Kentucky Sucks at Science

We host the child-abusing Creation Museum and are giving tax credits to the Flintstones Truther Park.  I'm surprised we got a grade as high as D.

Seriously. This map suggests that unless you live in California, a smattering of states out East, or a small handfull of other states sprinkled across the country, you're looking at a very grave problem when it comes to scientific illiteracy in your community's youth (and, presumably, its population in general). Come to think of it, this map should really concern you, no matter where you live.

Some have called this diagram, recently published in a report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a grim portrait of state science standards in the U.S. But this goes well beyond grim. This is downright bleak.

Scientific American's Anna Kuchment explains the concept of science standards:

Standards are the foundation upon which educators build curricula, write textbooks and train teachers– they often take the form of a list of facts and skills that students must master at each grade level. Each state is free to formulate its own standards, and numerous studies have found that high standards are a first step on the road to high student achievement.

That last bit should be a point of major concern for every person in the country, because as the report notes, a shocking majority of the states' standards are in fact "mediocre to awful." We're talking about purple, green, and grey states, here [click for a bigger version of the map]. States like Tennessee, where, according to the report, "half the biology course options in high school do not entail evolution."

Chess with a Pigeon

ummagumma.co:


(Source: religionrage)

Repug Elected = Voter Suppression = Cheating = Fraud by Repugs

Every motherfucking one of them. Frauds. Disqualified. Not fit for office.

Ed Kilgore at Political Animal:

So much has happened in so many parts of the judicial system regarding Voter ID and other recent efforts to restrict the franchise that it’s hard to get a fix on the big picture. But at the New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin has seen the future of SCOTUS action on voting rights in its rulings on Wisconsin (halting implementation on grounds of timing) and Texas (giving that state the green light) Voter ID laws, and it’s not good:

The Wisconsin and Texas rulings were just preliminary requests for emergency relief, and the Supreme Court may yet hear the cases in full on the merits. But there seems little chance that a majority of the current Court will rein in these changes in any significant way. In courtrooms around the country, it’s been made clear that these Republican initiatives have been designed and implemented to disenfranchise Democrats (again, usually of color). But the Supreme Court doesn’t care.

So Toobin thinks it’s time to make a mental adjustment back to the mid-1960s, when hostile state laws and practices on voting were overwhelmed by sheer the sheer moral and physical presence of people exercising the rights they still had and participating in elections whatever the difficulty:

Certainly, the obstacles for voters in the contemporary South do not compare to those that the civil-rights pioneers, black and white, faced until the early nineteen-sixties. In the Freedom Summer of 1964, the still nascent civil-rights movement coalesced around an effort to register voters in Mississippi. It was during that summer that the infamous murders of the civil-rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner took place. In addition, of course, black Mississippi residents endured less well-known but equally horrific abuse from state authorities during this time.​ In those days before the Voting Rights Act, the effort did not succeed in registering great numbers of voters, but it did focus the nation’s attention on the magnitude of the problem.

So it could today. In light of the changes in the state laws, it’s difficult but not impossible to register voters and make sure that they get to cast their ballots. And it’s absolutely mandatory in a democracy for that to be done.

The title of Toobin’s essay is “Freedom Summer, 2015.” It’s sobering to realize that’s what we may need to restore voting rights long thought to be relatively secure. But it’s also a reminder that reactionaries who fear democracy (not just judicial conservatives, but the Con Cons who think “losers” have forfeited the right to have any say in what “winners” do with their money and power) have been defeated before in more more extreme circumstances.

 See also Think Progress on court-allowed voter suppression and Lawyers, Guns and Money on purging voters of color from voting lists.

Where Fast Food Workers Earn $20 an Hour

It not only can be done and must be done, it is being done.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

Why it’s almost as if fast food companies are lying when they say they have to keep wages low in order to survive!

On a recent afternoon, Hampus Elofsson ended his 40-hour workweek at a Burger King and prepared for a movie and beer with friends. He had paid his rent and all his bills, stashed away some savings, yet still had money for nights out.

That is because he earns the equivalent of $20 an hour — the base wage for fast-food workers throughout Denmark and two and a half times what many fast-food workers earn in the United States.

“You can make a decent living here working in fast food,” said Mr. Elofsson, 24. “You don’t have to struggle to get by.”

With an eye to workers like Mr. Elofsson, some American labor activists and liberal scholars are posing a provocative question: If Danish chains can pay $20 an hour, why can’t those in the United States pay the $15 an hour that many fast-food workers have been clamoring for?

“We see from Denmark that it’s possible to run a profitable fast-food business while paying workers these kinds of wages,” said John Schmitt, an economist at the Center for Economic Policy Research, a liberal think tank in Washington.

And if those fast food companies are less profitable in Denmark than the U.S., well, good! Companies should have lower profits if that money is going into the hands of workers. This seems self-evident to me, but I know even many liberal Americans have so internalized the logic of modern profit ideology that the idea of lower profits in exchange for better lives for low-paid workers makes many people uncomfortable.

 Charlie Pierce explodes the Not in America arguments.

And He's Terrible At It

ummagumma.co:


(Source: sogoodatsettingbadexamples)

Don't Let Repugs Get Away With Calling You Pussies

The Rude Pundit nails what's really behind the repug fear-mongering:

Goddamnit, American motherfuckers, every single one of us: Aren't you tired of being afraid all the time? Isn't it exhausting? Aren't you tired of being told that you're just a fuckin' wimp who would be murdered the second a terrorist touched our precious soil? Aren't you sick of these assholes making you think that Ebola is going to jump out of the Dark Continent and turn you black or whatever the fuck we're supposed to fear it does?

The new Democratic ad, the closing argument, if you will, should be: "Don't let Republicans tell you that Americans are pussies. You're not a pussy. Vote for the Democrats.

Election Day is next Tuesday, November 4.  Polls are open in Kentucky from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.  Find out where your polling place is from your local County Clerk.

Not for nothing, but if you are not white or male, people literally died for your right to vote. Not voting is pissing on their graves.

And not voting Democratic is handing victory to the very people who don't want you to vote.

Post-Racial America in Kentucky

TPM:

A pretty disturbing incident from Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

What was purportedly a Halloween display on the front lawn of a residence at Fort Campbell was not surprisingly deemed "offensive in nature" by base officials who requested that the resident remove the display. As you can see in the picture, the display appears to depict an African-American family, with each member being hanged from a tree. The child in the display has a knife in its back.

Fort Campbell Public Affairs officer Brendalyn Carpenter said that it was "her understanding that the display was not intended to be offensive, but authorities deemed it could be interpreted as such. She said the occupant did extend an apology about the decorations."

Fort Campbell, of course, is the home of the storied 101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles.  Many of them are now on deployment to West Africa to help set up hospitals and other logistics for the doctors and nurses fighting the Ebola epidemic.  Have to wonder if this well-meaning resident has a problem with the color of the people the 101st is helping.

KY Repugs Voted to Slash Public Health Funding That Could Have Stopped Ebola

Ed Whitfield, Brett Guthrie and Hal Rogers voted to take money away from disease prevention programs; John Yarmuth and Ben Chandler voted against that deadly mistake. Thomas Massie and Andy Barr were not elected to office yet, but Massie's repug predecessor Geoff Davis voted in favor of a budget that literally killed people.

