The Erickson Report, Page 2: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Clowns]

The Erickson Report, Page 2: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Clowns]

Okay, we turn now to a popular feature, Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages. We start, as usual, with the Clowns and oh do we have a carful this time.

Our first Clown is conservative radio host and poster boy for privilege Ben Shapiro, who said on his show a couple of weeks ago that people who have to work two jobs are actually just, well, stupid:

If you had to work more than one job to have a roof over your head or food on the table, you probably shouldn’t have taken the job that’s not paying you enough. That’d be a you problem.

Put another way, if you have to take a second - or a third, or a fourth, or whatever - job in order to provide for your family, it's your own damn fault because you should have refused to take any job at all until one that paid enough came along.

He got scorched on Twitter, provoking him to shift into damage control mode, claiming - I shouldn't even have to tell you this - claiming he was taken out of context, the context being, it seems, that the government should take no steps at all toward establishing a living wage because The Market (pbui) "knows more than you do."

Ben Shapiro

How that affects his blaming struggling people for their problems goes unexplained. Which is pretty typical for a Clown.

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Next up, and we're sort of taking these chronologically, is the Hasbro company, which has come out with a variation on the board game Monopoly, this one called "Monopoly Socialism." You immediately can get a flavor of the game by noting the tagline is "Winning is for capitalists."

Historian Nick Kapur described the game in a lengthy Twitter thread, including noting the lame jokes about vegetarianism - how that got to be about socialism is beyond me - and the "We Are All Winners" school as well as pointing out the mockery aimed at environmentalism and, get this, voting.

the game

The whole idea seems to be that no one in the game gets anywhere, the "community fund" that finances projects which individual players can't afford is designed to be constantly going broke, and from time to time any wealth that the community has actually accumulated is simply destroyed.

I could have done without Kapur's suggesting the target audience is "hate-filled baby boomers who grew up during the cold war and are triggered by anything done by anyone under 40," but the fact remains that the whole thing is so thoroughly lame it is hard to imagine just who it is for and it is clearly the product of the minds of Clowns.

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We move on to the fact that last week, in response to a report that bedbugs had been found in the New York Times newsroom, a George Washington University professor named named David Karpf tweeted that "The bedbugs are a metaphor. The bedbugs are Bret Stephens," Stephens being a right-wing Times op-Ed columnist.

Bret Stephens

His tweet got, Karpf later said, nine likes and zero retweets and was not sent to Stephens.

Now personally, I think the joke is not funny and in fact a bit creepy but Stephens, who somehow heard about it, went out of his little mind. He wrote to Karpf complaining about his tweet and essentially daring Karpf to come to his house and say it to his face - a letter which he copied to the the university provost, that is, Karpf's boss. Oh, not to threaten his job of course, not to get him in trouble at work, oh no perish the thought, rather it was merely that he thought the provost should be aware of his underling's behavior. He then wrote a whole column about about attacks on Jews in World War II referencing insect comparisons and saying "the rhetoric of infestation is back."

To top is off, he then took advantage of his place as a contributor on MSNBC to get face time to bloviate about his side of his by-then-viral tiff with Karpf, who of course was afforded no such opportunity.

And if all that doesn't add up to Clown status (with the Times and MSNBC as enablers), then how about this:

James Inhofe

Despite cc'ing Karpf's boss, when it came to the case of Tucks Carlson saying Iraqis are "semi-literate primitive monkeys," Stephens defended him, saying threatening someone's career is an assault on free speech - in addition to which, insect and "infestation" references are not new to him, as he once compared Palestinians to a giant mosquito.

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Okay, an old favorite Clown is Sen. James Inhofe. He has introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act to limit the authority of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to regulate lake levels and flood control related to a dam on Grand Lake in northeastern Oklahoma.

Folks upstream of the damn, including local Native American tribes and officials in the high-poverty town of Miami, say that maintaining high water levels on the lake has contributed to repeated floods as water backs up from the dam. Two dozen floods in less than 30 years, in fact, with 150 homes torn down and more abandoned as a result. This spring’s floods forced the Eastern Shawnee tribe to evacuate, its ceremonial grounds covered in three feet of water.

LeBron James

Inhofe wants higher water levels at Grand Lake on the grounds that it "makes the lake a better place for recreation and commerce." We're all sure here that the facts that he has a vacation home there and a company in his wife’s name holds $1 million in property around the lake has nothing to do with his enthusiasm for deregulation.

Inhofe's middle name, no joke, is Mountain. Which seems entirely appropriate for a Clown who has rocks in his head.

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And the Clowns keep on coming. LeBron James has reportedly filed for a trademark for the phrase "Taco Tuesday," apparently based on his popular series of social media posts on the theme.

According to the application, James wants to trademark the phrase for "advertising and marketing services" through "indirect methods" that include social media and blogging.

