Category Archives: NADA – New American Dark Ages

New American Dark Ages

Election, NADA - New American Dark Ages

Ellen Goodman: The annual Equal Rites Awards : Opinion

Ellen Goodman: The annual Equal Rites Awards : Opinion

Need we remind you that women have achieved greater success in the sports meritocracy than in the political democracy? Forty years after Title IX, women outnumbered men on the U.S. Olympic team and in the gold medals. Ninety-two years after the 19th Amendment, women occupy only 17 percent of the seats in Congress and have never made it to the White House.

[mjh: For some reason, the Journal cut out the following paragraphs. Read the whole column at the link.]

Now for his pal Rick Santorum. Our boy Rick lost the presidential battle but won the Battle of the Sexes Badge for a pink panic attack. At a bowling campaign event in Wisconsin, Rick stopped a boy from picking up a pink ball, saying "You’re not going to use that pink ball. … Not on camera. … Friends don’t let friends use pink balls." In the pink and blue world of boys and grrrls, he is already behind our 8-ball.

Ah yes, but what about virtual games-man-ship? The annual Booby Prize for Online Sports goes to video game coach Aris Bakhtanians, who trash-talked player Miranda Pakozdi in the "Cross Assault" video game tournament, quizzing her on camera about her bra size and telling her to take off her shirt. For video harassment, we promise to crash his private hard drive.

Now on to the Backward Trailblazer Award. We censure the Census Bureau for its retro view of kiddie care. When Mom does it, according to the bureau, it’s parenting. When Dad does it, it’s child care. For sticking to the old script, we give the number-crunchers an apron emblazoned: Dad is not a baby sitter! …

As for the Romneys, our gal Ann worked not only as a mom but, we now know, also as an anthropologist studying the life of a remote tribe for her hubby. Employer Mitt gets the  Patriarch of the Year Award for whining that he does so understand women because Ann "reports to me" on what they think. To Mitt, a pill for tone-deafness.

Ellen Goodman: The annual Equal Rites Awards : Opinion

NADA - New American Dark Ages

The Case for Gun Control – TIME

The Case for Gun Control – TIME

By Fareed Zakaria Monday, Aug. 20, 2012

Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at UCLA, documents the actual history in Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. Guns were regulated in the U.S. from the earliest years of the Republic. Laws that banned the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813. Other states soon followed: Indiana in 1820, Tennessee and Virginia in 1838, Alabama in 1839 and Ohio in 1859. Similar laws were passed in Texas, Florida and Oklahoma. As the governor of Texas (Texas!) explained in 1893, the "mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man."

Congress passed the first set of federal laws regulating, licensing and taxing guns in 1934. The act was challenged and went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1939. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s solicitor general, Robert H. Jackson, said the Second Amendment grants people a right that "is not one which may be utilized for private purposes but only one which exists where the arms are borne in the militia or some other military organization provided for by law and intended for the protection of the state." The court agreed unanimously.

Things started to change in the 1970s as various right-wing groups coalesced to challenge gun control, overturning laws in state legislatures, Congress and the courts. But Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative appointed by Richard Nixon, described the new interpretation of the Second Amendment in an interview after his tenure as "one of the greatest pieces of fraud–I repeat the word fraud–on the American public by special-interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."

The Case for Gun Control – TIME

Election, NADA - New American Dark Ages

Satellites Observe Widespread Melting Event on Greenland : Image of the Day

There has been discussion for years of the inevitability of the sudden, massive melting of Greenland, as well as all of the earth’s glaciers. Yet, the paper says there is uncertainty whether this is “global warming” or “natural.” Bullshit. There is not uncertainty, only obfuscation, lies, and stupidity. mjh

Satellites Observe Widespread Melting Event on Greenland : Image of the Day

Satellites Observe Widespread Melting Event on Greenland

Satellites Observe Widespread Melting Event on Greenland : Image of the Day

Election, NADA - New American Dark Ages

Guns *do* kill people and more bullets kill more people

My right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness exceeds your fucking right to have the means to kill 100 people in minutes. mjh

E.J. Dionne: Rationalizing gutlessness on guns – The Washington Post

A study last year in the Journal of Trauma-Injury Infection & Critical Care analyzed gun death statistics for 2003 from the World Health Organization Mortality Database. It found that 80 percent of all firearms deaths in 23 industrialized countries occurred in the United States. For women, the figure rose to 86 percent; for children age 14 and under, to 87 percent. Can anyone seriously claim that our comparatively lax gun laws had nothing to do with these blood-drenched data?

