Daily Gnuz!!

Read all about it! Whatever IT is, today, Friday April 20th 2018

Giuliani Joins Trump Legal Team
H/T TPM
It’s been 30 years since Giuliani has been a prosecutor. Trump just needed another has-been recognizable name to fill the empty seats in the Oval Orifice.

And,
US school shootings rise rapidly in two decades: study
H/T Raw Story
“In less than 18 years, we have already seen more deaths related to school shootings than in the whole 20th century,” said lead author Antonis Katsiyannis of Clemson University.
And guns are more available than ever…

Finally,
LGBT rights group takes aim at Pence as Trump woes deepen
Pence could increasingly find himself the target of liberal attacks in a midterm election year.
H/T Politico
Pence will be the harbinger of “The HandMaiden’s Tale” if he winds up in charge of this mess.

Open Thread, for FSM’s sake, do something with it!

RUCerious @TPZoo

Daily (Sunday) Gnuz

Sorry, no comics with today’s Sunday Gnuz.

How Trump Plans to Evict Poor Families From Public Housing
H/T The Nation
More nefarious intent embedded in the Budget that cuts to the bone.

And,
Floridians Tell Politicians Who Do The NRA’s Bidding Their Time Is Up
H/T Huff Po
Hope it doesn’t take too many more of these shooting galleries to convince the American voters that guns = violence, and assault weapons are for soldiers.

Finally,
Why a Government Run by Oligarchs is Very Deadly
H/T Alternet
Seems self evident, but there are some interesting points made here.

Open Thread, put it under a microscope and examine it!

RUCerious @TPZoo

Daily Gnuz

Morinin, Zoo. Thank You Zooey for a wonderful Music Night last Friday eve!!

And now, back to reality with the Daily Gnuz

Lax Texas Gun Laws, the NRA and Another Horrendous Deadly Mass Shooting
H/T Alternet
Yes, gun rights are more important than human rights. At least in Texas…

And

The Republican tax plan’s original sin. A giant, unpopular, unworkable business tax cut.
H/T Vox
I must relucantly admit, that a small, mean part of me wants the R’s to steamroll this through. By 2020 America will be on its knees as more and more services are dismantled. Then we may get another 40 year run of Republican minority representation.

Finally,

Russia Puts the Squeeze on Don Jr.
H/T TPM
This is also known as C O L L U S I O N.

Open Thread, enjoy A moronic Monday
RUCerious @ TPZoo

Daily Gnuz

Good week to you alls, here’s the Gnuz!

9 Reasons Trump’s Tax Plan Will Hurt You
H/T AlterNet
Please use these to inform the muddled masses who are going to claim we’d be better off with HWSNBN’s tax ‘reform’ package
(HWSNBN = He Who Should Not Be Named — The sitting president. I am using this moniker, cause he is thrilled every time he sees his name..)

And

Shooting At Las Vegas Music Festival Kills 50, Wounds More Than 200
H/T TPM
Gun control, Schmun control, just offer coneffingdolences and go back to business as usual. No chance of effecting restrictions on lunatics owning weapons of mass murder…This is our Amurikka today.

Finally,

Puerto Rico is all our worst fears about HWSNBN coming real
H/T Vox
HWSNBN, channeling his inner Nero/Caligula…

Open Thread, welcome to another hell week in Amerikka
RUCerious @ TPZoo

The Weekend Watering Hole, Saturday, January 7th-8th, 2017: Russian Roulette

Here’s some of the most recent articles about the U.S. intelligence agencies’ report on the Russian influence in Trump’s election.

First, here’s a PDF of the report itself.

Next we have relevant articles from yesterday’s Washington Post and the New York Times.

And then a couple of articles on Trump’s post-intelligence-briefing statements, one from the NY Times, and one from this morning’s Raw Story. Apparently Trump took time from his preoccupation with Arnold and The Apprentice to tweet a few idiocies while avoiding the ‘yuge’ Russian elephant in his room.

What will it take for Trump, his minions, and the GOP to finally admit that the chambers in the Russian Roulette revolver aren’t all empty?

This is our Open Thread – join in with whatever you want to talk about.

The Watering Hole; Thursday October 6 2016; Guns v. 2A

“My faith informs my life [. . .] it all for me begins with cherishing the
dignity, the worth, the value of every human life“
(Mike Pence, Rep. VP Candidate)

“‘Every human life’ . . . except those stolen by #gunviolence . . .
like my mother’s. Then, you simply just don’t care”
(Erica L Smegielski; daughter of a Sandy Hook victim)

******

Guns v. The Second Amendment.

I recently ran across a fresh and novel (stupid) but still interesting “new” thesis, courtesy of Larry Pratt, executive director emeritus of Gun Owners of America. Last Saturday (Oct 1)  on his Gun Owners News Hour radio program, Pratt’s guest was Don Brockett, author of a book called “The Tyrannical Rule of the U.S. Supreme Court” in which Brockett poses the proposition that the Second Amendment was written so as to allow states to defend themselves against invasion, and was added to the Constitution because of Article I Section 10, the part which reads:

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, . . . engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Brockett asked,

“[H]ow can it defend itself if it’s being invaded if the people don’t have any Second Amendment right to arms? And I maintain in the book, even though some may think this is going too far, that you’re entitled to the same measure of weapons as the weapons that might be used against you. So does that mean everybody can have an RPG in their home? I don’t know. I think we need to discuss it, because how could you stop the invading army unless you have the equal weaponry? Or if you want to provide it by your national guard, which can be distributed to individual citizens when that need comes about.”

Pratt completely agreed with Brockett’s thesis, and pointed out that the Second Amendment essentially stands as proof that the Founders’ original intent was to constitutionally allow that every future man of military-age, in each and every State, be fully armed in order to confront and combat armed invaders of said State. Pratt added that in re today, the Founders would have allowed that “at a minimum,” every man should be carrying, at the least, an M-16 rifle. RPGs too, probably.

Pratt and Brockett are, of course, totally and completely wrong and off-the-wall. The Second Amendment had absolutely nothing at all to do with Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution. It was, instead, written by Virginia slave-owner and ‘Founder’ James Madison in response to Article I, Section 8, Clauses 15 and 16:

The Congress  shall have Power . . . [Clause 15] To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; [and Clause 16] To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress . . .

The 1787 Constitution assigned, in short, complete and total control of “the Militia” to Congress and not to the States, a fact which quickly became a matter of deep concern to, especially, the slave states. At the 1788 Constitution Ratifying Convention in Virginia, Patrick Henry expressed those concerns when he said:

Let me here call your attention to that part which gives the Congress power to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States. . . .

If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress insurrections. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress. . . . Congress, and Congress only, can call forth the militia. . . .

In this state there are two hundred and thirty-six thousand blacks, and there are many in several other states. But there are few or none in the Northern States. . . . In this situation, I see a great deal of the property of the people of Virginia in jeopardy, and their peace and tranquility gone.

“Insurrection of slaves” and “property” are the key words here, given that Article I Section 8 specifically says that only the Congress shall have power . . . To . . . suppress insurrections. NOT the State(s), i.o.w., and THAT was clearly the clause most worrisome to slave owners, to slave states, in the emerging USA, because it put their property in jeopardy.

Henry was also concerned about the attitudes of the abolitionists in the “northern” States, i.e those who wanted to completely do away with slavery. As he pointed out to James Madison,

 “[T]hey will search that paper [the Constitution], and see if they have power of manumission. And have they not, sir? Have they not power to provide for the general defence and welfare? May they not think that these call for the abolition of slavery? May they not pronounce all slaves free, and will they not be warranted by that power? This is no ambiguous implication or logical deduction. The paper speaks to the point: they have the power in clear, unequivocal terms, and will clearly and certainly exercise it. This is a local matter, and I can see no propriety in subjecting it to Congress.” 

In short, arguments such as Patrick Henry’s convinced instructed James Madison to write what we now know as the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Madison’s original draft read,

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.

In the final version of what was to become the Second Amendment, Madison succumbed to the suggestions of Patrick Henry, George Mason, and other Southern State voices that wanted slave patrol militias to remain free of Federal control mainly by changing a single word in his final version:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

“Country” now become “State” — Federal control of Militias now back in the hands of the STATE — not to ward off an invasion, but to deal with SLAVE INSURRECTIONS via a WELL REGULATED MILITIA (and whatever happened to the concept of a ‘well regulated militia’? Where is it today? Is the concept — and its regulatory manifestations — dead? Gone? Buried?).

If the answer is left to politicians and/or gun nuts, it’s likely that we’ll never know.

In any case, for a further and much deeper analysis of the Second Amendment’s origin and purpose, see Law Professor Carl Bogus’ Research Paper 80, The Hidden History of the Second Amendment which begins with this abstract:

. . . there is strong reason to believe that, in significant part, James Madison drafted the Second Amendment to assure his constituents in Virginia, and the South generally, that Congress could not use its newly-acquired powers to indirectly undermine the slave system by disarming the militia, on which the South relied for slave control. His argument is based on a multiplicity of the historical evidence, including debates between James Madison and George Mason and Patrick Henry at the Constitutional Ratifying Convention in Richmond, Virginia in June 1788; the record from the First Congress; and the antecedent of the American right to bear arms provision in the English Declaration of Rights of 1688.

