Climate Change Goes Local

I was very please to see this week's cover story in CSM regarding climate change going local. Here's the skinny...

In city after city in South Florida, local officials are dealing with climate change. So, too, are municipalities big and small across the United States. The same determination is evident among governors and legislators in more than two dozen states. And it is magnified worldwide: Surprising progress in grappling with global warming is coming from surprising nations. 

This groundswell of action on climate change is producing solutions and often bypassing lagging political leadership. The gathering force of these acts, significant and subtle, is transforming what once seemed a hopeless situation into one in which success can at least be imagined. The initiatives are not enough to halt the world’s plunge toward more global warming – yet. But they do point toward a turning point in greenhouse gas emissions, and ambitious – if still uneven – efforts to adapt to the changes already in motion.

Outstanding!

Here's something else that's very interesting...

Green lawns trump the political arguments over climate change, says Mr. Brown. “We don’t say ‘climate change,’ ” he admits. “It’s ‘protecting resources’ or ‘sustainability.’ That way, you can duck under the political radar.”

Right. This is exactly what Mooney talked about in "The Republican Brain." When words like "climate change" become so propagandized, you have to tell a different story. Who wouldn't be for protecting resources and sustainability?

It's Not _____________ When We Do It!

Donald Trump banned from RedState over menstruation jibe at Megyn Kelly

Aw...were their feelings hurt? Are they are all PC and shit now?

Sheesh...what a bunch of hypocrites. So much for the "outrage" over everyone being offended all the time:)

Good Sunday Words

"The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! 'Father, the atheists?' Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class. We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all. And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: We need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. 'But I don't believe, Father, I am an atheist!' But do good: We will meet one another there." 

  ---Pope Francis, 22 May 2013

Debate A Go Go

Lots of post debate analysis out there. Here are a few of my favorites...

Fear That Debate Could Hurt G.O.P. in Women’s Eyes

Ya think? It will never cease to amaze me how conservatives play the victim card and blame the media for the ACTUAL WORDS THAT COME OUT OF THEIR FUCKING MOUTHS. Save Carly Fiorina, none of the GOP nominees will get the female vote. I thought they were going to try to fix that after 2012.

FactChecking the GOP Debate, Late Edition

Darn those pesky fact checkers!! Reality has a well known liberal bias...

If you listened closely Thursday night, several Republican candidates let some heresies slip out.

Indeed:)

Hillary Clinton Can’t Stop Laughing At Dumbass Republicans 

I wonder how much she wants Trump to be the nominee...:)

Fox News panel blasts Trump’s debate complaints

Are they serious wondering why Trump is so high in the polls right now?

Think about the personality of Donald Trump and how that represents the characteristics of the GOP base. Trump is angry, hateful and peddles fear on a consistent basis. His behavior is similar to that of an adolescent bully and is most aristocratic, believing firmly in a hierarchical structure for society where the wealthy and privileged few lord over the peasants (see also: the Antebellum South). These are all traits that exemplify people in the GOP base and it's exactly why he is ahead in the polls.

More importantly, Trump is a "have"...a mega wealthy person who GOP voters...the "soon to haves"...believe will someday be them if they just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. That is, of course, if the federal government, liberals, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the gun grabbers don't foil them in their quest to be just like The Donald.

Political Correctness? Conservatives Invented It!

It's common for conservatives to bitch about "political correctness." In the debate last night, Megyn Kelly called Trump out:

You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals,' " Ms. Kelly said during the debate, which set a cable record, with 24 million viewers tuning in. "How will you answer the charge from Hillary Clinton, who [is] likely to be the Democratic nominee, that you are part of the war on women?”

“I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct,” Mr. Trump said, to some applause.

Then it got slightly ugly. “And honestly Megyn, if you don’t like it, I’m sorry. I’ve been very nice to you, although I could probably maybe not be, based on the way you have treated me. But I wouldn’t do that,” Trump said.

As you can see from the highlighted section, Trump was not-so-subtly threatening to savage Kelly with the same sort of epithets he uses on other women if she didn't treat him with kid gloves. And, true to form, after the debate Trump whined like some fourth grader about what a meanie Kelly was:

“The questions to me were not nice,” Trump said. “I didn’t think they were appropriate.”

Trump especially took issue with Megyn Kelly, the Fox News host who began her first question to Trump by listing the derogatory remarks he’s made about women he doesn’t like.

“I think Megyn behaved very nasty to me,” he said.

Did she call him an egotistical, misogynistic, fat, old, balding, combed-over, narcissistic, smug, sociopathic liar and dick? No, even though all of those things are demonstrably true. She said nothing nasty or profane about Trump. She merely asked him to how he would respond when the vileness and insults that he and so many conservatives spew about women were quoted back to him. How dare she confront him with his own words!

Tellingly, Trump's first recourse, like so many conservatives of the Limbaugh ilk, was to hide behind the guise of speaking truth and being put down by "political correctness." Whenever these ... men blurt out the verbal diarrhea that is their misogyny, racism and homophobia, and people call them out for it, they defend themselves by claiming that they are the victims and that "politically correct feminazis and liberals" are trying to muzzle them.

Which is the height of hypocrisy, because conservatives invented political correctness. They don't call it that, of course. They gave it all sorts of dire-sounding names: blasphemy, sacrilege, heresy, miscegenation, profanity. In Trump's case it's different, obviously, because nothing is sacred to him except himself.

When teachers first taught evolution in the schools conservatives called it sacrilege and tried to muzzle them. More recently conservatives have literally forced political correctness on school curricula by rewriting history to edit out the crimes whites visited upon black and native Americans, and turning history books into Ronald Reagan hagiographies. When blacks demonstrated in the 1950s and 60s for civil rights, challenging the conservative notion that God had made the races separate with whites superior to blacks, conservatives sent cops and dogs to beat the protesters into submission. When blacks married whites conservatives called it blasphemy and miscegenation. When homosexuals marched in gay pride parades and demanded the right to marry the person they loved conservatives screamed blasphemy and claimed God sent hurricanes in retaliation.

Whenever their sacred cows are gored, conservatives are the first ones to whine about being attacked. When their tender notions of religion or sexuality or American exceptionalism (or Trump's ego) are challenged they act as if the trumpets of doom have sounded and the world will end at any moment.

The thing that conservatives call "political correctness" is just the Golden Rule: treat others as you would have others treat you. But that's a teaching they don't seem to have heard of.

If Trump is going to call women fat pigs and and Mexicans rapists he can't whine about "political correctness" when people call him what he's just demonstrated he is: a misogynist and a racist. Donnie boy, if you're going to dish it out, you have to take it -- you can't go whining to mommy that Megyn was being nasty to you by holding you to account for what you said.

Debate Winners and Losers

Here are my takeaways from the two GOP debates yesterday...

For the first debate, Carly Fiorina was the clear winner. She was sharp, articulate, and substantive. The other six were essentially non entities although Lindsey Graham made some interesting points but that was largely due to his experience in the Senate. Rick Perry was awful. He just looked ridiculous. Pataki and Gilmore...why are they even running? Jindal very much looked and acted like he belonged at the kiddie table. Santorum's time has come and gone...just like evangelical Christians.

In the second debate, the clear winner was John Kasich. Even when pressed on issues like Medicaid and gay marriage, he stuck to his guns and proudly defended himself. Jeb Bush did an alright job as well but he needed to do more than that. The Donald was the Donald, of course, and, once again, lacked any real substance on policy. The first question was hilarious and it's going to be mighty interesting if he decides to run as a third party candidate.

Ben Carson was too flat. Chris Christie's main schitck has been stolen by the Donald so he wasn't much of a factor. A lot of people thought Rubio was good but I didn't see it. It's the same old ideas dressed up in a young, diverse looking package. Like Santorum, Huckabee's time is done. Cruz couldn't really be himself, again because of Trump. Paul really looked terrible but at least he didn't come off as bland as Walker, the real loser of both debates. His defense of himself as "aggressively normal" does not translate well to the national stage. If he is going to catch fire, he has to be a whole lot more than he is now. I don't think he can do it.

