Gee, why might Conservatives Have a Problem Attracting Minority Voters?

From here

A mailer put out by a conservative group:

Now look at the photo that they used, and look at the original. Notice anything?

And, of course, the black male has been photoshopped out too:

This is why I (and many others) see US conservatives as racist.

Thoughts prior to my first spandex chase of the year

The roads seem ok, so I’ll probably run that local spandex chase (5K in West Peoria). I am already signed up.

I have no idea how I’ll do or if there are ice patches on this course. Many of the roads look ok but we’ll see when we get out there. The piriformis “ache” is down to a dull roar.

Posts
Reading ability: this is a real weakness among today’s college students:

Today, though, I had them read an essay. In class. Aloud to me. After each paragraph, I stopped them and asked them to paraphrase.

Student: “He’s arguing that gerbils are hamsters.”
Me: “Where do you see that?”
Student: “‘Although some people are inclined to the foolish and idiotic opinion that gerbils are hamsters, we know from overwhelming evidence that this is not the case.’”
Me: “Why does he call it foolish if he thinks that?”
Student: “I don’t know. He just does.”

Me: “Okay, what’s he assuming in this passage?”
Student: “That black people can’t raise gerbils effectively. He’s racist.”
Me: “Where does he say that?”
Student: “‘Of course, there is no correlation between race and effective rodent cultivation.’”
Me: “That’s kind of the opposite of what you just said he said.”
Student: “I feel that he’s racist.”
Me: “I feel a headache. Moving on . . . “

Here’s the thing I realized. They sound out words, sure, and read the sight-words with great ease. But they don’t know what they mean. [...]

I’ve noticed this is mathematics classes. 15 years ago or so, those who couldn’t read the applications problems on a math exam couldn’t do the calculations either. Now, many who can’t read the problem accurately can actually do the calculations. I wonder what is going on in high school or before.

You see some of this after college. Example: a Daily Kos diary discusses an ugly incident in which a lesbian was beat up in a playground; it turns out that the person doing the assaulting yelled anti-lesbian stuff. However a dispute in a playground started the confrontation (the lady had stepped in when she thought that a kid was being bullied by older kids) and, as a commenter pointed out, Texas hate crimes law is very specific as to what constitutes a hate crime:

But lost in this debate has been something important. That is, the ACTUAL language of Texas’s hate crime statute. Because every person thinks they know what a hate crime is, and that’s fine, but it’s not really germane to the conversation. Really what matters (in terms of getting all pissed of at the police) is what’s in the statute. And it says:

In the trial of an offense under Title 5, Penal Code, or Section 28.02, 28.03, or 28.08, Penal Code, the judge shall make an affirmative finding of fact and enter the affirmative finding in the judgment of the case if at the guilt or innocence phase of the trial, the judge or the jury, whichever is the trier of fact, determines beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant intentionally selected the person against whom the offense was committed or intentionally selected property damaged or affected as a result of the offense because of the defendant’s bias or prejudice against a group identified by race, color, disability, religion, national origin or ancestry, age, gender, or sexual preference.

I have bolded what I believe to be the relevant part of this statute.

Of course, some understand. But others really don’t; they said that because the attacker was prejudiced against gays (certainly the case here) and yelled out anti-gay stuff (also clearly the case) this was a hate crime. But that isn’t the standard for hate crimes.

Of course, some “activists” just like to yell and really don’t consider things like, well, what the actual statute says.

Social Stuff

Can you believe that the predominately black gang, The Crips, and a local KKK group are banding together to do something?

Basically, Memphis decided to rename some of its parks; they had been named after Confederate “heros”. Some outside KKK groups are protesting this change, and the local KKK group and the local Crips say “this is our city; it is none of your business.”

Wow….

Wal Mart
I haven’t been inside a Wal Mart in years; perhaps a decade. Nevertheless the last few times I went there, I thought that the store was a dirty, unkempt dump. Perhaps that is catching up to them? I admit that I might be the one who is out of touch; perhaps sales are declining and inventory is dropping for some other reason.

Texas Drought, cute frogs and stereotypes…

Texas Drought: check out this series of photos of Caddo Lake: from all the way full to bone dry now. Things have changed since I moved from Austin in 1991.

Frogs yes, this is a frog:

more at Jerry Coyne’s website.

