No Ethics, and a piss poor SCOTUS Justice

Arresting Developments: The Wacky Religious Right Fake Arrests

Whiny conservatives like to claim they are the victims of a "war on Christians".

There is no 'war on Christians', but they enjoy pretending to be victims when they aren't.  It forms part of their pretext for being jerks and jack-asses, and their demands for special, privileged treatment, and for their justification to insult and  mistreat others.

There is such a lack of actual causes for complaint, they've been reduced to staging them for themselves.  Of course, when they post the videos of the staged 'war on Christians', they omit to mention the fakery.

The video was circulated without adequate explanation; now that it has received attention, the religious right wing nuts have been embarrassed into removing them, and radical right wing sites have updated and corrected false reports about it.

The video was posted as "Pastors Arrested For Defending the Faith".  Except of course, that was not true.




Now as noted by Huff Po, the local sheriff is in trouble for going along with this stupidity - as well they should be criticized.

Deputies of Ohio's Summit County Sheriff Steve Barry have come under fire from their community for a video of the officers arresting three pastors in front of their congregations and handcuffing them, supposedly for the crime of "defending their faith."
However, the arrests were fake -- staged as part of a marketing strategy for an upcoming drama, "Defending the Faith," which will take place at the Akron, Oh. civic center, according to Akron Beacon Journal.
Nonetheless, some churchgoers were upset by the dramatic antics, prompting Barry to release a statement explaining that it wasn't real. “I want to clarify that none of the arrests were real. It was all part of a skit that went along with the pastors’ sermons that day,” he said. “I knew it was being filmed, but I thought it was only going to be shown to the congregation. Once it got out there on the Web, people were commenting about how disgusting we were to interrupt church services to effect an arrest."

So, now the question remains - who has learned from this rather spectacular mistake? We must hope the sheriff's won't do this again.  But the churches clearly have not caught on to the lesson of the boy who cried wolf, and want to 'cry wolf' some more.  Continuing from the Huff Po:

[Edra Frazier, Marketing Director] deems the stunts successful and will organize more "arrests" as the lead up to the production goes on. “Our hope is that as sheriff’s deputies continue to make their way to churches throughout the community, members of that congregation will see that their pastors truly are defenders of the faith,” she said. “Even though it starts with a negative image of a pastor being arrested, this is a dramatic way to deliver the positive message that our spiritual leaders are doing a lot of good in our community."

I can only wonder what the heck the people in the offices of the Sheriff's Department were thinking when they agreed to this.  The potential for this action to be both misinterpreted, misrepresented, and misused is huge.  I can only hope they were well paid for their time and efforts, the way they might be compensated for appearing in any commercial movie.  If not then they should be investigated not only for their appallingly stupid conduct, but for misuse of departmental employees and property.  Perhaps someone forgot that these are public vehicles and that when in uniform and on duty, they are working on the public nickel.  This appears to be one more example of the religious radical right trying to claim special privileges at the expense of the rest of us.

From the AP and Fox8 in Cleveland:

Mock Arrests of Ohio Pastors Create Confusion

AKRON, Ohio (AP) — The staged arrests of pastors in front of their congregations in northeast Ohio got a surprising reaction for one sheriff.
Videos of the mock arrests posted online brought a wave of criticism for the Summit County Sheriff’s office from people who thought the deputies really were interrupting church services to make arrests.
Sheriff Steve Barry says his deputies took part in the mock arrests Sunday at a couple churches around Akron after the pastors approached his office and asked it to participate.
The churches staged the arrests as part of their “Defending the Faith” sermons. Videos showed deputies handcuffing pastors while they preached and placing them in patrol cars.
The sheriff says he wishes that those who put the videos online would have noted that the events had been staged.

Issa the Crook should not be Issa the Chair - of ANYTHING

C-PAC and other Right Wing Nuts Apparently Don't Know President Carter IS ALIVE

Shame on them. It's not like he has gone into a shameful retirement because of a disgraced presidency. Instead of painting shlocky naked self-portraits and shlocky dog pictures, Carter has been a significant figure on the world stage, from Habitat for Humanity to being part of solving an horrific public health issue, parasitism by the bloody and painful guinea worm in unsafe drinking water.