So be careful: If you ever want to have tacos on a Tuesday, you may have to pay a fee to LeBron James, professional Clown.

the shirt

As a footnote to that, of course the phrase "Taco Tuesday" has been around a long time, long before LeBron James became a fabulously rich man who wants to be a fabulously richer one. You're not supposed to be able to trademark a common phrase or expression, but in a world where money speaks louder than law and the patent office is hopelessly overburdened, that principle did not keep Paris Hilton from trademarking "That's hot!" or Rachel Zoe from getting a trademark on the word "bananas" referring to something crazy, even though that's an expression that dates back to at least 1935.

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Then there are the Clowns of the administration of the Highland Hills Middle School in Highland Hills, Indiana, where a 13-year-old girl got in trouble over a t-shirt.

What was wrong with it? Well, it had a slogan that read "Why be racist, sexist, homophobic, or transphobic when you can just be quiet?" which the principal declared inappropriate and disrespectful, along with claiming the words “Sex” and “Homo” were too eye-catching. As you can see in the picture, yeah, they really do just pop out at you, don't they.

The school's dress code bans shirts that are "suggestive, obscene or promote alcohol or drug products or use" or are sheer. It seems that "oppose bigotry" needs to be added to that list - unless doing so is already considered obscene by the Clowns at Highland Hills Middle School.

Dan Rehill

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Finally for this time, we have the Rev. Dan Reehil, a Clown pastor at the St. Edward School, a Roman Catholic grammar school in Nashville, Tennessee. He just sent an email to parents of students telling them that the Harry Potter books have been removed from the school library because they "risk conjuring evil spirits." Seriously.

Quoting the email:

These books present magic as both good and evil, which is not true, but in fact a clever deception. The curses and spells used in the books are actual curses and spells; which when read by a human being risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text.

Personally, I think that's just Riddikulus.

Clowns to the right of me, Clowns to the left of me, Clowns in front of me, volleyed and thundered....

213.2 - The fight for LGBT rights goes on

The fight for LGBT rights goes on

When the Supreme Court, or at least a majority of it, recognized that the fundamental right to marry should not be limited by the gender of the person you love any more than it should be limited by their race, I celebrated it - but added that this did not mean the fight for equal rights for LGBT, of it you prefer, LGBTQ, people. So a few notes on various fronts on that.

For one, the bigots are still searching out ways they can continue to discriminate and - well, be bigots - and it  turns out that the US Senate - or, to be accurate, a sufficient number of the members of the US Senate - have got their backs.

Just over a week ago, the Senate voted down the Student Nondiscrimination Act, intended to provide LGBTQ some protections against bullying and unfair treatment.

The legislation, actually got a majority of votes including some from the GOPpers - but the vote was 52-45, meaning it fell short of the supermajority of 60 votes that every damn thing needs now because filibusters have become quite literally a routine part of Senate business.

The would have established a mandate that public schools must refrain from and actively combat, anti-LGBT discrimination in those schools. The bill also would have empowered LGBT students to seek help through the courts if they felt they had been discriminated against. And of course we couldn't have that.

Senator Al Franken, who has championed the measure for several years, noted that the bill would simply take the protections against discrimination or harassment which already exist for factors such as gender, race, national origin, and disability and extend them to cover LGBT students. Quoting Franken on the need for the bill:

More than 30 percent of LGBT kids report missing a day of school in the previous month because they felt unsafe. Nearly 75 percent of LGBT students say they’ve been verbally harassed at school. And more than 35 percent of LGBT kids report being physically attacked.

His words were given added weight by a recent report from the New York Civil Liberties Union, the state branch of the ACLU, which found that transgender students in that supposedly liberal state are facing high levels of discrimination and illegal treatment, including exclusion, segregation, and unconstitutional bias - and it’s likely that this is commonplace in many parts of the United States.

However, opponents of Franken's bill dismissed it as "well-intentioned" but would lead to "costly lawsuits." Which is kind of odd since states - such as New York - which have adopted state-level protections of LGBT students have not seen a big rise in lawsuits. Others said LGBT students are already covered under Title IX, even though Title IX makes no mention of LGBT students and besides, if they are already covered, what is the problem with saying so specifically? Finally, it was argued that this is a local-level, education issue, not a federal-level one, an argument I will take as a sincere one when and only when those same people start moving to strip away protections based on gender, race, national origin, and the rest and openly propose leaving all such protections to those same jurisdictions which haven't acted on them before.

Meanwhile on another front, speaking of the local level, there are, of course, still the country clerks who refuse to provide marriage licenses to same-sex couples, sometimes trying to cover themselves by refusing to give out any marriage licenses at all but who even then will cop to religious bigotry as the reason for their actions.

Now, the rational response is to say "if you refuse to do your job, if you claim your religion prevents you from doing your job, then quit." But that, again, is the rational response, which doesn't apply here because like most right wingers, they want to stand up for what they believe in - without ever facing any consequences. So they want to be able to refuse to do their jobs yet still keep them.

