again, force is the only language these people understand...

Another Shooting At A Gun Range

So, we've had the Chris Kyle shooting...the little girl with the Uzi accidentally kill her instructor...and now this.

Shooting of Firearms Trainer by NYC Woman Exposes Gun Range Loophole

Not only does this continue to illustrate that the "gun free zone" assertion is an ever growing pile of shit, this incident could have been avoided and a life saved had we passed Manchin Toomey.

Another Study Torpedoes Defensive Gun Use

A recent study published in The Journal of Preventative Medicine offers new support for the argument that owning a gun does not make you safer. The study, led by David Hemenway, Ph.D., of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, examines data from the National Crime Victimization Survey — an annual survey of 90,000 households — and shows not only that so-called “defensive gun use” (DGU) rarely protects a person from harm, but also that such incidents are much more rare than gun advocates claim.

Contrary to what many gun advocates argue, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data reveals that having a gun provides no statistically significant benefit to a would-be victim during a criminal confrontation. The study found that in incidents where a victim used a gun in self-defense, the likelihood of suffering an injury was 10.9 percent. Had the victim taken no action at all, the risk of injury was virtually identical: 11 percent. Having a gun also didn’t reduce the likelihood of losing property: 38.5 percent of those who used a gun in self-defense had property taken from them, compared to 34.9 percent of victims who used another type of weapon, such as a knife or baseball bat.

What’s more, the study found that while the likelihood of injury after brandishing a firearm was reduced to 4.1 percent, the injury rate after those defensive gun uses was similar to using any other weapon (5.3 percent), and was still greater than if the person had run away or hid (2.4 percent) or called the police (2.2 percent).

Who Actually Gave Weapons To Iran?

Trump is #1

Donald Trump is leading the GOP nomination race?

BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH!!!!!

I guess we know where the GOP is these days...where I've always said it's been:)

Obama As Nixon?

As conservatives foam at the mouth about appeasement, the recent agreement with Iran (full text available here) reads less like appeasement and more like Nixon's pivot to China. The president himself has channeled Ronald Reagan using Gip's "Trust but verify" line but the comparisons to China are closer to objective reality.

China was a pretty awful country on a number of levels when Nixon went to China and already had a small cache of nuclear weapons. Nixon gambled that bringing China into the world economic community would tame their more militaristic intentions. He was right. Making money in a global economy based on capitalism using tends to chill people out. This is exactly what President Obama thinks will happen with Iran.

With sanctions set to fall apart anyway, this was the best route to take even though it isn't a perfect deal. Iran will not get a nuclear weapon in the next decade. Take note of how criticism of the deal is now centered on Iran being able to fund terrorism not get a nuclear weapon. That speaks volumes...

The GOP Legacy

Jeb! Wants Us to Work!

Last week Jeb! Bush said that Americans need to work more hours to get our economy to grow at 4%.

He doesn't seem to get that Americans are already working some of the longest hours among the world's advanced economies. In Europe most governments mandate four to six weeks of vacation a year, plus numerous official holidays, plus sick leave, plus paid family leave, and so on. Most full-time American workers get a maximum of two weeks of vacation, plus whatever sick leave and family leave policy your company deigns to give you.

If you have a part-time McJob you get a lousy salary and nothing else. These workers want to work more hours, but they can't because their employers don't want to give them full-time employees benefits. Clearly, Jeb! cannot be talking about these people.

He must therefore be talking about exempt employees, the full-time employees who are office workers, managers, engineers, programmers, accountants, etc. Exempt means exempt from overtime. Which means if they work more hours they get absolutely nothing for it.

Since 2000 average Americans are working 25% harder for no more money.

So the question is, what incentive do Americans have to work even harder? From 2000 to 2012 the wages of real working Americans did not go up, while productivity (the thing Jeb! wants us to crank up), increased from a relative base of 100 in 2000 to 124.9 in 2012.

All the extra effort of American employees have put in over the decade and a half isn't showing up in their paychecks. But it's showing up on their employer's bottom line. And their employers aren't sharing. So why should the average working stiff work harder?

Something similar is true at the other end of the economic spectrum. The tax rate tables show why:

Tax rate ordinary income	Single		Tax rate on capital gains
	over	to
10.00%	$0.00	$9,225.00	0.00%
15.00%	$9,225.00	$37,450.00	0.00%
25.00%	$37,450.00	$90,750.00	15.00%
28.00%	$90,750.00	$189,300.00	15.00%
33.00%	$189,300.00	$411,500.00	15.00%
35.00%	$411,500.00	$413,200.00	15.00%
39.60%	$413,200.00		20.00%
	Married filing jointly / Qualifying widow or widower
	over	to
10.00%	$0.00	$18,450.00	0.00%
15.00%	$18,450.00	$74,900.00	0.00%
25.00%	$74,900.00	$151,200.00	15.00%
28.00%	$151,200.00	$230,450.00	15.00%
33.00%	$230,450.00	$411,500.00	15.00%
35.00%	$411,500.00	$464,850.00	15.00%
39.60%	$464,850.00		20.00%

I've highlighted the tax bracket of the average American family. If you're doing real work, you pay taxes at 15% rate. If you get your income from tax-free bonds, long-term capital gains and qualified dividends (i.e., you've got a big pile of money) you pay zero federal tax.

The tax cuts passed during the Bush administration were made to benefit the idle rich. The system screws people who do actual work for the benefit of trust fund babies, hedge fund managers, stock market jockeys and layabouts. 