I'll give some props to the Fox News commentators for asking tough questions but they started off so fucking bad it was hard to take them seriously. Did they know the cameras were on for that pre -game 10 minutes? How was this planned? They looked very unprofessional.

Look for Fiorina and Kasich to move up in the polls.

Where's the Outrage? Where's the Video?

Almost two weeks ago South Carolina cops shot and killed Zachary Hammond, a 19-year-old unarmed white man, in a drug bust. His family and lawyer are dismayed that there isn't a national outcry:

“It’s sad, but I think the reason is, unfortunately, the media and our government officials have treated the death of an unarmed white teenager differently than they would have if this were a death of an unarmed black teen,” Bland told The Washington Post this week. “The hypocrisy that has been shown toward this is really disconcerting.”

It's not hypocrisy because the situations isn't the same: Hammond was not "unarmed" -- he was driving a car -- and most importantly, there's no video of the shooting. 

In the Sandra Bland case a cop forced Bland to change lanes, then pulled her over and ticketed for not signalling the lane change, then arrested her for not putting her cigarette out in order to receive the ticket. Then she was thrown in jail for three days and committed suicide.

In the Samuel DuBose case the shooting officer's own body cam recorded an assassination. In the Walter Scott shooting a passerby used his cell phone to record the cop murdering a fleeing man. In the Michael Brown case there was no video, but the cop was in a car and Brown was just walking down the street.

In Hammond's case, the shooting officer is claiming that Hammond was trying to run over him with a car. This is what the officer claimed in the DuBose case, but the video showed he was lying. (There are also rumors that DuBose had marijuana in the car.)

Getting run over by a car is a serious concern for cops at traffic stops. Two years ago police in Des Moines shot and killed Tyler Comstock, an "unarmed" white 19-year-old man who had taken his father's truck after an argument over cigarettes. The elder Comstock reported it stolen; when police caught up with Tyler he led them on a wild car chase through city streets, endangering many other drivers and pedestrians, finally pulling into a park, where he tried to ram cop cars. The police finally shot and killed him.

Did they really need to kill Comstock once his car was stopped in the park? Hard to say. But the episode was caught on video, and it was clear that the kid was totally out of control, trying to kill the cops. Hence, no outrage.

Last weekend Officer Sean Bolton, a cop in Memphis, was killed during a traffic stop for drugs:

"Officer Bolton apparently interrupted some sort of drug transaction," Armstrong said. "A digital scale and a small baggie of marijuana ... were located inside of the vehicle."

The violence was senseless given how mundane the stop was, Armstrong said.

"We're talking about less than 2 grams of marijuana. You're talking about a misdemeanor citation," he said. "We probably would not have even transported for that."

I suspect that the cop in Zach Hammond's death used excessive force. I suspect it was a bad shoot, that the cop was angry because the murdered kid was fleeing (the Guardian reports that Hammond was shot in the side, which means the car wasn't bearing down on the cop). I suspect that the department are helping Hammond's killer cover up a bad shoot by refusing to name him and release video of the killing. But I can't know these things without that video.

Our system gives cops the benefit of the doubt to use deadly force to protect themselves and others. That's the deal society makes with cops to make it possible to put their lives on the line every day.

This situation might seem hopeless, but there is something that we can do about these senseless deaths at traffic stops. And it's not just putting body cams on every cop.

Both Bolton's and Hammond's -- and perhaps DuBose's -- deaths were ultimately caused by drug laws. I personally think smoking weed is stupid and useless. But it's clearly no worse than drinking whiskey.

The easiest thing we could do to make cops and the public safer during traffic stops would be to decriminalize drug use. Drivers would be a lot less likely to flee or fight if drugs are legal.

That will make cops a lot less likely to stop random cars for minor infractions -- it's usually just an excuse to check for drugs, except in cities like Ferguson that balance their budgets by making cops shake down motorists for trivial offenses.

It would also prevent a lot of gang warfare and put South and Central American drug cartels out of business.

GOP Debate Tonight!

If These Guys Were Muslims...

The FBI has arrested three right-wing nut jobs who think that the government is going to use Operation Jade Helm 15 to declare martial law. 

The response of the national media has been muted, as it has been the numerous other times right-wingers have hatched plots to murder law enforcement officials and American military service members.

These guys were getting ready for armed insurrection and ambushes:

There were Kevlar helmets and body armor, pipe bombs and handmade grenades, large amounts of gunpowder and dozens of rounds of ammunition for a military-grade sniper rifle.

Federal officials say three North Carolina men — Walter Eugene Litteral, 50; Christopher James Barker, 41; and Christopher Todd Campbell, 30 — spent months compiling their cache, much of it purchased through a military surplus store owner who became so concerned about the plot that the person became the FBI’s informant.

Their plan including murdering U.S. military forces:

The plan involved testing the explosives on land in Shelby, N.C. But the ambush against U.S. forces would take place on Litteral and Campbell’s a 99-acre camp in Clover, S.C.

“According to [Campbell], he and Litteral intend to booby-trap the camp and draw government’s forces into the camp and kill them,” the warrant states.

Remember the fear and outrage that the shootings in Chattanooga caused when a depressed Muslim kid killed American service members? These rednecks in North Carolina were plotting something much worse.

Recordings of their telephone conversations are illuminating:

The documents indicated that Litteral told another person in a phone conversation: “I got a f—— .45 beside my bed. I got a .45 and a 9-mil in my truck. I’ve got a 9-mil and a .380, or a .380 in her car. Safe full of weapons. You know what? Every time I open up this damn safe, I mean I’ve got, I’ve got at least 30 weapons that I can see and some tucked all the way in the back back.” 

How much you want to bet that Litteral thinks of himself as a "good guy with a gun?"

He sounds an awful lot like the vigilante gun-lovers who set themselves up outside recruiting centers across the country after Chattanooga.

How Not to Prove Your Point

Vanity Fair has an article about the "staggering" inequality in Hollywood movies, as reported in a study from USC. But what is really staggering about this study is how extremely bad it is: it is riddled with errors and outright lies.

The claims are:

After seven years of collecting data from the 100 top-grossing fictional films from 2007 to 2014, the group has produced a report titled “Inequality in 700 Popular Films.” Here is just some of what they found:

• Gender: In the 700 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2014, only 30.2 percent of the 30,835 speaking characters were female. That means for every 2.3 guys with lines, you’ll only see one speaking woman. And while there’s no analysis of the quality of the lines given to women, the 2015 blockbusters don’t exactly paint a pretty picture.
• Age: Nestled inside the gender statistics is the fact that in the 100 top-grossing films of 2014, “no female actors over 45 years of age performed a lead or co lead role.” (Nope, not even Meryl Streep. As Manohla Dargis of The New York Times points out, in 2014 “the hardest-working woman in cinema had only supporting roles, including in the Disney musical Into the Woods.”) And outside of the lead roles the study notes that “only 19.9 percent of the middle-aged characters were female across the 100 top films.”
• Race and Ethnicity: Of the speaking characters in the 100 top films of 2014, 73.1 percent were “White,” 12.5 percent were “Black,” 5.3 percent were “Asian,” 4.9 percent were “Hispanic/Latino,” 2.9 percent were “Middle Eastern,” less than 1 percent were “American Indian/Alaskan Native or Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander,” and 1.2 percent were from “other” racial and/or ethnic groupings. Given that statistic, the uproar over Emma Stone’s controversial casting in Aloha seems pretty justified. As the report points out, sadly, this represents no change “in the portrayal of apparent race/ethnicity” from the previous seven years.

First off, these statistics are not derived from all movies and therefore totally bogus. They're only from the top 100 grossing movies. That means these are the most popular movies, the ones that audiences pay to see over and over again. The demographics for typical repeat movie-goers skews young and it skews male. Any conclusions drawn say nothing about bias and inequality in Hollywood, and everything about the biases of movie-goers.

