Under the Headings of Unintended Consequencs and 'Be careful what you wish for'...

Dear North Carolina, WHAT were you thinking? 

ARE you capable of thinking?

When will you start rethinking this decision; how many people and corporations will have to pull their money out before you cave? Because you WILL cave, just like Indiana.

Silliest Conspiracy Theory this week!

The dumbest conspiracy theory of the week started (of course) by right wing conspiracy crazies; but sadly, a few left wing election cycle watchers fell for it too.

The conspiracy theory is that Helen Purcell, the Maricopa, Arizona county recorder, the woman who so badly botched up the elections there that calls have been made for federal investigation and prosecution.  Right wingers have tried to float this as some Clinton conspiracy to steal the AZ primary, asserting that Helen Purcell was the wife of the Lt. Governor Joe Purcell, under Bill Clinton.

Except that nothing could be further from the truth.  It appears that Helen Purcell, the County Recorder, is not the widow of Joe Purcell of Arkansas.  She was, per her official county biography, born in Kansas, and lived the rest of her life entirely in Arizona - as a Republican.  I can find no evidence that she is or was married, or that Purcell is not her maiden name either.  Further the details of her professional life indicate a separate career of her own that is inconsistent with a life in Arkansas at the same time.

Don't be a dummy; don't uncritically accept silly stories without asking questions and doing at least minimal fact checking.  Only the most gullible fail to consider that there easily can be more than one person with the same or a similar sounding name.  That's grade school level knowledge.

For those who want to see it for themselves, here is the bio link for the Maricopa, Arizona County Recorder, Helen Purcell.

Ah, yes, all those family values anti-gay homophobes who were themselves gay....

As Trump and Cruz continue to advance as nominees on the right, and with the conduct of their supporters.............we may need to revisit being called the Asshole Nation, including by our closest allies, as well as given our record under Dubya.

One more example of conservaives applying a double standard

The Right Wing lives by a permanent double standard

We have seen it applied with particular virulence against President Obama and his administration and family, but they do so in judging others as well.

The Right Wing Can't Win Fairly, so they try to win by LYING, this time about Bill and Hill

Yesterday there was a video circulating that purported to show Bill Clinton bashing the Obama administration on behalf of Hillary Clinton - in spite of the illogic of that, given she was a prominent member of that administration as Sec State.

NO. WRONG. And also BAD.  The right should be swatted with a metaphoric rolled up newspaper, and so should anyone who bought into the right wing nut lie.

In service to truth and clarity, and just because it is so much fun to push back against the dirty and corrupt dealings of the right.  When they go after Hilary instead of each other it reflects that they are losing by their internal politics.

Via Little Green Footballs on the right wing video:

And here’s Bill Clinton’s statement tonight about this fake controversy:

An aide to Bill Clinton says the legacy he was referring to was Republicans’ obstructionism.
“When Republicans controlled the White House, their trickle-down approach drove our economy to the brink of a collapse. After President Obama was elected, Republicans made it their number one goal to block him at every turn,” spokesman Angel Urena said in a statement. “That unprecedented obstruction these last eight years is their legacy, and the American people should reject it by electing Hillary Clinton to build on President Obama’s success so we can all grow and succeed together.”

Liars are losers, and also not very ethical.

Solidarity with Belgium!

We share the grief with those in Belgium after the terrorist attacks, and applaud their courage and resolution, their national response, in the face of violence and loss.  It is correctly being reported that given the EU and NATO entities located in Belgium make this as much an attack on the international community (particularly the western world) as it is specific to Belgium.

I applaud the courage and practicality of the Belgians in responding to the tragedy by using twitter to organize private cars to help people stranded by the attack return to their homes.  Well done.

I would argue that it is inevitable that in fighting a war on terrorism, we will experience attacks, people will be hurt or killed, but that we cannot let that shake our resolve or let it stampede us to act out of fear, including how we vote.  There is no magic solution that will ever keep us perfectly safe from all harm, not walls, not increasing our military activity in the middle East. Least of all should we let this gin up hatred for all Muslims because of the extremism of a few.  Time for Americans to toughen up, to emulate the stiff upper lip of the Brits, in how we respond to attempts to frighten us.