Down with Tyranny:

On February 19, 2011 the Republican Party decided to cut funding for the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in 2011. Although Ron Paul didn't vote that day, only 3 Republicans recognized the folly of what the House Republicans were doing: John Campbell (R-CA), Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Walter Jones (R-NC). Although every single Democrat-- even the most corrupt reactionary Blue Dogs and New Dems-- voted NO, the bill passed 235-189.

When asked what the biggest challenge facing the CDC was 4 months later, Thomas Frieden, who had been director for exactly two years, went right to the point: "CDC’s budget was cut by $740 million between fiscal ’10 and fiscal ’11. That’s an 11 percent reduction in our budget authority and the lowest budget authority CDC has had since fiscal 2003. We’ve had to make very difficult and painful choices that are resulting in program reductions and eliminations, reduction in the number of staff working on projects, reductions in dollars going out to state governments for prevention, for preparedness, for lead poisoning prevention, for asthma management. State and local governments have had to cut about 45,000 public health jobs in the past two years, and the CDC budget cuts may require them to reduce staffing by another 1,000 staff. So this, to me, is the biggest challenge."

SNIP

Republican scare-mongers have been going on TV and falsely telling voters that doctors are wrong on Ebola and that the virus is airborne. Republicans all say they aren't scientists when it comes to Climate Change but when it comes to ebola, they are doing everything they can to stoke fear and panic and the undercut health care professionals and experts.

Together

ummagumma.co:


(Source: acontemporaryliberal)

Run As a Democratic Candidate, Alison

Elizabeth Jensen in Kentucky's Sixth, an un-funded challenger to incumbent repug Andy Barr, is running as an actual Democratic candidate, proudly supporting Obamacare and President Obama, and not wasting time trying to appeal to repugs who will never, ever vote for a Democratic candidate.

If Jensen wins and Grimes loses - or even if Jensen loses by less than Grimes does - that will be why.

Beverly Mann at Angry Bear:

If you want to run a Washington-vs.-our-state campaign as a Democrat, you need to make that campaign about the issue of who it is that determines specific Washington policy—in other words, about whether it’s the Kochs who effectively write legislation and dictate what legislation is filibustered or never brought to a vote, or instead small-business owners or ordinary individuals who play some meaningful role in this process.  A campaign for Congress by a Democrat that amounts to a generic ideological “Washington vs. our state” is a campaign that is incoherent. Grimes’ campaign is Exhibit A, but it’s certainly not the only current Exhibit.

The Louisville Courier-Journal, in its endorsement editorial, points out that Grimes supports such policies as a raise in the federal minimum wage and federally sponsored universal access to preschool.  But these are federal programs; she’s running for the United States Senate, not the Kentucky Senate. “Washington vs. our state” as a generic ideological precept precludes these. If Grimes’ ideology is really the same as Joni Ernst’s, then she should switch parties.  If it’s not, then she should make that clear, and make clear why it’s not.

And if Grimes wins, it will be precisely because of why it’s not—and because McConnell, not Grimes, finally made that clear to Kentucky’s voters.

And next time someone like Ashley Judd wants to run for Senate in a state like Kentucky, the Democratic Establishment should not insist that she not run because, after all, a “centrist” would have a better chance.  Judd would win this election comfortably, I’d bet.

Mitch Admits He Will Take Away All Your Healthcare

Well of course he will. You're not rich, white, straight xian and male, are you?

Steve Benen at Maddowblog:

Under the McConnell approach, the spokesperson told Stein, when it comes to the Affordable Care Act, everything must go – the Kynect website could exist, but consumers would no longer be eligible for subsidies to purchase coverage for themselves or their families. Medicaid expansion, coverage for young adults, prescription-drug benefits for seniors, et al, would all be eliminated as quickly as possible.

As a practical matter, McConnell, in the race of his life, is running on a curious platform: he fully intends to take health care benefits away from roughly 500,000 of his own constituents, leaving most of the state with higher premiums and worse insurance.

Team McConnell emphasizes, of course, that once the senator succeeds in tearing down the American health care system, the Republican hopes to replace it with something else, but McConnell hasn’t told anyone what the new system might look like and/or how many Kentuckians will be worse off. Working families are apparently just supposed to trust the longtime incumbent – he’ll take away their access to affordable medical care, but he’ll replace it with … something. Eventually. Maybe.

No state has been more successful in implementing health care reform than Kentucky. No senator is more desperate to destroy this success than Mitch McConnell. It’s arguably the strangest platform of any statewide candidate in the nation.

Truth in Fruit

ummagumm.co:


(Source: slowkingvictim)

Where Retail Employees Make $50K

Funny how policies that help employees also help business.  It's almost as if labor is what creates capital.

Bryce Covert at Think Progress:

The Container Store pays its 6,000 employees an average of $48,000 a year, according to CEO Kip Tindell’s new book Uncontainable.

As he told Business Insider, “That’s a lot of money for a retail sales clerk.” In fact, median pay for retail sales workers is just $21,410 a year. The company also gives “big” raises each year, he said, from 0 percent for low performers to as much as 8 percent.

The company still performs well while paying more than double what’s typical for the industry. It has annual sales of nearly $800 million. And Tindell credits at least some of that performance with the higher pay. His theory is “one equals three,” he told the Wall Street Journal: “one great person can easily do the business productivity of three good people,” which means a company can pay that one high performer “50% to 100% above industry average.”

And that brings returns back to the company. He told Business Insider that the company gets three times the productivity even while paying two times as much in wages. “[Y]ou save money, the customers win, and all the employees win because they get to work with someone great,” he said. Plus the company has a 10 percent turnover rate, while the rate for the entire industry is about 75 percent, and turnover is very costly. Tindell credits high wages for the low rate, saying, “[P]ay is more important than most people realize, particularly if you’re trying to attract and keep really great people.”

Beyond the business incentives, he believes he has a responsibility to pay more. “If you’re lucky enough to be an employer, you have a moral obligation to create a great work environment,” he said.

To that end, he thinks other companies should compensate their employees the way his does. And he may have the ability to influence them as incoming chairman of the National Retail Federation (NRF), which has opposed a minimum wage increase. “I’ll work to get the NRF to actually moderate and review that” stance, he said. “I also think certain companies will soon come out in favor of raising the minimum wage because they’re going to have to politically. Better pay leads to better profitability.”

Some other retailers do take that route, such as The Gap, Costco, Whole Foods, and others, which pay above the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. The Gap, for example, saw the immediate benefit of a spike in job applicants after it announced a higher minimum wage for its employees.

And He Really Sucks At It

ummagumma.co:


(Source: sogoodatsettingbadexamples)

Non-Theists Approaching Majority in U.S.

Via Maddowblog:

* A striking cultural shift: “If you’re dismayed that one in five Americans (20 percent) are ‘nones’ – people who claim no particular religious identity – brace yourself. How does 38 percent sound? That’s what religion researcher David Kinnaman calculates when he adds ‘the unchurched, the never-churched and the skeptics’ to the nones. 

Add the non-freakazoids to that list and the Krap Kristians are definitely in the minority.