But for the right wingers in Congress, that's small stuff. They're thinking big. In fact, they want to help every anti-LGBT bigot ignore laws and violate the human rights of LGBT folk at no cost to themselves.

Right wingers in both houses of Congress are pushing a bill that would ban any federal-level "discriminatory action"

against a person, wholly or partially on the basis that such person believes or acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.

In the bill, "person" is defined in a way that would include even for-profit corporations and "discriminatory" means any change in pretty much anything related to tax status, federal contracts, benefits, employment, and more. Put another way, some corporation decides that "God hates fags" and fires an employee for marrying a same-sex partner, or some "Christian" organization turns away gay people from federally-funded homeless shelters and drug programs, and the feds pretty much have to act as if that is just fine.

The bill already has 130 cosponsors in the House and it is thought it will pass if it comes to a vote. The prospects in the Senate are dimmer but that doesn't mean they won't push it as part of working to legitimizing this whole idea of theocracy.

Finally for now, there's another reason to bring this bill up: note the phrase "or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage." This bill would essentially empower any business anywhere in the country to fire anyone, any time, for any sex of any kind outside of heterosexual marriage without fear of any consequences from the feds. Some folk have been saying it allows for discrimination against unwed mothers - and yes, women do get fired for getting pregnant outside of marriage - but in fact it clearly goes well beyond that.

And this is not just a case of poor wording or not thinking it through. Sen. Mike Lee, who introduced the Senate version of the bill, was asked about a hypothetical university firing an unmarried woman for having sex out of wedlock. He said, "There are colleges and universities that have a religious belief that sexual relations are to be reserved for marriage" and they "ought to be protected in their religious freedom." In other words, they know exactly what they are saying.

Just last week, in discussing a suit about insurance coverage of birth control, I said "we told you years ago they would not stop at abortion." You can't say you weren't warned this sort of thing was coming.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.care2.com/causes/the-u-s-senate-just-told-lgbtq-kids-they-dont-matter.html
http://www.care2.com/causes/were-failing-trans-students-in-new-york-and-probably-across-the-u-s.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/senate-votes-down-federal-protections-for-k-12-lgbt-students/2015/07/14/745da4dc-2a64-11e5-a250-42bd812efc09_story.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33601483
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/18/1403401/-Republican-Legislation-Will-Permit-Companies-To-Fire-Single-Pregnant-Women
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/s1598/text
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/first-amendment-defense-act_55a7ffe6e4b04740a3df4ca1
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/07/2122.html

191.9 - Clown Award: Kermit Elementary School, Kermit, TX

Clown Award: Kermit Elementary School, Kermit, TX

Finally for this week, we have our other regular feature, the Clown Award, given for an act of meritorious stupidity.

This week the Big Red Nose goes to the administration of Kermit Elementary School in Kermit, Texas.

A 9-year-old boy, Aiden Steward, had recently seen the movie “The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies.”* He came to school with a large blue ring which he said was "the one true ring" forged in Mount Doom. He told a classmate that he could make that classmate turn invisible if he put the ring on their head.

The school called that "a terroristic threat" and suspended him.

The principal, one Roxanne Greer, said threats, real or imagined, to another child’s safety would not be tolerated. So now even imaginary "threats" are "terroristic" even when they aren't threats - because remember, putting on the ring turns you invisible, but all you have to do to be visible again is take it off. Hey, Greer, the invisibility is the point. It's a feature, not a bug.

Greer refused to comment on the suspension, citing confidentiality policies. Right. The suspension isn't confidential, the claim it was a "threat to another child's safety" is not confidential, but the logical reasoning for it, when challenged by the local newspaper? Oh, that's confidential.

When did we become such a frightened people? When did "Be afraid, be very afraid" become our new national motto? Yes, I know, 9/11 and all that but this actually predates that. The wrong side of our society just took 9/11 and ran with it as a way of intensifying our already-existing inchoate fears and focusing them on a chosen enemy-of-the-moment. But the fear is constant, generalized, and is especially so when it comes to children, to the point where being a parent is almost guaranteed to make you a criminal at some point:

A woman in Chicago is charged with "contributing to the delinquency of a minor" for leaving her 4-year-old safely locked in her car, playing with his iPad, for literally four minutes while she ran an errand.

A couple in Maryland is being investigated by child services, with the risk of having their children taken from them, for alleged "child neglect" for letting their 10- and 6-year-old children walk on their own the one mile from a local park to their home.

A mother in South Carolina was charged with “unlawful conduct toward a child” for leaving her 9-year-old daughter alone to play in a park where there were a number of other children around.

A man in Ohio has been charged with "child endangerment" because, unbeknownst to him, his son skipped church to go play with friends.

