Three Tour Iraq Vet Murdered By Gun Cult

Andrew Meyers served three tours of duty in Iraq and survived. But he couldn't survive a bicycle ride in Colorado Springs. He was one of the victims of Noah Haphram's shooting spree last Saturday. The shooting spree would likely have been stopped had Colorado Springs not allowed open carry.

Worse than any Islamic extremist, the Gun Cult gets blood like this on its hands every single day. It's time we stopped them as we would any other threat to national security and I can't think of any entity more equipped than the federal government:)

Good Words

From George Will...

Donald Trump is just one symptom of today’s cultural pathology of self-validating vehemence with blustery certitudes substituting for evidence. Another is the fact that the book atop the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list is a tissue of unsubstantiated assertions. Because of its vast readership, “Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency” by Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and his collaborator Martin Dugard will distort public understanding of Ronald Reagan’s presidency more than hostile but conscientious scholars could.

My bold emphasis above perfectly epitomizes today's conservative...especially the right wing blogger and the right wing blog commenter. Blustery certitudes, indeed:)

And this is the guy who's beating Trump...

Ben Carson thinks that the Egyptian pyramids were built not as tombs for pharaohs, but to store grain. In a college commencement speech he said:

"My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain. Now all the archaeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs' graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big if you stop and think about it.

It's flatly ridiculous: the pyramids would be useless for storing grain, because they are almost completely solid stone.  We know this because Egyptologists have been excavating these tombs for centuries and have found only tiny chambers and corridors inside them, as shown in this diagram:

Granaries are hollow shells, empty on the inside so that you can store large quantities of grain. What idiot would build a 450-foot-tall, six-million-ton pyramid that would hold less grain than would fill one barge going down the Mississippi?

Pyramids are massive structures filled with stone because the pharaohs wanted them to be huge and impressive, and the pyramid is the only structure primitive Egyptian technology could build that large.

And the times don't line up. The Great Pyramid was built about 2560 BC, and evangelicals' own biblical timelines put Joseph around 1916 BC, centuries later.

Then Carson spat out this gem:

And when you look at the way that the pyramids were made, with many chambers that are hermetically sealed, they’d have to be that way for various reasons. And various of scientists [sic] have said, ‘Well, you know there were alien beings that came down and they have special knowledge and that’s how, you know, it doesn’t require an alien being when God is with you.’

"Various of scientists" think aliens built the pyramids? No. No real scientists think that. Only kooks like Erich von Däniken think aliens built the pyramids.

You don't need aliens when you have human ingenuity. Scientists know that ordinary people built the pyramids, using any number of techniques that we know they had access to. We found the pyramid builders' homes, tools, and graves. Scientists have tested these methods and found that humans could have designed and built the pyramids without any special magical knowledge or help from aliens or gods. It doesn't take a genius to build a pyramid: you basically just stack a bunch of rocks.

The same is true for the giant stone moai on Easter Island and Stonehenge in England: when people put their minds to it, they can usually figure out how to do something, especially when it's relatively straightforward, like moving big rocks around. Building colossal yet simple memorial structures is, as they say, not brain surgery.

The pyramids were hermetically sealed because tombs are sealed to preserve the corpses inside. And to keep out grave robbers (which they failed to do in almost all cases in Egypt). It's true, some small amount of grain was probably stored in some of the pyramids: all manner of food and other necessities of pharaonic life (food, gold, dolls, chairs, boats, slaves) were placed in the pyramids and other tombs, such as those in the Valley of Kings where Tutankhamun's tomb was located.

Carson continues to this day to defend this nonsense:

"Some people believe in the Bible, like I do," Carson told reporters. "And don't find that to be silly at all and believe that God created the earth and don't find that to be silly at all. The secular progressives try to ridicule it anytime it comes up and they're welcome to do that." 

What does this pyramid gimmick have to do with the creation of the earth? The bible doesn't say that the pyramids were granaries, it just says that Joseph stored grain. The pyramid idea is Carson's pet theory. And it's a stupid and patently false one.

But when someone calls him on it, he starts whining that he's the victim of secular progressives. Why does he change the subject to god creating the earth when the question is about his stupid pyramid granary idea?

