Tea partiers mostly white, conservative, male, pro-life, poll says

So says the New Mexico Independent.

From the post,

According to a recent Gallup poll, tea partiers are mostly white (79 percent), conservative (70 percent) and male (55 percent). While 68 percent of tea party supporters have not graduated from college, 55 percent—make more than $50,000 per year.

And yet, Timothy Johnson, a black tea partier, states,

“Black Republicans find themselves always having to prove who they are. Because the assumption is the Republican Party is for whites and the Democratic Party is for blacks,”

That was from the article, Black conservative tea party backers take heat.

Do you think liberals on staff at the New Mexico Independent will note how black tea partiers are called Uncle Tom, Oreos, and traitors?

This started as a reply about hermeneutic in the context of the flood on my personal blog. Do we take the flood literally or not. My interlocutor was exasperated exclaiming that to not take the text literally implies words have no meaning. This is exactly backwords. Here is my response to him.

Yes, you are exactly right. Words have meaning. There is this word hermeneutic, which I have used on more than one occasion used in this sentence. Yet, you gaily trounce in with replies like “Why start with the Bible at all? Why not just make up your own stories if that’s what you’re going to do anyway?” or other remarks along the “making it all up” line as if every religious person just takes their preconceptions and hammers the text until it fits. That is not what any honest theologian does (and I think the majority of people atheist or faithful are as honest as they can be). That word, hermeneutic means, “the method by which one extracts meaning from a text.” See that word there. Method. It is there for a reason. Read the rest of this entry

No, really.

Americans overall are far less likely to be killed with a firearm than they were when it was much more difficult to obtain a concealed-weapons permit, according to statistics collected by the federal Centers for Disease Control. But researchers have not been able to establish a cause-and-effect relationship.

In the 1980s and ’90s, as the concealed-carry movement gained steam, Americans were killed by others with guns at the rate of about 5.66 per 100,000 population. In this decade, the rate has fallen to just over 4.07 per 100,000, a 28 percent drop. The decline follows a fivefold increase in the number of “shall-issue” and unrestricted concealed-carry states from 1986 to 2006.

The highest gun homicide rate is in Washington, D.C., which has had the nation’s strictest gun-control laws for years and bans concealed carry: 20.50 deaths per 100,000 population, five times the general rate. The lowest rate, 1.12, is in Utah, which has such a liberal concealed weapons policy that most American adults can get a permit to carry a gun in Utah without even visiting the state.

This isn’t from some right-wing news source, this is from MSNBC, for cryin’ out loud. (But you have to wait until the last page of the article to get the above paragraphs and the link to the stats and comparative graphs.  This is MSNBC, after all.)

Here in Georgia, the town of Kennesaw passed a law that every head of household must own a gun.  It is not one that is enforced, but the law went on the books in 1982.  Crime started to go down, and 25 years later the crime rate was cut by more than half, with zero residents involved in fatal shootings.  Worth considering.

From F.A Hayek The Road to Serfdom Chapter 2:

To allay these suspicions and to harness to its cart the strongest of all political motives — the craving for freedom — socialism began increasingly to make use of the promise of a “new freedom.” The coming of socialism was to be the leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. It was to bring “economic freedom,” without which the political freedom already gained was “not worth having.” Only socialism was capable of effecting the consummation of the age-long struggle for freedom, in which the attainment of political freedom was but the first step.

The subtle change in meaning to which the word “freedom” was subjected in order that this argument should sound plausible is important. To the great apostles of political freedom the word had meant freedom from coercion, freedom from the arbitrary power of other men, release from the ties which left the individual no choice but obedience to the orders of a superior to whom he was attached. The new freedom promised, however, was to be the freedom from necessity, release from the compulsion of circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choice of all of us, although for some very much more than for others. Before man could be truly free, the “despotism of physical want” had to be broken, the “restraints of the economic system” relaxed.

Hmm. There is not just a little similarity with these arguments and the arguments posed for healthcare. Democrats argue that healthcare is not socialism. Pedantically speaking that may be correct. But that is, in part, just a technicality. There are parallels here.

Good Morning.

1. On the Constitutionality question and healthcare, not so cut and dried as the defenders do pretend. And a little help in for your research on the matter.
2. Demographics and housing markets.
3. Iran.
4. On Pragmatism.
5. BSG, btw I’m just about finished with season 2.
6. A in race bike change done, well, just about perfectly.
7. Burning Judas.
8. Shifting standards, from a prior comment, “The threshold inquiry has to be the perspective of the women themselves, in their diverse circumstances, rather than imposing our perspective from up on high (and one size fits all).” So, the threshold inquiry about “maverick” status has to be from the perspective of Mr McCain himself, not imposing our perspective from on high (and one size fits all)?
9. Apparently at home moms are jobless.
10. Memory Eternal, one of best known Christian bloggers has passed. Noted, well everywhere.
11. Ontology and popular culture … or just a joke.
12. 40% of Tea Partiers are Democrats … oops.
13. Riding to work.
14. Drones.
15. Is that why I’m conservative?
16. And … for the Palin fans.