Women Vs The Front Line! Fight!

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

http://news.yahoo.com/ap-sources-panetta-opens-combat-roles-women-203034238--politics.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senior defense officials say Pentagon chief Leon Panetta is removing the military's ban on women serving in combat, opening hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and potentially elite commando jobs after more than a decade at war.

The groundbreaking move recommended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff overturns a 1994 rule prohibiting women from being assigned to smaller ground combat units. Panetta's decision gives the military services until January 2016 to seek special exceptions if they believe any positions must remain closed to women.


I'm curious to see what kind of exceptions will be put forth. But what's really on my mind is what sort of inevitable backlash this will kick up. I expect Fox News to jump on the old line about how being on the front lines will make it more likely female troops will be raped by enemies. Beyond that, well, I imagine that some inventive idiocy will arise from all this.

Still, this has been a long time coming. Shame it took needs must when the devil drives to make it happen.

There are no words for this:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

http://www.salon.com/2013/01/24/new_mexico_wants_to_criminalize_abortions_after_rape_as_tampering_with_evidence/

So, the same political party which was running a year ago on the basis of 'rape victims can't get pregnant because rape produces anti-impregnation magic' now has another idiot doing unpleasant things involving the politics of rape. *Now* the idiot in question wants to imprison a rape victim who had an abortion. I have no family-friendly phrases for what I think of someone who'd actually advocate this, but in lieu of a multi-paragraph string of English-language profanity strung together, I'm going to have to ask once again how the GOP expects a government powerful enough to control the uterus not to be powerful in any other sphere of life? Is the conservative ideal of small government a government small enough to fit in the uterus and the bedroom?

If you can’t win at the ballot box, win in parliamentary maneuvering

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida are starting legislative proposals to have the way their states award Presidential electoral college votes changed. Currently, it's a majority winner takes all approach. What's being proposed instead now is to use gerrymandered districts (redrawn in 2010 when Republicans took majorities in those states, and favors Republicans) and split the electoral votes accordingly. Meaning a presidential candidate could win the popular vote, but still be the loser in electoral votes (more about that later in this post, with a concrete example) And this strategy has been very effective: case in point: the House of Representatives. Hell the Republican State Leadership Committee has bragged about this on their Redmap 2012 website:

President Obama won reelection in 2012 by nearly 3 points nationally, and banked 126 more electoral votes than Governor Mitt Romney. Democratic candidates for the U.S. House won 1.1 million more votes than their Republican opponents. But the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is a Republican and presides over a 33-seat House Republican majority during the 113th Congress. How? One needs to look no farther than four states that voted Democratic on a statewide level in 2012, yet elected a strong Republican delegation to represent them in Congress: Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Henry Marsh, Virginia Senator and civil rights veteran

Having seen the evidence of their sucess, their going to up the ante. Virginia is the first state this year to pass such a proposal on Monday. The state senate in Virginia is divided equally between Republican and Democrats (20-20), but on Monday while African American Senator Henry Marsh* left to attend the President's inauguration in Washington, D.C. Virginia Senate Republican leadership decided to celebrate Martin Luther King day (and their one vote advantage) by voting through their gerrymandered voting districts that favor, can you guess who and puts African American voters as a serious disadvantage. The vote on Monday was a complete surprise for state Democrats, who were blind sided by the move. After extremely limited debate (15 minutes), the bill passed by a single vote.¹ And even Republican governor Bob McDonnell was taken back by the slickness of the move saying "it's not the way I would have done it."

The House of Delegates (where the proposed electoral vote is in committee) was touted by its sponsor Sen. Charles W. Carrico Sr. as essentially being more "fair" and argues that the current system punishes the more rural areas of the state (which Romney carried by 60 percent).² What would have happened in the 2012 Presidential election had the new districts and the new proposed split electoral vote had been in place. President Obama would still have won by more than 145,000 but Mitt Romney would have carried the state.


