Study Finds That Guns Don't Deter Crime

A recent study by Harvard Medical study finds that higher firearm ownership does not deter crimes. "We found no support for the hypothesis that owning more guns leads to a drop or a reduction in violent crime," said study researcher Michael Monuteaux, an epidemiologist and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. "Instead, we found the opposite."

Monuteaux and his colleagues wanted to test whether increased gun ownership had any effect on gun homicides, overall homicides and violent gun crimes. They chose firearm robbery and assault, because those crimes are likely to be reported and recorded in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Uniform Crime Report. Along with that FBI data, the researchers gathered gun ownership rates from surveys in the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, an ongoing, nationally representative survey in which participants answered questions about gun ownership in 2001, 2002 and 2004.

Using those years and controlling for a slate of demographic factors, from median household income, population density, to age, race and more, the researchers compared crime rates and gun ownership levels state by state. They found no evidence that states with more households with guns led to timid criminals. In fact, firearm assaults were 6.8 times more common in states with the most guns versus states with the least. Firearm robbery increased with every increase in gun ownership except in the very highest quintile of gun-owning states (the difference in that cluster was not statistically significant).

Firearm homicide was 2.8 times more common in states with the most guns versus states with the least. The researchers were able to test whether criminals were simply trading out other weapons for guns, at least in the case of homicide. They weren't. Overall homicide rates were just over 2 times higher in the most gun-owning states, meaning that gun ownership correlated with higher rates of all homicides, not just homicide with a gun.

Had We Passed Manchin Toomey...

AmericaBlog has a post up regarding the failure of the antiquated background check system which allowed Dylan Roof to get his gun that eventually killed 9 people in Charleston. It turns out that the gun used in the massacre was not, in fact, a gift from his father. Roof purchased the gun himself.

Had we passed the Manchin Toomey bill in 2013, Roof would have been denied the purchase of a gun and those nine people would still be alive today. Here is the full text of the bill which clearly illustrates the streamlining of the background check system. This is exactly what I mean when I talk about how the assholes in the Gun Cult are responsible for thousands of deaths every year. Unlike the relatives of the victims, I am unable to forgive so easily.

They're at fault and should be treated accordingly...like any other fucking criminal.

The Branches Of Our Government

Force. Period

The Confederate Flag came down today in South Carolina and I'm certain that plenty of people out there are taking it as some sort of victory. It's nothing of the sort. In fact, it reminds me a lot of the way conservatives argue. They set the battle line somewhere on the 5 or 10 yard line on the right side of the field and then "compromise" at the 35 yard line on the right side of the field. Sorry, fuckers, but that ain't gonna cut it with me.

The simple fact that it was up this long is an absolute insult. The Civil War was won 150 years ago and the people that are keeping the Confederacy alive (see: the current form of the GOP base, the Tea Party, Right Wing Bloggers, Gun Rights Douchebags) should be considered in a state of insurrection and in violation of the Constitution. Their constant whining and adolescent rebellion requires what every child throwing a temper tantrum needs: a firm hand.

I'd start with cutting off federal money to the areas of the country that bitch the most about the federal government. The Deep South is a start followed by Texas and Arizona. Cut off their fucking allowance and, like teenagers, see how long they last. In addition, I think that the people who claim they want to improve the gun laws in this country should change their tactics. You can't bring a limp noodle and milktoast to a gun fight. The Gun Cult are assholes and they're armed. How has America dealt with people like this in the past?

Force. Period.

After all, isn't that exactly what they preach when it comes to countries like Iran or Russia and groups like ISIL? The only thing militants understand is force so begin to apply it. The next time there is a shooting at a school, the next group of families that have to suffer as a result of assholes' insecurity and control freak/power syndromes should park a tank on the steps of the NRA headquarters plastered with photos of all their dead children. They should pool their resources with other families who have lost loved ones to gun violence and hire a Blackwater type security team to fuck with gun rights people...in the same way they fuck with Islamic extremists. I'm sure Michael Bloomberg has the money:)

It took the deaths of 9 people in a massacre to pull down a stupid ass flag. Given just how giant of assholes these people are, it's going to take a lot more for serious and substantive change. I mean, we didn't ask kindly with the Nazis, now did we?

Marco Rubio's "New" Idea: Indentured Servitude

It's ironic that as the South Carolina legislature was debating the Confederate battle flag and its status as the emblem of slavery, Marco Rubio is seriously proposing to reinstate a practice that amounted to the same thing, indentured servitude.

What? you say. Surely Nikto has flipped his lid. Nope. Rubio's proposal is exactly like indentured servitude:

Rubio proposed a system in which private investors could pay a student’s tuition in return for a cut of the graduate’s future earnings. In economics circles, the concept is known as “student investment plans,” “human capital contracts,” or "income share agreements."

How very 1984 of them to give them such nice names. "Indentured servitude" is more apt. According to Wikipedia:

Indentured servitude was a labor system whereby young people paid for their passage to the New World by working for an employer for a certain number of years.

Replace passage to the New World with college education and working for an employer with a cut of the graduate's future earnings and you have the 21st century version of serfdom.

