The problem is not only the tank cars that are outdated and obsolete - so is the fuel they carry

Republican Minnesota Legislator Pat Garofalo Nationally Humiliated for Racism

Pat Garofalo, face palmed[

A trash-talking / trash-tweeting member of the MN GOP had to back track after first doubling down on a racist tweet.

If you listen even only occasionally to the messaging in the right wing bubble, the alternate reality to the real world that they choose to live in, there is a lot of racism and a lot of assumptions - or 'sincerely held beliefs' - that black me are more often criminals than other groups (with the possible addition of Hispanics), including those in sports.

An example - said in the larger context of a larger rant against team culture - was Rush Limbaugh when he said:

Look it, let me put it to you this way. The NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.

or many of the accusations made about Richard Sherman being a thug, generally construed to be a code word or dog whistle replacing the word nigger, (in addition to actual use of the word 'nigger') in broadcast media, as tracked here.

There is a widely held belief on the right that athletes are over-privileged black men - many with white wives or girlfriends - who because they have achieved both financial and sports celebrity success, should not have that success, celebrity, or power. The way they justify that resentment is to assert that they are really criminals, and therefore in spite of any merit through performance, they are bad people who should not have that success. This is just another dog whistle short hand way of saying these black athletes are 'uppity' instead of being properly subservient, unknown, lacking in influence - and poorer.

So, I did what many other media are doing, I looked at the numbers. Most blogs and print media are only looking at a comparison between basketball players and rates of crime as measured by arrests.

The same has been done before in the context of baseball players and football players.

I went the extra step, and looked at all three in contrast to the national averages. No surprise, it turns out that those athletes are NOT a bunch of over-privileged criminals after all. (I leave it to another discussion to debate if we over-pay professional athletes.) It was interesting to me that the Regressive site's analysis of NBA crime paid special attention to the rate of crime in Minnesota, not just the national numbers. It was also interesting to me that the analysis of NFL players and arrests compared to a larger population analysis put the Vikings at the time of the comparison as the team with the worst arrest record. But just to take a larger look at the allegation that well-paid athletes more generally consider themselves above the law etc., I threw in a comparison as well to baseball.

So, here is the NBA analysis from Deadspin / Regressing:

To recap: Minnesota state representative Pat Garofalo tweeted, "Let's be honest, 70% of teams in NBA could fold tomorrow + nobody would notice a difference w/ possible exception of increase in streetcrime." He later clarified himself, saying, "I was talking about the NBA's high arrest rate and that their punishment for positive drugs tests are weaker than other leagues. No intent beyond that." So we thought we would see how high they really are.

As of the 2010 United States Census, there were 308,745,538 people in the country. For concurrency's sake, we pulled the arrest accounting for 2010. There were 13,122,110 total arrests that year. Disregarding anyone who was arrested twice, this is 4.25 percent of the population. Minnesota fares a bit better. As of 2011, Minnesota had a population of 5,303,925 reported, which accounted for 178,469 arrests, for a 3.36 percent arrest rate.

This is, however, a comparison against the entire population. Maybe NBA players are actually more violent than males in their age group, which we'll define here because that's how the census presents it. By those data, there were 29,808,343 males 20-34 in the U.S. in 2010. In that same year, 3,928,463 males in that age range were arrested, for 13.18 percent. We will not get too far into black arrest rates (27.86 percent; again, higher for young males) more than doubling that of their representation in the population (12.6 percent), but believe this is relevant to whatever point Pat Garofalo was trying to dislodge from his ass.

and here is a slightly older analysis from CBS Minnesota, back in fall of 2011 -- which I include here because it addresses both baseball AND football stats, AND a reference to basketball stats AND because this is a very old right wing myth that was as wrong back in 2011 as it is in 2014.

“These are males trained to be aggressive, they have higher levels of testosterone,” said John Tauer, head coach of the University of St. Thomas basketball team. He is also a professor of social psychology.

