Can someone explain to me in simple terms. USA elections

Just to be clear, I don't think all gunowners are racists! I think some people want guns because they are paranoid about crime, and some of those people are afraid because they have been affected so much by hysterical news coverage of crime, which often has a racial element. Studies have shown for example that in areas where black and white people commit crimes at similar rates, most of the criminals actually shown on local TV are black.

I'm not the biggest fan of Michael Moore but I thought he raised an interesting point in Bowling for Columbine, where he talked about how Canadians also have lots of guns but much less gun violence. I think he pointed to fear and paranoia as a big difference between the societies, you could also talk about how Canada has a much better social safety net that probably reduces crime, as well as demographic factors.

Flowery like you I don't understand why people's personal opinions get to trump the obvious fact that gun control would limit violence. I suppose a lot of people would disagree with your saying that the only purpose of a gun is to harm/kill people. I think the vast majority of people would say its purpose is protection, or maybe hunting, i.e. good purposes. So why should they have to be unprotected just because some people use guns wrongly?

Okay, sure, but what I really don't get is why we can't at least limit the worst guns, surely you can protect yourself without a semiautomatic, or with just one gun. But I guess that is seen as a slippery slope to banning them completely.

Ten??!!

Thanks to those who responded about the gun issue. Bohemian I can understand all those points of view. I understand feeling the need for personal protection, in a 'all the baddies have a gun therefore I need one too' kind of way. I also get that not wanting govt to tell people what to do is a big thing for some, although it seems to extend mostly to things they want to be able to do/control, rather than things they would like other people not to do...

I also understand that in some places guns just are, as you say CheerfulYank, and getting them back in the box just is never going to happen.

But what I struggle with is why any of these principles trump the fact that surely with stricter gun controls, less people would die? I can see the comparison with alcohol here, although of course the big difference is that the purpose of a gun is to cause harm/kill people. The only reason to have guns (other than those genuinely needed for animal control or whatever) is so that you are in a position to do that, whether in self-defence or not.

I find that very difficult. When gun lobby people have that argument put to them in debate, that strict gun controls surely = less death, what is their response generally?

I would also like to thank people for a fascinating and informative thread. I studied American History as part of my degree and also did a term on American politics, but remember shamefully little of it really. Most of my 'knowledge' now comes from the West Wing!

Extro

You seemed to be portraying yourself as an American with strong opinions.

I now see that you are a British person who has had some trips to America, none of them lasting more than two weeks.

So I hope you will not be offended more than necessary if I say that to take the views of the American voter, I will listen to citizens and residents and not you.

'Significance? Haters gonna hate... :P'
It wasn't actually very funny though, was it?

'A few racists out of thousands of people, not as if everyone was applauding them.
They felt comfortable enough and uninhibited enough in that environment to do it.

'Same as Akin and rape, his insensitivity to rape survivors and ignorance of reproductive biology doesn't extend to the whole party.'

The Akin thing happened in the specific context of upcoming legislation sponsored by Akin and Paul Ryan which would stop funding for abortion unless forcible rape could be proved by the victim -- the 'legitimate rape' language used was the language of proponents of the legislation. Akin's wing of the Republican Party believes that women would make up rape allegations to get around loopholes in anti-abortion legislation that made exceptions for rape and incest. So he is opposed to loopholes. The forcible rape language was dropped after an outcry from women's organisations.

Akin isn't smart enough to have come up with his biological theories himself, as demonstrated by the fact that he was stupid enough to broadcast the rhetoric -- it is widespread in his section of the party. He is not a lone idiot marching to the sound of a different drum. Back in the early 90s he opposed the extension of the definition of rape to encompass marital rape on the grounds that women could falsely claim rape and make divorce very messy. Obviously that did not put much of a ding in his political career. On this occasion he was confident enough of the ridiculous assertions of the circle that populates his own little echo chamber that he saw fit to air them to a wider audience, just as the peanut throwers were confident.

Incidentally, the notion that women cannot get pregnant after forcible rape has been around in the Republican party and the pro life movement since the 1980s. It is a wishful thinking theory that originated in campaigns against abortion, with the rape and incest loopholes that all anti-abortion legislation normally include proving too much for those who want abortion ended completely. Stephen Freind, a Pennsylvania Republican representative, was the first known politician to air the myth in the political arena, and got laughed out of court, back in 1988. Henry Aldridge of North Carolina was next. Apparently it just won't die. www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/08/a-canard-that-will-not-die-legitimate-rape-doesnt-cause-pregnancy/261303/

Cheerful Yank... I think it goes back to the saying: Not all Republicans are racists (or misogynists, or Christian fundamentalists), but all the racists (etc) are Republicans.