Something is seriously wrong with Ben Carson's brain. When you read about all the various ways he's said he tried to stab another kid, his dealings with the snake-oil sales salesmen who run Mannatech, his love for kooky conspiracy theorist Cleon Skousen, and the virulently anti-mainstream Christian teachings of his Seventh Day Adventist church, and now this pyramid nonsense, you really have to wonder about his grip on reality.

Another Gotcha Question!!!

The Libertarian Fantasy

Here's a pretty scary piece from the New York Times regarding arbitration and it really shows what happens if more elements of our society are privatized. As Adam Smith noted, if left to their own devices, owners will collude.

And workers will be fucked.

Exactly Why He Won Twice

The Republican Base is Dying Even Faster than We Thought

A study released yesterday finds that death rates for low-income white middle-aged Americans are rising significantly:

That finding was reported Monday by two Princeton economists, Angus Deaton, who last month won the 2015 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, and Anne Case. Analyzing health and mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and from other sources, they concluded that rising annual death rates among this group are being driven not by the big killers like heart disease and diabetes but by an epidemic of suicides and afflictions stemming from substance abuse: alcoholic liver disease and overdoses of heroin and prescription opioids.

In other words, the Republican base is dying even faster than we thought.

My sister's ex-husband is one of these statistics. He was a hard-drinking, gun-loving conservative who ran industrial ovens, but struggled with learning how to program the newest equipment; he barely passed high school. He lost his job after the financial meltdown, started drinking heavily, and my sister finally divorced him when he got violent. He recently died at age 50 from organ failure after years of alcohol abuse. It was very sad, because he was starting to turn it around.

And this same thing is happening across the country:

Dr. Case, investigating indicators of poor health, discovered that middle-aged people, unlike the young and unlike the elderly, were reporting more pain in recent years than in the past. A third in this group reported they had chronic joint pain over the years 2011 to 2013, and one in seven said they had sciatica. Those with the least education reported the most pain and the worst general health.

In other words, these people hurt and they self-medicate with alcohol. The article doesn't say it, but a lot of this pain is due to obesity: when you're poor you eat junk food and gain weight. When you're overweight, your joints all hurt and you develop conditions like sciatica, which reduces mobility, exacerbates weight gain and causes more pain. You take narcotics and drink to numb that pain.

That cycle will kill you in a few short years.

Since the turn of the millennium, income inequality has crushed middle- to low-income whites. The financial collapse the Big Banks caused hit middle-aged Americans particularly hard: because of their age, they were the first to get fired and the last to get hired.

The total destruction of private-sector labor unions has made it impossible for these people to negotiate fair wages and exert any control over their fates. Gigantic companies like McDonalds, Walmart and Dollar General have destroyed most of the small businesses that used to dot the countryside, making everyone with a minimal education a minimum-wage drone.

Now these poor uneducated whites are mad because they're in the same boat that blacks and Hispanics have been in for centuries.

Are these the people backing Donald Trump and Ben Carson? People whose personal circumstances are miserable, who blame society for their inability to pull themselves up by their bootstraps?

Even though things seem bad to folks like this, the United States is still the richest country in the world. The problem isn't that the government is spending too much money on welfare: it's that giant companies shipped jobs overseas and keep all the profits for CEOs and shareholders while paying the people still employed in the states next to nothing.

For the last 15 years all the new money in the economy has gone into the pockets of a very few guys like the Walmart heirs, the oil baron Koch brothers, bank CEO Jamie Dimon, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, drug extortionist Martin Shkreli, and -- yes -- presidential candidate Donald Trump.

The business decisions of these billionaires are why uneducated white guys can't make a decent living anymore. It's not blacks on welfare, or 11 million Hispanic immigrants picking vegetables and cleaning hotel rooms.

The entirety of all the Republican candidates' economic plan is more tax breaks. That's all they have, because they're either billionaires like Trump or selling out to billionaires like Rubio. But tax breaks will all go to the billionaires. Because if you're not making any money, a tax break is useless.

The intrinsic problem of our economy is that people who run companies pay their employees too little and themselves too much. And the Republican presidential candidates intent on bringing about the new Gilded Age like it this way.