And they know it.  Which is why they are so hysterical in their insistence that this is a christian nation.  Never has been, never will be.

Parental Lies

ummagumma.co:


(Source: par1138)

Invisible Friend

ummagumma.co:


(Source: ikidu)

Religious Liberty and the Bishop

It's about power.  It's always been about power.  It's always been about the kind of faux power that is the only kind the truly weak can ever acquire: power by demonizing the other and labeling them as sub-human.

Women, minorities, gays, non-conformists of all stripes: Other, and therefore su-human.

Ophelia Benson in Free Inquiry:

... James Conley, bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska, who does indeed have a Facebook page on which he shares the columns he writes for the Southern Nebraska Register. He published a column on the Hobby Lobby ruling and what he takes to be its implications on July 11. SNIP

What the bishop seems to want is not religious liberty but religious power and authority. He wants to impose his religion’s rules and taboos on all of us, including people who don’t share his religion.

Reasoning Evil

ummagumma.co:

Catholic Hospitals Forcing Ohio Abortion Clinics to Close

No, requiring a hospital transfer agreement isn't an "undue burden" on women seeking an abortion.

Not unless all the hospitals around are owned by freakazoid bullies.

Zandar:

It looks like the Planned Parenthood surgical center in Cincinnati has finally been cited for lack of a hospital transfer agreement, and has until next week to come up with a solution or risk being shut down for good.

The Elizabeth Campbell Surgical Center was last inspected in June, but the health department waited until last week to notify the clinic that it was out of compliance with acontroversial state law passed last year. That could be the first step in moving to revoke the clinic's surgical license, which would make Cincinnati the largest metropolitan area in the U.S. without an abortion clinic, according to an Enquirer analysis.

Abortion clinics in Ohio now must have agreements with private hospitals willing to take abortion patients in an emergency. Many private hospitals are religious and have declined to form agreements with abortion clinics. Planned Parenthood found itself in such a situation and asked the health department to grant an exception to the rule -- a so-called "variance," which is allowed by law.

SNIP

The other two clinics in southwest Ohio are in the same boat.  Mercy Health, formerly Catholic Health Partners (I bet you're seeing where this is going) is the largest hospital chain around.  They've basically bullied everyone in the area to revoke their transfer agreements or face their wrath, and everyone folded, most notably the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.

Just a reminder: abortion is the safest medical procedure performed in the U.S. It does not require a hospital, or a surgical facility, or transvaginal ultraounds object rape or waiting periods or any other bogus obstacle.

Not a Democracy

ummagumma.co:

(Source: skepticalavenger, via angryspatula)

"We have to be guided by the facts, not fear."

But only fear nourishes the repugs, Mr. President.  Only fear - on Ebola and everything else - can give repugs victory.



Full transcript here.

Blacks Searched Twice As Often in Louisville Traffic Stops; Police Chief Claims No Bias

Confident declaration of false belief in the face of factual proof to the contrary: Does Democratic Mayor Fischer know his police chief is a repug?

Matthew Glowicki at the Courier:

Black drivers are nearly twice as likely to be searched and arrested than white drivers after being pulled over by metro police, according to a vehicle stop study released Friday morning.

Police Chief Steve Conrad called those disparities "areas of concern," but said the report, which was conducted by University of Louisville researchers, does not definitively show racial bias was a factor in vehicle stops.

I see.  The fact that they were searched because they are black does not mean they were searched because they were black.

Blacks are also more likely to be arrested during a police stop, with 5 percent of stops involving blacks resulting in an arrest, compared to 3 percent of stops involving whites and 4 percent of stops involving Hispanics, according to the report.

Well, they have to justify those racially biased completely coincidental searches somehow.

They lie because they know they're going to get away with both the lies and the baseless stops and arrests.  And they're going to get away with the baseless stops and arrests until the residents of Louisville black and white stand up and say No More.

Against the Human Mind

ummagumma.co:

Study: Real Sex Ed Helps Kids Postpone Sex

Yeah, I know, what else is new.  But now there's data.

Think Progress:

Comprehensive sex ed classes that emphasize healthy relationships and family involvement can encourage more middle school students to put off having sex, according to the results from a new study published in the Journal of School Health. The results have big implications for school districts that are trying to decide what type of health classes to offer to kids in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades.

The three-year study was conducted by researchers at the Wellesley Centers for Women, who wanted to figure out whether Get Real — a comprehensive sex ed program developed by Planned Parenthood — has an impact on middle schoolers’ sexual behavior. In order to do that, the researchers tracked a group of racially and economically diverse kids at 24 different schools in the Boston area, half of which implemented Get Real and half of which continued with their existing sex ed programs. Kids were periodically surveyed about their sexual activity.

The results were “quite strong,” according to the lead researchers on the project. The study found that 16 percent fewer boys and 15 percent fewer girls became sexually active by the end of eighth grade after participating in Get Real, compared to the kids who didn’t participate in that curriculum.

It’s particularly significant that Get Real helped both girls and boys delay sex. The previous research into other sex ed programs has been mixed, and hasn’t been able to demonstrate such clear results for both genders.

 Or as Wonkette puts it:

Wow, it’s almost as if having open and honest conversations with kids about sex and its consequences leads kids to be more knowledgeable and responsible and to make exactly the kinds of choices that the very people who oppose real sex ed say they should make. Weird!

And you thought Planned Parenthood just built multi-billion dollar abortionplexes, huh? (No, you didn’t really think that because you are not A Idiot. Or Rep. John Fleming. But we repeat ourselves.)

We assume this study will lead all the conservatives who want to shut down Planned Parenthood and defund real sex ed to rethink their strategy and perhaps support this program. We also expect to see pigs fly by our window any second now …

Society

ummagumma.co:

(Source: yesimanatheist)

Grimes Finally Attacks Mitch on Voter Suppression

Voting in Kentucky is not quite as near-impossible as it is in Texas - you  have to present a form of identification but it doesn't have to be government-issued or have a picture - but without early voting or excuse-less mail-in voting, it's still a system that forces minorities, students, the elderly and working people to jump through fiery hoops.

When I started voting almost 40 years ago, all you had to do to cast a vote was to sign your name in the registration book, right next to the signature you made the last time you voted or registered, and as long as it matched you were gold.

Grimes did not go so far as to demand the return to that system, but at least she called out the voter suppression motherrfuckers for fucking their mothers. And lying about it.

Jack Brammer at the Herald:

The campaign of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes claims in two radio ads that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is trying to take the right to vote away from black people.

The most recent ad, launched earlier this week, is narrated by Georgia Powers, a civil-rights advocate from Louisville and the first black person elected to the Kentucky Senate.

In it, Powers says "Mitch McConnell and the Republicans are trying to take away our right to vote."

Restore the Economy in One Move: Soak the Rich

Fuck Wall Street and the repugs. Do it anyway. Call it the Eisenhower Bring Back the '50s Tax.

Bryce Covert at Think Progress:

A 90 percent tax rate on the top 1 percent of American earners wouldn’t just significantly reduce income and wealth inequality and boost government tax revenues. It would also be the optimal level for Americans’ welfare, according to a new paper from economists Fabian Kindermann and Dirk Krueger.

