Fox News Claims to Be the Victim in Charleston

For years Fox News has taken up the mantle of defending Christianity from the devils on the doorstep. They invented the pretend war on Christmas. They portray the requirement that for-profit corporations pay for birth control is a terrible burden and the most extreme violation of religious freedom. Fox New contributor Mike Huckabee claims gay marriage will lead to the criminalization of Christianity. And on and on.

Two days ago a white supremacist assassinated a black state senator in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the oldest black churches in the country. That day, June 17th, was the 193rd anniversary of a slave revolt planned by the church's founder, Denmark Vesey. Vesey and five slaves were hanged after a secret trial, and 30 other slaves were tried and executed in short order, all in secret.

When Dylann Roof killed those nine African Americans he said, “I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.” He said this as he was shooting six black women, one of whom was 87 years old!

Before the shooting he talked to an acquaintance:

Joey Meek reconnected with Roof a few weeks ago and said that while they got drunk together on vodka, Roof began complaining that "blacks were taking over the world" and that "someone needed to do something about it for the white race." 

This echoes the standard refrain of the Tea Party -- the creation of Fox News -- "taking America back."

Roof was a fan of racist symbols, from the flags of Rhodesia and apartheid-era South Africa to the Confederate flag he proudly displayed on his car.

Now Fox News is selling the lie that Roof's racism-fueled terrorist attack was an attack on Christianity, and an another excuse to call for more guns. Christianity -- and by proxy Fox News -- was under attack in Charleston! Christians are the victims! Woe is us! We're the victim! More guns!

It's not a fluke that this happened in South Carolina, the birthplace of the Civil War. A state that still flies the Confederate flag, the symbol of slave holders. Streets in Charleston are named after Confederate generals, traitors to the United States of America. They still celebrate Confederate Memorial Day, which is held on the birthday of Jefferson Davis in some states.

They say they're just celebrating their heritage. What is that heritage? Enslaving human beings and then executing men like Denmark Vesey for trying to achieve the same freedoms that the American Revolution was fought for.

The Confederate flag stands for slavery and white supremacy. And as long as South Carolina flies that flag, and puts it on its license plates, South Carolina will endorse and promote the same racist hatred that Dylann Roof expressed when he assassinated nine African Americans to inflame the nation with his terroristic goal of inciting a race war.

The Disparity of Response

Thoughts On Charleston

I have several thoughts going through my head right now regarding the shooting in Charleston but the one that sticks out predominantly is that we have, yet again, lost another young man to violent psychosis. Why? How did this keeping happening in our culture?

It's the magic cocktail all over again...male, young, white, mental illness, takes SSRIs, parents divorced, parents nutso, plays violent video games, and easy access to guns. Boom!...literally. Now, we haven't discovered yet whether or not he takes SSRIs but look for that bit of information to come out in about two weeks. That's the way it always works. Here is a piece that details Dylan Roof's background.

Much is being made of the racial angle with conservatives falling all over themselves in a most amusing attempt to redirect the attention away from the fact that this occurred in the South...in a deep red state...the same state where the Civil War began...where a lot of Republicans voters reside. I'm curious to know where Roof's parents are in all of this. He had to learn his white supremacy stuff somewhere, right? I'm betting it was from his dad who gave him a gun less than two months ago.

At this point, the racial thing is secondary to me. We have to figure out why our culture produces people like this. Is it the Columbine Effect? More importantly, how can we engage young men at an earlier age so they don't end up becoming spree shooters? In many ways, this is the same issue that communities with gangs have when they are trying to stop young men from turning to violence. It's also the same issue the world has in preventing young people from joining ISIL.

I'm convinced that had a few key people engaged Dylan Rood earlier in his life and steered him on a more positive path, this shooting never would have happened. This was a failure of mentorship in his life that should serve as a lesson for other mentors out there who might have someone they know like Dylan.

Do something now. Enlist the help of others in your community. Help these young men out!

Well, That Didn't Take Long

As I predicted...

NRA board member blames pastor for Charleston deaths 

What an ugly bunch of fuckers...but, hey, that's that Gun Cult for you!

It's Not a Hate Crime: It's Terrorism

There's a serious double standard. When Sunni and Shia Muslims kill people in mosques in Iraq we call it terrorism, but when white guys in America shoot a bunch of people in houses of worship we call it a "hate crime."

To wit: last night 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof shot and killed nine African Americans at a church in Charleston, SC. Roof has now reportedly been captured in North Carolina.

