Politics Alabama

Anti-Gun Idiocy from the NYPD

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 14:00:00 +0000

Okay, this may be a mea culpa on my part. I mean, if the New York Police Department demonstrably shows little knowledge of handguns, maybe I'm expecting too much from all of you gun control nuts out there. What am I talking about? The NYPD recently posted a picture of a ""very dangerous" (their words, not mine) handgun they had seized when they broke up a fight. Here is a screenshot of their twitter post on the subject.

The gun isn't in very good shape, and is obviously missing the grips, but other than that, can you see anything wrong with this picture?

Here, let me help by posting a picture of a similar revolver that really IS a :very dangerous" weapon. (It's called a Webley...)

Now, comparing these two firearms, can you see anything missing in the NYPD's picture? Anything at all?

Here, let me help again with a little visual clue.

See the part of the revolver that is inside the red circle? That part is called the hammer. Now, look back at the NYPD's picture... can you find the hammer on that gun? No? That's because it doesn't have one.

Why does that matter? On a revolver, the hammer contains the firing pin. It is the impact of the firing pin striking the bullet that fires the dang thing. No hammer, no firing pin, and the gun won't fire.

The "very dangerous" weapon the NYPD is so proud of having seized does not have a hammer and WILL NOT FIRE! Do you know what we call a revolver without a hammer/firing pin? At best it is a small club.

This is the kind of thing that folks like me are faced with over and over again from people who don't know what they are talking about. To put it incredibly simplistically, without the hammer, the gun in the NYPD's picture isn't able to generate the sparky-sparky that makes the gun go pew-pew. As a gun, it makes a nice paperweight. But the NYPD is proud of having taken this "very dangerous" weapon off the streets.

And you wonder why those of us who know a thing or two about guns roll our eyes in exasperation at those of you who do not, but expect us to take your uninformed opinions seriously anyway.

Two Gun Control Myths

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 13:00:00 +0000

The debate on gun control vs 2nd amendment rights has raged for decades, and there are two claims we've heard that are demonstratively false.

The first claim is that "no one wants to take your guns." We hear this all the time when gun control advocates want to pass this or that draconian proposal disguised as a "common sense" gun control law. For example, universal gun registration... this is a radical proposal that gun controllers pretend is a reasonable measure. When we note that gun registration makes gun confiscation more likely, we are lectured that "no one wants to take away your guns" as if it were an obvious and unalterable truth.

That fiction has been threadbare for quite a long time, but just recently it was exploded once and for all. Presidential long-shot candidate Beto O'Rourke actually said this in response to a question:

"Hell, yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47."

So yes, someone DOES want to take away our guns. And how did the audience receive this pronouncement? Apparently, they roared in approval. So the sentiment does not belong to O'rourke alone, but is very popular among the Democratic political base. Future debates on this matter must proceed with that firmly in mind... the ultimate end is disarmament of civilian gun owners.

The second claim we've heard concerns bans on so-called "assault weapons" such as the AR-15. The justification for these proposals is purportedly to reduce "gun violence." The thought is that if these weapons are banned, then fewer people will be killed by guns. This is demonstrably fallacious. To prove this, let's look at FBI statistics.

In 2016, the latest year I could find complete statistics for, there were a total of 11,004 people murdered with firearms of some type. Unfortunately, "assault weapons" isn't a category tracked, but "rifles" is... and "assault weapons" are a small percentage of all rifles owned. In 2016, there were 374 people murdered with rifles... all rifles, not the subset referred to as "assault weapons." But if you run those figures, you'll find that rifles were used in just 3.4% of all 2016 murders.

If gun control advocates were really concerned about preventing people being killed with firearms, focusing on weapons used in less than 3% of all murders committed with firearms doesn't seem to be an effective strategy. But if the goal is to move towards total gun confiscation, then it makes a lot of sense. The definition of "assault weapons" is basically "scary-looking rifles that look like military weapons," and they are being viewed as low-hanging fruit... a foot in the door towards total gun bans.

So yes, someone DOES want to take away our guns... a whole lot of people do, in fact. And no, the aim of "assault weapon" bans is not to prevent gun violence, but rather they are just the first step towards total gun confiscations and universal bans.

To those advocating new gun control laws, can you at least stop pretending these two claims are true? Please? Because the rest of us know they aren't.

MSNBC Stumbles Upon Truth... Sort of

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 13:00:00 +0000

Sometimes truth is discovered via dogged determination in a relentless examination of the evidence, and sometimes it is stumbled upon all unwittingly. The latter method of truth discovery was recently experienced by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.

In an on-screen segment, Mr. Hayes was trying to make the point that the Electoral College disenfranchises people and should be abolished in favor of one-person, one-vote. But then he said the most amazing thing.

“And the weirdest thing about the Electoral College is the fact that if it wasn’t specifically in the Constitution for the presidency, it would be unconstitutional."

Yes, that’s how it works… nice of MSNBC to finally acknowledge that.

The US Constitution was written as a list of enumerated (that means specifically listed) powers for the Federal Government to exercise, with any power NOT listed being illegal, forbidden, and unconstitutional.

So yes, if the Founders had not set up the Constitution to provide for the election of a President by an electoral college, then such an institution would have lain beyond their powers, and hence, would have been unconstitutional.

The rest of us already knew that, Mr. Hayes, so what took you so long?

Given that MSNBC advocates for political policies such as rigid gun control, national minimum wages, and other programs NOT enumerated as specific powers of Congress, it is amusing that they should sort of accidentally show an understanding of how the Constitution works.

The Futility Of Banning Weapons

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 18:10:00 +0000

The biggest wish-list-item that liberals constantly push is some form of weapons ban. The most well-known is, of course, banning so-called "assault weapons"... the logic is to ban the weapons that people seem to use in crimes; in this case, mass shootings. I would like to take this opportunity to point out where this leads.

Many supporters of the Second Amendment have pointed out that banning a particular weapon won't stop the criminal from simply choosing a different weapon and breaking the law anyway. Proponents of banning guns, on the other hand, usually roll their eyes and say we're crazy. So, who is right on this?

As it turns out, and based upon evidence collected "across the pond," liberals probably won't be happy to be proven wrong.

One of the shining lights in the gun control worship manual is Great Britain, which banned most guns many years ago. I have long since lost track of how many times I've heard a would-be gun-grabber say "If they can do it, why can't we?" And while "gun crimes" aren't as big a problem there as they are here, they do have their crime problems.

Let's look at London versus New York. Were you aware that London's murder rate, while usually lower than that of New York City, this year is on track to have a HIGHER murder rate than NYC?

London overtook New York in murders for the first time in modern history in February as the capital endured a dramatic surge in knife crime.

Fifteen people were murdered in the capital, against 14 in New York. Both cities have almost exactly the same population.

London murders for March are also likely to exceed or equal New York’s. By late last night there had been 22 killings in the capital, according to the Metropolitan police, against 21 in the US city.

And the weapon of choice? Knives.

London has seen more than 50 homicides already in 2018.

Most of the city’s murder victims have been stabbed to death, as guns are tightly restricted in Britain and shootings are relatively rare.

If the bloody trend continues, London will far surpass the 130 murders in 2017 and reach a number not seen since the early 2000s.

Now, having already responded to violence by banning guns, what is left but to target knives?

London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced a tough crackdown on knives Sunday as the city reels from a spike in stabbings that have led its number of homicides to top New York City's for two straight months.

He tweeted: “No excuses: there is never a reason to carry a knife. Anyone who does will be caught, and they will feel the full force of the law.”

THAT is where the "blame the weapon" logic takes you, crackdowns on whatever weapons that criminals find and can use. After all the knives are gone (with chefs and cooks protesting futilely) criminals will choose different weapons, and London will ban THOSE, as well.

But as we can see, the problem wasn't the guns, it was the people committing the crimes. Criminals who want to commit violence WILL do so, and they will use whatever weapons they have to hand.

There is even a "surrender your knife" movement that appears to be backed by police officials.

Age limits on who can purchase knives have been put in place, and knives purchased online have to be picked up in person so age and eligibility can be determined. And there is even more...

The delivery of knives bought online to private addresses is to be banned under a package of measures to tackle knife crime to be announced by the home secretary, Amber Rudd.

Knives bought online will in future have to be collected in person, with retailers responsible for checking that all buyers are 18 or older. New powers are also proposed for the police to seize banned weapons such as zombie knives, knuckledusters and throwing stars if they are found in someone’s home, and to arrest those involved.

Of course, officials aren't seeing the futility here in aiming at the weapons instead of targeting, arresting, and punishing the criminals themselves. And the power here, aimed at knives, is greater than what we're seeing aimed at GUNS in most of this country!

In Britain, they came for the guns, and now they're coming for the knives. In America, liberals wonder why many of us resist them as they claim that "nobody wants to take your guns away" and at the same time propose laws that ban guns. Because we know where this leads, a world where individuals aren't trusted even with knives!

Banning specific weapons simply does not work... I repeat, it DOES... NOT... WORK! I know that. Many others know that.

Do you?

Two Interesting Articles On Gun Control

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 17:40:00 +0000

This morning I ran across a couple of pieces that I'd like to share with you. The first one is titled "Gun control activists need to learn a little sympathy", by John Podhoretz over at the NY Post. In it, the author makes an excellent point that those wishing to ban guns erroneously view themselves as morally superior to those arguing against them.

Here’s the thing, my gun-restricting friends (and I have many). Those 35 percent of American households are geographically distributed in such a way that you’ll never secure your objective if you cannot engage the people who own guns in a conversation that begins with the proposition that you are better than they are.

Because they don’t think you are better than they are. They think they are just fine.

What you have to understand is that while you believe you have all the moral force on your side, you cannot make a gun owner believe that he is the Parkland shooter. Because he isn’t. And let’s face it — somewhere, deep in your heart, you think he is.

So if you genuinely want to alter the trajectory of America’s gun culture, stop thinking of yourself as a moral paragon and the people whose rights you are seeking to curtail as potential mass murderers and start thinking of them as fellow citizens you have to convince.

It is a telling point. Personally, I can't count the number of times I've been sneered at by gun control activists, or been told that I was just one fit of temper away from committing a mass murder spree. The arrogance displayed at such times is breathtaking. Yes, I suppose that I am a "potential mass shooter", in an "any-man-could-be-a-rapist" kind of way. But that is a useless measure, because it elevates bare possibilities without taking into account their probability. In a theoretical sense, I could use my guns in such a way, but the plain truth is that I haven't, I wouldn't, and I won't.

And anyone who wets themselves over the thought that I own and carry guns is acting like an hysterical fool. Sorry for being so blunt, but there it is. You may be happy being afraid of anything and everything, but that isn't a healthy way to live. Personally, the knowledge that someone out there might harm me is WHY I own and carry guns... I understand that we can't legislate away all forms of danger, and trying to do so simply turns us into the kind of repressive regimes that we supposedly hold in contempt.

This kind of attitude is pervasive amongst the would-be gun-banners, and Mr. Podhoretz nails it.

The second piece I'd like to share is titled "In High School, I Fervently Supported Gun Control. Now, I’m An NRA Member. Here’s What Changed" by Chad Felix Greene over at The Federalist.

When I was 16 years old, I would have voted to take your right to own a gun away. The Columbine massacre happened in April 1999, when I was a junior in high school. While not the first school shooting, it was the first to rage across the country and the world instantaneously in the new digital age.

But I saw gun ownership from a position of emotional danger. Other people owning guns felt like a direct threat to my safety. The fear originated from sitting in class in 1999 and simply grew over time as I imagined what danger I could be in everywhere I went.

I changed my mind when I realized the Second Amendment was a recognition of an inherent right rather than something the government allowed us the freedom to enjoy. Like speech, it became clear to me that this right had more to do with liberty than personal security or interest. Restricting gun ownership is an act of government infringement on our civil rights.

Progressives are afraid. The media has developed in our culture a sense of tangible fear in much of the population of potential harm to their families. While gun advocates see this particular weapon as a defense against the violence of our world, progressives view it as a singular source of that violence. They have developed a phobia so profound that they cannot rationally assess the actual danger involved and simply lose themselves in hysteria.

Guns are scary because they represent every social stereotype progressives fear in America solidified into a single, direct threat to their safety. They believe the only solution is government intervention to protect them from that threat.

This is not a rational argument. No amount of insistence that my grandfather had a right to do what I felt threatened my safety mattered to me. No statistic or comparison to other forms of violence persuaded me, because the gun represented an America I wanted erased from history. The gun itself is an object of tribal association and a psychological token of both freedom and helplessness.

Yet progressives want relief from their own terror and believe further restriction of rights they do not value or even recognize as valid will provide that relief. We can recognize that emotional experience without submitting to the hysteria. No restriction, background check system, or limitation will ever be enough, and no gun ban will ever satisfy the need to regulate violence out of humanity.

I hope you enjoyed reading these two pieces.