Minimum wage: a better policy idea that you might think; there is data backing this up.

I’m doing this kind of backwards, writing about the politics first. But I wanted to have my intellectual ducks — or rather, my lucky duckies — in a row before taking on the economics. And while I was grubbing around, Mike Konczal produced the perfect post summing it all up.

So what should you know? First, as John Schmitt (pdf) documents at length, there just isn’t any evidence that raising the minimum wage near current levels would reduce employment. And this is a really solid result, because there have been a *lot* of studies. We can argue about exactly why the simple Econ 101 story doesn’t seem to work, but it clearly doesn’t — which means that the supposed cost in terms of employment from seeking to raise low-wage workers’ earnings is a myth.

Discrimination yes, we’ve made a great deal of progress in race relations; no doubt about it, at all. But, unfortunately, some unfair stereotypes remain:

Not even the inside of a store can provide a Black man–in this case, Forest Whitaker— in New York City refuge from “Stop and Frisk.”
This time, however, the NYPD is not behind the act; it was allegedly an employee of the Upper East Side’s Milano Market who carried out the embarrassing pat down. TMZ reports that Whitaker said he was falsely accused of lifting an item off the store’s shelf and subsequently frisked by an employee. An eyewitness told the entertainment site that the Academy Award winner was frisked in plain view of everyone.
Of course, the shake down produced nothing belonging to the store and Whitaker left the establishment angry and embarrassed.
The actor’s rep told TMZ, “This was an upsetting incident given the fact that Forest did nothing more than walk into the deli. What is most unfortunate about this situation is the inappropriate way store employees are treating patrons of their establishment.
“Frisking individuals without proof/evidence is a violation of rights.”
The rep added, “Forest did not call the authorities at the request of the worker who was in fear of losing his employment. Forest asked that, in the future, the store change their behavior and treat the public in a fair and just manner.”

No darker skin male would be surprised by this. However, some of this goes down when one ages; the younger guys have it a bit worse. There seem to be tensions any time people of different races live together, and humans are a bit hard wired to reason inductively.

Drones, Belief, and Rabbit Hugs…

Science Fun
Jerry Coyne’s website: has some fun “nature” GIF files (animated photos). If you like nature, check them out.

Another “I am going to see this” film:

Morons Neo-Nazi Bill White is back in the news again, this time for threatening his ex wife.

Drone Strikes and US Citizens: are we headed toward establishing a “drone court” (like a FISA court)? The new nature of threats plus new technology means new challenges.

I am still conflicted on this.

The New Civil Rights Things have changed. In days past, civil rights dealt with issues such as people being denied admission to public placed due to the color of their skin. Now, this has become a dispute over whether someone in a rabbit costume hugged their kids. I think that this will be a hard lawsuit to win.

There are worse things than sucking at football….

A public school teacher saw fit to use his students as a captive audience for his anti-Obama, anti-gay ranting. You can watch the video there.

ob GrishamROGERSVILLE — School district officials are investigating allegations that a Lauderdale County High School teacher made slurs in the presence of students regarding first lady Michelle Obama and gays. Superintendent Jennifer Gray confirmed the investigation concerns the school’s head football coach, Bob Grisham, who also teaches driver’s education and psychology.

The investigation includes a 1-minute, 24-second audiotape of Grisham asking who knows who is behind the 600-calorie school lunch.

“Fat butt Michelle Obama,” he said. “Look at her. She looks like she weighs 185 or 190. She’s overweight.”

Male voices interject comments during the discussion, at one point referring to Michelle Obama as a “fat gorilla.”

Later in the tape, Grisham referred to the U.S. as going in the “wrong direction” and tells the students they can “get pissed off at me or not. You can go tell the principal, call the superintendent and tell her. I don’t believe in queers. I don’t like queers, I don’t hate them as a person, but what they do is wrong and an abomination against God.”The tape was reportedly recorded by a student Monday and took place on school campus during the school day.

Grisham told the TimesDaily on Wednesday afternoon he misspoke.“I misspoke in a debate-type situation,” he said. “I have no hatred toward anyone or any group. People that know my heart, they know that.”

Mr. Grisham: if you want to see what is wrong with America, look in the mirror. Note how atrocious his grammar is.