It's just another such incident in a long list of right-wing terrorist attacks:

In 2012, a white supremacist shot and killed six worshipers and wounded four others at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. A shooting rampage by a right-wing gunman in 2008 killed two people and wounded seven at a Unitarian Universalist church in Tennessee. 

The granddaddy of these terrorist attacks was the Ku Klux Klan bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, when four black girls were killed. For good measure, let's not forget forget the right-wing terrorist bombings of the 1996 Olympics, abortion clinics and gay clubs, or the right-wing terrorist shootings of abortion providers, shall we?

Roof sat with the victims during prayer before opening fire. He said, “I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.” Then he shot six women and three men, one of them a state senator. The shooter reportedly left one woman alive so that she could bear witness to the crime. Roof's Facebook page shows him wearing a jacket emblazoned with apartheid-era South African and Rhodesian flags.

It is clear that Roof committed these murders as a political statement in order to intimidate the African American community in the United States.

Now, there's a difference between a hate crime and terrorism. A hate crime is when a white guy beats up a black guy for dating a white woman, or a homophobe kills a gay man for hitting on him at a bar. The shooting in Charleston was a premeditated terrorist attack, calibrated to incite fear in all African Americans.

Attacks on churches aren't the only double standard on American right-wing terrorists. Police stations are frequently targets of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Less than a week ago an American gunman attacked Dallas police headquarters in an armored van. James Boulware planted a bunch of pipe bombs around the building. And the cops knew about this guy:

In 2013, Boulware was arrested after attacking a relative at their home and leaving the scene with "several firearms, ammo and body armor." Boulware then allegedly made phone calls in which he threatened to kill family members and attack churches or schools, which prompted the local school district to go into lockdown mode. He was arrested without incident and assault charges against him were eventually dropped.

Yes, the authorities just let him go, and let him buy more guns, an armored van, body armor, materiel for bombs and lots and lots of ammo.

But everyone's already forgotten about this guy, partly because he didn't kill anyone, but mostly because he was a white guy. And every time a white guy goes on a shooting spree everyone just says, "He was obviously unbalanced, maybe schizophrenic, just a deranged wacko with a fetish for guns and bombs."

They make excuses, such as, "Well, he wasn't connected to an organized terrorist group. He was just a lone-wolf nut job who hated the government." Which is usually followed by the sentiment, "They drove him to it!"

And this is the difference: whites are held individually responsible for their crimes (usually with a large dollop of blame attached to society for making them do it), but the entire African-American and Muslim communities are held collectively responsible for any crime committed by one of their own.

Boulware's attack was clearly terrorism, a political statement intended to intimidate the police and retaliate against the justice system which he blamed for his miserable life.

Was Boulware schizophrenic and crazy? Quite possibly. Almost by definition suicide bombers are mentally ill. It doesn't matter. That's why the word "terrorist" is so frequently preceded by "crazed." If they commit terrorist acts, they're terrorists, regardless of their mental health.

Boulware and Roof aren't alone. There are lots of people just as crazy as they are. The Department of Homeland Security reports that right-wing terrorism is a greater threat than Muslim extremism. These guys aren't just lone wolves: they roam this country in packs:

Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that by some estimates, there are as many as 300,000 people involved in some way with sovereign citizen extremism. Perhaps 100,000 people form a core of the movement, he said.

The right-wing sovereign citizen groups claim the police have no authority over them, and have killed lots of cops to make the point.

These guys have been skulking in the background for decades, spinning conspiracy theories, setting up their militias, killing cops over pizza, evading grazing fees in Nevada, and occasionally blowing up federal buildings in Oklahoma City.

Are they crazy? Sure. Why not. It doesn't matter. Their victims are just as dead.

Fox News and conservative politicians encourage these kooks and feed their paranoia with their crypto-racist, anti-government, hate-filled rhetoric. And then Republicans bow down to the NRA to enable them to buy guns, ammo, body armor and armored vehicles on demand.

These right-wing terrorists will keep on shooting cops and innocent church-going Christian African Americans as long as the right gives them the license to kill.

Charleston Shooting

Another young white man has gone on a shooting spree. This time it was in a black church in the South. Police are investigating it as a hate crime so it seems that this was racially motivated.

Most interestingly (and really not surprising), all the major news networks except Fox are covering this story as a big story. Last night, Fox had a story about Donald Trump. Today they are talking about the trade deal.

Wow.

