gun violence archive
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/mckayla-dyer-11-year-old-charged-puppy
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Saturday, August 29, 2015
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Curt Schilling, dumber than Donald Trump?
http://deadspin.com/and-now-curt-schilling-with-some-cool-thoughts-about-m-1726385341
Curt also has really cool collection of Nazi memorabilia, including SS troop uniforms, because nuthin' sez fun like playing dressup for a good game of Nazi death camp guard versus all that is good and Holy.
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Bill Maher: Anti-Immigrant The Donald Marries Furriners
[“Nobody brings this up about Donald Trump, who is always on about, ‘We can’t have foreigners coming into this country!’” said Maher. “His first wife is from Czechoslovakia. His current wife is from Slovenia. So, if you think crawling under a wall is the most disgusting way to become an American, somewhere there is a Panamanian woman hiding in a truck full of chickens with ten pounds of heroin-filled condoms in her stomach who’s thinking, ‘Well, at least I didn’t have to blow Donald Trump.’”] (Emphasis added for comedic value)
www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/22/bill-maher-slams-anti-immigrant-donald-trump-for-having-immigrant-wives.html
www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/22/bill-maher-slams-anti-immigrant-donald-trump-for-having-immigrant-wives.html
Friday, August 21, 2015
JEB!: The truth will set you free....
....from voting for John Ellis Bush, Iran Contra money launderer.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Democracy: One person, one vote?
One of the most enduring myths of the United States holds that we have a democracy. An actual democracy has all eligible citizens voting on all issues, which we can admit as not practical for countries larger than ancient Athens.
Since we vote in these United States for people to represent us in our state and federal legislatures, we can more accurately call our government a republic based on voting by individuals.
Nevertheless, as Supreme Justice and judicial crank Antonin Scalia noted in oral arguments on Bush vs Gore, the case the conservative Supreme Court justices would have us all forget, the right to vote does not appear in the Constitution we have. Mr. Scalia, who acts and writes as as strict constructionist basing his rulings on the literal text of the Constitution--when it suits his needs as a regressive, conservative, wannabe segregationist slave owner--ignores his own jurisprudence and issues expansive opinions when for instance he issued an opinion interfering in counting of actual votes in Florida in 2000.
Instead of rehashing the past, however, let us note now our right to vote lays under siege by Republican dominated state legislatures in the name of stopping the negligible, statistically insignificant cases of voter fraud.
So we must fight for the right to vote, for the most basic cornerstone of our representative democracy, for the rights of all eligible voters.
Since we vote in these United States for people to represent us in our state and federal legislatures, we can more accurately call our government a republic based on voting by individuals.
Nevertheless, as Supreme Justice and judicial crank Antonin Scalia noted in oral arguments on Bush vs Gore, the case the conservative Supreme Court justices would have us all forget, the right to vote does not appear in the Constitution we have. Mr. Scalia, who acts and writes as as strict constructionist basing his rulings on the literal text of the Constitution--when it suits his needs as a regressive, conservative, wannabe segregationist slave owner--ignores his own jurisprudence and issues expansive opinions when for instance he issued an opinion interfering in counting of actual votes in Florida in 2000.
Instead of rehashing the past, however, let us note now our right to vote lays under siege by Republican dominated state legislatures in the name of stopping the negligible, statistically insignificant cases of voter fraud.
Nonetheless, we should never forget, first, that even if we define democracy simply as universal adult suffrage, the United States has only recently come close to living up to its proclaimed purpose of serving as history’s grand democratic experiment; and second, that even when the right to vote itself has finally been won, it does not mean it has been fully secured.
Enfranchisement has neither prevented ruling elites from continuing to exploit and oppress, nor kept them from turning things around and effectively stripping fellow citizens of their hard-won rights—including the right to vote itself.
The post-Civil War Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting African-American men the right to vote states very clearly: Section 1: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Section 2: The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. And yet, as President Franklin Roosevelt himself was to observe in the 1930s: “New laws, in themselves, do not bring a millennium.” And he might well have added that not even constitutional amendments necessarily do....
In Give Us The Ballot, Nation magazine political correspondent Ari Berman has written an extremely valuable and terribly timely history of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Terribly timely not just because this year marks the 50th anniversary of the enactment and signing into law of the VRA (August 6, 1965), but all the more so because the VRA and the right to vote are not just under continuing attack but actually under siege.