Why does Rubio think this is needed? Why, it's those evil college cartels. Somehow Harvard, MIT and UCLA are preventing innovative, low-cost competitors from entering the college marketplace.

Except they're not. We've had a plethora of "innovative" private and Internet-based colleges entering the marketplace in the last 10 years. Most of them are scams, like Corinthian Colleges, which declared bankruptcy last May.

The business model of these for-profit colleges is ripping off government-run college grant and loan programs. They enroll students with low self-esteem they know will never graduate, promise them great jobs at fabulous salaries, give them bogus courses that teach nothing, and then laugh all the way to the bank when the students flunk out. Students that actually complete their coursework rarely find the jobs they were promised.

The evil thing about these indentured servitude contracts is that you'd never be able to get out of them. If you take out a student loan, it's possible (though difficult) to declare bankruptcy if you bottom out. These indentures would be impossible to get out of because they would just take a percentage of whatever you earn:

At an event last year at Miami-Dade University, Rubio went into more detail on how such a student investment plan might work.

A student who needs $10,000 for tuition makes an agreement with a private investment group to pay the lender 4 percent of their income after graduation for 10 years, regardless of whether this is more or less than $10,000, he said.

Now, 4% might not sound like a lot. If you got a job as a computer programmer at $50,000 that would be $2,000 a year. But that would go up every year as you got raises. A programmer with five years experience can easily earn $75,000 in some parts of the country. That would be $3,000.

But how much would you pay if you borrowed $10,000 with a regular college loan? This financial calculator shows you. If you borrowed $10,000 at 4.66% (the federal student loan rate for 2014-2015), you would pay $1253 a year. That will stay the same no matter how much money you make. Even at 8.5% a regular student loan is a far better deal than the man owning a piece of your ass for a decade.

And of course students won't be borrowing just $10,000. For four years you need anywhere from $40,000 to $200,000 or more, depending on where you want to go to school. Does that mean the investor is going to want 16% to 40% of your salary for the next 10 years? Or 10% or 20% for the next 20 years?

Geeze, it's like Rubio wants to let corporations tax private citizens...

Also, the people "investing" in students are going to dictate what your major is -- they're not going to sign contracts with education, art history and English majors: they're going to demand you major in computer science, engineering, pre-med, pre-law, business administration and so on.

Even creepier, Rubio talks about investors owning a "diversified portfolio" of students. Almost certainly there would be a secondary market where these indentures would be bought and sold, sort of like the derivatives contracts that torpedoed the economy in 2008.

And it would result in exactly the same kind of bubble and bust cycle after a President Rubio gutted the federal student loan program, and "entrepreneurs" signed a bunch of sub-par students, sold off their contracts to some sucker like Lehmann Brothers, who would then collapse when these kids could only find work at Walmart.

(Actually, this makes me wonder how much money private colleges are secretly giving to Rubio's Super PAC...)

If this actually caught on, it wouldn't just be investors taking out these contracts. Companies would want to eliminate the middle man: they'd sign promising students directly out of high school like the NBA does. Instead of owing an investor your salary, you'd owe your employer a chunk of your salary. You would be a literal indentured servant.

There's no question that there's a problem with burdensome college debt loads, especially for doctors who have to go to school for so many years. Creating a new class of indentured servants isn't the answer.

Since corporations are the primary consumer of college grads, companies should pay enough in state taxes to ensure that every student with a part-time job can afford to commute to an in-state public college or university. Hospitals, insurance companies and medical firms should pay a special tax to offset tuition at medical schools.

Tone It Down

Apparently, Reince Priebus had a little convo with the Donald recently and told him to tone it down.

Hee hee, I wonder why...?:)

The Donald That Keeps On Giving

Donald Trump's remarks about Hispanics being all rapey and stealy and stuff has been a real boon for the Democratic party. And the GOP...check out those poll numbers:) Reince Priebus must be just shitting himself right now in anticipation of the debates next month. He probably thought he could dust all that angry and hateful bullshit under the rug after 2012. Less debates was going to be the fix, right? Hee hee, not so much. You can only deny the negative aspects of your ideology for so long before it bites you in the ass with voters. Unless Jeb Bush is the nominee, the GOP can wave buh bye to the Hispanic vote.

Because that first debate on Fox News is going to be an excellent example of just where conservatives stand on Hispanics. They are going to be falling all over themselves to somehow support what the Donald has said. Personally, I can't wait! Combine this gem with six of the 16 (!) candidates running for the GOP nomination getting the cut to accommodate the required 10 slots and there really is a lot to look forward to!!

Illegal Immigrants Working on Trump's Hotel?

Donald Trump made a lot of noise at the announcement of his presidential campaign. But the thing that raised the most attention was his comment about Mexican immigrants:

When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

Most other Republican candidates have repudiated Trump, except for Ted Cruz, who congratulated Trump for his comments.

The thing is, while Trump is bellowing about illegal immigrants, he's employing them to build his hotel:

Interviews with about 15 laborers helping renovate the Old Post Office Pavilion revealed that many of them had crossed the U.S-Mexico border illegally before they eventually settled in the Washington region to build new lives.