I suppose the next word out of unicorn fart land will be about how those folks in the church should have armed themselves and this would not have happened.

Looking Forward To The GOP Debates

The Clown Car Gets Colorized

Now that the GOP clown car includes Donald Trump, the 2016 presidential campaign has gotten a whole lot more interesting. By "interesting," I mean big fucking trouble for the GOP. Take a look at Trump's campaign announcement.



Based on what he says here, I have to wonder if he is a secret Democratic plant that's going to beat the crap out of GOP candidates.

In so many ways, he is the epitome of conservatives today...arrogant and full of hubris, shameless money worshiper, deep belief in an aristocratic class, angry and hateful. What a great way to illustrate what the GOP stands for to independent voters!

It's The Librals' Fault!!

Remember that Dallas police station shoot up?

Dallas police shooter’s father says ‘liberal people’ drove son to ‘breaking point’

Wow...talk about playing the victim...:)

HIllary Not Talking To The Press?

So, the word in unicorn fart land is that Hillary isn't talking to the press and refuses to answer tough questions...





Really? This was yesterday.

So much for objective reality...

Good Words

I am going to do all I can to pierce the collective amnesia that the Republicans are trying to impose on people. We're not supposed to remember that the 12 years preceding Bill Clinton quadrupled the debt of our country? We're not supposed to remember that when he left office we had a balanced budget with a surplus? And if it had been continued would've paid off the national debt? We're not supposed to remember that Barack Obama inherited the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression and had to pull us out of the ditch? And did a better job than he gets credit for?

---Hillary Clinton.

This is the objective reality that the GOP fears heading into the election. Keep reminding the voters about it.

Moses A Founding Father?

Apparently so...

Texas approves textbooks with Moses as Founding Father 

It's always something with that wacky board of education in Texas. Of course, the histrionics about this is kinda funny to all the teachers out there. Most end up doing their own thing anyway. Add in the fact that a significant number of students never read their textbook assignments and the mouth foaming is unjustified.

So, I posted this question on Quora...

...and the best answer I have ever seen was posted. In addition to this being the best answer I have ever seen, it's also one of the finest examples of satire I have ever seen. Here it is in its entirety...

The questions was how exactly are Christians under attack in the United States?

I'll tell you how: 

1. Churches in the USA are regularly burned down by atheists, Muslims, and other anti-Christians, and the secular law enforcement agencies here won't even investigate. That's why you rarely see a church that can be identified as a church in the US. Mostly, Christians meet in hidden locations to avoid detection. 

2. It's almost impossible for Christians to get elected to public office. As soon as word gets out that a candidate is Christian, s/he can kiss that election good-bye. 

3. The Bible has been banned in the United States. You can't get it here legally, and if you're caught with one you'll go to prison. 

4. Christian kids live in fear of their schoolmates discovering they're Christian, because it's bound to lead to teasing, bullying, even getting beaten up. 

5. All broadcasting of Christian views has been censored. Try as you might, you will not find a Christian radio or TV station in the US. They do not exist. 

6. Christian holidays are forbidden. You'll never hear a peep about Christmas or Easter in the US -- people are simply too afraid to openly celebrate these holidays. Which is a shame for people like me because there would be oodles of marketing opportunities around those events, but alas, no. 

7. All Christian symbols are banned. You cannot find Christian jewelry, bumper stickers, t-shirts, or anything like that in the US. 

8. Christians who dare reveal their identity, or who are even suspected of being Christian, are regularly beaten in the streets by angry mobs. And again, the secular law enforcement here does nothing to stop it. 

9. Christians in America are forced to publicly deny their faith, and to perform public actions to prove they are not Christian, such as being forced into a gay marriage. The alternative is life in prison, or execution. 

10. People who are openly Christian here cannot own a business, are harassed at the voting booth so that many do not even attempt to vote, are subjected to special taxes no one else has to pay, and must have a cross stamped on their driver licenses, Social Security cards, and passports. 

In short, America is a brutal and frightening place if you're a Christian. I wouldn't go there if I were you.

The answer has gotten over 3,000 views already with my question over 8,000 views. No wonder...it's completely brilliant and makes conservative Christians look fucking ridiculous.

The only thing that is under attack is the ability of a conservative Christian (see also, fucking hypocrites) to force their opinion on the rest of Christianity. That's what they are really pissed off about.

We are calling them on their bullshit.

Cast The First Stone!

Hey kids, check this out!