“Strong reason” indeed.

Since James Madison’s Second Amendment was clearly written for the sole purpose of addressing the perceived Constitutional issue of Militia accessibility by the Several States, and since the sole purpose of the ‘well regulated Militia’ mentioned therein was to provide slave states with the means to put down and control slave ‘insurgencies’ and/or ‘insurrections,’ and also since the Thirteenth Amendment specifically states that Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude . . . shall exist within the United States — and since the Second Amendment was clearly written solely to protect the interests of Slave owners — the final question becomes clear and obvious:

WHY was the Second Amendment NOT automatically invalidated  at the very moment slavery was disallowed, at the very moment  the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified (Dec. 6, 1865)  by a majority of the Several States?

Why? Why the constant misinterpretation of the Second Amendment? Why the romance with any variation of that one contrivance — the GUN — the SOLE purpose of which is to KILL something – anything – that lives? Is the ability to KILL something the main driver of ‘our’ culture? Of the entire of Human society? One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, Emily Dickinson spoke in the voice of a gun when she wrote,

My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun —
In Corners — till a Day
The Owner passed — identified —
And carried Me away —

[. . .]

To foe of His — I’m deadly foe —
None stir the second time —
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye —
Or an emphatic Thumb —

Though I than He — may longer live
He longer must — than I —
For I have but the power to kill,
Without — the power to die –

The Gun — ALL Guns —  thereby Defined.

I, for one, will never understand the “magic” implicit in
a tool whose sole purpose is
TO KILL.

I know. I’m weird.

******

OPEN THREAD

The Watering Hole, Saturday, September 24th, 2016: 353 and Counting

So, another day, another mass shooting. This one took place last night at the Macy’s store in the Cascade Mall in Burlington, Washington. According to the info on Raw Story’s coverage of the shooting, four women were killed while shopping in the Macy’s cosmetics department. The shooter, described as a young Hispanic male, is still at large, and no motive or explanation has yet been reported.

But already, the “good guy with a gun”-lovers are out there shooting their mouths off – and I honestly wish that were literally true, so we sane people wouldn’t have to hear their idiocy. One example is from a guy named Michael Parker whom I’ve argued with before on various ThinkProgress threads:

“Michael Parker Had I been at this mall I would have engaged the shooter with my concealed carry weapon. Never mind…Washington State does not honor my Virginia concealed carry permit so I would have run for the hills like the rest of the sheep. Thank God Virginia recognizes Washington State concealed carry permits so if this happened in Virginia a visiting concealed carry Washington resident could have engaged the shooter. Last December, the Virginia Attorney General tried to limit Virginia’s concealed carry reciprocity to just 5 states. The NRA and the Virginia Legislators got involved…yada, yada, yada ….and now Virginia recognizes the concealed carry permits from all 50 states.”

Another commenter sarcastically said:

“Obviously we need more guns and fewer gun regulations. What could go wrong? Just suspend every one of the Bill of Rights except the 2nd Amendment and America will be great again.”

To which another gun-totin’ hero-wannabe replied:

“You are correct. That is PRECISELY what we need. Had there been a concealed carry weapon’s holder at the mall, like there was in Minnesota, the threat would have been neutralized. It’s stories like this PRECISELY why i carry a firearm.”

Apparently women shopping for cosmetics should only do so in states that allow the gun-carrying menfolk to protect the little ladies while they do so. Dog knows that going unarmed into Macy’s is just too fucking dangerous, so ladies, always expect the unexpected while you’re trying a new shade of lipstick–dontcha know, the real reason why there’s so many mirrors in cosmetics departments is so that we can scope out the folks behind us for possible shooters, not so that we can see how some silly makeup looks on us!

So, wait, how does this work with our big bad menfolk totin’ guns (concealed- OR open-carry) into a mall? As Bill Maher discussed last night – and Wayne and I have discussed before this – open-carry, at least, is quite honestly only safe for WHITE MEN to do. In an open-carry state, one probably won’t see too many men of color packing heat – or at least not for long, as SOMEONE will either shoot them ‘just because’, or report them to the police, who will come and shoot the ‘suspicious’ armed black man on sight.

As noted in the ThinkProgress thread, “There have been 353 mass shootings in the United States in 2016, according to the Mass Shootings Tracker.” C’mon, you crazy shooters, there’s still plenty of time left in 2016, let’s see how high you can make that number go before the new year! And you “good guy(s) with a gun”, Christmas shopping is just around the corner, and the malls will be packed, so get your gunz and ammo ready!

This is our daily Open Thread, so talk about gunz or whatever else you want.

The Watering Hole; Thursday June 30 2016; Gun Control? Underway!

I’ve never been shy concerning my attitudes toward the Second Amendment and the consequences of its misinterpretations by the Supreme Court; I’ve also never shied away from countering ANY argument in favor of universal gun ownership/possession. Guns have one purpose and one purpose only: to kill. Unfortunately for critters everywhere — humans especially — said purpose is massively overused, to the detriment of ‘we the critters,’ each and all. Similarly, the concept of rationality, of ‘control’ of the issue, is typically and constantly dismissed/disallowed because of the irrationality implicit in each and all of the arguments used to support the ‘universal gun ownership’ premise.

Bottom line: regardless of today’s conservative irrationality, guns are useful only to those who are interested in killing, and useless to those who are not. It remains, sadly, an essentially impossible task to do the logical thing and rid ourselves of the Second Amendment, in spite of the fact that it was written by James Madison solely to mollify slave owners concerned about the clause in the 1787 Constitution that assigned the use of militias to the federal government and NOT to the several states. Madison, himself a slave owner in Virginia, understood that militias were often used by Slave States to put down slave insurrections, a process seemingly disallowed by the new Constitution. Therefore the Second Amendment and its primary “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” clause was added in the Bill of Rights to essentially allow state militias to be continuously used for local purposes, and in the process re-open the door for Slave State ratification of the new Constitution.

In the two-plus centuries since the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, the Supreme Court has ruled on numerous occasions regarding the breadth of meaning implicit in Madison’s words, i.e. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.  In 1876, for example, in United States v. Cruikshank, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that “The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution.” Then in 1939, United States v. Miller, SCOTUS ruled that the federal government and the states could limit any weapon types that didn’t have a “reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” In 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Court handed down a landmark decision that held the amendment protects an individual right to possess and carry firearms. Finally, in the 2016 decision Caetano v. Massachusetts, the Court reiterated its earlier rulings that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding” and that its protection is not limited to “only those weapons useful in warfare.”

It took the Supreme Court 200-plus years, but as of today its rulings have effectively erased and rewritten the meanings implicit in the original Second Amendment, disregarding any and all references to “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,” and concentrating instead only on the words “the right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed.” Stated another way, the new bottom line ignores the Second Amendment’s original purpose — to allow Slave States to use armed militias to put down slave uprisings — and has instead become what’s seen as a guaranteed  Constitutional right, one that allows each and every citizen to own and carry as many of their own preferred instruments, each designed for the sole purpose of killing the life form at which it’s aimed, as they might care to own.

And these days, rest assured that ANY attempt by ANY state or by the Federal government to control in ANY way the guns available for sale to the general public will be met with screams from every quarter — save for, of course, the tiny corner still owned by sanity.

But then, suddenly, this very day, a breath of freshness, a beam of light piercing the imposed gun-culture darkness:

Hawaii just put gun owners on an FBI database — and the NRA is freaking out

Hawaii’s governor signed a bill making it the first U.S. state to place its residents who own firearms in a federal criminal record database and monitor them for possible wrongdoing anywhere in the country, his office said.

The move by gun control proponents in the liberal state represents an effort to institute some limits on firearms in the face of a bitter national debate over guns that this week saw Democratic lawmakers stage a sit-in at the U.S. House of Representatives.

Hawaii Governor David Ige, a Democrat, on Thursday signed into law a bill to have police in the state enroll people into an FBI criminal monitoring service after they register their firearms as already required, his office said in a statement.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation database called “Rap Back” will allow Hawaii police to be notified when a firearm owner from the state is arrested anywhere in the United States.

Hawaii has become the first U.S. state to place firearm owners on the FBI’s Rap Back, which until now was used to monitor criminal activities by individuals under investigation or people in positions of trust such as school teachers and daycare workers

[. . .]

Ige’s office said he also signed into law two other firearms bills. One makes convictions for stalking and sexual assault among the criminal offenses disqualifying a person from gun ownership. The other requires firearm owners to surrender their weapons if diagnosed with a mental, behavioral or emotional disorder.

Three cheers for Hawaii, for the Kingdom of Atooi! FINALLY!! A state with enough brass to look at the gun lobby and laugh, smile and wink before taking some reasonable and easily imposed steps to finally help curb this nation’s murderous plague of gun insanity!

Yeah, I know, the measures Hawaii has adopted are minimal within the concept of honest and effective gun control, but at this point in time, the old line “any port in a storm” stands tall. Plus, of course, nothing can be more satisfying than a gun control act/law that causes the NRA to freak out! The more of those, the merrier.

