Month: September 2013

Getcher ringside seats for the Tea Party Crazy Show

by digby

Courtesy Rep. Mark Takano

This is getting ridiculous.

Conservatives in the Senate have spent weeks and weeks hectoring House Republicans to stand true to GOP principles and make funding for the federal government contingent upon Democrats agreeing to defund Obamacare.

It’s about to blow up in their faces, and probably turn several of their more moderate colleagues into collateral damage.

Frustrated House Republicans are already demanding that their conservative antagonists in the Senate fight to the bitter end, as they promised they would, to either defund the healthcare law or shut down the government. That means Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Mike Lee, R-Utah; Marco Rubio, R-Fla.; Rand Paul, R-Ky.; and others will be held to account if they don’t do everything in their power to prevent a government funding bill from clearing the Senate if it doesn’t also defund Obamacare.

There are real steps they can take. But they’re already indicating they don’t plan to put up much of a fight. And if they lie down, it will expose their Defund Obamacare campaign as a farce engineered by hollow charlatans.

Brian Beutler has been following the ins and outs of this nonsensical tea party ritual from the beginning and his stories are getting crazier and crazier. Right now, assuming the House passes a bill defunding Obamacare, which is not for certain, the wingnuts who’ve been egged on by Cruz, Paul et al, are demanding a talking filibuster to stop the Senate from failing to defund it. Seriously, that’s what we’re talking about. And since there is a handful of looneytunes Tea Party Senators who’ve been mouthing off on this, they could conceivable pull it off for a while by carefully tag teaming the filibuster among themselves. They don’t want to do it. But they may have to.

Keep in mind that this is about defunding Obamacare,  which would be signed by the president over his dead body. So it will not pass into law under any circumstances. The whole thing is a sham.

Also too, this:

Even among the Americans who say they’re opposed to Obamacare, there’s not necessarily widespread support for Republican efforts to dismantle the entire law, according to the results from a new poll conducted by the Pew Research Center and USA Today.

About 42 percent of the people who say they disapprove of health reform think that public officials “should do what they can to make the law fail,” while a narrow majority — 51 percent — actually believes that lawmakers should do what they can to make Obamacare work.

And that’s just among the people who don’t like Obamacare to begin with. When put into context of the general population, researchers found that amounts to just 23 percent of Americans who want to undermine the health law to make it fail.

Boy that Ted Cruz really has his finger on the pulse doesn’t he?

Stay tuned. This is shaping up to be one of the more absurd chapters in American legislative history. They’ve backed themselves into such a corner that they’re starting to cannibalize each other. Boehner knows it’s a loser but has to appease his nutball caucus. The House nutball caucus expects to pass it and then expects Cruz and company to filibuster in the Senate. The Senators are freaking out that it might actually happen, especially Mitch McConnell who’s trying to be both a Tea Partier and a sane person so he can get re-elected (a daunting task, needless to say.) It’s a GOP clusterfuck.

So, let’s just sit back and watch the show. It’s a shame for the country, but I suppose it’s what we deserve. We’ve enabled these people for a long, long time. It was inevitable that they’d finally just explode into crazy one day.

Update:  They’ve taken to twitter:

House Republicans have quietly resented how much pressure has been put on them to carry out a plan hatched in the Senate, and the two chambers have been passing the hot potato for the past week about who would be the ones to actually vote down a government funding bill if it comes to that. Cruz’s comments were apparently the the last straw for some. A spokesperson for House Speaker John Boehner immediately put the pressure back on the Senate—”We trust Republicans in the Senate will put up a fight worthy of the challenge that Obamacare poses”—but other Republicans had stronger words.

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What evolutionary biology can teach us about gun control policy

by David Atkins

How do we know right from wrong? It should be an easy question, but it’s harder than it looks. Is it doing the greatest good for the greatest number as John Stuart Mill would argue, or is it simply a question of always doing to others what we would want done to us as Immanuel Kant would suggest? Both answers are fraught with problems.

