HallowThankMas season has begun!

Gasbags Who Complained About High Gas Prices Now Are Complaining About Lower Gas Prices

For the last 6-plus years, we’ve listened to conservatives whine about high gas prices, despite the fact that they were silent when gas prices reached $4 a gallonduring the summer of 2007 when George W. Bush was in office.

And along with the conservative whine-fest comes the obligatory blame game, which means all fingers pointed directly at the black guy occupying the White House. Because just like everything else bad that happens in America, high gas prices are all President Obama’s fault.

Conservatives blamed his energy policies and the thumbing of his nose at the “drill baby drill” charade that was started by half-term governor, full-term idiot Sarah Palin during the 2008 election campaign, and then continued after that, as gas prices rose. Why would President Obama not want to tear up our national parks and allow for the drilling of oil? Who really cares if a few trees get knocked over or if some scenic areas became defaced during the process, right?

At any rate, “drill baby drill” has thankfully not occurred, and whatever President Obama’s energy policies may be (I bet most conservatives cannot accurately define what those policies are), a funny thing has taken place: Gas prices are falling, and may continue to fall.

Why? Because of the capitalistic staple known as “supply and demand”, otherwise known as “market forces.” Right now, supply is higher than demand, so prices are falling. This is Economics 101 stuff.

But since conservatives were blaming President Obama for high gas prices, now they must find a way to spin the lower prices to make him look bad. One way to do so would be to suggest that lower prices at the tank would hurt the economy, as Fox News did this week. This concern trolling by the Fox gasbags runs contrary to all of the bellowing they did about high gas prices hurting the economy, back when prices were high. Either way, the President can’t win, can he?

Story's here.

Misinterpreting A Study To Wonder If Non Citizens Could Influence Elections

The article appears to be drawing conclusions, apparently incorrectly, from a flawed study.

A reader comment that illustrate the flaws in the study...

There are really 3 problems I see in how the authors presented their findings which make them very misleading. 
 
1) The authors make it appear that 6.4% of the sample voting electorate were non-citizens. This is NOT the case. Let's look at 2008. The authors say 6.4% turned out to vote. This is only 6.4% of the 339 non-citizens they say are listed as registered voters, NOT 6.4% of the entire sample of voters which total 32,800. So to put this into a more accurate (less misleading) context we take the 2008 “adjusted estimate” from their chart and divide it by the total sample 32,800 which comes out to 0.0006 or 0.06%. This means that non-citizens supposedly voting made up ONLY 0.06% of the total sample. This is even less in 2010, sitting at about 0.01% of the total were supposedly voting non-citizens. 
 
2) They don't even know how many of these “registered non-citizens” voted. By their own admission these are “best guesses”.  
 
3) Then they take those non-citizen estimated turnout percentages (already misleading) and apply them to particular races 2008. This, in of itself, is a very questionable application of the data because it makes the assumption that a significant portion of those non-citizens who voted lived in either North Carolina or Minnesota in 2008. The problem is that the total sample number (32,800) are a NATIONAL sampling, not samples taken in one state. To put this into perspective, for 2008 only 21 out of 32,800 people were supposedly voting non-citizens. That is 21 PEOPLE spread out across the nation. Most likely these non-citizens who supposedly voted were 1 in Texas, 3 in California, 2 in Minnesota. HARDLY significant.
~mpbt

Jim Crow Returns...

Story's here.

Jesse Ventura: Voter fraud is a myth, Election Day should be a national holiday

"There is not much voter fraud. When are people going to learn this? They did studies when I was governor of the state of Minnesota. voter fraud is like 1/10th of one percent. You are lucky if you find 5 votes in an election that were fraudulently cast. There is not this huge block electing anybody with voter fraud. It's a big red herring. It's much ado about nothing. You shouldn't need a passport to go vote. Voting is a right that every citizen in America, that our country and Constitution provides that right. Voting should not be difficult, it should be the opposite, it should be easy to do. I think, personally, that we should have one national election day a year and it should be a holiday. That way there is no excuse for not voting."

Story's here.

Modern Poll Tax

GOP Quarantine...

HOW CAN THE DEMS BE LOSING TO THESE IDIOTS?

