The ultimate in head wear, with accessory, for the right wingnut base.

Today, via Twitter:

Billmon ‏@billmon1

There isn’t enough tinfoil for all this –>

Joshua Holland @JoshuaHol

Rand Paul is “looking into whether the US military is actually planning a military takeover of the Southwest.” [….]

4:05 PM – 30 Apr 2015

Billmon ‏@billmon1

For years, federal authorities had been planning their move on Texas — building military bases, moving in troops, preparing for a takeover 4:15 PM – 30 Apr 2015

Yesterday at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C031159 04/29/2015 KOSTER FOR MISSOURI Elissa Holman 1211 West 64th Street Kansas City MO 64113 Self Employed Human Relations Consultant 4/29/2015 $7,500.00

[emphasis added]

Oh, we’ll see plenty of both.

Previously:

Campaign Finance: movement (April 29, 205)

Through over two hundred years of American history:

MARBURY v. MADISON, 5 U.S. 137 (1803)

[….]

….It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each. [5 U.S. 137, 178]   So if a law be in opposition to the constitution: if both the law and the constitution apply to a particular case, so that the court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the constitution; or conformably to the constitution, disregarding the law: the court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is of the very essence of judicial duty….

[….]

Representative Vicky Hartzler (r) today, via Twitter:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler @RepHartzler

#Marriage should be determined by the states, not the Supreme Court. #Stand4Marriage [….] 12:34 PM – 28 Apr 2015

Some of the responses:

Fake Vicky Hartzler ‏@VickiHartzler Apr 28

@RepHartzler So, now you’re in favor of allowing states to grant same-sex marriages? Congratulations on evolving! 1:25 PM – 28 Apr 2015

Sarcasm.

Fake Vicky Hartzler ‏@VickiHartzler Apr 28

@RepHartzler Re: the gavel about to destroy the ring, are you aware that if gays can marry, your marriage will still be legal? 1:27 PM – 28 Apr 2015

John Schultz ‏@theknobboy Apr 28

@RepHartzler So courts overturning laws prohibiting mixed race marriages were in the wrong? 2:36 PM – 28 Apr 2015

The unanswered question.

B Yates ‏@OldDrum

@RepHartzler You believe the Court’s ruling in Loving v. Va is wrong? So the validity of Clarence Thomas’s marriage should be a state matter 7:04 PM – 28 Apr 2015

PUDCAST245 ‏@pudcast245

@RepHartzler Marriage is a Fundamental right of all citizens. Civil rights should not be slave to the popular vote. #marriagequality 12:47 PM – 29 Apr 2015

Welcome to America.

Monday at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C000960 04/27/2015 MO DEMOCRATIC STATE COMMITTEE Koster for Missouri PO Box 1551 Jefferson City MO 65102 4/27/2015 $10,000.00

[emphasis added]

Yesterday at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C031159 04/28/2015 KOSTER FOR MISSOURI Lawrence Chapman 1600 S. Brentwood Blvd Suite 770 St Louis MO 63144 Self Employed Commercial Real Estate Developer 4/28/2015 $7,500.00

[emphasis added]

Previously:

Campaign Finance: all in today (April 9, 205)

The Cass County Democratic Committee held its annual Back to Blue Dinner in Belton on Saturday evening. Senator Scott Sifton (D), a candidate for Attorney General in 2016, was one of the featured speakers.

Senator Scott Sifton (D) speaking at the Cass County Democratic Committee annual

Back to Blue Dinner in Belton, Missouri on April 25, 2015. [photo: Jerry Schmidt]

Video by Jerry Schmidt.

Previously:

Back to Blue Dinner in Cass County – April 25, 2015 (April 27, 2015)

Jim White (D) at the Back to Blue Dinner in Cass County – April 25, 2015 (April 27, 2015)

Wes Shoemyer (D) at the Back to Blue Dinner in Cass County – April 25, 2015 (April 27, 2015)  

On being coy:

John Brunner ‏@JohnBrunnerMO

Do you want #JohnBrunner as #MoGov? Not declared yet. Your voice will be heard! It is #WETHEPEOPLE that will decide! 10:34 PM – 27 Apr 2015

Maybe he’s waiting to declare when his operation masters the finer points of this Internets thing.

Or?:

John Brunner ‏@JohnBrunnerMO

#WashingtonDC-toast! Only #WETHEPEOPLE can take our country back! Calling All Missourians–I’m ready to lead Missouri as your next governor 10:05 PM – 27 Apr 2015

Which is it? Yes or no?

Sean Nicholson ‏@ssnich

Just odd. #mogov [….] 5:54 AM – 28 Apr 2015

There’s that interpretation, too.

Many years ago, as a philosophy undergraduate, I learned that before I could address the “big questions,” I needed to take a logic class or two in order to acquire some basic rules for clear thinking. While I don’t pretend to be a master of the field, I did pick up some tools that have proven helpful over the years.

Most recently, in regard to the commentary on the the situation in Ferguson, race relations in the St. Louis area, and in the United States in general, I find myself thinking that maybe we’d be better off if we were sending our children to college to study philosophy and learn a little about logic before we train them to make a living – which seems to be the current single justification for higher education. Specifically, I seem to encounter again and again two memes that, because they are so prevalent, predominantly but not exclusively in conservative venues, might benefit from a little explicitly logical analysis:

Black on Black Crime vs. Abuse of authority.