Now, he did get some discipline:

Alabama high school psychology teacher Bob Grisham has been suspended for 10 days without pay for a rant that included calling the first lady “fat butt Michelle Obama.” A student in Grisham’s class made an audio recording of the remarks, which also included derogatory comments about gays.

Grisham’s suspension from Lauderdale County High School begins on Tuesday, and he has been barred from teaching his class for the rest of the school year and ordered to attend sensitivity training. Also the school’s head football coach, he will be assigned “other academic duties” for the rest of the year in place of teaching his class, according to Lauderdale County Superintendent Jennifer Gray.

Grisham will also have to meet monthly with Mark Butler, the school system’s personnel director, to make sure he is meeting his requirements. Grisham’s coaching job was not addressed at the Board of Education meeting on Monday night that decided his punishment for the remarks, Butler told TODAY.com.

The only possible excuse: maybe this is selective editing, though he did make that defiant “you can tell them that I said this”.

Anyway, while I am happy that some student saw fit to record this and bring it to someone’s attention, my worry is that this person is representative of the people in that area; these sentiments aren’t that different from what you see coming from tea party types, and I doubt that he is in the minority in that region of the country.

Look, no one is perfect; I know that I am not. I have my prejudices and I am embarrassed that I have them. No, I won’t tell you what they are but those who have read a lot of my writing can probably guess. But at least I hang around people who are embarrassed by their prejudices and mostly keep their mouths shut; I could live in a region where such prejudices are considered “moral virtues” and “common sense.”

Trillion Dollar Coins, race and child support for …donating sperm?

Economy One way to get around the Republican blackmail attempt is to use a loophole in the law to allow the government to mint a 1 trillion dollar coin and deposit it in the Fed to allow the United States government to meet its current obligations (NOT increase spending, which still has to be authorized by Congress).

Needless to say, the lunatic Republicans are just enraged! After all, shouldn’t the country be held hostage to their toddler-like temper tantrums? Frankly, I don’t care about them in the least. There are some objections from somewhat more sane people though, and Paul Krugman deals with them:

There seem to be two kinds of objections. One is that it would be undignified. Here’s how to think about that: we have a situation in which a terrorist may be about to walk into a crowded room and threaten to blow up a bomb he’s holding. It turns out, however, that the Secret Service has figured out a way to disarm this maniac — a way that for some reason will require that the Secretary of the Treasury briefly wear a clown suit. (My fictional plotting skills have let me down, but there has to be some way to work this in). And the response of the nervous Nellies is, “My god, we can’t dress the secretary up as a clown!” Even when it will make him a hero who saves the day?

The other objection is the apparently primordial fear that mocking the monetary gods will bring terrible retribution.

Joe Weisenthal says that the coin debate is the most important fiscal policy debate of our lifetimes; I agree, with two slight quibbles — it’s arguably more of a monetary than a fiscal debate, and it’s really part of the broader debate that has been going on ever since we entered the liquidity trap.

What the hysterics see is a terrible, outrageous attempt to pay the government’s bills out of thin air. This is utterly wrong, and in fact is wrong on two levels.

The first level is that in practice minting the coin would be nothing but an accounting fiction, enabling the government to continue doing exactly what it would have done if the debt limit were raised.
[...]

So minting the coin would be undignified, but so what? At the same time, it would be economically harmless — and would both avoid catastrophic economic developments and help head off government by blackmail.

What we all hope, of course, is that the prospect of the coin or some equivalent strategy will simply take the debt ceiling off the table. But if not, mint the darn coin.

Or put another way: minting the coin would be like putting the Republicans in a well deserved “time-out”.

By the way, Slate has a “design the coin” contest.

Social
What is it like to be “Black in America”? Read this account; it is something that any “younger” darker skinned male can relate to, though more so African Americans. Roughly speaking: three 30-something black guys (professionals, but it shouldn’t matter) go to the mall. There is an assault there. Evidently the suspect is black. So you can guess what comes next…they are eventually let go after some very rude questioning and then:

After an unnecessarily long questioning, they finally left us. No apologies. No “Merry Christmas.” Just gone. That was when one of my buddies, shaking his head, said, “Every now and then you get a reminder that you are black in America.”

I later shared this story on my Facebook and told some friends and family. The reaction to this was surprisingly insightful. Without fail, my white friends heard the story of our harassment and they were all upset and outraged. They felt that we should file a complaint with the police. My black and Hispanic friends weren’t surprised at all and just shrugged it off. And this is a simple difference in the experiences of races.