As it turns out, most people don’t actually make decisions based on complicated rational calculations of utilitarian or universalist formulae. We make most moral decisions in our guts based on instinct, an instantaneous hardwired balancing act of empathy and self-preservation. Usually those instincts serve us well. If our brains aren’t working properly, whether from tumor or mental illnesses like sociopathy, our moral intuition is off kilter.

That instinctive morality has some profound implications for public policy, including gun control. How so? Consider one of the most famous examples of the impact of evolutionary psychology on ethical reasoning: the Trolley Problem. Josh Clark explains:

It’s a lovely day out, and you decide to go for a walk along the trolley tracks that crisscross your town. As you walk, you hear a trolley behind you, and you step away from the tracks. But as the trolley gets closer, you hear the sounds of panic — the five people on board are shouting for help. The trolley’s brakes have gone out, and it’s gathering speed.

You find that you just happen to be standing next to a side track that veers into a sand pit, potentially providing safety for the trolley’s five passengers. All you have to do is pull a hand lever to switch the tracks, and you’ll save the five people. Sounds easy, right? But there’s a problem. Along this offshoot of track leading to the sandpit stands a man who is totally unaware of the trolley’s problem and the action you’re considering. There’s no time to warn him. So by pulling the lever and guiding the trolley to safety, you’ll save the five passengers. But you’ll kill the man. What do you do?

As it turns out, most people say they would pull the switch; many of those who refuse to pull take a fatalist or religious view that their interference would interfere with destiny or God’s will, while a few can’t bring themselves to pull the switch that sentences that one man to death. But most people do.

If we assume that they use moral reasoning to make the decision, then that decision is utilitarian: saving five people through action is better than saving one through inaction. A Kantian would also claim that decision is just under their own principles, but it’s a somewhat tougher sell. But what about this trolley example?

Consider another, similar dilemma. You’re walking along the track again, you notice the trolley is out of control, although this time there is no auxiliary track. But there is a man within arm’s reach, between you and the track. He’s large enough to stop the runaway trolley. You can save the five people on the trolley by pushing him onto the tracks, stopping the out-of-control vehicle, but you’ll kill the man by using him to stop the trolley. Again, what do you do?

Most people in this example do not decide to push the man off the tracks. But why? The logical reasoning behind both decisions should be the same: save five people by killing one. But it isn’t. Most people would pull the switch to send the trolley away to kill a man, but wouldn’t push the same man off a bridge to accomplish the same goal. While some have nitpicked this particular example, there are many others out there with different scenarios that prove the basic point. It’s fairly well established by now that human moral reasoning has much more to do with something innate to the human psyche than with complex moral reasoning–though reasoning does also clearly play a role in our decisions as well.

The reason for the discrepancy is simple: most people have an innate, empathetic resistance to physically pushing a man to his death no matter what beneficial consequences it might have. It feels wrong, somehow. Pulling a lever, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same effect. It doesn’t feel as wrong, even though both the intent and consequence of the act are the same in both circumstances. Moreover, so far as we can tell that instinctual morality isn’t greatly affected by cultural differences. It appears to be intrinsic to the human condition.

What does this have to do with gun control? Everything.

Gun lovers will say that knives and hammers kill just as effectively as guns do. If someone means to kill someone else, they can and will. While this isn’t actually the case, most arguments along this line tend to devolve toward the relative efficiency of guns versus other weapons.

While the efficiency and simplicity of the gun is certainly greater than for other weapons, that’s not actually what makes the gun so pernicious and dangerous. What makes it dangerous is the fact that the gun gets in the way of our moral reasoning in a way that the knife does not. For most of us, if we are in a heated argument with a cheating spouse or a friend who betrayed us, there is something deep-seated in our psyches that won’t let us actually hurt that person up close with kinetic force, much less strike them repeatedly as it usually requires to kill someone with the first dangerous object we can get our hands on. Our monkey brains say “no, this is bad. No matter how angry you are, this is not acceptable.” Even if we want to, most of us can’t push that man onto the tracks. Better to let the five on the trolley die through inaction.

But the gun is different. It’s easier. The gun is that switch that we pull to intentionally doom the man on the tracks with an action. It bypasses the moral circuitry that usually prevents us from taking the actions it would have required for us to kill another human being through countless generations, giving us a significant remove from the moral consequences of our actions. Rationally it’s still the same. Emotionally it isn’t.