Several of the men, who hail mostly from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, have earned U.S. citizenship or legal status through immigration programs targeting Central Americans fleeing civil wars or natural disasters. Others quietly acknowledged that they remain in the country illegally.

Latinos make up about 25% of the construction workforce. It's an open secret that Latino immigrants are widely employed in construction: about 29% are undocumented.

This is especially true in states like Texas, where private-sector unions have been completely dismantled. Companies have little interest in ensuring that construction workers are citizens and documented immigrants: they just want to pay workers as little as possible, and illegal immigrants are willing to work for much less than unionized Americans.

Trump's legal counsel said he will take no responsibility for this situation: he'll just blame the subcontractor.

“Mr. Trump, who is the 100 percent owner of the Old Post Office, hired one of the largest contractors in the world to act as the general contractor,” Cohen said in a telephone interview. “That company is Lend Lease. They then go out and employ subcontractors to work for them. The obligation to check all workers on site is exclusive to Lend Lease. This of course assumes that the assertion regarding the employees’ status is accurate.”

In other words, Trump is shocked -- I tell you -- shocked to find out that the Mexicans he insulted in his announcement are the very people building his fancy hotel.

Trump always talks about how smart he is, he brags about being god-damned lying son of a bitch who screws over everyone he does business with. Is his entire presidential campaign nothing more than a bargaining tactic to intimidate construction workers on his sites so he can pay them less?

Politically Correct Fire Fighting Gear

Immigrants Threatening Your Way Of Life?

The Surest Way to Reduce Abortions: Long-Acting Birth Control

Conservatives have been bitching about abortions for decades, doing everything they could to eliminate them. In some states they've passed laws to require waiting periods before abortions. They've taken away doctors' freedom of speech, forcing them to follow a state-mandated script. They've forced women to undergo expensive and invasive vaginal probes.

Six years ago one state decided to do something real: starting in 2009 Colorado gave girls and young women free long-acting birth control. The result?

The birthrate for teenagers across the state plunged by 40 percent from 2009 to 2013, while their rate of abortions fell by 42 percent, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. There was a similar decline in births for another group particularly vulnerable to unplanned pregnancies: unmarried women under 25 who have not finished high school.

Colorado's program was funded by the Buffett Foundation, named for Warren Buffett's late wife.

This proves that simple and straightforward contraceptive programs will prevent more abortions than all the abstinence programs and restrictive legislation put together.

It also shows why private companies who want to opt out of paying for employees' birth control are so completely wrong: preventing unwanted pregnancies reduces the number of abortions, saves the health care system billions of dollars in unwanted pregnancies, helps keep young women and their unwanted children off the government dole, increases the graduation rate allowing more young women to get the education that is very much needed to be competitive in today's job market.

And, quite blatantly, it's better for business: women who don't get pregnant accidentally make better employees. Women with IUDs and implanted contraceptives are much less likely to get pregnant unexpectedly. Their absences can be better planned and aligned with business needs. Everybody wins.

It's now clear that the only reason a business wouldn't pay for their employees' birth control is to register their unbridled and childish annoyance at the health care law that has been designated the primary achievement of the first African American president of the United States.

The fact that it works and is better for everyone all around just makes conservatives that much angrier.

I Wonder Which Party And Ideology They Belong To...

Charleston Church Shooter Dylan Roof Receives $4 Million Dollars in Donations From Supporters

Update: This story has been proven false by Snopes. 

I am very happy to be wrong!!

What Happens When You Allow Open Carry...

2 dead after shootout at downtown Austin Omni Hotel

This morning, a man with a loaded rifle walked into an Omni Hotel in Austin, causing customers to cry, yell and call 911. Texas law allows the open carry of long guns, but does not require background checks on guns purchased from unlicensed sellers. An Omni Hotels manager said today that the hotel "follows state and local laws," meaning it allows people to open carry long guns inside its hotels.

"Police say they received a 911 call from a patron at 4:48 a.m. saying there was a man in the lobby of the Omni Hotel who was walking around with a gun. Two minutes later, the caller said the man had shot someone."

A profoundly sad example of how we can't really tell the good guys from the bad guys now can we?

Still Crazy in Texas

On the Fourth of July the nutcases in Texas are still convinced that the military's Jade Helm 15 military exercise is a plot to take over the state:

Terry Wareham, head of the Bastrop County Tea Party, said she fears that the Obama administration might deliberately instigate violence between soldiers and Texans as a pretext for establishing martial law.

“We’re not against the military. This community is very supportive of the military,” Wareham said. “But who’s the commander in chief of the military?”

Does this nitwit Wareham really believe the US military would ever follow an illegal order to attack Texas? He says he's not against the military, but seems to know nothing about the US military.

In 2007 the extremely conservative Heritage Foundation wrote a report about the demographics of the military. They found that in 2007 military recruits from the heavily Republican south and mountain west states were represented 20 to 50% . They also found that most of those same southern and western states were much more heavily represented among enlisted personnel than California and northern states. Texas was the most heavily represented state in the military: 11% of all enlistees were from there, more than twice the number of the second largest state, New York. Hispanics, coincidentally, also make up 11% of active duty members.