These preferential tax rates can have a huge affect on how much people work.

By age 45 or 50, intelligent, married professionals in the medical, legal, engineering and management fields can quit the salary rate race and have sufficient investment income to live comfortably without paying any federal taxes.

These people are usually considered our most productive citizens, and the tax system provides every incentive for them to quit their jobs outright.

Our tax system penalizes labor, giving preferential treatment to capital. If Jeb! wants middle class Americans to work harder, they should get a bigger piece of the pie for their efforts.

As it stands, all the income gains over the last 15 years have gone to the top 1%, and Republicans have cut their taxes in half, by using various scams to convert their salaries to long-term capital gains (e.g., getting paid in stock instead of a salary).

So why should regular Americans knock themselves out to make the rich even richer?

Predictable Responses

Now that an agreement has been reached with Iran regarding its nuclear technology, bowels are being blown all over conservative land. The race to see who can denounce it best is on! The responses have been all too predictable and I have to wonder if people are even paying attention to what conservatives are saying anymore. It's always the same "Obama succeeded again so we have to act like 8 year olds" response. I mean, have they even read the agreement yet? How can they denounce it?

I haven't had the time to read through it yet so I don't have an opinion either way but I am interested to see what their alternative is to the pact. Will it be a bitch fest with nothing at all to replace it...AGAIN?

The False Flag Candidate?

Donald Trump is leading the Republican presidential race in many national polls. He's doing this by espousing the most cliched Republican memes, becoming the very caricature of a conservative that Democrats love to ridicule.

Many are speculating that Trump will drag the Republican Party into such a deep, dark hole that they'll never be able to crawl out of it. The consensus is that Trump can never be president; far too many Republicans despise the man.

The question is, why is Trump doing this?

Unquestionably because he's a greedy narcissist who thrives on attention. In that way he's the same as the other 20 Republicans running for the nomination.

But Trump's "campaign" is costing him real money. He doesn't have billionaires like the Koch brothers pumping money into his Super PAC. Many of his business deals have been sunk because of his comments. If he's as brilliant as he tells us he is, he must have some ulterior motive.

Trump's right-wing credentials are called into question by conservatives who are capable of remembering anything that happened before the last Indy 500:

“I truly, honestly, and with all my heart and mind think Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters are making a yuuuuuuge mistake. I think they are being conned and played,” Jonah Goldberg, the author of Liberal Fascism, wrote. “I feel like a guy whose brother is being taken advantage of by a grifter. I’m watching helplessly as the con artist congratulates him for taking out a third mortgage.”

Other National Review writers concurred. “Donald Trump has been a conservative for about ten minutes,” Jim Geraghty wrote.

They cite his Ivy Leauge and Manhattan background, his previous support for abortion, immigration, assault weapons bans, government health care, as well as his backing of Democratic politicians.

Sometimes, as people age they become more conservative -- whether that's due to the wisdom of age, an inability to adapt to the new realities of a changing society, or atherosclerosis is still open to debate. So maybe Trump is sincere in his racism and intolerance.

On the other hand, there's speculation that Trump is running a false-flag campaign: he's pretending to run for president to sabotage the rest of the Republican field with his outlandish stances.

If so, Trump wouldn't be the first to fool conservatives. Comedian Stephen Colbert is famous for duping conservative viewers with his parody of conservative talking heads like Bill O'Reilly.

I guess we'll find out if Trump is punking Republicans when he announces his running mate:

Seventeen Now!

It looks as though former Governor of Virginia, Jim Gilmore, is going to fill up the GOP clown car even further and throw his hat into the 2016 presidential race. That makes seventeen candidates now on the GOP side and five candidates now on the Democratic side. AP News has a piece up about why there are so many people running on the GOP side.

Personally, I think it's a vanity thing combined with that white trash reality show dealio that conservatives just can't resist. I suppose the fact that being a conservative is part of a cottage industry as well. Being all loud and shouty about librals makes some good cash!!

A Deeply Attractive Man

Donald Trump is on a roll. His recent speeches in Las Vegas and Arizona were extremely well attended by the conservative base. Ol' Sheriff Joe Arpaio had the honor of introducing the Donald at the Arizona speech, even taking the time to bring up that tried and true chestnut from the past-the president's birth certificate.

There's been quite a bit of talk about how Trump isn't a real Republican and is just doing this to promote himself. Yet if you take a look at him, the constant fear peddling, anger and hate that emits from his yap makes him a PERFECT representation of conservatives today. Combine that with his self centeredness on steroids, his wealth, and his titanic hubris and, if you are a conservative, what's not to like? Truly, a deeply attractive man...:)

There are a couple of interesting pieces on Trump that have popped up this week. The first comes from Paul Rosenberg over at salon.com who widens out the discussion to include Sanders and a broader look at what American voters want.

Subsequent research has intensified this division. Conservatives win by making broad, sweeping appeals, which can often have little relationship with the facts (Iraq’s WMDs, “voter fraud,” global warming denialism, etc.). Liberals win by focusing on how to fix specific problems. Thus “government spending” in general is seen as a negative, but spending on most specific programs is strongly supported. The pattern is clear: The more practical the question, the more liberal the answers. That’s just how U.S. politics works.

Yep.

Kevin Williamson at the National Review has looked at Trump and decided a new term was in order-the WHINO.