What these contrived statistics show is that young people don't want to spend their money to see character-driven movies about older people and women. They prefer to see action movies about younger men. Well, duh...

The claim that “no female actors over 45 years of age performed a lead or co lead role" is an outright lie. Sigourney Weaver starred in Avatar at age 59 -- which was the #1 grossing film in 2009. Sandra Bullock starred in Gravity, released in 2013 when she was 49 (sixth grossing film in 2013). Bullock was the only person on screen for about 95% of the film! Judi Dench starred in Philomena in 2013, which was the 80th grossing film in 2013. Dench's The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was the 73rd grossing film in 2012.  Meryl Streep was in the The Iron Lady, which as the 100th grossing film in 2011. Michelle Pfeiffer starred in Dark Shadows (39th grossing film in 2012) at age 54. If you dig, I'm sure you will find dozens more examples.

The numbers on race are fairly close to reality: African Americans make up 12.6% of the population, while the numbers cited for the films is 12.5%, directly reflecting the U.S. population. Asians make up 4.8% of the population (vs. 5.3% in film). The complaint that less that 1% of actors are native American/Hawaiian is similar nonsense, because those ethnicities comprise only 1.1% of the American population in the first place. Ergo, not very far off.

Where popular films do diverge from the reality is in Latinos, who make up 16.4% of the US population (vs. 4.9% in films). But again, the stats derived in this study are bogus, because they come only from the most successful films, not from all films.

Now, I'm not claiming Hollywood is innocent. Do they cast young and attractive people in action flicks instead of old ladies and ethnic actors in sedate internal psychological dramas? Of course, that's what sells! Does Hollywood have an inequality problem, paying female actors less than their male costars? Yes! Is it a crime against nature that older male actors are always paired with love interests 20 or 30 years their junior? No question! Do they put more marketing dollars behind their loud, big-budget, action-filled, youth-oriented action flicks? They would be idiots if they didn't.

But cherry-picking the films for these statistics based on their success completely prevents making any conclusions about inherent bias in Hollywood. Hollywood definitely has a lot of terrible biases, but this is a totally bogus way to show it. This study only says what the preferences of audiences world-wide are.

Yes, Hollywood makes lots of movies about young men in action roles because that's what makes them the most money. They also produce movies that have Latinos, old ladies, old men, fat guys, fat girls, skinny guys, gays, lesbians and so on. And a lot of these movies even gross in the top 100!

Obama Coming For Your Guns?

Here's One the NRA Won't Be Talking About...

Alabama police shoot woman after she shot home invader

Police in Alabama said officers shot a woman who had shot an intruder during a home invasion after she didn’t drop her weapon.

Huntsville police spokesman lieutenant Darryl Lawson told local news site AL.com the woman’s estranged husband came into the house she shared with her mother armed with a gun on Sunday afternoon. The woman opened fire with a shotgun, wounding him.

Her mother called 911 and when police arrived, they heard gunshots and saw the woman in the garage holding the shotgun. They demanded she drop the weapon and when she turned toward them with the gun in her hand, at least one officer fired.

Officers say the estranged husband’s injuries are life-threatening. The woman is expected to survive.

Lawson says the officer who shot the woman has been placed on administrative leave. 

This is a great example of why you are not safer around cops or guns. You especially don't want cops near you when you have a gun...

They Can No Longer Be Trusted

Check this piece out from William Selatan at Slate. Here's only the first reason why Republicans should not be leading our country.

1. North Korea. In all three hearings, Kerry explained how the inspection and verification measures in the Iran deal are designed to rectify flaws that led to the failure of the North Korean nuclear agreement. He spent much of his opening statement outlining these differences. This made no impression. When the Senate held its next hearing a week later, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presiding Republican, dismissed the Iran agreement with a quip: “How did that North Korean deal work out for you?”

Seriously, how old are these guys? 12?

Will Joe Run?

The political world is abuzz this AM with talks of Vice President Joe Biden jumping into the race. Once unthinkable given the death of his son, Beau, a Biden run seems more likely for a couple of reasons.

First, Democrats are worried that the issue of Hillary's authenticity will be a factor in the general election. One would have to be a fool in ignoring the appeal of Donald Trump to the masses. What you say is what you get and, in many ways, Biden is like Trump...for good or ill:)

Second, Beau apparently made his dad promise that we would run so that there would be "Biden values" in the White House and not Hillary Values. I'm not sure what the difference in those values are but we are talking about a deathbed wish here.

Third, Joe Biden is the fucking Vice President of the United States. He has been instrumental in shaping many of Barack Obama's policies and add in his 40+ years of experience. He has to be sitting there thinking...why not me?

In my view, Joe Biden should run for president. Even as someone who thinks that Hillary Clinton has the best chance of continuing the progress we've seen over the last six years, he should be in there to mix it all up. Much of the focus so far as been on Trump and the 89 other candidates running for the GOP nomination. Think of the contrast that would show as the Democrats would have the Vice President, a former Secretary of States, a leading voice on inequality, and Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Navy up on stage. The GOP clown show would look even more ridiculous.

So, Run Joe Run!! Let's have your personality in this race to make it even more colorful!!!

Indeed

From Tom Teves, father of Alex Teves killed in the Aurora shooting.

Another man with a gun. Another movie theater. Another devastated community. Something is very wrong in our society when Americans can’t feel safe in a movie theater, their school, where they worship, or in a shopping mall.

We have an entire federal department devoted to terrorism from outside our borders. What about the terror our communities and families are experiencing right here within our borders? It’s time for meaningful solutions to ensure Not One More life is taken by gun violence. Failure to act makes our politicians culpable for this unending carnage.

The ones that are really culpable are the members and leaders of the gun rights lobby.

If you are actively supporting the loosening of gun laws, you are allowing irresponsible people to gain access to weapons and hurt or kill people. As far as I'm concerned, that makes you an accessory to murder.

And you should be thrown in jail.

The Price of Admission is Bullets

Unwittingly, I became a member of a club no one wants to belong to early on a chilly Friday morning, December 14, 2012. I had never even heard of this club. There is no formal name for this group and we don't have a clubhouse. The members are from across the country, all races, ages and genders. We live in urban areas, the suburbs and rural communities. Yet we all met the memberships' one criterion, a life taken by gun violence. The price of admission to this club is bullets. 

The price of my admission was my sister Mary Sherlach.

---Jane Dougherty, sister of Mary Sherlach, killed at Sandy Hook on December 12, 2012. 

How They Are Brainwashed

Trump Is Creating American Jobs, but Giving Them to Foreigners

You know how Trump keeps telling us that as president he'll create lots of American jobs? Like this:

"I will be the greatest jobs president that God every created," he said in announcing his candidacy on June 16. "I will bring back our jobs from China, Mexico and other places. I will bring back jobs and our money."

The problem is, based on his track record, he won't be creating them for Americans. He's creating them for foreigners that he brings in on H2-B visas:

The temporary work visa program through which Trump's companies have sought the greatest numbers of workers, H-2B, brings in mostly workers from Mexico. Mexicans made up more than 80 percent of the 104,993 admissions to the United States on H-2B visas in 2013. The Trump companies have sought at least 850 H-2B visa workers. 

Remember what Trump told us about Mexico sending us people?

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best," he said in the speech. "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists."

I guess Trump should know. He's hired hundreds of Mexicans in the last several years. And he's still doing it:

This month, [Trump's Mar-a-Lago] resort filed paperwork seeking to bring in 70 foreign workers later this year on H-2B visas to serve as maids, cooks and wait staff, according to paperwork known as "job orders" published on the Labor Department's web site.

And menial labor isn't the only thing Trump thinks foreigners are fit for:

Two of his companies, Trump Model Management and Trump Management Group LLC, have sought visas for nearly 250 foreign fashion models, the records show. 

Trump also prefers to give the job of being Mrs. Trump to foreigners.