That’s not to say that people don’t kill one another by hand all the time. Many people are psychopaths, many become so enraged or greedy that even instinct is overwhelmed, and many people would push the man off the bridge onto the tracks in any case. But it’s a numbers game. Statistically speaking, there are a great many people who, even if their chance of killing their victim were 100% with either a knife or a gun and did not fear failing in their attack, would stop short of using the knife for reasons of evolutionary psychology alone. Tens of thousands of victims are dead who should not be, and tens of thousands become murderers when they could have gone to their graves as productive members of society, simply because a gun was available when it should not have been.

In the story of human society and evolution, the gun itself is a villain that robs us of our own finely tuned instinctual morality. A society that makes guns harder to acquire is a society that not only allows more of us to continue to live, but also allows us to be more fully human in those rare moments that threaten to turn fatal.

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Your moment of zen. So, so wrong.

by digby

I’m not a pizza purist but this is just wrong:

Pizza Hut UK is getting a limited-time Cheeseburger Pizza Crust featuring soft crust pockets filled with mini beef patties fixed with mozzarella cheese. The new item comes with a side of ketchup dip and can be covered with your favorite toppings.

Why????

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QOTD: Phil Gingrey (R-Dumbasapost)

by digby

What is that they say about a gaffe being an accidental truth?

“In a few years [my staff] can just go to K Street and make $500,000 a year. Meanwhile I’m stuck here making $172,000.” … Rep. Phil Gingrey, (R-Dumbasapost)

Here’s how that works: A lobbyist says to a staff member that he likes the cut of her jib, thinks she’s very smart and has a big future in DC. He tells her to “stay in touch” and when she’s ready to change jobs, give him a call. From that time on, she’s thinking about his offer and that 500k a year. How do you suppose that affects her analysis and advice for the Representative or Senator she works for?

They don’t have to bribe them outright. They just have to tell them they like them. Easy as pie.

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It’s the guns, stupid

by David Atkins

It’s not just random mass shooters, accidents and neighborhood turf wars. Guns are also the #1 factor in domestic violence deaths:

According to a 2003 study published in the American Journal of Public Health, the risk of homicide against women increases 500 percent when a gun is present in domestic violence situations, and the FBI estimates that in 2010, 64 percent of women murdered with guns were killed by a current or former intimate partner. The Violence Policy Center reports that in 2010, the number of women shot and killed by partners was six times higher than the number killed by strangers using all other weapons combined.

In Texas, the numbers echo national estimates: the Texas Council on Family Violence reports that, in 2011, firearms were used in 64 percent of 102 cases where women were murdered by current or former intimate partners. The FBI also estimates that, in states where a background check is required for every handgun sale, 38 percent fewer women are shot and killed by abusive partners. Texas is not one of those states.

When it comes to the should-haves and could-haves of domestic violence murders, one “should” appears to be clear: Domestic abusers should not have access to firearms. But abusers can easily sidestep background checks by purchasing from private sellers, or shopping for weapons at a gun show, and efforts to close those loopholes have been thwarted.

Earlier this year, pressure from the national gun lobby overshadowed the overwhelming evidence connecting domestic violence homicides to guns when the U.S. Senate rejected tougher gun laws that would have expanded those background checks and banned some semi-automatic weapons.

Paulette Sullivan Moore with the National Network to End Domestic Violence says that the Second Amendment and tougher gun laws are not mutually exclusive, which makes the Senate’s rejection of the firearms bill that much more heartbreaking.

“The reality is that responsible gun owners also want other gun owners to be responsible,” said Sullivan Moore. Her organization has been speaking with senators who voted to renew the Violence Against Women Act but who are against gun reform, senators who she says are seemingly “unable to make the connection between prior armed violence and violence against women.”

Gun nuts will claim that men who want to kill their partners will use other means if they don’t have a gun. But while that might sometimes be true, the lack of comparable domestic violence death rates in states and nations with tougher gun laws puts the lie to that argument. It’s also common sense.