As  for me, if ONLY I could write a gun control law (short of repeal of the Second Amendment), it would be a short one, word-wise. I don’t, in fact, think it would need to be verbose at all, and would require no big words. Let’s see, how about this: “Each and every time a person, any person, dies from gunshot, the gun manufacturing industry shall pay a fine of one million dollars.” If the current American death rate by gunfire remains constant — 33,000 per year, approximately — the cost to the gun industry would be a mere $33,000,000,000 (33 billion) per year. The gun industry would clearly have to raise their prices on both guns and bullets appropriately to cover their new expense, likely to levels inaccessible to all but a few. Legally, however, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” would not “be infringed.” There might even be, in fact, one or two “people” who could still afford to buy not only a gun, but also the ammo to make it functional as a killing machine! Also, of course, the value/price of existing guns — the second hand market — would soar to the point where all current gun owners would be millionaires (who could no longer afford to buy bullets. but what the hell).

What could go wrong?

I think I’ll write my Congressman and demand action! He’s a wingnut, but what the hey, gotta start someplace, right? Right! Follow in the footsteps of Hawaii, of Atooi! Who needs guns?

 

Hawaii-Atooi —  Who needs guns in Paradise anyway?!!

OPEN THREAD

The Watering Hole; Thursday May 5 2016; Guns and Roses Losers

My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun —
In Corners — till a Day
The Owner passed — identified —
And carried Me away . . .

Ted Cruz speaks for evangelicals and the right wing in general when he says:

“Listen, absolutely, yes. I think the first obligation of everyone in public office is to protect life. Life is foundational. In fact, as you look at the Declaration, that ordering of unalienable rights — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — I think is a very deliberate ordering.”

And when he says:

“It doesn’t make sense for grown adult men, strangers, to be alone in a restroom with a little girl. This is the height of political correctness. And frankly, the concern is not of the Caitlyn Jenners of the world, but if the law is such that any man, if he feels like it, can go in a woman’s restroom and you can’t ask him to leave, that opens the door for predators.”

And he really grabs them when he talks about what wingnuts everywhere perceive as serious threats to their Second Amendment “rights,” as in this:

“Following the tragic shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, President Obama and Harry Reid lead an assault, not on going after violent criminals, which is what they should have done, but instead going after the Constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens. And I led the fight to protect the Second Amendment in the U.S. Senate and we defeated President Obama’s efforts to undermine our rights.”

And on the campaign trail in Iowa, he wowed ’em with this bit of “wisdom”:

“The great thing about the state of Iowa is (that) I’m pretty sure you all define gun control the same way we do in Texas: hitting what you aim at.”

Ah yes. As every good gun owner knows, hitting what you aim at is the PURPOSE! of guns, and that PURPOSE! is what the Second Amendment is all about! It PROTECTS our RIGHT to hit what you aim at and KILL IT!  YeeeeeHawwwww!!

Seems to me there’s a serious discrepancy embedded in the premises noted above. On the one hand, the fear of transgender people seems to DEMAND that the Declaration of Independence’s ordering of unalienable rights, i.e. life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness which Ted Cruz considers to be a very deliberate ordering, is an ordering that does NOT apply to everyone, and clearly not to transgender people, or to LGBT people in general. Instead he seems to reckon that to lend them the ‘impression’ that they enjoy the same rights as everyone else would be a really dangerous concession, one that would open the door for predators and put the entire rest of the nation in grave danger.

All of which is something, of course, that guns could NEVER do. Right? Right. Except — as a recent report points out —

The American College of Physicians has been calling gun violence an epidemic since 1995, and though homicide incidences have decreased dramatically since the early 1990s, the medical community still remains deeply concerned, as more than 478,000 fatal and nonfatal violent crimes were committed with a firearm in 2011, according to the most recent data from the Department of Justice.

Gee. What’s up with THAT? Close to a half million violent CRIMES in only ONE YEAR were committed with GUNS? Nah, that’s just them commie democrats lyin’ to us again, trying to find a way to accelerate President Obama’s efforts to undermine our rights and confiscate our guns! — which of course has absolutely NO relationship to the fact that ALL “conservatives” everywhere know and believe that the first obligation of everyone in public office is to protect life. Right? Right.

The article also notes that

In February, several leading health associations issued a call to action asking Congress to develop policies that would reduce the incidences of gun violence. Many of the recommendations look similar to those proposed by gun-control advocates – including limiting the availability of assault weapons and closing loopholes that exist in background checks for those who buy guns at gun shows or from dealers – and they are expected to gain little traction in the GOP-controlled Congress . . .

Well, you know, they say there’s somewhere between 30 and 35 thousand people that die every year from gunshots, but prolly half o’ them’re suicides, so what’s the problem. Right? Right.

Problem obvious: 478,000 fatal and nonfatal (gun) crimes per year, 35,000 people dead from gunshots every year, but that’s nothing, really. Where our REAL problem lies is that them transgender people wanna use the wrong restroom, and if that’s allowed God will rain death and destruction down and destroy Amurkkka in the process!

And we haven’t even touched on the gay marriage stuff, and how many people are doomed cuz of THAT!

******

Has anyone published the numbers yet of how many die from gay marriage or how many transgender restroom assaults (and deaths) there are each year? Bet the numbers are really scary-scary! Most likely all-a-dem gun owners are really lucky that Life is foundational for DEM and not for THEM! Right? Right.

Actually, I’m guessing the number in those LGBT scenarios is probably zero even though I’ve not seen any confirming stats. I should ask Ted Cruz, maybe; bet he’d know. I mean, since Life is foundational, maybe there could be a tee-tiny flaw in the Second Amendment interpretation and expression? You gotta wonder.

Too bad Ted’s dropped out of the presidential race; maybe I should ask Trump. He’ll know. Right? Right.

Though I than He — may longer live
He longer must — than I —
For I have but the power to kill,
Without — the power to die –
(Emily Dickinson)

Remember always the “conservative” point of view: Guns are a RIGHT — the height of political correctness — no matter how many lives they might take. Personal Lifestyles, where no other lives are taken, are not, because “Christian Nation” and all, wherein The power to kill without the power to die is of prime import — even as the power to live one’s life as one chooses is forever open to challenge. By the righteous.

I wonder why that is?

OPEN THREAD

 

The Watering Hole, Tuesday March 1, 2016 – Super Tuesday

We interrupt our regular programs to bring you up to the minute commentary by posters of this blog on the Super Tuesday primary event. As a way of introduction and background, here is a snippet from Raw Story:

Democrat Hillary Clinton aims to build an impregnable lead on “Super Tuesday,” the most consequential day of the presidential nominations calendar, while Republicans struggle to derail their insurgent and controversial front-runner Donald Trump.

With barely 24 hours before the big day, Clinton and Trump are well positioned to secure the lion’s share of the delegate bonanza in the 11 states voting in each party’s primaries.

Trump and Hillary? Let the voters decide.

Follow the money (per NBC News):

 

 

 

The Watering Hole: Monday, February 22, 2016: Your Gun Is Dangerous After All

According to the website Gun Violence Archive there has been a shooting incident or spree in which at least four people have died almost every single month since January 2014, the furthest back their site’s statistics go. And where last month’s mass shooting involved one family member killing five others before taking his own life during police negotiations, this past weekend’s incident in Kalamazoo, MI, involved someone apparently shooting people at random. That’s even worse. As tragic as the family shooting was, if you weren’t related to them (or living next door), odds are you were never in any danger. But the Uber driver who killed six seven and injured two another in between passenger pickups should scare the crap right out of you, because there was no rhyme or reason to how his victims were chosen. The only comforting thing is that he was caught so quickly, unlike the DC Beltway Sniper who terrorized people in the capital area for three weeks in October 2002 (during the time that President George W. Bush supposedly “kept us safe,” as certain delusional people like to keep repeating.) You only heard about this latest mass shooting because: A) it was the latest incident of a mass shooting out of far too many in this country, and B) more than one person died, unlike the other multiple shootings incidents that happened the same day.

We’re not even talking here about people shot and killed by our own police forces, which The Guardian is kind enough to keep track of for us here. We’re just talking about every day civilian Americans going nuts and shooting people. It’s become so common place now to hear of multiple people shot and killed that unless we personally know one of the victims, it doesn’t even bother us anymore. We almost never hear about the thousands who were single victims of their gun-toting killers. And unless they were famous celebrities battling the evil demons of depression, we hear even less of the nearly twice as many people who took their own lives by gun. (Would it surprise you to know that a suicide by gun happens about once every thirty minutes?) Regardless of the ultimate reasons for their use, each of these gun deaths had one undeniable fact in common: each involved the use of a gun. Now there are those who are ready to debunk just about any statistic you can name for whether or not things are safer due to the incredible proliferation of easily acquired guns in this country, but you cannot argue that each and every one of these deaths would have happened by some other method, and in the same incident, and the resulting number of deaths would have been unchanged. That is easily false. Certainly at least some, whether a majority or not is irrelevant but certainly a non-trivial percentage, of those gun deaths happened just because a gun was available to use. Many gun supporters argue that guns are not dangerous. This is pure bullshit. Besides the few dozen or so people killed by toddlers and pets around guns, there’s the point that guns are dangerous for many of the same reasons nuclear weapons are dangerous. Yes, both could “accidentally” go off and kill someone (or several thousand someones) nearby. But there’s a reason we don’t want other potentially hostile countries to have nuclear weapons: because they may have, or could soon have, a means of firing them at us from the safety of their own country elsewhere on the planet. Despite what then-National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice said in testimony, we did not learn on September 11, 2001, that our oceans no longer protected us. We learned that the day we learned the USSR (a country on which she was supposed to be an expert, but who did not foresee its collapse) possessed intercontinental ballistic missiles, with the nuclear warheads to put on top of them. They were able to kill or harm us from across the planet, just like someone with a gun can kill or harm you from across the room or street, and not have to put themselves in close proximity to you, where you might be able to take their weapon away from them. THAT is why guns are dangerous. I might be physically bigger and stronger than you, but if you can kill me before I can get close enough to punch that smarmy look-who’s-the-big-buy-now grin off your Shkreli-like face I’m not likely to survive an attack on you in self-defense. Without the gun, and possibly even with another hand weapon, you wouldn’t be as dangerous to me. It’s the gun that increases the danger.