I mean it is truly admirable, in its perverse way, how anti-idea this party is. It has no economic plans. Did you see this Times article last week called “Economists See Limited Gains in G.O.P. Plan”? I trust that you understand the world of newspaper euphemism enough to know that “limited gains” basically means “jack shit.” It’s all tax cuts and fracking and the wildly overhyped (in jobs terms) Keystone pipeline.

Progressive Centralists


Read aboudid here.

Using Photoshop For Fun & Profit... And Reelection

 Governor Tom Corbett is in a fight for re-election in Pennsylvania and he’s losing badly. Polls show he’s as much as 25 points behind his opponent Tom Wolf (D). One of the problems he has is his inability to connect with minorities in his state. That’s when his re-election campaign had the brilliant idea to just photoshop an African-American woman into a campaign photo instead of actually finding a real life supporter. Haha.

Story's here.

Backpack NO, Concealed Gun OK!

So Utah State University had to cancel a speech scheduled for Wednesday because of death threats made against the feminist speaker, Anita Sarkeensian. It seems that an unintended consequence of campus carry laws is that when death threats are made against a speaker, security and/or law enforcement can’t turn away people carrying guns. They can make rules for things like no one may bring in backpacks, but guns…no problem.

Story's here.

Twitter Fixed Boner's Empty 5 Point Jobs Plan Tweet...

Never Know Who You'll See On The Twitters

The only thing that stops a bad guy with a... oh, nevermind.

Man Proudly “Open Carrying” New Pistol Is Robbed Of It At – Wait For It – Gunpoint

Story's here.

John Boehner Just Admitted on Twitter That Republicans Have No Jobs Plan

In a breathtaking display of honesty, House Speaker John Boehner tweeted out the Republican Party’s five-point jobs plan Tuesday morning—and it was entirely empty. Take a look:

Liberals have had quite a bit of fun with this on Twitter (as I have), but Boehner accidentally told the truth in that tweet. The Republican Party doesn’t have and has never had a jobs plan during the Obama presidency. To see that, take a look at the actual five-point “jobs plan” that Boehner links to in his tweet. He wants to reform our tax code, cut spending, reform the legal system, cut regulations and improve our education system. Those all seem like good ideas—and could generate increased growth in the long-run—but these are all supply-side solutions intended to increase worker productivity and encourage business investment.

But the economy currently suffers from a shortfall in demand—consumers aren’t buying enough stuff. When the Great Recession hit, Americans dramatically cut back on spending, forcing businesses to fire workers, who cut back their own spending and this negative cycle repeated itself.

Story's here.

The Republican plan doesn't address the shortfall in demand. Only a plan that increases demand will cause quicker job growth/creation. Increased demand will come when consumers have dough to spend on stuff. If Congress really wants to see job growth, they need to get busy and figure out how to get more dough to consumers. 

This isn't rocket science. I was taught this way back in the early 1970s in college.

Here’s Why Conservatives ALWAYS Support The Police When They Shoot Unarmed Black Men

This topic is so important, I'm printing the article in its entirety.

Remember when conservatives were against Obama’s tyrannical police state? Remember when the right wing hated the government and were afraid that the police where going to break down their door at any second and violate their civil liberties?

Of course you do, that was just from earlier today and every day since President Obama was elected in 2008.

But then why does it always seem that the right wing is all kinds of gung ho for the police to violently stomp on the civil rights of American citizens (as long as they’re not white)?

The most recent example of this is the (very long) string of stories concerning the police beating, shooting or threatening to shoot an unarmed black man. The media has latched on to this because it’s FINALLY caught the attention of the public at large. It’s not like black people being terrorized by the police is a new thing in the slightest but thanks to the ubiquity of cell phones and high definition security cameras, it’s become impossible to ignore.

Now, you’d think that the first people to line up to protest our growing police state would be the virulently anti-government right wing. But here’s where that raging hypocrisy and racism come into play. The fact is that conservatives are verycomfortable with police brutality, the rampant violation of civil rights and even murdering unarmed Americans as long as it’s being done to maintain white supremacy.