His first wife, Ivana, was a model born in Czechoslovakia. They stayed married for 15 years. He did try marrying an American the second time around (Marla Maples) but American women are just so ... uppity. She only lasted six years. So for the third wife he married another woman born in the Soviet bloc, Melanija Knavs, who for some reason Germanized her name when she came to the United States (Melania Knauss, perhaps it was originally German).

Trump and Melania have been married now for 10 years, but I don't imagine this marriage will last -- she's 45 and she's had a child. I can't imagine Trump will put up with that for much longer.

Apparently Trump's whole Miss Universe enterprise is just an audition for the next Mrs. Trump.

How's That $15 An Hour Working Out For Seattle?

Well, it's still too soon to tell, obviously, but Ivar's Salmon House in Seattle seems to be handling it just fine.

As Washington, D.C., and other cities consider following Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles in phasing in a $15-an-hour minimum wage, Ivar's approach, adopted in April, offers lessons in how some businesses might adapt. Ivar's Seafood Restaurants President Bob Donegan decided to raise prices, tell customers that they don't need to tip and parcel the added revenue among the hourly staff. 

For some of the restaurant's lesser-paid workers - including bussers and dishwashers - that's meant as much as 60 percent more. Revenue has soared, supportive customers are leaving additional tips even though they don't need to, and servers and bartenders are on pace to increase their annual pay by thousands, with wages for a few of the best compensated approaching $80,000 a year. 

It is staff, not diners, who feel the real difference, with wages as much as 60 percent higher than before. One waitress is saving for accounting classes and finding it easier to take weekend vacations, while another server is using the added pay to cover increased rent. 

"It's been a surprise," Donegan said. "The customers seem to like it, the employees seem to like it, and it seems to be working, at least in this location." 

Rochelle Hann, 25, is a second-generation worker at Ivar's. Like her mom, she has performed a variety of roles, including serving, bookkeeping and even dressing up as a giant clam. If she keeps working 30 hours a week, her annual pay will jump about $12,000 - money she's socking away for accounting classes at a community college.

Weird...it'a almost as if the economy is improving and becoming (gasp!) not quite as hierarchical in nature. Speaking of adding customers, look who else has had to add more staff.

Could we see a return to the golden age of capitalism?:)

Zero Outrage

So, everyone's outrage level is at maximum over a lion being killed yet the 418 children ages 0-11 that have been killed so far just this year due to gun violence gets nothing. Wait, I'm sorry...there is outrage over the children being killed by guns...it's "FUCK YOU, DON'T TAKE MY GUNS!!!"

The contest on social media right now as to who can be more outraged at a dentist who killed a lion nauseates me.

Meanwhile, in the land of human beings, we've had 207 mass shootings so far this year and 419 children ages 0-11 killed or injured by gun violence. Hey, let's all go blow a bowel about a lion...yay!!

Why Trump Is Winning

Check out this focus group of New Hampshire voters.



A "classy" presidency? Wow. Yet in many ways this makes sense, right? Consider all the reasons I've discussed as to why Trump is doing so well with GOP primary voters. Their comments in this video confirm all of it and more. Like any good marketing person, Trump understands exactly what they want and he gives it to them.

Truly Grateful

So They Did a Study About Defensive Gun Use...

With the NRA constantly claiming that more guns are more better, someone actually did a study about the effectiveness of untrained gun users. It turns out that untrained people are really bad at defending themselves with guns:

They found that, perhaps unsurprisingly, people without firearms training performed poorly in the scenarios. They didn't take cover. They didn't attempt to issue commands to their assailants. Their trigger fingers were either too itchy -- they shot innocent bystanders or unarmed people, or not itchy enough -- they didn't shoot armed assailants until they were already being shot at.

It was a relatively small study, so the statistical significance isn't the greatest. But it backs up what every gun owner should already know: without effective, consistent and repeated training, carrying a gun is useless at best, and will get you killed at worst.

The Concealed Carry University (which sells training DVDs) outlines several gun myths that amateur gun owners fall victim to:

• The “find the gun that works for you” myth. At least 60% of the guns and gear out there were designed with sales and popularity in mind, not effectiveness in a fight. Which are good, which are bad, and what makes them poor choices for self-defense combat?
• The myth of “Accuracy in Combat = Accuracy at the Range." Statistically, 77 percent of shots fired in self-defense situations will miss their targets, even when fired by trained gun-handlers
• The “I’ll see him coming" myth. Roughly 67 percent of the time, the bad guy is the first one to use lethal force. They ambush us. This tells us that a gunfight is not a clear-cut incident where a target pops up from behind a barricade.
• The “I’ll have time to think and decide” myth. The average violent attack is over in 3 seconds. They are “blitz” attacks, designed to blindside and overwhelm us.
• The myth of ‘Fight or Flight’. The reason criminals prefer these ‘blitz attack ambushes’ is because it forces our minds into a state of reflexive reaction. The problem is, our bodies don’t only choose between Fight and Flight, but instead between Fight, Flight, and Freeze. And without specific training, many (if not most) of us are prone to freezing for 3 or more seconds when confronted with a sudden, psychologically and physically overwhelming attack.
• The myth of one shot drops. 93% of single-gunshot wounds are survivable, and in the majority of recorded gunfights, good and bad guys report not even knowing they’ve been shot until after the fight ends. Handguns do not have “stopping power”. A bullet hits with exactly as much force as the recoil of the handgun that fired it. In order to effectively stop a threat, we must destroy something in the attacker’s body (or destroy his psychological motivation), that he needs to continue attacking us. This must be ingrained at the reflexive, muscle-memory level.

But perhaps the most important consideration is your willingness to kill. If you buy a gun, you have to want to kill someone, and do so without having any time to think about it. You can't pull your pistol out with the expectation that you will scare the bad guy away by simply waving it at them. 

The problem is that civilians will never have enough training to safely and effectively wield handguns. They can't afford either the cost or the time to maintain an adequate skill level. Cops are constantly being trained and evaluated, and all too frequently even they shoot bystanders or suspects who are unarmed and harmless.

The final thing civilians are missing is constant psychological evaluation. Police forces constantly monitor the performance and mental state of officers. Bad cops don't just up and kill someone like Walter Scott out of the blue. They typically have a track record of excessive violence and civilian complaints against them.

Civilians have no such oversight. When someone like John Houser, the Lafayette theater shooter, buys a gun there's no one making sure he stays on the straight and narrow. Even when a Houser is reported to the police for violating a restraining order, they frequently don't take his guns away. And in the rare occasions when guns are confiscated, the NRA has forced lawmakers to pass laws that return them in short order. Police departments are made to err on the side of "let the kooks have their guns" in most states, 'cuz it's the Second Amendment!

The NRA wants people to buy lots of guns and go the whole hog and get into the killer mindset. To do that right requires serious training -- not just on the shooting range, but tactical training that simulates real life situations. Anyone who buys a gun should be required to undergo that on a regular basis. However, the vast majority of us would never do that: we don't have the inclination, the time, the money, or the emotional makeup to become ruthless killers.

Unless you plan to become a soulless killing machine like John Houser, having a gun will only make you a menace to yourself and everyone around you.

Someone Please Notice Mike Huckabee

With the GOP clown car filled up to max cap, Mike Huckabee needed to do something to get noticed. This task was especially difficult given the Donald's suckage of all of the air out the room. So, he offered up some right wing blog commenting porn and compared Barack Obama to Adolph Hitler.

I was not offended by what he said as many others are now pretending to be in the media. For me, it was simply another shining example of the type of people are country has to deal with on a daily basis. They start with a straw man (Obama is helping Iran) and then sashay into appeal to fear (Obama is helping Iran kill Jews). They top it off with a false equivalency (Obama is helping Iran kill Jews like Hitler!). This tactic works every time for the audience he is targeting: the GOP base.

Conservatives become more animated when anger, hate and fear are all involved.