Anyway, read it. This really isn’t a post in a “poor me” tone; it is “matter of fact”. And: this demonstrates why I think that ethnic/sex balance on courts is so important. Remember that laws regulate human behavior, and it is impossible to have the laws so precise that following them breaks down into a simple “all possible cases” flowchart. There is no avoiding the “reasonable person” interpretation. And, a reasonable woman might come to a different conclusion than a reasonable man in the same external situation, and the same applies for black, brown, yellow, red and white people.

No good deed goes unpunished.
Ok, a lesbian couple wants to have a kid. So you volunteer to donate sperm to them and sign a “declination of child support/responsibility/rights” waiver and then donate. End of story, right? Wrong…not if that couple lives in a state that doesn’t recognize gay marriage.

The Kansas Department of Children and Families was willing to help, but only if Schreiner cooperated in identifying the girl’s father and making him pay child support. Why should taxpayers be on the hook if the noncustodial parent could cover the girl’s expenses? Bauer tried to explain that as co-parent and breadwinner, that responsibility was hers. But the agency blew her off. Kansas doesn’t recognize gay marriages, marriage-like domestic partnerships, or adoptions by same-sex couples. According to Bauer, a bureaucrat told her “he wasn’t going to discuss anything with me because I’m not the parent or legal guardian.”

Instead, the state targeted the closest thing the girl had to a male parent: the sperm donor. The agency told Schreiner she wouldn’t get any help unless she coughed up his name. So she did. And now the state is suing Marotta for nearly $6,000 in medical expenses for the child. Never mind the predonation contract in which the parties had stipulated, “Jennifer and Angie further agree to indemnify William and hold him harmless for any child support payments demanded of him by any other person or entity, public or private.” The state says that contract is meaningless, since the sperm donation wasn’t administered by a doctor. Furthermore, the state argues, under Kansas law, “a person cannot contract away his or her obligations to support their child.”

As they say: “no good deed ever goes unpunished.”

Please, Please, Please

Some Republicans: think that Sarah Palin should be the GOP nominee in 2016:

Furthermore, looks count in politics, and Palin at age 48, has it all over her possible competition, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, who will be 69 by election day 2016 and who let someone talk her into adopting the flowing blond locks of a college student, making her look like Brunnhilde in a small-town Wagner production. Men love Sarah Palin, and she loves men.

She’s tough as nails too. After Election 2008, she was supposed to have been through. This year eight of the 14 GOP candidates Palin endorsed for Congress won election or reelection, including tea party favorite Ted Cruz for a Senate seat in Texas.

Sure, there is going to be never-ending nastiness from the left, but she’s already lived through that once. Katie Couric? A has-been. Tina Fey? Her shtick was already wearing thin in 2008.

There are also the snooty East Coast Republican intellectual types, such as Peggy Noonan, who look down their noses at a woman who doesn’t shop at Neiman Marcus and didn’t attend an Ivy League university. But Peggy made a fool of herself calling the election for Romney on Nov. 5. Who’s going to care what she and her ilk have to say next time?

Some Republicans will say Palin has too much baggage from 2008, and we need to look for a new Sarah Palin. But I don’t see what’s wrong with the one we’ve got. Ever since the 1990s, Republicans have been looking for the next Ronald Reagan. Reagan is now revered in bipartisan circles, but during his presidency he was, like Palin, ridiculed by liberals. They cited “Bedtime for Bonzo” and sneered at his no-name college degree.

Sarah Palin is the new Ronald Reagan: charming and affable and unwilling to back down if she’s right. I can’t see what’s wrong with that.

Charlotte Allen writes frequently about feminism, politics and religion.

I say: I agree! Pretty please…run her! (I can’t tell whether this Los Angeles Times editorial is satire or not because some journalists really argue this poorly.)

Shaming racists: someone set up a “rouge’s gallery” of racists who post racists rants on the internet. Good idea or no?

Do I really need this

First a political quip:

Fox News viewers haven’t learned anything from this election.

Now about the topic of the post
5.1 mile run (hilly course, dark, chilly but not bad running weather). Time: 50:48 (not remarkable).

Good news: second run in the new shoes; they feel great!