“Part of it is thinking, I won’t get caught, there won’t be consequences for this,” he said.

I would argue that the numbers do not support this to be true in professional sports, so this appears to be factually wrong. I did not look at college sports, so do not address if this is factual in that context here.

Deadspin also did this graph, more of an apples to apples comparison, in looking strictly at adult males, not the overall population which illustrates visually what I mean:



I suspect we could find some further analysis of weapons arrests to break down by age group, but also should - in such an analysis, to be fair - also look at the rate of threats to athletes generally, celebrities generally, in comparison to the general male-and-female population, and male-only general population. (It seems reasonable for purposes of this discussion to postulate that sports figures get volumes of nasty threats if they lose, especially if they make an error, and/or if they win, possibly from fans of their opponents. Therefore, the context for involvement weapons is different.)

CBS continued:

Since 2000, the San Diego Union Tribune has found 573 NFL players arrested for things bigger than speeding. That’s an arrest rate of 1 in every 45 players.

“That certainly seems high, but if you contrast with overall public, you see the picture’s a little more murky,” Tauer said.

Indeed, according to the FBI, the national arrest rate in 2009, for all arrests, is 1 in 23.

So even though you see all of the mug shots of NFL players arrested, the general public gets arrested at a higher rate than pro football players.

“Anytime a NFL player gets arrested, you’re going to hear about that story, you aren’t going to hear about it the other times someone gets arrested,” Tauer said.

When you compare DUI arrests, it’s almost identical. In the NFL, one in 144 is arrested on suspicion of DUI. The national rate is 1 in 135.

According to an infographic on sports crime rates, in 2010, Major League Baseball players were arrested 16 times for major crimes like drug offenses and violent crimes. 34 pro football players were arrested for those offenses, which puts football and baseball at a similar rate of arrest (there are twice as many NFL players than MLB players). The NBA is the smallest league, and with 23 arrests, that puts their arrest rate at the top, at least for 2010.

Comedic pundit Stephen Colbert coined the word 'truthiness" to describe what feels true, without regard to if something is or is not true. That certainly seems to be a persistent mis-perception, and one that has strong chronic overtones of racial bias from the right.

Kudos to Garofalo for his eventual retraction, but Garofalo and the MN GOP and the rest of the right beyond our borders needs to engage in some serious intropspection about their beliefs and assumptions, and most of all needs to become fact driven not racist ideology driven. It would make a nice change, but so long as it takes a national spanking before Garofalo would make such a retreat from his tweet, the underlying problem of racism continues to be the real problem.

Garofalo fits my working definition of a bigot - someone who believes (often "sincerely", as if that made it ok) things about a group of people which are both derogatory, and not true or factual. Unfortunately, on the right, which likes to see themselves as victims when they are not, this is probably a net plus for him politically. I bet this won't be Garofalo's last 'oops' with social media; he seems to have a somewhat flat learning curve, and little incentive to improve.

Michele Bachmann Struggles with Rejection by America by Attending CPAC

At CPAC, Michele Bachmann continued her cray-cray. She is dealing with rejection the same way she deals with the rest of reality, by denying it. Her own party and base don't want her. She couldn't get re-elected in Minnesota CD6 if she ran.
From the Huff Po:

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) continued her effort on Saturday to tank a potential 2016 presidential bid by Hillary Clinton, telling the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference that a woman should eventually be president -- but not the one many Democrats are rooting for.
"We will have a woman for president, just the right one," she said, adding that Republicans are the only party that had a woman on the presidential ticket this century: former Gov. Sarah Palin as the vice presidential nominee in 2008.
Bachmann, who ran for the Republican nomination unsuccessfully in 2012 and declined to run for reelection in Congress this year, was invited to CPAC as a guest of Jenny Beth Martin, the president and co-founder of Tea Party Patriots.
She went on to attack Clinton's work as secretary of state, including relations with Russia and the Benghazi attacks in 2012 that killed four Americans.
"She's going to have to answer a very tough question: Did she pick up the phone and call the secretary of defense and the president of the United States and demand that they send a military rescue operation into Benghazi to rescue Americans that were under fire?" Bachmann said.

