Probably A Good Idea

George Zimmermann takes down that personal defense website he set up prior to his arrest. [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/alKceFT5p50/probably_a_good
_idea.php

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Rep. Willie Perkins (D - Greenwood) questions
Rep. Bill Denny (R - Jackson) about the Denny redistricting map

Rep. Perkins (D - Greenwood) is now questioning Rep. Denny (R - Jackson) about the Denny map.  Perkins asks first about cracking and packing.  (Read about those terms here.)  Perkins then moves on to ask Denny about the community redistricting meetings across the state in preparation for last year's redistricting efforts and the standards adopted by the committee this year.  Asks Denny whether or not the committee adopted as one of its standards not to employ packing and cracking.  Denny says he believes the committee did.

Perkins is now asking Denny if he remembers Republicans said last year that they were fine with their individual districts, but voted against the map as a whole because they had not seen it before it was presented to the committee.  Denny says "That was last year."  (Denny earlier admitted that no one saw the map as a whole until he printed it out last Friday.  Denny of course then went on to change the districts over the weekend.)

Perkins asks Denny if the prison populations were counted in drawing the districts.  Denny says they were.  That's rich, since they can't vote.

Perkins then begins to hit Denny with individual non-majority minority districts in which the minority voting age population was reduced substantially.  Denny says he did that to prevent retrogression.

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Denny says he increases number of majority
minority districts with his plan. He's not telling the truth. ***UPDATE*** - I was wrong.

Rep. Bill Denny (R - Jackson) began his remarks on the floor today by saying that his map increases the number of majority minority districts.  I've said it once and I'll keep saying it until he admits it:  THAT IS NOT TRUE.  He's decreased the number of majority minority districts by one.

***UPDATE*** - I counted Districts 71 & 83 twice in the 2002 summary, so the above is incorrect.  Denny's map does increase the number of majority minority districts by 1.

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Clarion-Ledger and Daily Journal misreport affect
of Denny map on majority minority districts ***UPDATED*** - My numbers were wrong, C-L and DJ were right.

Cassandra Mickens of the Clarion-Ledger and Bobby Harrison of the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal both erroneously reported today that the redistricting map drawn by Rep. Bill Denny (R - Jackson) would increase the number of majority minority House districts in Mississippi.  In actuality, the number of majority minority districts would decrease.

Under the current maps, drawn in 2002, there are 43 majority minority districts.  Under the Denny map, there would only be 42.  When the current maps were drawn a decade ago, there were only 41 majority minority districts.  Due to population shifts, however, the current number of majority minority districts is 43.

You can count them for yourself here:  House 2002 benchmark summary and Denny map summary.

***UPDATE*** - Thanks to "anonymous" in comments, I have been proven wrong.  I counted districts 71 & 83 twice.  The articles linked above are correct in saying that the Denny map increases majority minority districts by one.  My apologies to Ms. Mickens and Mr. Harrison.

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House breaks from redistricting debate to break
for lunch

They will be back at 1:15 p.m.

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From Pit Bull and Pepper Spray to Concealed Carry
Vigilantism

“Don’t use pepper spray,” he told the Zimmermans, according to a friend. “It’ll take two or three seconds to take effect, but a quarter second for the dog to jump you,” he said. “Get a gun.” – Reuters

When the homeowners association asked George Zimmerman to begin a neighborhood watch, according to a Reuters report, he took it very seriously. In violation of neighborhood watch rules, Zimmerman began carrying his Kel-Tec on his patrols. It was the uncorking.

More from Reuters:

A criminal justice student who aspired to become a judge, Zimmerman also concerned himself with the safety of his neighbors after a series of break-ins committed by young African-American men.

[...] “Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. I’m black, OK?” the woman said, declining to be identified because she anticipated backlash due to her race. She leaned in to look a reporter directly in the eyes. “There were black boys robbing houses in this neighborhood,” she said. “That’s why George was suspicious of Trayvon Martin.”