Under the ruse of preventing “voter fraud,” Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country have enacted laws clearly intended to make it more difficult for minority, poor, and young Americans to actually exercise their right to vote. (emphasis added)For one particularly egregious incidence, a state legislature banned college identification cards with photos as proper id for voting but allows National Rifle Association id for voting purposes, obviously aimed at suppressing votes by the young: people who lean towards progressive policies. Mother Jones has an excellent piece on voter suppression measures passed or pending in 22 states, all in the name of preventing nearly non-existent voter fraud.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/18/think-your-voting-rights-are-guaranteed-think-again.html
So we must fight for the right to vote, for the most basic cornerstone of our representative democracy, for the rights of all eligible voters.
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Robin Williams Elmer Fudd Sings Bruce Springsteen
OMF'ngG! Funniest thing seen this month so far.
Wait, maybe that can point my way to lessening depressing feelings. Read 1 time of film producer in hospital w/ gastrointestinal problems of unknown origin. After significant time in bed--probably w/ blood tests done at 5 am, commotion in the hallways so no one sleeps, and an absolute lack of privacy--and guy finally got fed up, checked himself out, rented every comedy videotape he could find, and he cured himself w/ laughter.
"Does anybody remember laughter?"
Seeing The Donald on TV every single damn night already driving me insane, and I absolutely abhor JEB! so will become an absolute gibbering, drooling, senile old fool before November '16, (even more so than now, Ron).
See so much here at Tube of U: George Carlin on global warming and Robin and Pres. Bush. Wonder which 1? Pray to goddess we have no more Bush.
Wait, maybe that can point my way to lessening depressing feelings. Read 1 time of film producer in hospital w/ gastrointestinal problems of unknown origin. After significant time in bed--probably w/ blood tests done at 5 am, commotion in the hallways so no one sleeps, and an absolute lack of privacy--and guy finally got fed up, checked himself out, rented every comedy videotape he could find, and he cured himself w/ laughter.
"Does anybody remember laughter?"
Seeing The Donald on TV every single damn night already driving me insane, and I absolutely abhor JEB! so will become an absolute gibbering, drooling, senile old fool before November '16, (even more so than now, Ron).
See so much here at Tube of U: George Carlin on global warming and Robin and Pres. Bush. Wonder which 1? Pray to goddess we have no more Bush.
Monday, August 17, 2015
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Saturday, August 15, 2015
Star Farts: The Bore Begins
New Star Wars footage from Comic-Con, where lonely comic nerds go to meet girl geeks.
Abigail's 101st birthday party
She might not be as spry as once was, but darn sure happy, alive, and metaphorically kicking.
You go, girl! Next year strippers!
Friday, August 14, 2015
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Big Box Store- Neil Young
Uncle Neil, still angry after all these years, plays with Willie Nelson's boys and their band, Promise of the Real, on the album The Monsanto Years.
By overwhelming margins. polls show Americans want food containing Genetically Modified Organisms labeled as such. our legislators, ever mindful of raising cash rather than public opinion, have passed laws so GMO's do not need labeling as such.
Why, I feel better already!
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Face the Facts of US War Crimes
After a plane from the United States Army Air Force dropped without warning a second atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki on 9 August 1045 at 11:02 am, the weapon vaporized a third of a mile above the Urakami valley, reaching a temperature of 5,400 degrees Fahrenheit, greater than the heat at the centre of our very own sun.
Three seconds later, the temperature at the ground level beneath the expanding may have reached 7.200 degrees Fahrenheit, instantly burning to cinders, every human, animal, tree, and shrub.
Buildings exploded, and more radiation than ever unleashed on earth before, fell upon the inhabitants of Nagasaki--normal people like you and me despite the racism published in the US warning of the yellow menace of the Japanese which promoted fear based on skin pigmentation. It becomes psychologically easier to slaughter great numbers of people if you define them as subhuman and barbaric--people who had received no warnings, no dropped leaflets, no radio broadcasts warning them to flee the city before nearly utter destruction.
The use of the second atomic bomb on people came after a campaign of firebombing of German and Japanese cities, cities unimportant as military targets. Firebombing them mostly killed civilians under the new theory of war as utter destruction of an enemy populace, bringing Old Testament biblical destruction upon other human beings, in violation of all the rules of civilized war.
"As I have observed, those who plow evil
and those who sow trouble reap it."
Job 4:8
Three seconds later, the temperature at the ground level beneath the expanding may have reached 7.200 degrees Fahrenheit, instantly burning to cinders, every human, animal, tree, and shrub.
