We need to stop giving Huckabee and his ilk the time of day, let alone any air time. First it was because we took prayer out of school (see link for nice breakdown of how wrong he is) and now he's just pulling more bull out of his arse.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/rodda/2012/1…

a FB "friend" re-posted this - the original posting asked "why isn't this man president?"

because he's a terrible, terrible theologian. God cannot be removed from anyplace - is God not Omnipresent?

Mike Huckabee must not be tolerated in America any longer.

Maurice Clemmons was let out of prison by this dolt and he murdered four policemen. Idiot.

someday i will travel a great distance--use up all me vacation hours even!--just to gleefully piss on this man's grave.

@2

A step-uncle of mine posted an image on FB telling us that the shooting was evidence of God wanting prayer in school. Really? I'm so glad I'm not going home for the holidays. I might have to bitch slap him if I did.

Flying Spaghetti Monsters

There's an FB image going around on my feed currently stating we should station three or four armed veterans at the entrance to every school. Yes, because that worked so well in at that military base.

What a jackass.

@10: correlation is not causation.

and this "discussion" isn't about the fucking sixties. it's about huckabee and his ilk thinking that their god could/would stop an amoklauf killer if we hadn't stopped kissing his ass 24/7.

@10 another simple correlation without causation. Next.

@10: Yes, and cancer causes cell phones. (No, that's not backwards.) Correlation alone does not imply causation.

Give Huckabee a break. It's just like 9/11 happened because we allow feminists, abortions and gays. Pat Robertson said so!

@16: Is it possible that one parent who didn't feel the need to own multiple weapons would have prevented [redacted] from having the tools necessary to shoot 6- and 7-year-old children in the face.

The logical contortions you go through would be comical if they weren't so fucking tragic.

Hey Fuckabee, Maurice Clemmons says hello from hell.

@10 Has anyone pointed out the flaw in conflating correlation with causation yet? Did you know that increased ice cream sales cause people to go to the public pool more?

On a serious note - there is a correlation you're missing, which is the increase in the availability of heavy firepower. Remember the Boston Massacre (well, remember hearing about it?) A number of soldiers opened fire on a crowd, killing five. That's right 5. Nowadays, one person kills 28. If that psycho had to use muskets, I'm guessing it would have gone a little differently.

Fact-based finger-pointing, please.
The latest reports say the parents divorced when the shooter was 17 (hardly a young child), and they attended the local Catholic church.

@17 - exactly. Blaming the fact that she was a single mother and overlooking the presence of assault weapons in the house is mind-boggling.

@16 - Studies also show that being born into a low income household hurts your chances of growing up to be healthy. But if you bring that up, then you have to address poverty, which isn't one of the conservative talking points. Instead, you chose to blame the recently deceased mother of a psychopath for having been single. Nice.

@10, 16
Gosh--I wish this disusssion had taken place a couple of weeks ago, when I was still teaching logical fallacies.

You and Huckabee are both guilty of classic "Post Hoc" arguments (cause and effect arguments) in which you're arguing that because two things happen in sequence, the first causes the second to happen. Both of you are arguing that civil rights and social progress have caused the Newtown shooting.

From your position @10, you move on to a statment that includes two fallacies at once.

The first is hasty generalization. You wrote "Studies show that children who grow up in two-parent homes are more likely to turn out OK. " While that may be true, I don't know of any studies that show that children who grow up in single parent homes (as you suggest) are more likely to become mass murderers. The second is is hypothesis contrary to fact, in which you argue that events today would have been different if certain things had or had not happened in the past: "Is it possible that two loving parents with the support of a faith-community could have prevented Adam Lanza's psychological problems"? Sure. Anything is possible. But we don't know. Jim Jones had two loving parents. So did O.J. Simpson. Lizzie Borden was raised in a two-parent household (though one parent was a step-mother), and Lizzie was active in the church to boot.

Again, I wish this discussion had happened earlier in the semester, but I may print the thread so that I can use your comments next time we cover logical fallacies.

@23, Lizzie Borden was acquitted, and there's lots of disagreement over whether she did the killings.

Yes, yes, I know--not the point.

@10, 22
There was plenty of violence BEFORE the civil rights movement, though much of it was unreported and tacitly condoned.

Wife beating and lynching are no longer fashionable.

@24 OJ was acquitted, too.

@10 I don't know what planet you spend most of your time on, but here on Earth, in the United States, violent crime has decreased precipitously in the last few decades; it's now at the lowest level it's been since the 1970's. Last time I checked, we didn't all become the Cleaver's in that time - in fact, religion probably plays a much larger role in our civic debates now than it ever did in the 60's. Also, right up to the 60's, lynching was a pretty common phenomenon, and I doubt law enforcement was adequately tracking this crime. I think there's even less chance that law enforcement took gay-bashing seriously back then. Should we return to the "traditional values" that excused that kind of cold-blooded murder? Maybe it's not so much that violent crime has skyrocketed, but that the people it most often targets finally started to matter to mainstream America.

@22
Escalation in social mayhem? On the whole, violent crime has declined precipitously since the early 1990s.

What came to my mind when I heard about this, yesterday, was the Children's Crusade. God permeated every facet of life at that time in Europe, but somehow this did not save those children - children who were, in fact, aiming to do God's work.

This kind of argument is rejected even by theologians - those who make the study of God their life's work. Simply put, that's not the way this shit works.

@22 2 points:

1) If you don't know the answer to a question, you can't just make up one that fits your ideology.

2) Overall crime rates are actually going down. Why do school shootings in particular seem to be on the rise - no one knows. That includes you.