Did the Texas nitwit hear that 18% of active duty members are African American and would somehow brainwash the other 82% of the military into blindly following illegal orders to attack Texas?

Fact is, the military is dominated by white southerners. The default accent of the military is a smeared Texas to Virginia drawl. Military bases are predominantly in the conservative south and west. That's not because Obama built them there to spy on rednecks. It's because bases were originally built in milder climates to facilitate year-round training, and senators and representatives from those states have fought tooth and nail to keep those bases in their states because of all the cash the federal government pumps in with military spending.

Or is the Texas nitwit afraid that all the white supremacists trying to infiltrate the US military will start following Obama's orders and impose martial law?

Wareham is right to be concerned that there are people who want to start a war in this country: people like Dylann Roof. Although I suppose Wareham thinks that the terrorist murders at that church in North Carolina were a secret FBI false flag attack to rationalize putting North Carolina under martial law.

It seems abundantly clear that these people are just cranking up the paranoia to keep elderly white folks in the South quaking in their boots so they turn out and vote for a rich white southerner in 2016.

Lots of Reflection

My question on Quora, How exactly are Christians under attack in the United States?,  has now received nearly 20,000 views. There have really been some great answers and the top one has this great line in it.

In essence, for the first time in living memory Christians are being called out on the ways they've accrued, maintained, and abused privilege in this country. The vast majority are taking this in a remarkably Christ-like way, but the ones making this claim (oh no! we're being persecuted!) are still fighting to restore their dominance.

Right. It's not that they are being persecuted. It's that they are not allowed to be bigoted assholes anymore and that pisses them off. In fact, this comment can be extended to all of conservative land. It's not that the media is liberal. It's that they are telling the truth about conservative BS. It's not that fact checkers are biased. They are calling conservatives on their bullshit and people are finally listening.

Check out this answer.

The comment thread is most illuminating. Here is my favorite.

Your sect may claim that Jesus had something to do with the harsh rules of the Old Testament, but you seem to cherry-pick which rules to keep and which to throw away. You have no evidence that your interpretation of the Bible is accurate or that any deity actually exists. You are not stating the truth. You are preaching the doctrines of your sect, doctrines that are without supporting evidence. Other Christian denominations reject what you teach.

Yep.

Zoinks! Another "fake" Christian!!! Seems like this is becoming a trend. Gee, I wonder why...:)

A People's Contest

This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men; to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life. Yielding to partial and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading object of the Government for whose existence we contend.

--President Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Congress, July 4, 1961. 

What About My Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness?

God Distances Self From Christian Right

God Distances Self From Christian Right

“Many people hear my name in connection with the Christian Right and start to assume we are aligned in some capacity, and I’m here to say, for the record, that we are not,” God continued. “So let me just be clear: I don’t want women to get raped—not ever. I don’t think their resulting pregnancies are my divine will. And if a woman is raped, then she has the right to get an abortion, period. I do not agree with Mourdock. I do not agree with the Christian Right. End of story.”

God then went on to cite several incidents—ranging from the Westboro Baptist Church’s “God Hates Fags” campaign to Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin’s remark this year that victims of “legitimate rape” rarely get pregnant—as examples of what He described as “an unmistakable and disturbing trend toward intolerance that I do not support.” 

Man, I love God...:)

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!

Protect Your Home From A Killer!

Very Tired of Idiots

Many in Nation Tired of Explaining Things to Idiots

Of the many obvious things that people are sick and tired of trying to get through the skulls of stupid people, the fact that climate change will cause catastrophic habitat destruction and devastating extinctions tops the list, with a majority saying that they will no longer bother trying to explain this to cretins. 

Coming in a close second, statistical proof that gun control has reduced gun deaths in countries around the world is something that a significant number of those polled have given up attempting to break down for morons. 

Finally, a majority said that trying to make idiots understand why a flag that symbolizes bigotry and hatred has no business flying over a state capitol only makes the person attempting to explain this want to put his or her fist through a wall.

Amen.

An Unbroken Line from Jefferson Davis to George F. Will

Ta-Nehisi Coates has a long article that discusses the origins of the Civil War. It consists mostly of quotes from Southern politicians who justified slavery as being necessary for civilization and even white equality. 

Coates' point is that the Confederate flag is undeniably the emblem of slavery and is why it should be taken down. 

But reading these quotes makes it clear that the political philosophy and economic theory of pro-slavery secessionist Southerners have been directly adopted by modern conservative "thinkers" and corporate elites in the United States.

For example, here's an excerpt of the statement of Mississippi justifying secession:

[A] blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.

Jefferson Davis believed that without slavery, equality among white men was impossible:

[E]quality ... cannot exist where white men fill the position here occupied by the servile race.
— Jefferson Davis

You too know, that among us, white men have an equality resulting form a presence of a lower caste, which cannot exist where white men fill the position here occupied by the servile race. The mechanic who comes among us, employing the less intellectual labor of the African, takes the position which only a master-workman occupies where all the mechanics are white, and therefore it is that our mechanics hold their position of absolute equality among us.