The two posters below were prepared by the British government in 1939, in anticipation of attacks in the coming WW II.  We should keep the advice in mind in the face of terrorism as well, in the face of attempts to frighten us away from fighting extremism by any name or acronym.



The attacks in Paris were the result of the success by allied forces in bombing ISIS oil, along with the economic 'war' with oil prices being at record lows.  That has caused ISIS to begin to go broke, to severely impair their ability to buy weapons and ammunition, explosives, or to pay their fighters, even to feed their fighters.  The Paris attacks were an attempt to stop the French from being effective against ISIS, as the French were taking the lead in those targeted bombings of ISIS resources.  ISIS claimed that was the reason for the attacks, and our own leaders have said the same.

Likewise, the terrorist attacks in Brussels is a push-back against the effectiveness of the Belgians since the Paris attacks in rooting out terrorists.  Success means push backs; it does not mean we run around in hysteria as a result of such attacks, it means we recognize this is what winning looks like. We must double down, and that we recognize that we might have more of these before we establish some kind of limited victory.  Realistically, given the complexity of the problems involved that have led to extremism, limited victory is the optimum possible.

Finally, I'd like to share a graphic from a European friend of mine; the translation is "Finally when one see what can be done in the name of God, one has to ask what activity is left for the devil."

I am seeing a lot of hateful things being done in the name of God or by those who claim deep religious belief in God, and it is not from Muslims, but from Christians.  Let us look to ourselves first in considering the wisdom below.

None so blind as those who WANT to hear lies

Trump supporters claim he 'tells it like it is'.  Apparently they really don't listen to him; he changes his story often as to the cost of the wall, etc., and then they decline to think critically about what he says.

Fortunately, John Oliver has looked at those statements critically for them, not that they will listen.  They don't want to know the truth from Trump any more than from the other GOP candidates in the past who told them rubbish and used Republican math, with numbers that never add up.

Fortunately when Oliver looks critically, it is not only informative, it is hilarious.

Enjoy his latest.

Conservative religion, promting lies and dumbing down America

A documentary was made of this incident, which occurred in 2006 in New Jersey; the teacher was reprimanded but continued to teach, and continued to assert he did nothing wrong. The documentary won an award at a New Jersey film festival. The student involved graduated, and then went on to a successful post-secondary education. 
Tyson failed to remove the ignorant and scientifically illiterate from the ranks of public school teachers.  Fortunately, the student who opposed the ignorance was not permanently affected:

LaClair lives in New York having just graduated from The New School with a degree in Culture and Media and hosts a radio show.

Conservative bigotry and Minnesota's proposed Hate Crime Legislation

image via the investmentunderground.com

Whether you wear an hijab or a yamulka, whether you speak Spanish or Swahili, or some other language than English, you shouldn't have to fear hate crimes.

I came across a couple of news stories about hate crimes in Minnesota, and an interactive map of the United States showing Trump supporter violence that included one of those stories - possibly inaccurately - in Minnesota. Please see the Minnesota instance on the map below.

The incident that shows up on the map for Minnesota was the beer mug face-bashing of a Muslim woman in an Applebee's restaurant, for speaking Swahili with her family.  The same woman testified in the judiciary committee legislative hearing on hate crimes on Friday.




To be fair, while this Minnesota incident above was, clearly, a hate crime, it is far less clear that the woman who committed the crime (allegedly) is or was a Trump supporter.  She might very well have been a supporter of one of the other candidates, or perhaps none of the numerous candidates running at the time may have been sufficiently extreme for her.  (The rest of the incidents on the interactive map appear to be more legitimately committed by Trump supporters.) However the notion the USA is, or should be, exclusively English speaking is more strongly a conservative one, and conservatives tend to reject the notion of learning foreign languages as well.  I'd go further; in my experience, Americans actually expect people in other countries to speak English to them, and object to those people speaking their own language in their own country.

The conservative position appears to be because it is more often conservative extremists  who are committing the hate crimes, not because of any legitimate rationale for opposing a change to hate crime law penalties.  Apparently hate and violence are conservative 'family values' they are trying to protect, or their notion of freedom. 