Our former Democratic presidents have continued their public service. Our former Republican presidents have mostly just played Golf and been privileged jerks.

True as well of the right wing propagandizing blogosphere

Make "Support our Troops" MEAN something, not just propaganda

It's Friday Fun Day - but not for McCain and not for his buddies Loopy Lindsey Graham, or Putin either

But not so much fun if you're the Putin-praising Senator John McCain from Arizona.

I have to wonder if perhaps the elderly senator is getting a bit past it, as some people do at his age, trying to live back in the past - the cold war era long past - for McCain, the 'good old days' of hawkish Goldwater Republicanism.

Maybe THIS is what is playing in McCain's old white privileged brain:

If so, McCain is both out of date and out of touch.  PPP polling shows him to be the least liked or approved member of the entire Senate - dead last out of 100.  His fellow senator from AZ doesn't seem to be doing so well either.  All that pro-Putin-izing  and his other positions don't play well with others.  Neither apparently does the Arizona 'papers please' legislation from 4 years ago have the same support...

Public Policy Polling show Mc Cain right now to be the MOST UN-Popular senator in the entire United States. McCain Least Popular Senator in Country -PPP's newest Arizona poll finds that John McCain is unpopular with Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike and has now become the least popular Senator in the country. Only 30% of Arizonans approve of the job McCain is doing to 54% who disapprove. There isn't much variability in his numbers by party- he's at 35/55 with Republicans, 29/53 with Democrats, and 25/55 with independents, suggesting he could be vulnerable to challenges in both the primary and general elections the next time he's up.
McCain trails in hypothetical general election match ups with both 2012 nominee Richard Carmona (41/35) and former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords (42/35). He would lead though in a match up with former Governor Janet Napolitano, 44/36. This has the potential to be an interesting one in 2016. -
The Presidential race in Arizona in 2016 could be interesting as well. Hillary Clinton narrowly trails Jeb Bush (45/44), but leads Chris Christie (44/41), Rand Paul (46/43), and Mike Huckabee (47/41). Arizona could finally reach its long anticipated battleground status this cycle.
Ted Cruz leads the Republican primary field in the state with 16% to 14% for Rand Paul, 12% for Chris Christie, 11% each for Mike Huckabee and Jeb Bush, 8% each for Paul Ryan and Scott Walker, 4% for Marco Rubio, and 2% for Bobby Jindal. This is the best poll showing we've found for Cruz in a long time- he leads based on his strength with 'very conservative' voters, among whom he gets 22%.
-Almost four years after it passed, we're finding declining support for Senate Bill 1070 in Arizona. In October of 2010 we found voters favored it by a 25 point margin, 60/35. They still support it now, but it's only by an 8 point spread at 44/36. The bill's popularity has declined with Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike.
-Jeff Flake's poll numbers went into the gutter last April after he voted against requiring background checks on all gun purchases, and they haven't seen any improvement since then. Only 27% of voters approve of the job he's doing to 47% who disapprove. Republicans only narrowly give him positive marks (46/27), while Democrats (10/71) are far more unified in their disapproval of him.
-Arizona goes along with every other state we've polled in supporting increasing the minimum wage to $10 an hour. 53% of voters support such a change to only 37% who are opposed. It has almost unanimous support from Democrats (88/8) and 29% of Republicans support it as well.
-Arizonans give strong bipartisan support to the idea of legalizing medical marijuana- 67% are in favor of it to only 26% who are opposed. Democrats (92/5) and independents (67/22) are both overwhelmingly in favor of it and even Republicans (47/44) are narrowly for it. The state is much more evenly divided when it comes to the issue of recreational marijuana use- 46% think it should be legal to 48% who think it should continue to be illegal.

Norms and Shame - another post for International Women's Day

Cross posted from MN Political Roundtable with the permission of the author:




Happy International Women's Day!  Let's marvel together at what happens in India:

On Tuesday, the BBC ran a fascinating and heartening profile of Arunachalam Muruganantham, a south India inventor who 16 years ago wanted “to impress his young wife” by buying her fresh sanitary pads to replace the “nasty cloths” she’d been hiding from him. “I will be honest,” he says, “I would not even use it to clean my scooter.” But she told him she couldn’t afford to buy clean pads and keep up with other household necessities. And when he learned the markup on pads was 40 times that of regular clean cotton, “He decided he could make them cheaper himself.”
What began as a thoughtful gesture from a newlywed husband evolved into a quest, as Muruganantham – who previously hadn’t even realized that women get their periods on a monthly basis – investigated the plight of women in India. Only 12 percent of the female population use any kind of pads, and many have to resort to “sand, sawdust, leaves and even ash.” Added to the challenge is the fact that during their periods, Indian “women can’t visit temples or public places, they’re not allowed to cook or touch the water supply.” Imagine being part of a family where for five days a month the mother and daughters can’t cook or obtain water.