They find that the top marginal tax rate that maximizes government revenues before being so high as to discourage the wealthiest from earning more is very high, or 95 percent on those who are among the top 1 percent of earners. They also find that a 90 percent tax rate on the richest 1 percent could significantly reduce the Gini index, a measure of income inequality, and wealth inequality would also steadily decline.

But these effects aren’t worth the policy change in and of themselves, they argue. In an email to ThinkProgress, Krueger wrote, “One could certainly reduce inequality in the economy to zero, by the government confiscating all income and wealth and redistributing it equally among all households… Of course people would stop working and saving and the outcome would be disastrous.” But the interesting finding in their paper is that the same tax rate that would maximize revenues and drive down inequality is nearly the same one that would make everyone better off, or what they call the optimal top marginal tax rate.

What god Hates

ummagumma.co:


(Source: nicolemarshsays)

Proof the Rich Are Moochers

Everybody who's got more than, say, a million bucks should just be presumed guilty of economic crimes against humanity and forced to disgorge 90 percent of it.

Enough of these fuckers.

David Atkins at Political Animal:

The entire conservative ideological program on economics depends on cosmic justice: the idea that those who develop talent and work hard will succeed as they deserve, while those who are lazy and without skills will fail as they ought. That meritocratic concept is the justification for slashing all forms of assistance to the poor and the middle class from food stamps to healthcare. Further, if the rich got there by just deserts, then they should get even more money to keep being so productive for everyone else.

But if it turns out that there is no meritocracy—if the rich get there through privilege and luck rather than industry and talent—then the entire rest of the conservative agenda morally falls apart.

It just so happens that a new study shows that the United States does not, in fact, have a meritocracy:

America is the land of opportunity, just for some more than others. That’s because, in large part, inequality starts in the crib. Rich parents can afford to spend more time and money on their kids, and that gap has only grown the past few decades. Indeed, economists Greg Duncan and Richard Murnane calculate that, between 1972 and 2006, high-income parents increased their spending on “enrichment activities” for their children by 151 percent in inflation-adjusted terms, compared to 57 percent for low-income parents….

Even poor kids who do everything right don’t do much better than rich kids who do everything wrong. Advantages and disadvantages, in other words, tend to perpetuate themselves. You can see that in the above chart, based on a new paper from Richard Reeves and Isabel Sawhill, presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s annual conference, which is underway.

Specifically, rich high school dropouts remain in the top about as much as poor college grads stay stuck in the bottom — 14 versus 16 percent, respectively. Not only that, but these low-income strivers are just as likely to end up in the bottom as these wealthy ne’er-do-wells. Some meritocracy.

What’s going on? Well, it’s all about glass floors and glass ceilings. Rich kids who can go work for the family business — and, in Canada at least, 70 percent of the sons of the top 1 percent do just that — or inherit the family estate don’t need a high school diploma to get ahead. It’s an extreme example of what economists call “opportunity hoarding.” That includes everything from legacy college admissions to unpaid internships that let affluent parents rig the game a little more in their children’s favor.

But even if they didn’t, low-income kids would still have a hard time getting ahead. That’s, in part, because they’re targets for diploma mills that load them up with debt, but not a lot of prospects. And even if they do get a good degree, at least when it comes to black families, they’re more likely to still live in impoverished neighborhoods that keep them disconnected from opportunities.

Everything about the conservative economic agenda is wrong not only on the merits (supply-side economics is a proven logistical failure, for instance), but from its very philosophical underpinnings.

There is no meritocracy. The rich do not get ahead by their industry and talent, but by luck and connections. It’s more about who you know, than what you know. Which means that anyone defending the right of the rich to take even more money is exalting a system as indefensible as the divine right of kings.

Corporations and the Free Market Making Ebola Worse

Interesting that all the U.S. hospitals where Ebola patients have recovered without infecting any hospital workers are all government-run non-profit hospitals.

While the ONLY U.S. hospital where an Ebola patient died AND hospital workers got infected with the virus is a corporate-owned, private-industry, for-profit medical industry facility.

karoli at Crooks and Liars:

Never mind that private, for-profit hospital who ignored CDC protocols with regard to Ebola. The one that sent Mr. Duncan home with antibiotics for a deadly viral infection. Never mind that, because it's easier for lazy people like Bruni to blame Obama, and by extension, all Democrats everywhere.

This is why we cannot have nice things. We have no surgeon general, but that's of no moment because the whiny ass Republicans bleated for an Ebola czar and now that they have one, they're criticizing the president for not appointing a doctor.

Look over there and you'll miss the forest for the trees! Also, on November 5th there will be little talk, if any, about Ebola. I guarantee it. Just like there's no talk about the "border crisis" or the IRS or even Benghazi!.

If there is something to fear about Ebola, it's how private hospitals are dealing with it. A TPM reader paints a terrifying picture:

SNIP

So once again, I must reiterate: Why is it that the for-profit hospital system isn't taking any of the heat for their lack of preparedness? Why aren't states enforcing the protocols? Why is all of this Obama's fault? Of course it's not his fault. It's just convenient for lazy corporate journalists to blame it on him rather than actually thinking it through.

I seriously hope we kick Republicans' asses on November 4th and put these shameless hacks out to pasture forever.

Steve M:

In a Washington Post op-ed published Monday, DeMoro tied our Ebola problems to the private, for-profit nature of our health care system:

... Ebola is exposing a broader problem: the sober reality of our fragmented, uncoordinated private health-care system. We have enormous health-care resources in the United States. What we lack is a national, integrated system needed to respond effectively to a severe national threat such as Ebola.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issues guidelines but has no authority to enforce them. Hospitals have wide latitude to pick and choose what protocols they will follow; too often in a corporate medical system those decisions are based on budget priorities, not what is best for the health and safety of patients and caregivers. Congress and state lawmakers put few mandates on what hospitals must do in the face of pandemics or other emergencies, and local health officials do not have the authority to direct procedures and protocols at hospitals.

Where other countries -- notably Canada, which took action after its vulnerabilities were exposed by the 2003 SARS epidemic -- have empowered their public health agencies to coordinate local, state and federal detection and response efforts for pandemics, the United States cut funding for its already-weak system. Federal funding for public health preparedness and response activities was $1 billion less in fiscal 2013 than 2002....

Why do we know what went on in Texas Health Presbyterian when Thomas Duncan came in? Because a union was able to tell us. Conservatives would prefer an America in which no health care workers were unionized at all. They should remember that when they're quoting National Nurses United.

To sum up:  Government and Unions: Getting it right and saving lives.  For-profit corporations: Fucking up and killing people.

Chain Saws

ummagumma.co:

The Ad That Could Save Alison - If She'd Run It

I am sure Bruce Braley would be happy to let her steal it.

And equally sure she wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole.

What Did NOT Happen

People who are still fear-mongering on Ebola - and that includes my intelligent, educated co-workers - are fucking morons and a clear and present danger to public safety.

Steve M:

Thomas Eric Duncan flew from Monrovia, Liberia, to Brussels, Belgium, on September 19, then flew from Brussels to Dulles Airport in D.C. The next day, September 20, he flew from D.C. to Dallas.

He arrived in Dallas -- infected with Ebola -- 29 days ago.

