Death by Measles

Two days ago Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill that eliminated religious and personal-belief exemptions for vaccinations of California schoolchildren. This was in response to an outbreak of measles in Disneyland last December that infected at least 150 people.

The whining started immediately. Jim Carrey ranted on Twitter, "California Gov says yes to poisoning more children with mercury and aluminum in manditory [sic] vaccines. This corporate fascist must be stopped."

The thing is, thimerosal has long been removed from most childhood vaccines:

By 2001, Thimerosal was removed from most vaccines in North America and Europe. It was gradually replaced by other non mercury compounds, and some vaccines have been formulated so they don't need preservatives.

But the number of autism cases continues to rise, a trend discovered as early as 2008. Why? Probably because other environmental toxins, such as a neuro-toxic pesticides, still abound, and parents are waiting longer to have children: there's a link between parental age and autism: "autism rates were 66 percent higher among children born to dads over 50 years of age than among those born to dads in their 20s. Autism rates were 28 percent higher when dads were in their 40s versus 20s."

There are, however, people who really do need exemptions to mandatory vaccination laws: people allergic to vaccine components and those with compromised immune systems.

One such person was a woman in rural Washington who recently died from the measles. This was the first such death in the United States in 12 years. A measles epidemic from 1989-1991 killed 123 children. One of the outbreaks was in Philadelphia where two church groups had religious objections to vaccines. Six children there died, mostly because parents refused medical care.

If everyone who can be vaccinated is vaccinated, society develops "herd immunity." Isolated cases of measles (usually from international travelers) are stopped cold because no one else can be infected. But when lots of people aren't vaccinated, measles spreads like wildfire and can kill vulnerable individuals. To make it worse, not all victims of measles develop the most common symptom: the woman who died never had a rash. She died from pneumonia, a common consequence of the disease, and the measles infection wasn't discovered until after she died.

Anyway, when Jim Carrey divorced Jenny McCarthy why didn't he dump her silly ideas too? He should go back to ranting about Fox News and mocking Charlton Heston.

Free Hugs

The New Ronald Reagan

Messina mentioned huge shifts in public opinion on major issues including LGBT rights, immigration, income inequality and climate change that make the 270 electoral votes necessary to secure the White House simply out of reach for Republicans.

Mere Concern?

Fires at black churches raise concern

Mere "concern?" Really?!!?


“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” 

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Gay Marriage, the Full Faith and Credit Clause, and Guns

Since the Supreme Court struck down gay marriage bans some conservatives have been talking as if the Apocalypse had come. They're crying about judicial activism and states rights. But from a Constitutional and practical standpoint, it's impossible for the states to have different marriage laws.

States rights sounds like a good idea. Texas can have a speed limit of 90 mph, and New York can limit it to 70 mph. They have different environments and requirements: Texas is a big, empty, flat, arid wasteland with cities hundreds of miles apart. New York is crowded, hilly, and covered with trees that limit sight lines

But when you're in a state you must abide by that state's laws. Texans can't drive 90 mph when they're in New York, right?

So why should a gay couple from New York moving to Texas expect to stay married? Why can't Texas split them up and take away their kids if Texans can't stand the idea of two men or two women being married?

Because the Constitution says so. The Full Faith and Credit Clause (Article IV, Section 1) requires that each state recognize the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. Texas must recognize companies incorporated in New York, as well as New York marriages, divorces, adoptions, etc.

Furthermore, the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law. That means that in states where gay marriage is legal, gay couples must be granted the same rights and privileges as heterosexual couples. That means every couple must have all the same rights of inheritance, tax laws, child custody, and so on.

These two clauses come into play because Americans move all the time. Every year about 12% of Americans move. About 2% of Americans move between states. In 2013 that was 7 million people.

And that's where the idea of states having different definitions of marriage falls apart. If a gay couple moves to Texas they have to be treated the same as a heterosexual couple who made the same move. Texas must treat both couples equally -- they can't take away the gay couple's children or deny gay spouses inheritance or hospital visitation rights. It must be this way, because people move so frequently it would total chaos if states had veto power over other states' marriages and court decisions.