Beware Those "Mission Accomplished" Moments

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 14:43:00 +0000

Does anybody remember when liberal activists were crowing over the fact the Michelle Obama had reduced childhood obesity rates through her much-maligned "healthy" school lunch program and "Let's Move" exercise initiatives? I do. Heck, I even wrote a piece cautioning them from trying to declare victory when, a) it wasn't even definite that a victory had occurred, and b) Michelle's program most likely had little or nothing to do with the claimed drop in early childhood obesity rates.

For me, at this point, I would be extremely hesitant to crow victory and vindication for Michelle, as this particular meme does. Both studies included cautions that, while these results could be the beginning of a trend, they could also be just a statistical blip, and more time is needed to determine the truth. Also, any possible drop in early childhood obesity rates did NOT reduce obesity rates for older children, as you'd expect if any lasting changes were, in fact, realized. Finally, as Michelle's efforts on early childhood obesity began with the Let's Move campaign in 2010, comprising less than three years of effort in the study period, it stretches credulity that those efforts drove any changes that might have occurred.

So I'd hold off on these "Mission Accomplished" moments, if I were you. The data isn't nearly as conclusive as you might like it to be.

Anyway, an article came out yesterday showing the results of a more recent study indicating that, surprise surprise, early childhood obesity rates continue to climb. (emphasis mine)

American children continue to gain too much weight, with the sharpest increase in obesity occurring among those between 2 and 5 years old, according to a study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Obesity remains highest among Hispanic and African-American children, according to the new study. For example, researchers found that as many as half of all Hispanic children are either overweight or obese, a percentage researchers called “astounding.”

“What’s concerning ... is that we know that once obesity is established, it’s really hard to reverse,” said Stephen Daniels, M.D., Ph.D., chairman of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and pediatrician-in-chief at the Children’s Hospital Colorado. Daniels was not involved in the study.

In the new study, researchers evaluated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data culled from a nationally representative sample of more than 3,000 children. They compared body mass index (BMI) reported in 2013 and 2014 to BMI reported in 2015 and 2016. What they found was deeply worrying.

“Previously reported improvements seen in younger children were either an anomaly or transient because national data presented here demonstrate a sharp increase" in obesity, the authors wrote in their conclusion.

So, once again I caution all of you partisan activists out there against declaring "mission accomplished" based upon cherry-picked evidence, unless the data shows a sustained trend lasting longer than a single moment frozen in time. In this case, I'm guessing the liberal activists who were doing the crowing barely remember that moment now, and wouldn't admit their mistake if they did.

Reality is a heartless sucker, isn't it?

GOP Will Lose Power If They Ignore Fiscal Responsibility

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 17:09:00 +0000

The other day I wrote a piece about the new budget deal that the Senate passed. Now there is news that President Trump's proposed budget will do away with the GOP's traditional promise to balance the budget in 10 years. Yes, I know that was always a pipe dream that did never and will never come true... future Congresses can do what they will, so if the current Congress doesn't balance the budget, if they foist that decision of on a Congress 10 years in the future, then it will never be balanced. However, in holding on to that promise, we the people could hope that someone would even pretend to be concerned with the approaching bankruptcy.

I mean, if we keep running perpetual deficits, we will eventually go bankrupt. The Democrats don't care about that, they've made that perfectly clear, but the GOP has always given lip service to that concern, even if they didn't always vote that way.

Until now.

Today we find out that President Trump's proposed budget will entirely do away with the idea that the budget needs to be balanced.

On Monday, Trump is slated to announce a new budget plan that will no longer seek to eliminate the deficit over the next decade, forfeiting a major Republican goal, according to three people familiar with the document. The plan will call for a range of spending cuts that reduce the growth of the deficit by $3 trillion over 10 years, but it will not attempt to balance the federal budget, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the proposal before its official release.

The Republican turnaround on economic policy stands in sharp contrast to the party’s opposition to President Barack Obama’s stimulus program during the Great Recession. At that time, Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), now the speaker of the House, warned of a “debt crisis” and said that “spending is the problem.” Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, then a congressman from South Carolina, derided Obama’s spending plans as a “joke” and backed a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget.

Now, GOP leaders are largely silent on the two issues that had preoccupied them for the past decade — total spending and the growth of federal entitlements — while Trump has signed legislation that will lavish cash upon both defense and domestic programs far beyond what he had earlier proposed.

This is a MAJOR problem. If the GOP goes down this path of embracing perpetual deficits, this country might as well declare bankruptcy now and save us the wait. If we don't begin paying off the debt, we WILL go bankrupt! There's no other way it can turn out.

I have long said that I will criticize where I think criticism is due, and compliment where I think compliments are due. During the Obama years, I excoriated Democrats for their trillion dollar deficits and the way they ran up the national debt. Now it looks like I'm going to be doing precisely the same thing for the Republicans.

And here's the thing. The GOP earned their majorities by promising to repeal ObamaCare and do something about the deficit and debt. They failed on the ObamaCare front, and if the renege on this as well, they are going to lose BIG in coming elections.

After all, why elect Republicans if they are going to govern like Democrats? Why support them as they follow in Obama's footsteps and continue the collapse of the American economy? Why vote people into office who support trillion dollar deficits and eventual bankruptcy for the USA?

Why, indeed.

Not A Dime's Worth Of Difference...

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Fri, 09 Feb 2018 15:20:00 +0000

In 1968, during his run for the Presidency, Governor George Wallace proclaimed that "there's not a dime's difference between the two major parties"... a fact with which I have agreed more than once. I bring it up again to illustrate the parties proving it once again.

During the Obama years, I wrote long and often about Obama's record-breaking, trillion dollar deficits and the spiraling national debt that WILL eventually lead to bankruptcy if something isn't done. At the time, Democrats thought nothing of doubling the national debt with $2 trillion yearly deficits, and treated ANY reduction at all as cataclysmic to our national fiscal health. Even when the "cuts" were really only reductions in how fast spending would grow (i.e. they asked for a 2% increase but that was "cut" to only a 1% increase), they spewed apocalyptic predictions of tragedies caused by inadequate funds. In doing so, they cemented their status as the party that wants this nation to go bankrupt.

Meanwhile, the Republicans positioned themselves as the "fiscally responsible" party by arguing against the Democrats' drunken-sailor-like spending spree, and advocated reductions in spending... but only sometimes, and only sort of. They got a lot of political mileage out of this stance, but now it's coming back to bite them.

Now that Republicans have complete control of both houses of Congress AND the Presidency, they are now behaving like the Democrats did during the Obama years. That's right, we're looking at a trillion dollar deficit this year as the GOP wants to massively increase spending.

Republican lawmakers are re-entering a “deficits don’t matter” phase, like the ones that persisted during the Reagan and Bush presidencies. That has conservative economists queasy, as they look at a government budget that is only going to face more stress as an aging population turns to Medicare and Social Security and drives up spending levels.

“Republicans were very concerned about debt and deficits during President Obama’s two terms in office. Then their concern kind of evaporated,” said Michael R. Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “I do think as an economic reality, deficits do matter.

Left-leaning economists are also scratching their heads at the speed at which Republicans seem to be disavowing their commitment fiscal restraint.”

So the Republicans stand revealed as the party willing to lie about their positions in order to gain political power. They only care about fiscal responsibility when the Democrats are in charge. When they get their turn, it's right back to "deficits don't really matter."

This is a major problem. I will repeat what I have said before: If we do not turn the yearly deficit into a yearly surplus and begin paying down the national debt, this country WILL eventually go bankrupt. And at that point, spending is going to have to be drastically curtailed because nobody will lend us more money to maintain our extravagant spending habits.

Republicans, hear this message: Get the deficit under control and start paying down the debt. That is what is in the best interests of our country, not whatever your latest pet projects happen to be. If we don't have the money, then DO NOT SPEND IT!!!

I do not expect them to listen, to tell the truth, because it has become obvious to me that they don't really care about the well-being of this country, only about exercising and increasing their own political power.

So, tell me again how the two parties are so different? I'll wait...

UPDATE: I am FAR from the only one seeing this and recognizing the problem. This is not a problem of having insufficient revenue. It is, and always has been, a problem caused by spending more than we have. Period, end of quote.

Annual deficits are creeping up to $1 trillion and the national debt has topped $20 trillion. On Monday, Treasury said that the United States will need to borrow $441 billion in privately held debt this quarter, the largest sum since 2010, when the economy was emerging from the worst downturn since the Great Depression.

Yet the need to deal with the federal debt seems to have taken a back seat to other priorities, including the $1.5 trillion tax cut, increased defense and domestic spending, and an expected infrastructure request from President Trump.

Mr. Mnuchin’s request to raise the debt limit stems from the simple fact that federal spending is far outpacing revenue.

UPDATE: Rand Paul, who isn't a patch on his father, tried to get an amendment that would reduce some of the spending in the budget that passed last night. The Senate refused to allow him a vote, and is now angrily attacking him for "delaying the vote" on the budget deal. I say, kudos, Mr. Paul, and I wish you could have done more.

Frustrated Senate Republicans lashed out at Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) early Friday for refusing to speed up a budget deal and forcing a temporary government shutdown.

GOP senators, from leadership to rank-and-file, accused the libertarian-leaning lawmaker of wasting the chamber's time by delaying an agreement that ultimately passed in the early hours of Friday morning.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the No. 2 Senate Republican, warned Paul during a heated back-and-forth on the Senate floor that he would be to blame for shutting down the government.

"I don't know why we are basically burning time here while the senator from Kentucky and others are sitting in the cloakroom wasting everybody's time and inconveniencing the staff," he said.

Leadership had offered to let Paul raise a budget point of order, which would have also gotten him a roll call vote. But the Kentucky Republican continued to push for — and ultimately failed to get — an amendment vote arguing his party needed to confront its spending habits.

"When Republicans are in power, it seems there is no conservative party. ... The hypocrisy hangs in the air and chokes anyone with a sense of decency or intellectual honesty," Paul said.

UPDATE: Trump says they were "forced" to increase spending. Bull.

President Trump on Friday expressed displeasure with the government funding bill just moments after he signed it into law, ending a brief federal shutdown.

In a pair of tweets, Trump said Republicans were "forced" to increase spending because there are too many Democrats in Congress.

The president lauded the bill for the increase in military spending but said Republicans had to fill the bill with "waste" in order to get Democratic approval. Trump also noted that DACA provisions were not included in this bill and negotiations for the program will "start now!"

Nunes Releases Memo On FBI FISA Abuse

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Fri, 02 Feb 2018 20:14:00 +0000

We've known for days that Republicans on the Intelligence oversight committee authored a memo and asked the President to declassify it and release it to the world. Democrats and the FBI first attacked it as revealing classified information that should remain secret. However, having now read the memo, which was released earlier today, I don't see any such information. Sure, the FBI would rather the world not know certain things, but don't we deserve to know if they overstep their bounds?

If you would like to read the memo for yourself, you may do so here.

From my reading, the memo doesn't really introduce a whole lot new to the mix, as we've heard about most of it before. But it does make a good case for FBI misbehavior and abuse of FISA warrants to spy on innocent Americans for political purposes. I will also say that I think it was more than a little over-hyped prior to its release.

Democrats, the FBI, and others now respond that the memo suffers from "grave omissions" and is inaccurate.

Former FBI Director James Comey took aim at the controversial memo authored by House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes' staff, which was declassified by President Donald Trump and released Friday.

Criticizing the memo in a Friday tweet, Comey wrote, "That's it?"

"Dishonest and misleading memo wrecked the House intel committee, destroyed trust with Intelligence Community, damaged relationship with FISA court, and inexcusably exposed classified investigation of an American citizen," he continued. "For what? DOJ & FBI must keep doing their jobs."

I believe the answer to this is more transparency, not more secrecy. Democrats on the intelligence committee have authored a rebuttal memo which should be declassified and released as well... let us read them both and form our own opinions.

But even with both memos released, we're basically in a "he-said, he-said" situation, here. Which do we believe? The only way to resolve this is to release the underlying documents upon which both memos are supposedly based.

If the FBI is, in fact, abusing the FISA court and improperly obtaining search warrants, that should become public knowledge, and classification of underlying documents should not stand in the way. Possible FBI embarrasement at being caught isn't sufficient reason to classify their mistakes.

I will go even further and use this as an example of why I dislike the entire FISA system. Secret courts issuing secret warrants based upon secret information, and issuing secret rulings that form an entire body of secret legal precedent? Police using these secret warrants to conduct searches and seize evidence THAT THE ACCUSED IS NEVER INFORMED OF? I'm sorry? Judicial proceedings are, and MUST BE, generally open to the public. Those accused must be given the right to know when searches and seizures take place. Meaningful oversight cannot occur when the entire process is sealed and judges have to rely on the "word of the FBI" and other government agencies.

You DO remember the news last May that the FISA court rebuked the NSA for conducting a 5-year program of illegally spying on US citizens, right?

The document, signed by Judge Rosemary M. Collyer, said the court had learned in a notice filed Oct. 26, 2016, that National Security Agency analysts had been conducting prohibited queries of databases “with much greater frequency than had previously been disclosed to the court.”

It said a judge chastised the NSA’s inspector general and Office of Compliance for Operations for an “institutional ‘lack of candor’ ” for failing to inform the court. It described the matter as “a very serious Fourth Amendment issue.”