The incubation period is, at most, 21 days.

There are no Ebola cases in Belgium. There are no Ebola cases in the D.C. area. The only people with Ebola in Dallas have been Duncan and two nurses who treated him when he was unquestionably gravely ill, and when the nurses may not have mastered the protocols for protecting themselves from a highly contagious patient, or may not have had adequate protective gear and other safeguards.

The point is, we know that Thomas Eric Duncan did not communicate Ebola to anyone in his travels -- no one on any plane he flew on, no one in any airport he passed through. The people he had contact with until he was finally admitted to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on September 28 -- 21 days ago -- have shown no signs of Ebola, and that includes his relatives and his fiancee -- who seems fine, by the way, but can't get anyone to rent her an apartment.

I know that, by now, much of America probably thinks that "we don't really know" what the incubation period is, just as they think "we don't really know" how Ebola is transmitted. But no matter what they think, they need to be reminded that there are no non-medical personnel who've contracted Ebola via Thomas Eric Duncan. Not his relatives. Not his fiancee. Not the people at the apartment complex where he was staying. Yes, it's true that the people who delivered food to Duncan's family after his hospitalization and later cleaned the apartment are still not past the 21-day maximum incubation period-- though they've had time to develop symptoms, and none have.

If the authorities are lying to us about how Ebola is transmitted, where are all the other cases?

And no, the situation is Europe is no better than it is here, so no, it's not Obama's fault.

Last word to the Rude Pundit, whose entire column you should read:

More people in the United States are scared about Ebola than climate change when climate change affects everyone and Ebola affects, at most, a handful of Americans. Republicans pretend not to know science, but they are unafraid of spreading lies and pretending to know it when it suits their purposes, even if it ultimately causes more harm than good.

And the majority of Americans buy into it and lose their shit when Ebola will never cause them to do so.

Paradise

ummagumma.co:

Voting Republican

Down with Tyranny:

QOTD: Anti-Corporation Republicans

via Michael Kazen  and Political Animal:

“There once was a time in history when the limitation of governmental power meant increasing liberty for the people,” TR told his followers in the independent new Progressive Party in 1912. “In the present day, the limitation … of governmental action, means the enslavement of the people by the great corporations, who can only be held in check through the extension of governmental power.”

Dying for Fish

ummagumma.co:



(via punchgod-deactivated20130427)

Taxpayers and Public Prayer

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito: Evil or Stupid? And Does It Matter?

Tom Flynn in Free Inquiry:

Writing the majority opinion in Harris v. Quinn, a decision announced shortly before Hobby Lobby that weakened public-sector labor unions, Associate Justice Samuel Alito actually wrote: “Except in the rarest of circumstances, no person in this country may be compelled to subsidize speech by a third party that he or she does not wish to support.”

Alito had in mind dues-paying union members whose unions might take political positions to which they object.

Obviously, one could scarcely imagine Alito writing the same sentence in regard to, say, nonreligious taxpayers compelled to subsidize legislatures that open their sessions with sectarian prayer!

Yeah, Right

ummagumma.co:

(via livelove-t0ke-deactivated201211)

Herald Fear-Mongers on Ebola

Shame on you, Bill Estep and Herald editors for contributing to the baseless Ebola hysteria instead of using an opportunity to educate people.

In this story on how rural hospitals in Kentucky are preparing to deal with a patient with Ebola, Estep unquestionably accepts the false premise that Ebola is easily contracted and spread.

On Friday, the Mountain Advocate newspaper in Barbourville reported that an ambulance brought a woman to the Knox County Hospital who was concerned she'd been exposed to Ebola. The hospital closed off the emergency room before determining the woman had not been exposed, the paper reported.

I suppose it's remotely possible that someone recently in West Africa showed up in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky, but I think it's more likely she was suffering from Faux News Overexposure syndrome and imagined that she contracted Ebola through her TV.

Estep misses a huge opportunity there to tell us whether she was actually a likely Ebola victim and to educate his readers on how Ebola actually spreads and the extreme unlikelihood of contracting it if you've never stepped foot outside the county you were born in.

Yes, there's an "About Ebola" sidebar that mentions Ebola cannot be casually contracted. Nobody reads sidebars.

The real danger of Ebola in this country is that hospitals are going to be overwhelmed and wasting money on Faux News Overexposure victims, each case exponentially increasing the hysteria that will end up costing lives far from the nearest Ebola patient.

All We Have

ummagumma.co:

"We can't give in to hysteria or fear"

Well done, Mr. President. Hysterical fear spreads exponentially, and it's going to take exponential efforts to eliminate it.



Full transcript here.

The War on Christians

How come we never hear about all those freakazoids being re-jailed for refusing atheist indoctrination? 

Divine Irony:

Calif. atheist awarded $2 million after being re-jailed for refusing faith-based rehab

A Northern California man was awarded almost $2 million in a settlement after prison officials sent him back to jail for refusing to take part in a faith-based treatment program for drug offenders because he is an atheist.

According to the Redding Record Searchlight, Barry Hazle Jr. will receive $1 million from state officials and $925,000 from Westcare California, the contractor in charge of the program, which called for attendees to submit themselves to a “higher power” and pray.

“I’m thrilled to finally have this case settled,” Hazle said on Tuesday. “It sends a clear message to people in a position of authority, like my parole agent, for example, that they not mandate religious programming for their parolees, and for anyone else, for that matter.”…

What It Really Is

From a Gawker takedown of a fashion "Antebellum" revivial, a description of the New Racism:

... the keeping of a caste of humans as property has been reimagined as a comprehensive system of impoverishment, judicial and extrajudicial violence, and de facto subjugation.

No Shit

ummagumma.co:


(Source: rationalthinker)

Not Even Congressman Awesome Can Save Alison Now

Talk to some Kentucky Democratic voters - and those of us who actually vote Democratic are ALL liberal, thank you very much - and what you'll hear is anger. Red-hot, hopping mad fury at Alison Lundergan Grimes for expecting us to vote for a repug-lite, coal-excusing hater of President Obama.

And for pissing away our best chance in 30 years to get rid of McConnell.

Some of us are still going to vote for her, because we are Democratic voters and we are liberals and we're voting against the Turtle. But not all of us.  And not enough of us to lift her to victory.

And that is 100 percent her fucking fault.

Sam Youngman at the Herald:

Yarmuth, speaking before Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, did something that Democrats in Kentucky have been going out of their way to avoid doing:

He embraced, defended and praised President Barack Obama.

"Nobody has inherited a tougher job than Barack Obama did," Yarmuth said to wild applause from more than 4,000 Democrats Wednesday night.

As the Grimes campaign has taken on water in recent days for her refusal to say if she voted for Obama and for her decision to run an immigration ad condemned by liberal groups, Yarmuth is working overtime to keep Grimes' liberal base intact.

"I think that is part of my role with her," Yarmuth said Thursday in a phone interview with the Herald-Leader.

The liberal base of Kentucky's Democratic Party is not wholly different than it is nationally — 30 percent of Kentuckians still give Obama a thumbs-up — and Grimes needs every last one of them to show up on Nov. 4 if she hopes to deny U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a sixth term.

But it is a restless base.