Maxi pads liberate women.  But there's more to the story - to produce and distribute maxi pads Muruganantham had to overcome powerful social norms, or group held beliefs on how someone should behave.  His wife left him and his friends said he “had become a pervert” or was possessed by evil spirits.  Americans might be amazed by this, forgetting we have our own social norms which inhibit behavior.

While as many as one in three American women have an induced abortion,  abortion is still considered deviant, and so women who have them feel ashamed and are shamed.  Women are not supposed to like sex, and birth control isn't natural, and therefore taking birth control or the morning after pill  is shameful and possibly even against your religion.  Because men are the true and perhaps only breadwinners, women still make 77% of what a man makes for the same job. Further,  men's brains are different and so women probably just don't want to be engineers.

Perhaps after we marvel at what happens in India we should work to change opinion, and even law, here at home.  Let's stop inhibiting American women.

March 8th is International Women's DayConservatives don't VALUE Women, they just try to control, restrict and dominate women and girls

Next door in South Dakota we have another example of racism meeting misogyny, and attempt by right wingers to intrude more of THEIR religious bias into governmental authority, using it AGAINST women, their families, clergy, and doctors.

The radical right just cannot let people make their own decisions. Rabid conservatives in South Dakota are trying to pass a law that would make it a felony to have an abortion because of gender selection of the embryo - and they are blaming this on a small increase in the Asian population of the state, not on any actual indication that such abortions are taking place in the U.S., by Asians or anyone else.

Earlier this week, the gender abortion ban deadlocked in the Senate, after having passed the House, as noted in SF Gate.

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota's proposed ban on gender-selective abortions would stigmatize Asian-Americans and promote racial stereotypes, opponents of the measure said during a hearing Monday.
Lena Tran, an Asian-American student at the University of South Dakota, said the ban would result in racial profiling against Asian women in doctors' offices.
"I personally would not get an abortion," Tran said to the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. "I do not want my friends and neighbors to look at me with suspicion."

We should not be passing racist bills in this country, directed at someone's ethnicity or country of origin. This is both racist, and just one more effort to prevent women from making decisions about their bodies and their reproductive health that is their constitutional right.

I don't actually find the Radical Right valuing women in the U.S.

They oppose paying women equal compensation for equal work, they oppose paying a fair minimum wage which affects women more than men, they support legislation that is intended to take away autonomy of women over their own bodies, and to shame and humiliate women with costly and intrusive procedures like medically unnecessary ultrasounds. The extremist conservatives on the Radical Right opposed the Equal Rights Amendment - they do not WANT equal rights for women. The radical right opposes affirmative action, which seeks to advance women more proportionately in education and employment on the basis of merit. The Radical Right fought passage of the [Anti] Violence Against Women Act, and have supported a pro-rape culture, including attempting to redefine rape so as to exclude existing rape definitions such as statutory rape and rape where a woman is rendered incapacitated by drugs or alcohol. The Radical hateful right also has done their level best to cut aid to single mothers.

The radical right has passed laws that REQUIRE a doctor to give women seeking abortions medically INACCURATE information, and they have passed laws that allow a doctor, as a matter of his or her conscience, to LIE to women about their medical care and health, including lying to them about even being pregnant. And of course we have the radical right's support for abstinence only sex education which ALSO promotes medically inaccurate information being taught, and which teaches women that they have no value if they are not virgins when they marry or if they have sex without deciding to get married -- an exclusively religious belief that devalues women and puts them at risk of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease.

The radical right also has cut funding for health care for women, and is opposing making contraception affordable for women under the ACA --- which is necessary for women to be able to be in control of their reproductive years, affecting their education and career choices. The radical right also gives little authority or roles of significance to women in politics, and the radical religious right insists on dominion or domination of men over women, and that women must submit themselves to ALL male authority.