The entire FISA system is set up in such a way that the judges rely on the agencies to deal with them truthfully, but too often they do not. It is an invitation to abuse, with only the "access procedures" of the agencies serving to limit abuses... but the very nature of oversight is to make sure agencies are, in fact, behaving lawfully, and that can't happen by trusting those agencies to report truthfully. As long as affairs are conducted in secret, the public can have no confidence that abuses are not happening. The very rebuke that I reference above was, itself, a classified document that was leaked to a news service. In other words, we were lucky to hear about it at all.

Secrecy harms justice rather than serves it, and we should not allow that secrecy to continue. So release the Democrats' memo, release the underlying documents, and abolish the FISA courts.

Global Warming Doesn't Make Weather More Extreme

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 17:31:00 +0000

(I have written before on Global Warming... this is the link to the first in a 5-part series of posts on why I doubt that Global Warming is the huge threat we are constantly told it is.)

Despite what the climate change warriors will tell you, so-called Global Warming is NOT making weather events more extreme. This isn't opinion, it is fact. In spite of that, you'll hear claims like this one:

According to the report, insurers paid out a record $135 billion because of these disasters, and total losses amounted to $330 billion, the second worst since 2011. It was also, the report says, the costliest hurricane season on record. And if you look at the chart in the report, it does appear that the cost of natural disasters has been on the uptrend since 1980.

Naturally, climate change advocates point to this as further proof that the increase in CO2 levels is already causing calamities around the world. "As human-induced climate change continues to progress, extreme weather is becoming more frequent and dangerous," is how the Environmental Defense Fund put it.

Keep in mind, that measuring how much damage is done is not the same as measuring extreme weather events... a tornado hitting downtown Miami will do more damage than one hitting an empty field in Nebraska. is that what is going on?

OK, but what about the Munich RE numbers showing the continued increase in costs? That can easily be explained by the fact that the past several decades have seen increases in development and population in areas that are prone to severe weather.

If a hurricane battered Florida 100 years ago, the monetary damages would be far, far less than today — even if you adjust for inflation — for the simple reason that Florida's population and its economy have exploded over the intervening years.

I recommend you give this a read. The author shows charts provided by the relevant authorities that show tornadoes, droughts, hurricanes and the like do NOT show upward trends in intensity. Charts like this one, that shows quite clearly that tornadoes have NOT shown a trend of increasing frequency.

The number of tornadoes in 2014 was below the number in 1954, NOAA data show. Indeed, the trend line seems to indicate that tornado activity has been lower since the mid-1980s than it was in three decades before that.

So, the doomsday claims that weather is getting more extreme because of man-caused global warming is pure bunk, designed to panic people into supporting whatever EXPENSIVE boondoggle that comes down the pike. You did hear, didn't you, that the climate conference in Bonn (May of last year) decided to increase their demands from $100 billion a year to $400 billion a year to be payed by "developed countries" (i.e. the US will pay the lion's share of this) to "poor countries." Expensive boondoggle, indeed.

Meeting in Bonn, Germany, for yet another unneeded climate conference, attendees are now demanding $300 billion a year more to help less-developed nations cope with anticipated climatic warming. Are they kidding?

By the way, that $300 billion is in addition to the $100 billion that the world's governments have already promised to deliver under the Paris Climate Agreement. So now they're asking for a total of $400 billion a year in climate welfare for the developing world.

The evidence keeps coming in that the computer models predict far more warming than is experienced in reality, and that the climate is far less sensitive to CO2 than the Warmers would have you believe.

The University of Alabama-Huntsville study, conducted by climate scientists John Christy and Richard McNider, shows that not only is the temperature rising far more slowly than predicted, but that the Earth's atmosphere appears to be less sensitive to changing CO2 levels than previously assumed.

This casts serious doubts on the dozens of models used in coming up with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's dire forecast of massive global warming based on rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, mainly from human activity.

Given that CO2 levels have risen sharply in recent decades but the pace of warming has remained essentially the same suggests that CO2 doesn't have the warming effect that many models assume.

It has gotten to the point that even some WARMERS are admitting the climate models run too hot in their predictions.

A new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience purports to support action by global governments to reduce carbon dioxide output in order to lower potential global warming over the next 100 years or so. But what it really does is undercut virtually every modern argument for taking radical action against warming.

Why? The study admits that the 12 major university and government models that have been used to predict climate warming are faulty.

"We haven't seen that rapid acceleration in warming after 2000 that we see in the models," said Myles Allen, professor of geosystem science at Oxford and one of the authors of the study. "We haven't seen that in the observations."

And, of course, he's quite right. As we've noted here numerous times, the much-feared "global warming" trend seems to have halted somewhere around 1998. We know this is true because satellite temperature readings — the most accurate temperature gauge since it takes in the entire atmosphere, not just parts of it — show there's been virtually no change.

And despite the fact that polar bear populations are growing, we continue to hear the scare stories about starving polar bears wandering in areas devoid of ice and snow.

It's a heart-rending video: The National Geographic tape shows a plainly starving, shockingly thin polar bear rummaging for food. It's near death. The tragic scene went viral on the internet.

"When scientists say bears are going extinct, I want people to realize what it looks like," said SeaLegacy photographer Paul Nicklen, whose video of the bear was later shared online by National Geographic. And, of course, the media wasted no time in fixing blame: global warming.

The New York Times came right out and said it: "Experts and environmentalists say the broad answer — however controversial and nuanced it may be — is to reduce the present levels of global greenhouse gas emissions in order to curb global warming. In January, federal wildlife officials issued a report that called climate change the biggest threat to the survival of the polar bear."

Unfortunately, the global warming guilt-mongering by the media and their allies in the green movement is almost entirely false.

Both the media accounts above and several others noted the lack of ice. But the area in question where the polar bear was wandering lacks ice every year at that time. They call it "summer." So the lack of ice proves nothing, other than the utter tendentiousness of what passes today for environmental reporting.

As the Canadian Post noted, "According to data collected by the federal government, polar bears along the entire west coast of Baffin Island are 'stable.' On the southeastern side of the island (around the Nunavut capital of Iqaluit) polar bears have even experienced a 'likely increase.' It's only on the island's northeastern corner — in a management area that meets Greenland — that polar bears are suspected to be in decline."

It should be noted that in other countries with significant polar bear populations, including Norway and Russia, polar bear populations are increasing. On Norway's Svalbard Island, for instance, the Norwegian Polar Institute reported a 42% increase from 2004 to 2015. Russia also reports increases.

"One starving bear is not evidence of climate change, despite gruesome photos," wrote Susan Crockford, a zoologist, on her website "Polar Bear Science."

It has gotten so bad that scientists pushing the global warming line have taken to suing scientists who dispute their findings.

Back in June, the National Academy of Sciences published a paper with a typically bland title: "Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar."

The paper, which had 21 authors, was a robust critique of work done by Stanford professor Mark Jacobson, whose widely cited research claimed that the U.S. could easily switch to 100% renewable energy in as few as 35 years.

In their response, the authors said Jacobson's work suffered "significant shortcomings" including "invalid modeling tools … modeling errors, and ... implausible and inadequately supported assumptions."

Tough words to be sure. But hardly out of the norm for scientific debate. Indeed, this kind of back and forth serves as the very heart of science.

But instead of simply defending his own work, Jacobson decided to file a $10 million lawsuit against the National Academy of Sciences and the paper's lead author, Christopher Clark, for defamation of character.

Things aren't going well for those who worship at the altar of the all-mighty Climate Change (all intone the benediction, "Warrrr-Minnng"), as more and more evidence emerges to dispute their twin contentions that catastrophic consequences of man-caused global warming are coming and that the science is settled. Chicken Little had nothing on these guys, always ready with another doomsday prediction that can only be stopped if we spend [insert ridiculous amount of money here] on [insert latest proposal to "stop the warming" here]. And these predictions of doom and death don't come true.

No, polar bears aren't dying, and no amount of new stories hyping the lie that they are will change that fact. The world isn't being battered by more extreme weather events because of man-caused global warming, as the evidence clearly indicates. No, man isn't killing the planet, and no, we don't need to spend trillions of dollars in a misguided attempt to "save" the planet!

So, to all you global warming fanatics out there, can you please put a little more science into your science? The rest of us would appreciate it.

The #MeToo Movement And Moral Panic

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Fri, 08 Dec 2017 20:03:00 +0000

For the past week or so, I have been contemplating writing a blog post on the #MeToo movement. You know, women coming forward to accuse men of harassing them in one way or another, whether it be last week or three decades ago, and the subsequent personal and professional destruction that is being visited upon these men, based solely upon the accusations being made.

They are woman, hear them roar.

My major problem with this phenomena is that is has morphed into a moral panic, and the lines of what constitutes "sexual harassment" have become more than blurred. At the moment, almost anything can be considered "sexual harassment," and the punishment for this "crime" is complete and total destruction; as a society, we are kicking them off the island for their transgressions.

Make no mistake, rape and any other form of men forcing themselves on women is wrong, but most of what we are hearing is FAR from reaching that standard. What stuck in my mind is one woman saying she was harassed by her boss when he asked her questions designed to determine if she was interested in a sexual relationship. Beg pardon? Men are being increasingly told that we have to ask before escalating an encounter, and we must ask at every escalation... but how can we, when that very asking is itself classified as harassment?

Do you see the difficulty?

Anyway, I might still write something more detailed on this, but this morning I ran across an absolutely marvelous op-ed piece on this very subject, written by Claire Berlinski. I will not post the entire piece, as it is quite lengthy, but I do think that she writes very eloquently on the subject. You might want to give it a read. But to whet your appetite, I will post snippets of the piece. (Emphasis added.)

Recently I saw a friend—a man—pilloried on Facebook for asking if #metoo is going too far. “No,” said his female interlocutors. “Women have endured far too many years of harassment, humiliation, and injustice. We’ll tell you when it’s gone too far.” But I’m part of that “we,” and I say it is going too far. Mass hysteria has set in. It has become a classic moral panic, one that is ultimately as dangerous to women as to men.

It now takes only one accusation to destroy a man’s life. Just one for him to be tried and sentenced in the court of public opinion, overnight costing him his livelihood and social respectability. We are on a frenzied extrajudicial warlock hunt that does not pause to parse the difference between rape and stupidity. The punishment for sexual harassment is so grave that clearly this crime—like any other serious crime—requires an unambiguous definition. We have nothing of the sort.

The things men and women naturally do—flirt, play, lewdly joke, desire, seduce, tease—now become harassment only by virtue of the words that follow the description of the act, one of the generic form: “I froze. I was terrified.” It doesn’t matter how the man felt about it. The onus to understand the interaction and its emotional subtleties falls entirely on him. But why? Perhaps she should have understood his behavior to be harmless—clumsy, sweet but misdirected, maladroit, or tacky—but lacking in malice sufficient to cost him such arduous punishment?

I could now, on a whim, destroy the career of an Oxford don who at a drunken Christmas party danced with me, grabbed a handful of my bum, and slurred, “I’ve been dying to do this to Berlinski all term!” That is precisely what happened. I am telling the truth. I will be believed—as I should be.

But here is the thing. I did not freeze, nor was I terrified. I was amused and flattered and thought little of it. I knew full well he’d been dying to do that. Our tutorials—which took place one-on-one, with no chaperones—were livelier intellectually for that sublimated undercurrent. He was an Oxford don and so had power over me, sensu strictu. I was a 20-year-old undergraduate. But I also had power over him—power sufficient to cause a venerable don to make a perfect fool of himself at a Christmas party. Unsurprisingly, I loved having that power. But now I have too much power. I have the power to destroy someone whose tutorials were invaluable to me and shaped my entire intellectual life much for the better. This is a power I do not want and should not have.

Revolutions against real injustice have a tendency, however, to descend into paroxysms of vengeance that descend upon guilty and innocent alike. We’re getting too close. Hysteria is in the air. The over-broad definition of “sexual harassment” is a well-known warning sign. The over-broad language of the Law of Suspects portended the descent of the French Revolution into the Terror. This revolution risks going the way revolutions so often do, and the consequences will not just be awful for men. They will be awful for women.

Harvey Weinstein must burn, we all agree. But there is a universe of difference between the charges against Weinstein and those that cost Michael Oreskes his career at NPR. It is hard to tell from the press accounts, but initial reports suggested he was fired because his accusers—both anonymous—say he kissed them. Twenty years ago. In another place of business. Since then, other reports have surfaced of what NPR calls “subtler transgressions.”

They are subtle to the point of near-invisibility. It seems Michael Oreskes liked to kiss women. Now, it is an embarrassing faux-pas to kiss a woman who does not wish to be kissed, but it happens all the time. Kissing a woman is an early stage of courtship. It is one way that men ask the question, “Would you like more?” Courtship is not a phenomenon so minor to our behavioral repertoire that we can readily expunge it from the workplace. It is central to human life. Men and women are attracted to each other; the human race could not perpetuate itself otherwise; and anyone who imagines they will cease to be attracted to each other—or act as if they were not—in the workplace, or any other place, is delusional. Anyone who imagines it is easy for a man to figure out whether a woman might like to be kissed is insane. The difficulty of ascertaining whether one’s passions are reciprocated is the theme of 90 percent of human literature and every romantic comedy or pop song ever written.