Many southern "gentlemen" held slaves in particular and working people in general in utter contempt (from the Muscogee Herald):

Free Society! we sicken at the name. What is it but a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moon-struck theorists? All the Northern men and especially the New England States are devoid of society fitted for well-bred gentlemen. The prevailing class one meet with is that of mechanics struggling to be genteel, and small farmers who do their own drudgery, and yet are hardly fit for association with a Southern gentleman's body servant. This is your free society which Northern hordes are trying to extend into Kansas.

This last was a reaction to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would allow the voters in the two new territories to decide whether slavery would be allowed. People like Jesse James flooded into Kansas and Nebraska to influence the outcome of the slavery vote. Southerners wanted slavery to spread to new states and dreaded the outcome of new territories voting down slavery.

How many poor white Southerners fought for the Confederate Army because Jefferson Davis told them that if blacks were freed from slavery, poor whites would become the slaves?

The wealthy upper classes of the South considered themselves the real Americans, the well-bred, genteel Anglo-Saxon nobility of the United States. They despised a free society. They thought of the vast "northern hordes" as inferior, a lower caste, a servile race, greasy mechanics and filthy farmers.

That is the heritage the Confederate battle flag represents. How many poor white Southerners fought for the Confederate Army because Jefferson Davis told poor whites that if blacks were freed from slavery, whites would become the slaves? Were the men who fought in the Confederate Army fighting to preserve slavery simply to avoid being forced into slavery themselves?

The idea that there must be masters and there must be slaves appears to persist in the South to this day. The best way to do this is to minimize the political and economic power of workers, which means busting unions. If workers are unorganized and intimidated, you can pay them slave wages. That's why "right to work" laws were first enacted in former slave-holding states and have effectively destroyed private-sector unions there. Such laws have slowly spread to northern states as Scott Walker and other northern politicians have been co-opted by corporate elites like the Koch brothers.

Many corporate execs espouse the same slave-holding mindset as Jefferson Davis: the only thing that matters is profit. Today's Republican Party falls in line, parroting the narrative that maximizing the wealth of a few individuals and cutting their taxes will benefit the country much more than paying the people who actually do all the work a living wage.

But union busting still wasn't good enough for corporate America: even non-unionized Americans make too much damned money. So corporate America ships jobs off to other countries.

That brings us to the present day, when in March George Will told us proudly that income inequality is a good thing. Will is making exactly the same argument the well-bred gentlemen of the South: slaves are necessary for commerce and civilization. Will casts this in the light of shipping jobs off to Vietnam, where surrogate slaves perform the "drudgery" of manufacturing cheap shoes and plasma TVs for the United States. But it's just the same argument Jefferson Davis and well-bred Southern aristocrats used a century and a half ago.

Back then southern plantation owners needed African slaves to maintain their wealth and power. Today, corporate America needs wage slaves to maintain their stock bonuses and profit margins.

We had a Civil War to disabuse Southern slave holders of their quaint notions about "civilization and commerce." As more and more Americans fall into poverty -- especially white Americans in the South -- notions in board rooms will need similar adjustments.

There's some evidence that corporate America is beginning to understand how untenable growing income inequality is (note Walmart's increase to their minimum wage).

Let's hope they don't dawdle too long.

Feel Safe Yet?

Following the Money

A lot of Republicans had a hard time calling for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from South Carolina's capitol in the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Charleston, even as it became more and more obvious that Roof's motivations were linked to glorification of the Confederacy, white supremacy and slavery. 

Most said that taking the battle flag down was something that people should "begin discussing," though some -- like Mitt Romney, to his credit -- did quickly call for its banishment to the ash heap of history.

The question is, how can anyone possibly defend the Confederate flag, especially in light of the horrors of slavery and the treacheries of the Civil War that it invokes?

The answer's obvious: money.

It turns out that Republicans get a lot of money -- and votes -- from racists. The Guardian looked into this:

The leader of a rightwing group that Dylann Roof allegedly credits with helping to radicalise him against black people before the Charleston church massacre has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republicans such as presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum.

Earl Holt has given $65,000 to Republican campaign funds in recent years while inflammatory remarks – including that black people were “the laziest, stupidest and most criminally-inclined race in the history of the world” – were posted online in his name.

Additionally:

Holt has since 2012 contributed $8,500 to Cruz, the Texas senator running for the Republican presidential nomination, and his Jobs, Growth and Freedom Fund political action committee, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings. On some filings Holt’s occupation was listed as “slumlord”.

And it's not just presidents: Holt spent his cash affecting election outcomes across the country:

Holt has also distributed tens of thousands in campaign contributions among prominent Republicans in congress, such as Representative Steve King of Iowa ($2,000), Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas ($1,500) and Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona ($1,000). He also gave $3,200 to the former Minnesota congresswoman and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann.

Holt's website and its focus on the fiction of "huge numbers" of heretofore unknown black-on-white murders was what radicalized Roof.  Curiously, the signal event that started Roof down this path was the murder of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman.

What?! you say. How can that be? Well, following the lead of Fox News, in which whites and Christians are always the victim no matter who gets killed, racists like Holt twisted the killing of a black teenager walking home in the rain into a call to action for white supremacists. Roof's impressionable young mind was warped by Holt's propaganda, just like young Somali Americans whose minds are warped by Al Qaeda and ISIS propaganda on the Internet.