All the Repugs Have Is Fear. Unfortunately, It Works

karoli at Crooks and Liars:

Whether it's Ebola, the IRS, ISIS, Benghazi! or the recent Secret Service scandal, Republicans are dedicated to convincing voters they live in a dark, horrible world. Be afraid, little people, be afraid.

The corollary to that is, of course, that the good soldier Republicans will save you if you'll only vote for them so they can roll back time to some time in history (God knows when!) when everything was wonderful.

It's a tactic. Fear as motivation to reject progress is time-honored and Republicans have turned it into a sort of art form -- dark arts, that is. After all, one of the reasons we live in a somewhat scary world is because of what Republicans did; specifically, Republicans George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

SNIP

Fear and anger. Fear and bigotry. Fear and selfishness. Classic conservative tactics and monsters of conservative invention for the purely cynical purpose of gaining and consolidating power.

For example, the Ebola virus. President Obama has wisely decided that deploying our military expertise to build medical facilities and help put some infrastructure in Africa to combat the disease is a good thing. But David Vitter objects, claiming it focuses too much on Africa. No funding for efforts to contain the virus and save lives in Africa, Vitter whines, while clutching his pearls and crying about "illegals" crossing the southern border with unnamed but intentional linkage to the Ebola virus. Be afraid!

Fear, baby. It sells. Give them some fear, forget that you refuse to deal with the situation causing the fear.

Boredom

ummagumma.co:


(Source: contextplease, via bookporn)

Want Good Workers? Pay for Them.

That's the way capitalism has worked since the Black Plague created a huge labor shortage in feudal Europe that overturned the serf system and forced landowners to pay for labor.

But over the past 30 years, employers have come to insist that they no longer have to pay workers. Employers - especially big corporations - now view workers as sub-human serfs that don't really need, much less deserve, decent pay.

Kevin Drum:

Here's something you don't see every day: a news article about employers who desperately want to hire more people but just can't find workers with the right skills. Oh wait. You do see that every day. What you don't see are articles which make it clear that a willingness to pay higher wages is all it takes to fix this problem:

Manufacturing wages are rising at a rapid clip in some major industrial states as shortages of certain skills and gradually falling unemployment rates force more companies to pay up to attract and retain workers.

....“What we mainly need is welders,” said Terry McIver, chief executive and owner of Loadcraft Industries Ltd., a maker of parts for oil rigs in Brady, Texas....Dewayne Roy, head of the welding program at Mountain View College in Dallas, said he recently had a waiting list of about 250 people seeking to enroll. One student, Logan Porter, 22, started working for a metal-fabrication shop in the Dallas area in February and is putting in 55
to 60 hours a week. He earns $17 an hour, but with time and a half for overtime, his weekly take-home pay typically exceeds $800. “I love the work,” he said. ....Steve Van Loan, president of Sullivan Palatek Inc. in Michigan City, said job hopping is becoming more of a problem. “They get an offer for more money across town, and they’re gone,” he said. Wages on average at his firm, which makes compressors that power drills and other tools, are rising 4% to 5% this year, compared with 2% to 3% in recent years, Mr. Van Loan said.

How about that? If you pay more, you attract workers with the right skills. If you pay more, training programs start to fill up. If you pay more, you can steal folks away from your competitors.

Pay is the great equalizer. There are always going to be shortages of specific skills in specific times and places. But a long-term nationwide shortage? That just means employers aren't willing to pay market wages. They should read their Milton Friedman. If you pay them, they will come.

War on Voting Rights Never Going Away Because It's Not About Voting Rights

One guess what it is about.

Ed Kilgore at Political Animal:

... the War on Voting isn’t just a coolly calculated gambit that would go away if it were not perceived as effective or efficient. It’s closely integrated with contemporary conservative ideology.

For one thing, the highly prominent Constitutional Conservative wing of the GOP considers democracy itself—if it aims at or even allows erosion of the Ideal Governing Scheme of states rights and property rights and religious rights (and for many ConCons, fetal rights) established by the Founders—as essentially un-American (This is a republic, not a democracy, they never tire of saying) and requiring significant restrictions.

Anything that makes exercise of the franchise more difficult—especially by those people who so poorly resemble the white yeoman farmer property owners of the early Republic—is presumed to be a good idea in itself.

But even short of the Con Con ranks, the kind of thinking that produced Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remarks is deeply entrenched in the GOP, and its root idea is that voting by people who benefit from an active federal government (and don’t pay income taxes!) is corrupt. So you can talk all day about the non-existence of voter fraud in the legal sense of participating in elections without eligibility. For a large number of Republicans, “voter fraud” means Democrats trading other people’s money (their money) for votes, and being technically eligible to cast a ballot cuts little or no ice.

So long as these habits of thinking persist on the Right, then the War on Voting will persist as well, whether or not it’s “working” in the sense of producing a tangible positive net effect for the Republican Party.

Nuke Saudi Arabia. Do It Now.

Steve M. says President Obama will probably send ground troops to the Syria/Iraq Permanent Hellhole of Futility after the election.

I think he's right, and I think the only way to stop it is to turn the real trouble-maker in the region into a giant sheet of glass.

I mean it. There is no reason not to and and infinite number of reasons to do it.

Revenge for 9-11, three-quarters of the terrorists of which came from Saudia Arabia?  Nuke Saudi Arabia.

Shut off the money flow to Islamic terrorists worldwide?  Nuke Saudi Arabia.

Punch the fossil fuel industry in the nuts, maybe long enough to get renewable energy really off and running?  Nuke Saudi Arabia.

Eliminate the economic, social and religious source of the 9th-century backward bullshit that enslaves a billion women and children around the world?  Nuke Saudi Arabia.

Kevin Drum:

I don't think the world has a Muslim problem. It has a Saudi Arabia problem. The closer a country is to the warped influence of Saudi Arabia, the more violent and illiberal it is. Go west to Tunisia and Morocco and Islam becomes more moderate. Go north to Turkey and it becomes more moderate. Go east to India and Indonesia and it becomes more moderate.

Obviously this is hardly a perfect correlation. If you want to find exceptions, you can. But generally speaking, Saudi Arabia is the epicenter of Islam's problems, a country that stands for virtually everything that the liberal West condemns. It is almost feudally anti-democratic. It is corrupt. It is theocratic. It treats women and gays horribly. Its legal system is barbarous. It is intolerant of any religion other than its own fundamentalist strain of Wahabi Islam. It is no coincidence that 15 of the 19 terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 came from Saudi Arabia and the rest came from nearby countries. Saudi Arabia is a country that, by rights, should be shunned by every government on the planet.

But they're not. For historical reasons, we've instead forged a longtime alliance with the princes of Riyadh. The world is paying a high price for this.

Entertainment

Divine Irony:

thereisnogod:

Frank Fucking Zappa.

(Source: questionall)

Cowardly Democrats Always Lose

Why? The Rude Pundit explains:

Nearly every election, we've gotta go through this. We gotta watch as Democrats desperately try to portray themselves as salt-of-the-earth right-wingers (cue the ads of Democrats shooting shit). This time around, like in 2010 and 2014, we get to see them do the distancing dance, saying that they're not nigger-lovers, oh, no. They're "Clinton Democrats," as Grimes and others have called themselves, which is one of the most bullshit, racist phrases the Rude Pundit's seen since "urban youth." Once more, we're watching Democrats try to appeal to the yahoos when they should just rip the heads off their opponents and use the head to suck them off or eat them out like a fuck puppet.