Lots of folks get themselves all wound up over the fact that lots of angry, mostly black people hit the streets to protest the killing of unarmed, African-American Michael Brown by a jumpy white police officer in Ferguson, while very few, if any, are marching in the streets to protest the stream of African-American men, women and children killed almost daily by other African-American individuals in their own neighborhoods.  

At the heart of this riff is what is termed a category error, defined by Wikipedia as “a semantic or ontological error in which things belonging to a particular category are presented as if they belong to a different category, … or, alternatively, a property is ascribed to a thing that could not possibly have that property.” At the risk of oversimplifying, a category error consists of comparing the proverbial oranges to apples.

The confusion – or category error – here is the belief that it is the simply the death of these young men at the  hands of often white policemen that leads to the protests and turmoil they leave in their wake. The outrage is sparked, however, not by their deaths, but by the way they die. The anger we see stems from the perception of pervasive police brutality and abuse of power that, in the most extreme cases, may lead to implicitly sanctioned murders of black Americans.

Which is not to say that we don’t all abhor black-on-black crime – or white-on-black, black-on-white or white-on-white crime. But the object of our opprobrium in these cases is crime itself, a problem for which we have more or less effective, institutionalized ways to respond. We deal with crime through our justice system. A significant part of that system involves policing and our courts, which is why abuses by those entities, along with their perceived racial biases, urgently need to be addressed separately.

Black lives matter (BLM) vs. All lives matter (ALM).

By now most of us have watched some television commentator or another respond to the Black lives Matter movement by declaring self-righteously, all aquiver with their own brilliance, “all lives matter” – as they indeed do. Possibly the most obnoxious was the recent declaration by GOP presidential wannabe, Mike Huckabee, that Martin Luther King would be appalled by BLM since, don’t cha know,  “all lives matter.” Many of us are getting seriously tired of having to deal with friends or family who think they’ve shut down the entire BLM protest movement with this insight.

The problem here is that these deep thinkers seem to believe that that they’ve turned the tables on BLM proponents and caught them in a – gasp – racist argument of the form while, at the same time, affirming their own superior humanity:

Major premise: Black lives matter

Minor premise: All lives are not black lives

Conclusion: All non-black lives don’t matter.

This is a syllogistic fallacy involving an “illicit major” premise. The implication is that BLM proponents are presenting a major premise that is incorrectly understood as universal and hence improperly excludes lives that are not black.

However, rather than srving as the major premise, “black lives matter” is actually, rather obviously, the conclusion of this argument

Major premise:  All lives matter

Minor premises: There are black lives

Conclusion: Black lives matter.

To any one with an iota of sense the only reason to use this argument to underpin a socialmovement is that somebody – most saliently the abusive police and court authorities of the first meme – have been acting as if black lives don’t matter. And that, folks, is the problem. Not the imagined exclusionary and divisive nature of BLM.

Of course, it is one thing to be wrong and another to be offensive. And the condescension and implicit racism of these two memes are just that. The “Black-on-Black” motif is often the first step in an effort to blame the victims of black crime and its frequent concomitant, poverty, complex, not very well understood issues at the best of times, on the victims who, we are told, just need to pull up their pants and act like their responsible, usually white, critics. As for  “all lives matter,” consider this offering from Steve Benen:  

A friend of mine told me a few weeks ago to imagine someone telling their neighbor, “My father just died and I’m heartbroken.” The neighbor should say, “That’s awful; I’m so sorry. How can I help?” But if the neighbor responds, “A lot of fathers have died, and since I believe that all parents matter, it’s wrong to elevate yours above others,” he’s lacking in a certain basic decency.

For one of the republican “exploratory” gubernatorial candidates for 2016.

Today at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C151053 04/27/2015 GREITENS FOR MISSOURI Andrew Hauptman 10671 Chalon Road Los Angeles CA 90077 Andell, Inc. Chairman 4/27/2015 $10,000.00

[emphasis added]

Previously:

Campaign Finance: There is another? (February 25, 2015)

Campaign Finance: a little bit more (February 26, 2015)

Campaign Finance: A new bandwagon? (March 6, 2015)

Campaign Finance: but wait, there’s more (March 10, 2015)

Campaign Finance: that’ll help finance a whole lot of exploring (March 12, 2015)

Campaign Finance: it’s going to be a good quarter (March 16, 2015)

Campaign Finance: still exploring (March 17, 2015)

Campaign Finance: gone quiet (March 21, 2015)

Campaign Finance: not quiet at all (March 25, 2015)

Campaign Finance: eat mor chikin (March 26, 2015)

The stenographer: Ah, for the good old days… (March 28, 2015)

Campaign Finance: in under the wire (April 1, 2015)

Campaign Finance: all in today (April 9, 2015)

Campaign Finance: far afield (April 13, 2015)

Eric Greitens (r) – quarterly campaign finance report – April 15, 2015 (April 18, 2015)

Campaign Finance: not to be outdone (April 21, 2015)

Campaign Finance: not exactly spare change (April 23, 2015)

Campaign Finance: also in increments of $5,001.00 (April 23, 2015)

The Cass County Democratic Committee held its annual Back to Blue Dinner in Belton on Saturday evening. Former Senator Wes Shoemyer (D) was one of the featured speakers:

Former Senator Wes Shoemyer (D) speaking at the Cass County Democratic Committee annual

Back to Blue Dinner in Belton, Missouri on April 25, 2015. [photo: Jerry Schmidt]

Video by Jerry Schmidt.

Previously:

Back to Blue Dinner in Cass County – April 25, 2015 (April 27, 2015)

Jim White (D) at the Back to Blue Dinner in Cass County – April 25, 2015 (April 27, 2015)