The blazing heat melted iron and other metals, scorched bricks and concrete buildings, ignited clothing, disintegrated vegetation, and caused severe and fatal flash burns on people’s exposed faces and bodies. A mile from the detonation, the blast force caused nine-inch brick walls to crack, and glass fragments bulleted into people’s arms, legs, backs, and faces, often puncturing their muscles and organs. Two miles away, thousands of people suffering flesh burns from the extreme heat lay trapped beneath partially demolished buildings.
At distances up to five miles, wood and glass splinters pierced through people’s clothing and ripped into their flesh. Windows shattered as far as eleven miles away. Larger doses of radiation than any human had ever received penetrated deeply into the bodies of people and animals. The ascending fireball suctioned massive amounts of thick dust and debris into its churning stem. A deafening roar erupted as buildings throughout the city shuddered and crashed to the ground.
“The Light Was Indescribable”
“It all happened in an instant,” Yoshida remembered. He had barely seen the blinding light half a mile away before a powerful force hit him on his right side and hurled him into the air. “The heat was so intense that I curled up like surume [dried grilled squid]."http://www.salon.com/2015/08/06/most_of_nagasakis_residents_had_no_warning_the_day_we_dropped_the_bomb_partnerLike a grilled squid. Underneath the bomb, the tremendous heat and shock wave from the blast burned the skin right off humans' bodies, leaving burnt heaps behind.
Buildings exploded, and more radiation than ever unleashed on earth before, fell upon the inhabitants of Nagasaki--normal people like you and me despite the racism published in the US warning of the yellow menace of the Japanese which promoted fear based on skin pigmentation. It becomes psychologically easier to slaughter great numbers of people if you define them as subhuman and barbaric--people who had received no warnings, no dropped leaflets, no radio broadcasts warning them to flee the city before nearly utter destruction.
The use of the second atomic bomb on people came after a campaign of firebombing of German and Japanese cities, cities unimportant as military targets. Firebombing them mostly killed civilians under the new theory of war as utter destruction of an enemy populace, bringing Old Testament biblical destruction upon other human beings, in violation of all the rules of civilized war.
World War II was a landmark in the development and deployment of technologies of mass destruction associated with air power, notably the B-29 bomber, napalm and the atomic bomb. An estimated 50 to 70 million people lay dead in its wake. In a sharp reversal of the pattern of World War I and of most earlier wars, a substantial majority of the dead were noncombatants. [1] The air war, which reached peak intensity with the area bombing, including atomic bombing, of major European and Japanese cities in its final year, had a devastating impact on noncombatant populations.
What is the logic and what have been the consequences—for its victims, for subsequent global patterns of warfare and for international law—of new technologies of mass destruction and their application associated with the rise of air power and bombing technology in World War II and after? Above all, how have these experiences shaped the American way of war over six decades in which the United States has been a major actor in important wars? The issues have particular salience in an epoch whose central international discourse centers on terror and the War on Terror, one in which the terror inflicted on noncombatants by the major powers is frequently neglected. (emphasis added) From A Forgotten Holocaust: http://japanfocus.org/site/view/2414So failing to face facts of "moral atrocitie"s committed in the name of the American people in service of the Global War on Terror (sic) today causes misuse of US military power, which engenders and foments the terror we seek to stop.
"As I have observed, those who plow evil
and those who sow trouble reap it."
Job 4:8
Monday, August 10, 2015
Pete Townshend - Empty Glass
"Why was I born today?
Life is useless like Ecclesiastes say"
Many times have I stared int the depths of my empty glass, wondering where or how to make my useless life worth something--any damn thing positive. For some, it seems so easy to obtain cheap grace from Jesus. Could they do so while suffering like Job?
Sunday, August 9, 2015
The Genius and Despair of the Human Race
First, let's consider the better nature of ourselves, that human desire to take what we see and transmit it to posterity in the form of paintings, dating all the way back to prehistory in the form of cave paintings, with perhaps finest examples found near Lescaux, France.
Most of us live in a fantasy world where force can solve everything, refusing to face even the basic fact use of nuclear weapons creates clouds of radioactive fallout which circle the globe.
Just when one gets tempted to give up on the Internets as font of racism and home of trolls, troglodytes, and deviant porn, you accidentally find a Google Earth Tour of Florence, Italy, and just today found the Web Gallery of Art, the last web based collection of "European fine Art from the eleventh to nineteenth centuries, with artists from A to Z: Aachen, Hans von to Zurn, Michael.
Love me some Vermeer, Johannes in this case with the Geographer:
Right at your fingertips you can find the masters, indeed the Titans of European art; damn, that's some good stuff.