It is as ludicrous to assert that any other motive exists as it is to assert that conservative obstruction of the nomination of a replacement for Scalia to the SCOTUS is about "the will of the voters".  This is particularly evident now that Merrick Garland has been nominated and the GOP in the Senate have indicated they would confirm him after November 8th, but before the newly elected members of the Senate and the new president are sworn in if they lose the 2016 election.

Over the weekend, I watched that documentary,  "KKK: the Fight for White Supremacy"; and during the week I had caught the televised hearings from the MN lege on increasing the penalties for hate crimes in Minnesota. The woman in the Applebee's incident testified at that legislative hearing. The conservative legislators in the hearing opposed any increase in hate crime penalties, effectively trying to give cover, protection from consequences and penalties, to conservative hate criminals. They argued that to make hate crimes penalties higher was to exalt the victims of hate crimes over other victims. I certainly never heard the argument that when stiffer penalties were applied for users and vendors of the form of crack cocaine over powdered cocaine in enacting drug laws, that the victims of the harsher penalized crime were 'exalted', for example.  Rather the argument was that the harsher laws were intended as a deterrent to drug activity.   (I have yet to see anyone who reasonably believes a penalty for a crime 'exalts' the victims.)

It was interesting to me that in the state lege hearing on increasing penalties for hate crimes, one of those legislators in favor of increased hate crime law documented that of the immigrants over the time of our state's existence, only 25% came from English speaking countries, while the overwhelming majority of the other 75% did not speak English when they arrived, and spoke their native language among themselves.  In other words, who we are, who we have always been, has been multi-lingual.  Even early schools taught students in Swedish, and German, and other immigrant languages, not English.

There is an established premise of severity of penalties in law operating as a deterrent to crime.  While this does not appear to be true of the death penalty, it remains the premise for all of the legislation initiated by the right to be tough on crime that has led to our high incarceration rate.

It is worth noting that in being tough on crime, our incarceration level disproportionately locks up black and Hispanic people, largely for drug crimes and drug use, which in fact are crimes more frequently committed by relatively more affluent white people.

What distinguishes the nature of a hate crime from any other individual crime is that it is a crime against an individual or individuals which intimidates and affects a greater number of people in the same group, not only the direct victim.  This can be by intent, or it can simply be an effect; but the reality is that there is a larger and broader group of secondary victims.  In a very real sense, the direct victim of a hate crime is a proxy victim for the other members of the targeted group; attacking one is a means to attack all.

Nowhere was this more evident than in the mass shooting in a predominantly black church in South Carolina last year, where the intention was to instigate a race war, which resulted in, among other effects, the removal of the civil war battle flag from state house grounds - to the disapproval of white racists.  Both the racism and the disapproval over removal of the flag, as well as the intentional intimidation of black citizens, was evident in the BBC documentary filming in South Carolina at the time of the mass shooting, "KKK: the fight for White Supremacy".  Those members who share the same targeted group as the shooting victims emphatically express being affected, as victims of intimidation, as a result of the hate crime - and it makes sense that they would do so.  Jews similarly have expressed feeling fear in response to anti-Semitic violence and hate attacks, a reasonable response, even when they were not the direct victims.

It is past the time when conservatives must stop defending and protecting hate criminals, and to start repudiating them and penalizing them.  Republicans must take back their party from extremists and tea partiers, and become a party of principles and real values again.  Let's start with the proposed law in the Minnesota legislature.

Conservative Myths about Socialism, the latest UN report on happiness, and the 2016 election cycle

In my experience, the right fears socialism without properly knowing what it is, and without correctly identifying who or where socialism works well. That would include nations like Denmark, which is a hybrid capitalist/socialist state.

I attended the Republican caucuses held March 1st; the leadership warned about the DIRE possibility of  BECOMING DENMARK.  No one would elaborate on what part of resembling Denmark was so fearful, it was an accepted wisdom without any reference to reality.

What reality? THIS reality. 

The report found that inequality was strongly associated with unhappiness — a stark finding for rich countries like the United States, where rising disparities in income, wealth, health and well-being have fueled political discontent.

Denmark is a very successful nation, a very small nation relative to the United States - surely no one is concerned about national shrinkage? 