Again, how can anyone argue guns are not dangerous? If guns aren’t dangerous, why do we make sure almost every soldier sent off to a war zone is equipped with a gun of some variety? Of what use are they in a confrontation with the enemy? Why don’t we give our soldiers headed to the Middle East buttons that say, “Ask me about my Saluki”? Why do the people we face in conflict often use guns if they’re not dangerous? Besides killing people, of what use are hand guns? You don’t hunt with them. You could use hand guns for target practice at a shooting range, but that would beg the question, “Why are you doing that?” You could properly answer with something about self-defense against bad guys with guns. So I ask if you would be shooting to kill them? If not, then why do you need a gun? And if so, then you’ve proven my point about what use they are. So if we agree they have no other purpose but to kill, then why are they not dangerous? Yes, people use things other than guns to kill one another and, yes, more people use bats and hammers to bludgeon people to death than use rifles, but rifles aren’t hand guns, and most of the other things people used to kill had been made for some other intended non-homicidal purpose. Not so with guns. Guns are made to kill. That’s their appeal to you people who own them. That’s the reason you keep them. Are you going to threaten an intruder with something non-lethal, or would you prefer to make the intruder think his life was in danger? Oh, wait, there’s that word again. Danger. Because of a gun. Which is supposedly not dangerous. Sorry, but the argument that guns are not dangerous just doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny and critical thinking. If guns weren’t dangerous, you gun owners wouldn’t feel safer carrying one around with you, would you? But if you carry one on your person somewhere, even concealed, now you’ll feel that YOU are a danger to bad guys who might try to pull something off in front of you. Which means your gun is dangerous after all.

This is our daily open thread. Feel free to discuss guns or anything else you wish to discuss.

Sunday Roast: Another year gone; what have we learned?

I know I’ve posted this video a few times over the years, in one form or another, but I’m posting it again.

Why?  That’s a good question.  I’m glad you asked.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m feeling especially pessimistic or cynical these days, but I’m thinking that we haven’t learned anything over the past year.  Maybe it’s just that the United States is absolutely fucking bonkers right now, and I’m having trouble seeing the good in the world; or maybe we’re at a critical turning point, and, much like correcting a naughty child, the behavior gets much worse before it starts getting better.

I hope it’s both, and I hope the “getting better” part starts happening soon.

This is the last Sunday Roast of the year — What do you think?

The Watering Hole, Saturday, December 5, 2015: How Much Is Too Much?

If you’re reading these words, then you have access to the internets. And if you have access to that wonderful “series of tubes” then you know it happened again. Several times, in fact. Another mass shooting (the worst in America since Sandy Hook, which actually happened, so don’t try to convince me otherwise) that left more than a dozen people dead, following a mass shooting at a Planned Parenthood facility in CO. Why did these shootings happen? Quite frankly, who cares? Two of these latest shootings, one in Colorado Springs, CO, and the other in San Bernardino, CA, were motivated by religious extremism, though you couldn’t be blamed for not knowing that based on the coverage in the MSM. But they were. One killer was motivated by his extreme Christian beliefs, and the other killers were motivated by their extreme Islamic beliefs. Of course, now that we learned one of the killers in CA had pledged allegiance to ISIS on her Facebook page, the talk has been about Muslim extremists but not Christian ones. (It should be noted that while ISIS thanked her for her support, they did not claim any responsibility for the murders.) And while Colorado Springs police have not officially released a motive for the killings there, there is ample reason to believe that he was motivated by his own extreme Christian beliefs. And not just those, but on lies promoted by right wing media and politicians regarding the doctored videos about Planned Parenthood and the lies told about fetal tissue and “baby parts.” (Please, if you’re conservative, don’t waste my time trying to convince me the videos were 100% legitimate and truthful. They were nothing of the sort.) But regardless of the motives of the killers, the real cause of the problem is being ignored by most of the MSM: the proliferation of guns and the ease with which they can be acquired, even by people the law says shouldn’t have one.

No matter when it happened, no matter where it happened, and no matter why it happened, every single instance of gun violence in this country has had one and only one thing in common: A gun. Sometimes more than one. We keep wondering why somebody would pick up a gun and kill people, but we never admit that had it not been so easy to acquire guns, many of these killings (I would even say most) would never have occurred. Guns are dangerous things. Let me repeat that: Guns are dangerous things. Anyone who tries to say that isn’t true is deluding himself, and denying some simple facts. One of the main reasons guns are dangerous is that they allow you to harm or kill someone else without having to put yourself in close proximity to that person. If you had to actually get close to someone to stab them, you would be less likely to do that than you would to use means that didn’t require you to get close to your intended victim. That is not to say nobody ever gets stabbed, and only an idiot would think I’m implying that. But how brave are you? If someone wants to harm you, would you prefer getting up close to that person to try to thwart off the attack, or would you prefer some means of stopping (or harming in anyway) that person while not having to get up close? My guess is, given a choice, most people would prefer to not have to get up close to their attacker. A gun removes that danger to yourself. You can shoot your attacker from across the room with less chance of being harmed yourself in the process. And if you’re crazed with anger (or some other emotion, perhaps a deep abiding love for the particular god you worship), you are more likely to act without thinking. All the more reason it’s dangerous for you to have access to a gun anytime you want. You can look at it another way. Would the world be a safer place or a more dangerous place if every country had the means to launch nuclear weapons at another nation, even one halfway around the world? If you think it would be safer, you can stop reading this blog now, Archie Bunker.

If you still want to think guns are not dangerous, ask yourself this: Since we train our fantastic Marine Corps to be lean, mean, fighting machines capable of killing with their bare hands, why do we issue them guns when we send them off to war? If guns aren’t dangerous, why are they a vital component of war? And don’t say they’re just tools, like the knives, grenades and other weapons we hand them. They are deadly tools that can kill. If guns aren’t dangerous, why is it considered criminal negligence to leave a loaded gun where a small child could pick it up? If guns aren’t dangerous, why aren’t you allowed to carry one on board a plane with you (as Archie thinks you should)? If guns aren’t dangerous, why are people getting killed and seriously injured by children and dogs who manage to get their hands and paws on one? Please, if you like having a gun, admit the truth. You like it because it’s power. You can kill someone with it. I’m not suggesting you would, although I am suggesting that there are definitely people out there who would kill if they thought they could get away with it. And there are people out there who have killed because they thought they could get away with it. And in many of those cases, I’m positive the only reason someone ended up dead is because a gun was easily available to do the job. How many more people have to die just because we can’t get over this insane obsession with these murderous devices? How many are too many? How much gun violence in this country is too much?

Don’t put words in my mouth. Passionate gun owners (who lack compassion) have tried to twist my suggestions into saying we should take away all the guns in this country. I’m not opposed to that, but I’m not suggesting it, either. The first thing to recognize is that there are WAY too many guns in the United States. By some estimates, there are more guns in the US than there are people (legal citizens or not), and despite this, there are still about 6 million guns manufactured in the US per year (and about half that number imported on top of that.) Why is this? What good does it do? About 82 people die by firearms every day in America. Even if you subtract the third that took their own lives with a gun, that’s still more than one firearm death every 30 minutes. (And, no, the police aren’t doing all of them, but they are doing way too many of them. That can be the subject of another post.) I often hear gun supporters counter that many gun homicides are committed in cities or states with tough gun control laws. What these folks often ignore (deliberately) is that the guns weren’t being obtained in the places with strict gun control laws, but often from states with very lax laws (like Virginia.) If you’re going to argue that strict gun control laws do nothing to solve the problem, are you also going to say that lax gun laws have nothing to do with the problem, either? But regardless of whether or not the state has lax gun laws, it remains a fact that if the guns were not there to be gotten in the first place, fewer people would die by gun violence each year. How can that be addressed? Simple: tax the manufacture (or import) of guns. Not the sale, but the manufacture. The tax burden would fall totally on the gun manufacturer. Obviously they would pass this cost onto the purchaser, but that’s to be expected. If your gun now costs $5,000 more because the maker had to pay a tax to make it, you’ll think twice about buying a gun for which you very likely have no need. If the gun manufacturer later declares that some of the guns they made were destroyed, then they can get a tax rebate for them. But the key is to tax the gun as it is made. Otherwise they’ll just fund a way to dump them on the streets and the problem continues. Nobody (and especially no corporation) has a right to make guns, just to own them. So we can pass all kinds of laws related to the manufacture of guns, why not include that extra tax while we’re at it? That way the gun makers will have much less incentive to over-manufacture guns, and fewer guns would be available for people to buy. Maybe there are flaws to this plan, but since I don’t look at the issue form the perspective that you have a right to have any kind of gun you want, made by anybody you want, I’m probably seeing fewer flaws in this plan than you. And notice I said nothing about the guns that are already out there. But if you’re opposed to any kind of gun regulation in this country, then answer this: How many more people have to die by gunfire before you decide it’s too many? How much more gun violence do we have to endure? How much is too much?