Having done a little research the numbers for the USA are as follows.

5% of rapes end up in pregnancy,

32,000 rape pregnancies a year in the USA

That means 640,000 rapes a year in the USA

Question for Extrospektiv

If gun ownership is a great thing why are they not 640,000 men shot a year by a rape victim. Is that because the lack of gun control allows the rapeists a real means of force.

Instead of trying to criminalise the victims with force birther legislation why don't the right wing states go after the rapists.

Not all Republicans.

I am most decidedly not a Republican, but it's unfair to tar them all with the same brush, the same as it is any other group of people.

Republicans believe the way to control the poor is to keep them poor and struggling because as the old song goes how will they keep them down on the farm once they've seen Paris.

Of course the republican elite can see Paris for as long as they can, especially in order to dodge the draft.

How is the Democratic party anti family?

How does a party that campaigns against 'government interference in how businesses are run' including for instance making businesses provide a clean room for lactating women to pump milk call itself pro family? How is a party that objects to paid maternity leave for a paltry six weeks pro family? How is a party that always objects to raises in the minimum wage pro anything but permanent impoverishment of vast swathes of the workforce?

I suspect when the Republicans call themselves pro family what they are saying is that they are the party that makes it difficult for mothers to work or for working women to have babies and recover in a humane amount of time (and eat while they are away from work) and what they actually mean by 'family' is one where there is a male breadwinner.

The right continually have attacked the pregnancy advice centres and policies of education by charity groups like Planned Pregnacy and in many areas the right have gone out of there way to force Planned Pregnancy to close down due to the rights forced birth stance. They always conveniently forget that only 3% of what Planned Pregnacy do is permitting a woman the her god given right to liberty to choose and the vast majority of their work is in prevention of STI's etc. etc.

Oh and do remember that in the USA the vast majority of all abortions are on middle aged married woman.

Do remember that through their sex education practices Planned Pregnancy are in fact the largest preventors of abortions in the USA.

But hey the disinformation of the right is not know for letting facts get in the way of phoney rhetoric. WMD's anyone...anyone...Bueller...

What a fun thread. Romney will lose the election. The economy and healthcare should have sunk Obama, despite the facts that the economic situation is largely not his fault and the healthcare proposals are a step in a right and necessary direction.

Whatever. Romney is a middle-kingdom kind of Republican, theoretically the right sort to take the centre voters and win. But the Republican party is in the midst of a dark night of the soul, with fiscal conservatives and wealthy self-interests sitting next to right-wingnut religious fundamentalists and small-government libertarians. It won't wash.

His choice of Ryan was poor - he's photogenic and energenic, but he's an Ayn Randist, leave-the-poor-to-their-fate, abortion-opposing nutjob. It's a choice to energise the Republican 'base', but the Republican base is all over the place at the moment. Romney needed the strength of character to stand as the former governor of Mass., the guy with the healthcare plan and the record on abortion rights who kept his religion out of his politics. Obama would have lost to that guy: the Republicans would vote for him because who else would they vote for? Many Democats would have voted for him because they're disappointed by Obama.

Romney should have stood up and said: I'll keep the healthcare element. I did it in Mass. and it worked. He would have neutralised all opposition and he could have hammered Obama relentlessly on the economy. Now he just looks like a flip-flopper with no ethical centre. And a wealthy one who off-shores his income, to boot.

Four more years of opposition, I think, for the Republican party to decide who they want to be.

None of those groups you demonised are 'anti conservative' lobby groups. They all have their own reasons for existence, their own pet projects if you will.

The Sierra Club for instance was founded in the 1890s and it is an environmental group with an educational mission.

The ACLU's mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It did commit the cardinal sin of participating in the Scopes trial on the side of the right to teach evolution so I can see how that would irk some on the right, but I do not see how its general mission could be interpreted as 'anti-conservative'. Do people have rights in the US? Have there been times when those rights have been threatened?

PNHP is Physicians for a National Health Program. Self explanatory.
What is unclear is how it is an 'anti conservative' lobby unless 'conservative' means 'insurance company', and also unclear is why under the constitution it can't lobby for something it believes in; surely one of the fundamental pillars of conservatism should be the constitution that guarantees the rights of expression, etc...