But…as I was going up the final hill (5 in all) ….I run a flat 1.15 miles to this and then 1.15 miles home:

I wondered: “do I need to be doing this…is this really counter productive at my stage in life”??? Then I thought: nothing hurt (no joint pain, muscle pain, etc.); I just had the usual discomfort of performance. Nothing more than that; this was my lazy mind trying to get me out of doing something that was uncomfortable at that moment.

My times are improving; last weekend’s 15K run was at a slightly faster average pace than some of my 5K runs the year before. I am making progress…I just have to be patient and realistic.

Gills, Stars and Important Issues

Science and Creationism
I really don’t mind ignorance; after all ALL of us are ignorant about most things. Really; no matter how good you are at something, it is impossible to be “in the know” about every topic. But what bothers me about creationists the most is this (Katha Pollitt via The Nation):

One reason is that rejecting evolution expresses more than an inability to think critically; it relies on a fundamentally paranoid worldview. Think what the world would have to be like for evolution to be false. Almost every scientist on earth would have to be engaged in a fraud so complex and extensive it involved every field from archaeology, paleontology, geology and genetics to biology, chemistry and physics.

Seriously; do these people really believe this? Or is it worse: do they believe that they actually “know more” than all of these scientists….or that putting faith in the stories written down by ignorant sheepherders thousands of years ago gives them some special wisdom?

I suppose that once superstition has you by the throat, it is difficult to let go of it, no matter the amount of evidence.

Speaking of creationism, Troy Britain (in the his blog Pigeons Playing Chess) writes an excellent rebuttal to creationist claims about the so-called “gill slits” that human (and other mammal) embryos have. This reminds me a bit of what is in Neil Shubin’s book Your Inner Fish.

(hat tip: Jerry Coyne)

Note: the title of Britain’s blog comes from the following: arguing with creationists is a bit like playing chess with a pigeon. It doesn’t matter how good you are; it struts onto the board, knocks the pieces over, craps all over it, and then sticks out its chest as if triumphant.

More science

Click on the thumbnail to see the full size version. Note: in the thickest part of this cluster, there may be as many as 100 stars in a cube of 3 light years across. For reference: our nearest star (other than the sun, of course), is 4 light years away. That would be some night sky, wouldn’t it? However, I wonder if such a cluster would play havoc with planetary orbits.

Science and Society

Lest you accuse me of being a hypocrite: I drive a hybrid…when I drive at all. I walk to work every day.

Politics
Come on Romney campaign:

Seriously?

Today, President Obama gave a major speech. He pointed out that, as it currently sits, we are going nowhere. We have two very different versions of where to take the country and there is little opportunity to compromise between these two versions. Now if we have the same result (divided Congress, Obama reelected), maybe, just maybe, the Republicans will realize that there is nothing to gain by opposing the President just to oppose him. Maybe….I doubt it.

The problem is our system. People who live in Republican Congressional districts aren’t going to like the direction that I would like and visa-versa. We might be better served by a Parliamentary system with lots of parties.

Republicans: FAIL.

RNClatinos.com, the Republican National Committee’s new website aimed at Latino voter outreach, uses a stock photograph of Asian children as its banner picture.

The stock photo found on Shutterstock is listed with tags including “asia, asian, cheeks, children, cool… interracial, japanese… thailand, together, trendy.” But the words ‘hispanic’ or ‘latino’ are nowhere on the page.

The GOP has been making a concerted effort to reach out to Latino voters this election season — but, by any account, this particular effort was less than successful.

Geeze…how hard could it be to round up some Cuban kids for your own cute photo?

2012 election
A few readers (including me) sent in our 2012 predictions. Consensus: close race; Obama a slight edge for the moment.

Intrade has Obama 52.8, Romney 42.6, which sounds just about right. I’d put it 55-45 which would be in line with what I am seeing in the European betting lines.

Ronald Reagan: encouraged class warfare?

Another topic:

Trayvon Martin
Interestingly, the conservatives are attacking the attention paid to Trayvon Martin. Here is what I find disgusting about these attacks:

Meanwhile, the right-wing outrage machine is more concerned that Zimmerman may be being wrongly accused of racism than that a boy died largely because he’s black. William F. Buckley’s magazine played a key role in building that outrage machine, and it continues to keep it going, whether or not John Derbyshire works there anymore.