It’s much easier and faster, emotionally speaking, to whip out a gun in the heat of the moment and pull a trigger. It’s horrible to think about, but it’s a far different thing to get close to a person and strike them with a sharp or blunt object, usually several times. Many people who will pull the trigger of a gun and kill a spouse or girlfriend will stop short if they would otherwise need to use hand-to-hand physical violence.

The American gun epidemic is also a violence against women epidemic. There are literally tens of thousands of women (and a great many men as well) dead today who would likely be alive if this country had sane gun laws, purely in domestic violence cases alone.

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Could we justify having all these police if we ended the war on drugs?

by digby

Well all these police authorities have to have something to show for the vast sums of money we spend on them:

Drug offenses remained the single most common cause of arrest in 2012, mostly for offenses involving mere possession, according to newly released FBI estimates. Of the 12.2 million estimated arrests 1.55 million were for “drug abuse violations.” Some 82 percent of those were for possession offenses, and 42.4 percent for marijuana possession. That is the equivalent of a drug arrest every 20 seconds, and a marijuana arrest every 42 seconds, according to calculations by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of law enforcement officials who support the regulated legalization of drugs.

“These numbers represent a tremendous loss of human potential,” said LEAP Executive Director Neill Franklin, who was a police officer for 34 years. Each one of those arrests is the story of someone who may suffer a variety of adverse effects from their interaction with the justice system.” Among those effects are ineligibility for federal student loans, which applies only to convictions for drug offenses, or involuntary civil commitment for a sexual offense.

“Commit a murder or a robbery and the government will still give you a student loan,” Franklin said. “Get convicted for smoking a joint and you’re likely to lose it. This is supposed to help people get over their drug habit?”

Emphasis on drug abuse arrests also detracts from resources for solving other violent crimes. Over the past half century, the rate of unsolved homicides has skyrocketed. And a recent study by the Drug Policy Alliance found that the New York Police Department spent 1 million hours over the last decade just on marijuana arrests. An FBI chart accompanying last year’s annual crime statistics tracks the increase in marijuana arrests, as violent crime arrests decreased.

But police do need to justify their existence. This is one way to do it:

Murders and other complex crimes are difficult to solve. But when law enforcement officers face arrest quotas, or are feeling pressure to demonstrate the fruits of their efforts, drug possession arrests provide an easy route to success. In New York, for example, the aggressive NYPD stop-and-frisk program has been touted as a way to net illegal guns. But among the small fraction of stopped New Yorkers who are arrested for anything at all, marijuana is the number one offense. This is so even though marijuana possession is decriminalized in New York, except when it is in public view. New York police officers reportedly ask subjects to take marijuana out of their pockets in the course of a frisk, and then arrest them for marijuana in public view.

And there’s always the money:

Police also stand to profit from seizing money and assets they believe are associated with drug crimes. And once arrested, drug defendants face stiff mandatory minimum sentences, unless they take a plea deal, or barter with law enforcement by serving as a snitch or ensnaring other drug defendants. As a consequence, drug offenders fill our jails at enormous taxpayer expense.

While arrests for all drug offenses went up since 2011, marijuana arrests have gone down slightly, likely because of a barrage of state reforms. But these arrest still fall disproportionately on minorities. A recent American Civil Liberties Union report found that blacks were four times as likely as whites to be arrested for marijuana, despite similar rates of marijuana use.

I assume we are on the road to changing this with the new laws in the states. But there is so much money involved it’s much harder than it should be. These drug warriors won’t go quietly.

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Worship the 1%. You live at their pleasure.

by digby

You’ve got to love the Randroids.  they never give up.  Here’s one writing in Forbes about the 99% vs the 1%.  Guess who he thinks need to give back?

Each particular individual in the community who contributed to a man’s rise to wealth was paid at the time–either materially or, as in the case of parents and friends, spiritually. There is no debt to discharge. There is nothing to give back, because there was nothing taken away.

Well, maybe there is–in the other direction. The shoe is on the other foot. It is “the community” that should give back to the wealth-creators. It turns out that the 99% get far more benefit from the 1% than vice-versa. Ayn Rand developed the idea of “the pyramid of ability,” which John Galt sets forth in Atlas Shrugged:

When you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best productive minds who exist in the world around you.