PFAW (People For The American Way) has the following mission:
'People For the American Way is dedicated to making the promise of America real for every American: Equality. Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. The right to seek justice in a court of law. The right to cast a vote that counts.
Our vision is a vibrantly diverse democratic society in which everyone is treated equally under the law, given the freedom and opportunity to pursue their dreams, and encouraged to participate in our nation?s civic and political life. Our America respects diversity, nurtures creativity and combats hatred and bigotry.
We believe a society that reflects these constitutional principles and progressive values is worth fighting for, and we take seriously our responsibility to cultivate new generations of leaders and activists who will sustain these values for the life of this nation.
Our operational mission is to promote the American Way and defend it from attack, to build and nurture communities of support for our values, and to equip those communities to promote progressive policies, elect progressive candidates, and hold public officials accountable.'
...The context in which the organisation and its mission originated was the increasing din from the right during the 1980s of the likes of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.

The mission sounds like the Declaration of Rights..

How could any conservative be opposed to a group choosing to participate in a democratic way in the public life of the US? Does opposition to the 'conservative agenda' (aka in this case the agenda of Falwell and Robertson) automatically turn a group into a crowd of Bolsheviks?

The NEA is the National Endowment for the Arts. Yes, I can see how the NEA would be very obviously an anti conservative lobby . Obviously not just a hotbed of commies but probably gay commies because it is well known fact that artists are all gay..

ACORN -- Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now is no longer in existence. It was hounded out of existence by two right wing activists and their supporters who produced dubious films purporting to show ACORN reps advising people how to secure public housing and carry on their 'business' of prostitution. ACORN was cleared of wrongdoing by the General Accounting Office and various attorneys general but the shit stuck nevertheless.
Some of the issues ACORN had grappled with up to the time of its destruction by right wing zealots included:

• Predatory lending practices (sub prime lending -- remember that disaster? We are all living in the post sub prime lending world)
• Campaigning to allow people to remain in their homes and not be thrown out upon foreclosure by mortgage companies. Prescient of them to sense the coming storm.
• Affordable housing - how is this ant-conservative?
• Katrine Relief - to the extent that this embarrassed tha Bush government I can see conservatives being annoyed..
• School Improvement -- a pet project of conservatives is the disbandment of government schools. ACORN pushed for improvement of schools, better parental involvement, even setting up of charter schools to replace failing schools, but clearly this wasn't enough.
• Voter Registration -- registering the wrong people is a no no apparently. Meanwhile voter identification legislation proposals on the part of the right demonstrate the need for advocacy on the issue.

Planned Parenthood provides contraception and abortion services and other services to women such as mammograms. Abortion is legal. Contraception is legal. Many people do not approve of them and hold dear their beliefs that these things are wrong. But PP is still not an anti-conservative lobby. It lobbies to keep the services it provides legal just as tobacco companies and gun manufacturers lobby to keep their products legal and available and affordable. If lobbying is objectionable to conservatives then they shouldn't lobby either. If it is not lobbying per se but what an organisation is lobbying for that conservatives object to then conservatives need to read the constitution again

NARAL - National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League is a lobby group. It is as its name suggests a group that lobbies to keep abortion legal and fight encroachments on the right to abortion and reproductive rights that have been declared by the Supreme Court.

The Center For Reproductive Rights seeks to support legal reproductive rights for women around the world and in the US including abortion rights. There are other groups out there that seek to further an opposing agenda. All part of the give and take of debate.

Maria Wright Edelman, graduate of Yale Law School, was the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar. What's not to like about a woman who has devoted her life to speaking out on behalf of poor, minority and disabled children through the Children's Defence Fund? What could conservatives possibly find objectionable in an organisation that seeks to help prevent teen pregnancy, promotes the transmission of positive values through families, seeks the protection of children from violent images in the media, and advocates for prenatal care and childcare? The CDF also seeks to protect children from abuse and neglect. That all seems very pro life to me. Its motto 'Leave No Child Behind' was lifted by GW Bush for his education legislation..

People have a right to opinions. People have a right to put their money where their mouths are. The US Supreme Court recently ruled that corporations are 'individuals' for the purposes of free speech and financial support of causes and candidates, a pet conservative issue. You should make it clear whether you oppose lobbying in general or just the message of specific groups who lobby. Whatever way you decide, it might be a good thing to acknowledge that lobby groups are not anti-conservative lobbies but pro or anti various issues -- I am sure you would not wish to characterise the gun lobby as an anti liberal lobby.

