The Quiet Republican Culture War: Concealed Firearms In Bars!

The Ohio Republican legislature passed a open firearm in bar bill in 2011. The governor John Kasich, first term has been marred in controversy. The SB 5 bill which strips public sector unions of collective bargaining, calling the Upper Arlington police officer who stopped him "an idiot", partisan redistricting to favor Republicans, and his golf outing with Ohio House Speaker John Boehner, Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama has sunk job approval to low 40s.

Governor Kasich, the former host of Fox News program Heartland also has ties to NewsCorporation, Incorporated. The media network is involved in a major scandal over here and in the United Kingdom.

Here's an example of putting water on a grease fire: Ohio's controversial firearm in bar laws was passed an example of not following the rules is this person here, Chad O'Reilly is facing serious charges.

Chad O’Reilly / Provided

Written by

Dan Horn

Facts about Ohio’s new gun law

• The law allows people with concealed-carry permits to keep their guns with them when they enter one of the state’s 17,000 bars, restaurants or nightclubs where alcohol is served. The law also allows a permit holder to have a loaded handgun in a vehicle even if the gun is not secured in a holster or container.

• Businesses still can ban guns on their premises by posting a sign stating guns are not permitted.

• No one is allowed to drink alcohol while carrying a gun. Doing so is a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

• Eight other states specifically allow people with proper permits to carry guns into bars. A dozen other states prohibit guns in bars.

More

A Deer Park man became the first in Greater Cincinnati to face charges under Ohio’s “guns in bars” law Wednesday when he was arrested for threatening to kill a fellow bar patron.

Chad O’Reilly’s arrest came two weeks after the law took effect and immediately reignited debate between gun-rights activists and those who wanted to continue a statewide ban on guns in bars.

“This law is so absurd,” said Toby Hoover, director of the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence. “Without this law, maybe some fists would have flied. Instead, he’s waving a gun around.”

Supporters of the new law say it worked as intended in this case. They say O’Reilly will lose his concealed-carry permit and could face up to five years in jail if he is convicted of violating the new gun law – stiffer penalties than he would have faced under the old law.

“This fellow made a serious mistake,” said state Sen. Bill Seitz, R-Green Township, who supported changing the law. “Nothing in the law allows you to do anything other than carry a gun into an establishment if you have a permit.

“It does not give you license to brandish a gun and wave it around.”

Police say the incident occurred around 2 a.m. Wednesday when O’Reilly, who has a permit to carry a concealed weapon, got into a heated argument with another man at the H&H Tavern on Ohio Avenue in Deer Park.

They say O’Reilly, 25, walked out of the bar and returned a short time later with a .40-caliber semiautomatic Glock pistol in his hand.

According to the arrest report, O’Reilly shouted a racial slur at the man, who is Hispanic, and said, “I’m going to kill you.”

Deer Park police say O’Reilly’s friends ushered him out of the bar and police arrested him at gunpoint a few minutes later. He did not resist and no one was hurt.

O’Reilly, who police said had been drinking, was charged with aggravated menacing, ethnic intimidation, possession of a controlled substance (injectable testosterone) and illegal possession of a firearm in a liquor establishment.

The latter charge is related to Ohio’s new law, which allows concealed-carry permit holders to bring weapons into bars, restaurants, nightclubs and other places that serve liquor as long as they do not drink alcohol.

Ohio law previously had forbidden guns in those businesses, with or without a concealed-carry permit.

Because O’Reilly had been drinking, police say, he violated the new gun law. The other charges relate to the threats he is accused of making while brandishing the gun.

Ohio is one of several states to adopt some version of the guns in bars law, with gun-rights advocates arguing it makes sense to allow law-abiding citizens to carry their weapons rather than keep them at home or locked in a car when they go out.

The law does not allow drinking while carrying a gun and gives bar owners the option of putting up a sign banning guns on their premises.

The H&H Tavern had no such sign, but owner Dave Anderson said it soon will. He said his bar never had a problem with gun-toting patrons before and blames the new law for the incident Wednesday morning.

“I believe in the right to bear arms, but I believe that law was made in bad judgment,” Anderson said. “It’s not good for any small business to have people carrying firearms in.”

Deer Park police Lt. Daniel McCormack said O’Reilly told police he tucked his gun into his waistband, without a holster, before entering the tavern. The bartender told police he served O’Reilly two beers before the incident.