The constant refrain of conservatives is always, "We're the victims! We're the victims!" even when whites kill blacks. To distract from the injustice of Trayvon Martin's murder, racists like Holt manufactured a phony scandal that sucked Dylann Roof in.

Fox News and Republicans like Cruz, Bachmann, King, and Cotton all jumped on the Zimmerman bandwagon, repeat the same stupid chant, knowing that it's what angry racists in the South want to hear. It wasn't the exact same tune that Holt was pushing, but it was an accompanying melody, a sort of racist-light counterpoint that lent mainstream credibility to Holt's ridiculous claims.

Now, Republicans and most of their supporters in former slave holding states don't openly advocate the radical racist agenda of Holt and his ilk. But they use the code words and the dog whistles that let racists like Holt and Roof know where their sympathies really lie. They push policies in Congress -- privatizing Social Security and Medicare, cutting welfare, repealing the ACA -- that are calculated with the express intent to do maximal harm to minorities. This agenda was clearly described by Paul Krugman just today:

Only one former member of the Confederacy has expanded Medicaid, and while a few Northern states are also part of the movement, more than 80 percent of the population in Medicaid-refusing America lives in states that practiced slavery before the Civil War.

And it’s not just health reform: a history of slavery is a strong predictor of everything from gun control (or rather its absence), to low minimum wages and hostility to unions, to tax policy.

These policies are intended to keep black and other minorities on the lowest economic rungs of society. The downside is that with increasing income inequality, much of it due to jobs shipped overseas and union busting, more and more white Americans are falling into the same trap. But to Holt, that's a good thing: the poorer whites become, the more scared and pissed-off they get.

Holt wants white kids like Roof, now facing the same dismal prospects that blacks have faced for the last 150 years, to blame blacks for their problems. It's an easy sell in the South, where racism is always bubbling below the surface.

Now Cruz and the other Republicans are falling over themselves to return Holt's donations. But it's a sham. They'll keep the millions of dollars of donors who are smarter than Holt and don't put their racist rants online, couching them in gentler terms like "combating voter fraud," "states rights," "balanced budgets" and "tax reform" that have the ultimate goal of crushing minorities.

But everyone still knows who's calling the shots in the Republican Party.

Let Them Live On Their Own

Today, I'm wondering why the GOP candidates for president are hedging on the Confederate flag still being flown in South Carolina. Could it be because their base is filled with old, white southern racists? Nah, that can't be it. It must just be me and my bias against them:)

In objective reality, they simply can't face the negative aspects (see: racism, prejudice, bigotry) of the people in their base and the core tenets of their ideology. They should face it and consider what it's like for black people who live in Charleston (and other places in the South) who have to see the confederate flag every day when they go to work. Or drive on a road named after a Confederate general who fought to keep them in human bondage.

The fact that we are even still debating this makes me fucking sick to my stomach. The South is filled with racist assholes like Dylan Roof who have a profound warped sense of reality. Take a look at this photo of Roof from trip to a Confederate museum.

One of the slaves is fucking SMILING? Yes, that's right. They were all really happy and comfortable during the time as slaves.

I've really had enough of these assholes. They hate the federal government? Great. Kick them out and let them live on their own.

Political Preachers

It shouldn't be surprising to anyone that Michele Bachmann is fleecing people, similar to an evangelical preacher, to pay off debt from living a lavish lifestyle. Stupid people are always willing to part with their money, eh?

I think what's kind of surprising is that her donors don't seem to have noticed that she doesn't hold public office anymore. They are still giving her money as if she is some sort of candidate. Is this the future of failed GOP candidates? Just begin to ask people for donations so they can continue on with their private club memberships and pricey dinners?

Well, they do love themselves some aristocracy...

Do These Pictures Clear Things Up about Dylann Roof?

Through Internet sleuthing the New York Times and other outlets have reported on Dylann Roof's white supremacist web site, The Last Rhodesian, and a trove of pictures of Roof apparently in his back yard and at various slave plantations and Confederate landmarks.

Fox News and Republicans have been expressing confusion and uncertainty about what could have possibly motivated Roof to commit a terrorist attack on a bunch of old ladies in a church basement.

These pictures should answer that question:

In every Congress between 1995 and 2006 Republicans put forth "flag desecration" amendments. The last time it failed by a single vote.

And here's Dylann celebrating his Conferate heritage:

Here's Dylann celebrating his Southern pride with the Stars and Bars and a .45:

And here's Dylann showing his white supremacist and Nazi sympathies:

"1488" is white supremacist code for "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. Heil Hitler!” The othala rune beneath that is another symbol used by white supremacists.

How representative is this young man of the citizens of Dixie who have "Southern pride" and speak fondly of their "Confederate heritage?" How far removed from Dylann Roof are the Tea Partyers who angrily shout about "taking our country back" from a black president? Or the secessionists in Texas, who fear the Army is set to invade them any day now and are itching for a rerun of the Civil War?

American conservatives have to stop waffling and call a spade a spade. They must stop exercising Republican partisan correctness. They must call these people out for continuing to honor the racist, anti-American, flag-burning traitors who caused the deadliest war in our history. 