This is our daily open thread. Talk about whatever you wish.

The Watering Hole; Friday October 9 2015; Guns and Insanity v. Reality

“What luck for rulers, that men do not think.”
~Adolf Hitler

When the wingnuts come out of their gun closets, hang onto your hats. Here are four of the most recent articles I’ve run across that very ably describe the depths to which insanity is capable of descending in the aftermath of yet another gun massacre.

Bobby Jindal Will End Mass Shootings By Telling Everyone He Is A Christian

Tony Perkins Blames Obama For UCC Shooting

WorldNetDaily Pundit Suggests The Obama Administration Is Behind Mass Shootings 

The Watering Hole; Thursday October 8 2015; Pigs, Wings, and the GOP

’The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
‘To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.’
~Lewis Carroll (1872)
(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There)

******

I’ve always liked the metaphors that Lewis Carroll embedded in that little excerpt, especially the last line — MOST especially since the “launch” of the GOP’s 2016 Clown Car.

But it took the Washington Post’s October 7 ‘Opinion’ article by Paul Waldman — entitled Ben Carson perfectly explains the Republican position on guns — to cast the image in concrete. Here are a few of the more salient and definitive excerpts from one of the best ‘tonal’ summations of America’s gun-worship idiocy I’ve yet run across:

Carson is in the hot seat for comments he made about the shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. But the real question is, why is everyone so upset with Carson? What he said is nothing more than the logical outgrowth of what nearly every Republican candidate and officeholder believes about guns. You can say he’s wrong, but you can’t say that his views should be any kind of surprise.

There were two things that Carson said that drew condemnation, one on television and one on his Facebook page:

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson attracted criticism Tuesday for appearing to suggest in an interview that the victims of last week’s tragic school shooting in Oregon should have acted more forcefully to prevent the attack.

“I would not just stand there and let him shoot me,” Carson said on “Fox and Friends” Tuesday morning. “I would say, ‘Hey guys, everybody attack him. He may shoot me, but he can’t get us all.’” …

Carson on Monday night took to Facebook to denounce calls for increased gun regulation in the wake of another mass shooting, saying that the problem is not caused by Second Amendment protections and accusing gun-control advocates of politicizing the tragedy.

“As a Doctor, I spent many a night pulling bullets out of bodies,” he wrote. “There is no doubt that this senseless violence is breathtaking – but I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away.”

Waldman adds,

Let’s take these one at a time. Was it unspeakably insulting to the victims of the Oregon shooting and their families to suggest that they were killed or injured because they didn’t have the physical courage and quick thinking that a hero like Carson would have displayed had he been in their shoes? Of course. And is it an absurd fantasy that in the instant he was confronted by a gunman, Carson would in the space of seconds organize a bunch of terrified strangers to mount an assault on someone ready to kill them? You bet it is

But this fantasy is nothing unusual at all. In fact, it lies at the heart of much of the efforts Republicans have made at the behest of the National Rifle Association in recent years to change state laws on guns. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” says the NRA, and Republicans believe it, too. So they push for laws to allow guns to be brought into as many places as possible — schools, government buildings, churches, anywhere and everywhere. They advocate “stand your ground” laws that encourage people to use guns to settle arguments. They seek both open-carry and concealed-carry laws on a “shall issue” basis (meaning the government presumes that you should get the license unless it can prove you fall into certain categories of offenders) to put guns in as many hands as possible.

All of this is driven by the fantasy of the gun owner as action hero. Sure, the world may see you as just a middle-age middle manager with an expanding gut and a retreating hairline, but at any moment you could be transformed into Jack Bauer! Woe be to the al-Qaeda commando team or deranged shooter who comes to your town, because you’ll be ready for ’em! The world is divided into the sheep who cower while waiting to be killed, and those possessed of the courage and firepower to stand up at those life-and-death moments. This is what the gun industry, the NRA and the Republican Party encourage people to believe. So, of course, Ben Carson believes it, too.

As for Carson’s assertion that “I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away,” that, too, is the natural outgrowth of the contemporary Republican position on guns.

Think for a moment about how we reorganized our government, our airline industry and entire swaths of our society, spending hundreds of billions of dollars, creating a new apparatus of surveillance, all because nearly 3,000 people were killed on Sept. 11, 2001. We didn’t like spending all that money, creating all that fear, compromising our privacy and constitutional principles and making everybody take off their shoes at the airport, but it was a price we had to pay because of those 3,000 deaths, right?

It takes about a month — every month, month after month — for that many Americans to be killed with guns. Just imagine how we would have reacted to an attack 10 or 11 times the scale of 9/11, which is but a single year of the death toll guns place on our country. In 2013, the latest year for which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released data, 11,208 Americans were murdered with guns, and 505 Americans died due to accidental firearm discharge. Another 21,175 Americans killed themselves with guns (having a gun in the home dramatically increases one’s risk of suicide), for a total of 32,888 gun deaths.

. . .

But unlike their position on terrorism, the position that the entire Republican Party now adopts — not necessarily all its voters, but virtually all its elected representatives — is that a toll that size is simply not meaningful enough to justify any action to not even restrict, but merely to inconvenience Americans’ ability to own as many guns as they want and to get them as easily as they want.

And don’t forget — wingnuts everywhere are ANGRY at Obama because he POLITICIZED the Oregon mass murder by calling for more strict gun laws. They’re also ANGRY at him because tomorrow he’s going to be in Roseburg on an official visit to the site of the atrocity — all in the interest of gun privilege restriction, probably confiscation, of course.

And whilst on the topic of Pigs with Wings, this l’il tidbit popped up as if an additive to Carson’s nonsensical blathering:

Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, joined Mark Walters on Armed America Radio this week, where the two concluded that President Obama got emotional during his speech responding to last week’s mass shooting in Oregon not because the president was upset that nine people had died but because he was sad he couldn’t take people’s guns.

Right. Conclusion obvious: “Pigs” do indeed “have wings.” AKA the GOP (apologies for the implicit insult to pigs, btw).

OPEN THREAD

The Watering Hole, Tuesday September 1, 2015

Away from food politics and environment for a moment, here is an essay on the presence of guns in the US with respect to other countries and the comparative murder and suicide rates. Surprised to actually find this at a CNN site.

Amerikans love their guns to death.

Papa bear, momma bear, and baby bear.

The Watering Hole, Saturday, August 1st, 2015: WTF is Wrong With These Pictures?

So what DOES it take for someone seen “toting an AR-15 assault rifle, a handgun and an ax” on more than one occasion, sometimes wearing a mask, to even be questioned by law enforcement? Apparently it wasn’t until said someone posted a threat on Facebook, which alert citizens reported to law enforcement, that the local LEOs sat up and really took notice.  From RawStory:

“While police could not respond to residents’ complaints about McCrory’s past activities, they took note of him on Wednesday for online posts regarding the murder trial of Kyler Carriker, who was charged in the 2013 death Ronald Betts during a drug deal. Carriker was found not guilty on Thursday.

“Is it out of line to storm the courthouse if he’s found guilty?” the suspect wrote. He later added, “If we get a get a decent number of people to charge through the front doors and security, the police there will attack us. Often times [sic], the only way to defend yourself from a cop is to kill the cop which means using a rifle to penetrate the body armor.”

Well, it looks like more than one thing is “out of line” – KAKE-TV reported that:

“…McCrory was ineligible to own a firearm at all, since he has a felony conviction.  He was charged with aggravated criminal threat and three counts of criminal possession of a firearm.”

According to KSCrime.com:
The following raw charge information was entered by law enforcement authorities during detainment of Samuel Mccrory on 2015-07-30. All suspects are innocent until proven guilty: [emphasis mine – I think they mean all WHITE suspects.]

21.5415.B AGG CRIMINAL THREAT
21.6304.A.3.A CRIMINAL POSS FIREARM
21.6304.A.3.A CRIMINAL POSS FIREARM
21.6304.A.3.A CRIMINAL POSS FIREARM

The KS Crime article also mentions: “At the time of the arrest, Mr. McCrory was described as a white man, 6′ 5″ tall, 280 lbs, and 22 years old.”

BINGO! Strapping young white guys with guns are apparently off-limits.

 

This is our daily Open Thread–you know what to do.

The Watering Hole Tuesday July 14, 2015

Whataburger takes a stand against Texas’ open carry gun law –

 

Somebody in Texas does not want their business marred by an OK Corral shoot out. Well waddayaknow.