“I’m a shooter and I believe in concealed carry,” McCormack said. “But any time you have alcohol and guns, it’s just not a good mix.”

The same argument was made often when legislators debated the new law earlier this year. The Ohio Restaurant Association, with more than 2,400 members, opposed the law on grounds that alcohol and guns are a bad combination.

Seitz and others, however, have said the nearly 250,000 Ohioans with concealed-carry permits are law-abiding citizens who should be allowed to keep their firearms with them.

To obtain a concealed-carry permit, a person must complete at least 12 hours of training, including two hours on a firing range, pass a criminal background check and pay various fees.

Seitz said the potential penalties O’Reilly faces for violating the law should discourage other permit holders from drinking while carrying a gun.

“The draconian sanctions on those who violate this law will act as a deterrent on those who would do something foolish in the future,” Seitz said.

Anderson, the bar owner, said he just doesn’t want a repeat of what happened Wednesday morning.

“We’ve been in business 21 years,” he said. “We’ve never had a thing like this happen before.”

Another Ridiculous Culture War Distraction! Operation Fast & Furious Scandal

This issue has circulated through the conservative blogs and media for the last three months.

Operation Fast and Furious was a sting run by the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) between 2009 and 2010 as part of Project Gunrunner in its investigations into illegal gun trafficking. The stated purpose of the operation was to permit otherwise-suspected straw purchasers to complete the weapon's purchase and transit to Mexico, in order to build a bigger case against Mexican criminal organizations suspected of being the ultimate buyer.

During the operation, the sale of at least 2,000 guns were facilitated by ATF knowing most would be trafficked to Mexico. By June 2011, the guns have been linked (through eTrace, ATF's electronic tracing program) to some 179 crime scenes in Mexico.

Of the 2,000 guns knowingly released by ATF agents, only 600 are reported as recovered by officials. The remaining 1,400 guns have not been recovered.

Congressman Darrell Issa (R-California) is heavily involved in the Operation Fast & Furious scandal. The Republicans and conservatives call for Attorney General Eric Holder to resign. Republicans once again have their asses wrapped around the American flag in defense of another "culture" war. Instead of worrying about what they were elected for, we see the Republicans wasting time, money and patience.

Woman is the “N” of the World? : Ms Magazine Blog

Woman is the “N” of the World? : Ms Magazine Blog: In 1969, Yoko Ono coined the phrase, and I quote, “Woman is the N****R of the World.” Shortly thereafter, she and her husband, the late John Lennon, wrote and he recorded a song with that same title.

According to Wikipedia (which is ALWAYS questionable), at that time (don’t know where they would stand today) Dick Gregory and Ron Dellums defended the song.

Several Black feminists, including Pearl Cleage, challenged Yoko Ono’s racist (to Black women) statement. “If Woman is the “N” of the World, what does that make Black Women, the “N, N” of the World?”

Lawrence O'Donnell Gave Herman Cain And The Right Something To Rant About!

Way to go, Lawrence! You just gave the right wing something to whine about on radio, television and the blogs.

If one is to believe that interview was out of line, then you're not the only one!

For one thing, Republican candidate Herman Cain was a stand up guy for appearing on a clearly partisan show! It shows that the candidate is at least willing to take on a political enemy as the right put it in the network MSNBC.

Second, if Lawrence O'Donnell would have stayed focus on interviewi­ng Cain on his policies and then focus on his controvers­ial statements­, this wouldn't be the talk in the right wing media.

Third, Cain now is a establishe­d front runner. After this Florida Straw Poll, and a CBS poll putting him in a statistic tie with former governor of Massachuse­tts, Mitt Romney, Cain is riding in the limelight.

After scandals affected Rick Perry's campaign, Herman Cain quietly came into the focus.

O'Donnell should have not went into the "culture war". That's like picking with a hornets nest!

The right will drive this issue for weeks to come!

Sean Hannity Goes After President Obama Speech To Congressional Black Conference!

Sean Hannity is a notoriously known race-baiter. He wants to paint the president as a person with "radical" views.

In his latest made up attempt at creating a controversy, Hannity debates two Black commentators over the president's speech to the Congressional Black Conference.

Dr. Marc Lamont Hill and Reverend Wayne Perryman are debating over the president's speech.

This is the amended version.