It's a Jesus slingshot that's perfect for your evangelical buddy. Help him or her to cast the first stone with this supercool slingshot! 

Can The Republicans Win In Any Way With King v Burwell?

Chris Trejbal over at Americablog doesn't seem to think so and I agree. If SCOTUS does not uphold the subsidies, they have two choices. If they go the nuclear option, they instantly piss off seven million voters. If they go with the band aid, quick fix option, then the adolescents in their base get pissed off. If SCOTUS upholds again, it would be incredibly demoralizing.

The one thing about his piece that really stood out for me was this quote from the Daily Caller's Neil Siefring.

Republicans shouldn’t disrupt Obamacare’s collapse if the Supreme Court decides the subsidies are unworkable. The blame for this lies squarely with our scholar-leader President Obama and the Democrats. Republicans should not rescue them from their mistakes. Republicans have pointed out for years that Obamacare is unworkable. If the Supreme Court helps prove them correct, Republican leadership in the House should take advantage of the decision to pivot health care back to the states as rapidly as possible and get the federal government out of the health care business at which it has failed so badly. Republicans in the House and Senate should resist the temptation to provide mouth-to-mouth to the bureaucracy the left has constructed. They have done so too often in the past.

Scholar-leader? Prove them correct? Why doesn't Mr. Siefring, like every other conservative out there, admit that he can't fucking stand it when people are smarter and more accomplished than he is? This is a very core problem with conservatives today. They suffer from terrible, terrible adolescent envy.

Fix this problem and most others go away.

Saving Lives

One of the main reasons why I support the president is that he has literally saved lives since he has taken office. The passage of the Affordable Care Act has led to more people having insurance and getting medical care that didn't have it before.

Ergo, lives saved.  It doesn't get much simpler than that.

Pretty spectacular!

The Trouble with Girls

There's been a lot of talk about women in science and technology in recent months. Google's Eric Schmidt stuck his foot in it last March. Apple's Tim Cook wants more gender equality, but his company is still 70% male.

But what has attracted the most attention were comments by Tim Hunt, a 72-year-old biochemist and Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine, who made advances in cell division:

“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls,” Mr. Hunt said Monday at the World Conference of Science Journalists in South Korea. “Three things happen when they are in the lab: You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry.”

The reactions to his comments have been swift and harsh. Hunt has resigned as honorary professor at University College London.

He meant the comments as a joke, but continued to defend the sentiment behind them:

“I did mean the part about having trouble with girls,” he said. “I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me, and it’s very disruptive to the science because it’s terribly important that in a lab people are on a level playing field.”

And he elaborated on his comments that women are prone to cry when criticized.

“It’s terribly important that you can criticize people’s ideas without criticizing them and if they burst into tears, it means that you tend to hold back from getting at the absolute truth,” he said. “Science is about nothing but getting at the truth, and anything that gets in the way of that diminishes, in my experience, the science.”

First off, Hunt has blinders on. There is and always has been same-sex romance. Scientists can be gay like everyone else: segregating men and women won't end romantic entanglements in the lab.

Second, I really don't know where the bit about crying comes from. I worked for 25 years in software engineering, and always had women coworkers and/or bosses. My wife worked in electrical engineering for just as long, and had many female coworkers and employees. Neither of us ever saw women crying at work because they were criticized.

I wonder: in Hunt's storied career, did his criticism of a male colleague ever elicit angry shouts, obscenity-laced streams of invective or even fisticuffs? That's a typical male response to criticism. I have seen numerous violent emotional outbursts from men over the years (especially from managers). I cannot believe that Hunt was never involved in his own share of such altercations. 

Isn't an obscene rant just as unprofessional and unscientific as a crying jag?

As a man of a certain age, Hunt would perceive a swearing-filled shouting match as a proper way for scientists to settle their differences. He knows how to win such an argument: just shout back, only louder.

What Hunt is really complaining about is that he can't win an argument by shouting louder when the object of his derision starts crying. Crying disarms him and exposes him for the bully he is.

Now, assuming that Hunt really means what he says, all this loving and crying is his fault. He says that 1) he falls in love, 2) she falls in love, 3) he makes her cry.

Since Hunt is a Nobel Prize winner, I'm going to venture a guess that he ran his lab. That would mean he was the boss. I would also guess the man is rather arrogant, brilliant, self-absorbed and full of himself (he did win the Nobel Prize, so he does have reason). There's an inherent imbalance of power when a renowned boss romances an employee. Because of the potential for abuse, most workplaces strongly discourage such relationships and some even ban them.