You know the RINO — Republican In Name Only — but you may be less familiar with the WHINO. The WHINO is a captive of the populist Right’s master narrative, which is the tragic tale of the holy, holy base, the victory of which would be entirely assured if not for the machinations of the perfidious Establishment.

The WHINO is a Republican conspiracy theorist, in whose fervid imaginings all the players — victims, villains — are Republicans.  

This certainly explains why there is so much division among conservatives. And why they can't win national elections. Williamson has a great take on an argument I've heard many times from some conservatives.

I did an interview with Matthew Boyle of Breitbart Radio, a nice enough guy but a pretty good example of the WHINO style in American politics. What about Romney? Boyle demanded. Romney, he said with absolute assurance, lost to Barack Obama because millions of conservatives stayed home, finding him insufficiently committed to their cause. 

The first aspect of what is wrong with this analysis is obvious: It assumes that a “real conservative” who couldn’t beat Mitt Romney in a Republican primary dominated by “real conservatives” would have defeated Barack Obama in a national election not dominated by conservatives at all, i.e. that Romney was the weakest candidate except for all the guys who couldn’t beat him. But the defects in this analysis do not stop there. I am not sure that the psephology actually says what the WHINOs think it does, but even if it were so, the further problem with this line of thinking is obvious: If you are a conservative, and if you believe that the way to reform American public policy is to elect conservatives, and you arrived at Election Day believing that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were, from the conservative point of view, interchangeable commodities, then you are either a fanatic or extraordinarily ill-informed.

We must give some consideration to Trump, Breitbart’s Boyle informed me, because he is a vessel for the expression of the base’s frustration. The base should get a hobby. 

No shit. But this is exactly how much of the base thinks. And that's why they are supporting Trump.

Study Finds That Guns Don't Deter Crime

A recent study by Harvard Medical study finds that higher firearm ownership does not deter crimes. "We found no support for the hypothesis that owning more guns leads to a drop or a reduction in violent crime," said study researcher Michael Monuteaux, an epidemiologist and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. "Instead, we found the opposite."

Monuteaux and his colleagues wanted to test whether increased gun ownership had any effect on gun homicides, overall homicides and violent gun crimes. They chose firearm robbery and assault, because those crimes are likely to be reported and recorded in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Uniform Crime Report. Along with that FBI data, the researchers gathered gun ownership rates from surveys in the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, an ongoing, nationally representative survey in which participants answered questions about gun ownership in 2001, 2002 and 2004.

Using those years and controlling for a slate of demographic factors, from median household income, population density, to age, race and more, the researchers compared crime rates and gun ownership levels state by state. They found no evidence that states with more households with guns led to timid criminals. In fact, firearm assaults were 6.8 times more common in states with the most guns versus states with the least. Firearm robbery increased with every increase in gun ownership except in the very highest quintile of gun-owning states (the difference in that cluster was not statistically significant).

Firearm homicide was 2.8 times more common in states with the most guns versus states with the least. The researchers were able to test whether criminals were simply trading out other weapons for guns, at least in the case of homicide. They weren't. Overall homicide rates were just over 2 times higher in the most gun-owning states, meaning that gun ownership correlated with higher rates of all homicides, not just homicide with a gun.

Had We Passed Manchin Toomey...

AmericaBlog has a post up regarding the failure of the antiquated background check system which allowed Dylan Roof to get his gun that eventually killed 9 people in Charleston. It turns out that the gun used in the massacre was not, in fact, a gift from his father. Roof purchased the gun himself.

Had we passed the Manchin Toomey bill in 2013, Roof would have been denied the purchase of a gun and those nine people would still be alive today. Here is the full text of the bill which clearly illustrates the streamlining of the background check system. This is exactly what I mean when I talk about how the assholes in the Gun Cult are responsible for thousands of deaths every year. Unlike the relatives of the victims, I am unable to forgive so easily.

They're at fault and should be treated accordingly...like any other fucking criminal.

The Branches Of Our Government

Force. Period

The Confederate Flag came down today in South Carolina and I'm certain that plenty of people out there are taking it as some sort of victory. It's nothing of the sort. In fact, it reminds me a lot of the way conservatives argue. They set the battle line somewhere on the 5 or 10 yard line on the right side of the field and then "compromise" at the 35 yard line on the right side of the field. Sorry, fuckers, but that ain't gonna cut it with me.

The simple fact that it was up this long is an absolute insult. The Civil War was won 150 years ago and the people that are keeping the Confederacy alive (see: the current form of the GOP base, the Tea Party, Right Wing Bloggers, Gun Rights Douchebags) should be considered in a state of insurrection and in violation of the Constitution. Their constant whining and adolescent rebellion requires what every child throwing a temper tantrum needs: a firm hand.

I'd start with cutting off federal money to the areas of the country that bitch the most about the federal government. The Deep South is a start followed by Texas and Arizona. Cut off their fucking allowance and, like teenagers, see how long they last. In addition, I think that the people who claim they want to improve the gun laws in this country should change their tactics. You can't bring a limp noodle and milktoast to a gun fight. The Gun Cult are assholes and they're armed. How has America dealt with people like this in the past?

Force. Period.

