Still On Board The Zimmerman Train?

George Zimmerman has been arrested...again. This time, it's aggravated assault.

I'm wondering if folks are still hitching their wagons to his star.

The Girl Effect

If there was one clear reason why there is inequality in the world, it's this.



This would be exactly why globalization isn't the evil demon that some on the left make it out to be.

The Obummer Destruction of the Economy Continues

Today's jobs report was very positive with the unemployment rate dropping to 5.6% and 252,000 jobs added in the month of December. November's jobs number was revised upwards to over 350,000 jobs. Overall, the economy added nearly three million jobs in 2014.

I look at this graph and I have to wonder, where is the "Obummer Destruction of the economy" I hear so much about from conservatives? Certainly, you can't credit the president completely for the improved economy but his policies have most definitely helped.

As always, I'm still waiting for that "tough history coming." Any day now...:)

Good Words

From my most recent question on Quora...

The Southern Strategy is overwhelmingly the biggest reason for the shift in American politics, and that strategy DOES have its roots in the opposition to the Civil Rights movement in this country. There were residual issues from that era that bled into the '70's-notably Affirmative Action, Busing/educational issues, urban issues, etc. All of these issues essentially had a Black face. 

In addition, other movements were making their mark as well-Cesar Chavez in the '70's started the labor movement among Hispanic/Mexican immigrants, and Stonewall (beginning of the gay rights movement) occurred in the later part of the decade. Hispanics and gays are also next to blacks on the Republican bullseye. All of these things changed America from a white dominated culture to a more multicultural country-and the most conservative, racist individuals in the South reacted by using racial coding to give aid and comfort to a white population that was uncomfortable with the changes. 

You have to remember: after the 1964 Civil Rights Bill was passed in the US, many Southern Democrats-called Dixiecrats-left the Democratic party for the Republican party in protest. They were vehemently against the concept of equal rights for blacks. That spirit of the Dixiecrats is still alive thanks to the "Southern Strategy". Starting with Nixon, Republicans took that spirit and fanned the flames of the anti-Civil Rights act movement for political gain. Prominent Republicans have confirmed that the "Southern Strategy" was part of their election strategy. 

And here is an example of the famous "black hands" ad for a Republican Senator in the '80's:RNC Adviser Alex Castellanos Admits That His Infamous Jesse Helms Ad Hurt Race Relations 

There are more examples of race based strategies, coding, baiting, and slips of the tougue as well. One can turn on any right wing media outlet and hear it for themselves. And of course, in the present day, the most notable recent example of the residue of this strategy is one Steve Scalise, who was caught speaking to a white supremacist group, and labelling himself "David Duke without the baggage (whatever the hell that means). 

So, yes, it is not an exaggeration to say that racial animus on the part of conservatives, specifically Southern conservatives, was a huge reason for the shifting of American politics to what you see now. And this history is why nonwhites in this country don't trust conservatives, and don't vote for them in such large numbers.

I'm wondering if any of my five commenters are courageous enough to respond to this and engage in a much larger forum than here:)

Free Speech: Racist Epithets vs. Blasphemy

The massacre of cartoonists and journalists at Charlie Hebdo in Paris by Muslims outraged by the publication's depictions of Mohammed brings up an important question: why do liberals consider Charlie Hebdo's cartoons of Mohammed, the Piss Christ and The Interview to be expressions of free speech that should not be silenced, while they routinely condemn derogatory racist and sexist epithets applied to minorities?

Is it simply hypocrisy? Political correctness run amok? Or is it a principled stand against the oppression of the weak by the powerful?

Blasphemy is irreverent speech about religious figures such as god, or Mohammed, or Jesus, the Pope, Kim Jong Un, or the books and institutions of a religion. Those institutions are powerful and influential and are completely capable of weathering criticism from cartoonists and late-night comics.

Christians, Muslims and North Koreans are equally free to condemn this irreverent speech. What we cannot abide are threats and physical harm to blasphemers and, not just coincidentally, the persons and property of the religious.

Historically, charges of blasphemy are usually leveled at competing sects from the same religion that consider the very existence of the other sect to be a blasphemy. The Sunni-Shia schism and the Christian Gnostic blasphemies come to mind.

Racist and sexist epithets, by contrast, lump an entire class of underprivileged people together as something less than human, providing justification in the minds of racists for systematic discrimination and personal ad hominem and physical attacks.