We now have, in effect, a crime that comes with a swift and draconian penalty, but no proper definition. It seems to be “sexual behavior” or “behavior that might be sexual,” committed through word, deed, or even facial expression; followed by a negative description of the woman’s emotions. Obviously this is inadequate. Human beings, male and female, are subject to human failings, including the tendency to lie, to be vengeful, to abuse power, or simply to misunderstand one another. It is hard to define sexual harassment precisely, because all of these human frailties are often involved. But we must nonetheless reason out together a definition that makes sense. Mass hysteria and making demons of men will get us nowhere we should want to go.

Maybe it doesn’t matter where the sources of the present moral panic lie. But could we at least get enough of a grip to realize that it is a moral panic—and knock it off? Women, I’m begging you: Please.

As I said, there is much more in this piece, and it is well written, insightful, and thought-provoking. I recommend you give the entire piece a read.

UPDATE: As time goes by, I am reading mroe and more people who also see a danger, here.. The following piece seems to be fairly well written, and makes the point that, if we're not careful, we could cause a lot of harm to a lot of innocent people.

We now have an opportunity for profound reform, for women and men to join together to treat each other with dignity and respect. But as this unexpected revolution unfolds, we should also keep in mind the dangers of creating new injustices in the service of correcting old ones.

Among the principles and polices that have become entrenched at schools—and are now spilling out into the wider world—are the beliefs that accusers are virtually always telling the truth; that the urgency to take action is more important than fair procedures; that we shouldn’t make distinctions between criminal acts and boorishness; and that predatory male behavior is ubiquitous. These beliefs have resulted in many campus cases in which the accused was treated with fundamental unfairness, spawning a legal subspecialty of suing schools on behalf of these young men. Examining what happened on campuses shows where the politics and social rules of interaction between the sexes might be headed—and how to avoid making the same mistakes on a larger scale.

But in the debate over campus sexual assault, believing accusers, especially female ones, has become a virtual article of faith. Many Democratic politicians have expressed an opinion similar to the one recently tweeted by California Senator Kamala Harris, regarding college campuses: “Survivors of sexual assault deserve to be believed, not blamed.” As Harvard Law professor Jeannie Suk Gersen wrote in the New Yorker, wanting to examine the evidence before coming to a conclusion has come to mean being perceived on campus as being “biased in favor of perpetrators.”

[Al] Franken [when he first apologized] sounded as if he had taken last year’s mandatory Title IX training for freshman at the University of Southern California, where the first piece of advice given to USC students accused of sexual assault is to acknowledge the likelihood that they are guilty, as documented in an article in the conservative outlet Campus Reform: “Admit to yourself that even if you don’t remember the event, or don’t believe yourself capable of hurting someone, that it’s possible that you may have crossed a boundary.”

Democratic politicians in particular have acted with disdain for the rights of accused male students, and with disregard for ending their education and professional prospects. At a 2015 congressional hearing on campus sexual assault, Representative Jared Polis of Colorado suggested that anyone accused of sexual misconduct should be dismissed without any fact-finding at all. “If there are 10 people who have been accused, and under a reasonable likelihood standard maybe one or two did it, it seems better to get rid of all 10 people,” he said. “We’re not talking about depriving them of life or liberty. We’re talking about them being transferred to another university, for crying out loud.” (Polis was heavily criticized and walked back his remarks.)

in a statement on Facebook calling for Franken’s resignation, New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand came out against making such distinctions. “While it’s true that his behavior is not the same as the criminal conduct alleged against [Alabama Senate candidate] Roy Moore, or Harvey Weinstein, or President Trump, it is still unquestionably wrong,” she wrote. “We should not have to be explaining the gradations between sexual assault, harassment and unwelcome groping.”

In a New York Times op-ed, actress Amber Tamblyn wrote that making distinctions will mean the cultural change that is happening will stall and bad behavior will win out. So, she wrote, “The punishment for harassment is you disappear. The punishment for rape is you disappear. The punishment for masturbation in front of us is you disappear. The punishment for coercion is you disappear.” (She conceded that some men may be allowed to come back professionally after a period of contrition.)

This erasing of distinctions between the criminal and the loutish was a central feature of the campus initiatives of the Obama administration and led to many unjustified punishments. “Definitions of sexual wrongdoing on college campuses are now seriously overbroad,” the feminist Harvard Law professors wrote. “They are so broad as to put students engaged in behavior that is overwhelmingly common in the context of romantic relationships to be accused of sexual misconduct.”

The movement to stop sexual harassment in the workplace will eventually move past this moment of shocking allegations against famous men, and should soon focus on the many nonfamous people in quotidian circumstances. But top news organizations are not likely to provide as much due diligence about those cases. No doubt many disputes will more resemble those on campus, in that the charges will be about ambiguous situations for which there is little evidence. This amazing moment has a chance to be truly transformative. But it could also go off track if all accusations are taken on faith, if due process is seen as an impediment rather than a requirement and an underpinning of justice, and if men and women grow wary of each other in the workplace. As Laura Kipnis, a feminist professor at Northwestern, writes in her book, Unwanted Advances, “I can think of no better way to subjugate women than to convince us that assault is around every corner.”

SCOTUS Hears "Gay Wedding Cake" Case

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 14:00:00 +0000

Earlier today, the Supreme Court of the United States heard verbal arguments on a case pitting anti-discrimination laws against freedom of speech and religion. I'm sure you remember the Colorado baker who, in 2012, refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. After the couple filed a complaint, the State of Colorado found he had violated the couple's civil rights. He appealed and lost, then appealed again to the highest court in the land. And during verbal arguments, it seems as if a ruling in his favor is not out of the question.

Lines began forming outside the Supreme Court last week for one of the biggest oral arguments of the year, in the case of a Colorado man who says that requiring him to create custom cakes for same-sex weddings would violate his religious beliefs. At the end of over an hour of debate, it became clear that, at least in one respect, the case is just like so many others: It is likely to hinge on the vote of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who initially seemed sympathetic to the same-sex couple but later expressed real concern that Colorado had not been sufficiently tolerant of the baker’s religious freedom.

At first, Kennedy seemed to acknowledge the impact that a ruling for the baker could have for gays and lesbians. He told Solicitor General Noel Francisco, who argued on behalf of the United States in support of Masterpiece Cakeshop, that if the baker were to win, he could put up a sign indicating that he would not bake cakes for same-sex couples. That, Kennedy suggested, would be “an affront to the gay community.”

But later, Kennedy asked Colorado Solicitor General Frederick Yarger, representing the state, about a statement by a member of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission who noted that religious beliefs had in the past been used to justify other forms of discrimination, like slavery and the Holocaust. It is, the commission member contended, “one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use their religion to hurt others.” If we thought that at least this member of the commission had based his decision on hostility to religion, Kennedy asked Yarger, could the judgment against Masterpiece stand? Kennedy returned to this idea again a few minutes later, telling Yarger that “tolerance is essential in a free society.” But Colorado, Kennedy posited, hasn’t been very tolerant of Phillips’ religious beliefs in this case.

Let me begin the discussion by saying that the questions asked by justices during verbal arguments aren't always a good indicator of the final ruling. Anybody who claims to know how SCOTUS will rule on ANY case is blowing smoke. But we can get an idea of what the important issues are to various justices, even if we aren't sure how any specific justice may resolve those issues.

In this case, the liberal wing of the court are, predictably, saying that anti-discrimination laws should be upheld, as that is an important principle to maintain. The conservative wing, also predictably, seems more accepting of the concept that one's religious beliefs can and should affect the actions we take. Justice Kennedy, also predictably, seems caught in a dilemma. I say that because he has, in the past, championed both gay rights and religious freedom. So how he will come down on this issue is anybody's guess.

Personally, I think the couple, who went elsewhere and got a cake they were apparently happy with, should leave the baker alone. As should the state of Colorado. It seems as if the baker practices his religious beliefs in his business, and so his stance is consistent with a sincere religious conviction. According to reports, he doesn't make cakes for Halloween, cakes with alcohol in them, or divorce cakes. (I wasn't even aware that last one was a thing.) Presumably he would also refuse to make cakes for stag parties or, naming a product that actually exists which I cannot imagine ever buying or eating, cakes in the shape of male and female genitalia. It looks like a consistent stance... I mean, aren't we, as Christians, SUPPOSED to live our lives according to our beliefs? For example, we are expected to not drink to excess... or at all, in many denominations. And we are also not supposed to aid others in drinking to excess... that would be wrong. If our beliefs don't affect the way we behave in our everyday lives, then they are worthless.

So I can see the baker's point. I mean, if we are to be forced by government to take actions which violate our sincerely held religious beliefs, then what does the Constitutional protection of religion actually accomplish? I don't believe that "freedom of religion" means only the freedom to pray in a church. If our religion itself means anything at all, we have to live it in our everyday lives, or it means nothing. And if SCOTUS rules that people can be legally compelled to take actions that violate their sincerely-held religious beliefs, they are essentially ruling that religion belongs only in the church and is protected nowhere else.

I am, as you no doubt know by now, a person with very libertarian political views. As such, I fully support the right of people to join together however they wish, whether that be traditionally male-female parings, same-sex, or even line, group, and plural marriages. Further, I don't think we should allow government to define "marriage" at all. I'm all about individual liberty and freedom.

I just don't see how we can "protect free speech and religious liberty" by controlling and limiting it. That's a concept that just doesn't make sense to me, and any good ruling will have to take that into account.

My problem with cases like this is that it boils down to one party (the gay couple in question) trying to force a second party to do something that it doesn't wish to do. Note the use of government force to compel action that pleases the couple while upsetting the baker. The couple found a different baker to bake the cake, as far as I can tell, without any problems, so all the rest seems to be vindictive overkill. "He made me feel bad, so I'll show HIM!" Like 6-year-old children.

We will have to wait until next summer, most likely, to see what SCOTUS decides. I look forward to reading their decision.

UPDATE: Here is a statement from the baker at the center of the controversy, Jack Phillips, owner and operator of Masterpiece Cake Shop in Colorado (Emphasis mine):

I’m happy to sell a cake to anyone, whatever his or her sexual identity. People should be free to make their own moral choices. I don’t have to agree with them.

But I am responsible for my own choices. And it was that responsibility that led me to decline when two gentlemen came into my shop and invited me to create a wedding cake for their same-sex ceremony.

Designing a wedding cake is a very different thing from, say, baking a brownie. When people commission such a cake, they’re requesting something that’s designed to express something about the event and about the couple.

But this wasn’t just a business decision. More than anything else, it was a reflection of my commitment to my faith. My religious convictions on this are grounded in the biblical teaching that God designed marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Obviously, not everyone shares those convictions. I don’t expect them to. Each of us makes our own choices; each of us decides how closely we will hold to, defend and live out those choices.

The two men who came into my shop that day were living out their beliefs. All I did was attempt to live out mine. I respect their right to choose and hoped they would respect mine.

They did not.

UPDATE: And apparently, Colorado has disagreed with itself, as it has allowed bakers to refuse cakes celebrating marriage as a union between man and woman. Hypocrisy, much? (Emphasis mine)

To force Phillips to do that anyway is to compel speech, and the First Amendment we all love until we don’t prohibits that, as the Supreme Court seems likely to rule in the the Masterpiece Cakeshop case it heard on Tuesday.

The proof that even Colorado recognizes that, on some days, anyway, is that in three different instances, it has upheld the right of three other bakers to refuse to bake wedding cakes for Christian couples who wanted “marriage is between a man and a woman” messages on them.

Who’d want a cake like that, you ask? Someone trying to prove a point. Which is that if you think gay bakers should have the right to refuse to bake an “I prayed the gay away” gateau for a Christian celebrating his conversion therapy, or that orthodox Jewish bakers have every right to turn down an order for a “Christ is Risen” Easter cake, well then Phillips also has the right to decline to bake one with a message that violates his beliefs.

Justice Samuel Alito asked lawyers arguing otherwise whether a baker has to sell the same cake that proclaims Nov. 9 the greatest day in history to someone celebrating his anniversary on that day as to someone commemorating Kristallnacht. Justice Neil Gorsuch wondered whether a baker who sells a cake with a Red Cross on it to someone celebrating a great humanitarian organization has to sell the same cake to someone celebrating the KKK.

No and no, right? And as a lawyer for Phillips put it, “This law protects the lesbian graphic designer who doesn’t want to design for the Westboro Baptist as much as it protects Mr. Phillips.”

UPDATE: And here is an interesting, and very relevant, point (Emphasis mine):

Two years ago, when the Supreme Court declared a constitutional right of same-sex couples to marry, Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the court stressed that recognition of such of right would affect no one but the same-sex couples who marry. “Indeed,” Kennedy and his four colleagues stressed in Obergefell v. Hodges, “with respect to this asserted basis for excluding same-sex couples from the right to marry, it is appropriate to observe these cases involve only the rights of two consenting adults whose marriages would pose no risk of harm to themselves or third parties.”