This is insane. I expect most anyone my age could come up with a similar story, but I can recall that when I was about the age of about 8, my brother, who would have been about 10, and I would walk a mile to the bus stop, take the bus into town, walk to the train station, take the train to another town, and then walk a mile to our grandparents' house where our parents would pick us up after work. I shudder to think how many years in prison my parents would have spent if it was like today.

But let's leave that aside for now to get back directly to our clowns, who did even more to earn the Big Red Nose than simply to wet their administrative pants over a child's fantasy.

The Steward family moved to the Kermit Independent School District only six months ago. This is now the third time Aiden has been suspended this school year.

The first was for referring to a classmate as black. The second was for bringing his favorite book to school: "The Big Book of Knowledge." This is a popular children's encyclopedia. But the teacher discovered that the book had a section on pregnancy which included an illustration of a pregnant woman. That got Aiden suspended.

The administration of Kermit Elementary School: clearly, undeniably, a bunch of clowns.

*Personal note: I have not seen "The Battle of Five Armies," but I have seen "An Unexpected Journey" and "The Desolation of Smaug" and I have to tell you that the original Lord of the Rings trilogy was waaaaay better.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/texas-boy-suspended-bringing-ring-power-school-article-1.2099103
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/1/texas-boy-9-suspended-for-threatening-to-use-hobbi/
http://www.salon.com/2014/06/03/the_day_i_left_my_son_in_the_car/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/maryland-couple-want-free-range-kids-but-not-all-do/2015/01/14/d406c0be-9c0f-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/07/14/and-now-the-criminalization-of-parenthood/

160.3 - Update: can you refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance?

Update: can you refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance?

Two weeks ago, in talking about the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's decision that the phrase "under god" in the Pledge of Allegiance has nothing to do with religion and so does not violate the rights of atheists, I noted that part of the court's argument was that reciting the Pledge is voluntary, that students, the Court said, "are free to recite the pledge or any part of it that they see fit" or they can "choose to abstain."

Which, as I noted, is true legally - but, I asked, just how true it is socially, just how free are we in day-to-day reality to not join in reciting the Pledge.

Well, we have our answer.

The Elmira City School District of Elmira, New York, stands accused of bullying a high school sophomore who refused to stand for the pledge because she objected to the reference to "under God."

She was ordered to stand by her teacher, who threatened her with disciplinary action if she didn't. The teacher also told her, in front of the whole class, that not standing for the Pledge is "disrespectful to America and to military personnel."

And it seems this was not an isolated incident there. The American Humanist Association, in a letter to the school demanding it recognize students' constitutional right to not say the pledge, said:

We have been informed that teachers - and even an administrator - in your school have inappropriately pressured students to participate in the Pledge exercise. For example, students have been told that nonparticipation is disrespectful and unpatriotic, that nonparticipation would itself be disruptive, and that participation is expected because nonparticipation would encourage others to opt out.

Even though the legal right to refuse to recite the pledge is clearly and well-established, the question about the practical ability, the day-to-day freedom, to abstain remains.

Sources cited in links:
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2014/05/1584-outrage-of-week-atheists-dont.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2014/05/1585-footnote-freedoms-just-another.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/27/atheist-student-pledge-of-allegiance_n_5399090.html
http://americanhumanist.org/system/storage/2/82/1/5134/Letter_to_Elmira_City_School_5-27-14_.pdf

Left Side of the Aisle #160

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of May 29 - June 4, 2014

This week:

Some dare to say "gun control"
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/05/24/315425094/shooting-near-uc-santa-barbara-leaves-3-dead
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/05/24/315624700/alleged-shooter-in-california-left-vast-digital-trail
http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2014/05/24/nr-california-shooting-victims-father-press-conference.cnn.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/25/peter-king-gun-control_n_5390146.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/25/senate-gun-control-bills_n_5389192.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/us/16cnd-shooting.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.bradycampaign.org/sites/default/files/GunDeathandInjuryStatSheet3YearAverageFINAL.pdf
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/05/27/deleo-unveils-bill-strengthen-gun-laws-mass/Y7CUFEFhGcOHnY6D5GJTmI/story.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/27/chicago-gun-plan_n_5398340.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/06/chicago-gun-ban_n_4551227.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/27/joe-the-plumber-guns_n_5397981.html
http://barbwire.com/2014/05/27/open-letter-parents-victims-murdered-elliot-rodger/

USPS under fire by those who want to destroy it
http://www.news.ruralinfo.net/2014/05/committee-passes-controversial-issa-bill-apwu.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/21/postal-service-communal-mailboxes_n_5366124.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2011/10/mailing-it-in.html

Update: can you refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance?
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2014/05/1584-outrage-of-week-atheists-dont.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2014/05/1585-footnote-freedoms-just-another.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/27/atheist-student-pledge-of-allegiance_n_5399090.html
http://americanhumanist.org/system/storage/2/82/1/5134/Letter_to_Elmira_City_School_5-27-14_.pdf