THIS is how the radical right 'values women and girls'.

So for the radical right in South Dakota to claim that this legislation or legislation like it is about valuing women is a crock of excrement. From SFGate:

Rep. Don Haggar, R-Sioux Falls, suggested during a House debate that the bill was necessary because of an influx of immigrants to the state. And Rep. Stace Nelson, R-Fulton, said that he spent 18 years in Asia in the military and believes parts of the world don't value women as much as he values his daughters.

The SF Gate article continues outlining that this is a solution seeking a problem, not the other way round, and I provide a larger context to the why this is NOT valid legislation immediately following.

No one at Monday's hearing endorsed sex-selective abortions, and there are no available statistics to demonstrate that sex-selective abortions have taken place in the state.
"We really have no indication as to whether this is really a problem. Or is this a solution looking for a problem?" asked Sen. Bruce Rampelberg, R-Rapid City. A Fiscal Impact Statement on the bill says, "violations are likely to be rare, and successful prosecutions very rare."
South Dakota is among a number of states proposing legislation to ban gender-selective abortions. A similar bill that explicitly references race is currently being challenged in Arizona courts. The Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion rights nonprofit whose statistics are widely respected, reports that seven other states already have laws banning abortion based on the gender of a fetus. Such laws remain in effect in six states.

The very definition of right wing big government is reducing rights, and passing laws that don't actually address real problems, issues or behavior.

While there ARE cultures and countries that engage in widespread sex-selection abortions, there is no evidence that we have a problem with that here. In China for example, where there is a fairly strict policy of one child per couple, the ratio of boys to girls being born is 80 girls for every 100 boys. The normal ratio of male to female births is approximately 106 male births to every 100 female births, while the actual ratio of adults world wide is roughly 101 males to 100 females. This is actually a separate specialized field of scientific research:

In the United States, the sex ratios at birth over the period 1970–2002 were 1.05 for the white non-Hispanic population, 1.04 for Mexican Americans, 1.03 for African Americans and Indians, and 1.07 for mothers of Chinese or Filipino ethnicity. Among Western European countries ca. 2001, the ratios ranged from 1.04 in Belgium to 1.07 in Switzerland,Italy, Ireland and Portugal. In the aggregated results of 56 Demographic and Health Surveys^[ in African countries, the ratio is 1.03, though there is also considerable country-to-country variation.
Even in the absence of sex selection practices, a range of "normal" sex ratios at birth of between 103 to 108 boys per 100 girls has been observed in different economically developed countries, and among different ethnic and racial groups within a given country.
In an extensive study, carried out around 2005, of sex ratio at birth in the United States from 1940 over 62 years, statistical evidence suggested the following: For mothers having their first baby, the total sex ratio at birth was 1.06 overall, with some years at 1.07. For mothers having babies after the first, this ratio consistently decreased with each additional baby from 1.06 towards 1.03. The age of the mother affected the ratio: the overall ratio was 1.05 for mothers aged 25 to 35 at the time of birth; while mothers who were below the age of 15 or above 40 had babies with a sex ratio ranging between 0.94 to 1.11, and a total sex ratio of 1.04. This United States study also noted that American mothers of Hawaiian, Filipino, Chinese, Cuban and Japanese ethnicity had the highest sex ratio, with years as high as 1.14 and average sex ratio of 1.07 over the 62 year study period.

While there are more males at the baby end of the life span spectrum, in nearly every society and culture, women out live men, resulting in more women at the elderly end of the life spectrum. Gender ratios are not constant.

China has an acknowledged problem with gender selection and they are having to address it as noted here in the Financial Times from last November:

Population growth in China is a concern for policy makers because the working-age population peaked in 2012, so the country faces having fewer workers available to support a growing army of the elderly. That peak has come at an earlier stage than in neighbouring economies, lending weight to the opinion of some observers that “China will become old before it gets rich”.

Demographers consider that to keep the population from falling, each woman, on average, must produce 2.06 babies, or an average of one daughter each. While males slightly outnumber females at birth everywhere, they are more likely to die in infancy.
But women in China would need to produce 2.2 children each to keep population level. That is because the nation’s gender imbalance is among the highest in the world, with 1.17 boys for every girl, a level that demographers have warned could lead to social unrest in years to come. Even China’s neighbours such as South Korea and Japan, which have fertility rates of 1.23 and 1.34 per woman, do not need as high a birth rate to hold the population level.