The fact remains that George Zimmerman pursued Trayvon Martin with a concealed carry and Stand Your Ground gun laws bolstering his sense of civic duty that didn’t come with the training required to do what amounted to the job of policemen and women.

Then came 2005, and a series of troubles. Zimmerman’s business failed, he was arrested, and he broke off an engagement with a woman who filed a restraining order against him.

That July, Zimmerman was charged with resisting arrest, violence, and battery of an officer after shoving an undercover alcohol-control agent who was arresting an under-age friend of Zimmerman’s at a bar. He avoided conviction by agreeing to participate in a pre-trial diversion program that included anger-management classes.

Trayvon Martin represents the lightning strike in the middle of a perfect storm that begins with George Zimmerman’s life and his inability to deal with his own anger.

Following Trayvon Martin was wrong and Zimmerman was told not to pursue, which bears repeated reminding.

Targeting a person while carrying a weapon, with no crime having been committed and no suspicious activity involved to alarm, is felonious intent to play judge and jury of a man, because of other events that have no relation and can only be decided by law enforcement.

Zimmerman’s multicultural background is interesting, which a jury will consider, if this gets beyond the Stand Your Ground hearing, with the case allowed to go forward.

The fact remains that with the neighborhood robberies allegedly committed by African Americans as background information, George Zimmerman’s overblown sense of vigilantism pushed him to follow the black man wearing a hoodie.

There was no action by Trayvon Martin to warrant George Zimmerman tailing him, let alone pulling the trigger and ending his life.

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Ayn Rand Fanboy Paul Ryan Now Says He Rejects Ayn
Rand's Philosphy (UPDATED WITH VIDEO)

Click here to view this media

Perhaps finally realizing that praising the cruel, shallow philosophy of a second-rate novelist -- then writing legislation which pays tribute that philosophy -- isn't a big winner in American politics, Paul Ryan (R-WI) and his partners in crime at the National Review now want us to believe he was never an Ayn Rand disciple at all.

?I reject her philosophy,? Ryan says firmly. ?It?s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person?s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas,? who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. ?Don?t give me Ayn Rand,? he says.

O RLY?

"The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand," Ryan said at a D.C. gathering four years ago honoring the author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

That would seem to be the opposite of "reject."

Nice try, Paul.

UPDATE
Check out this campaign video in which Paul Ryan praises Rand, saying she "best job of anybody to build a moral case for capitalism."

UPDATE 2
An alternate video, with a slightly different message, is shown above.

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Ayn Rand Fanboy Paul Ryan Now Says He Rejects Ayn
Rand's Philosphy

enlarge
Perhaps finally realizing that praising the cruel, shallow philosophy of a second-rate novelist -- then writing legislation which pays tribute that philosophy -- isn't a big winner in American politics, Paul Ryan (R-WI) and his partners in crime at the National Review now want us to believe he was never an Ayn Rand disciple at all.

?I reject her philosophy,? Ryan says firmly. ?It?s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person?s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas,? who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. ?Don?t give me Ayn Rand,? he says.

O RLY?

"The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand," Ryan said at a D.C. gathering four years ago honoring the author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

That would seem to be the opposite of "reject."

Nice try, Paul.

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Austerity promises fail as UK hits double dip
recession

Despite all of the big talk about how austerity creates an economic miracle, as usual, miracle talk was nothing more than a lie by snake oil salesmen. The Tories, much like the US Republicans, are happy playing economic games with everyone else and the results are clear. Austerity during these conditions doesn't work, it only makes the recession more severe. If only the Democrats weren't so afraid of making this point early and often. Running a country is not the same as running a household, but this is somehow news for the GOP. During times like this, stimulus spending is a must to keep the economy going until the private sector can rebound. The Guardian:

"We consistently warned that their austerity plan was self-defeating and that cutting spending and raising taxes too far and too fast would badly backfire. David Cameron and George Osborne arrogantly and complacently dismissed people who warned of the risk of a double-dip recession and the country is now paying a very heavy price. Their economic credibility is now in tatters." Responding to news that a big fall in construction output and a smaller decline in manufacturing production had caused the economy to shrink for the fourth quarter in the last six, the prime minister told MPs: "These are very, very disappointing figures. I don't seek to excuse them, I don't seek to try and explain them away."

