Second Amendment Trumps the First in Utah

Anita Sarkeesian, a critic of the way women are portrayed in video games, was  forced to cancel a speech at Utah State University after the university could not guarantee her safety:

Tim Vitale, the spokesman, said that the school police told Ms. Sarkeesian that, under Utah law, they could not prevent attendees from bringing concealed weapons to the event. 

In Utah the rights of video game addicts to commit a massacre outweigh the rights of a woman to speak in public without fear of being killed like some sex object in a video game.

On Monday evening, members of the administration at Utah State University received an e-mail warning that a massacre would be carried out against attendees of the event.

“This will be the deadliest school shooting in American history and I’m giving you a chance to stop it,” said the e-mail, which bore the name Marc Lepine, who killed 14 women in a mass shooting in Montreal in 1989 before taking his own life.

Now, to see how ridiculously idiotic this situation is, imagine what the reaction of school officials would be if Ann Coulter were the woman speaking, and a misogynist Muslim calling himself Osama bin Laden sent an email threatening to commit a massacre during the speech to "silence that harridan."

Homeland Security would be all over it. They would spare no expense to track down the author of the email. If no suspects were apprehended, and Coulter had the guts to proceed with the speech this is how things would go down.

There would be a large police and FBI presence. Coulter would wear Kevlar and stand behind a bulletproof screen. If some "Muslim-looking" people showed up the FBI would arrest them on the spot, especially if they had weapons. But if by some miracle the FBI didn't arrest them, and let them into the auditorium with their weapons, they would certainly segregate them from the rest of the audience, perhaps even isolating them in a bullet-proof glass enclosure so they couldn't shoot anyone.

And if they didn't isolate suspected Muslims with weapons and allowed them to freely mingle with the crowd, and they suddenly started firing on the crowd during the speech, a small group of gunmen could easily kill dozens or hundreds of people. The cops couldn't even fire on them for fear of hitting human shields. Sure, a bunch of right-wing gun nuts would also show up and "guard" each armed Muslim, but since bad guys shoot first they're sitting ducks. And as as soon as one shot was fired, everyone would start shooting, and you'd have hundreds of friendly fire deaths.

I therefore submit that a Utah university president would never allow misogynist Muslims the opportunity to assassinate Ann Coulter. They wouldn't cite Utah law, they would say that they would do anything to protect their students. And we would all applaud them for saving society from the scourge of Islamic terrorism.

Yet Utah State University is perfectly willing to give misogynist gamers the opportunity to assassinate Anita Sarkeesian and anyone who would listen to her.

Conservatives seem to think there's some intrinsic difference between a Muslim terrorist who blows himself up at a marketplace, and a gun-loving American narcissist who murders twenty school children and then commits suicide. They're both terrorists, they're both criminals, and they're both alienated from society and want to strike out and hurt people in a blaze of delusional glory.

The petty details of what motivates them are irrelevant: the underlying psychopathy is the same. Islamic terrorism is no more heinous than school shootings.

Dead is dead.

Being Vulnerable Can Be A Good Thing

Is The World Becoming More Peaceful?

Yes, it is.

Pinker points out that during World War II, the human population lost 300 of every 100,000 people each year. During the Korean War it was in the 20s, before dropping into the teens during the Vietnam era. In the 1980s and 1990s, it fell into the single digits. For most of the 21st century it’s been below one war death per 100,000 people per year. 

There has been an uptick globally as a result of the civil war in Syria, doubling from 0.5 per 100,000 to 1. But Pinker says “you can’t compare 1 with 15 or 25 or 300.” Everywhere else in the world, the stats are still trending downward. The same is true for homicides.

Pretty fucking cool.

Suddenly, South Dakota

It looks like the race for the Senate seat in South Dakota isn't as much of a slam dunk for the Republicans originally thought.

According to the Survey USA/KOTA/KSFY/Aberdeen American News poll taken between Oct. 1 and Oct. 6, Rounds is only leading independent Larry Pressler 35-32 percent among likely voters. (Pressler is a former GOP senator who has not said how he would caucus if elected.) Not far behind is Democrat Rick Weiland, with 28 percent.

Add in the fact that the Democrats are now going to spend $1 million dollars in the cheap advertising market there and suddenly the GOP is playing defense. This story could also have an impact on Rounds.

No doubt, this year's elections are going to be interesting. A common theme that I have noticed among the Democrats is a fear based strategy with the express intent of getting people out to vote. When the media speaks of Republican waves based on certain polls, the Democrats send out emails and voter registration goes up in the battleground states.

Take, for example, the Quinnipiac poll from mid September that showed Republican challenger Bob Beauprez 10 points ahead of John Hickenlooper in the Colorado governor's race. The Democrats made a lot of hay out of that one and now take a look at the polls. Hickenlooper has led in every one except the Fox poll in which they are tied. Of course, no one really took the Quinnipiac poll seriously anyway so this could be just a normal readjustment.

It's also important to note the number of likely voters when looking at these polls. RCP shows how many LVs there are with each poll. The CBS poll, for example, has nearly 1700 likely voters while the Fox poll has only 700. Obviously, the CBS poll is more accurate with a greater number of LVs.