For example, the marriage age with either parental and/or court consent for girls in Georgia, Hawaii, Missouri, Mississippi is 15. In New York, Pennsylvania and Texas it's 14, in New Hampshire it's 13, in Massachusetts it's 12, and in California there's no minimum (eww!). If states didn't have to recognize the marriage laws of other states, an 18-year-old Texas man could be arrested for statutory rape if he had sex with his 14-year-old wife in most other states in the Union.

Furthermore, if states had total autonomy over marriage law, Louisiana could outlaw divorce, then charge divorcees from other states with bigamy if they remarried in Louisiana.

If conservatives want their marriages and divorces to be recognized in other states (and conservatives get divorced a lot), then gay marriages have to be recognized in all other states.

And if gay marriage is legal in any state, then it has to be recognized in all states. And since it was already here to stay in most states, it must be legal in all states.

Conservatives are all for states rights, except when they're against them: at the same time conservative states were refusing to recognize gay marriages from other states, their members of Congress were trying to pass a law that would force states to recognize concealed-carry gun permits from other states.

In fact, some conservatives are already citing last week's gay marriage ruling to claim that they have a Constitutional right to carry a gun in public. It's a bogus argument. 

But it's creepy that some gun nuts are so wedded to their guns that they actually think they're wedded to their guns.

Hating Black People

#Loserswithguns

Tragedy as boy, 3, dies after shooting himself in the head with loaded pistol he found in a closet 

After the death of his son, Brian Holbrook backed the right to bear arms in a Facebook post. He said 'I have nothing wrong with guns, I will still support the Second Amendment [sic]. 'All I ask is that everyone please, please safety first... lock it up and put it out of reach of anyone that has no business being around a gun especially kids. 'Gun safety people! My boy would still be here if it was put away like it should have been.'

But you didn't and he is dead. And YOU should be held accountable. The law should be changed so that every time this happens, the fucking moronic parents are charged with homicide and have to serve a mandatory minimum of 25 years.

These are the #loserswithguns the Gun Cult defends every single day.

5 Years Of Conservatives Wrongly Declaring 'The End Of Obamacare'

Comes with a free "I am a fucking idiot" T-shirt.

NBC To Trump: Buh Bye!

NBCUniversal cuts ties with Donald Trump

Man, I love the free market:)

And I believe that Mr. Trump is polling second in the GOP presidential race for 2016. I guess we know now the maturity level of the base!!

Good Question (s)

Are We Still Yammering About Whether the Civil War Was About Slavery? Really?

Are we still arguing about whether the Civil War was really fought over slavery? Seriously? What's next? The Holocaust was really about Jews overstaying their tourist visas? The Inquisition was a scientific exploration of the limits of the human body? The Romans were genuinely curious about whether a man could kill a hungry lion? The Bataan death march was a controlled trial of different brands of army boots? WTF?

Indeed...

A Change is Gonna Come

Regular readers will note that as of today Markadelphia is no more. In keeping with the changes already in place with the comments section, this site has been renamed in order to move away from a personality based site to a general political discussion forum where ideas are at the forefront, not the people who write about them.

Nikto has been contributing a great deal to this site and gets more hits than me anyway so it's way past time that a change was made to truly make it a site for both of us (as well as John Waxey if he ever stops digging for artifacts long enough to share his wisdom). We have a few other people in mind that may end up being contributors as well in the future.

This won't be the the only change. We're planning on implementing some design changes as well as different types of content in addition to the regular posts that 300-600 of you enjoy every day. We got close to 1,000 hits in a 24 hour period after the two big SCOTUS decisions this week and I think that's pretty amazing. Thank you very much!!

So, what is "Zombie Politics?" Well, we clearly have been having the same political discussions in this country from day one. Sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes that's a bad thing. Either way, we here at Zombie Politics will be talking about it!!