I’m just being ridiculous, right? Except that the default position of the right when an unarmed black male is beaten/shot/killed is that he must have had it coming. Nothing to see here! Stop victimizing the poor police, please!

This has never been more clear than after the shooting of Micheal Brown in Ferguson where every witness, including the police, say that Brown was running away when the officer first starting shooting at him. Doesn’t matter. The right went on a rampage to demonize Brown as a violent nigger “thug” that had it coming.

A few days before that, John Crawford III was gunned down for casually wandering around a Walmart with a toy gun. The police gave him under two seconds to acknowledge their presence before shooting him. The reaction from the right? He shouldn’t have been walking around with a gun even though Ohio is an open carry state and it’s actually legal to walk around a Walmart with a gun.*
Three weeks ago, Levar Jones was following the orders of a police officer to produce his ID and was shot 4 times for doing so. He was lucky to survive the ordeal. It was all caught on video and it was clearly a massive overreaction by the cop (who, miracle of miracles, is being charged with aggravated assault). The right’s reply to this round of police violence? Meh. Whatever. At least they didn’t defend the cop for a change.

Two weeks ago, the police in Hammond, Indiana pulled over a black family for a seat belt violation and pulled a gun on the father in the driver seat when, complying with their orders, he tried to show the police his ID. After that, rightfully afraid for his life, Jamal Jones refused to get out of the car or even roll down the window. Mind you, he was the passenger and hadn’t actually done anything but, you know, he was a black man so who gives a crap about that?

The police eventually smashed the window, tased Jones in the car, dragged him out and handcuffed him. In front of his children. Jones never even raised his voice until he was screaming in pain. The right’s reaction? He should have obeyed the police and gotten out of the car even though it was entirely possible they were going to shoot him if he sneezed.

Oh, and in every instance, the right insists that race played no part in the brutality whatsoever. Because everyone knows about all those Open Carry white guys that were shot by the cops for walking around .

Wait, that never happens. Ever. Hell, the cops shot a black man in the back, repeatedly, because he had a sword on his back but there hasn’t been a single white guy with a gun on his back so much as drawn on by the police.

But, you know, the not-at-all-racist right wing wants us to believe that race has nothing to do with all of this police brutality that just happens to target the black community. Also, by the way, even though the right claims to despise the police state, can we just stop complaining about police brutality against blacks? Conservatives would really appreciate that, thanks.

The bottom line is that, in the same way conservatives love LOVE government hand outs unless it’s for black people, the hypocrisy and racism of the right wing dictates that police terrorism is just A-OK with them as long as it’s being used to oppress the black community and maintain the privileged status of white people in America. Once upon a time, the police were used explicitly maintain white supremacy. Now, this racism is so ingrained into law enforcement culture, it’s going to take a massive and sustained push back from the public to alter it.

But how can we ever change the racist culture of law enforcement when almost half of the country explicitly supports their ongoing terrorism against black people?

*After two full months, Open Carry finally got around to staging a protest over the shooting of Crawford. 40 people showed up. Better late than never?

~ by Justin Rosario

Webpage is here.

Oceans Getting Hotter Than Anybody Realized

The RV Kaharoa motored out of Wellington, New Zealand on Saturday, loaded with more than 100 scientific instruments, each eventually destined for a watery grave. Crewmembers will spend the next two months dropping the 50-pound devices, called Argo floats, into the seas between New Zealand and Mauritius, off the coast of Madagascar. There, the instruments will sink and drift, then measure temperature, salinity and pressure as they resurface to beam the data to a satellite. The battery-powered floats will repeat that process every 10 days — until they conk out, after four years or more, and become ocean junk.

Under an international program begun in 2000, and that started producing useful global data in 2005, the world’s warming and acidifying seas have been invisibly filled with thousands of these bobbing instruments. They are gathering and transmitting data that’s providing scientists with the clearest-ever pictures of the hitherto-unfathomed extent of ocean warming. About 90 percent of global warming is ending up not on land, but in the oceans.

Story's here.

Why Do Some Americans Accept Facts Presented By Science While Others Scoff?

Before getting deeper into this topic, let me get this off my chest. If we are going to dismiss climate scientists, as well as other scientists, as merely in it for the money (in their cases, gummit grant money), let's not overlook the vast sums given by various industry groups to the legions of climate change deniers in American media.