We are only three weeks out, folks, and things are likely to get more exciting. I'm still at 51-49, GOP favor, for the Senate...the House staying more or less the same...and somewhere between 3-5 GOP governors getting the boot.

GOP PLAN 2014

Shit Your Pants!

100% Renewable

Burlington Vermont is now running on 100% renewable energy and I think that's pretty fucking cool. It's especially wonderful when you consider that the state of Vermont is planning on becoming the first state to be 100% renewable.

I wonder how many more states will follow suit...

A Cure for Diabetes on the Horizon?

A group of scientists at Harvard announced that they have found a way to make embryonic stem cells produce insulin:

The long-sought advance could eventually lead to new ways to help millions of people with diabetes.

Right now, many people with diabetes have to regularly check the level of sugar in their blood and inject themselves with insulin to keep the sugar in their blood in check. It's an imperfect treatment.

"This is kind of a life-support for diabetics," says Doug Melton, a stem-cell researcher at Harvard Medical School. "It doesn't cure the disease and leads to devastating complications of the disease."

People with poorly controlled diabetes can suffer complications such as blindness, amputations and heart attacks.

If this result holds up under further study, it could be a real cure for diabetes. The implications for the nation's health and the cost of health care is huge. Diabetes cost an estimated $245 billion in 2012, including direct medical costs associated with diabetes and indirect costs such as lost productivity.

But the cost in human misery is incalculable. I have a sister-in-law whose son developed type I diabetes in elementary school. For the next several years her entire life revolved around measuring his blood sugar, planning out everything that that he would eat, and fretting every time he was late coming home from school that he had lapsed into a diabetic coma and lay dying alone.

But, incredibly, there are people who oppose this research:

"If, like me, someone considers the human embryo to be imbued with the same sorts of dignity that the rest of us have, then in fact this is morally problematic," says Daniel Sulmasy, a doctor and bioethicist at the University of Chicago. "It's the destruction of an individual unique human life for the sole purpose of helping other persons."

Embryos are alive, and they contain human DNA, but they are not people: once they have been prepared for in vitro fertilization and frozen, they are just a cluster of cells. Using embryonic cells from these sources to cure diabetes is no less ethical than transplanting the heart from a brain-dead victim of a car accident, or using cadaver ligaments to fix a torn ACL, or cadaver corneas to restore vision in the blind.

If the sentiment that unique human lives should not be destroyed for helping other persons were consistently employed, opponents of embryonic stem cell research might have some moral integrity. But most of the detractors also favor the death penalty, in which a unique human life is destroyed for petty revenge, and want anyone to be free to buy a handgun on demand and to shoot anyone they think might hurt them, and if they mistakenly kill an innocent person believe the shooter should suffer no consequences.

In any case, this will not be the final step in researching a cure for diabetes:

Melton thinks he can also make insulin cells using another kind of stem cell known as an induced pluripotent stem cell, which doesn't destroy any embryos. He's trying to figure out if it works as well, and hopes to start testing his insulin cells in people with diabetes within three years.

The goal for scientists is to figure out how switch a patient's own cells into such a pluripotent stem cell, which means no embryos would be involved. But scientists first have to figure out how stem cells differentiate into insulin cells naturally before they can coax adult cells back into stem cells.

Where do the stem cells whose dignity people like Sulmasy want to protect come from? Embryos that are left over after in vitro fertilization procedures. Embryos that would otherwise have to be destroyed are this very moment piling up by the hundreds of thousands in liquid nitrogen vats at in vitro fertilization clinics.

Does it really make more sense to incinerate those leftover cells, or to use a few of them to find a cure that save millions of people from debilitating and deadly diseases?

Train Your Wife

Could These Three Governors Be Going Bye Bye In A Month?

Take a look at these three governors...







They are Sam Brownback (Kansas), Rick Scott (Florida) and Scott Walker (Wisconsin). While everyone is hyper focused on the Senate and Republican "waves," I think that these three guys are all going to lose their jobs in a month. All of them have employed conservative policies in in their states and they haven't really gone over very well. Their opponents are ahead of them in most of the polls and their constituents are not happy at all.

So, if there is a wave of conservatism sweeping the nation, why are there guys in such trouble?

Obama's Numbers

From FactCheck.org. 

The accompanying article really shows how looking at just one of these numbers isn't a barometer for measuring his success. So, what does it say when looking at all of the data?

Blank Jobs Plan

From a recent John Boehner tweet...

Largely accurate except there should be at least one point written which states "Against Barack Obama's plan."

A Decline in Poverty

In 2013, poverty declined in the United States and it went down faster for children which is very good news.

It was the first meaningful decline in poverty for children since 2000, and for the overall population since 2006.The declines are due largely to an improving job market, which has lifted the living standards not only for the newly employed but also for their children.

“Every child in this country matters. So while it is significant that child poverty decreased in this single year, the real takeaway is that it demonstrates poverty is not unsolvable,” Hannah Matthews of CLASP, a nonprofit group seeking to improve conditions for low-income people, wrote after the Census Bureau released the new numbers.

Obviously, there is a great deal of room for improvement but this news is most welcome!