After all, isn't that exactly what they preach when it comes to countries like Iran or Russia and groups like ISIL? The only thing militants understand is force so begin to apply it. The next time there is a shooting at a school, the next group of families that have to suffer as a result of assholes' insecurity and control freak/power syndromes should park a tank on the steps of the NRA headquarters plastered with photos of all their dead children. They should pool their resources with other families who have lost loved ones to gun violence and hire a Blackwater type security team to fuck with gun rights people...in the same way they fuck with Islamic extremists. I'm sure Michael Bloomberg has the money:)

It took the deaths of 9 people in a massacre to pull down a stupid ass flag. Given just how giant of assholes these people are, it's going to take a lot more for serious and substantive change. I mean, we didn't ask kindly with the Nazis, now did we?

Marco Rubio's "New" Idea: Indentured Servitude

It's ironic that as the South Carolina legislature was debating the Confederate battle flag and its status as the emblem of slavery, Marco Rubio is seriously proposing to reinstate a practice that amounted to the same thing, indentured servitude.

What? you say. Surely Nikto has flipped his lid. Nope. Rubio's proposal is exactly like indentured servitude:

Rubio proposed a system in which private investors could pay a student’s tuition in return for a cut of the graduate’s future earnings. In economics circles, the concept is known as “student investment plans,” “human capital contracts,” or "income share agreements."

How very 1984 of them to give them such nice names. "Indentured servitude" is more apt. According to Wikipedia:

Indentured servitude was a labor system whereby young people paid for their passage to the New World by working for an employer for a certain number of years.

Replace passage to the New World with college education and working for an employer with a cut of the graduate's future earnings and you have the 21st century version of serfdom.

Why does Rubio think this is needed? Why, it's those evil college cartels. Somehow Harvard, MIT and UCLA are preventing innovative, low-cost competitors from entering the college marketplace.

Except they're not. We've had a plethora of "innovative" private and Internet-based colleges entering the marketplace in the last 10 years. Most of them are scams, like Corinthian Colleges, which declared bankruptcy last May.

The business model of these for-profit colleges is ripping off government-run college grant and loan programs. They enroll students with low self-esteem they know will never graduate, promise them great jobs at fabulous salaries, give them bogus courses that teach nothing, and then laugh all the way to the bank when the students flunk out. Students that actually complete their coursework rarely find the jobs they were promised.

The evil thing about these indentured servitude contracts is that you'd never be able to get out of them. If you take out a student loan, it's possible (though difficult) to declare bankruptcy if you bottom out. These indentures would be impossible to get out of because they would just take a percentage of whatever you earn:

At an event last year at Miami-Dade University, Rubio went into more detail on how such a student investment plan might work.

A student who needs $10,000 for tuition makes an agreement with a private investment group to pay the lender 4 percent of their income after graduation for 10 years, regardless of whether this is more or less than $10,000, he said.

Now, 4% might not sound like a lot. If you got a job as a computer programmer at $50,000 that would be $2,000 a year. But that would go up every year as you got raises. A programmer with five years experience can easily earn $75,000 in some parts of the country. That would be $3,000.

But how much would you pay if you borrowed $10,000 with a regular college loan? This financial calculator shows you. If you borrowed $10,000 at 4.66% (the federal student loan rate for 2014-2015), you would pay $1253 a year. That will stay the same no matter how much money you make. Even at 8.5% a regular student loan is a far better deal than the man owning a piece of your ass for a decade.

And of course students won't be borrowing just $10,000. For four years you need anywhere from $40,000 to $200,000 or more, depending on where you want to go to school. Does that mean the investor is going to want 16% to 40% of your salary for the next 10 years? Or 10% or 20% for the next 20 years?

Geeze, it's like Rubio wants to let corporations tax private citizens...

Also, the people "investing" in students are going to dictate what your major is -- they're not going to sign contracts with education, art history and English majors: they're going to demand you major in computer science, engineering, pre-med, pre-law, business administration and so on.

Even creepier, Rubio talks about investors owning a "diversified portfolio" of students. Almost certainly there would be a secondary market where these indentures would be bought and sold, sort of like the derivatives contracts that torpedoed the economy in 2008.

And it would result in exactly the same kind of bubble and bust cycle after a President Rubio gutted the federal student loan program, and "entrepreneurs" signed a bunch of sub-par students, sold off their contracts to some sucker like Lehmann Brothers, who would then collapse when these kids could only find work at Walmart.

(Actually, this makes me wonder how much money private colleges are secretly giving to Rubio's Super PAC...)

If this actually caught on, it wouldn't just be investors taking out these contracts. Companies would want to eliminate the middle man: they'd sign promising students directly out of high school like the NBA does. Instead of owing an investor your salary, you'd owe your employer a chunk of your salary. You would be a literal indentured servant.

There's no question that there's a problem with burdensome college debt loads, especially for doctors who have to go to school for so many years. Creating a new class of indentured servants isn't the answer.

Since corporations are the primary consumer of college grads, companies should pay enough in state taxes to ensure that every student with a part-time job can afford to commute to an in-state public college or university. Hospitals, insurance companies and medical firms should pay a special tax to offset tuition at medical schools.

Tone It Down

Apparently, Reince Priebus had a little convo with the Donald recently and told him to tone it down.

Hee hee, I wonder why...?:)

The Donald That Keeps On Giving

Donald Trump's remarks about Hispanics being all rapey and stealy and stuff has been a real boon for the Democratic party. And the GOP...check out those poll numbers:) Reince Priebus must be just shitting himself right now in anticipation of the debates next month. He probably thought he could dust all that angry and hateful bullshit under the rug after 2012. Less debates was going to be the fix, right? Hee hee, not so much. You can only deny the negative aspects of your ideology for so long before it bites you in the ass with voters. Unless Jeb Bush is the nominee, the GOP can wave buh bye to the Hispanic vote.