The Trump Bubble Has Still Not Burst

Recent polls show Donald Trump as the clear front runner of the GOP nomination. He's ahead of Jeb Bush in New Hampshire by seven points and has pulled to within 2 of Scott Walker in Iowa. Conversely, he would get his ass kicked by Hillary in a general by 16 points and, most surprisingly, by Bernie Sanders by 21 points! The other interesting note about the polls show Jeb only beating Bernie Sanders by 1 point, certainly within the margin of error, while a Sanders-Walker matchup (wouldn't that be something?) has Sanders coming out on top by five points.

Predictions of the Trump Bubble bursting have not come to pass. It's not really that surprising given that he truly is the epitome of the conservative base. He's aristocratic, authoritarian, wealthy, arrogant, loud, angry, fear peddling, hate filled and has one conviction...his own vanity. The words he uses and how he uses them are nearly identical to those we see in the major right wing forums. Any facts presented that directly refute what he says are ignored with hubris.

He's the pissed adolescent's wet fucking dream.

Good Words

Now it’s routine for gun lobby commentators and politicians to blame mass shootings on the existence of so-called “gun-free zones.” This is a red herring, pushed by the gun lobby to advance a “guns everywhere” agenda, which insults the dead and mocks the living by reducing tragedy to a mere trope. 

It’s past time to lay this fallacy to rest.

So-called “gun-free zones” are not the problem, and victim-blaming is not a solution. Dangerous people’s continued access to guns is the problem, largely due to the gun lobby’s extreme agenda which harms everyone, including law-abiding gun owners, military members, and law enforcement. So let’s work on the real problem, together. 

The solution is to strengthen our common-sense gun violence prevention laws, like legislation pending in Congress right now to ensure background checks occur on all gun sales. It won’t prevent every tragedy – nothing will – but it would go a long way toward making Americans safer.

--Peter Read, Ex-Air Force officer: Gun laws, not ‘gun-free zones,’ are the real problem.

Agreed. And thank you for your service.

Trump on Scott Walker

AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHHAHHHAHHAHAHAHHHAAA!!!!!!!

Chattanooga Good Guys Had Guns After All

The conservative meme is that five men died in Chattanooga because big bad government wouldn't let them have guns. However, the FBI reports that some service personnel in the Chattanooga shooting were armed:

A Navy officer and a Marine fired their sidearms hoping to kill or subdue the gunman who murdered five service members last week in Chattanooga, Tennessee, according to multiple military officials familiar with internal reporting on the tragedy.

It remains unclear whether either hit Muhammad Abdulazeez, who was shot and killed on July 16 after he gunned down four Marines and a sailor at the Navy Operational Support Center in Chattanooga. It's also unclear why they were armed, as it is against Defense Department policy for anyone other than military police or law enforcement to carry weapons on federal property.

Other independent news outlets have the same account, including the Chattanooga paper and U.S. News and World Reports. Yet gun nuts around the country have been insisting that if only the service members had guns everyone would be saved, and some of these kooks have been standing "guard" at recruiting centers against the advice of the Pentagon.

In fact, the shooter was being chased by cops with guns, some of the victims had guns, and people died anyway. This proves, for the thousand and first time, that guns are not armor: they do not protect you from bullets.

Abdulazeez attacked two military facilities: no one was killed at the recruiting center where the gunman shot up the windows with a Kalashnikov. Then he drove to the Navy support center, while the cops were chasing him, and killed five guys:

According to FBI Special Agent in Charge Ed Reinhold, who spoke at a press conference July 22, Abdulazeez plowed his rented car through the gates, and with Chattanooga Police chasing close behind, the gunman got out of the car and stormed into the building. Abdulazeez wore a vest with extra ammunition and carried an assault rifle and a handgun. An additional gun was found in his vehicle.

A service member inside the building saw Abdulazeez approaching and fired at hi[m], Reinhold said. The investigator's description of this incident matches account of White's actions that day, as relayed by officials close to the investigation to Navy Times. The gunman shot back and then proceeded inside.

Once inside, he fatally wounded a sailor and "continued to shoot those he encountered," Reinhold said.

As police followed the gunshots, he then walked out the back door into a gated motor pool area, where troops tried to scramble over a fence to safety, and it was here that the four Marines were killed.

When the shooting first started, troops inside the building went room to room to rush their colleagues to safety, said Maj. Gen. Paul W. Brier, commanding general of the 4th Marine Division. Then, some rushed back into the fight.

Two guns belonging to service members were recovered at the scene, he said; shots were fired from at least one. It's unclear if the gunman was hit by one of those weapons, Reinhold said. The military will investigate whether the service members were authorized to have those weapons, he said.

This is a text-book example of how guns provide no form of "protection" in mass shootings.

The bad guys will always have the advantage: they are calm (usually described as having "dead eyes") because they're suicidal nutjobs trying to take out as many people at they can before killing themselves. They shoot first and have surprise.

The targets of shootings like the ones in Chattanooga and Lafayette are busy doing their jobs, or watching a movie. They're not expecting to be shot at. A lot of the time they're not even sure they're hearing gunfire. They're not psychologically prepared for combat mode. They are slow to react.

Most of the time, therefore, even when intended victims are armed, shooters will be able to empty their entire clip before anyone has a chance to respond -- semiautomatic weapons can easily discharge two to four rounds per second. That's a big reason why once upon a time there were laws that limited ammo capacity.

Preventing kooks from getting guns in the first place will save more lives than killing them after they've already shot ten people.

These are the simple facts. Being armed will not prevent all deaths in mass shootings. At best, it can only reduce the number of victims. By the same token, making it harder for nuts like Houser in Lafayette and Abdulazeez in Chattanooga to buy guns won't stop all killings -- but it will reduce the number of victims.

After the Chattanooga shooting everyone was screaming about self-radicalized Islamic terrorists, even though it's clear that Abdulazeez was a mentally ill drug and alcohol abuser. He was basically the same as any other loser who shoots up a mall or high school.

Contrast that with the reaction to the Lafayette theater shooting, when a right-wing white man shot up theater and killed two women. Officials could only bemoan the sorry state of mental health care in this country.

The mental health history of both these men was known before they bought their weapons: that should have made it impossible for them to buy guns legally. And when these mentally ill men attempted to buy guns it should have sent off alarm bells, bringing the FBI and local law enforcement in to evaluate their mental state.

The problem isn't mental health care as much as the sheer ease with which mentally ill Americans can buy massive amounts of firepower. One possible solution: hold gun stores culpable when crooks and kooks use the guns they sell to murder people.

Conservatives blamed "the government" for the sorry state of the mental health care system, but they made it that way.

In the wake of Lafayette conservatives blamed "the government" for the sorry state of the mental health care system, but conservatives made it that way. They constantly rail against Medicaid and the ACA, which is exactly what funds the mental health care system that they insist should stop these shootings. Then they don't want to change the gun laws to make it harder for these nuts to get hold of guns in the first place.

Conservative policies are the direct cause of these shootings: that's why there's a cluster of mass shootings in the South, where gun laws are lax and spending on mental health care is nil.

Nothing will prevent all mass shootings. Tougher gun laws will stop some. Better mental health care will stop some. Better reporting by local governments to federal databases will stop some. Tighter background checks will stop some. Holding gun sellers responsible for selling guns to crooks and kooks will stop some. Adequately funding police departments to improve their response times will stop some.

And, yes, shooting the bastards when they open fire in a public place will prevent some tiny number of additional deaths.

But if you look at the tens of thousands of deaths due to the profusion of guns -- due to suicide, domestic disputes, children getting hold of guns, stupid gun accidents (dropped weapons, cleaning "unloaded" guns), guns stolen from honest citizens' houses and then used to commit murder -- the number of lives armed civilians might save in relatively rare mass shootings would be dwarfed by the carnage caused by our gun-crazy culture.

Why Aren't Republicans Going After Trump's Mob Connections?

I found this article from four years ago about why Donald Trump wouldn't run for president in 2012. The upshot: Trump's connections to organized crime connections would torpedo a serious run.