Fun fact - someone did an actual study using actual data and found that increased access to birth control and abortion was strongly correlated with decreases in violence by the generation of children effected. Using your logic, you must also believe that allowing parents to plan families by not having kids they don't want leads to a safer, more wholesome society. Do you believe that? I'm going to guess no, because that particular correlation gives you the sads.

@29 - The opposite conclusion actually follows: violence that affects small numbers of people is falling steadily, while we are seeing a rise in things like mass shootings. Therefore the types of guns that get used in mass shootings, which are growing in abundance, are prime targets.
The evidence suggests that you can keep your hunting rifle, but we'd all be better off if you forked over the AR-15.

I get the impression that some people would get more upset over the loss of their semi automatic weapons than they would over the deaths of, say, 20 children and 7 adults. Newsflash - you aren't going to defend the country against Tyranny. Assault rifles get used for two things - having fun by blowing the holy be-gezus out of a target and killing dozens of innocent people at a time. It's like an X-box that can also kill people.

@ 32 - I remember reading about that - they found that crime stats, especially of stuff like vandalism, car theft, B&Es, started to decline about sixteen years after Roe v Wade. The theory is that a lot of unwanted kids who would have gone on to lives of crime just hadn't been born. Don't know how we would go about actually proving that, though - correlation does not imply causation even when it's our side doing the arguing.

@1 I'm not sure "stop giving him attention" is the best route. I think "mock the fuck out of him and turn him into an enormous joke" is far, far more effective.

@32, 34: It's written up nicely in "Freakonomics".

Can you believe this Doofus Mulroney? He makes the rounds on TV shows such as The Daily Show and sounds reasonable (if wrong). Then, he makes these wack statements on his own TV show that one would think would disqualify him FOREVER from a presidential candidacy (but it doesn't). It's like me being on Today to give an well-balanced argument about the Palestinian issue, then going home and eating a plate of my own shit and posting it on You Tube.

I know Jon Stewart (love you, Jon!) is a fair-minded man when it comes to his guests, but I think this merits cancelling any future appearances by Huckabee - because he sounds bananas.

@4,

But Clemmons said he loved Jesus. Who would think twice about releasing him?

@16,

No. The shooter was raised by both parents until he was 16 years old, i.e. nearly an adult.

One nice thing about this asshole's comments and his complete abandonment of "compassionate" Christianity is that it's obvious that Fuckabee has given up any pretense of becoming President. He knows where the money is, and it's in spewing this shit, not in unsuccessfully running for president.

@32,

The guy who examined that data originally did so to "prove" that abortion rates among black people was responsible for the decreased crime rate. He cleaned that theory up for widespread publication in Freakanomics. Also, real researchers who aren't pushing pseudo-research to make a buck dispute his findings.

One far more probable reason for the decreasing crime rate: Baby Boomers getting too old or imprisoned or dead to continue committing crimes. The worst period of crime and violence in recent U.S. history also happened to be the same period when Boomers were teens and young adults.

@10 - You are full of shit.

You know who goes to church way fucking less than Americans? Canadians. You know who pops contraceptives at higher rates? Canucks. You know who has more affirmed athiests? Yep, the 51st State of Hockey. You know who also consumes the same fucking violent video games, movies and entertainment, but DOESN'T routinely shoot up the building? Canadians.

Another thing. It is SUPREMELY FUCKING INSULTING to suggest that someone's child died because someone didn't pray enough.

One more thing Ken. I used to be with you, a moderate Republican/Conservative Democrat. No more. I am fucking done. That was a massive stupid fucking "look how cool I am to be on the fence" moment of my youth, i.e. last month. The Republicans and their NRA ilk are directly responsible for blocking policies that would have given those Sandy Hook children a fighting chance to escape. They have pediatric blood on their hands. Nothing else matter. Not tax policy, not off shore drilling, not Social Security.

Watching Obama speak at Newton made me thank fucking god he won.

I hereby serve notice to all politicians who oppose sensible gun control: you have an enemy in me, and I will do everything in my financial and political power to crush you.

Fuck I am pissed.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/fuck-ev…

and this, for any US citizens who want to add their names:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petitio…

or this one, about tax exempt status:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petitio…

Again, where's the fucking thumbs up for #42... another fantastic comment.

It could be hate-mongering; it could be a right-wing dog whistle; but the simplest explanation is that Huckabee and his ilk are possessed of the Just World Fallacy (google it). In their world, good is rewarded, and evil is punished, and if something really bad happens, then the victims must have done something really bad to deserve it.

The alternative is that these things are arbitrary, and it could have been them, and tomorrow it could be them. They don't have the cojones to live knowing that we all walk on the edge of the abyss, all the time.

Rather than getting angry, we should call them out for the moral cowards that they are.

@10: Yes, because once Canada, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Australia passed civil rights into law, the bloodshed began!

Oh wait, I forgot. America is the only place that any of that ever happened.

He's so full of noise that I don't listen to him.

I'm talking about huckabee of course.

@42, two thumbs up from me. I've used that same argument about you know who else watches/reads/plays the same "violent" video games/movies/books/etc except I referred to Scandinavians not Canadians.

@42. Love your post! Thank you.

@42 Thank you...

He says God showed himself in the teachers who put themselves in between the kids and the gunman. I don't know what to call that kind of behaviour when it comes from a supposedly all powerful, all seeing entity. "Cowardice" seems way too mild a word. Reminds me of the scene in Dead Zone where Michael Douglas holds up an infant to shield himself from a bullet.

@52 - That was Martin Sheen. :)

Ah yes, so it was. But you see my point.

@10:

Of the zero sources you cited, I find all of them credible.