And, he added, “it must be emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned.”

Two years later, proponents of same-sex marriage want to have their cake and eat it, too. Their right to same-sex marriage was premised upon the assertion that it would not affect anyone else; but now they now assert that the right entitles them to force other people to affirmatively aid or celebrate their weddings. Even when this contradicts the people’s religious beliefs or freedom not to speak—precisely what Justice Kennedy and his colleagues assured would not happen.

UPDATE: Here is yet another article analyzing the positions taken by opposing lawyers before SCOTUS, and they're proposed "solutions" to the religion v discrimination issue.

Similar examples abound, and in each of them, the U.S. Constitution should allow creative professionals to decline to create expression that offends their conscience. For instance, a cake artist who agrees to design a rainbow cake for a Noah’s Ark–themed Sunday-school party should not be forced against his will to make the same cake for a same-sex wedding (like the one that the same-sex couple who visited Masterpiece Cakeshop eventually got for their wedding reception). Neither should a cake artist who would craft an elephant-shaped cake for a party at the zoo be forced to create the same cake for a Republican-party celebration. Nor should a cake artist who is willing to design a cake saying “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” for a Christmas party be required to make that cake for a party hosted by Aryan Nations. But under the ACLU’s proposed rule, none of these bakers could invoke the First Amendment to defend their decisions not to design those cakes.

The state of Colorado’s arguments create additional constitutional concerns. The state court held that bakers can reject “offensive” messages but arrogated unto itself the prerogative of distinguishing offensive from non-offensive messages. This is a recipe for viewpoint discrimination. The state court held that bakers can reject ‘offensive’ messages but arrogated unto itself the prerogative of distinguishing offensive from non-offensive messages. Indeed, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission has proven itself unable to apply this “offensive messages” rule in an evenhanded manner. It specifically ruled that three cake artists did not discriminate on the basis of religion when they refused to create cakes with religious messages opposing same-sex marriage. The commission explained that those messages were offensive, so the cake artists’ refusals were not discrimination against the religious customer. The commission distinguished Phillips’s case by claiming that he discriminated based on who the customers were, not based on any message that would be communicated by a custom wedding cake created for a same-sex marriage. The state thus manipulated its “offensiveness” test to exonerate businesses that operate according to viewpoints the government likes, while punishing businesses that embrace views the state opposes. Adopting “offensiveness” as the standard for any test simply creates too great a risk that the government will apply the law in a viewpoint-discriminatory manner. The Supreme Court has declined to adopt such a standard.

The rule that the Supreme Court should adopt is simple, and it’s a line that the court has drawn before. The First Amendment allows creative professionals to decline to create speech because they object to the requested message, but they may not refuse a customer because of an objection to the status of the requesting person. Adopting this message/person distinction will ensure that the law does not license status-based discrimination. And it will guarantee that there is constitutional protection for conscientious professionals like Phillips who serve all people but do not create all messages or celebrate all events.

Tone-Deaf NFL Blows It Again!

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 19:04:00 +0000

Okay, I can't make this stuff up. You remember the whole kneeling-during-the-anthem flap that pissed off half of the NFL's fan base? Players were seen as disrespecting the flag and our nation, mostly by conservative fans, and this resulted in a blowback that included falling game attendance and lower ratings on TV... not to mention some advertisers complaining that the flap was hurting their sales. A few local sponsors even stopped advertising with the NFL altogether.

The league handled it VERY badly, a trend that they are continuing today. In response to a mostly-conservative backlash, what do they do? They announce the league is donating $89 million to liberal PACs and organizations to fund liberal projects.

Plagued by sagging ratings, player protests and fan outrage, the NFL has thrown a political Hail Mary by reportedly agreeing to dole out millions of dollars to two social justice groups connected to Democratic billionaire George Soros.

Under an agreement with the Players Coalition, NFL owners plan to funnel tens of millions of dollars to the Dream Corps, a leftist advocacy group led by former Obama adviser Van Jones and linked to Mr. Soros, which has called for saving the Clean Power Plan, cutting the prison population by half and providing “sanctuary for all.”

The $89 million, seven-year deal also carves out millions of dollars for the Players Coalition, according to ESPN, which has been advised by Soros-funded groups such as the Campaign for Fair Sentencing of Youth and the Center for American Progress, a leader of the anti-Trump “resistance.”

Nobody can make this stuff up. The league is responding to conservative outrage by donating money to liberal groups. Does anybody else see how this might be a touch... counter-productive?

Calling their action "tone-deaf" is being kind to them, to tell the truth. This is an idiotic move that will just make things worse. Do they honestly believe that those conservatives who have stopped watching will view this with FAVOR? Or that those who hadn't quite been offended enough to stop watching will smile and say, "That's more like it"?

They are crazy. This move is designed to placate the PLAYERS, not the fans. But the players are millionaires who got rich off of the money spent by... wait for it... FANS! So, the NFL's theory seems to be, "kick em in the face, and see if they'll give up."

I don't think it will work. A while back I wrote another piece about this protest, and I said that I didn't think it would end well for the NFL. With this move, the NFL is doing everything they can to make sure my prediction comes true.

Should Government Failure Lead To More Government?

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Wed, 08 Nov 2017 16:28:00 +0000

I first heard about the Texas church shooting on Monday morning, and it was a terrible thing. My condolences and prayers go out to the families and friends of the victims. I have also prayed for those who were injured or killed in that Church, apparently for no better reason than that they were there when the shooter arrived.

Once again, an evil man has taken up a weapon and killed innocent people. This time, the weapons used were firearms, while last week in New York the weapon of choice was a rented truck. The weapons may have been different, but the evil intent in the hearts of those particular individuals was exactly the same. Whatever they hoped to achieve, these demons in human flesh have left behind them little besides anger, grief, and tears. Well, the Texas shooter also left behind calls for draconian crackdowns on Second Amendment rights that ring loudly throughout the land. Even some conservatives are joining in with the call for more gun control.

But no law would have stopped him from shooting up that church. How do I know this? Quite simply, because this whole thing was facilitated by a failure of that law and mistakes on the part of people in our own government.

First, we have a good idea of what happened (emphasis mine):

We know that the Texas church shooter should not have been able to own or obtain a gun under federal law. He had a long history of mental illness and criminal behavior: He escaped from a mental institution in 2012, threatened his superior officers and attempted to smuggle weapons onto a military base to carry out those threats, cracked the skull of his infant stepson, beat his wife, abused a dog. He was convicted of domestic violence and did twelve months in the brig and was busted down in rank to E-1. The Air Force failed to inform the FBI, and so the shooter successfully bought four weapons in four years.

What happened is that the law didn't work to stop him from obtaining these weapons, because the government itself failed to do what it was supposed to do. So the shooter walked into a gun shop, passed a federal background check, and walked out with a weapon he shouldn't have had. Four times. He broke the law in lying on his form... what else do you expect of a man willing to perpetrate such evil as he did this Sunday? The gun shop owner complied with all aspects of the law, as far as I know, and sold the weapons once the FBI cleared him to do so.

No, the blame here lies on individuals within our own government. And this brings up a point I have made numerous times on this blog and elsewhere: Government is people. Government isn't a homogenized entity, it is composed of people: regular, every-day people. And like the rest of us, these people in government have their fair share of strengths, weaknesses, biases, and frailties. Nobody is perfect, and that means that government itself has never been and will never be perfect. People make mistakes, and this time that mistake resulted in a tragedy.

For those calling for more government action, please consider that it was the government itself that failed, here. Universal background checks will never be a panacea, because mistakes have been made and will continue to be made in the future.

This isn’t unique. The racist Charleston church-massacre perpetrator obtained his gun despite pending felony charges; the FBI screwed up. The Orlando nightclub shooter had been investigated twice by the FBI, but they didn’t charge him with a crime. The Sandy Hook shooter obtained his weapons illegally. The FBI simply missed the San Bernardino terrorists, despite years of open talk about carrying out a terror attack.

Nobody is perfect, but mistakes by most of us usually result in smaller ripples of consequences. But when the government makes mistakes, it has the potential to affect MANY others. Ask yourself, if they messed up in this way for the Texas shooter, how many more people out there are passing NICS checks because someone in government neglected to make an entry in the right database? And on the other side, how many people who should pass a background check are instead failing one, because of one or more mistakes made by the people who make up our government?

Government will never be perfect. The laws in place should have stopped this individual from legally purchasing a gun, but the government failed their end of the deal. No new law being proposed would have changed this failure. None. And where is the logic in rewarding government for this failure by passing new laws and giving them more powers to exercise, and more mistakes to make?

Beyond that, no power on Earth can remove the impulse for violence from every person in this country. Violence, murders, muggings, rapes... all these will happen again, there is no avoiding that simple fact. As long as human nature remains as it is, violence will continue to occur.

I may or may not actually address the calls for more gun control in more detail... though I have done so more times than I can count on this blog alone. But right now I just want to point out that government action, more controls and limitations slapped on out of a desire to "do something," is more an emotional reaction than a rational one. We should all be very careful of the "We-must-do-something,-this-is-something,-therefore-we-must-do-it" syndrome. We don't simply need to pass any old new law, most especially not those favored by liberal gun-control activists who would really like to outlaw guns of any kind. No, what we need is to identify the exact problem we wish to address, then devise an effective means of achieving it. What we must NOT do is react emotionally and favor new laws simply because that means we are "doing something."

Think, don't react. If there is a solution to be found, that is how it will be realized... and not by emotional people screaming and demanding that "something be done." If effective action is desired, think it through.

Think, don't react.

Is Reducing Corporate Tax Rate "Absurd"?

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 21:19:00 +0000

I've been hearing a lot of criticism for any "tax cut" plan that reduces corporate income tax rates. This opinion piece is a decent example of what I'm seeing.

Let's face it: the entire corporate tax cut idea makes no sense. The federal budget deficit is already large and rising. The economy is growing without the tax cuts. Economic inequality is sky-high. The public wants higher, not lower, taxes on companies, according to the Pew Research Center. If ever there were a time to tame the Republican Party's addiction to unaffordable tax cuts, this is it.

The author, Jeffrey Sachs, seems to miss more than one fundamental point. When he says the deficit is large and rising, he's correct... ever since Obama took office, yearly deficits have basically gotten out of control. Face it, trillion dollar deficits are absurd... not to mention damaging to the entire country's economy. But his implication that tax rates are the cause of those massive yearly deficits is completely backwards. The problem here isn't too little revenue, but rather too much spending. But reducing spending doesn't seem to enter his thoughts.

Granted, spending reductions don't seem to be high priorities for ANY elected officials, starting with Obama, going through both parties in Congress, and continuing all the way up to Trump. Unless we balance the budget and begin paying down the debt, this country will inevitably go bankrupt, and nobody in power really seems to care.

But then he says that the public wants higher tax rates... while that may be true, it has nothing to do with economic reality. So let's ask this question, are corporate income tax rates in the United States too high, too low, or just right?

The reality of the situation is that the United States has the fourth highest corporate tax rates in the world, and by far the highest among industrialized nations with larger economies. The worldwide average for corporate tax rates is 22.96%... the US taxes corporations at 38.91%, far above that average. Indeed, they are so high that, during Obama's Presidency, so many corporations moved their headquarters overseas to avoid our high taxes that the President himself chastised them for it and tried multiple rule changes to make them stop.

President Obama made a forceful case Tuesday for stopping corporations from moving their headquarters overseas to avoid U.S. taxes, saying they are taking advantage of the American economic system and saddling the middle class with the bill.

These companies “effectively renounce their citizenship,” Obama said at a White House news briefing. “They declare that they’re based somewhere else, thereby getting all the rewards of being an American company without fulfilling the responsibilities to pay their taxes the way everyone else is supposed to pay them.”

Inversions are one of the most “insidious tax loopholes out there . . . [and make] it harder to invest in the things that are going to keep America’s economy going strong for future generations,” Obama said. “It sticks the rest of us with the tab. And it makes hardworking Americans feel like the deck is stacked against them.”

“Here in the United States, there are loopholes that only wealthy individuals and powerful corporations have access to... A lot of these loopholes come at the expense of middle-class families, because that lost revenue has to be made up somewhere.”

But the REASON that more companies sought to move their HQ's out of the country is because our tax rates are too freaking high! The concept of "patriotism means shut up and pay our high tax rates" is just the modern, economic version of "lie back and think of England." Neither makes sense.

So yes, corporate income tax rates in the US are far too high, and act as an incentive for companies to flee for lower taxes. Raising the rates will simply make the problem worse, and provide a larger incentive for "economic traitors" to seek avoidance rather than compliance. I fail to understand how actively encouraging companies to leave the country helps our economy.

Who is more greedy, here, the companies who want to pay lower tax rates, or the government that sets the rate so high and then takes steps to punish those trying to seek legal means of avoidance? (Hint: The answer isn't the companies.)