With lawsuits pending, Trump's business empire could not withstand the close scrutiny of a presidential campaign, and even his kids might have been muddied. Wayne Barrett, who first exposed Trump’s ties to organized crime in his 1992 book, looked into the Donald’s most recent business dealings and discovered:

• One associate who was an "unindicted co-conspirator" in a massive 2000 stock swindle  — and escaped prison only by helping to convict 19 others, including six members of New York crime families
• Two associates who served prison time on cocaine charges
• Another partner prosecuted for trafficking underage girls after a dramatic helicopter raid on a yacht off the Turkish coast
• A pending lawsuit against Trump Soho that alleges daughter Ivanka, among others, made fraudulent misrepresentations

When Trump dropped out the last time, he said:

"Nobody said it was going to be easy, but I had no idea I would get hammered in the way I've been hammered the past few weeks," Trump said in Nashua, New Hampshire. 

Much of that was due to the ridicule Trump suffered after President Obama released his birth certificate. So why is Trump so popular this time around? And why aren't Republicans hammering him?

I get that some Republicans are quaking in their boots after he issued his extortion threat last week -- "Be nice to me or I'll  run as a third-party candidate and hand the election to the Democrats." But the Republican who takes down Trump will be a hero to the rest of the party -- why are they so afraid of this blowhard?

It should be trivial to dethrone Trump. Just have your lawyers look into any one of his golf courses or hotels or casinos on the East Coast -- they've all got to be riddled with corruption of some sort or other, or based on sweet-heart deals he cut with the Democratic office holders to whom he contributed campaign dollars. They could take out Trump and embarrass some Democrats at the same time.

And does anyone seriously believe Trump is is no longer connected to organized crime? As a casino owner and real estate developer in New York and New Jersey, how can he not be all mobbed up?

Finally, Trump brags about what an unreliable, underhanded and dishonest businessman he is -- it's his definition of "smart." Trump is a crook six ways to Sunday. He's a shell of a human being: all blustering ego and native cunning with a marginally average intelligence. He succeeds only because he's a soulless, narcissistic sociopath without the conscience that prevents most people from swindling everyone they deal with. There must be dozens of people that Trump has screwed over who are just itching to get back at him. Why haven't Republicans dug any of them up? They might start looking into his four bankruptcies.

The Democrats certainly will if Trump is the nominee.

Republicans are constantly complaining about us becoming Greece, but with Trump as president we'd become Italy. Trump is just Silvio Berlusconi with more hair glued on his head.

Take Down Future John Housers

Here are a couple of reports (#1 and #2) that detail John Houser's all too familiar ideology.

Educated in accounting and law, he owned bars in Georgia — including one where he flew a Nazi banner out front as an anti-government statement. He tried real estate in Phenix City. But Houser's own resume, posted online, says what he really loved to do was make provocative statements at local board meetings and in the media.

Anti government...posted online

On an NBC television affiliate's call-in show in the 1990s, Houser encouraged violent responses to abortion and condemned working women, host Calvin Floyd recalled. He was an "angry man" who spoke opposite a Democrat and really lit up the phones, he added.

Anti women and anti abortion...

In recent years, Houser turned to right-wing extremist Internet message boards, where he praised Adolf Hitler, and advised people not to underestimate "the power of the lone wolf," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose hate-group watchdogs spotted Houser registering to meet with former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke in 2005.

Right wing extremist message boards...

The man Bone once knew as a church-going neighbor had grown into someone better known by neighbors and colleagues as an angry provocateur. Police say his anger culminated Thursday night in a slaughter at The Grand 16 theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, leaving two women dead and nine other people hurt.

Angry provocateur...

It was then that he regularly appeared on a local television show, appearing opposite a Democrat as a radical Republican railing against women in the workplace and calling for violence against abortion providers.“He made a lot of wild accusations,” said Calvin Floyd, who hosted the show on WLTZ-TV in Columbus for more than two decades. “He could make the phones ring.”

Violence against abortion providers...

Houser sums up the conservative base today. They are a very angry, hate and fear filled lot who are a direct threat to our country's security. Their support of continued gun violence makes them even more of a threat to national security as they are responsible for thousands of deaths every year. You can add the victims of John Houser to the list.

It's time we started taking these fuckers out and by out, I mean prison. And I don't mean a minimum security place. Perhaps since we can't get Gitmo closed, we send some of them down there for awhile. That should chill their American Taliban asses out and send a message to those individuals out there who wish to perpetuate continued attacks on our country.

I say we start with Clive Bundy and his followers...

Hey Governor Jindal, What Did You Think Would Happen?

My kind of campaign stop; Capital Armament in Sibley. #IAPolitics pic.twitter.com/26VDrrr9sY

— Gov. Bobby Jindal (@BobbyJindal) July 3, 2015

Another Right Wing Nut Job

AP News is reporting that John Houser, the shooter at the theater in Louisiana, was a right wing nut job.

In the 1990s, he frequently appeared on a local television call-in show, advocating violence against people involved in abortions, said Calvin Floyd, who hosted the morning show on WLTZ-TV in Columbus, Georgia. Houser also espoused other radical views, including his opposition to women in the workplace. Floyd described Houser as an "angry man" who made "wild accusations" about all sorts of topics, and said he put him on to counter a Democratic voice because "he could make the phones ring."

I could have seen that one coming from a mile away. As soon as I heard "white man in his late 50s," his ideology was obvious. The question is...why was it so easy for him to still own a gun? Given the failure of Manchin Toomey to pass and the relaxed gun laws in the South, he clearly didn't have any trouble figuring out some sort of loophole.

Ilooks like his wife hid his guns and his family had him committed at one point. I'm calling on all wives of Gun Cultists to do the same. You never know when your husband might snap.

A Look at Ronald Reagan's Iran Weapon Deals

As Congress debates the deal that the was worked out with Iran and the rest of the world over their Iran's nuclear program, one of the major criticisms Republicans are leveling against the deal is that it didn't include the release of four American hostages.

Iran takes hostages in order to extract concessions from the United States. If you include hostages as part of these deals, then that only encourages Iran to kidnap more Americans.

There was, however, an American president who did cut deals with Iran for hostages, setting the stage for endless abductions of Americans by Iran: Ronald Reagan.

Obama's nuclear weapons deal isn't the first weapons deal the United States has made with Iran. During the Iran-Contra affair the Reagan Administration sold missiles to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages being held by Iranian terrorists in Lebanon:

In 1985, while Iran and Iraq were at war, Iran made a secret request to buy weapons from the United States. [National Security Advisor Robert] McFarlane sought Reagan's approval, in spite of the embargo against selling arms to Iran. McFarlane explained that the sale of arms would not only improve U.S. relations with Iran, but might in turn lead to improved relations with Lebanon, increasing U.S. influence in the troubled Middle East. Reagan was driven by a different obsession. He had become frustrated at his inability to secure the release of the seven American hostages being held by Iranian terrorists in Lebanon. As president, Reagan felt that "he had the duty to bring those Americans home," and he convinced himself that he was not negotiating with terrorists. While shipping arms to Iran violated the embargo, dealing with terrorists violated Reagan's campaign promise never to do so. Reagan had always been admired for his honesty.

The arms-for-hostages proposal divided the administration. Longtime policy adversaries Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Secretary of State George Shultz opposed the deal, but Reagan, McFarlane and CIA director William Casey supported it. With the backing of the president, the plan progressed. By the time the sales were discovered, more than 1,500 missiles had been shipped to Iran. Three hostages had been released, only to be replaced with three more, in what Secretary of State George Shultz called "a hostage bazaar."

Yes, Reagan sold thousands of missiles to hostage-taking terrorists even as they continued to take more hostages. Reagan not only cut deals with terrorists, he was duped by them. Then he lied about it, only to be forced to admit it a week later.

At the time Reagan was publicly backing Saddam Hussein (yes, that Saddam Hussein) in the Iran-Iraq War, but Reagan was secretly selling missiles to Saddam's enemy.