Now, on to the topic at hand...

Why are people still sceptical about climate change?
Why are some people still scep­tical about the reality and ser­i­ous­ness of cli­mate change when the sci­entific evid­ence is so overwhelming?

This is the ques­tion that motiv­ates a great deal of cli­mate change com­mu­nic­a­tion. How can cli­mate scep­ti­cism be countered?

Understanding that cli­mate change scep­ti­cism will not be over­come by a more forceful present­a­tion of the sci­ence is a crit­ical first step. A lot of valu­able com­mu­nic­a­tion time will con­tinue to be wasted on explaining the sci­ence of cli­mate change over and over again to a group of people who have already heard everything they need to hear. Of course people need to know about the sci­ence of cli­mate change – but once they know about it and choose to reject it, explaining it to them louder is unlikely to do much good.

Instead, com­mu­nic­ators need to bring the real cause of dis­agree­ment out into the open, sep­arate the sci­ence from the politics (Hulme, 2009), and make clear that although the sci­ence tells us that cli­mate change is hap­pening, and what is causing it, the sci­ence doesn’t tell us which way to respond.

Society could do nothing. Society could build new tech­no­lo­gies. Society could raise taxes. Society could change its beha­viour. Society could reg­u­late industry. But these are decisions to make as cit­izens – and so they should be the sub­ject of debate. Providing oppor­tun­ities for people to delib­erate with each other about cli­mate change allows the reasons for dis­agree­ment to come to the fore. If these reasons are based on values, cul­tural world-views or ideo­logy, then it makes sense to get these dis­agree­ments out into the open rather than obscuring them by fighting polit­ical battles using the lan­guage of science.

Source, and the entire article here.

Additional studies and discussions of the phenomenon of climate denial:

Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in

the United States

Aaron M. McCright, Lyman Briggs College, Department of Sociology, Environmental Science and Policy Program, Michigan State University, E-185 Holmes Hall, East Lansing, MI 48825-1107, USA

Riley E. Dunlap, Department of Sociology, Oklahoma State University, 006 Classroom Building, Stillwater, OK 74078-4062, USA

"Bounded rationality": the Grigori Rasputin of explanations for public perceptions of climate change risk

Climate Science Communication and the Measurement Problem
Dan M. Kahan
Yale University - Law School; Harvard University - Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics
June 25, 2014
"...there is in fact little disagreement among culturally diverse citizens on what science knows about climate change. The source of the climate- change controversy and like disputes is the contamination of education and politics with forms of cultural status competition that make it impossible for diverse citizens to express their reason as both collective-knowledge acquirers and cultural-identity protectors at the same time."

Downloadable pdf.

Book Review...  Why We Disagree about Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction, and Opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University: Press, 432 pp

David Demeritt, Diana Liverman and Mike Hulme

"I'm not a scientist", but I know more than they do...

Climate scientists themselves have derided the tactic of of claiming ignorance on whether climate change exists, particularly from politicians, who are frequently presented with information curated by scientists to explain what’s going on with the climate. The National Climate Assessment, for example, was written by scientists and other experts specifically so that members of Congress could understand climate change and how it affects the country.

“Personally, I don’t think it proper for any American to use that argument [that they're not scientist],” Donald. J Wuebbles, a coordinating lead author for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2013 assessment report, said at the time.

Still, that hasn’t stopped many of our country’s most prominent politicians from saying they’re not sure whether humans are the primary drivers of climate change — whether that’s because of the fact that they’re “not a scientist” or otherwise. Here is a list of politicians and political figures who have made the claim so far.

Story and list here.

WTF's the matter with these peeps?

Fox News Gets No Emmys For News (Again). Maybe Reporting Some News Would Help?

And this is why so many people say that they get their news from Comedy Central and their comedy from Fox News.
The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences released the recipients of the Emmys for news and documentaries. And the winners were: PBS with eleven Emmys; CBS News won ten; ABC News won three; NBC News and the BBC each got two; and CNN and Al Jazeera America both received one Emmy.