China and other countries with large and poor populations HAVE had problems with gender selection abortions, but those countries and cultures, with large numbers of poor and uneducated people comprising their populations, as they try to become more industrialized and developed, are addressing those issues and backward beliefs. We don't have the problem here and we should not pass legislation that targets and punishes immigrants from those cultures who come here.

This law represents the worst of what is wrong with the radical right. Those who more genuinely value and support women and girls are found on the left, opposing horrible legislation like this. As we approach the International Day of the Woman, this legislation and the legislation like it, is doubly repugnant and offensive.

Why the Radical Right has to LIE about gun confiscation? - because it is not real!

The Radical Right subset of propagandists are in high gear.

Understandably, the main stream media is not joining in their hysteria mongering.   It is unique to the crazy right wing nuts that they need relentlessly to present themselves as victims when they are nothing of the kind; it is embarrassing what a bunch of pathetic, gullible, lying whiners conservatives have become.  Make no mistake, this is a radical right driven faux narrative, it is not bi-partisan.

The purveyors of prime red meat propaganda have been claiming gun confiscations in New York, New Jersey, and now Connecticut, with the fear-mongering that other locations will be next -- "COMING TO A STATE NEAR YOU, SOON." and "RUN AROUND WITH YOUR HAIR ON FIRE PANIC".  Without the lie, the "anti-gummint" rhetoric is just ludicrously silly pure B.S.

So, the radical right gun extremists LIE. Loudly. Often. They appeal shamelessly to the fact-averse and the willfully ignorant.

The only problem with the propaganda is that no such confiscations or legal seizures have taken place. (Confiscation is defined, for a working definition here, as a legal seizure involving due process in court.)

At issue are the gun control laws in Connecticut and New York. The propagandists are running around with loaded rhetoric and their hair on fire, claiming that "OH MY GOD! The GUMMINT IS COMIN' Ta TAKE OUR GUNS!", and that law enforcement is going to be going house to house, helmet and visor wearing, bullet-proof vests buckled in place, jackboots polished to a high gloss, kicking down the doors and tossing the house looking for your illegal assault weapon.  And .....maybe shooting your dog or kid, depending on the propagandist.

Here is the reality, which differs MARKEDLY from the propaganda on all points.

First of all, if you did not register your assault rifle and/ or your large capacity magazine, during the nearly nine month period available to do so to be grandfathered in,  you were stupid, probably that special kind of stupid unique to the delusional gun-obsessed, as distinct from normal people who have a rational view of their guns.

A letter WAS sent out, to people who tried to register their assault weapons and large capacity mags AFTER it was too late to do so.  THOSE people were informed that they were too late - because they were, and because the law as written had no late provisions in it- so people were informed of their alternatives which were:

1. VOLUNTARILY turn over the weapon or mags to law enforcement.

2. Take it out of state

3. Sell it to an FFL dealer

4. render it inoperable (aka treat it like a D-WAT [deactivated war trophy].)

If you do number 4, you could turn the former assault rifle it into a great desk lamp for the gun-nut man-cave....

Nowhere is the word confiscation used, nowhere is it implied, or suggested.  Calls to the CT Dept. of Public Protection Office, Firearms division indicate no such action or communication about action is contemplated.  Ditto calls to the CT AG. 

What I was told, and what I confirmed, is that the ONLY way for law enforcement to seize a weapon, ammo or a magazine is if a person is in imminent danger to themselves or other, due to apparent mental illness or if they are committing or CLEARLY about to commit a crime.  That is not the result of the post-Sandy Hook law, by the way -- THAT dates back to 1998.