In my own personal opinion, the concept of lowering corporate tax rates isn't absurd. What IS absurd is the US having the highest corporate tax rate of all the larger industrialized nations in the world, and the fourth highest of ALL nations in the world. What is absurd is complaining when companies respond to those high rates by seeking legal means to pay lower taxes. What is absurd is trying to claim that one of the largest economies having the fourth highest tax rate in the world results in too little revenue.

But the greatest absurdity of all is thinking that our Federal government, which collected $3.27 trillion last year in taxes, is running a yearly deficit because taxes are TOO LOW.

THAT is the true absurdity.

White Supremacy Is The New Racism

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 16:02:00 +0000

Has anyone else noticed that the vastly overused term "racism" is fading out a bit, and is being replaced by the much more visceral "white supremacist?"

We are told that every white person is racist... and that is how the very word has been diluted to meaninglessness. I mean, if a white guy is racist because he marries a white woman, then the term "racism" itself has lost all meaning. So the race warriors who profit from division need a new term to keep outraging people.

When most of us hear the term "white supremacist," we think of neo-nazies marching with guns, or a mob of sheet-wearing kluxers involved in a lynching. But now we're hearing the term used to describe white folks who don't like the NFL protests. (Emphasis mine) Seriously...

White supremacy is not racism, but it is the result of racism. White people participate in white supremacy every day, often unknowingly. It has nothing to do with hate or willful malice. It is accepting the premise of prejudice for one’s own self-interest.

It is the privilege of valuing the symbols of patriotism over actual lives because the results of injustice or inequality do not affect you. It is feeling annoyed because players used their platform to attempt to save the lives of their sons, daughters, brothers and sisters. White supremacy is believing that the innocuous three minutes before a game “is neither the time nor the place.” White supremacy is believing that there is a time or a place. White supremacy is not hostility or hatred. White supremacy is apathy.

So NOW, we are to believe, anybody who doesn't care enough about racial issues ("enough" being determined by the author of the piece, Michael Harriot, one supposes) is a WHITE SUPREMACIST. (Cue scary music amidst a fiery background dominated by terrifyingly violent figures.)

In other words, if you're white, you're a white supremacist. They have begun using that term precisely because it is loaded with emotional impact, impact that "racism" has begun to lose.

But watering down the term to include "apathy" isn't going to help them, eventually people will realize what they are doing. Don't underestimate people... we understand that "racism" is being used to tar people who aren't racists, and we have begun to stop caring so much when the term IS used. That's why "white supremacy" is the new vogue, the visceral, gut-wrenching accusation that makes everybody instinctively HATE those so labeled. But if they keep labeling "apathetic" people that way, the visceral reaction will wane. And then the left will be horrified when accusations of "white supremacy" are met with yawns. They'll have nobody but themselves to blame for overusing the term in situations where it isn't appropriate, but they'll believe the nation has accepted white supremacy.

You see, that's how they keep the race war alive, by telling us that racial relations today are worse now than ever before!

So, if people don't react to the accusation of "white supremacy" as strongly as you might hope, maybe you're using it wrong.

UPDATE: As an example, here is an article analyzing how Democrats have reacted to their loss last year.

Since then, efforts at a broader analysis have tended to emphasize racism as by far the most important factor in Republican victories — which ensures that Democrats won't even try to win over voters from the other party, who are presumed to reside on the other side of a moral chasm that is both impossible and undesirable to bridge.

We've all heard people on the left calling all those who voted for Trump (or who didn't vote for Hillary... not entirely the same group) as racist. I know several people who seem to truly believe that, to the extent that I've been told they "don't want those people" (i.e. Trumnp voters) on their sides, because "they" are despicable.

As I have repeatedly observed, turning opponents into non-people, uncivilized barbarians who are beyond the pale, automatically legitimizes any tactic (no matter how vile) used against them.

Trump vs The First Amendment

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 19:40:00 +0000

Many Trump supporters tell me that "he's like us," and that "he gets the Constitution." This, unfortunately, is a myth that he periodically destroys through his own words and actions... though his supporters seem not to notice those moments.

What would you say if I told you Trump doesn't understand or appreciate the First Amendment? Because he doesn't:

“It is frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write,” Trump said.

I mean what does "freedom of the press" actually mean? Doesn't it mean that they can write whatever they want to write? We can respond by suing them, if they cross a line, but fundamentally, freedom means that the press gets to choose what it writes and publishes. And note the implication, here, that government should have some sort of control over what is written. This shows a fundamental disregard for the first amendment.

But Trump is taking it even further. Now he wants to use the power of government to punish media outlets that publish or air things he doesn't like, based upon the content of what they report.

"With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!"

I think it's obvious, at this point, that Trump doesn't care very much about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Oh, he talks a good game, right up until the point that he proposes this or that unconstitutional program or action. Remember when he said that people should lose their citizenship if they burn the flag? That's not even remotely legal, as SCOTUS ruled on this very issue in 1967:

“The very nature of our free government makes it completely incongruous to have a rule of law under which a group of citizens temporarily in office can deprive another group of citizens of their citizenship. We hold that the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to, and does, protect every citizen of this Nation against a congressional forcible destruction of his citizenship, whatever his creed, color, or race. Our holding does no more than to give to this citizen that which is his own, a constitutional right to remain a citizen in a free country unless he voluntarily relinquishes that citizenship.”

Trump seems to view disagreement with him as a cardinal sin, and no actions are too severe in response to such provocation. Don't like what they say or do? Heck, put 'em in jail, remove their citizenship, or take away their identity as a media company. DESTROY THEM! And who cares about the Constitution, anyway, right? Trump is on our side, and when he violates the Constitution, it's for our own good. Right?

I'm sorry, but Trump is not only wrong on this issue, he is dangerously wrong. This is the kind of thing that should outrage conservatives, liberals, and libertarians alike.

So, Trump supporters, are you willing to criticize your hero when he is clearly, absolutely, undeniably wrong? Or are you just going to lie back and think of America?

Is The National Debt Really A Big Problem?

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 19:43:00 +0000

As the years pass, it seems we have grown a joint belief between the two major political parties (i.e. Democrats and Republicans) in reference to the national debt. That is, the national debt doesn't matter (unless the Republicans are in the minority and looking for an issue on which to campaign), and running a perpetual deficit is just fine and dandy. So that brings up the question, are they right? Is the National Debt something we can ignore? Is it really such a big problem?

The short answer is, no, we cannot ignore it, and it is absolutely the biggest problem looming over this country today.

The national debt is just that, money borrowed from other sources to pay for things and programs in excess of tax money collected. Most of those sources are external (private investors, the Chinese Governement, and so forth), and the rest is internal (money borrowed from the Social Security Fund, for example). As of earlier this year, the National Debt hit $20 trillion, and it is still rising. From the budget information seen so far, next year's deficit could top another trillion! So, using that as a starting point, how long will it take to pay down our current national debt?

First off, we have to account for interest on the debt. The US Government must pay that interest on an ongoing basis. Based upon the current interest rates and the amount of debt held, in 2016 that translated to payments of more than $432 BILLION... and by 2026, that number could easily rise to more than $750 billion. That's for a single year of debt service. Keep in mind that this money doesn't reduce the debt a single penny, it's just the interest on the debt, i.e. the price we pay for having spent that $20 trillion that we did not have.

So keep in mind that for next year's budget alone we will be spending that much money on interest alone.

So, what does that mean? Well, if we reduced spending to eliminate the deficit (approximately $400 billion, based on the current deficit, but a trillion or so based upon what lawmakers seem likely to approve for next year), then at least the debt wouldn't grow. But we have to begin paying that debt back, so let's cut an additional $200 billion from the budget. I know, I know, Democrats would go positively ballistic, and Republicans would have to reach for the antacids... nobody is willing to cut $700 billion or more in yearly spending, much less a trillion, but that's what it would take. (That's just for this year... the math only gets worse with time.)

So, assume the spending has been cut, and we can now pay down the debt at the lugubrious rate of $200 billion a year... how long would it take to eliminate the national debt? The answer to that question is a simple exercise of mathematics, dividing $20 trillion by $200 billion, and the result is: 100 years. That's right, it would take us ONE HUNDRED YEARS to pay of the debt at that rate. We could cut it down to 20 years, but that would mean another $800 billion in spending cuts.

The upshot is that we have accumulated an impossibly large debt that can never, in our current political climate, EVER be repaid. No politician is going to approve of spending cuts that deep. (Well, a few might, but no way they get a majority of votes.) And even if they did, they would have to maintain that for somewhere between 20 and 100 years... and all the congresses in that time frame. With today's political atmosphere, it simply isn't happening.

Heck, efforts have been ongoing to balance the budget for as long as I've been alive, mostly to no avail. And that's just to balance it, never mind developing a surplus.

A country perpetually in heavy debt, and whose politicians firmly believe that running a deficit every year (in other words, going deeper into debt by borrowing more money), will eventually go bankrupt. It is inevitable, with the only question being how fast the debt continues to rise. As things are going, WE WILL GO BANKRUPT! Eventually. And when we do, our economy slides into a ditch.

At this moment in time, the United States is facing eventual, GUARANTEED bankruptcy. With the attitudes expressed by our politicians, it is unavoidable at this point.

So tell me, how is this NOT the biggest topic of political discussion? Or are we looking forward to the total collapse of our economy? Are we yearning for our country to become one of those third-world countries most of us look down on? Because that's where we are headed.

As long as Democrats and Republicans keep increasing spending, as long as they keep running a never-ending deficit, our future is certain. WE... WILL... GO... BANKRUPT!

I realize this... does anybody else?

NFL Player: "OK. Bye."

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Fri, 29 Sep 2017 14:08:00 +0000

Earlier this week, I wrote a piece about the whole NFL kneeling thing, and I said that the NFL was taking a risk, and could lose a LOT of fans if they don't change direction. And then yesterday, this happened. (Emphasis mine.)

“And the fans that don’t want to come to the game? I mean, OK. Bye. I mean, if you feel that’s something, we’re disrespecting you, don’t come to the game. You don’t have to. No one’s telling you to come to the game. It’s your freedom of choice to do that.”

This is what is known as a self-inflicted wound. Or, in tennis/baseball parlance, an unforced error.

If that attitude becomes associated with players in general, with teams, and with the League, then it's all over but the post-mortem.

I mean, doesn't this guy realize how incredibly, offensively, condescending he sounds? Urging upset fans to not come to the games means they also aren't watching on TV (viewerhip goes down, advertisers not happy) OR buying your gear! If fans decide to take your advice, nobody in the NFL will be happy with what happens next.

So, to fans of the NFL who don't like the protests, the players themselves view you with scorn, as not important to their success, to the game, or to the league. I'm wondering how many of you are going to react to this idiot by showing him exactly what that means for him.

Personally, I don't think linking arms or remaining in the locker room are viable options anymore. Essentially, the NFL is beginning to look for a way out of this, but at this point nothing except standing as normal for the anthem, with hands over hearts, is going to appease the ever-more-angry fans.

The issue has pushed the N.F.L. into an unusual dilemma of balancing respect for the wishes of its players, who often are critical of the owners on issues of health and labor agreements, while taking into account some signs of a backlash among many fans.

It is clear from interviews with N.F.L. officials and more than a dozen teams that owners and team executives would prefer that the protests end, both for personal reasons and because it risks inflaming the president, who has been a friend and ally of many of the owners, and alienating fans and sponsors. But they are also wary of appearing heavy handed and upsetting the image of unity that the league sought to project last weekend.

And how angry are fans? They are not only punishing players who protest by NOT buying their gear, as well as rewarding those who stood for the anthem by buying THEIR gear in record numbers, but they are also BURNING GEAR IN PROTEST!

The league is also monitoring fan reaction, especially on social media, where videos have surfaced showing people burning N.F.L. jerseys. Nearly every team has been fielding hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of calls from fans, most of them opposed to the protests. Some have even turned in their season tickets.

If the NFL doesn't do something to reverse this trend, if they don't stop the protests and have teams standing in respect during the national anthem, they are in real danger of alienating their fan base. With this kind of attitude being expressed by players, things will only get worse from here.

Update: Since this issue exploded, ticket sales have dropped 17.9%. Also, at least one advertiser is pulling all commercials from the NFL for the rest of the season. Now, he's a local advertiser in Tennessee, granted, but is he the only one?

Update: No, that advertiser wasn't the only one. Here's one from New Jersey...

Kneeling During Anthem Will Not End Well For NFL

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 22:36:00 +0000

So far, I haven't opined on the whole NFL "kneeling in protest" thing, but I think now is the time. In general, I don't think the NFL is going to be happy with the way this thing turns out. I could be wrong, yes, but from what I'm seeing so far, they seem to be alienating the people who make the whole Major-League-Sports thing work, i.e. the fans.

I do not watch football, NFL or college. It's not that I object to anything they do, I just don't particularly like the game. Football is highly stylized conflict, with the play-by-play format, and so forth. I prefer my stylized violence... I mean, my sports... a bit more freewheeling, and that's where the NHL comes in. Go Penguins!