If any flag should be burned, it's the Confederate battle flag that was still flying high over the capitol in South Carolina, while the American flag was at half-staff to honor the victims of Roof's terrorist massacre.

Climate Change Warrior

Let's just make today a climate change day!

Check out this piece from the New York Times.

Dr. Oreskes’s approach has been to dig deeply into the history of climate change denial, documenting its links to other episodes in which critics challenged a developing scientific consensus. Her core discovery, made with a co-author, Erik M. Conway, was twofold. They reported that dubious tactics had been used over decades to cast doubt on scientific findings relating to subjects like acid rain, the ozone shield, tobacco smoke and climate change. 

And most surprisingly, in each case, the tactics were employed by the same group of people. 

The central players were serious scientists who had major career triumphs during the Cold War, but in subsequent years apparently came to equate environmentalism with socialism, and government regulation with tyranny.

Hmm, those people sound awfully familiar...:)

It's both sad and devastating, but entirely understandable given their System 1 brain thinking, how easily manipulated people are by these actors.

The Caveat

In my previous post I said that my initial reaction was that I didn't think that gun laws could stop Dylann Roof's terrorist attack on the church in Charleston. But as I've considered it, I'm not so sure. Roof was on the cops' radar, and if he hadn't been white, things likely would have played out differently.

In particular:

Mr. Roof has had two previous brushes with the law, both in recent months, according to court records. In February, he attracted attention at the Columbiana Centre, a shopping mall, when, dressed all in black, he asked store employees “out of the ordinary questions” such as how many people were working and what time they would be leaving, according to a police report.

Clearly the cops suspected Roof was casing the mall for some sort of burglary or other nefarious activity. If he'd been black and caught doing this, what are the odds they would have just let him go on his way?

Buying a gun should require a license, practical testing and a rigorous background investigation. Roof's suspicious behavior at the mall is exactly the kind of thing that should show up on a criminal background check. The logical conclusion is that Roof was trying to buy a gun to commit a robbery.

That shouldn't prevent a person from getting a gun out of hand. But it should trigger a deeper investigation. They should talk to his family and friends. Had the authorities done that, they might have remarked upon his recent racist behavior. Had they checked him out on the Internet, they might have learned of his racist sympathies from his Facebook page, which might have led them to his Last Rhodesian white supremacist web site, where he divulged his racist plan to attack Charleston.

That level of investigation would cost money, of course. Which means a gun license would have to cost a fair amount of money. Which might have prevented Roof from getting a gun in the first place.

Admittedly, that's a lot of ifs. But as we already know, it's impossible to prevent all murders. But the higher the bar is for gun purchases, the fewer guns will be sold, especially to angry losers like Dylann Roof.

The only possible goal is to reduce the number of deaths without imposing undue burdens on the rest of society. Making sure that gun buyers aren't white supremacists planning to rob malls or murder old black ladies in church isn't an unreasonable burden.

Now, suppose Dylann Roof had been a Muslim. What do you think the cops' reaction at the mall would have been? A Muslim skulking around a mall, wearing black, asking questions about employees and closing times. They would instantly suspect he's preparing for a terrorist attack, looking to sneak into the mall after hours to plant a bomb. If they didn't arrest him for this on the spot, at a minimum they would have placed him on a watch list, which would have been flagged when he tried to buy a gun.

American conservatives are more than willing to allow the authorities to invade our privacy by x-raying us, rifling through our personal belongings and making us take off our god-damned shoes every time we board an airplane.

Yet somehow they think everyone in the country should have complete and untrammeled access to weapons of mass murder at their local gun stores. They can shoot up churches and schools and malls with impunity -- why would any terrorist bother with an airplane anymore?

NRA people don't seem to understand that lax gun laws they insist upon also allow Muslim terrorists to obtain guns easily -- just like the guns Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem provided the jihadists who were killed in the Muhammad cartoon ambush contest in Texas last month.

Toby Keith: Right and Wrong

Both sides of the gun control debate are weighing in on the terrorist attack on a Charleston church. Hillary Clinton called for "common-sense" gun control laws that keep weapons out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. NRA board member Charles Cotton blamed the victim for voting against laws that would allow guns in churches. Country music star Toby Keith said stricter laws would have made no difference in the Charleston attack.

I tend to agree with Keith (though with a caveat in a second post). Dylann Roof bought a weapon legally, had no (serious) criminal record or history of mental illness. So there were no red flags that would have stopped him from getting a gun.

That means that we're always going to have some number of people who get guns legally who then use them to commit murder. As Keith points out, this happens even in countries like Norway, where strict gun laws are in place.

So, yeah. Some number of people are going to die each year in attacks like this, regardless of the gun laws.

Where the gun nuts are wrong is claiming that the Charleston terrorist attack could have been prevented by a policeman or armed citizens in the room. The hackneyed lie about guns making us safer.

You see, the bad guys don't play fair. They don't schedule a duel for high noon on Main Street in front of the saloon. They plan for weeks, lurking, practicing, skulking, shooting people in the back and gunning down old ladies while accusing them of "raping our women."