A Memorial Day thought
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/05/26/veterans-for-peace-remember-fallen-soldiers-with-harbor-front-ceremony-advocating-end-war/aylGYUlJt83qIvWyAdBsgL/story.html

Clown Award: Michael Boggs
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/13/michael-boggs-confirmation-hearing_n_5316391.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Banner
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/27/michael-boggs-abortion_n_5398327.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

Outrage of the Week: domestic violence is not like beer
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/27/bar-domestic-violence-joke_n_5397927.html
http://domesticviolencestatistics.org/domestic-violence-statistics/

Link to Richard Martinez' statement:
http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2014/05/24/nr-california-shooting-victims-father-press-conference.cnn.html

155.6 - The Clown Award: South Fayette High School of McDonald, PA

The Clown Award: South Fayette High School of McDonald, PA

Now it's time for our other regular feature, the Clown Award, given for meritorious stupidity.

This week, the big red nose goes to the administration of the South Fayette High School in McDonald, Pennsylvania.

Christian Stanfield is a 15-year-old boy who suffers from comprehension delay and anxiety disorders, as well as ADHD. What that means is that he is slow to grasp things, more particularly, he has a low mental processing speed, which means not only does he take time to understand things, he does everything slowly.

He had been in a special education math class at South Fayette High School, where he is a sophomore. He had been getting harassed and bullied by other students in the class, up to and including having books slammed against his head. His mother, Shea Love, contacted the school several times about the bullying to no avail.

Finally, Christian got tired of it. So he used his iPad to make a 7-minute recording of the bullying, which he showed to his mother. She went and confronted school officials with the evidence.

The response of Principal Scott Milburn of South Fayette High School in McDonald, Pennsylvania was to call police and accuse Christian of felony wiretapping. A city cop named Robert Kurta questioned Christian and, he said, based solely on what the principal told him, charged christian with disorderly conduct, which, as a local attorney said, "is a catch-all for disposing of a case." That is, it's what cops charge you with when they want to charge you with something but have no idea what that something might be. School officials demanded Christian destroy the recording and punished him with Saturday detention.

To make this even more absurd, South Fayette District Judge Maureen McGraw-Desmet upheld the disorderly conduct charge, fining Christian $25 plus court costs.

By the way, the students tormenting Christian? Nothing happened to them at all. Not a thing.

So a student is being harassed and bullied. His mother repeatedly notifies the school. Nothing is done. The student records the bullying and the school is presented with the evidence. As a result, the lamebrain school wants the victim charged with a felony, the lamebrain cop charges him with disorderly conduct, and the lamebrain judge convicts him. All while the actual guilty parties walk without even getting a sour look.

So the South Fayette High School in McDonald, Pennsylvania - in fact, forget that, everyone involved, the school, the cops, the courts: You are, all of you, clowns.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/04/15/teen-punished-for-recording-alleged-bullying-to-sue-school-district/
http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/5945781-74/fayette-south-district
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/04/15/3427016/boy-with-disabilities-bullied/
http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/5953843-74/fayette-south-bullying

135.6 - Footnote to the Updates: Confederate flag vs. rainbow flag

Footnote to the Updates: Confederate flag vs. rainbow flag

A quick footnote to both those updates as an indication of how far we have yet to go.

The rainbow flag is accepted as a symbol of the movement for LGBT rights. Well, a new poll by Public Policy Polling found that Americans are more offended by the rainbow flag than by the Confederate flag, even though the latter is connected to insurrection, racism, and slavery and those who say it's just a symbol of "regional pride" are either liars or so profoundly ignorant of history as to make their opinions not worth hearing.

The actual questions were about if high school students should be allowed to wear to school Confederate flags or, quoting the question, "gay pride" flags. Those were, just to make sure it's clear, two separate questions.

When asked if high school students should be allowed to wear Confederate flags to school, a plurality of 43%-37% said yes. When asked if high school students should be allowed to wear gay pride flags to school, the answer was a huge no, by 57%-28%.

When the question was posited as an either/or, the results of anything were worse: Only 9% said the rainbow flag was appropriate attire, compared to 38% being okay with the Confederate flag.

The one ameliorating factor is that those in the group who were asked these questions were overwhelmingly conservative: Fully 76% described themselves as "somewhat" or "very" conservative. So those polled were not representative of the US population as a whole.

But it still means they are out there, out there in significant numbers, people who would rather celebrate racism and bigotry than equality and human rights. We still have a long way to do.

Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/14/rainbow-flag-offensive-confederate_n_4273886.html
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/11/cruz-down-17-to-hillary-but-still-leading-with-conservatives.html
http://www.edgeonthenet.com/news/local/151893/poll_finds_pride_flag_more_offensive_than_confederate_flag

Left Side of the Aisle #112 - Part 2

Clown Award: Bill O'Reilly

The whole preceding item could be taken as a very long introduction to one of our regular features, the Clown Award, given for acts of meritorious stupidity.