This is exactly the same problem this country had in the 1890s. It took a while, but it was fixed by organizing labor unions, raising taxes on the wealthy and reducing the ability of banks to speculate.

It's no accident that middle-aged, middle-class whites have suffered as labor unions have been destroyed, taxes on the wealthy have been slashed and banks have been deregulated.

What Open Carry Does

Regarding the recent Colorado Springs shooting rampage...

Bettis said she recognized the gunman as her neighbor — whom she didn't know by name — and that before the initial slaying she saw him roaming outside with a rifle. She called 911 to report the man, but a dispatcher explained that Colorado has an open carry law that allows public handling of firearms.

Again...the Gun Cult is a more clear and present danger to our nation's safety than ISIL or any other terrorist organization. They must be stopped. Yesterday.

For a group that caterwauls all the time about Nazis and gun free zones being dangerous, they sure seem to be doing a great job of actually creating and supporting that type of totalitarianism.

Why He Quit The NRA (Good Words)

Reprinted in its entirety because it's just that fucking good.

I was a member of the National Rifle Association for more than 50 years. In 2012, I decided not to renew my membership.

My NRA was all about marksmanship, safety and responsibly. But the NRA today is off the rails. It’s being irresponsible, and it has been for years. NRA leaders should be sponsoring responsible gun laws instead of opposing them, in my opinion.

In 2006 my daughter was one of the victims in thes hooting at the Jewish Federation in Seattle, where a shooter killed one and inured five. My daughter survived, barely. After she recovered, she wanted to put the tragedy behind her, but she found that it was too life-changing. She started telling her story, and she began advocating for more effective gun-control laws in Washington.

I’ve always enjoyed shooting sports. As a Boy Scout and an Explorer Scout, I joined the NRA in high school. I then spent 20 years in the Navy, where I qualified as an expert in both rifles and pistols. I still own guns: four modern firearms and two old-fashioned pistols that are more than 100 years old.

But I strongly believe that being a responsible gun owner means supporting sensible laws to keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people. This belief was cemented by the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. The shooting in Oregon last week was another tragic reminder.

I feel that four things can help prevent such tragedies in the future. Requiring background checks on the state and federal level is the sensible first step. In addition, there should be penalties for officials of city, state and county governments who fail to enter people’s names in the database when they’re judged to be mentally ill, or a danger to themselves or others, or have convictions that would make them no longer eligible to own firearms.

Another safety precaution would be to make sure that when a protection order is issued by a judge, that person’s guns are confiscated until the order is lifted. Finally, no one needs high-capacity magazines, firearms capable of holding more than 10 rounds, for target shooting, hunting for personal protection. Not only should they not be sold, but their possession should also be illegal.

Many NRA members would agree that we need more common-sense gun laws: A 2013 survey found that about 75% of members support stronger restrictions on guns. The NRA leaders should listen to the members and do more to make sure that gun ownership goes hand-in-hand with responsibility and safety.

Gun-rights advocates often make the argument: “Guns don’t kill people; people do.” But the reality is: People with guns kill people. And there’s a lot more we can do to stop them.

Fake Christians

Neighbors upset over church’s homeless family program

Not surprisingly, this happened in the South where the alleged "real Christians" are located.

“If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you. -- Leviticus 25:35-36

Republicans Take Ball, Go Home

In a not very surprising move, the GOP has suspended its relationship with NBC due to the poor questioning at last Wednesday night's debate. In short, they are taking their ball and going home.

Although, home ain't what it used to be. Similar complaints were aired about Megyn Kelly and Fox News after the first debate. CNN also received a a laundry list of beefs. Essentially, if it's not Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Mark Levin, Republicans don't have the balls to face anyone who is even remotely contrary to them.

Once again, we see The Adolescent in full play. Whining about fairness...blaming others (the media, liberals) for their problems...tantrums...shutting out reality. They don't want any sort of pesky facts like...oh, the fact that the USA ranks #1 in the world in terms of economic competitiveness...getting out there.

Perhaps they should have a debate exclusively run by conservative media. I think the United States should get unfettered access to life inside the bubble.