A Heated Discussion About Islam

How Far They Have Come...

Repeat And Spread This Every Day Until The Election

From a recent Facebook post...

After the 2008 elections the Republicans were one more Election Day loss away from ceasing to be a viable national party. They had lost the '06 & '08 elections so badly that they became desperate. Out of that desperation came the strategy to oppose anything that Democrats in general and POTUS Obama in particular favored. 

This desperate strategy was hatched on the night of POTUS Obama's first inauguration and it was hoped that it would gum up the works of government to the point where enough people who were captivated and enthusiastic about the Obama presidency would become disenchanted by the lack of substantial progress on the most problematic issues, sit out future elections and stay out of the political process. Again, this was/is a strategy borne out of desperation but it was designed with some very deep-seeded traits (like the short attention spans of and instant gratification mindset of so many Americans) in mind too, particularly turning budding progressives off to the entire political process. Sorry to say that this desperate strategy worked better than the Republicans could have ever hoped, especially in the 2010 mid-term elections, when voter turnout nationwide plummeted to 40%. 

Liberal talking heads like filmmaker Michael Moore were so turned off by the lack of progress on key issues like financial reform and the lack of either single-payer healthcare or the public option being part of the final ACA that they actually encouraged progressives to not vote in 2010.

Republicans had nothing to lose by becoming professional obstuctionists as long as it succeeded in turning people (most of whom would probably vote for Democrats) off to the entire political process. The Republicans KNOW their base WILL turn out to vote as long as they continue obstructing and advocating what most of us consider policies and strategies that are off a cliff crazy. Despite the continuing high number of absolutely crazy policies advocated by Republicans, despite Republican pols continuing to disparage women, African-Americans, Latinos, gay-Americans, working class Americans of both genders and all ethnic backgrounds, despite the lack of even cloaking their ties to and obedience to corporate masters, the Republicans are looking at a very realistic chance of increasing their majority in the House of Representatives and gaining the majority in the US Senate.

Never seen anything like it in my life. It's like the more mean-spirited Republicans become the better their prospects become for the midterm elections. And this success is primarily (overwhelmingly) due to progressives (liberals) sulking and staying away from the process. 

Well, if progressives stay away from this year's elections ... quite possibly the most important midterm election in modern history ... and the Republicans win the day on Nov. 4, they should no longer wonder why things are so gummed up, why corporate interests win out on every issue or problem, why politics is such a filthy, cutthroat business because if they want to know who's fault it is, the first thing progressives who didn't vote should do is go look in a mirror.

This is exactly the message that needs to be repeated over and over again between now and election day.

President Obama Still Not Destroying The Economy

Unemployment rate drops to 5.9% as job growth rebounds

The economy added a robust 248,000 net new jobs, and the unemployment rate dropped 0.2 percentage point to 5.9%, the lowest since July 2008, the Labor Department said. Job growth in July and August also was revised upward by a total of 69,000. That included lifting August's disappointing initial estimate of 142,000 net new jobs to 180,000.

Increasing Inequality

Check this out...

So, right around the time regulations started to loosen up in the late 1970s, things seemed to switch quite a bit, didn't they? When the economy grows, Pavlina R. Tcherneva illustrates quite cleary who benefits.

Buzz In The Tiny World Of Poll Nerds

I've been pretty amused by the Twitter war that has blown up between forecasters Sam Wang and Nate Silver. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the blogsphere (especially the right wing blogsphere) and social media need guys like Silver and Wang to thump their digital chests and pwn someone in comments (hmm...Silver and Wang...sounds like a gay porn title:))

In my view, Wang has been too optimistic about the Democrats' chances in taking over the Senate, although his latest model is line with my current prediction as well (51 R, 49 D). Yet, it's important to remember that Silver's model shows the Republicans with a 59.3 percent chance of winning the Senate and the Democrats with a 40.7 of holding on to the Senate. People look at this and say, "Oh, well the GOP are ahead so they will win." That's not how it works in statistics. Wang should know this when he admonishes Silver for being "wrong" about Montana and North Dakota. Silver wasn't wrong. Even though the odds favored the GOP in those races, they still lost. That's what happens sometimes.

The Republicans have been pretty smart this election cycle and kept the real nutters off the ballot. Their candidates have just enough Tea Party in them to pass muster and nowhere near the level of sheer moonbattery to drive midterm voters away. But they have to be careful.

Once the 2014 election is over, the 2016 election officially begins. The tables are going to be turned 180 degrees and the GOP is going to have to defend 24 seats to the Dems 10. If they spend two years acting like children and stonewalling the president, they'll lose the Senate, several seats in the House, and any chance of winning the White House. At half of the approval rating of the president, they will have zero wiggle room to have tantrums. Their future as a party depends on their willingness to compromise because their base is very old and the Democrats' base is young.

That's why I chuckle when I hear this year's GOP candidates say they are going to take it to the president and force their agenda down his throat. Yeah, like that's going to play well in 2016. No, sorry, I predict that if they do win back the Senate, they are going to cave on some issues...just like they always have before...and piss off their "no compromise" base.

Best Album Cover Ever!