This one starts with the news that Tippecanoe School for the Arts and Humanities in Milwaukee recently celebrated School Spirit Week with a series of events for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. As part of that, the student council chose Friday of the week to be what they called "Gender Bender Day," a voluntary event that called for boys to dress like girls and girls to dress like boys.

And of course some parents hit the roof. It was called “ridiculous,” “creepy," "the wrong lesson," it's "having students dress as transvestites," and in one particularly revealing comment, one mother claimed the event promotes the acceptance of homosexuality among students - and we all know what a horrible thing being accepting of gay people is.

The school tried to cool things off by renaming it "Switch It Up Day" but that of course failed. Still, what happened is that the day came and went, some participated, some didn't, and the world, naturally did not come to an end.

Despite that, those parents are not the winners of the big red nose this week. No, this week, it goes to that supremo of stupidity, that icon of idiocy, the clown's clown, Bill O'Reilly.

The topic of "Gender Bender Day" came up on his show, and he denounced the school's teachers as his favorite long-since cliched epithet "pinheads" while claiming the whole thing was a "politically correct" "anti-bullying" project. Which first off shows how, typically, he has no idea what he is talking about: recall this was done by the student council, not the teachers or administration, as part of "school spirit week" and had nothing to do with any anti-bullying effort.

But that sort of base ignorance is not enough for the high standards BO usually sets. In response to BO's "it's an anti-bullying tactic" rant, his guest, comedian Adam Carolla, said "I have a six-year-old son, I have twins. He had to ride in his sister's pink car seat the other day for a mile and he screamed like a stuck pig the entire time."

O'Reilly says, quoting, "That's a good sign. That's a good sign because, if he had liked that, you might have to send him to camp."

That's right, according to Bill O'Reilly, if a boy likes pink, there's something wrong with him. He needs correction. He needs treatment, he needs to be sent to - just what sort of camp were you thinking of, Mr. BO?

This kind of rigid, doctrinaire, sexist thinking is stupid, it is bigoted, it is damaging to children, it is the notion of a complete and total clown.

Oh, and by the way: Apparently, according to BO, a boy liking a pink car seat is a sign of - well of something being wrong with him. I wonder if the same applies to pink ties.

Sources:
http://fox6now.com/2013/05/24/gender-bender-day-causes-controversy-at-tippecanoe/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/28/gender-bender-day-homosexuality_n_3346285.html
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/06/04/bill-oreillys-parenting-advice-punish-boys-who/194335

Left Side of the Aisle #98 - Part 4

Clown #2: Brian Camenker of MassResistance

Our other clown this week is Brian Camenker of MassResistance, a collection of anti-gay bigots who, unhappily, prove that Massachusetts is not immune to that particular infection.

On Feb. 15, the Massachusetts Department of Education issued a new set of rules for teachers on how to handle transgender student issues, such as bathroom use and sports team affiliation. Among the guidance is that teachers shouldn't confront a student's parents because, as noted by Carlos Maza of Equality Matters,

[s]tudies have shown that over half of all transgender people experience family rejection, with roughly 20 percent becoming the victims of domestic violence from a family member after coming out.

In response, Camenker put on his big red nose and likened LGBT-friendly school administrators to guards at Nazi concentration camps.

In an interview, he told a Christian radio station

These school administrators, you know I mean you think of them as what the Nazi concentration camp guards must have been like where they are doing this horrible evil and they are just taking orders or something, they believe in it.

This kind of thing is not new for him: Last May, apparently floundering for a way to make support for gay rights the same as racism, he made a totally befuddling equation of diversity training with Jim Crow laws.

Still, this time he reached for the Nazi meme. There is an informal notion on the internet that during a flame war, the first person who brings up the Nazis automatically loses. Which on this issue would make Brian Camenker the loser - and a clown.

Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/01/bill-oreilly-on-transgender-equality-guidelines-madness_n_2783809.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/brian-camenker-lgbt-advocates-schools-nazi-camp-guards_n_2776172.html

Voter ID laws are meant to block progressive voters

I’ve talked before about proposed voter ID laws, laws demanding that certain approved forms of ID, often a photo ID, be shown at a polling place in order to be able to vote. I’ve noted that the main effect of such bills - and I maintain it is the intended effect of such bills - is to disenfranchise poor, elderly, minority, and student voters, all of who are disproportionately affected by these laws and who also, by what surely is no coincidence, are constituencies more likely to be liberal rather than conservative in their voting patterns.

These laws are, that is, intended to permanently tilt the electoral playing field in favor of the right wing.

I raise this now because Massachusetts is not immune to this crap. Republicans in the state legislature are pushing voter ID bills. One such bill was killed right around the end of May by being "referred for study" - in effect, tabling it. Even though that one was killed, you can be damn sure there will be more about it.