Despite what many will tell you, this whole controversy with the NFL is NOT a First Amendment issue; those who claim otherwise apparently don't understand the First Amendment. All that the First Amendment does is keep the government from banning (or mandating) speech. That's it. It has nothing to do with the wisdom, or lack thereof, of protesting by kneeling or refusing to take the field during the national anthem. Nor does it have anything to do with those objecting to such activities.

As far as I can see, free speech is proceeding apace at the moment. Players feel free to protest, the NFL feels free to let it happen, NASCAR feels free to NOT let it happen, fans feel free to refrain from attending games and/or watching on TV, and so forth. There is no coercion, here. Yes, Trump says they should be fired, but do you really think the First Amendment does not apply to the President of the United States? How bizarre would that be? As long as no effort is made to force compliance with Trump's tweet, he and I have no issues.

But I am seeing signs of trouble for the NFL. This protest thing only works if the fans agree with it or don't think it is that important.... but a lot of fans think it IS important, and they DON'T like it.

One problem with the protest is that there is no single, coherent REASON for it... different kneelers have different reasons. Some kneel because they support BLM, others to protest injustice in America, and still others because they didn't like Trump's tweets on the subject. You see, this isn't a movement worthy of the name. It has no common goal. Those headlines I'm already seeing that say the NFL "won" or "beat Trump" are misguided... how do we judge victory? By how many players participate? If that's the sole criteria, then maybe, yes.

But there is more at play here, and by that I mean the fans. You know, ordinary folks who watch games on TV, visit the stadium to cheer for their team, and buy team merchandise. In other words, I'm talking about the money flow, the people who finance this entire League. Without them, without their money, the NFL folds like a cheap suit. Consumers always have the option of the pocketbook veto, if something ticks them off badly enough.

Do you remember the Dixie Chicks? They were a country-western group who were, in their heyday, popular enough. But they decided to mix their politics into that entertainment, expressing their low opinions of then-President Bush. The problem was that their fans, the people who spent money on concert tickets and albums, didn't agree with or like that low opinion, and they expressed that with their pocketbooks. They stopped buying albums and tickets, and the Dixie Chicks folded not long afterwards. The problem with mixing politics into entertainment is that you risk alienating those with different politics... something the Dixie Chicks found out to their sorrow.

Now, those doing the kneeling almost universally say that one thing they are NOT doing is protesting against the flag, or the anthem, or the country. The problem is, that is precisely how many fans seem to be interpreting things.

How do I know this? Well, NFL viewership is down from last year, double-digits, for a total of 13 million subscribers over the past six years. Viewership for this weekend's games, during which the protests happened, were also down. When Villanueva of the Pittsburgh Steelers was the only member of the team to take the field and stand respectfully during the anthem, his jersey became the #1 best-selling item in the NFL store overnight. (He later apologized and said it was a mistake and he wanted to stand in the corridor, out of sight, but the fans loved what they saw.) And then, of course, there is this:

According to a YouGov poll (with a very kindly worded question), 85 percent of Republicans, 59 percent of independents, and 34 percent of Democrats disapprove of kneeling during the national anthem.

The fans, and their willingness to plop down money for the sport and merchandise, are the lifeblood of the NFL. Not the players, who get paid (in a roundabout way) by those fans, and not the owners (ditto). A sports league with few or no fans will soon no longer exist.

Will it get that far? Who can say. But I do think that the "Dixie Chick Effect" is in operation, here, and if the NFL continues to make fans mad over this issue, then the League, and all the teams therein, will suffer the consequences.

Most business owners know that you don't piss of the customers, but apparently this is a lesson that the NFL, the teams, and the Players still have to learn. Keep politics out of the game, or potential backlash could be deadly. Baseball used to be the country's most popular sport... what makes the NFL think their popularity is permanent?

Republicans, Please Stop Being Foolish!

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 13:19:00 +0000

Back in 2009, when Obama and the Democrats were desperately searching for the votes to pass ObamaCare, I wrote a piece in which I criticized them for bribing lawmakers to support the bill.

And now, fast forwarding to the current attempt by the GOP to kill (well, sort of, but not really) ObamaCare, the Republicans are doing precisely the same thing!

Sens. Lindsey Graham, Bill Cassidy and allies in recent days have tried to revise the legislation before their ability to pass repeal with a simple majority expires on Sept. 30. Enough Republican senators have raised opposition to their approach to put the bill's passage in doubt, prompting President Donald Trump to publicly pressure holdouts on Twitter this weekend.

The revised bill includes new provisions that would steer more federal funding to Alaska, Arizona and Kentucky. All three states are home to pivotal GOP swing votes who either have opposed or expressed concerns with the bill — Sens. John McCain, Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski.

Folks, this is bribery, pure and simple, and it is wrong. It was wrong when the Democrats did it, and it's wrong when the Republicans do it. Period.

Back then, Republicans lashed out at the special deals, claiming they were wrong. Remember the "cornhusker kickback"? Well, they were right... it WAS wrong.

The problem is ethics, to a politician, is a null-word... it means nothing. Or rather, it means doing whatever they want to accomplish their goals, but NOT allowing the opposition party the same luxury. If you're thinking "political advantage," give yourself a prize.

Republicans are using exactly the same tactics used by Democrats to pass ObamaCare, tactics that they loudly criticized and condemned. This makes them hypocrites. And it makes them worse today than the Democrats were then.

Come on, GOP... if you want me to support you, then you have to meet AT LEAST the following criteria:

1) Stand for some set of principles, AND STICK WITH THEM!

2) Pick a set of principles that I can support.

3) Stop doing the same things you criticize the Democrats for doing: One standard, please.

4) Cut spending, balance the @&#%$ budget, and start paying down the debt!

I don't suffer fools lightly. And right now, the Republicans are fools.

UPDATE: An article today made the point that the latest "ACA repeal" bill was drafted "behind closed doors" with little input from the rest of the Senate... exactly what the GOP criticized the Democrats for doing with ObamaCare. (Emphasis mine.)

That exchange summed up how some veteran senators felt about the process behind the consideration of the Cassidy-Graham bill that aimed to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with block grants to states: It was bad news, start to finish, with little chance of success — and little in the way of true legislative scrutiny.

Here We Go Again: Agree With Us Or Go To Jail!

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:19:00 +0000

Okay, here we go again. We got a couple of major hurricanes hitting the United States after twelve years without, and immediately they are touted as proof of man-caused global warming. Excuse me, climate change.

I love the newer title, because I agree that climate change is happening. Constantly. You see, that's what the climate of the planet does, it changes. The planet has been hotter and colder than it is today, and I fully expect it will be both hotter and colder sometime in the future, too, because the change is constant. So, yes, I believe in a changing climate.

But when news reporters, commentators, and politicians say "climate change," they mean something entirely different. THEY mean that the changes in climate we're seeing are all being driven by human activity, and that drastic, expensive, and controversial actions are necessary to "save the planet." Mother Nature has taken a vacation, pegged the climate to remain permanently as it was when she departed, and the only thing affecting climate is us filthy humans.

Please.

Do you remember the last major hurricanes to actually make landfall in the United States prior to this year? That would be Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma, in 2005. Wilma hit in October of 2005... almost 12 years ago. Think of that number, 12 years. That equals more than 140 months, or more than four thousand days. That's how long it's been since a major hurricane hit the United States.

After Katrina and Wilma, "experts" told us that this would be the new normal, that hurricanes would hit us in greater and greater numbers, and they would be stronger than ever. They predicted that the next year (2006) would have an extremely active hurricane season, and warned the country to brace for it.

And after all that warning, what happened in 2006? It was an extremely mild hurricane season. In fact, no hurricanes at all made landfall in the United States. None of the hurricanes spawned that year were stronger than cat 3, and none made landfall in the US.

Whoops.

And so, 12 years passed, during which the US was a country untroubled by major hurricanes. It was an aberration that couldn't last forever, and so predictions of stronger and more hurricanes were periodically advanced... I presume on the "stopped clock" theory that eventually they'd be right. And finally, they were right.

After a 12-year vacation from major hurricanes, so far we've been hit twice by cat 3 or stronger hurricanes this year. The stopped clock was finally right, and the global warming nuts gleefully went to work.

You see,to them, twelve years without a major hurricane was an aberration (I agree) that couldn't be allowed to refute their pet theories. We were constantly told that "weather isn't climate," and that the lack of major hurricanes doesn't mean anything. No single weather event, we were told, is climate. That line of argument got tossed out the window five minutes after Harvey made landfall in Texas.

Global warming nuts watched with great satisfaction as the hurricane weaked havoc, and wasted no time in announcing to the world that this hurricane was caused (or maybe made stronger by) Global Warming. (All bow down to the great God AGW and intone the benediction, "War-ming".) They trumpeted this from the mountaintops, and loudly proclaimed that the cause of the storm was obviously cimate change, and only a blind fool could possibly think otherwise.

But if the cause of Harvey and Irma were so obviously self-evident, then why haven't we seen similar storms during the past dozen years?

'Shut up, shut up, only a filthy DENIER would ask questions like that!'

But the questions remain. And it isn't ending, it's just picking up steam. Here is one example, from Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post:

No rational U.S administration would look at the devastation from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma and seek to deny climate change. At present, however, there is no rational U.S. administration.

Future megastorms will likely be worse, scientists say; the question for policymakers is to what degree.

In other words, we're hearing the same things today that we heard in 2005 after a strong hurricane season. They're seizing this with both fists and holding on tight, because in this they see their triumphant vindication. "See, we TOLD you so!" They may not be saying those words, but that is certainly the sub-text.

And it's getting worse. Now we are hearing proposals for turning the doubting of a scientific theory into a criminal offense. Yes, you heard that right:

“Climate change denial should be a crime,” declared the Sept. 1 headline in the Outline. Mark Hertsgaard argued in a Sept. 7 article in the Nation, titled “Climate Denialism Is Literally Killing Us,” that “murder is murder” and “we should punish it as such.

“In the wake of Harvey, it’s time to treat science denial as gross negligence — and hold those who do the denying accountable,” said the subhead in the Outline article, written by Brian Merchant.

Wow, the hubris of these people. Treating speech and even THOUGHT as crimes? George Orwell, you didn't know the half of it!

This is insanity.

Personally, I posted repeatedly on social media, arguing that Irma wouldn't amount to much in Alabama. As Publix closed its doors at noon on Sunday, and school/government closings were announced all day Saturday and Sunday, I argued that it simply wouldn't be that bad. To be specific, I said that we probably wouldn't see anything worse than tropical storm strength, and in that I was wrong, as well. In truth, we didn't even see anything of tropical depression strength. All the closings, panic-buying, and dire announcements heralded... essentially a thunderstorm in the Montgomery region. Without much lightning. Yes, we got some damage, but not very much.

I was also wrong on the strong side, but I was closer than most others. The number of people who advanced the "we should prepare for the worst-case scenario" surprised and saddened me. On the contrary, we should prepare a response in proportion to the likely threat. But even as the rain was beginning to slacken, I heard announcements of how emergency services were ready to spring into action and save... what? Any witches from melting who might be caught in the rain? Nobody in any position of authority has, to my knowledge, acknowledged their HUGE overreaction and apologized for it. Nor do I expect them to, because frightened and dependent is exactly how they want us.

It is my considered opinion that we may well have some stronger hurricane seasons in the coming years... these things are cyclical, and it may be time. However, time will march on, and by-and-by we'll see weaker seasons, too. That's sort of how this whole "natural climate" thing works.

But THIS appears to be the new normal. Everything, no matter what it is, proves man-caused global warming is real, anyone who doesn't immediately bow to that orthodoxy is a de facto criminal and should be punished, and questioning authority is somehow immoral AND fattening!

Got it, thanks... but I respectfully disagree.

Global Warming Hypocrisy on Harvey

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Thu, 31 Aug 2017 15:10:00 +0000

This is sort of a follow-up to my 5-part series on global warming.

Whenever we see mild temperatures, or a lack of storms (Harvey is the first cat-3 or better hurricane to make landfall in the US since 2005), we are told that means nothing. What we see there, we are told, is just weather, not climate. In other words, mild temperatures and tame storm seasons don't do anything to disprove global warming theory. It's just weather, not climate. No single weather event, we are constantly told, can disprove global warming, because weather has variations within the climate norm.

And that's fine, as far as it goes. The problem is, it's a standard that global warming proponents only apply to those who disagree with them. The moment we get high temperatures or a bad storm, it's not "just weather" anymore, it's proof positive that man-caused global warming is the pure gospel truth.

We are seeing this in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. Michael Mann says precisely that, though he tries to tiptoe around it a little:

In conclusion, while we cannot say climate change “caused” Hurricane Harvey (that is an ill-posed question), we can say is that it exacerbated several characteristics of the storm in a way that greatly increased the risk of damage and loss of life. Climate change worsened the impact of Hurricane Harvey.

In other words, Harvey wasn't just weather, it was climate!

And he wasn't alone. The editorial board of the LA Times joined in with the same chorus in an article titled "Harvey should be a warning to Trump that climate change is a global threat".

He’d also learn that although warming did not cause Hurricane Harvey, it certainly makes such storms stronger, more unpredictable and quicker to intensify.