Check your guns at the door, boys.

Whataburger

Sunday Roast: Death, Mayhem & Gun Violence

Moscow, Idaho — May, 2007, New York Times

The police said Mr. Hamilton had been drinking at a bar with another man until about 10 p.m. Saturday. Then, they believe, he went home and fatally shot his wife in the head before setting off for the courthouse carrying two semiautomatic rifles. Around 11:30 p.m., he opened fire at the building, eventually firing some 125 shots at the courthouse and at the people who responded to the scene.

Mr. Hamilton killed one responder, Officer Lee C. Newbill of the Moscow police. Officer Bill Shields was hit in the leg by bullet fragments as he went to Officer Newbill’s aid. A sheriff’s deputy, Sgt. Brannon Jordan, was shot several times but was not seriously wounded and was expected to leave the hospital on Monday.

Peter Husmann, a 20-year-old mechanical engineering major at the University of Idaho, in Moscow, heard the shootings and rode his bicycle to the scene armed with a .45-caliber pistol, said his father, Sam Husmann. Peter Husmann was shot in the back, fell to the ground, and was then shot in the calf, neck and shoulder, his father said. He was in stable condition on Monday.

After the shootings at the courthouse, Mr. Hamilton entered the First Presbyterian Church, directly across the street. He had worked there as a custodian for American Building Maintenance, which had a contract with the church, and he knew the church’s sexton, Paul Bauer, Chief Duke said.

Moscow, Idaho — August, 2011, ktvb.com

July 14, 2011: UI requested Moscow Police participate in a threat assessment concerning the threatening behavior of Ernesto Bustamante. University investigators met with Benoit to review Bustamante’s response and notify her that they would be interviewing him on July 19. She was asked to stay somewhere other than her apartment. The Moscow Police tried to call Benoit several times, leaving messages. Benoit did not return the phone calls. Police told the university that she wasn’t calling back. The university indicated that Benoit had been referred to Alternatives to Violence of the Palouse and a safety plan had been discussed. The Moscow Police informed the UI that Benoit did not want police involved.

…

July 22, 2011: University called Benoit to ask her where she would be staying until the start of school. She said she would be in Moscow. They encouraged her to take safety precautions and contact Moscow Police Department if she felt the need.

…

August 19. She was warned to be vigilant and call police if she had any safety concerns.

August 22, 2011: Katy was shot outside her home at 8:40 p.m.

August 23, 2011: Moscow Police find Ernesto Bustamante dead in a hotel room at the University Inn-Best Western.

Moscow, Idaho — January 10, 2015, ktvb.com

Police say they first responded to a call of a shooting at around 2:30 p.m. at the Northwest Mutual on E. Third Street. Police say the two victims at the first reported shooting were 76-year-old David Trail and 39-year-old Michael Chin of Seattle. Trail, a Moscow businessman, was taken to Pullman Regional Hospital where he was declared dead. Chin was taken to Gritman Medical Center and is currently in critical condition.

Minutes after the first incident, police say a second shooting was reported at an Arby’s restaurant on Peterson Drive. Police say Lee entered the restaurant and asked for the manager. When the manager, 47-year-old Belinda Niebuhr, came forward Lee reportedly opened fire. Niebuhr was declared dead at Gritman Medical Center.

About a mile and a half away from the Arby’s, police say a fourth victim was found dead at a residence in the 400 block of Veatch Street. The fourth victim, 61-year-old Terri Grzebielski, is reportedly the suspect’s adoptive mother. Police say Grzebielski was a physician’s assistant at Moscow Family Medicine.

You may be asking yourself what is the significance of posting these three items about gun violence in one small town in America, so I’ll tell you:  These are stories of suicidal rage, mental illness, murder, blood, obsession, fear, and a gun sickness in this country, the “cure” for which seems to be more and more guns — and, consequently, more and more gun violence.

The significance to me is the fact that, in each of the above stories, I knew one of the dead:

Crystal Hamilton died a bloody death by gun violence by the hand of her husband.  She was the head custodian at the Latah County Courthouse, and was a lovely young woman.  She always had a smile for everyone.

Ernesto Bustamante died a bloody death by gun violence by his own hand, after having become a murderer.  He was my psych research professor — my favorite professor — and he was gorgeous, with his long, shiny black hair, devastating smile, and ironic sense of humor.  He was an occasional chatting partner in my peer advising office in the psych department, and he murdered a promising young grad student, Katy Benoit.

Yesterday, Terri Grzebielski died a bloody death by gun violence by the hand of her adopted son.  She was a physician’s assistant in the University of Idaho Student Health Department, and was my PA for the four years I attended the U of I.  She was an amazing woman:  Very tall, very thin, full of energy, ready smile, and she truly cared about her patients.

In addition to these people, a childhood friend’s sister was killed with a gun, and her murder was never solved; my former mother-in-law’s boss was murdered by his crazed daughter-in-law; and the husband of a dear friend died as a result of a gun accident.

This is fucking excessive, people!  Does everyone know this many people who’ve died by gun violence?

I don’t know the solution to the gun sickness in this country, other than collecting all the guns and melting them into plowshares, but we all know that will never happen.  One feasible solution is strict regulations placed on guns and gun owners, but that would take political integrity and honor, and that exists in very small amounts in this country.

I’m sick to death of gun violence in this country, and I’m SO fucking done with “gun rights” being more important than human lives.

This is our daily open thread — Fuck you, trolls.

The Watering Hole, Monday, September 1st, 2014: Black and White

I can’t do a normal Labor Day post, I’m too aggravated, disgusted, as my Mum used to say, “I’m so angry I could spit.” The reason is simple:

Black female professor arrested for jaywalking vs white drunk man with gun jaywalking.

This is our daily open thread–please feel free to comment on racial injustice or whatever subject is on your mind today.

The Watering Hole, Tuesday June 24, 2014 Environmental News and Food Politics

Study links pesticides and pregnancies with increased risk of autism:

“Pregnant women who lived in close proximity to fields and farms where chemical pesticides were applied experienced a two-thirds increased risk of having a child with autism spectrum disorder or other developmental delay, according to a new study.”

Another reason to go organic

New study shows link between bald eagle deaths and lead ammunition

“Endangered California condors have been the poster birds for calls to get lead ammunition out of our environment, but they might have to make some room for our nation’s most iconic raptors thanks to a new study showing how lead ammunition is also harming bald eagles.”

The NRA isn’t going to like this one.

Oppose the DARK act.

“The Grocery Manufacturers Association has introduced a bill in Congress that would block states from enacting GE food labeling laws and make “voluntary labeling” the law of the land. Big Food is trying to kill your right to know if the food you’re eating is genetically engineered.”

The food giants want to control the debate.

 

The Watering Hole, Monday, June 16th, 2014: Local Fearmongering

A few days ago, I received the below email from our local State Senator Greg Ball:

Subject: Assault On Our 2nd Amendment Rights

Friend:

After recent anti Second Amendment efforts in the Assembly, the Senate Democrats are now pushing efforts to move legislation sponsored by Senator Peralta (S68A) that would mandate microstamping in New York State. Microstamping involves the expensive and invasive use of laser technology to engrave a microscopic marking onto the tip of the firing pin and onto the breech face of a firearm, so that spent cartridges give information about the firearm.

This is an extreme attempt to turn law abiding citizens into criminals, rather than tackling the real criminals. We must unite in both the Senate and throughout the state, to kill this extreme and costly effort, as we have done in the past.

There is not a shred of credible evidence that proves the technology actually works. This is a back door gun grab by liberal legislators engaged in social engineering, and we will stand our ground to defeat this recent effort.

I will keep fighting up in Albany to stop legislation that would infringe on our Second Amendment rights, but please stay vigilant and talk with your friends in other parts of the state to contact their elected officials.

Yours truly,

Senator Ball’s giant signature follows, but I won’t include it here, honestly, it’s huge.

Anyhoo, this is the gist of my reply to Senator Ball:

“This is an extreme attempt to turn law abiding citizens into criminals” In what way, Senator Ball? If a gun that is used in a crime shows the ID, wouldn’t it assist law enforcement in their efforts to apprehend a criminal? Most of the penalties outlined in the proposed legislation apply to gun manufacturers and gun dealers. If the ‘law-abiding-citizen’ gun owner does not deface his gun, microstamped or otherwise, then he will not be a criminal under this legislation. See Section 6. (A):

“6. (A) Any person who wilfully defaces any machine-gun, large capacity ammunition feeding device or firearm, INCLUDING DEFACING A MICROSTAMPING COMPONENT OR MECHANISM OF A SEMIAUTOMATIC PISTOL, is guilty of a class D felony.”

“…rather than tackling the real criminals.” Can you define who the real criminals are? Do you or your Republican colleagues have any proposals describing how you would “tackle” these “real criminals”?