I don't have much else to say about the debate. No one really "won" or "lost" in my opinion. All I heard was the same wacky, ideological nonsense combined with fevered predictions of doom and gloom. The media is saying Rubio, Cruz and Christie won and Bush lost. Who really cares?

The Flea on the Tail Wagging the Dog

When the "Freedom Caucus" ousted John Boehner they claimed to represent "the will of the American people."

So, exactly how representative of America are the 38 Republicans who make up the group that made John Boehner go home crying?

That's something we can figure out with a ballpark estimate: how many people actually voted for these 38 guys (and they're all guys but one) as a percentage of the population of the United States?

The average size of a congressional district is 710,767. The average turnout nationwide in 2014 was 36.6%. The population of the United States is about 322 million.

The final number we need to know is the average margin of victory. Of the Republican seats, most (192) were won by 20% or more, so we'll assume on average that 60% of the votes were cast for the "Freedom Caucus" winner.

If we multiply all this out, we get

38 "Freedom Caucus" members ˟ 710,767 people per congressional district ˟ 36.6% voter turnout ˟ 60% victory margin = 5.9 million people who voted for a Freedom Caucus member

How representative is that of the population of the United States?

5.9 million "Freedom Caucus" voters / 322 million Americans = 1.8%

The "Freedom Caucus" represents the will of less than 2% of the population of the United States. Yet they somehow think that they should be able to control every policy detail for the rest of the country and dictate who the speaker of the House should be.

The "Freedom Caucus" and the Tea Party represent a tiny percentage of the American population. Because they stay inside the bubble 24/7, associating only with themselves, and only watching Fox News and listening to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, they have fooled themselves into thinking they are in the majority.

But in their hearts they know the truth: the reason they're so hysterical is that they are drastically outnumbered, and with each passing year more and more of them are dying off.

The Republican Party barely escaped total implosion with the Boehner resignation. The old saw about the tail wagging the dog doesn't even apply: the "Freedom Caucus" is the flea on the tail of the dog.

The House and Senate just passed a budget bill that will fund the government for the next two years, freeing us from the tyranny of the "Free Dumb Caucus" threatening to trash the economy every couple of weeks.

The "Free Dumb Caucus" wailed bitterly about the unfairness of "the process." But that process is representative democracy. In a democracy majority rules. And the majority of the House and Senate voted for the measure. (If they want to talk about patently undemocratic unfairness in Congress, they should start with the Hastert Rule.)

Now that the "Free Dumb Caucus" is finding themselves in the same situation that Hispanics and African Americans have been in for centuries, you'd think they'd have a little more sympathy for the historical plight of minorities.

The Gun Free Zone Lie (Again)

The Gun Cult has apparently gotten to Donald Trump. In Wednesday night's debate (more to follow this weekend), Trump had the following to say.

I feel that the gun-free zones and, you know, when you say that, that's target practice for the sickos and for the mentally ill. That's target [practice]. They look around for gun-free zones.

We've heard this giant pile of shit before. Thankfully, the Washington Post today put up a piece how there is zero evidence for this. They link all current studies which show that this claim is FALSE. 

We all have to realize that the Gun Cult is largely made up of old, fat white men with tits who were picked on in high school. Having a gun (or 8 guns, as we have recently learned) makes them feel empowered over all past and future bullies. They likely spend hours fantasizing about being Jack Bauer or ___________________ (insert Michael Bay action hero here) and taking down spree shooters should they every come across one.

Yet both the recent shooting at Umpqua Community College and at the Gabby Giffords shooting had good guys with guns who didn't do anything. So WTF are they talking about?

Tell Me Again About the NRA

The NRA Is Making Sure Scientists Can't Tell You the Truth About Guns

But since the mid-1990s, the federal government has done exceptionally little to investigate the threat posed by firearms, thanks largely to successful efforts by the National Rifle Association to intimidate, threaten and harass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies.

Indeed.

I Promissssssss

Good Words

This, Too, Shall Pass...