Conspicuously missing from that list was Fox “News.”

Story's here. And here.

You ARE A Lib'rul If...

YOU ARE A LIBERAL IF ….

1. As scientific theories, you place equal importance on evolution and gravity.
2. Even the thought of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly makes you sick.
3. Sarah Palin’s voice hits you like fingernails on a chalkboard.
4. You are able to form your own opinion without the influence of television.
5. You are colorblind when it comes to race or national origin.
6. You are serious about recycling.
7. You believe a woman has the right to make her own medical decisions without government intrusion.
8. You believe education and health care should be subsidized for the common good.
9. You believe government is “of the people, for the people and by the people” and not just for corporations.
10. You believe in “Liberty and Justice FOR ALL”.
11. You believe in the separation of church and state.
12. You believe in, and have even read a book or two about science.
13. You believe people are more important than corporations.
14. You believe public education and paying teachers competitive wages are good things.
15. You believe that affordable healthcare is a basic right – not a privilege (for the privileged).
16. You believe that the Bible and the Constitution are not interchangeable.
17. You believe that the privileges of the few should not impose on the rights of the many.
18. You can find Iraq on a map while understanding that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
19. You can tell the difference between profit and God.
20. You care about the environment.
21. You consider all the facts on issues instead of calling your grandparents and asking them what to think.
22. You do not believe corporations are people too, friend.
23. You do not believe in the concept of “acceptable casualties”.
24. You don’t believe that being a woman is a “pre-existing condition”.
25. You ever inhaled, exhaled and inhaled again.
26. You get a kick out of NRA Spokesman Charlton Heston in the Ten Commandments.
27. You give to charity because you care, not because it is a tax write-off.
28. You have gay friends and you respect them.
29. You have gay friends you acknowledge in public.
30. You have left a restaurant because Fox News was on the television.
31. You know how to read a map and understand there is a world outside our borders.
32. You know the difference between adhering to the Ten Commandments and merely preaching them when convenient.
33. You know the difference between fascism and communism.
34. You know what being socialist actually means.
35. You learn from your mistakes.
36. You like books, not viewing them as merely being kindling.
37. You realize our Founding Fathers were deist, not Christian.
38. You prefer to breathe non-cancer-causing air and drink non-toxic water.
39. You rarely make spelling errors.
40. You rarely use the words “Tea Party” and “Logic” in the same sentence unless explaining they lack the latter.
41. You read food labels.
42. You registered Republican so you could vote for their weakest candidate in their primaries.
43. You remember that Reagan increased taxes on the rich.
44. You remember that Reagan strongly believed in the separation of church and state.
45. You support the arts.
46. You support the middle class.
47. You take the time to read this.
48. You think that sexual relations between two consenting adults is their personal and private business.
49. You try to live up to the ideals Jesus taught such as brotherly love, taking care of the sick, the elderly, the poor.
50. You understand that “trickle-down economics” is like a “pissing contest” in that nobody ever wins – everyone just ends up getting wet.

by Jeff Stevens

Second Time's The Charm...

The shooting occurred in the parking lot outside a Jacksonville convenience store, after Dunn asked the car of teens including Davis to turn their music down. His fiancée, Rhonda Rouer, says the last thing she heard him say was, “I hate that thug music.” Rouer was in the convenience store when she heard gunshots, and when she ran outside, he told her to get in the car and they drove away.

Dunn claimed he saw a gun and believed the boys were armed and dangerous. But police found no gun in the car. He said he heard Davis threaten to kill him, and responded by rolling down the window of his car and asking, “Are you talking to me?” Dunn and Rouer left the scene without calling 911 and spent the night in a hotel, as planned, and their testimony differed about what happened that night, and in the days that followed.

In February, Dunn was found guilty on three counts of second-degree attempted murder — one for each of three of Dunn’s friends who were also in the line of fire as Dunn fired ten rounds into their sport utility vehicle. The jury deadlocked on the first-degree murder charge, the judge declared a mistrial on the first degree murder count, allowing prosecutors to reach a new trial. Dunn faces a mandatory sentence of 25 years to life in prison without parole.

Story's here.

If you think we're done with neoliberalism, think again

Story's here.