When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making . . .

In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns. But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him. And the same is true of all men between, on all levels of ambition and ability. The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is the nature of the ‘competition’ between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of ‘exploitation’ for which you have damned the strong.

For their enormous contributions to our standard of living, the high-earners should be thanked and publicly honored. We are in their debt.

Yes, the geniuses who brought us the financial crisis and mortgage fraud should be thanked for their service along with the “mental effort” of failing executives who get paid huge golden parachutes just to get rid of them. And, needless to say, their heirs should be worshiped for having the superior intelligence to be born to wealthy parents.

The rest of us parasites should be grateful for the opportunity to breathe the same air as those we serve with our labor. It’s only right.

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Of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations

by digby

Dday has a great expose of Max Baucus and his idea of “tax reform” up at TNR today. Keep in mind that this is what’s going to be defined as the necessary GOP “concession” to offset Democratic cuts in Social Security in the upcoming budget battles:

The CEOs of the nation’s largest companies typically don’t have a reason to fly to Butte, Montana. But that’s where they are this week, a who’s who of corporate America, participating in the Montana Economic Development Summit, billed as an effort to “boost our state’s economy by finding Montana solutions for Montana jobs.” That may sound like a regional concern, but the non-Montana titans of industry in attendance include Google CEO Eric Schmidt; Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg; Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk; and many more, including executives from Ford, Boeing, Hewlett-Packard, ConocoPhillips, Oracle, FedEx and Delta Airlines. Sponsors of the event include even more behemoths, like Walmart, Pfizer, Pepsi, Microsoft, Nike, Lockheed Martin and dozens more.

How can a local Montana jobs summit attract the giants of American commerce, few of whom have any business interests in the state? Well, the convener of the event, Max Baucus, happens to chair the Senate Finance Committee, the key tax-writing panel in the upper chamber. And when he throws an event, nominally about “bringing jobs to Montana,” corporate America recognizes that this gives them another opportunity to dole out favors to the senator who wants to lead a massive rewriting of the nation’s tax laws, designed to lower corporate rates and allow companies to bring back money stashed overseas with impunity. In fact, every corporation associated with the Montana Economic Development Summit has a stake in the tax reform debate, and most have officially lobbied for favorable treatment. Considering the tens of billions that these companies stand to gain if they are successful, a couple days in Butte doesn’t sound like such a bad trade.
[…]
The event sponsors and keynote speakers represent almost the entire coalition pressuring Baucus for a corporate-friendly tax reform plan. Featured speaker Fred Smith runs FedEx, the delivery service, a company that paid an effective tax rate of 4.2 percent on $9.4 billion in total profits over the past five years, according to Citizens for Tax Justice. They sit on two coalitions that have led corporate lobbying efforts on tax reform—the Alliance for Competitive Taxation (ACT) and Reforming America’s Taxes Equitably (RATE). FedEx has spent $31 million on lobbying from 2011-2013.

Both ACT and RATE support a reduction in the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent, which is supposed to be “paid for” by closures of loopholes. But the biggest loophole of all would be pried open with ACT’s plan for a “territorial” taxation system, exempting from taxation profits earned by U.S. multinationals overseas or simply booked offshore, and allowing corporations to repatriate offshore profits at a rate as low as single-digits. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities believes such a system would create incentives for global corporations to move more of their operations overseas to avoid taxes, “hurting domestic businesses… and weakening the economy.”

Whatever comes of this is going to be touted as “tax reform” and “asking the corporations to pay a little bit more” in order to have the same “skin in the game” as millions of social security recipients, disabled citizens and veterans who will be living in poverty with no ability to make money to offset the cuts. Anyone who believes that hasn’t been paying attention to what’s happened with Dodd-Frank.

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NSA goes where no man has gone before

by digby

This takes the cake:

“When he was running the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, Alexander brought many of his future allies down to Fort Belvoir for a tour of his base of operations, a facility known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a ‘whoosh’ sound when they slid open and closed. Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather ‘captain’s chair’ in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen.

‘Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard,’ says a retired officer in charge of VIP visits.”