There are a couple of things that get me about this. First is why I called it an attempt to disenfranchise liberal-leaning voters. The GOPpers in the state legislature pushing this idiocy argued that

people cannot cash a check, rent a car, rent a DVD or even enter some government buildings without showing an ID.

That is exactly what gets argued every time and everywhere this comes up. You get exactly the same arguments, often in exactly the same words. Do not even try to tell me this is not a coordinated campaign. What’s more, these are claims carefully designed to avoid engaging in logical argument. After all, the real response should be what the hell? Since when is cashing a check or renting a DVD a basic component of a healthy democracy? Since when are they a basic function of citizenship? And weren’t we just a few years ago talking about how we could encourage more people to come out and vote? Why now are we supposed to focus instead on how many roadblocks we can put in their path?

Another thing that gets me is that right after arguing, in effect, that everyone already has ID, they’ll respond to being faced with the fact that something like 11% of potentially-eligible voters, disproportionately the elderly and minorities, don’t have such ID by ignoring their previous claims and declaring it doesn’t matter because some agency (usually the given state’s version of Massachusetts’ Registry of Motor Vehicles) will issue free IDs. Which is all well and good - except you need to be able to produce the documents to prove you are who you say you are in order to get the ID. That is, you in effect have to have ID in order to get the ID - and in some cases, such as having to prove citizenship, the paperwork can cost $200. By contrast, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, which studies topics like voter access, when the poll tax was declared unconstitutional in 1966, it was $1.50.

And here’s the real thing, the real thing that gets me and proves this has nothing to do with “protecting the integrity” of the voting process: The only kind of “voter fraud” that these laws could possibly address is voter impersonation, that is, going to the polls and pretending to be someone other than who you are. That is the only kind of fraud these laws could address and that kind of fraud is vanishingly rare. It is a solution in search of a problem.

One example: When Shrub’s DOJ launched a crackdown on fraud in 2002, five years later it had obtained only 86 convictions. That's 7/100,000 of one percent of the 122 million people who voted for president in just the 2004 elections. Even if the DOJ only caught one percent of the actual fraud, even if the actual rate of fraud was 100 times higher, that would make it 7/1000 of one percent.

Another example: Texas passed a voter ID law last year, making a picture ID necessary to vote. This came despite the fact that the 2008 and 2010 general elections, in which more than 13 million voters participated, together produced fewer than five “illegal voting” complaints of a kind affected by the new law.

Meanwhile, the Brennan Center estimates that in 2004 up to 3 million registered and fully-qualified voters were prevented from voting because of problems with our voter registration systems and up to five million people could be adversely affected by voting law changes enacted in 2011.

To top it off, we have this story: Pennsylvania recently passed one of these “prevent the ‘wrong sorts’ from voting” laws. In April, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Carol Aichele was touring the state to “explain” the new law. In a meeting with the editorial board of the Erie (PA) Times-News, she showed her state employee ID as an illustration - only to be told that it was not a valid form of voter ID under the law because it did not have an expiration date.

When advocates rely on fear-mongering, false comparisons, and slogans while not even understanding the laws they demand be passed - you know there is something really wrong.

Sources:
http://www.thenation.com/blog/168400/pennsylvania-voter-id-law-places-expiration-date-democracy
http://www.southernstudies.org/2010/11/why-the-voter-fraud-myth-wont-die.html
http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/voting_law_changes_in_2012
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Cheating-rarely-seen-at-polls-3432801.php
http://www.fair.org/blog/2011/06/21/usa-today-misses-the-point-on-voter-id-laws/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/28/AR2007032801969.html
http://www.wickedlocal.com/marlborough/news/x2067829442/Beacon-Hill-Roll-Call-Voter-ID-sparklers#axzz1xuv3c5Ic

Left Side of the Aisle #50 - Part 3

Outrage of the Week: Schools punishing students for non-school activities

First a quick update: That bill in Tennessee, last week's Outrage of the Week, to sneak creationism into public schools through the subterfuge of calling it “encouraging critical thinking about scientific theories” has passed and gone to the governor for his signature.

This week's outrage comes from Indiana, which is becoming a regular contributor here.

Recently, an Indiana high school senior named Austin Carroll sent a Tweet that contained some obscenities. I'm going to tell you what he said - you just need to know that in each case, "bleep" is the f-word.*

Bleep is one of these bleeping words you can bleeping put anywhere in a bleeping sentence and it still bleeping makes sense.

Yeah, kinda crude - although hardly beyond the reach of some conversations I've heard and I doubt beyond the reach of some conversations you're heard, either - but still it's silly and obviously done as a joke, done just to be funny.

He was expelled.

Carroll agrees that the tweet was "inappropriate" - but expulsion? Just weeks before graduation?