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Your Taxes Will Pay For The Coast Guard To
Babysit Shells Arctic Drilling

by Michael Conathan

The Weather Channel?s reality series ?Coast Guard Alaska? gives viewers an exhilarating taste of what life is like for coasties stationed in the distant reaches of our 49^th state, conducting search-and-rescue and fishery enforcement missions in some of the harshest weather conditions known to man.

But starting this summer, the U.S. Coast Guard will have a new purpose in Alaska: babysitting. And you and I will be paying for it.

At a time when budget restrictions have forced belt-tightening across the Coast Guard?s suite of missions, it is making a major commitment of taxpayer dollars and limited assets to monitor Royal Dutch Shell?s Arctic Ocean oil and gas drilling.

The Coast Guard is already stretching is dollars to try to overhaul its fleet of cutters ? most of which were built in the 1960s ? while continuing to keep our waterways and mariners safe. Under the proposed budget for fiscal year 2013, it already faces funding cuts that even budget hawk Rep. Robert B. Aderholt (R-AL) called ?challenging for us to accept? because they ?bluntly [gut] operational capabilities.?

Yet the Coast Guard plans to deploy key resources to the Arctic this summer exclusively for Shell?s plans to begin exploratory oil drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas ? activities the insurance giant Lloyd?s of London called out for posing a ?unique and hard-to-manage risk.?

The Coast Guard will send up one of the service?s three new National Security Cutters, a sea-going buoy tender, and two helicopters from the closest Coast Guard station in Kodiak, AK ? over 1,000 miles away.

Taxpayers won’t just be paying the financial price. Because the service has a finite number of ships, aircraft, and personnel, we will also sacrifice part of the Coast Guard?s ability to carry out other missions, including homeland security, migrant and narcotics interdiction, fisheries enforcement, and search-and-rescue operations.

At a July 2011 Senate hearing on Arctic drilling, Coast Guard Commandant Robert Papp seemed to question his service?s capacity to respond to a potential spill in the Arctic, saying ?if [a spill] were to happen off the North Slope of Alaska, we?d have nothing.  We?re starting from ground zero today.? He elaborated on those comments at a December hearing, saying his ?most immediate operational need is infrastructure.?

On April 16, Papp confirmed that the Arctic deployment, ?will come at the expense? of other missions:

Most likely we?ll draw down drug interdiction missions to send a national security cutter up there. Or more fisheries are left unprotected, or something else out there?. Right now we?re keeping a pretty good balance [of missions], but it?s going to be a challenge going forward. We?ve got certain things we?re just not going to be able to do.

One can?t help but wonder how that will play out when a fishing boat runs into trouble a hundred miles off the Aleutian Islands this summer and the helicopter needed to rescue those fishermen is a thousand miles away.

Or when another semi-submersible loaded with cocaine slips through an increasingly perforated dragnet in the southern Pacific that could have been tightened by the presence of a state-of-the-art National Security Cutter.

Certainly, the Coast Guard must have a presence in the Arctic while Shell?s drilling operations are moving ahead. Given the lack of infrastructure detailed in the Center for American Progress report, Putting a Freeze on Arctic Ocean Drilling: America?s Inability to Respond to an Oil Spill in the Arctic, it?s clear that greater investment must be made in developing the capacity to handle a potential worst-case scenario before drilling commences.

But this year, the sole purpose of Coast Guard operations in the region is to monitor Shell?s activity, thus taking away from other important activities. While Adm. Papp speaks to the need for his service to grow its Arctic capabilities, the inherently multi-mission Coast Guard will have a single mission to undertake in the Arctic: babysitting Shell.

Asking American citizens to sacrifice their tax dollars and compromise vital Coast Guard operations in service to Shell?s unacceptably risky Arctic drilling amounts to nothing more than just another Big Oil subsidy.

Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress.

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