What A Week!

What a fantastic week for Barack Obama, Democrats and liberals everywhere. The Affordable Care Act is solidified...gay marriage is the law of the land...the trade bill is about to be signed by the president...Confederate flags finally coming down...and this speech....





Stunning...

The reaction from conservatives has largely been the typical adolescent furor. This, however, caught my eye...

Huckabee and Santorum Sign On with Minister Who Wants To Set Himself on Fire Over LGBT Rights

...as a fantastic example of how conservatives in this country are really no different than Islamic extremists (see: American Taliban). If I were in Homeland Security, I'd keep an extra eye on the right wing groups for the next few weeks and possibly in perpetuity.

Because our country is finally moving in the right direction and the mouth foamers are likely not going to stand for it. Given that they throw a good hump into their gun collection every day, I'd wager that more than a few of them are going to act up violently, as was the case with Dylan Roof.

Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll accidentally shoot each other:)

The Not So White House

Not The New Normal

Pants on Fire!

Ever had some old,m conservative uncle in your family foam at the mouth about how the Civil War wasn't really about slavery? What follows is invariably a giant pile of wacky, ideological nonsense.

The fine folks at Politifact recently tackled this very same issue and ruled it PANTS ON FIRE.

The erratic anti-feminist and purposefully politically incorrect Gavin McInnes added his take on the Confederate flag controversy. McInnes, a frequent Fox News guest, tweeted to more than 50,000 followers on June 23, 2015, that the Confederate flag should continue to fly. Why? Because, "The Civil War wasn't about slavery," he wrote. "It was about secession." In a companion tweet, McInnes said anyone, like Northerners, who think the Civil War was about slavery should go to Google. "Look it up," said McInnes, who was born in England and grew up in Canada. 

So we did.

And what did they find?

We typed in "causes of the Civil War." The first hit was History.net which told us, "The burning issue that led to the disruption of the union, however, was the debate over the future of slavery. That dispute led to secession, and secession brought about a war in which the Northern and Western states and territories fought to preserve the Union, and the South fought to establish Southern independence as a new confederation of states under its own constitution." The second link on Google was to PBS and its History Detectives series. There we read, "What led to the outbreak of the bloodiest conflict in the history of North America? A common explanation is that the Civil War was fought over the moral issue of slavery. In fact, it was the economics of slavery and political control of that system that was central to the conflict." No. 3 on the Google hit parade was Americanhistoryabout.com. That page offered five main reasons and the first one was "Economic and social differences between the North and the South." And what were those differences? 

Well, slavery.

The fourth link on Google was from the Civil War Preservation Trust. The trust wrote "The Civil War was the culmination of a series of confrontations concerning the institution of slavery." 

Perhaps they should have been directed to those sites which tell the (ahem) real story. You know that ones I'm talking about, right? They all have the same common, unspoken theme: I can't face the ugliness in my own ideology so I'm going to blame the victim and redirect. 

Of course, the internet can be wrong so Politifact reached out to some experts on the Civil War.

Eric Foner, professor of history at Columbia University, used the words of secessionists themselves as proof of their intentions. "Read South Carolina's Declaration of the causes of secession," Foner said. "It is all about protecting slavery." Indeed, the first sentence refers to slaveholding states, and throughout, the institution of slavery is the pivot point around which all else turns. Historian Stephanie McCurry at the University of Pennsylvania points to Mississippi’s declaration of secession. Sentence two begins, "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery." 

So just to be clear: Slavery led to secession, which led to the Civil War.

Of course, we here on this blog know how the conservative brain works. The more facts they get, the worse they get and we all get to experience the backfire effect. My advice is to simply chuckle and say, "Sure, Unc...anything you say."

A Blow To Right Wing Bloggers and Commenters Everywhere

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of the subsidies for the Affordable Care Act 6-3.  