But here's real thing, the real reason this gets Outrage of the Week status: The Tweet was sent from his home on his own personal account. Not at school, not on school grounds, not on school time. The school, that is, is asserting the authority to punish him for something done on his own time that has nothing whatsoever to do with school, lacking even the limp justification that what he did would somehow disrupt the school or interfere with some educational function - because no one would buy an argument that lame.

By extension, the school is claiming it can oversee and discipline - that is, punish - any student for doing whatever the school thinks is "inappropriate" any time, anywhere, regardless of its impact on the school.

And here's a question, one which occurred to me and perhaps occurred to you: How did school even know about this since, it develops, the Tweet was sent at 2:30am? It turns out that when you log on to a school computer, the system automatically goes back and tracks all your Tweets.

This is inane.

But nothing is too inane for Indiana these days. Current law in the state says:

a student may be suspended or expelled for engaging in unlawful activity on or off school grounds if the unlawful activity may reasonably be considered to be an interference with school purposes or an educational function; or the student's removal is necessary to restore order or protect persons on school property.

In January, the state House of Representatives passed a bill that would delete the word "unlawful." In effect, do something of which the school disapproves, any time, anywhere, and you are in the disciplinary cross-hairs - even if it’s entirely legal.

What makes this more important is that it's not just this school and not just this state. Other schools, other states, have adopted similarly sweeping rules to direct students' outside lives. It's all part of an on-going trend for those in power to want more and more power over those over who they have power - such as, for another recent example, employers taking advantage of a still-tight job market to demand of applicants that they hand over their Facebook password so the employer can go rummaging around the applicant's account.

Happily, there has been some pushback: Facebook is threatening to sue companies that demand job applicants give up their password and some states will be considering legislation to make the demand illegal. And for Indiana's students, the state Senate effectively killed the bill at least for now by replacing it with "a 'study commission' on best practices in school discipline."

But despite that, the school still is arguing that you are under their authority day and night, everywhere and all the time so you had just better watch your step. And Austin Carroll is still expelled. And that is still an outrage - the Outrage of the Week.

*No, I have no problems with saying "fuck" here, but remember these posts are supposed to reflect what was on Left Side of the Aisle, which comports with the rules of the local community access TV outlet, which require that shows using such language are only shown after 10pm, which obviously limits the potential audience.

Sources:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/job-seekers-getting-asked-facebook-080920368.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-warns-employers-not-demand-141726467.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-lawmakers-warn-employers-not-224505140.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/16/indiana-bill-would-allow-_n_1282790.html
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/03/when_school_administrators_bully.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57404826-71/high-school-expels-student-for-tweeting-f-word/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/25/austin-carroll-indiana-hi_n_1378250.html
http://www.wbng.com/news/state/144036496.html
http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/aclu-applauds-facebook-for-threatening-to-sue-employers.php
http://timesfreepress.com/news/2012/mar/27/tennessee-evolution-bill-goes-to-bill-haslam/

Left Side of the Aisle #50

Left Side of the Aisle #50, for the week of March 29 - April 4, 2012

Good and bad news on the environment; global warming
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-rt-us-usa-climate-powerbre82q05a-20120326,0,2379987.story
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/22/keystone-xl-obama-defends-southern-pipeline_n_1373137.html
http://1trickpony.cachefly.net/gas/pdf/Affirming_Gasland_Sept_2010.pdf
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fracking
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/fracking
http://www.dangersoffracking.com/
http://www.earthworksaction.org/files/publications/JointFS_HalliburtonLoophole.pdf?pubs/JointFS_HalliburtonLoophole.pdf
http://truth-out.org/news/item/8124-climate-change-disappears-from-keystone-xl-pipeline-debate
http://motherjones.com/environment/2012/03/fracking-doctors-gag-pennsylvania
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-03/D9TOEKC03.htm
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/26/us-climate-thresholds-idUSBRE82P0UJ20120326
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/25/us-weather-climate-change-idUSBRE82O0EA20120325
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-03-26/heat-waves-rains-probably-linked-to-warming-scientists-say
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/03/earth-warming-faster-than-expected.html

New proof of damage from the Deepwater Horizon blowout
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/46860353/ns/us_news-environment/#.T3I1C9VnBDR

Outrage of the Week: Schools punishing student for non-school activities
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/job-seekers-getting-asked-facebook-080920368.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-warns-employers-not-demand-141726467.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-lawmakers-warn-employers-not-224505140.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/16/indiana-bill-would-allow-_n_1282790.html
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/03/when_school_administrators_bully.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57404826-71/high-school-expels-student-for-tweeting-f-word/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/25/austin-carroll-indiana-hi_n_1378250.html
http://www.wbng.com/news/state/144036496.html
http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/aclu-applauds-facebook-for-threatening-to-sue-employers.php
http://timesfreepress.com/news/2012/mar/27/tennessee-evolution-bill-goes-to-bill-haslam/