Because that first debate on Fox News is going to be an excellent example of just where conservatives stand on Hispanics. They are going to be falling all over themselves to somehow support what the Donald has said. Personally, I can't wait! Combine this gem with six of the 16 (!) candidates running for the GOP nomination getting the cut to accommodate the required 10 slots and there really is a lot to look forward to!!

Illegal Immigrants Working on Trump's Hotel?

Donald Trump made a lot of noise at the announcement of his presidential campaign. But the thing that raised the most attention was his comment about Mexican immigrants:

When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

Most other Republican candidates have repudiated Trump, except for Ted Cruz, who congratulated Trump for his comments.

The thing is, while Trump is bellowing about illegal immigrants, he's employing them to build his hotel:

Interviews with about 15 laborers helping renovate the Old Post Office Pavilion revealed that many of them had crossed the U.S-Mexico border illegally before they eventually settled in the Washington region to build new lives.

Several of the men, who hail mostly from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, have earned U.S. citizenship or legal status through immigration programs targeting Central Americans fleeing civil wars or natural disasters. Others quietly acknowledged that they remain in the country illegally.

Latinos make up about 25% of the construction workforce. It's an open secret that Latino immigrants are widely employed in construction: about 29% are undocumented.

This is especially true in states like Texas, where private-sector unions have been completely dismantled. Companies have little interest in ensuring that construction workers are citizens and documented immigrants: they just want to pay workers as little as possible, and illegal immigrants are willing to work for much less than unionized Americans.

Trump's legal counsel said he will take no responsibility for this situation: he'll just blame the subcontractor.

“Mr. Trump, who is the 100 percent owner of the Old Post Office, hired one of the largest contractors in the world to act as the general contractor,” Cohen said in a telephone interview. “That company is Lend Lease. They then go out and employ subcontractors to work for them. The obligation to check all workers on site is exclusive to Lend Lease. This of course assumes that the assertion regarding the employees’ status is accurate.”

In other words, Trump is shocked -- I tell you -- shocked to find out that the Mexicans he insulted in his announcement are the very people building his fancy hotel.

Trump always talks about how smart he is, he brags about being god-damned lying son of a bitch who screws over everyone he does business with. Is his entire presidential campaign nothing more than a bargaining tactic to intimidate construction workers on his sites so he can pay them less?

Politically Correct Fire Fighting Gear

Immigrants Threatening Your Way Of Life?

The Surest Way to Reduce Abortions: Long-Acting Birth Control

Conservatives have been bitching about abortions for decades, doing everything they could to eliminate them. In some states they've passed laws to require waiting periods before abortions. They've taken away doctors' freedom of speech, forcing them to follow a state-mandated script. They've forced women to undergo expensive and invasive vaginal probes.

Six years ago one state decided to do something real: starting in 2009 Colorado gave girls and young women free long-acting birth control. The result?

The birthrate for teenagers across the state plunged by 40 percent from 2009 to 2013, while their rate of abortions fell by 42 percent, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. There was a similar decline in births for another group particularly vulnerable to unplanned pregnancies: unmarried women under 25 who have not finished high school.

Colorado's program was funded by the Buffett Foundation, named for Warren Buffett's late wife.

This proves that simple and straightforward contraceptive programs will prevent more abortions than all the abstinence programs and restrictive legislation put together.

It also shows why private companies who want to opt out of paying for employees' birth control are so completely wrong: preventing unwanted pregnancies reduces the number of abortions, saves the health care system billions of dollars in unwanted pregnancies, helps keep young women and their unwanted children off the government dole, increases the graduation rate allowing more young women to get the education that is very much needed to be competitive in today's job market.

And, quite blatantly, it's better for business: women who don't get pregnant accidentally make better employees. Women with IUDs and implanted contraceptives are much less likely to get pregnant unexpectedly. Their absences can be better planned and aligned with business needs. Everybody wins.

It's now clear that the only reason a business wouldn't pay for their employees' birth control is to register their unbridled and childish annoyance at the health care law that has been designated the primary achievement of the first African American president of the United States.

The fact that it works and is better for everyone all around just makes conservatives that much angrier.

I Wonder Which Party And Ideology They Belong To...

Charleston Church Shooter Dylan Roof Receives $4 Million Dollars in Donations From Supporters

Update: This story has been proven false by Snopes. 

I am very happy to be wrong!!

What Happens When You Allow Open Carry...

2 dead after shootout at downtown Austin Omni Hotel

This morning, a man with a loaded rifle walked into an Omni Hotel in Austin, causing customers to cry, yell and call 911. Texas law allows the open carry of long guns, but does not require background checks on guns purchased from unlicensed sellers. An Omni Hotels manager said today that the hotel "follows state and local laws," meaning it allows people to open carry long guns inside its hotels.

"Police say they received a 911 call from a patron at 4:48 a.m. saying there was a man in the lobby of the Omni Hotel who was walking around with a gun. Two minutes later, the caller said the man had shot someone."

A profoundly sad example of how we can't really tell the good guys from the bad guys now can we?

Still Crazy in Texas

On the Fourth of July the nutcases in Texas are still convinced that the military's Jade Helm 15 military exercise is a plot to take over the state:

Terry Wareham, head of the Bastrop County Tea Party, said she fears that the Obama administration might deliberately instigate violence between soldiers and Texans as a pretext for establishing martial law.