“We must unite in both the Senate and throughout the state, to kill this extreme and costly effort, as we have done in the past.” The proposed legislation requires that the process cost no more than $12. (See S.7 below)

“There is not a shred of credible evidence that proves the technology actually works.” Um, not according to the text of the legislation’s Section S.6, so you might want to look into this further:

S.6 “…firearm microstamping is a revolutionary forensic technology that produces an identifiable alpha-numeric and geometric code onto the rear of the
cartridge casing each time a semiautomatic pistol is fired; that the alpha-numeric and geometric code on an expended cartridge casing will provide
an initial lead for law enforcement by enabling law enforcement to match the cartridge casing found at a crime to the original owner of the firearm;
that information from completed crime gun tracing is an important element utilized by COMPSTAT and other crime analysis systems to target illegal
firearms trafficking; that microstamping technology continues to produce identifiable markings onto expended cartridge casings even
after thousands of rounds of testing; that this additional tool will help law enforcement investigate illegal gun trafficking, close firearm-related
criminal cases and protect the public; and that legislative action is necessary to require all new semiautomatic pistols sold after January 1, 2016 to be
microstamp-ready.”

“This is a back door gun grab by liberal legislators engaged in social engineering” Now this is just pure fear-mongering strawman tactics, Senator, intended to rile up an already-riled-up base. Contrary to every NRA/Second Amendment worshippers’ rumor-mongering (which started BEFORE President Obama was even elected), that the big bad government was going to be “coming for your guns!”, the proposed S68A legislation mentions nothing about confiscation of guns whatsoever. In fact, the law itself, if passed, would not go into effect until AT LEAST January 1, 2016 OR whenever law-enforcement officials have received notification from microstamp job shops that certain production standards can be readily met; and, in fact, the law would only apply to GUNS MANUFACTURED AFTER JANUARY 1, 2016.

S.7 “This act shall take effect January 1, 2016, or at such time that the superintendent of the state police has received written notice from one or more microstamp job shops that such shop or shops are willing and prepared to produce microstamp structures on two internal surfaces of a semiautomatic pistol as defined in subdivision 26 of section 265.00 of the penal law for a price of twelve dollars or less at a production level of one thousand semiautomatic pistols per batch, whichever occurs later…”

So your guns-above-all-else-type of constituents can stock up to their heart’s content with non-microstamped weaponry.

“…and we will stand our ground to defeat this recent effort.”

This, Senator, offends me even more than your previous incendiary words.

While (S68A) would not have prevented, nor might not prevent, a tragedy such as the Sandy Hook shootings, any and every effort to do so warrants at least discussion. Yet you insist on using the volatile phrase “stand your ground”, which is now synonymous with “you can shoot anyone you want if they look at you the wrong way, or play their music too loud or, well, whatever, AND you can get away with murder! [Women need not apply.]” Your total lack of human tact or empathy is astounding. The people in Newtown/Sandy Hook are our neighbors. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that a teacher in the Pawling School District lost a child at Sandy Hook? You talk about this legislation’s (imagined) effect on law-abiding citizens, what about the effect of ignoring such a horrific slaughter of truly innocent children? Would you publicly label those particular parents of Newtown victims who are now advocating stricter gun laws “gun-grabbers”?

“I will keep fighting up in Albany to stop legislation that would infringe on our Second Amendment rights, but please stay vigilant and talk with your friends in other parts of the state to contact their elected officials.“ Not for much longer, Senator. [State Senator Ball has announced that he would not be running for public office once his term is up.]

Senator, IF this legislation ever passes, I hope that you will not be out there telling people these irresponsible, incendiary lies. In the meantime, why doesn’t the NY State Senate work toward gun-control legislation that could prevent another Sandy Hook, another Columbine, another Aurora, etc., etc. There have been over 70 shootings since Sandy Hook in public places such as schools, malls, plus killings like the recent one in Florida where a father killed three children and his wife before turning the gun on himself.

But the scariest shooting of all occurred last week when two of Cliven Bundy followers killed, in cold blood, two Las Vegas policemen on their lunch break at a local pizzeria; then the couple adorned each corpse with a Gadsden (“Don’t Tread on Me”) Flag. Shortly thereafter, after killing another innocent civilian, they killed themselves, too cowardly to face responsibility for their despicable act. A libertarian pundit, Adam Kokesh, “argued that because America’s political institutions — including the police — have become “homicidal … against freedom,” it was wrong to see the Millers unprovoked killing spree as acts of murder rather than self-defense. Kokesh argued next that the Millers had, if anything, saved lives by murdering two police. “Think of how many lives might have been saved by this incident,” he urged his audience. “How many people would these cops have killed had they not been killed?” “We can only hope that some of the officers in America are listening — if you care about your own safety”

Seriously, Senator Ball, please remember that words have consequences. The kind of rhetoric you use in your email could be the spark that lights some mentally unstable New Yorker’s fuse. Is that really what you want?”

Sincerely,
blahblahblah

 

Open thread–what’s on your mind today?

The Watering Hole, Wednesday, 11/13/13: Stopping Bad Guys With Guns.

The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Recently someone (a good guy?) fired off some celebratory shots at a birthday party in a house crowded with teenagers. Someone else (another good guy) took it upon himself to open fire in response. Result: 2 dead and more than a dozen injured. By a good guy with a gun.

With so many guns per capita in the U.S. you’d think good guy vigilanteism would stop most of the mass killings. But, no. A survey of mass murders over the years reveals a surprising number of “bad guys with guns” kill themselves.

Two good guys with guns kill each other. oops.

2013: A bad guy with a gun opens fire at a Naval Yard, kills a dozen people before he is killed.

2012: Sandy Hook Elementary; 27 killed; gunman commits suicide.

2012: Aurora, Colorado; 12 killed; gunman dressed in head-to-toe protective gear is taken into custody.

2011: Seal Beach, California; 8 killed; gunman wearing body armor is arrested without incident trying to leave the scene.

2010: Manchester, Connecticut; 8 killed; gunman commited suicide.

2010: Appomattox, Virginia; 8 killed; gunman surrenders to police the next morning.

2009: A bad guy with a gun kills 13 people at Ft. Hood. Lots of good guys with guns. Bad guy not shot, is sentenced to death. Hmmmm….the death penalty didn’t stop this guy.

2009: Binghamton, New York; 13 killed; gunman commits suicide.

2009: Alamaba; 10 killed; gunman commits suicide.

2009; Carthage, North Carolina; 8 killed; gunman convicted of second degree murder, sentenced to 141 to 179 years in prison.

2007: Virginia Tech. 32 killed; gunman commits suicide.

2007: Omaha Nebraska; 8 killed; gunman commits suicide.

2005: Red Lake High School, Minnesota; 8 killed; gunman commits suicide.

1999: Columbine High School; 13 killed; gunmen commit suicide.

1999: Atlanta, Georgia; 12 killed; gunman commited suicide.

1993: San Francisco; 8 killed; gunman commits suicide.

1991: Killeen, Texas; 23 killed; gunman commits suicide.

1989: Louisville, Kentucky; 8 killed; gunman commtis suicide.

1984: San Ysidro, California, McDonnalds; 21 killed; Police sharpshooter kills gunman.

1984: Manley Hot Springs, Alaska; 8 killed; gunman is killed in a shootout with police.

1982: Miami Florida; 8 killed; gunman shot in the back by a witness who pursued him.

1982: Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; 13 Killed; gunman committed to mental institution.

1973: New Orleans; 9 killed; police snipers kill gunman.

1966: University of Texas; 18 killed; police officers killed gunman.

So there we have it. Of the 20 deadliest shootings in U.S. history from 1965 to now, only once has a good guy with a gun taken out a bad guy with a gun (not counting the police, who are supposed to be the good guys with guns).

What’s the solution? Some throw up their hands in despair, there’s too many guns out there, there’s no way to stop it. Others point to Australia, that decided after one horrific incident that enough was enough, and had a massive gun riddance campaign. Others wrap themselves in the flag and flack jackets and openly brandish their firearms, threatening to use them if anyone dares impinge upon their “Second Amendment Rights.”

We’re coming up on the anniversary of Sandy Hook. Nothing has changed. Not enough kids have been slaughtered yet for Americans to say “enough is enough.”

OPEN THREAD

The Watering Hole, Thursday September 12 2013; Good News? Really? Where?

Ok, so here’s the thing: I’ve spent several hours over the last few days in search of some good news emanating from the political world. My results to date: Nada. Zip. Zero. Nothing. I frankly can’t remember a time — ever — that’s remained as devoid of even the barest shred of a promising development as have the last what, weeks? Months? Years? Decades? But that, of course, is my point-of-view. There was, yesterday, here in Colorado’s RWNJ community, lots of joy and happiness once the results of a pair of state senate recall elections in which two Democrats who worked earnestly on behalf of the state’s recently enacted gun laws . . . background checks now mandated, also assault rifle magazine size limited . . . were recalled in a special election. Both lost, thanks in no small part to heavy duty NRA investments of both time and cash; thus today, wingnuts across the state will continue floating on cloud nine, convinced that the tide is finally turning, that pretty soon Americans will once again be FREE to own and carry as many mass murder devices as they wish. Just like the Founders intended!

Why is owning the means of mass murder such a joy-inducer to Wingnuts, even as birth control pills are deemed so horrible that they should be banned? What, the fertilized egg is a “Person” but a young black fellow wearing a hoodie and sipping his ice tea is not? Twenty elementary school children were only murdered because their teachers weren’t heavily armed?

What kind of a nutcase country has this one become? And WHY??