And then, if someone does put out an ass-kicker of an ad, Democratic pussies run away, acting like their delicate sensibilities were just offended. Take, for instance, Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis's ad against her wheelchair-bound opponent, the odious scum-eater, Greg Abbott. In "Justice," we see an empty wheelchair as a serious narrator tells us that Abbott sued the fuck out of someone whose tree fell on him and won millions of dollars and then, as a lawyer, fought against others receiving compensation for their injuries. Yeah, Abbott's that special kind of hypocritical bastard, one who loves the taste of the sweat and tears of others: he speaks out against lawyers who try to get money for their injured clients.

So while Abbott gets to roll away from the substance of the ad, Davis gets excoriated.

SNIP

Davis is losing, so you could call it a "hail Mary," but it's a gut punch. Why are we not getting ads from Grimes saying that McConnell will take away people's health insurance? Is it because it will force Grimes to mention the-Negro-who-shall-not-be-

named?

SNIP

The failure of Democrats to show that Republicans would take away health care from millions of people and are responsible for our crumbling infrastructure and slow jobs recovery is a failure of imagination, messaging, and leadership. It's cowardice, purely and simply, and it's once again allowed Republicans to set the rules of engagement. Texas could have used a leader for the 21st century, not the mid-20th.

QOTD: Voting Rights

Charlie Pierce:

There is a long, blue river of sadness running through the words of that dissent. It runs under the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama. It pools into a lagoon of sadness behind an earthen dam in Mississippi. The survivors of the generation that fought and bled for the right to vote are getting old and dying off right now. John Lewis is 74. Soon, there won't be any of them left. But it always was thought that the victories they won would survive them. That the real monument to their cause would be lines of the historically disenfranchised suddenly empowered, swamping the system, and realizing that elections in this country are meant to be the most powerful form of civil disobedience there is. And now, it looks very much as though powerful interests are in combination to make sure their victories die with them, here as we celebrate John Roberts's Day of Jubilee. There is a long blue river of sadness running through those words, and a darkness spreading across its surface, and a long night is falling on the face of the water.

Ebola Treatment in Production 24/7 in Kentucky

While Mitch McConnell and Alison Lundergan Grimes fight over which one embraces the decomposing corpse of coal more ardently, the company that is Kentucky's future is quietly and determinedly working to save the world.

Laura Ungar at the Courier:

As Ebola continues to ravage West Africa and spreads for the first time in the United States, a Kentucky company is putting all other work aside to concentrate solely on producing the experimental medicine ZMapp.

The goal: To ramp up production and get it to people more quickly.

Kentucky BioProcessing, contracted by San Diego-based drug maker Mapp Biopharmaceutical to produce ZMapp, makes the compound using tobacco plants, which act as "photocopiers" to mass-produce proteins.

"We have essentially put all of our resources around the ZMapp compound," said David Howard, a spokesman for Reynolds American Inc., which acquired Kentucky BioProcessing in January. "It's our entire focus. ... We're trying to do what we can to address this epidemic."

Howard said the company is hiring more staff and working on the compound 24 hours a day, seven days a week at its Owensboro facility, which has 32,000 square feet of manufacturing space. Although the compound takes about three months to make, he said, limited supplies are available, and he expects to keep producing more on a rolling basis. He said this increased production may help speed up the drug-approval process.

Working toward U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval is also the federal government's goal. In September, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced plans to accelerate development of ZMapp under an 18-month, $24.9 million contract with Mapp, which could be extended to $42.3 million.

Wonder

Divine Irony:

doinggoodwithoutagod:

https://m.facebook.com/MICHAELSHERLOCK.AUTHORM

But It's Obama Who's Killing the Coal Industry

Have you ever not been able to breathe? Maybe after diving into too-deep water and inhaling too soon? Or in an asthma attack?  Remember the terror you felt, unable to make air move into or out of your lungs?  Now imagine feeling that every minute of every day of your life forever.

Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

I, for one, am glad that some doctors out there are brave enough to hold back the tide of “black lung” addled coal miners/parasites who are threatening the profitability of our coal companies and our insurance companies:*

After working underground in the coal mines of southern West Virginia for almost 35 years, Steve Day thought it was obvious why he gasped for air, slept upright in a recliner, and inhaled oxygen from a tank 24 hours a day.

More than half a dozen doctors who saw the masses in his lungs or the test results showing his severely impaired breathing were also in agreement.

The clear diagnosis was black lung.

Yet, when I met Steve in April 2013, he had lost his case to receive benefits guaranteed by federal law to any coal miner disabled by black lung. The coal company that employed the miner usually pays for these benefits, and, as almost always happens, Steve’s longtime employer had fought vigorously to avoid paying him. As a result, he and his family were barely scraping by, sometimes resorting to loans from relatives or neighbors to make it through the month.

Like many other miners, he had lost primarily because of the opinions of a unit of doctors at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions that had long been the go-to place for coal companies seeking negative X-ray readings to help defeat a benefits claim. The longtime leader of the unit, Dr. Paul Wheeler, testified against Steve, and the judge determined that his opinion trumped all others, as judges have in many other cases.

 *Yes, of course he's being sarcastic.

Happy Just Another Monday

Because enough with this shit.

Of Course It Does; That's the Point

How long before we have to spend tax dollars for a scientific report refuting repug insistence that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east?

Alan Fram at TPM:

States that toughened their voter identification laws saw steeper drops in election turnout than those that did not, with disproportionate falloffs among black and younger voters, a nonpartisan congressional study released Wednesday concluded.

As of June, 33 states have enacted laws obligating voters to show a photo ID at the polls, the study said. Republicans who have pushed the legislation say the requirement will reduce fraud, but Democrats insist the laws are a GOP effort to reduce Democratic turnout on Election Day.

The report by the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative agency, was released less than a month from elections that will determine which party controls Congress.

Persons

ummagumma.co:


(Source: azspot, via redakota)

Want Attention? Vote!

If you can't come up with any other reason to vote on November 4th - and if you are a minority or a woman whose right to vote was paid for by the literal blood and tears and deaths of those who fought to get it for you, so shame on you if you don't - then how about this:

Every time someone who is not white, male, straight, xian, conservative, repug and rich votes, somewhere a repug head explodes.

David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

It's that day again. If you're obsessive enough about politics to be reading this, you should probably already be registered to vote by mail (assuming you live in a state that allows it.) But if you're registered to vote at the polls, be sure to get out there and vote today.

If you believe that there really is value in seeing Democrats defeat Republicans--as I suspect most of you do--then it's very important that you vote. It's not just that your vote helps win elections today. When you vote, the Democratic Party knows that you're that much more reliable a voter. We don't have to spend as much money making sure you show up, and you won't get harassed as often. From a progressive warrior point of view, it also means that when there are intra-party primaries to pick the more progressive Democrat, the campaigns will fight harder over your vote because they know you're going to show up.