Bibi Netanyahu has utterly condemned the current nuclear agreement with Iran. But who funneled the weapons to Iran during the 1980s? The same country that constantly makes hostage deals, sometimes even exchanging Hezbollah terrorists -- Iran's proxies in Lebanon -- for Israeli corpses: none other than Israel:

It was planned that Israel would ship weapons to Iran, and then the United States would resupply Israel and receive the Israeli payment. The Iranian recipients promised to do everything in their power to achieve the release of the U.S. hostages. The plan deteriorated into an arms-for-hostages scheme, in which members of the executive branch sold weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of the American hostages. Large modifications to the plan were devised by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council in late 1985, in which a portion of the proceeds from the weapon sales was diverted to fund anti-Sandinista and anti-communist rebels, or Contras, in Nicaragua.

The Contras were right-wing death squads who killed indiscriminately; they were most famous for the murder of nuns, including an American, in 1990.

There are also credible allegations by Abolhasan Banisadr, the former president of Iran, as well as former National Security Council officials, that Reagan made back-door negotiations with Iran to delay the release of American hostages taken by the Iranians at the American embassy in Teheran until the day of Reagan's inauguration, again in exchange for weapons funneled through Israel.

Unquestionably, this arms for hostage deal won Reagan the presidency. It was never completely exposed because the main actor -- William Casey, Reagan's CIA director -- was conveniently dead by the time the accusations came to light.

Given the venom and vitriol Republicans are leveling at Obama over this Iran deal, how can Republicans continue to venerate someone like Ronald Reagan?

And the "He didn't know what his underlings were doing" line doesn't cut it: George H. W. Bush pardoned the officials charged in the Iran-Contra affair before their trials were complete in order to cover up Reagan's and Bush's roles in the scandal.

Another Shooting...Oh Well

We had yet another mass shooting last night and another one in a movie theater. The location was the Grand Theater in Lafayette, Louisiana and the shooter was named John Houser, an older white male who has been described as a drifter. He stood up about twenty minutes into the film "Trainwreck" and started firing. He killed two people, wounded nine and then killed himself.

At this point we don't know much about the circumstances behind the shooting. We do know, however, that Louisiana is an open carry state that does not require a license to own a firearm. Their laws are very lax in terms of gun ownership. Before the shooting, the president gave an interview with the BBC and had this to say about gun violence in the United States.

"That is an area where …I feel that I've been most frustrated and most stymied," he said. "It is the fact that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense, gun-safety laws. Even in the face of repeated mass killings."

He added: "If you look at the number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism, it's less than 100. If you look at the number been killed by gun violence, it's in the tens of thousands. And for us not to be able to resolve that issue has been something that is distressing. But it is not something that I intend to stop working on in the remaining 18 months."

At this point, it's getting hard to keep track of the regularly occurring mass shootings. It's simply stunning to me that we have now accepted this as part of our culture with shrugs, oh wells, and don't take my fucking guns!!! I've stated previously that the only way things are going to change is if the Gun Cult is affected personally and has some sort of tragedy of gun violence within their community. Yet Chris Mooney and his Republican Brain research shows me otherwise.

Because of this sad truth, I think the only way to deal with this ideology is through the only language they understand: force. They have repeatedly demonstrated a complete unwillingness to compromise in the face of repeated violence heaped upon American citizens. They are partly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people and should be held accountable for it.

#loserswithguns

So, the Gun Cult got themselves the idear that THEY should be the stalwart Murcans to stand watch (and their ground!!) in front of military recruitment centers since Barack Obama and other librals have taken away their right to be idiots. Even though the US Marine Corps asked them to get the fuck out, they are still there.

In a statement Tuesday, the U.S. Marine Corps said, "While we greatly appreciate the support of the American public during this tragedy, we ask that citizens do not stand guard at our recruiting offices. Our continued public trust lies among our trained first responders for the safety of the communities where we live and work."

Not surprisingly, this happened.

Civilian guards ordered to leave shopping center after one accidentally fires rifle

Message to #loserwithguns:

You are overly emotional, irrational, and don't know what the fuck you are doing. 

Go Home.

Sad Words

A very good friend of mine just posted this on Facebook regarding Sandra Bland.

To me, one of the most haunting things about the Sandra Bland tragedy is how just another normal sunny day can so swiftly turn to darkness and death. That so quickly one could slip the dividing line between the world we see and share to one with no exit or escape. 

And, most haltingly, that there are people among us who this can happen to so much more easily than others. They can sense the menace behind the quotidian, and they never know when it will loom out and grab them. Cross the river, Sandra, and rest in peace under the trees. I fear we failed you.

The more we hear about Sandra Bland, the worse it gets. It absolutely sickens me that shit like this happens in this country...

Amen

Scott Walker's New Scandal

When Scott Walker was elected he promised to attract tons of new jobs to Wisconsin. That didn't happen, for a lot of reasons. But one of the big ones is that Walker eliminated the Commerce Department and replaced it with the Wisconsin Economic Development Agency, a "public-private partnership" which he apparently used to funnel state money into the wallets of campaign contributors and cronies:

Agency projects have also come under scrutiny for political ties, with major Walker donors receiving handsome payouts.

Cheese manufacturers controlled by the Gentine family, which has cumulatively given $104,000 to Walker's campaigns, have received five separate deals totaling more than $1.5 million in loans and more than $9 million in financing. A $2 million tax credit went to a company ultimately owned by Diane Hendricks, a billionaire construction magnate who contributed $500,000 to Scott Walker's campaign during the 2012 recall, when there were effectively no donor limits. And companies represented on the board of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, a business trade group that spent undisclosed sums against Walker's recall, are regular awardees.

Walker was in such a hurry to shovel state money into dump trucks that didn't bother to vet the companies he put on the government dole:

The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation awarded $1.2 million in grants and loans in 2011 and 2012 to Green Box NA Green Bay LLC, a company that said it could produce recycled products, electricity and even diesel from fast-food waste.

"Gov. Walker and I are firmly committed to doing everything possible to expedite the processing and awarding of this incentive award," then-agency Chief Executive Paul Jadin wrote in a September 2011 letter to Green Box.

There were warning signs. Green Box told the state that the company and its founder, Ron Van Den Heuvel, had no recent legal troubles. But court records showed that Van Den Heuvel had been sued 27 times in the prior five years by banks, business partners, state tax officials and even a jeweler. Green Box said it held seven patents, but the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office lists no patents granted or assigned to Van Den Heuvel or the company.

Four years later, the 116 jobs the company promised to create don't exist, according to a recent legal deposition of Van Den Heuvel, though in another setting the company has said it created all 116 jobs. Green Box is in court-ordered receivership, and its attorney told a court that sheriff's deputies had seized five truckloads of documents from its offices, according to the Green Bay Press-Gazette on Monday.

Nonpartisan state audits have determined that the agency doled out tax breaks, loans and grants in ways that ran contrary to its own rules and state law. Expected jobs never materialized, with some award recipients receiving payouts even as they outsourced Wisconsin jobs overseas. Awards appear to have gone to Walker's political supporters and allies-- at least in one case, after a high-ranking Walker appointee interceded on an applicant's behalf. 

WEDC wasn't some obscure government agency that Walker inherited. He created it, he was its champion and chairman until July 12 of this year. He appointed six of the 15 board members, all but two of whom are Republicans. Walker's adviser, Eileen Schoenfeldt, also has complete access to every detail of the agency's grants and loans.

WEDC is Walker's baby, the crux of his unfulfilled promise to create jobs. He ignored all the warning signs of catastrophe in his pet project. Instead he spent all his time busting unions, kowtowing to mining interests and the Koch brothers, and running for president.

Republicans carp about the government loan program Solyndra used (which was started under George Bush, not Obama). Solyndra failed because Chinese companies dumped solar panels on the world market. Walker's WEDC failed because of graft and fraud.