“We’re not against the military. This community is very supportive of the military,” Wareham said. “But who’s the commander in chief of the military?”

Does this nitwit Wareham really believe the US military would ever follow an illegal order to attack Texas? He says he's not against the military, but seems to know nothing about the US military.

In 2007 the extremely conservative Heritage Foundation wrote a report about the demographics of the military. They found that in 2007 military recruits from the heavily Republican south and mountain west states were represented 20 to 50% . They also found that most of those same southern and western states were much more heavily represented among enlisted personnel than California and northern states. Texas was the most heavily represented state in the military: 11% of all enlistees were from there, more than twice the number of the second largest state, New York. Hispanics, coincidentally, also make up 11% of active duty members.

Did the Texas nitwit hear that 18% of active duty members are African American and would somehow brainwash the other 82% of the military into blindly following illegal orders to attack Texas?

Fact is, the military is dominated by white southerners. The default accent of the military is a smeared Texas to Virginia drawl. Military bases are predominantly in the conservative south and west. That's not because Obama built them there to spy on rednecks. It's because bases were originally built in milder climates to facilitate year-round training, and senators and representatives from those states have fought tooth and nail to keep those bases in their states because of all the cash the federal government pumps in with military spending.

Or is the Texas nitwit afraid that all the white supremacists trying to infiltrate the US military will start following Obama's orders and impose martial law?

Wareham is right to be concerned that there are people who want to start a war in this country: people like Dylann Roof. Although I suppose Wareham thinks that the terrorist murders at that church in North Carolina were a secret FBI false flag attack to rationalize putting North Carolina under martial law.

It seems abundantly clear that these people are just cranking up the paranoia to keep elderly white folks in the South quaking in their boots so they turn out and vote for a rich white southerner in 2016.

Lots of Reflection

My question on Quora, How exactly are Christians under attack in the United States?,  has now received nearly 20,000 views. There have really been some great answers and the top one has this great line in it.

In essence, for the first time in living memory Christians are being called out on the ways they've accrued, maintained, and abused privilege in this country. The vast majority are taking this in a remarkably Christ-like way, but the ones making this claim (oh no! we're being persecuted!) are still fighting to restore their dominance.

Right. It's not that they are being persecuted. It's that they are not allowed to be bigoted assholes anymore and that pisses them off. In fact, this comment can be extended to all of conservative land. It's not that the media is liberal. It's that they are telling the truth about conservative BS. It's not that fact checkers are biased. They are calling conservatives on their bullshit and people are finally listening.

Check out this answer.

The comment thread is most illuminating. Here is my favorite.

Your sect may claim that Jesus had something to do with the harsh rules of the Old Testament, but you seem to cherry-pick which rules to keep and which to throw away. You have no evidence that your interpretation of the Bible is accurate or that any deity actually exists. You are not stating the truth. You are preaching the doctrines of your sect, doctrines that are without supporting evidence. Other Christian denominations reject what you teach.

Yep.

Zoinks! Another "fake" Christian!!! Seems like this is becoming a trend. Gee, I wonder why...:)

A People's Contest

This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men; to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life. Yielding to partial and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading object of the Government for whose existence we contend.

--President Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Congress, July 4, 1961. 

What About My Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness?

God Distances Self From Christian Right

God Distances Self From Christian Right

“Many people hear my name in connection with the Christian Right and start to assume we are aligned in some capacity, and I’m here to say, for the record, that we are not,” God continued. “So let me just be clear: I don’t want women to get raped—not ever. I don’t think their resulting pregnancies are my divine will. And if a woman is raped, then she has the right to get an abortion, period. I do not agree with Mourdock. I do not agree with the Christian Right. End of story.”

God then went on to cite several incidents—ranging from the Westboro Baptist Church’s “God Hates Fags” campaign to Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin’s remark this year that victims of “legitimate rape” rarely get pregnant—as examples of what He described as “an unmistakable and disturbing trend toward intolerance that I do not support.” 

Man, I love God...:)

Death by Measles

Two days ago Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill that eliminated religious and personal-belief exemptions for vaccinations of California schoolchildren. This was in response to an outbreak of measles in Disneyland last December that infected at least 150 people.

The whining started immediately. Jim Carrey ranted on Twitter, "California Gov says yes to poisoning more children with mercury and aluminum in manditory [sic] vaccines. This corporate fascist must be stopped."

The thing is, thimerosal has long been removed from most childhood vaccines:

By 2001, Thimerosal was removed from most vaccines in North America and Europe. It was gradually replaced by other non mercury compounds, and some vaccines have been formulated so they don't need preservatives.

But the number of autism cases continues to rise, a trend discovered as early as 2008. Why? Probably because other environmental toxins, such as a neuro-toxic pesticides, still abound, and parents are waiting longer to have children: there's a link between parental age and autism: "autism rates were 66 percent higher among children born to dads over 50 years of age than among those born to dads in their 20s. Autism rates were 28 percent higher when dads were in their 40s versus 20s."

There are, however, people who really do need exemptions to mandatory vaccination laws: people allergic to vaccine components and those with compromised immune systems.

One such person was a woman in rural Washington who recently died from the measles. This was the first such death in the United States in 12 years. A measles epidemic from 1989-1991 killed 123 children. One of the outbreaks was in Philadelphia where two church groups had religious objections to vaccines. Six children there died, mostly because parents refused medical care.