Why? The best way to undermine any person's confidence and credibility is to make it appear they obtained their position through sexual favors. By instigating such a relationship with an employee, Hunt is torpedoing that person's career in the most callous way possible.

When Hunt criticizes a lover, the subtext is, "You are stupid. You have this job just because we had sex. My criticism means I don't love you anymore. You're going to lose absolutely everything: my respect, our love and your job. And stop crying, damn it!"

Hunt is little different from the imams and the ayatollahs who want to cloister women in their houses and hide them under chadors. Like them, Hunt blames women for his inability to work without being distracted by their gender. Hunt is the problem, not the women.

Instead of banning women from the labs, brilliant men who can't keep it in their pants should be kept out of management positions. They should work in solitary, monk-like contemplation where they won't be distracted by their inability to concentrate on the science at hand and constantly "falling in love." Which is just the euphemism men like Hunt use for "getting laid."

The real trouble with girls? Men are dicks. In both senses of the word.

No Cop Is Safe

Cool Guy With Gun At Airport

Check out Jim Cooley.

He's really cooley, I guess, because he likes to carry his AR-15 at the airport. And then he likes to complain about being harassed by the police. Gosh, I can't imagine why...

Perhaps he and victim George Zimmerman should start a club!

Climate Change Won't Make Plants Grow Faster

One of the tenets of climate change deniers is that as the world warms -- when they admit that it is warming -- plants will grow more quickly. It turns out, not surprisingly, that's a lie:

“There is more to climate change than just temperature,” says Camilo Mora, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Hawaii in Mānoa, who led the work. Drought and limited sunlight will undermine any gain from a warmer atmosphere. By 2100, Mora says, “there could be an 11 percent reduction in the plant growing season worldwide.”

Specifically:

One primary reason is that heating the Arctic will not bring pineapples to Alaska. There is insufficient sunlight year-round at high latitudes to support lush vegetation. In addition, the tropics will lose up to 200 “suitable growing days” a year—days when temperature, soil moisture and sunlight favor growth rather than retard it—because of excessive heat and drought. Overall, “the decreasing number of suitable growing days in the tropics will offset optimistic projections at mid- and high-latitudes,” the study concludes. 

And the idea that increased carbon dioxide levels will make plants grow faster because it's "plant food?" Not true.

Greater levels of CO² made no difference one way or the other. At higher temperatures plants open their pores, called stomata, to capture the elevated CO², which boosts photosynthesis, greening the leaves. But plants also tend to close their stomata in warmer temperatures to prevent water loss. Mora says that on balance the two effects cancel out.

Plants don't like extreme heat, and just like people, they die when they get too hot. There's a reason that the hottest places in the world -- deserts -- have so few plants.

The interesting thing is that the study was instigated by climate deniers:

Mora did not expect this result when he began the study, inspired by notes he swapped with a climate denier. In 2013 Mora published a high-profile study in Nature showing that climate change would harm plants and animals in the tropics sooner than it would hurt them in the Arctic. He says he received numerous e-mails and phone calls attacking the results. “In one such phone call I decided to talk to the person,” he explains. “The guy, one of the so-called climate deniers, claimed that climate change would actually be good for the planet.” The argument is known as the greening effect—that warmer temperatures and higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere would increase plant growth. Mora found several serious papers reaching that conclusion.

But Mora, who grew up in Colombia and saw plants struggle under high heat and low rainfall, had a hunch that there was more to the story. He and his graduate students calculated the number of days, from now through 2100, when plants would have favorable temperature, moisture and light to grow. They found that at high latitudes plants in the future could not “profit” from warmth because sunlight is limited much of the year. In the tropics temperatures got too hot for numerous plants and drought rose, adding stress to already overtaxed ecosystems. Broadleaf forests there would take the biggest hit, losing as much as three months of suitable growing days annually. 

Nonetheless, Mora sees an upside to climate deniers:

Mora sees two big lessons from the new analysis. One, “that nothing good can come from messing with the Earth’s climate.” And two, “that engaging climate deniers could be good for scientific productivity.” 

If climate deniers were all just harmless cranks making scientists cross their t's and dot their i's, that would be one thing. But when they're employees and shills for oil and coal companies that spend billions of dollars suppressing and distorting the truth, dictating government policy and sucking up hundreds of billions of our tax dollars through direct and indirect subsidies, it's a whole other can of worms.