More to the point, the people who condemn racist and sexist epithets in public discourse are simply condemning racism and sexism. They may call for racists and sexists to be socially shunned or their companies boycotted. But they're not advocating that the haters be killed or jailed for their hateful speech, except when that speech crosses over into actual threats of violence.

It's not an abrogation of a conservative's right to free speech or "political correctness" when others upbraid him for calling something "gay," or express outrage when he makes watermelon and fried chicken jokes about the Obamas, or call him a dick for telling sexist jokes. They're simply exercising their First Amendment rights.

Just like he did when he spouted that crap in the first place.

Scary!

Dick Cavett on Ayn Rand

From a recent interview with Dick Cavett...

 CAVETT: Oh, well, that’s so, too. You can piss away valuable hours of your life reading Ayn Rand—her wretched appeal to the young, her wretched writing, her wretched person. She was supposed to be on my show; I was kind of sorry she wasn’t, because I was kind of laying for her. I did not succumb, as a kid, to being enthused by Ayn Rand, and that sense of power, as every kid was at one time until they outgrew it. The old bag sent over a list of fifteen conditions for appearing with me, or for appearing with anyone, I guess. One of them was, “There will be no disagreeing with Ms. Rand’s philosophy.” 

GREEN: You’re kidding. 

CAVETT: No! I wrote at the bottom of the list, to be sent back to her, “There will be no Ms. Rand, either.”

No disagreeing with Ms. Rand's philosophy...gee, that sounds awfully familiar:)

The above quote kinda reminds me of another quote...

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.” — [Kung Fu Monkey — Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009] ― John Rogers

More Guns In Chicago

One of my favorite bits of fiction peddled by the Gun Cult is that Chicago, a city that heavily restricts guns, is a great example of what gun control really does...create more violence and leave ordinary citizens defenseless.  So, by this logic, if Chicago were to loosen its gun laws and allow more people to have guns, violence would decrease, correct?

I'm curious...what is the basis for this line of thought? And how would a fully armed Chicago look if the laws were indeed changed?

Democrats Still Got More Votes Than Republicans

Across the 2010, 2012, and 2014 elections., the current Senate of 46 Democratic Senators got just shy of 68 million votes while the 54 Republicans about to take office only got 47 million votes.

I wonder if conservatives truly understand what this means...

The Southern Strategy Explained

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

For the full interview, click here. 

Yet Another Conservative

I've received several requests to comment on the Steve Scalise story so I guess I might as well say something. I've been reluctant, for the most part, because honestly this is nothing new (yet another conservative has a race problem? Shocking...not). This is one of those stories that has a whole lot of "merry go round" ishness to it. Republican is discovered to have ties to racist organization...people are shocked...other Republicans screech about race baiting, deny to the point of silliness, and blame the liberals (like they do for everything else)...round and round we go.

Most Democrats, including myself, will tell you that they have a much longer history of racism than do the Republicans. That's because, up until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the conservatives of today were southern Democrats. They simply switched parties and became Republicans (see: Nixon's Southern Strategy.  So, it's really not surprising that Scalise spoke at a meeting of neo-Nazis. Nor is it surprising that Louisiana Democrats are rallying to Scalise. If I were him, I'd tell anyone who is a southern Democrat to shut the fuck up.

The Daily Beast has an interesting piece on the folks who courted Scalise to come and speak at their little meeting. Check out this photo of their leaders...

Looks like some commenters from Kevin Baker's blog:)

Anyway, it's my view that Scalise doesn't really have much to worry about. His supporters and, indeed, a big chunk of the GOP base (especially in the South) would actually be more in favor of him speaking at a meeting like this. That's because many of them are dreaming of the South rising again and taking back what is rightfully their's.

Exactly what that is, I've never been able to quite figure out.

A Big Test For The Minimum Wage

This year, 21 states will be raising the minimum wage so we will finally get a broad look at how this action affects economies. My hope is that the following question will not be answered: will the rise in low-paid workers' salaries and their increase in spending in the economy (thus creating more jobs) outweigh any costs in slower job creation?

My answer is YES

Kicking Off The New Year With Positivity

I'd like to kick off the new year with some positivity. Check this out.

The rate of violent crimes in the United States has been cut in half during the past 20 years. That’s according to statistics released in November by the FBI. What surprises some criminologists is that the decline has persisted against the backdrop of two other trends long believed to lead to an increase in crime: The US prison population is dropping and the number of young adults, who are considered more likely to commit a crime, has risen.

But why is this happening?