If everyone who can be vaccinated is vaccinated, society develops "herd immunity." Isolated cases of measles (usually from international travelers) are stopped cold because no one else can be infected. But when lots of people aren't vaccinated, measles spreads like wildfire and can kill vulnerable individuals. To make it worse, not all victims of measles develop the most common symptom: the woman who died never had a rash. She died from pneumonia, a common consequence of the disease, and the measles infection wasn't discovered until after she died.

Anyway, when Jim Carrey divorced Jenny McCarthy why didn't he dump her silly ideas too? He should go back to ranting about Fox News and mocking Charlton Heston.

Free Hugs

The New Ronald Reagan

Messina mentioned huge shifts in public opinion on major issues including LGBT rights, immigration, income inequality and climate change that make the 270 electoral votes necessary to secure the White House simply out of reach for Republicans.

Mere Concern?

Fires at black churches raise concern

Mere "concern?" Really?!!?


“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” 

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Gay Marriage, the Full Faith and Credit Clause, and Guns

Since the Supreme Court struck down gay marriage bans some conservatives have been talking as if the Apocalypse had come. They're crying about judicial activism and states rights. But from a Constitutional and practical standpoint, it's impossible for the states to have different marriage laws.

States rights sounds like a good idea. Texas can have a speed limit of 90 mph, and New York can limit it to 70 mph. They have different environments and requirements: Texas is a big, empty, flat, arid wasteland with cities hundreds of miles apart. New York is crowded, hilly, and covered with trees that limit sight lines

But when you're in a state you must abide by that state's laws. Texans can't drive 90 mph when they're in New York, right?

So why should a gay couple from New York moving to Texas expect to stay married? Why can't Texas split them up and take away their kids if Texans can't stand the idea of two men or two women being married?

Because the Constitution says so. The Full Faith and Credit Clause (Article IV, Section 1) requires that each state recognize the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. Texas must recognize companies incorporated in New York, as well as New York marriages, divorces, adoptions, etc.

Furthermore, the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law. That means that in states where gay marriage is legal, gay couples must be granted the same rights and privileges as heterosexual couples. That means every couple must have all the same rights of inheritance, tax laws, child custody, and so on.

These two clauses come into play because Americans move all the time. Every year about 12% of Americans move. About 2% of Americans move between states. In 2013 that was 7 million people.

And that's where the idea of states having different definitions of marriage falls apart. If a gay couple moves to Texas they have to be treated the same as a heterosexual couple who made the same move. Texas must treat both couples equally -- they can't take away the gay couple's children or deny gay spouses inheritance or hospital visitation rights. It must be this way, because people move so frequently it would total chaos if states had veto power over other states' marriages and court decisions.

For example, the marriage age with either parental and/or court consent for girls in Georgia, Hawaii, Missouri, Mississippi is 15. In New York, Pennsylvania and Texas it's 14, in New Hampshire it's 13, in Massachusetts it's 12, and in California there's no minimum (eww!). If states didn't have to recognize the marriage laws of other states, an 18-year-old Texas man could be arrested for statutory rape if he had sex with his 14-year-old wife in most other states in the Union.

Furthermore, if states had total autonomy over marriage law, Louisiana could outlaw divorce, then charge divorcees from other states with bigamy if they remarried in Louisiana.

If conservatives want their marriages and divorces to be recognized in other states (and conservatives get divorced a lot), then gay marriages have to be recognized in all other states.

And if gay marriage is legal in any state, then it has to be recognized in all states. And since it was already here to stay in most states, it must be legal in all states.

Conservatives are all for states rights, except when they're against them: at the same time conservative states were refusing to recognize gay marriages from other states, their members of Congress were trying to pass a law that would force states to recognize concealed-carry gun permits from other states.

In fact, some conservatives are already citing last week's gay marriage ruling to claim that they have a Constitutional right to carry a gun in public. It's a bogus argument. 

But it's creepy that some gun nuts are so wedded to their guns that they actually think they're wedded to their guns.

Hating Black People

#Loserswithguns

Tragedy as boy, 3, dies after shooting himself in the head with loaded pistol he found in a closet 

After the death of his son, Brian Holbrook backed the right to bear arms in a Facebook post. He said 'I have nothing wrong with guns, I will still support the Second Amendment [sic]. 'All I ask is that everyone please, please safety first... lock it up and put it out of reach of anyone that has no business being around a gun especially kids. 'Gun safety people! My boy would still be here if it was put away like it should have been.'

But you didn't and he is dead. And YOU should be held accountable. The law should be changed so that every time this happens, the fucking moronic parents are charged with homicide and have to serve a mandatory minimum of 25 years.

These are the #loserswithguns the Gun Cult defends every single day.

5 Years Of Conservatives Wrongly Declaring 'The End Of Obamacare'

Comes with a free "I am a fucking idiot" T-shirt.

NBC To Trump: Buh Bye!

NBCUniversal cuts ties with Donald Trump

Man, I love the free market:)

And I believe that Mr. Trump is polling second in the GOP presidential race for 2016. I guess we know now the maturity level of the base!!

Good Question (s)

Are We Still Yammering About Whether the Civil War Was About Slavery? Really?

Are we still arguing about whether the Civil War was really fought over slavery? Seriously? What's next? The Holocaust was really about Jews overstaying their tourist visas? The Inquisition was a scientific exploration of the limits of the human body? The Romans were genuinely curious about whether a man could kill a hungry lion? The Bataan death march was a controlled trial of different brands of army boots? WTF?