For the rest of you, this is why the people who say they're going to "punish" politicians by not voting are just deluded. You're not punishing anyone. You just fall off our radar. We stop caring about you at all.

SNIP

So guess what? When a bunch of Democrats who voted in 2008 decided to just not show up at the polls in 2010 because they weren't inspired or whatever, the Democratic Party didn't say to itself "oh, we should be more progressive and inspirational!" The Party said, "well, those people can't be counted on. Let's worry about the more conservative senior voters who are on the fence."

If you want to make the Democratic Party care more about progressives and progressive issues, withholding your vote isn't how to do it. That only weakens your hand.

The biggest way to make an impact is to be both loud and reliable. Particularly when it comes to voting in Democratic primaries. Make sure the party knows you vote, that you'll vote for Democrats generally, but that any individual politician may or may not get your vote--and that you'll vote against them in a primary if it comes to that.

Those are the people who scare politicians. Not the non-voters.

So get out there and vote. Because you know what we call the sort of person who votes in a June off-year midterm primary? Someone we have to pay attention to.

Yep.  This is why I take every opportunity to tell my local Democratic Party pooh-bahs that you bet your ass I'm voting for Alison Lundergan Grimes, BUT that I'm going to have to borrow a Level-5 Hazmat suit to do it, and they better not ever forget it.

Digby:

So let's be clear. People despise Congress and its inability to solve problems. But they absolutely hate Republicans. Democrats aren't exactly sweethearts, but a majority do have a favorable impression of the party.

If everyone voted, Republicans would be bounced out of influence. But people don't vote.

The problem isn't convincing more people. The problem isn't Fox News or the right-wing media machine or anything like that. Most people aren't fooled.

The problem is getting the people who do see the world the right way to vote. In the parlance of campaign operatives, it's a turnout problem, not a persuasion problem.

So yes, because liberals stay home and don't vote, the electorate is conservative.  Democrats run as conservatives to get their votes, because conservatives are the ones voting.  We're not.

If liberals don't give a damn about voting in midterms,why should Democrats give a damn about liberals who don't vote?

Last word to Zandar, who nails it:  

Abdication of voting is cowardice, plain and simple.  If you make the political decision to stay home and not vote in order to punish politicians, you are a coward, and you deserve no voice at all in our political process.

Too many people have fought and died for women, African-Americans, Hispanic and Latino, Asian, and other minorities to be able to vote.  Walking away from that is not only irrational, despite what Gary Segura says, but suicidal.  If you feel that you are voiceless, why make yourself voiceless by not voting?

I can respect voting for the other candidate in order to punish the one you're angry with.  That's at least still exercising the right people bled for.  But to stay home and do nothing?  Insanity.  You only assure that you will not be taken seriously in the future and that your concerns will be ignored.

Why should politicians care about those who do not vote at all? 

Hate Crime

ummagumma.co:


(Source: atheist-me)

The Schools They Want

ummagumma.co:

(via nonplussedbyreligion-deactivate)

How Religion Corrodes Civil Society

That religion is a net negative to society is a given among atheists, but now Andy Norman at Free Inquiry has made the effort to explain why and how.

If the gods were not passengers on the earliest human attempts to resolve differences with words, they soon hitched a ride. Ever since, religious pronouncements have been part of public discourse. Such talk can induce feelings of religious solidarity, and this reinforces the impression that religion is conducive to moral and civil order. In fact, though, religious talk is profoundly corrosive of civil society. By quietly subverting expectations of rational accountability, religious talk undermines reason’s power to reconcile, civilize, and humanize us. In this article, I mean to illuminate the mechanism by which religions compromise our prospects for truly civilized existence. Protecting public discourse from the deleterious effects of religious piety, it turns out, is a job that cannot be left to the so-called “wall of separation” between church and state, because the U.S. Constitution’s anti-establishment clause is woefully inadequate to the task; a considerably higher and sturdier barrier is needed. The time has come for a more far-reaching principle, one that insulates politics from all forms of unaccountable talk. The solution lies in the promotion and collective embrace of an idea central to humanism—the idea that each of us has a profound moral and civic obligation to yield to the force of the better reason.

SNIP

He concludes:

Should the introduction of religious pronouncements into public discourse, then, be considered a punishable offense? No. I am not suggesting that we introduce legal or constitutional restrictions on religious speech. Indeed, the right to speak freely—even in a religious modality—should be viewed as fundamental. It doesn’t follow, though, that we are obliged to listen to such speech or treat it as germane to public policy issues, still less that we give it “equal time.” A truly civilized people will regard the insertion of theology into politics as faintly ridiculous—as worthy of bemused disdain. (And sometimes worthy of ridicule, the ridiculous being—by definition—that which calls for ridicule.) Such a people will enforce rational accountability with politeness and good humor but also with seriousness, vigor, laughter, sarcasm, and irony. They will take a stand for the force of the better reason and recognize that doing so will sometimes offend the delicate sensibilities of the faithful. The making of a truly sustainable and prosperous civilization requires that we renew our collective commitment to rational accountability.

A Religious Solution

ummagumma.co:

QOTD: Ebola Epidemic

From the Nation:

“This isn’t a natural disaster,” international health crusader Paul Farmer told The Washington Post. “This is the terrorism of poverty.”

Religious Morality

ummagumma.co:


(Source: kjdreamer, via alecologia-deactivated20120803)

"Nobody who works full-time should ever have to raise a family in poverty."

And no rich person should get tax cuts while anybody does raise a family in poverty, Mr. President.

(Technical issues with embedding video.  View it here.)

Full transcript here.

Yet More Proof Austerity Kills, But That Won 't Stop the Repugs

Facts and reality have never stopped them from pushing their kill-the-poor agenda before; why should they change now?

Seth D. Michaels at TPM:

Unfortunately for them, all of the arguments they like to deploy in favor of safety-net cuts are collapsing.

The CBO announced today that the federal budget deficit has fallen to a five-year low:

It's the smallest deficit recorded since 2008. FY2014 was the fifth consecutive year the deficit declined as a percentage of GDP. It is now an estimated 2.8% of GDP, a percentage that puts it below the average of the past 40 years.

There are many reasons for this, both good and bad - but the biggest takeaway is that deficit reduction is a consequence of economic growth, rather than a prerequisite for growth, as politicians of both parties have spent so much time arguing.

One result is that politicians are spending less time talking about the deficit, which in itself is a positive outcome, because it knocks away one of the first arguments for pointlessly cruel safety-net cuts.

Indeed, the “pivot to deficits” that happened before economic recovery was even underway has hurt the economy more in the long term. The last few years of showdowns, shutdowns and compromise cuts have been a huge wasted opportunity:

Austerity has also hurt more than we thought — so much so that it might even be self-defeating. That's right: cutting spending in a slump might actually make debt problems worse.

The rush to trim deficits led to lost jobs, cuts to food stamps, and the end of extended unemployment benefits, long before the recovery

So you’ll be less likely to hear arguments about a future debt crisis that needs to be imminently solved with cuts to the major social safety net programs; instead, you’re more likely to hear what I’ll call the “unleash” argument: the notion that we need overall cuts to the size and role of government in order to jump-start our economy.

No, you won't. You'll hear them even more loudly and effectively.  The austerity hysterics never quit.