Jesus H. Christ. This is for real. Greenwald found pictures:

Numerous commentators remarked yesterday on the meaning of all that (note, too, how “Total Information Awareness” was a major scandal in the Bush years, but “Information Dominance Center” – along with things like “Boundless Informant” – are treated as benign or even noble programs in the age of Obama).
But now, on the website of DBI Architects, Inc. of Washington and Reston, Virginia, there are what purports to be photographs of the actual Star-Trek-like headquarters commissioned by Gen. Alexander that so impressed his Congressional overseers. It’s a 10,740 square foot labyrinth in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The brochure touts how “the prominently positioned chair provides the commanding officer an uninterrupted field of vision to a 22′-0″ wide projection screen”:

The glossy display further describes how “this project involved the renovation of standard office space into a highly classified, ultramodern operations center.” Its “primary function is to enable 24-hour worldwide
visualization, planning, and execution of coordinated information operations for the US Army and other federal agencies.” It gushes: “The futuristic, yet distinctly military, setting is further reinforced by the Commander’s console, which gives the illusion that one has boarded a star ship”:

Other photographs of Gen. Alexander’s personal Star Trek Captain fantasy come-to-life (courtesy of public funds) are here. Any casual review of human history proves how deeply irrational it is to believe that powerful factions can be trusted to exercise vast surveillance power with little accountability or transparency. But the more they proudly flaunt their warped imperial hubris, the more irrational it becomes.

I think I’m most stunned by the fact that Alexander used the Star Trek TV model instead of this one. It’s so much more fitting:

I don’t know how much the taxpayers put up to fulfill this bizarre Star trek fantasy but the mere fact that it exists is enough to prove that he needs to be shuffled off to the multi-million dollar sinecure that awaits him in the private sector. In fact you have to wonder why that hasn’t happened. It’s more than a little bit suspicious when a spy chief with access to information on everyone in the country (especially important politicians) keeps his job despite the fact that he’s clearly a little bit cuckoo. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before …

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Gun nuts jacked on espresso = danger for customers

by digby

So Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, is disturbed that his company is being used as a stage for gun nuts to make their point. So he’s asking them to stop:

Recently, however, we’ve seen the “open carry” debate become increasingly uncivil and, in some cases, even threatening. Pro-gun activists have used our stores as a political stage for media events misleadingly called “Starbucks Appreciation Days” that disingenuously portray Starbucks as a champion of “open carry.” To be clear: we do not want these events in our stores. Some anti-gun activists have also played a role in ratcheting up the rhetoric and friction, including soliciting and confronting our customers and partners.

For these reasons, today we are respectfully requesting that customers no longer bring firearms into our stores or outdoor seating areas—even in states where “open carry” is permitted—unless they are authorized law enforcement personnel.

I would like to clarify two points. First, this is a request and not an outright ban. Why? Because we want to give responsible gun owners the chance to respect our request—and also because enforcing a ban would potentially require our partners to confront armed customers, and that is not a role I am comfortable asking Starbucks partners to take on. Second, we know we cannot satisfy everyone. For those who oppose “open carry,” we believe the legislative and policy-making process is the proper arena for this debate, not our stores. For those who champion “open carry,” please respect that Starbucks stores are places where everyone should feel relaxed and comfortable. The presence of a weapon in our stores is unsettling and upsetting for many of our customers.

He’s missing the point, don’t you think? The reason these people want to carry guns in public places like Starbucks is to shut up anyone who might think it’s ok to have a political opinion with which they disagree — and that includes the customers and the employees who don’t want them to be in Starbucks carrying guns. I’m certainly not going to argue with people who are so committed they feel the need to ostentatiously wear a gun in public. It signals quite clearly that they are zealots on the subject and it’s not safe to argue with armed zealots. And that’s exactly what they mean to convey whether they admit it or not.

When I see people carrying guns, I leave the vicinity and that includes Starbucks. With all the accidental shootings in this country, it’s not safe to be around these yahoos when they are carrying in any case. And those who are wearing their guns to make a political point are clearly trying to intimidate people. Who knows what they’ll do? Starbucks is right to be alarmed.

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