A Repost of Suheir Hammad's Exotic

Here's a repost of Ms. Hammad's Exotic:

Suheir Hammad's Exotic




This poem is my favorite. This one really touched many women of color as we all face everyday sexualized racism, whether from family, work, school, the general public, and the ever-present mass media in one form or another.



exotic


by suheir hammad










don't wanna be your exotic


some delicate fragile colorful bird


imprisoned caged


in a land foreign to the stretch of her wings


don't wanna be your exotic


women everywhere are just like me


some taller darker nicer than me


but like me but just the same


women everywhere carry my nose on their faces


my name on their spirits


don't wanna


don't seduce yourself with


my otherness my hair


wasn't put on top of my head to entice


you into some mysterious black voodoo


the beat of my lashes against each other


ain't some dark desert beat


it's just a blink


get over it


don't wanna be your exotic


your lovin of my beauty ain't more than


funky fornication plain pink perversion


in fact nasty necrophilia


cause my beauty is dead to you


I am dead to you


not your


harem girl geisha doll banana picker


pom pom girl pum pum shorts coffee maker


town whore belly dancer private dancer


la malinche venus hottentot laundry girl


your immaculate vessel emasculating princess


don't wanna be


your erotic


not your exotic

Here's her video of Suheir's "Exotic" at Youtube:






Ms. Hammad's poem is still relevant today.  As you see from the photos, past and present, women of color are still fetishized and exoticized in mainstream popular culture, media, and politics.  The images comes from various Disney films, pop music videos, and paintings from the 19th century onwards.  They show the various ways women of Color are portrayed in film and in culture in general.  Those images do have a big impact on how people view us, whether they give us respect or contempt.  Love, or lust/fetish that has to be hidden from public view.  Public policies whether to help women of Color or to marginalize, as in debates on immigration, feminism, etc.
 
What are your thoughts about the poem and the views it expressed?

Obama To CBC: Stop Complaining! Fight For Your Share!

WASHINGTON — In a fiery summons to an important voting bloc, President Barack Obama told blacks on Saturday to quit crying and complaining and "put on your marching shoes" to follow him into battle for jobs and opportunity.

And though he didn't say it directly, for a second term, too.

Obama's speech to the annual awards dinner of the Congressional Black Caucus was his answer to increasingly vocal griping from black leaders that he's been giving away too much in talks with Republicans -- and not doing enough to fight black unemployment, which is nearly double the national average at 16.7 percent.

"It gets folks discouraged. I know. I listen to some of y'all," Obama told an audience of some 3,000 in a darkened Washington convention center.

But he said blacks need to have faith in the future -- and understand that the fight won't be won if they don't rally to his side.

"I need your help," Obama said.

The president will need black turnout to match its historic 2008 levels if he's to have a shot at winning a second term, and Saturday's speech was a chance to speak directly to inner-city concerns.

He acknowledged blacks have suffered mightily because of the recession, and are frustrated that the downturn is taking so long to reverse. "So many people are still hurting. So many people are barely hanging on," he said, then added: "And so many people in this city are fighting us every step of the way."

But Obama said blacks know all too well from the civil rights struggle that the fight for what is right is never easy.

"Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes," he said, his voice rising as applause and cheers mounted. "Shake it off. Stop complainin'. Stop grumblin'. Stop cryin'. We are going to press on. We have work to do."

Topping the to-do list, he said, is getting Congress to the pass jobs bill he sent to Capitol Hill two weeks ago.

Obama said the package of payroll tax cuts, business tax breaks and infrastructure spending will benefit 100,000 black-owned businesses and 20 million African-American workers. Republicans have indicated they're open to some of the tax measures -- but oppose his means of paying for it: hiking taxes on top income-earners and big business.

But at times, Obama also sounded like he was discussing his own embattled tenure.

"The future rewards those who press on," He said. "I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I don't have time to complain. I'm going to press on."

Caucus leaders remain fiercely protective of the nation's first African-American president, but in recent weeks they've been increasingly vocal in their discontent -- especially over black joblessness.

"If Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House," the caucus chairman, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, recently told McClatchy Newspapers.

Like many Democratic lawmakers, caucus members were dismayed by Obama's concessions to the GOP during the summer's talks on raising the government's borrowing limit.

Cleaver famously called the compromise deal a "sugar-coated Satan sandwich."

But Cleaver said his members also are keeping their gripes in check because "nobody wants to do anything that would empower the people who hate the president."

Still, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., caused a stir last month by complaining that Obama's Midwest bus tour had bypassed black districts. She told a largely black audience in Detroit that the caucus is "supportive of the president, but we're getting tired."