E.J. Dionne: Rationalizing gutlessness on guns – The Washington Post

Election, NADA - New American Dark Ages, The Atheist's Pulpit

The founders weren’t warriors — they were intellectuals …

Amid the noise and bellowing of the day, recall quietly that our nation was founded by the best-educated people of their day, who drew from a deep well of learning. Today, our nation’s greatest threat is ignorance and our defenders include teachers, lawyers, and judges.

As Memorial Day and Veterans Day honor fighters, Independence Day honors thinkers and planners. Think and be free. peace, mjh

Election, media, NADA - New American Dark Ages, other voices

Marriage is a civil contract governed by established contract law

The following letter is a cogent and thorough argument for marriage rights for all adults. Marriage is a contract. Indeed, Merri has made this argument for 25+ years. Kudos to David Paul Blacher.

A different letter insists Americans bow to Leviticus as the law. Not in America, bub. We have the Constitution. You are free to let the Bible rule your life, but not to force that rule on the rest of us. Amen. peace, mjh

Contract Law Applies To Marriage Licenses

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER’S comments (“The Same-Sex Marriage Dilemma,” May 19) are interesting, but he misses the fundamental issue— marriage is a contract. In fact, in America, it is most often actually two contracts: one civil and one religious. I absolutely support the right and obligation of religious organizations to define, pursuant to their own doctrines, who may enter into a contract that they validate and recognize.

However, the civil contract — usually in the form of a “marriage license” — automatically provides the individuals who sign and register the document with several unique and valuable government- issued and -sanctioned advantages. First and foremost is a significantly lower income tax rate, both federal and state. Add to this the way married couples may choose to own real property — usually as community property — and the inheritance advantages which are thereto attached.

Also, married couples have access to a capital gains deduction upon sale of the primary residence that is double that of a single owner. Add to this the general inheritance rights and tax levels provided by governments to married couples but not single couples.

Furthermore, the ability for hospital visitation, treatment and health-decision participation are treated differently for married and unmarried couples. The list of civil rights available only to married couples is extensive. … Most, if not all, governmental entities have laws that disallow discrimination on the basis of sex in the fulfillment contracts — both oral and especially written. The most significant contract that most people will ever sign is their civil marriage contract.

To abrogate a contract based on the sex of the signatories goes totally against the grain of the history of the United States as to the sacrosanct nature of contracts — see Article I, section 10, clause lof the U.S. Constitution that forbids the states from passing any “Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts.”

DAVID PAUL BLACHER
Albuquerque

[Curiously, this letter is not available on-line. What’s up with that, abqjournal.com?]

Election, NADA - New American Dark Ages

Democracy for New Mexico: $642,000,000,000 (billion) for the War Machine "Ike was Right"

Amen to that. A majority of Democrats and Republicans support reducing money to the War Department, but our representatives vote for it. Why? Follow the money. Who gets rich from war?

Democracy for New Mexico: $642,000,000,000 (billion) for the War Machine "Ike was Right"

This kind of obscene money spent on war and defense has got to stop. 88 billion still going over to Afghanistan for 2013, that is $1.5 bill every week. Think of what this Country could do with $1.5 bil every week. The bill funds a missile defense site to be built on the east coast, that the military itself opposes, old star-wars garbage, and even Russian cold war garbage. We have gone insane, when we will fund things the military does not even want and threaten drastic cuts to social security for our seniors which is desperately needed now, we have gone insane.

Democracy for New Mexico: $642,000,000,000 (billion) for the War Machine "Ike was Right"