Donald Trump, as is his wont, has stirred up another hornet's nest by ridiculing Ben Carson's Seventh-Day Adventist religion and refusing to apologize. It started at a rally in Florida when Trump said:

I'm Presbyterian. Boy, that's down the middle of the road, folks, in all fairness. I mean, Seventh-day Adventist, I don't know about. I just don't know about.

When asked about this comment on This Week, Trump said:

I would certainly give an apology if I said something bad about it. But I didn't. All I said was I don't know about it.

Yeah, right. It's the old Fox News trick of condemning something by asking leading questions about it.

But this was after Carson questioned Trump's religiousness, saying,

By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches and honor and life and that's a very big part of who I am. I don't get that impression with [Trump]. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't get that.

And this is also after Carson made lots of political hay among conservative voters by claiming that Muslims cannot be president because Islam is incompatible with the Constitution.

Now, I'm sure Carson is right about Trump: Trump doesn't give a crap about religion; he never has and never will, because it doesn't make him any richer, and money is the only thing Trump cares about.

But Trump is also right about Seventh-Day Adventism: it's a kooky apocalyptic annihilationistic religion. It shares many features with conservative Islam: they insist on an absolutist and "literal" (i.e., their own) interpretation of the Bible. They have a self-proclaimed prophet (more than one, actually) who claimed intimate knowledge of God's holy plan. Their holy day of rest is not on Sunday, in opposition to most of Christianity. They anticipate the world will end soon in a conflagration between the true believers (them) and mainstream Christianity, which they believe is in league with Satan. And this global conflagration will be caused by Christians trying to force the Sabbath to be on Sundays, persecuting Adventists who celebrate the Sabbath on Saturday.

This is Adventist's major concern, and it's totally ridiculous: with each passing year we are getting further and further from forcing the Sabbath to be observed on Sundays, with almost every state eliminating mandatory Sunday closing laws and allowing the sale of everything from automobile to alcohol sales.

But more importantly, why would the creator of the universe care how humans set up their calendar? Which day is the seventh day of rest comes down to whether you define the first day of the week as Sunday or Monday. And that depends on the date when you start the cycle of days of the week.

Adam never wrote a damned thing down: no one did for thousands of years. Moses didn't get the tablets from God telling him to to keep the Sabbath holy until some time between 1600 and 1200 BC. Given that writing didn't exist when the world was created, and arithmetic and calendars wouldn't be created for three or four millennia after the ostensible day of creation, we have absolutely no way of knowing what day should be the first day of the week. Thus, the exact day on which the Sabbath is celebrated is totally arbitrary and essentially random.

Christians have switched calendars four times since the time of Christ: from the Hebrew, to the Roman Julian calendar, to the Christian Julian calendar, to the Gregorian calendar. So how can know really know anything about what the right day is to celebrate the Sabbath?

William Miller, the founder of Carson's religion, predicted the Second Coming would occur on various dates in 1843 and 1844, recalculating the End Times several times. Adventists called it "The Great Disappointment" when Christ failed to appear. Yeah, it's so disappointing that the world didn't end and millions of Christians who weren't Adventists didn't die because they honor Sunday as the Sabbath.

Most Adventists also revere Ellen White as a prophet, even though the Bible is supposed to be God's last word and the Bible warns against false prophets.

Carson himself believes literally that the world was created in six days just a few thousand years ago, and that evolution is the work of Satan.

Like Trump, the average Republican voter knows nothing about Adventism. If they did, they would lump Carson and his religion in with the Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientologists, Muslims and Wiccans.

The Republican race is beginning to look a lot like the last Republican primary, when they cycled through nuts like Bachmann, Gingrich, Santorum, and Cain before finally deciding on boring Mitt Romney. This time they started out the the boring guys like Bush and Christie, then flirted with Trump because of his big mouth. They're getting tired of the bombast, and already they're toying with Carson because they find his somnolent droning a soothing change of pace.

Carson, too, shall pass, probably when Ted Cruz goes bananas because he's bored and running out of cash.

Fucking. Brilliant.

Start Shittin' Yo Self

Backed by moms and money, gun-safety group expands its clout

Everytown for Gun Safety and its subsidiary, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, have helped push six states since 2013 to adopt more background checks on gun sales — what they consider the single most important measure to prevent shootings. They have also helped thwart legislation in several states that would make it easier to obtain firearms and carry them in more places such as schools.