I wasn't thinking specifically of the 'Protocols' and that is why I didn't mention it, but rather of the generalised, casual anti-semitism of the US (without which the Protocols couldn't have been taken seriously and to which the Protocols gave momentum, in a circular dynamic) as expressed by opponents of the New Deal such as Fr. Coughlin supporters. It was very much a feature of many other countries too I'm not singling out the US here for anti-semitism but the US was the topic of discussion. Anti semitism and racism lingered longer in the US, and under different circumstances from those of western Europe they flourished. 'Metropolitan elite liberal' is a slightly more polite way to say 'Commie Jew' but that is what it means all the same, and the term comes from fear of the alien, fear of the person who is 'not like us' the same place where it always came from.

Extrospektiv

You do realise that girls starting to menstruate before 12 is not a new phenomena at all and has been going on for time in memorial. Claiming that you are protecting innonce by not giving sex eduation is just ignorance.

According to the Centre for Disease control children in who receive comprehensive sex education are 60% less likely to have a teen pregnancy.

States with abstinence only programs had no effect on abstinence rates in other words the kids were still getting jiggy with it but just uneducated on the risks or STI's and contraception.

The only reason the religious are pro abstinence pro ignorance, anti education and anti abortion is that they want a bigger congregation.

There would be far fewer teen pregnancies in those bible belt states if they were more tolerant of gay marriage.

Some one standing in front of kids saying sex is a wonderful gift from god and then the school only being able to say, don't have it, is never going to work.

Which is why Mississippi, abstinance only ,has more than 3 times the teen pregnancy rate of New Hampshire which has comprehensive sex ed.

far better to say sex is awesome and there are 127 odd diseases you can catch from it and here is how to protect yourself, because if you do get pregnant the right wingers will force you to give birth whether you like it or not.

Ohh I thought you meant "significance" as in whether that isolated racist incident was, in my opinion, an unveiling of their real principles or just a few hateful fools who happened to be there, so I went for the latter.

I thought you would understand that nuts and monkeys went together and that it was therefore a racist gesture in the same vein as monkey noises made by football hooligans at Black players. As you do seem to be well-informed in general from your discussion on this thread. Sorry for the presumption.

Violence and ignorance aren't family values and forced marriage is an unjust, misogynist cultural practice which girls and women deserve to be shielded from. Educating Muslims in a pro-woman reading of Islam could help; I get suspicious when it's all white non-Muslim liberals trying to change the culture for the better, it can be seen as imperialism and that does not foment good inter-communal relations. I'm not being PC-gone-mad; in any individual case I support appropriate legal and other action being taken to stop the forced marriage. To see change fostered from WITHIN the community and not only forced from outside it will be a better solution if available.

Some parents believe in innocence (i.e. not disclosing too much about sex until around the age of 12, when the classical model posits they leave the latency period) rather than ignorance . This may be problematic now because of girls starting to menstruate before 12 and not knowing what is happening to their bodies but school can teach this and not go into any of the wider "sex" context without parental approval.

Because that's how people traditionally fed animals at the zoo.

Hateful, ignorant assholes.

I would guess that it is a reference to the commonly held belief by white people who have racist viewpoints , that black people are equivalent to monkeys. How one can hold such views in a modern western society is beyond me.
When I look at people, I see a person, not a skin colour, gender, religion or other noticable difference.

I don't know the significance of throwing nuts. It is not a practice I am familiar with. What does it signify?

"subverting family values in schools" is a fact, not a country-specific piece of political jargon

I disagree.

It is, as you used it, jargon, and its meaning is not intrinsic from the words. Hence I asked what it meant (implying, when you use it)

Some families use violence on their children; is that a family value? If other citizens try to discourage or prevent this violence, or punish it, would that be subversion? Some families support forced marriages. Is that in your view a "family value?"

Some families seek to prevent their youngsters learning facts, for example about sex and relationships. Is ignorance a family value?

From your perspective, how do you identify a family value?

Significance? Haters gonna hate... :P

A few racists out of thousands of people, not as if everyone was applauding them. Same as Akin and rape, his insensitivity to rape survivors and ignorance of reproductive biology doesn't extend to the whole party.

Back to the original subject...

What is the significance of white American political activists, at a major political event, throwing nuts at black American workers?