Walker's very own creation is the epitome of crony capitalism and corporate welfare. And it's all on Walker: he was either party to the fraud at WEDC, or he was totally oblivious to it. Either way, he's clearly not competent to be governor of Wisconsin, and especially not president of the United States.

Checking His Watch

No, Polygamy is Not the Next Step

Now that gay marriage is the law of the land, people keep bringing up that red herring: polygamy.

Conservatives kept telling us that if we allowed gay marriage, next there would be polygamy, then people would start marrying horses and blowup dolls.

When the gay marriage debate started conservatives trotted out the idea that the only purpose of marriage was to have children. Children are necessary for the good of society. Since couples of the same sex can't procreate, the logic went, they shouldn't be allowed to marry.

Yet there are millions of opposite-sex couples who cannot have children, due to infertility. Those husbands and wives adopted children, or used sperm or egg donors, or engaged surrogate mothers. Gay couples can do these same things. In this technological age, biology is not destiny. And we've never stopped heterosexual couples past their childbearing years from marrying, so it makes no sense to deny gays and lesbians the same basic right.

The basic moral argument for gay marriage is that every person should have the same right to marry the person they love. Singular.

When conservatives tried to dredge up reasons for why gay marriage was bad, the only reason they could deduce, other than they didn't like it, was that it was harmful for the children. Why? Because conservatives would mistreat the children of gay couples.

Yes, their actual rationale for denying gay marriage was, "You can't get married because our children will harass your children."

Unlike gay marriage, polygamy has several detrimental social and biological effects.

The primary problem is that of hoarding of women. If a small number of men have a large number of wives, that means a large number of men have no wives. The consequences of this imbalance would be severe: it would force straight men into gay or polyandrous marriages. (Or be made into eunuchs so that they could manage the harems of the wealthy?)

Every extra wife a polygamous man hoards steals another straight man's right to happiness by denying him a family. (Gay marriage doesn't have this problem, as the ratio of gay men to lesbians appears to be close to one.)

If you believe -- as many conservatives do -- that being gay is a choice, polygamy could potentially force some men into gay relationships and marriage because they cannot find wives.

If you look at polygamous societies (Islam and Mormon cults like Warren Jeffs'), you find other social harms. Polygamy demeans the role of women: rich men would arrange to be married to younger women and girls. This would encourage the treatment of women as broodmares; some husbands would force them to selectively bear daughters after they get their first-born son to sell wives to other polygamous men. As the men age they go after younger and younger girls, marrying twelve- and thirteen-year-olds.

Wealthy men would pay large "dowries" to parents of attractive young girls to stock their large harems. These would create what amounts to a sex slave market for underage girls. There would be an Uber-like app for parents looking to sell their daughters.

That leaves a large number of men without any outlet for sexual tension. In the United States men would never stand for having no access to heterosexual sex, so polygamy would force the legalization of prostitution.

There are historical antecedents that show a large population of men who cannot marry causes major social upheaval.

This has occurred more than once in China. During the Qing dynasty in the 19th century a famine caused widespread female infanticide. The Chinese considered daughters less valuable than sons because girls wouldn't carry on the family name, or support their aged parents. Over time that resulted in more than a quarter of young men being unable to find wives.

This was particularly short-sighted. They failed to realize that when large numbers of parents killed girl babies, there would be no women for their sons to marry. And the result was the same: their sons could not carry on the family name.

But that wasn't the only problem. These wifeless men (called "bare branches") formed militias and raised havoc, ultimately bringing down the Qing dynasty.

China is making the same mistake again today, with many parents having aborted female fetuses or abandoning girl babies in the cold to die due to the strict one-child policy. By 2020 it's estimated that there will be almost 4% more men than women in China. That's 30 million men who won't be able to marry. (Some of them are seeking wives from other countries, like Korea, but that just spreads the problem across the world.)

Already, in the areas of China where the male-to-female ratio is the most lopsided there is considerably greater violence, alcoholism, drug addiction, gambling, as well as kidnapping and trafficking of women.

We had the same sort of problems in the United States in the Wild West, when there were far more men than women in the new territories.

So, too many men is obviously bad. What about polyandry?

The idea that women with multiple husbands would somehow make up for men with multiple wives is ludicrous: the simple facts of biology make that impossible. One woman just cannot bear children for several husbands; it's just too hard on women (the sheer creepiness of the Duggar baby factory should dispel any notion that this is desirable). And I seriously doubt any significant percentage of American men would ever voluntarily submit to being one of several husbands. The male ego is too fragile -- they would go without rather than submit to such an embarrassment.

There are also practical, biological and economic arguments against polygamy. It would increase inbreeding: more and more children would have the same fathers. This would reduce the gene pool in general and the Y chromosome in particular. Society would be more prone to genetic diseases and in general less genetically diverse, which leads to greater susceptibility to disease.

Political and economic power would become even more unequal as polygamous dynasties passed power from father to son.

Then there are legal ramifications for divorce and inheritance. Wherever polygamy reigns women are treated as chattel. Clearly that won't stand in America. But what happens in a modern society like ours when a wealthy man marries 20 women and the wives disagree with the husband on how to manage their affairs? He can't just have his way because he's the man, not in this day and age. Majority vote? The wives will win every argument. What man would put up with that?

Oh, you say, a prenuptial agreement would solve these problems. No. Typically polygamous marriages are arranged by parents. Parents aiming to make money off their daughters will sign the girls to unfair prenups and sell them off at age 16 or 18 to some rich guy. These things will wind up in court 10 years later when the wife wants a divorce and take "her" children with her. But in a polygamous family where all the children are raised by half a dozen wives as if they were their own, which children are hers? Two-way custody battles are already a nightmare. Imagine what a six-way custody battle would be like.

Biology makes polygamy inherently asymmetric, and therefore inherently unfair. (Some would argue that it also makes heterosexual marriage unfair, but sometimes you have to yield to biology.)

Marriage between two spouses has demonstrable societal goods: married people -- whether gay or straight -- are more economically stable and responsible. Married people live longer and are in better health. Married people provide a better environment in which to raise children. Unmarried couples living together have many of the same benefits, but these unions tend to be less stable.

Having extra wives around to care for children in a polygamous marriage is touted as a benefit. But is that really true? Two-spouse marriages are frequently stressed by jealousies, inequitable distribution of labor, disputes over sex, expenses and child-rearing techniques. Imagine what a mess it becomes if you have four or five wives bickering with themselves and their husband over these same things. How will the older wives feel when the husband wants to get another young new wife, who they know will get all the attention and have all the fun while they are stuck taking care of the kids and cleaning the house.

The only women women who would submit to such conditions would have been up in polygamous households and brainwashed from birth into thinking that they have to defer to the husband in all things and that his word is law. But if polygamy went mainstream, that wouldn't fly in this country.

The attraction of polygamy is the idea of a man having all these women at his beck and call. Practical American polygamy wouldn't work that way. It would be more businesslike and practical, and that defeats the entire purpose, which is to stroke the ego of the polygamist male. Most women wouldn't stand for it, and the men who wanted polygamy wouldn't stand for a fairer version of it that America would allow.

Because total subjugation of women to the will of a man is the entire point of polygamy. It is sexual slavery. And we just don't cotton to that anymore.

If people want to live together in their own freaky version of polyamory, they can do that. But they don't need the blessing of the government to do it.

Racism From The Cradle To The Grave

Here's a very sad and eye opening piece about the Texas county where Sandra Bland was found dead in a jail cell.

“This is the most racist county in the state of Texas which is probably one of the most racist states in the country,” said DeWayne Charleston, a former Waller County judge who in 2007 ordered a black funeral home to handle the burial of an unidentified white woman, sparking controversy when activists claimed that other officials intervened to stop a white person being buried next to black corpses. A federal lawsuit alleging that the county seat of Hempstead neglected historically black cemeteries while maintaining white ones was settled in 2004, resulting in the city committing more resources to their upkeep. 

“You’ve got racism from the cradle to the grave,” Charleston said.

So, what are we going to do about it?

The Side Effects of Diplomacy