Indeed...

A Change is Gonna Come

Regular readers will note that as of today Markadelphia is no more. In keeping with the changes already in place with the comments section, this site has been renamed in order to move away from a personality based site to a general political discussion forum where ideas are at the forefront, not the people who write about them.

Nikto has been contributing a great deal to this site and gets more hits than me anyway so it's way past time that a change was made to truly make it a site for both of us (as well as John Waxey if he ever stops digging for artifacts long enough to share his wisdom). We have a few other people in mind that may end up being contributors as well in the future.

This won't be the the only change. We're planning on implementing some design changes as well as different types of content in addition to the regular posts that 300-600 of you enjoy every day. We got close to 1,000 hits in a 24 hour period after the two big SCOTUS decisions this week and I think that's pretty amazing. Thank you very much!!

So, what is "Zombie Politics?" Well, we clearly have been having the same political discussions in this country from day one. Sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes that's a bad thing. Either way, we here at Zombie Politics will be talking about it!!

What A Week!

What a fantastic week for Barack Obama, Democrats and liberals everywhere. The Affordable Care Act is solidified...gay marriage is the law of the land...the trade bill is about to be signed by the president...Confederate flags finally coming down...and this speech....





Stunning...

The reaction from conservatives has largely been the typical adolescent furor. This, however, caught my eye...

Huckabee and Santorum Sign On with Minister Who Wants To Set Himself on Fire Over LGBT Rights

...as a fantastic example of how conservatives in this country are really no different than Islamic extremists (see: American Taliban). If I were in Homeland Security, I'd keep an extra eye on the right wing groups for the next few weeks and possibly in perpetuity.

Because our country is finally moving in the right direction and the mouth foamers are likely not going to stand for it. Given that they throw a good hump into their gun collection every day, I'd wager that more than a few of them are going to act up violently, as was the case with Dylan Roof.

Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll accidentally shoot each other:)

The Not So White House

Not The New Normal

Pants on Fire!

Ever had some old,m conservative uncle in your family foam at the mouth about how the Civil War wasn't really about slavery? What follows is invariably a giant pile of wacky, ideological nonsense.

The fine folks at Politifact recently tackled this very same issue and ruled it PANTS ON FIRE.

The erratic anti-feminist and purposefully politically incorrect Gavin McInnes added his take on the Confederate flag controversy. McInnes, a frequent Fox News guest, tweeted to more than 50,000 followers on June 23, 2015, that the Confederate flag should continue to fly. Why? Because, "The Civil War wasn't about slavery," he wrote. "It was about secession." In a companion tweet, McInnes said anyone, like Northerners, who think the Civil War was about slavery should go to Google. "Look it up," said McInnes, who was born in England and grew up in Canada. 

So we did.

And what did they find?

We typed in "causes of the Civil War." The first hit was History.net which told us, "The burning issue that led to the disruption of the union, however, was the debate over the future of slavery. That dispute led to secession, and secession brought about a war in which the Northern and Western states and territories fought to preserve the Union, and the South fought to establish Southern independence as a new confederation of states under its own constitution." The second link on Google was to PBS and its History Detectives series. There we read, "What led to the outbreak of the bloodiest conflict in the history of North America? A common explanation is that the Civil War was fought over the moral issue of slavery. In fact, it was the economics of slavery and political control of that system that was central to the conflict." No. 3 on the Google hit parade was Americanhistoryabout.com. That page offered five main reasons and the first one was "Economic and social differences between the North and the South." And what were those differences? 

Well, slavery.

The fourth link on Google was from the Civil War Preservation Trust. The trust wrote "The Civil War was the culmination of a series of confrontations concerning the institution of slavery." 

Perhaps they should have been directed to those sites which tell the (ahem) real story. You know that ones I'm talking about, right? They all have the same common, unspoken theme: I can't face the ugliness in my own ideology so I'm going to blame the victim and redirect. 

Of course, the internet can be wrong so Politifact reached out to some experts on the Civil War.

Eric Foner, professor of history at Columbia University, used the words of secessionists themselves as proof of their intentions. "Read South Carolina's Declaration of the causes of secession," Foner said. "It is all about protecting slavery." Indeed, the first sentence refers to slaveholding states, and throughout, the institution of slavery is the pivot point around which all else turns. Historian Stephanie McCurry at the University of Pennsylvania points to Mississippi’s declaration of secession. Sentence two begins, "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery." 

So just to be clear: Slavery led to secession, which led to the Civil War.

Of course, we here on this blog know how the conservative brain works. The more facts they get, the worse they get and we all get to experience the backfire effect. My advice is to simply chuckle and say, "Sure, Unc...anything you say."

A Blow To Right Wing Bloggers and Commenters Everywhere

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of the subsidies for the Affordable Care Act 6-3.  

“It is implausible that Congress meant the Act to operate in this manner,” the majority of the justices wrote. “Congress made the guaranteed issue and community rating requirements applicable in every State in the Nation. But those requirements only work when combined with the coverage requirement and the tax credits. So it stands to reason that Congress meant for those provisions to apply in every state as well.”

In short, stop with the adolescent wordsmithing.

This ruling illustrates what adults in reality think of right wing blog arguments and comments, essentially the plaintiff's case. They rejected it utterly.

Combine this with the likely ruling striking down gay marriage bans and our country is really looking a heckuva lot better these days!