In other words, Harvey wasn't just weather, it was climate!

And these aren't isolated stories. You can find more here, here, here, here, and here. This isn't all, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's enough to make the point that this isn't an isolated event from one or two whackjobs, but a mainstream effort to tie this single weather event into climate... something that is verboten when the tables are turned.

The problem with this argument is that it supposes as a fact what they are, in fact, trying to prove. Global warming caused the record amount of rain, the weak winds that caused the storm to stall, and so forth. That is what is known as an assumption unless backed up with proof, and said proof is sadly lacking.

Do storms ever dump large amounts of rain or stall and stop moving for reasons other than global warming? Yes, they most certainly do, they certainly have, and they will certainly continue to do so. Therefore, to assert that the wind patterns for THIS STORM were caused by global warming is to argue that this particular weather event is actually climate, not weather. This one weather event is being used to prove global warming, even though we're told that no weather event can DISprove the theory.

Hypocrisy, much? To the so-called scientists, one standard, please. I mean, Harvey hit Texas, true, but the last major hurricane to hit the US was 4,324 days ago... almost 12 years ago. If strong hurricanes caused by global warming are so inevitable that Harvey's cause is self-evidently obvious, then where have they been for the past 12 years? Predictions of ultra-strong hurricanes came out for years after Katrina and Wilma, until it became obvious that the weather/climate wasn't cooperating with theory, and they kind of tapered off a bit. After Harvey, predictions of global-warming-caused super-storms are already being issued again. I detect an almost gleeful tone of "see, we told you so!"

Michael Mann tries to say that the rainfall ties into warmer gulf water temperatures, but in a chart compiled by Dr. Roy Spencer. a former NASA climate scientist, that theory doesn't look to be accurate.

Well, is this the worst hurricane ever to hit Texas? Turns out, not really.

In 1900, America’s deadliest ever hurricane devastated Galveston, Texas.

The practice of naming hurricanes was not yet in vogue, but this category four hurricane didn’t need a name to become a true human tragedy.

The storm brought 145 mile per hour winds and a 15 foot storm surge which flooded the city.

Estimates range from 6,000 to 12,000 dead. The loss of life was so extreme that Texans couldn’t cope with the sheer number of bodies. They were forced to resort to mass graves, barges for mass burials at sea, and mass funeral pyres on the beach. The loss of homes, life and property was staggering.

Strong storms happen, people, and it's disingenuous to automatically shout "GLOBAL WARMING" every time we see a weather event that fits your narrative.

Yes, the global warming folks have been saying for the past 12 years that we would see stronger storms, and for 12 years they have been wrong. The fact that we finally see a strong storm is... well, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

I know I'm probably spitting into the wind by expecting global warming fanatics to actually show common sense, logic, and consistency, but hey, I'm an idealistic kind of guy.

UPDATE: Apparently, the New York Times published what many AGW-warriors would consider a "denier" article, questioning global warming's impact on hurricane activity and strength. Here is an opinion piece about that article.

In its article, and contrary to the expectations of readers who expect articles that generally assert climate change has an intimate and easily understood relationship with just about anything bad, the Times reported that the connection between hurricanes and warming was “not simple.” Instead, we were told, “Some things are known with growing certainty. Others, not so much.”

The next sentence was worded in a confused and complicated manner. The most recent federal report, “suggested that the science linking hurricanes to climate change was still emerging.” Climate change activists had, the paper said, found that the “trend signal” had not yet risen “above the background variability of natural processes.”

In plain English, that means they found nothing that proved a connection. That’s hardly surprising, since it had been 12 years since such an intense hurricane had hit American shores. In other words, even if you believe in a warming planet, the evidence shows that during the last decade when Gore claimed such storms would increase, nothing of the kind happened.

New Political Protests: Dog Poop

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 13:51:00 +0000

Okay, people, may I ask that we at least TRY to show a little class? I've given up on pleas for civility and reasonable language, but this? Dog poop? DOG POOP?

Here's the story.

It all started as a joke, a borderline “absurd” idea from a San Francisco artist who goes by the name Tuffy Tuffington. Yes, really.

As he was walking his dogs in Golden Gate Park last week, he stewed over white nationalist movements and the recent violence in Charlottesville. As he did, a right-wing group was in the midst of planning an upcoming “free speech” rally in San Francisco, and Tuffington wanted to find a way to peacefully push back.

“My dogs were doing their business,” Tuffington, 45, said, “and I was struck with the image of a bunch of alt-right folks stomping around in a field of poop.”

So he decided to make a Facebook event with a group of about 15 friends, encouraging them to “leave a gift for our Alt-Right friends” in Crissy Field, a public park near the Golden Gate Bridge where the rally is planned for Saturday.

“Take your dog to Crissy Field and let them do their business and be sure not to clean it up!” he wrote in the event description. It encourages dog owners to stop by the park Friday night or Saturday morning before the rally, which is planned by the group “Patriot Prayer.” By Saturday night or Sunday morning, organizers plan to return to the park to clean up the poop.

In the week or so since Tuffington posted the dog-poop event, more than 980 people have said they will participate. More than 5,300 said they are interested. Some have even said they intend to collect their dogs’ contributions over the course of the week to dump at the park.

Look, I understand free speech and peaceful protest, but what level of maturity do you have to have to eagerly embrace the concept of strewing dog poop for others to step in? Exactly what, if I may ask, is this supposed to accomplish... besides giving people a chuckle and a thrill of guilty pleasure at the thought of someone walking in poop in order to attend a rally they don't like? Does anybody really think that this will accomplish anything? That someone will say, "Ahh dang, I stepped in poop, which of course means the entirety of my political beliefs is obviously invalid and must therefore be abandoned in favor of a poop-centric liberal ideology?"

Yeah, me neither. But apparently, this appeals to the tastes of MANY people.

Look, protests and counter-protests should at least TRY to accomplish something... and personally, I think "make them step in poop" as a political goal is lacking that certain something.

Here's how I look at it. One side wants to stand up and hold a rally for something they believe in, to stir up enthusiasm for what they think is important... perfectly legal and understandable, and I don't care who disagrees with their message. The other side wants to fling poop. Not just verbally, but literally.

And I can't respect that.

A Logical Look At Charlottesville

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 16:07:00 +0000

Okay, Charlottesville. I've been hearing a little bit of analysis, but mostly blame throwing and vitriol. So, this is my take.

Before I begin, let me make it clear what I am, and am not, doing. I am not attempting to assign blame, nor am I attempting to determine "which side" was morally correct or superior. I am not attempting to defend or attack one side or the other, I am not attempting to assign blame. What I AM attempting to do is inject some rationality in the "analysis" and determine what happened and, if possible, why. That's it. What made this riot happen, where was the inflection point that turned it from a protest into a riot? If you read this looking for "hidden messages" or "code words" or "proof" that my sympathies lie with one side or another, then you might want to stop reading with this paragraph, as any conclusions you draw will be made up out of whole cloth and entirely imaginary.

A lot of the commentary has been obviously biased towards or against one side or the other, with the authors being quite willing to abandon logic in favor of... well, here's an example:

"Only one side with one belief system was involved in a speeding car being rammed into a group of counter-protesters -- an incident that left one woman dead and more than a dozen others injured. Only one group in Charlottesville on Saturday bases their entire "belief" system on the inferiority of other people because of their race or religion. Only one group on Saturday speaks admiringly of a murderous dictator who killed millions."

This may be true, but it is also beside the point. Why do I say this? Because none of it addresses how or why the two sides came together in violence, it merely cherry picks actions during the conflict, as well as attitudes and opinions. So, let's look at what actually happened.

The City Council of Charlottesville was deciding whether or not to remove some civil war monuments, and a rally was planned to object. The City tried to deny the permit, but lost in court because it was obvious that the denial was based in the opinions held by the organizers. This group seems to have been dominated by white supremacists and neo-nazis, though I understand other groups not sharing such attitudes were also present in the rally.

Let's pause a moment to examine this aspect. We may not like what this group believes, espouses, and says, but in this country they have the absolute legal right to believe, espouse, and say it. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that government may not censor speech because of the CONTENT of that speech, i.e. viewpoint-based discrimination by the government is illegal. We can't ban speech because we don't like what is being said. For all of those thinking, "but hate speech is different and not protected by the first amendment"... you are wrong. Objectionable and hate-filled speech is, in fact, protected speech. Most recently, SCOTUS unanimously reaffirmed this principle in July of this year, in a majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito:

[The idea that the government may restrict] speech expressing ideas that offend … strikes at the heart of the First Amendment. Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express “the thought that we hate.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion that agreed on that point.

A law found to discriminate based on viewpoint is an “egregious form of content discrimination,” which is “presumptively unconstitutional.” … A law that can be directed against speech found offensive to some portion of the public can be turned against minority and dissenting views to the detriment of all. The First Amendment does not entrust that power to the government’s benevolence. Instead, our reliance must be on the substantial safeguards of free and open discussion in a democratic society.

So they had every right to do exactly what they did... obtain a permit and hold a rally against the actions of the City Council. You may not like what they say, but that doesn't mean they don't have a right to say it.

So, that's the first two pillars of what happened. The City Council was considering removing some monuments, and a group decided to protest that decision. These weren't the cause of the violence, merely the groundwork leading up to it.

What happened next is that some groups decided to gather in response to the rally, at the same time and in the same place as the original rally. They had every right to plan a protest to the rally... what is regrettable is that the two demonstrations occurred in close proximity to each other. My understanding is that, while the original group had a legally approved permit, the counter-protest did not. I'm not a big believer in such permits, which I view essentially as a government permission slip to exercise constitutional rights that we already have, but that fact is part of the situation. (Some have claimed BLM and Antifa did have a permit, but I have been unable to confirm this.)

So, now we have two diametrically opposed groups in the same place at the same time, both primed for violence. We know this in two ways. First, the nature of both groups includes acceptance of violence in support of their goals as justified. On one side, the KKK and neo-Nazis have historically not been shy about getting violent, and on the other, the Antifa (anti-fascist) movement actively advocates violence to achieve their aims. When you view dissenting opinions as violence, it is easy to justify physical violence in return. Second, members of both sides arrived at that park armed... some with guns, others with clubs, pepper-spray, and makeshift shields. And yes, members of both groups were armed with guns, though, as far as I know, nobody actually got shot. But other weapons abounded, and on both sides... at one point, a protester utilized a makeshift flamethrower against members of the original rally.

And yes, if you bring weapons to a rally or counter-protest, whether you have the right to do so or not, you are open to the idea of committing violence. In a riot situation, I am afraid, self-defense is an abstract concept at best. The best form of self-defense is not to be there.

So, two groups who embrace violence, both armed, were present in that park. Who threw the first punch? I don't think anybody knows, and to my thinking it doesn't really matter. At this point, absent anything moving the groups apart, violence was inevitable. When the police took a "hands-off" approach, and basically let things happen, it was only a matter of time. But to be honest, I don't know that the police could have actually managed to keep the groups separated.

If you're looking to blame someone, there is no clear way to do that... unless you just buy into whatever pre-conceived opinions you might have and declare yourself to be right because of, you know, reasons.

Freedom isn't nice and clean. It is often messy. But using violence to advance your agenda is NEVER justified. Never. Self-defense is a different story, but there is no self-defense in this particular story. It takes two sides to fight, and both sides where ready to do so. That a fight broke out shouldn't surprise anybody.

Part of the problem, and only part, is that so many people think it is okay to use force to stifle or silence people uttering opinions with which they disagree. Charlottesville is far from the first time this has happened in recent months.

So, who is to blame? I refer you back to the opening of this piece... I am not assigning blame. But this is more or less what happened. Yes, it is simplified a bit. (I know the permit was revoked at the last minute and the rally ordered to disperse as an unlawful gathering... how can it be unlawful if they were issued a permit? Sounds like the city just took a last minute bite at the "we don't want those racists here" apple... you know, the argument that lost in court.) You'll notice that I didn't dwell on the pepper spray, individual fights, or even the car plowing into the protesters. During a riot, it is axiomatic that violence happens... and it is to be expected that some try to commit the greatest amount of violence that they can. But understand that the actions taken during a riot are not valid reasons to blame one side or the other for that riot occurring in the first place.

The original rally had the right to speak, and jumped through the legal hurdles to do so. The counter-protest did not have to happen at the same time or in the same place. That it did is, in my opinion, the inflection point of the situation. Let me be clear... I'm not referring to the decision to hold a counter-protest, but rather to the decision to hold it at the same time and place as the original rally. That was a poor decision that inexorably led to the riot. Whether they had the legal right to hold the counter-protest or not, doing so as they did was a poor decision.

I know that many won't like my conclusion, and I will likely be blasted for expressing it... it's too easy in this day and age to simply "blame the racists." So be it. But, within the parameters set out at the beginning of this piece, this is how I see things.

The Charlottesville riot happened because of the decision by some violence-prone groups to hold a counter-protest in close proximity to a rally being held by other violent-prone groups, and the decision by the police to let it happen. It's as simple as that.