Beats me. Anyone?

OPEN THREAD; REPEAL THE SECOND AMENDMENT! ETC.

The Watering Hole, Monday, May 13th, 2013: ‘Hu-mons’ and Animals – I’ll stick with the Animals

Well, the argument over gun legislation isn’t going to go away anytime soon, especially as long as Americans are being shot, deliberately or in tragic “accidents”, every day.

First, a frightening story from a commenter at TP:

“My son tried to make plans with a few friends to see the new Batman movie in Aurora. His plans fell through. The next day we talked. Grateful that he wasn’t there, I just felt sad. Then he told me about how hard to tried to be there. It jolted me awake. I kept thinking of how different my day, his day and our lives would have been had he been in that movie theater. I am more grateful for my son’s life than I have been since he was quite young. Gun regulation is personal to me. It is time. I will stick with this movement. It is time.”

Next: From a (somewhat outdated, as it was from November 2012, therefore does not include the Newtown shooting nor the 3000 or so gun deaths since December 14th) Mother Jones article listing mass shootings in the U.S. from 1982 to 2012, excerpts from the comment section:

Someone trotted out the “hammers kill more people than guns do” bullshit story (the report actually said that hammers were used to kill people more often than rifles, not guns); when another claimed disbelief, a pro-gun person who had been the main commenter on the thread responded:

#1.. proof of hammers.. GOOGLE IT.. in under 10 seconds you will find links showing proof..

As for where are the stats from? The FBI… national crime stats. The same thing can be had via StatsCan as well as other sources.

It sounds absurd to ban or regulate hammers as well. Why? not only are they used for non-malicious purposes an uncountable # of times every day (the same as firearms are) it again would NOT actually accomplish anything good at all.

It would not stop the rapist that uses the hammer to subdue his victim.. it would not stop the “armed robber” from robbing the local 7-11.. it also won’t stop the moron whom wallops his thumb with it either. Instead it would make “work” and waste of $ within gov regulation.. so you have to prove you are “competent” etc etc to put a nail in the wall with a “deadly and dangerous hammer”. Meanwhile criminals would just get an illegal hammer and use that… while the law abiding home owner has to wait to hang up a picture for gov approval.

As for the Nuclear bomb.. no.. that is not a fair comparison at all.. it is a very stupid comparison.

Explosives (Nuclear or otherwise) are already highly regulated to try to prevent lunatics such as Timothy McVeigh from causing mass destruction.

Why? Simple.. what practical use would a nuke be for people to have? You You can’t take it to a range to and practice with it.. you can’t carry it for personal protection and the protection of others. Not to mention it is a BOMB

You also neglect the fact that the lunatics such as McVeigh and Lanza are not stupid. If they did not have access (legal or illegal) to firearms they would find another way to inflect the damage they are intent on. It’s not hard to learn how to build a bomb online.. (though I won’t help educate anyone here how.)

As for pools and accidents.. yes they matter. But the anti’s love to pull the “if it saves one kid” crap. It’s crap since those saying such don’t care that a kid dies.. they care HOW they die. otherwise they would actually look at the real problems and try to find a solution. Such as education. We teach our kids safety with a pool.. why should they not be taught safety with a firearm? That alone is the single most effective way to reduce accidents (same for some adults). We also do not rely on the gov to regulate education about swimming pools. it is COMMON SENSE. The absurd stigma the uneducated use with firearms is unbelievably ignorant. Something sadly only made worse by the sensationalized BS spewed by the media.

Contrary to the media’s typical BS such as showing “Hollywood” scenes and constantly mislabeling firearms.. as well as the lie of “assault weapons” (There is no such thing btw as I’ve explained before… or do I need to explain it again?).. they have been caught flat out bold face LYING to the public. (Wolf Blitzer for one prime example and he was called on the carpet and publicly embarrassed for it)

So once again.. the aim of your post is to in effect place blame upon the inanimate objects and to punish those whom have done no harm. You aim to make those same people less able to defend themselves and others from the very people whom do cause harm. That is insanity to say the least since we already know the lunatics and criminals don’t obey the law. So it is completely destined to failure as gun control always has been. (Unless you are the dictator wanting control such as Hitler etc etc)

Once again the proof of the inanimate object doing no harm: http://montego.roughwheelers.c…

You were tempted to “refute every major contention” I’ve made. Sorry but the only way to try to do so would be to LIE. I am only telling the truth. Not trying to twist and cherry pick like the Anti’s do constantly. It is a cold hard and realistic view of the issues and the world. I for one refuse to fall for “feel good” legislation that does only harm to the general public. It is the absence of emotional rhetoric so commonly found with incidents such as Sandy Hook

It is not a lack of compassion for the victims of such either. It is the opposite. I would much rather those teachers had been armed and shot Lanza in the head on the spot. I would much rather the rapist is killed by the would be victim. I would rather the armed home invader that raped and robbed an 80 yr old woman last yr instead be shot by her.

As for incidents such as Lanza.. if I had been there I’d have attacked him even unarmed.. because it is the right thing to do. If I had been armed I’d have not even blinked at the need to shoot him on the spot.

Remember it is about personal responsibility. Unlike those blaming the firearm(s).. or blaming hollywood movies.. or video games etc etc.. none of those matter. I have played those games, watched those movies and I’ve been around firearms for most of my life. Funny.. I’m not a rampaging murderer… nor are you (I assume). They are all merely objects that are easy and conveniently to blame when trying to blame anyone or anything but ourselves.

Society failed for Sandy Hook not due to lack of moronic gun control… or lack of game control etc etc.. but they failed due to mental heath system in the US. His mother was trying to get a conservatorship of her Adult son (very hard to do).. and to have him committed. Also her firearms were locked up and he apparently got the code(s) w/o permission. If the system had not failed her, him and everyone else that incident could very well have been avoided entirely. And not a single “gun control” law would have been needed to accomplish such.

If you want to actually accomplish something good.. stop focusing on the object.. focus on the actual problems.

There is evil in the world.. and all the well wishing, idiot laws and tantrums by the anti’s won’t make that go away.

Oh and something I posted elsewhere you also should read:

You cannot child proof the world… but you can try to world proof your child.

“It is the Soldier: Not the minister Who gave us freedom of religion. Not the reporter Who gave us freedom of the press. Not the poet Who gave us freedom of speech Not the campus organizer Who gave us freedom to protest Not the lawyer Who gave us the right to a fair trial Not the politician Who gave us the right to vote It is the soldier who salutes the flag,Who serves beneath the flag, Whose coffin is draped by the flag, Who allows protesters to burn the flag” – Adapted from Charles M. Province

and

“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” – Voltaire

That which was fought for and died for you have the privilege of enjoying. Do not waste such a gift by spitting in the faces of those whom fought and died so you have it in the first place.

You enjoy the 1st and 2nd in the US… it comes from the Magna Carta. Learn history and defend it since the rights you do not defend you loose.

And the same commenter later:

“Of course they are not telling the whole truth. They are cherry picking stats in order to try to twist the truth. Sadly very typical of the anti’s to try to promote their own agenda.

As for Oz [I believe this refers to Australia].. Deaths / injuries via violent crime and suicides have climbed and remained relatively stable respectively after GC. South Africa skyrocketed after GC. etc etc… it has all been thoroughly listed.. though they refuse to accept the reality still.

GUN CONTROL is a failure and always will be.”

A commenter for gun control:

One more thing, speaking of gun defense…I find it interesting, that we have the most guns of any “developed” nation..we have the least restrictive laws…and we don’t have this “gun paradise” of less crime because armed vigilantes saving the day.

We have the opposite. More gun deaths than any other developed nation.

Yet gun ownership seems to be declining. So if we don’t have a “safer” country with the amount of guns we have now, and less people want/have guns…then that hypothesis will never come to pass.

Unless this is the safe society we get with an armed citizenry?

And that same commenter also said later:

“Ugh, the “guns don’t kill people”, is such a trite argument.

I keep having to reference the stuff you throw out there. First off, we regulate cars in all sorts of ways. We regulate at the federal level of what a car maker can make. We regulate what safety features must be had. If you want to drive the car, even once, you are required to register with the state regularly. You have safety inspections regularly. You have to have insurance. You are required several months of intensive training. The state can revoke your license at will, including your Alzheimer’s patient. There are school zones where you have different rules to follow. All done to protect people. So let’s do all that in a mandatory way on every gun.

As you said, it’s just an object. Let’s treat it like every other dangerous object, which is to minimize the damage and casualties.

And once again, your premise is wrong. Guns do kill people, because they were designed to. Near the Newtown shooting, there was a school stabbing in China where 20 kids were attacked. How many died by the gun here? 20. How many died in China with the stabbing? 0. So…the gun does kill people. It kills people that otherwise may have lived.

Let’s get away from self-destructive ‘hu-mons’ (“ugly bags of mostly water”) and hang out with Nature:

While depressing, this photo gallery of rare and endangered animals is worth the look; on a brighter note, check out “Earth as Art”, shown just below the linked article, for a different look at our world.

Next, unusual albino animals; and, in somewhat the same vein, a few rare dog breeds.

This is our Open Thread. Please feel free to comment on any claims made above, or on any topic on your mind.