Last year, Obama addressed the same dinner and implored blacks to get out the vote in the midterm elections because Republicans were preparing to "turn back the clock."

What followed was a Democratic rout that Obama acknowledged as a "shellacking."

Where blacks had turned out in droves to help elect him in 2008, there was a sharp drop-off two years later.

Some 65 percent of eligible blacks voted in 2008, compared with a 2010 level that polls estimate at between 37 percent and 40 percent. Final census figures for 2010 are not yet available, and it's worth noting off-year elections typically draw far fewer voters.

This year's caucus speech came as Obama began cranking up grass-roots efforts across the Democratic spectrum.

It also fell on the eve of a trip to the West Coast that will combine salesmanship for the jobs plan he sent to Congress this month and re-election fundraising.

Obama was leaving Sunday morning for Seattle, where two money receptions were planned, with two more to follow in the San Francisco area.

On Monday, Obama is holding a town meeting at the California headquarters of LinkedIn, the business networking website, before going on to fundraisers in San Diego and Los Angeles and a visit Tuesday to a Denver-area high school to highlight the school renovation component of the jobs package.

UC Berkeley: Racially Themed Bake Sale Got Students Upset!

Racially heated posting sparks UC Berkeley outrage

Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer

BERKELEY -- A Facebook post announcing plans by a UC Berkeley Republican group to sell baked goods priced according to race, gender and ethnicity - "White/Caucasian" pastries for $2 and "Black/African American" pastries for 75 cents, for example - has drawn outrage on campus.

"I'm ashamed to know that I go to the same school with people who would say stuff like this," responded student Skyler Hogan-Van Sickle on Facebook. "I'm really trying to figure out how someone can be this hateful."

The campus Republicans, who expect to go forward with their "Increase Diversity Bake Sale" on Tuesday, say the event is meant to mock an effort by the student government to drum up support for SB185, a bill to let the University of California and the California State University consider ethnicity in student admissions. It's awaiting approval or veto by Gov. Jerry Brown.

"Our bake sale will be at the same time and location of a phone bank which will be making calls to urge Gov. Brown to sign the bill," posted six students who created the Facebook page. The purpose "is to offer another view to this policy of considering race in university admissions. The pricing structure of the baked goods is meant to be satirical."

But students say the joke is anything but funny. More than 200 students responded to the event, most opposed, and some violently so. One threatened to burn the table and set the cupcakes on fire. At least four student groups sent complaints to campus administrators, and a student-only meeting was set for Friday evening to discuss it.

"It's offensive because of the tactics that they chose," said Joey Freeman, a vice president with the Associated Students of the University of California, Berkeley's student government. "This should be done for constructive dialogue and debate. But not in a way I thought was, frankly, racist."

The posting describes five price levels for pastries, with the highest for "White/Caucasian," and the lowest for "Native American." A 25-cent discount is offered for women.

"If you don't come, you're a racist," the post declares.

Berkeley's tempest follows a series of racial and anti-Semitic incidents across UC campuses, which prompted UC officials to focus new attention on fighting hate speech among students.

In March at UCLA, a student posted a video of herself ranting about Asians. In 2010, UC San Diego students posted racial slurs and caricatures on Facebook, and used campus TV to belittle black students. Someone also hung a noose from light fixture in the library.

At UC Davis, six swastikas were found, including one carved into a Jewish student's door, and someone defaced the gay students' center.

At UC Merced, a video mocking efforts to create a Chicano studies program was posted on Facebook.

In 2010, UC President Mark Yudof described the incidents as "quite simply the worst acts of racism and intolerance I've seen on college campuses in 20 years." He created a committee to help campuses strengthen anti-hate policies. And next year, all students and employees will be asked to take a survey about campus tensions, said UC spokesman Steve Montiel.

At Berkeley, the Facebook posting violates no campus policy, said Gibor Basri, vice chancellor for equity and inclusion.

"The only policy it violates is the principles of community," he said, adding that a campus-wide letter will go out Monday. "We can use this as a teaching moment."

Shawn Lewis, president of the Berkeley College Republicans, was surprised by the number of critics and their harshness and said he agrees that race-based pricing is discriminatory.

"But it's discriminatory in the same way that considering race in university admissions is discriminatory," he said.

E-mail Nanette Asimov at nasimov@sfchronicle.com.

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