The only way for seizure of an illegal assault weapon is through a court-issued warrant, and then only after a court hearing has ruled on the legality/illegality of the weapon.  Simply receiving a letter that your request for registration was too late is NOT grounds for such a warrant, because there are multiple options for possible legal disposal of the now-illegal firearms, etc.  That means that while you clearly had an assault rifle, etc. AT ONE TIME, there is insufficient basis to issue a warrant, because there is absolutely no information that shows you still have that firearm after receiving the letter, and the state themselves provided you with the information to act legally.  The assumption has to be that you are legal and law abiding, not that you are guilty and unlawful. Otherwise you have grounds to dispute the legality of the warrant, and anything that results from it - or so I have been told.  I'm not a lawyer, nor do I claim to be.  However there does seem to be ample support for the basis and success of such a challenge in other contexts, in the form of what is in legal terminology, a motion to suppress  under the exclusionary rule, and the protections of the 4th Amendment against unlawful search and seizure, as well as possible protection under state Constitutions.

So, if you are serious about wanting to commit civil disobedience to protest the law which made having an UNREGISTERED assault weapon illegal, you pretty much have to take your assault weapon with you into the nearest police station with you, and dare them to arrest you.

If you are not willing to engage in that kind of protest and to face arrest and prosecution, you are just another person who is a common criminal, a person who makes the choice to do something against the law, hoping you won't get caught and held accountable.

Those who did not register their now-illegal assault weapons and large capacity magazines so as to have them grandfathered in legally were pretty stupid.  They are now NOT law abiding gun owners, when they could have so.  But if an assault weapon owner did not do the smart and legal thing, there is absolutely zero reason to expect their door to be kicked in by storm-trooper gun-grabbing LEOs.  That has not happened, will not happen, could not happen.

We hear, often, from the gun-deluded, that the possession of firearms leads to a polite society.  Ordinarily I would strenuously disagree with that point of view, given our daily occurrence of road rage and other violence with firearms where people behave badly instead of better because of possessing weapons (legal or otherwise).  However, given that a person who commits domestic violence, resulting in the issuing of a restraining order, criminal or civil, might also address possession of guns, both legal and illegal, we might hope that before hitting a spouse or significant other, the domestic abuser might want to think about what will happen if his intended victim testifies under oath that he has an illegal assault rifle and/or illegal large capacity magazines.  Just maybe, in order to keep his dirty little secret a continuing secret, he will control that impulse to commit abuse.

I doubt it, but we can hope.

Why does the GOP hate the men and women who serve in our armed forces?

First cutting nutritional supplement to our armed forces families, then this? The GOP, as they do with so many of their 'values', only gives lip service. They are hypocrites.


and - it continues:

Drill Baby, Drill, OR, Once Again, Conseratives Believe Things Which Are NOT TRUE

This segment on television says it better than I possibly could.  NO, we cannot supply natural gas to eastern Europe, and NO, more drilling is not the solution to ANYTHING, much less Putin.

Shame. This is our gun culture FAILURE.

Watching International News this Morning Made Me Proud of Obama and Kerry

There was some de-escalation by Putin, pulling troops back from the border. 

But what most made me proud this morning was the video footage of Ukraine troops in the Crimea peninsula, marching unarmed, with their flags and their commanding officer at their head, to confront armed Russian troops including snipers.

They had a five hour stand off, with very agitated Russian soldiers, as the Ukraine troops attempted to take back the control of their airfield.  The New York Times has the video you can see here.

They were chanting "America is with us. America is with us."

Sec State Kerry had just arrived in Kiev.

They know what more of our own radical right politicians, the radical right media bubblers, and the radical right voters SHOULD know.  Obama and Kerry and the coalition of which they are a part and with which they cooperate and lead, is being effective.

The people of Russia don't want to go to war; the people of Russia have a bad economy, and since the invasion of Ukraine, the value of their currency has significantly declined and the economy is getting desperately worse.  The Russians can't afford this conflict and they don't want it, and they are looking at longer term consequences from it with little to gain.

Putin has been pushing the Russian government to pass a new law making it possible to confiscate American and other business assets, if the west takes action against the Ukraine invasion.  While this would present a short term loss, it has to present a much longer and larger loss to Russia if they ever hope to attract any kind of foreign investment again, and it is a measure of Putin's desperation, as I'm sure that detriment to investment is clear to other people too.

This is what winning looks like, to adults, not Putin. Putin only appeals to the party of bullies.  This is what leadership and adults look like - Obama and Kerry.  This is what being in good standing with the developed world looks like - not Bush, and very much not Putin.

This is how you stand up to people like Putin, and this is how you stand up to fools like those on our own right.