Michele Bachmann has low approval ratings - and has had them for quite a long time. The same is true of her buddy in politics, Sarah Palin, unless you get your fake reality from the right wing media.

Of course, Michele Bachmann, like so many conservatives, has a hard time owning responsibility for that disapproval, including the massive failure of the shut-down of government that she supported last fall.  Palin gave the keynote speech at this year's CPAC.

Back in January of this year a PPP poll showed Palin popular among Republican Primary voters, one of the most extreme right wing of the generally radical right.  However, given how badly she failed in 2008 and her failure to remedy any of her failings and deficiencies, there is no way that Palin could become the national candidate for the GOP, much less win a general election in 2016, against ANY of the potential Democratic candidates.

Palin is so generally unpopular, she couldn't win her conservative home state of Alaska - according to mixed messages from PPP.  There is clearly a big difference between Republican primary voters, and the overwhelming majority of normal, sane people.

From PPP - in January:

The best liked person we tested on this poll with Republican primary voters is actually Sarah Palin who has a 70/20 favorability rating. She's followed by Huckabee at 64/18, Ryan at 58/18, Paul at 58/21, Bush at 56/18, Cruz at 45/20, and Christie at 40/38. Most of those numbers are similar to what they were a month ago but Christie's seen a substantial drop from +18 at 47/29 a month ago to his new +2 net favorability.

From PPP - in February:

-Sarah Palin continues to be so unpopular in her home state that she trails Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical contest for President there. Only 39% of voters in Alaska have a favorable opinion of her to 55% who see her in a negative light, and she trails Clinton 44/43 in a head to head. Palin does worse in her home state than any of the other potential Republican candidates we tested. Jeb Bush is the strongest, leading Clinton by 8 at 47/39, followed by Rand Paul who leads her by 6 at 47/41, and Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee who both lead her by 4 points at 43/39 and 45/41 respectively.
The Republican primary field is a jumble with six potential candidates polling in double digits. Rand Paul leads with 15% to 13% for Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz, 12% for Jeb Bush, 11% for Mike Huckabee, 10% for Chris Christie, 6% for Marco Rubio, and 4% each for Paul Ryan and Scott Walker. Even among GOP voters only 28% think Palin should run for President in 2016, compared to 62% who think she should sit it out.

One of the best litmus tests to define a conservative is that they believe things that are not true. That continues to define Palin, the radical right, and more than most of the radical-right-wing-nuttery, that defines soon to be out of office Michele Bachmann. THAT day cannot come soon enough.  But it is likely that Palin and Bachmann and the Tea Party branch of the GOP will believe that they can elect a woman to the presidency, in spite of the efforts by the radical right to continue waging their culture wars on women.

What can you expect from people who hear voices in their head, and think they personally are challenging the voice of God?

Legitimate candidates for office can distinguish the difference between reality, and right wing primaries or CPAC.

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.

This is in the larger context of Christian churches actually being victimized, by being burned to the ground by homophobic arsonists for having been PRO- inclusive of the Gay/LGBT community in their services.  You know  - REAL Christians versus the bigots who use religion as a pretext for their hate.  There was an example in 2012, in Bloomingville, Ohio where the pastor also received death threats. That I think presents a sharp contrast and context to the real victims from the fake victims.

So, why this stupidity, eighteen months later?

In February there was a law suit filed to over-turn the Ohio same-sex marriage ban.  There have been more than half a dozen such successful suits across the country in red states like Oklahoma, Utah, Texas and just last week in Kentucky, among others.  And gay rights supporters want to put legalizing gay marriage on the ballot in 2014 in Ohio.

Good Christian bigots have to do something, no matter how stupid or offensive.  I suppose we should be glad that it doesn't involve flaming torches and gasoline.

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.