“It is implausible that Congress meant the Act to operate in this manner,” the majority of the justices wrote. “Congress made the guaranteed issue and community rating requirements applicable in every State in the Nation. But those requirements only work when combined with the coverage requirement and the tax credits. So it stands to reason that Congress meant for those provisions to apply in every state as well.”

In short, stop with the adolescent wordsmithing.

This ruling illustrates what adults in reality think of right wing blog arguments and comments, essentially the plaintiff's case. They rejected it utterly.

Combine this with the likely ruling striking down gay marriage bans and our country is really looking a heckuva lot better these days!

Choosing Our Heritage

Before pretty much everyone in the South decided that it was time to take down the Confederate flag, there was a lot of hemming and hawing in the immediate aftermath of Dylann Roof's terrorist attack on a church in Charleston, SC.

Initially many southern politicians defended the flag as "their heritage." Many, like Lindsey Graham, the senator from South Carolina, said that the flag "is part of who we are."

No. That is not who we are. That flag is who our ancestors were.

And even though half my ancestors didn't come to this country until the 20th century, I can still say we. My maternal grandfather was from Tennessee and I'm related to General Stonewall Jackson.

We are not our fathers -- we own neither their victories nor their sins. We can only learn from their mistakes and preserve their successes. The idea that our heritage -- our ancestry -- defines who we are is an antiquated, stupid, racist misconception. We define who we are by what we say and what we do.

As Americans we're all equal. We're supposed to make our own way in the world and not leech off our ancestors' reputations. As Americans we pick our own heritage -- we're not stuck with whatever random traits our genetics gave us.

Sometimes people carry this idea to ridiculous extremes, as in the case of Rachel Dolezal. She claimed the heritage of African Americans. It sounds weird, but it's no different than every Republican from Ted Cruz to Bobby Jindal claiming the heritage of Ronald Reagan. The only thing Dolezal really did wrong was lie about it.

If you have white skin, no one can just assume you're intolerant and racist. If you have brown skin, no one can just assume you're lazy and stupid. You can't choose your skin color. But if you choose the Confederate flag as your emblem, you're claiming a heritage of disunion, racism and oppression.

That choice is key: being able to define who we are is our real American heritage.

Warning Labels

Just got this in an email...

Two issues here, racism, and the proliferation of gun culture and acceptance of gun deaths. I am far more concerned how we are growing a new crop of racial bigots than I am with ISIS. As for guns, 30,000 people a year die here in gun violence. This simply (with a few notable exceptions) doesn't happen in other developed nations. If ISIS were killing even a tiny percentage of that 30k in the US...we would lose our minds. This doesn't even register with the American public.

It doesn't register with them because the "liberal" media (especially Hollywood) are ammosexuals. If they reported on the Gun Cult the same way they report on ISIL, it would be a much different situation.

The Tax Revenue Zombie Lie Rises Again

It amuses me to no end when zombie lies rise again. Check this out.

GOP strategist Christie: Tax revenues rose after Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003

Once again...

What we found is Christie is carefully picking his starting and end points to make the most dramatic comparison. Changing the timeframe makes all the difference, as we’ll show you.

Indeed:)

The Tax Policy Center, a joint project of two academic centers the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, summarized the CBO numbers. This chart based on the center’s table shows revenues initially falling, not rising.



In short, federal revenues were below 2000 levels (after adjusting for inflation) until 2006. They outpaced fiscal year 2000 collections for a bit, then fell again in 2008. The same pattern roughly holds if you use 2001 as the starting point. What’s that all mean? When you adjust for inflation, the 47 percent revenue growth from 2003 to 2007 becomes 28 percent. And if you start the clock in 2001, revenue growth drops to 4 percent. By 2009, of course, the numbers look even worse. Here’s another way to look at it, using data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Over Bush’s two full terms, federal revenues dropped 13 percent.

Christie’s statement has some superficial accuracy but a more complete picture shows that he has omitted many details that would lead to a different conclusion. We rate this claim Mostly False.

Superficial accuracy pretty much sums it up!