Using the new districts and split electoral votes, Romney would have won Virginia in 2012

And here is a map of the key battle ground states and the implications if they decide to split their electoral votes based on the Republican redrawn districts:




I think the answer (and the most easy to do) is to remove state redistricting from politicians and appoint non-partisans like several states have already done. Discussions about reforming the electoral college are great, but that's not going anywhere and a non-starter. Non partisan redistricting can also stop the gridlock in Congress as well because it would effectively kill the "hyper-partisan" districts (especially in the House of Representatives), and create more moderate Representatives, since candidates would have to appeal to other elements in the other party, and not worried so much about being primaried. In fact Mike Bloomberg released a study in 2010:

such districts can increase the competitiveness of legislative elections at the state and federal level. In the most recent elections, the report found that across the country, 49 percent of candidates elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and 57 percent of candidates elected to state legislatures won their races with margins of victory greater than 30 points, or faced no opposition at all.³

Here is the entire segment about this from Rachel Maddow's program, it's extremely good and recommended viewing ;)

================
* Senator Henry Marsh is veteran from the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, fighting to integrate Virginia schools in the 1950s and 1960s, and is 79 years old.

[1.] Va. Senate GOP springs redrawn lines on Democrats by Bob Lewis and Larry O’Dell for the AP.

[2.] Morning Read: GOP Senator Proposes Plan to Split Va.'s Electoral College Votes by Perry Stein: nbcwashington.com.

[3.] Nonpartisan Redistricting Would Increase Competition in NYC Elections mikebloomberg.com

Should The West automatically give a political asylum to a Russian street protester?

[panchul.livejournal.com]

Gentlemen: I believe there is a case of a serious disconnect and I need your help to clarify the situation.

What happended: Alexander Dolmatov, a member of a Russian opposition party The Other Russia (effectively a renamed National Bolshevik Party) decided to take part in a street meeting that led him to a fight with a Russian police: Dolmatov is on the right:



As a result, he got in trouble with a Russian state and decided to flight to Netherlands, where he applied for political refugee status:

( Dolmatov in Hemp Museum in Netherlands )

Dolmatov was denied the refugee status because Dutch decided that the only danger he is facing in Russia is 500 rubles fine (about $20). As a result, Dolmatov commited suicide.

It is also important to know that Dolmatov was working in a Russian company that designed tactical missiles and had a government security clearance (minimal level - so he did not work on anything secret).

Now: a Russian journalist Oleg Kashin published an article in The New York Times implying that the West has a moral obligation "to keep doors open" to "thousands" of Russian political activists who may choose to flee Russia when they feel they can be prosecuted.
( And here is a disconnect )

I personally think that Oleg Kashin and other Russians like him have a mistaken assumption about how the West perceives these "fighters for the democracy" in Russia. Kashin probably think that Dolmatov-type political activists are a kind of proxy fighters of the West in its mission to democratise Russia. As a result they expect the West to protect these activists from any misfortune. I also may be mistaken, so I decided to create a poll:

[Poll #1892259]

Anyone want to mine an asteroid?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Deep Space Industries unveiled its plans to launch a series of spacecrafts in 2015 to mine valuable minerals from asteroids. "Announcing the proposals, chairman Rick Tumlinson said that resources locked-up in nearby asteroids were sufficient to "expand the civilisation of Earth out into the cosmos ad infinitum". Some (e.g. NASA) are skeptical about how commercially viable the project will be.

Keith Cowing, editor of NasaWatch.com, said he was not yet convinced by Deep Space Industries' plans. "Is the prospect of using asteroid resources crazy? No it's not. Is if difficult? Yes it is. Can you make a business case for it? People are trying, and making progress." But he said any company must have a product, experienced people and a business case. "This is like a three-legged stool. You need all three legs, otherwise it's not a business, it's a hobby," he said.¹

This is the second business that has stated its goal for mining asteroids; Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin with film director James Cameron, Ross Perot Jr. and others started Planetary Resources.

I think this is fantastic; and shows there can be a collaborative approach between private industry and government funded space exploration. Now, this isn't manned lunar bases yet, but it a serious start. And oddly enough, this does make me appreciate Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's proposals for Moon bases. And the punditry reaction that his ideas were slightly eccentric or even nuts, disappointed me. Gingrich defended his proposal, recalling with great pride he grew up in the 1960s seeing American missions landing men on the Moon.

The Near Earth Asteroids are thought to be recent arrivals from the Kuiper Belt or the Main Asteroid Belt sent our way by Neptune and Jupiter. Coming from colder places they are more likely to have water and other volatiles. Metallic asteroids are thought to come from the cores of bodies large enough to have differentiated layers. These asteroids have nickel, iron, and platinum group metals in much richer concentrations than are typically found on planet surfaces.²

[1.] Asteroid mining: US company looks to space for precious metal by
Ian Sample, science correspondent The Guardian, Tuesday 22 January 2013.

[2.] The Case For Asteroids.