Our differences with Denmark underline the political issues and pressures driving the 2016 election cycle.

It is also a nation that is widely regarded, including by its own citizens as less corrupt, as being economically more successful as measured by GDP - it is strongly business friendly.  It is more successful in terms of educational outcome, of health care outcomes (including cost management), in terms of life expectancy, but also in terms of pro-family policies and infrastructure safety, and energy policy.  The average citizen is far more affluent and has far more economic and social mobility than the citizens of the US.

Corruption drives wealth and income inequality, and perpetuates it.

Critics can hardly call the Danes godless heathens; the state religion is evangelical Lutheranism.  Rather I would prefer to see the US retain the freedom of religion guaranteed by no state religion being established.  But the nation has remarkable religious tolerance, arguably more than that shown by the conservative evangelicals who are Islamophobic.

Winning looks like this. The "will of the people" looks like this.

Adios, Rubio! Another one bites the dust! Will Kasich be far behind? GOP candidates running on suckers money?

So far, Cruz carried Texas, his home state, and in spite of trailing is at least still in the race.  Kasich is still in the race after winning Ohio, but he can't win nationally.

Rubio is out; he couldn't win his home state of Florida.

Neither could the other Republicans who are out so far.  Not only Rubio couldn't carry Florida, where he was born and raised, but Jeb Bush couldn't carry it either. Ben Carson couldn't carry Florida  (he lives there) OR his native state of Michigan.  Chris Christie couldn't carry his home state of New Jersey, not after his handling of Hurricane Sandy, Bridge-gate, the pension fund fiasco, and the nine drops of the state credit rating.  Scott Walker couldn't carry his home state of Wisconsin, with his corrupt governance, notably his campaign manager getting millions of state $ for his sports facility; last election cycle, Paul Ryan lost Wisconsin, and is unlikely to be able to carry it this time if he is drafted in a brokered convention.  Bobby Jindal couldn't carry his home state of Louisiana - and was so unpopular, it is possible he ran for office only as a graceful out from his badly failed state office.  Rick Santorum has never been able to carry Pennsylvania in his runs for president. I doubt from the polls that Mike Huckster-bee could carry Arkansas either.  In the previous election cycle, neither Tim Pawlenty or Michele Bachmann could win Minnesota either.

And it looks as if Donald Trump, in spite of his winning elsewhere, can't win in New York.

Hillary Clinton would crush Donald Trump in a New York State general election matchup: poll

It is pretty much a given that a candidate, any serious candidate, has to be able to win their own home state.  And ALL of those candidates KNEW going into the race, that they were unlikely to change their popularity sufficiently to carry their home states.  Which raises the question, were they ever REALLY seriously candidates, or were they just in it to make money in some way, using election law?

Pretty much the situation is that NONE of the other candidates who were even nominally in the race on the right could have carried their own states, if you go down the entire list.  Which is a short way of saying that where they know you, REALLY know you, they don't like you.

The Week summed it up:

Is Ben Carson's campaign one big con?

Ben Carson's presidential campaign is many things. A curiosity, an oddity, a fascinating yet disturbing commentary on today's Republican Party? Absolutely. But there's also some reason to believe that it's a giant confidence game.
That isn't to say that Carson isn't genuinely trying to become president. He has even moved into the lead in a couple of recent national polls. But the inner workings of his campaign will look awfully familiar to those who understand how one right-wing movement has been bilking gullible conservatives over the last half-century.
...As conservative radio host Erick Erickson says, "Carson's actual expenditure list reads like a wealthy Republican getting played by consultants."

While Donald Trump keeps claiming he is funding his own campaign, the reality is that he is also seeking donors.  He isn't paying for his own campaign out of his pocket, he is LOANING his campaign funds, which are repaid out of donations.  Trump is running on suckers' money.  In different ways that might be the case for the majority of the rest of the GOP candidates, and has been for some time now, given the reality of their unfavorables.

Conservatives, with their opposition to campaign finance laws, such as their support for Citizens United, have made democracy into one big con game to fleece conservative donors and to sell out the country to special interests, all while patting themselves on the back for their piety and rectitude.