The biggest weapon the Gun Cult has is fear. They use it every effectively and illogical people fall for it every time. Yet the Gun Cult also has a very big Achilles heel-their own hubris. They think they are invincible and this ever growing group of sensible people proved that they are not.

If I were the Gun Cult, I'd be shitting my self right about now. Pissing off a large group of women who are about to put the first woman in the White House is never a good idea.

The Fallacy of the Hot Hand Fallacy

In sports there's this thing called the "hot hand." This is where a player gets on a roll and feels he can do no wrong. The Mets' Daniel Murphy is the latest person to be pegged as having a hot hand, hitting a bunch of home runs recently, after having a recent slump and being rather average for most of his career.

Statisticians claim there's no such thing as as a "hot hand," calling it a fallacious belief:

The "hot-hand fallacy" (also known as the "hot hand phenomenon" or "hot hand") is the fallacious belief that a person who has experienced success with a random event has a greater chance of further success in additional attempts. The concept has been applied to gambling and sports, such as basketball.

With random events, such as tossing coins and rolling dice, each toss or roll is independent of all others. If you roll two six-sided die the chance of a rolling a 7 is 16.7% every time, even if you just rolled a 7 the time before. If you roll 10 7s in row, the chance of rolling a 7 is still only 16.7% the 11th time.

In gambling statistical fallacies take two forms: first is the idea that if you're losing, you're eventually "due" a success. Second is the idea that if you're on a roll, your odds of success are increased. Both are wrong in games of chance like craps and roulette, where each event is random and independent of other events.

Some studies have indicated that success in sports like baseball and basketball has the same characteristic of randomness. This has lead statisticians to believe that one play has no bearing on the probability of success on the next play. That is, if a batter has a record of hitting home runs 16.7% of the time and hits a home run in the first inning, he still only has a 16.7% chance of hitting a home in third inning.

But plays in sports are not random and independent events. They are dependent on the individuals and conditions involved. During a single game, it's the same day, the same stadium, the same batter, the same pitcher, the same defensive lineup, the same weather conditions. Some days batters won't get a good night's sleep. Sometimes the pitcher had and argument with his wife and his mind's not really on the game. On a particular day, a player can play better than he ever has in his life, and his chances of success are better than his career average that whole day.

Thus, a batter hitting a ball is not a totally random independent event, like rolling dice. Many of the conditions are under the batter's or the pitcher's control.

For example, the pitcher can guarantee the batter won't get a home run by walking him intentionally. (This comes at a cost, of course.)

Similarly, if you take a professional baseball player and put him on the plate facing a 9-year-old little league pitcher, he would probably hit a home run every time the kid put the ball over the plate.

Thus, hitting a baseball is not totally random.

The "randomness" in sports comes from two sources: external and internal. External sources of randomness arise from things like air pressure, wind and lighting that may affect the flight of the ball or the player's perception of it. Internal sources of randomness arise from human beings' inability to repeat tasks identically: a pitcher cannot throw a ball at exactly the same speed along the same trajectory every time.

Finally, the player's mental state has a huge impact on performance. People who are wracked with doubts don't usually perform very well. Success breeds success by inspiring confidence and eliminating hesitation and second guessing oneself.

Having said all that, however, any hot hand effects are going to be fairly small, because human beings cannot repeatedly execute physical actions with extreme precision.

The epitome of randomness is flipping a coin. But this is random only because humans cannot consistently apply all the same forces to a coin each time it is flipped, or even flip it from the same height and location.

But if we built a device that flipped a coin in a vacuum, applying exactly the same forces each time with extremely high precision, we could increase the probability of getting the same result by reducing the variation in each iteration. We could potentially build a machine that could make a coin come up heads 9 out of 10 times, or 99 out of 100 times. (100% certainty is unlikely due to quantum effects.)

In gambling the hot hand fallacy still applies to games of chance like roulette and craps (but not necessarily to poker or blackjack, where skill matters).

But in sports where human is pitted against human and most of the factors are controlled by the actors, it is a fallacy to think that the outcome is completely random.