Criminologists say the latest gains against violent crime appear rooted especially in improved law enforcement, rather than a drop in the number of teenagers and 20-somethings. The “community policing” movement has brought beat cops into closer ties with the neighborhoods they serve, for one thing, and a data-driven focus on crime “hotspots” has led to successful prevention efforts in high-risk areas.

Isn't this exactly how the United States is supposed to work? I find it very interesting that this flies in the face of what I see in the mainstream media...

Obama Can't Even Do That Right

We Need a New Word

The English language needs a new word. A word that describes an incident that is tragic and terrible, yet is completely predictable and preventable, the inevitable outcome of carelessness, stupidity, hubris and pride.

This word would be used to describe what happened in Idaho when a 29-year-old mother visited a Wal-Mart in Idaho. Her two-year-old pulled her handgun out of her purse and shot her dead.

We need this new word to replace the phrase "tragic accident" that everyone uses in these cases, to wit:

"It appears to be a pretty tragic accident," [sheriff's spokesman Stu] Miller said.

The victim's father-in-law, Terry Rutledge, told The Associated Press that Veronica Rutledge "was a beautiful, young, loving mother."

"She was not the least bit irresponsible," Terry Rutledge said. "She was taken much too soon."

What sheer nonsense. Of course she was irresponsible. She recklessly left a loaded handgun within the reach of a two-year-old, thinking a zipper would stop a child. She might as well have given the kid a burning kerosene lamp to play with, or a pit viper.

The grieving father-in-law is a victim of the foolish guns-everywhere-all-the-time mindset that results in the pointless deaths and shootings of thousands of Americans every year. To these people it's inconceivable that a two-year-old child would be able to master the intricacies of a zipper and a trigger.

But why does a woman wrangling four children at a Wal-Mart in Idaho think she needs to pack a pistol in her purse? Are there gangs of white supremacists roving the countryside? Do grizzly bears hang out in the Wal-Mart parking lot? It's not like she was going to make a drug deal in Leroy Brown's south side of Chicago.

What imminent threat was she defending herself from in Idaho? Practically speaking, if a mugger did sneak up on her in front of the Wal-Mart, did she seriously think that she could fish the gun out of a zipped compartment of a purse -- while holding a two-year-old, herding three other kiddies and being distracted by their incessant babble -- fast enough to deter him?

A tragedy is an avalanche inundating a sleeping hamlet. A tsunami wiping out an entire island. An earthquake devastating a city. Getting shot by a toddler isn't a tragedy, it's idiocy. If the kid had shot another shopper instead of the mother, by all rights she should have been charged with involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment. There's a sort of rough justice that she -- instead of her child or a completely innocent bystander -- died.

Every year hundreds of Americans get shot by a two-year-old, or a five-year-old with his birthday .22, or a nine-year-old with an Uzi, or a dropped pistol in the men's room, or by a gun jostled in purse, or a gun falling out of a waistband.

These aren't tragic accidents: they are the entirely foreseeable and preventable consequences of people who are not competent to carry or use firearms succumbing to paranoia and fear promulgated by the gun industry. These people have been brainwashed into thinking that their lives are in imminent danger unless they have the ability to shoot anyone they don't like the looks of.

It's terribly sad that this young mother died. It's even sadder is that hundreds more men and women and children will be shot next year in almost exactly the same way, and no one is going to do a damned thing about it.

And that's a real tragedy.

Big Things President Obama Did in 2014

Despite having to deal with the adolescents in Congress, the president accomplished some big things in 2014. Among them...

• Sweeping changes to immigration enforcement
• Actual progress on climate change 
• Remaking the federal courts for a generation 
• Beginning to transform U.S. relationships with Iran and Cuba 
• Greater protections for federal contractors

Hmm...must be why his approval ratings are on the rise...actually doing something and solving problems as opposed to stomping your feet and foaming at the mouth about wacky, ideological nonsense seems to be a better path.

Will the new Congress (controlled entirely by the GOP) follow suit?

War Crimes?

Protected!

My liberal friends like to complain an awful lot about the "raping of the land" and how government is ineffective in protecting it. Yet this recent piece from CSM states otherwise.

Since 2012, more than half a million square miles of land have come under protection. Now more than 15 percent of terrestrial and inland water areas around the globe are under protection, toward a United Nations target of 17 percent by 2020, according to a recent report by the UN Environment Program. 

I'd say that's pretty impressive. Why are they complaining so much?

Good Words

The Police Aren’t Under Attack. Institutionalized Racism Is.

Amen

All That Kenyan Socialism