Tag: Conservative Values
Here’s How the Gun Lobby Wants Us to Live
Quality of life? Out the window.
If you were wondering what life is like under the recently passed, “All Guns, All the Time” Georgia law crafted by ALEC and the gun lobby, here’s an answer. It means that some guy, trying to make a point that only he understands, can pace back and forth at your kid’s little league game with a gun (and knife) clipped to his belt. And when you and the other parents herd your kids into the dugout and form a human shield around them as you call 911, you can be told by law enforcement that there is nothing they can do.
Quality of life? Out the window, when there are important second amendment rights to be exercised. Where are your priorities, parents?
The park is responding by considering hiring an armed guard, because the answer to too many guns is just what Gun Owners of America and the NRA want: more guns! Feel secure, knowing your second grader is playing under loaded weaponry.
It’s time to pause and remember the wise words of Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) in the movie, Jurassic Park. “Just because we can, it doesn’t mean we should.”
Supreme Court to Florida Gov. Rick Scott on Drug Testing: ‘Talk to the Hand’
Florida’s public servants couldn’t be blamed for feeling that someone painted targets on their foreheads after Rick Scott (GOP/Tea) took over as governor three years ago. He eliminated many of their jobs, leaving the survivors with crippling work loads. He reduced their salaries by an amount equal to the state’s contribution to their pensions, so they have less money to spend each week and only the same amount they had before for retirement.
But treating public employees as guilty of taking illegal drugs until proven innocent is one of the most overt ways Scott’s contempt for the state’s workers has been evidenced. The new governor demanded that state employees line up and pee in a cup to prove that they’re drug-free, as if being willing to work for the government places them among the criminal class.
What It Means for America to Have the Largest Prison Population in the World
This video from the Hank portion of the VlogBrothers doesn’t follow where the $75 billion a year goes, nor does it discuss prison privatization, which drives the spending, but maybe it’s better to start, as the video does, by describing the problem’s scope.
Punitive measures that continue punishment even after the convicted have paid their debt to society turn every prison term into a life sentence
What is covered is something a criminal justice system employee once told me: the vast majority of people in prison today will at some point get out, and we are not only doing almost nothing with that day in mind, such as preparing them to do something different, but we are helping ensure their failure with punitive measures that are designed to continue punishment even after the convicted have paid their debt to society. This turns every prison term into a life sentence. And that’s good for neither them nor society, i.e., us.
I hope someone will do a similar video on the facts behind the DUI privatization rip-off, but that’s a subject for another day.
A Third Alternative: Just Answer the Freakin’ Question, Marco
If you want a taste of what passes for honesty and frankness from Republican leaders these days, here’s a quote from Florida Sen. Marco Rubio after he was asked at an educational forum if he ever smoked pot.
“If I tell you that I haven’t, you won’t believe me. And if I tell you that I did, then kids will look up to me and say, ‘Well, I can smoke marijuana because look how he made it. He did alright so I guess I can do it too.'”
So you see, Marco isn’t going to respond because he can’t control what people will do with his answer. If your idea of presidential material is cutesy mind games or outright stonewalling (a term originated to describe Republican Pres. Richard Nixon’s way of blocking information to the press), then Marco is your guy.
TIME’s Politics Prediction Survey Misses the Mark
TIME Magazine has an online survey that purports to be able to assess your politics based on a series of questions that seem to be apolitical (although they aren’t really, if you read them closely). I came out 32% conservative and 68% liberal, which is about as accurate as a Rush Limbaugh commentary.
There is a final question that allows you to self-identify, so you can correct the survey results to some extent.
Take the survey and leave a comment about how accurate you think the survey is.
Oh, and if you’re a dog-lover, beware.
Why Conservative Republicans Aren’t Defending Christie
You’re going to see conservatives returning the favor he gave them over the last year. There’s no love lost between Chris Christie and conservatives.
— GOP strategist Rick Wilson, quoted by National Journal, adding that Christie “goes out of his way to be a dick to other Republicans.”
More Americans are Self-Identifying as ‘Liberal’
38%
Of Americans identify themselves as conservatives, while 23% identify as liberals, according to Gallup. But the conservative advantage is down to 15 percentage points as liberal identification edged up to its highest level since Gallup began regularly measuring ideology in the current format in 1992.
Nice Atheist Collects $125,000 Thanks to Wolf Blitzer’s Douchery
Comedian Doug Stanhope helped raise $125,000 for the tornado victim who told Wolf Blitzer earlier this year that she wasn’t thanking the lord for sparing her and her child because she’s an atheist and doesn’t go in for that sort of thing. But before you go thinking Stanhope did it because he’s a nice guy…well, watch his explanation.
Earth Rights Itself on Its Axis as Cracker Barrel Reinstates Duck Dynasty Merch
If you have not had the misfortune to dine on the meaty, greasy, and yet somehow completely flavorless fare at a Cracker Barrel, you will not know that in order to get to the chow, you must first bob and weave through the world’s most annoying gift shop. It’s filled with overpriced America-esque junk, from made in China pewter cross pendants to made in China sock monkeys.
If you’ve never been there, you will also not have been shocked when Cracker Barrel announced, after GQ published an interview with one Phil Robertson, of Duck Dynasty fame, quoting him thusly, that it was pulling DD merchandise from its stores.