Had there been an armed cop in the room, Roof simply would have shot him first, probably in the back of the head. And then Roof would have another weapon.

Now, the NRA nuts will say: if everyone in the room had a gun Roof would have no chance.  Nope. Not true. Because a lot of people just freeze under stress.

When I was a kid I went into some sandstone caves with two of my friends, Bob and Randy. We were looking at the bins where mushrooms were grown when we heard a truck pull up. We peered out and saw some guys unloading junk. We threw open the door and ran like hell.

At least, Bob and I did. Randy froze. He just stood there stupidly gaping, while Bob and I bolted up a hill and into the woods. They grabbed Randy and called the cops. Bob and Randy got arrested, I skipped town and they didn't rat on me. Thus ended my illustrious criminal career...

When my wife was in high school she and a friend started to cross the street. A car came out of nowhere. My wife froze. Her friend grabbed her and pulled her out of the way. She could have been run down right then and there.

Freezing is a normal human reaction. It might be indecision. It might be a paralyzing fear. It might be emotional shock. In a situation like Charleston, it's probably all three, all at once.

So when people see someone get shot, a lot of them are going to freeze. There were several middle-aged and elderly ladies and men in that church in Charleston. All of them will freeze for several seconds at a minimum. In that time a practiced shooter with a semiautomatic pistol can easily fire 10-20 rounds.

They're going to stay frozen for varying times. Some will totally dissolve in an anxiety attack. Some will come out of it quickly and react. If they have a gun they'll draw it. The killer, who will have positioned himself so he can observe all his victims, will shoot the first one to move. And then the next one, and the next one. Even if they all have guns, they won't react simultaneously, allowing the shooter to deal with one target at a time.

But the idea that all of them will have guns close at hand is ludicrous. Six of the nine victims were women. Women typically keep everything in their purses, including guns. Women frequently don't keep their purses immediately at hand, especially when they're among friends and people they trust. Even men will frequently keep guns in their jacket pockets, which would be hung up on the coat rack.

Which means most of the people in the room, even they were packing heat that night, wouldn't have had their weapons on them when the shooting started.

But some of them might. Let's say the pastor whipped out the pistol from his waist band and started firing at the terrorist. He'd almost certainly miss, because he's emotionally distraught, not really very well trained, and -- this is true even for cops -- the vast majority of pistol shots fired in haste will miss.

And the terrorist, a stone-cold killer who can mercilessly gun down little old ladies without a second thought, will calmly turn and shoot the pastor. And then he'll have another weapon.

Since his targets won't all react simultaneously and scramble over to the coat rack where their guns are in their purses and jackets, the killer will have plenty of time to reload and shoot everyone in the room as they unfreeze, even if they had all brought guns to a bible study in a church basement.

When I first heard about this attack it vexed me that he could shoot so many people, pausing to reload several times, without anyone rushing him to stop him. How, I wondered, could they just stand by and let this happen?

But Roof had chosen his victims carefully. Observed them for an hour. He picked middle-aged and elderly people who knew would be easy to kill, lulled them into a sense of safety and then killed them in a blitz attack.

Roof's victims weren't like him at all. They weren't stone-cold killers. They don't want guns near them or their families. Even if they had firearms, most of them would hesitate to use them, because they wouldn't be familiar with them them, they're not used to the recoil or the noise, they're afraid of missing the target and hitting someone else. They think human life is sacred and think killing is wrong.

NRA people can't comprehend this. NRA people spend their every waking moment fantasizing about guns, practicing with them, psyching themselves into the mindset that human life is cheap, planning how to kill people they think are threatening them. They will trade someone else's life for theirs in a heartbeat. For them the ends justify the means: every man for himself.

In short, NRA people think just like Dylann Roof.

Normal people don't want to spend their lives obsessing about guns and death. They just want to carry on with without having to live in constant fear.

Roof and his ilk know that. That's why they do what they do: they want to ratchet up the fear, the distrust and the hatred. They want blacks to react violently and angrily to this act of terrorism, in order to perpetuate the white supremacist dream of resegregating this country.

The Pope On Climate Change

Like me, Pope Francis is a "fake" Christian, according to conservatives. He spends his time worrying about the poor, not judging gay people, and preaching the evils of inequality (see also, the works of Jesus Christ).  Now that he has embraced the objective reality of climate change and what is causing it, he's gone full on commie pinko bastard!

"Those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms," Francis wrote of the impact of climate change in the encyclical titled "Laudato Si," or "Praise Be."

He called on humanity to collectively acknowledge a "sense of responsibility for our fellow men and women upon which all civil society is founded." And he wrote that climate change "represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day."

Francis said that developing countries, as the biggest producers of harmful greenhouse gasses, owe the poorer nations a debt. "The developed countries ought to help pay this debt by significantly limiting their consumption of nonrenewable energy and by assisting poorer countries to support policies and programs of sustainable development."

In one particularly blunt passage, Francis writes: "The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. In many parts of the planet, the elderly lament that once beautiful landscapes are now covered with rubbish. ... Frequently no measures are taken until after people's health has been irreversibly affected."

Actually, the pile of filth also extends to the conservative platform on climate change with the party of responsibility taking none of it.