Now for the opposite side of the coin, today we find the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the second atom bomb, by the United States of Self Righteous America, the two unnecessary bombings comprising some of the worst crimes in the history of the world, akin to the angry as Hell old, white, bearded old Testament God instructing the Israelites to slaughter the Amalekites; men, women children and even the animals: God HISownSelf ordering a junior Holocaust.
Yup, here you see it, American exceptionalism at the best.
[Seventy years ago this week we vaporized 250,000 civilians, and yet still view the bombings as an act of mercy.... (Emphasis added)
(S)ome of America’s best-known World War II military commanders opposed using atomic weaponry. In fact, six of the seven five-star generals and admirals of that time believed that there was no reason to use them, that the Japanese were already defeated, knew it, and were likely to surrender before any American invasion could be launched. Several, like Admiral William Leahy and General Dwight Eisenhower, also had moral objections to the weapon. Leahy considered the atomic bombing of Japan “barbarous” and a violation of “every Christian ethic I have ever heard of and all of the known laws of war.” (Emphasis added again because Americans refuse to face facts.) http://www.salon.com/2015/08/05/americas_overdue_hiroshima_reckoning_the_revisionist_history_that_haunts_the_good_war_partner/
"Nuke 'em until they glow," will kill us too, making it far preferable to seek peace through diplomacy and avoid becoming complicit in war crimes, except of course the odd drone strike which kills innocent civilians. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-strikes-kill-1147
Gosh those make me feel safer; guess i can go back to the bread and circuses offered up by American telly. Praise Allah the NFL started the preseason tonight.
Amen!
[The second atomic bomb attack of Japan took place on August 9, 1945 in the city of Nagasaki. The northern portion of the city was destroyed almost instantaneously, and an estimated 70,000 people were killed as a result. According to the statistics found within Nagasaki Peach Park, the death toll from the atomic totaled exactly 73,884, including 2,000 Korean forced workers and eight POWs, as well as another 74,909 injured. This does not include another several hundred thousand diseased and dying from fallout and other illness caused by nuclear radiation.]
Orlando Gunfight: WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?
It gets tiresome writing about idiots who injure or kill others or themselves with unsafe and STUPID handling of firearms. EVERY DAY, somewhere in America, someone gets killled by improper handlng of weapons.
For God's sake, a nine year old girl at a firing range killed an instructor who tried to help her shoot a fully automatic Uzi machine gun. Shot him dead with a round to the head.
(Actual image of poor little girl, now scarred for life, before she killed a gun instructor.)
In my 57 years on this pear shaped planet, it feels like i've fallen into a Bizarro universe, one unmoored from any former notions of logic and sanity. How can fully automatic firearms and alcohol consumption mix without tragedy
Friday, August 7, 2015
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Florida, where we love the criminally insane, especially when they build firing ranges in their front yard
Oh Florida, where we can't wait to pave over paradise and the right for every idiot to own a shooting iron Trumps every other right like not getting killed by psychopaths using their Second Amendment rights.
So this absolutely batshit crazy gun nut--Joseph "Compensating for Small Cock" Carannate--after hammering a couple of bottles of cheap booze thought it a fine idea to build small gun target backed up by sand in his front yard, next to houses where other children play.
Obviously, the right of neighboring kids to live pales next to the right of an asshole to avoid driving drunk to a local firing range and instead just to bust off caps on his own property.
So, the ass wipe neighbor built the target to the most exacting standards by getting a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon By God Beer and get some gap toothed Confederate flag flying friends to help him slap it up. That way he could just step outside and blast off a few rounds, practicing for fighting off the Islamic fascist hordes 'cause real Americans don't take no shit from no hordes.
Also, who wants the hassle of driving to a gun range? With a home range you can just roll out of bed bleary eyed, pop a beer, and walk outside, and blast away. And Florida law, handcrafted by the National Rifle Association, makes it all legal.
Yay, smell the gunpowder and freedom!
Beause you know, what could possibly go wrong?
http://freakoutnation.com/2015/02/neighbors-upset-about-florida-gun-nuts-front-yard-shooting-range/
So this absolutely batshit crazy gun nut--Joseph "Compensating for Small Cock" Carannate--after hammering a couple of bottles of cheap booze thought it a fine idea to build small gun target backed up by sand in his front yard, next to houses where other children play.
Obviously, the right of neighboring kids to live pales next to the right of an asshole to avoid driving drunk to a local firing range and instead just to bust off caps on his own property.
So, the ass wipe neighbor built the target to the most exacting standards by getting a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon By God Beer and get some gap toothed Confederate flag flying friends to help him slap it up. That way he could just step outside and blast off a few rounds, practicing for fighting off the Islamic fascist hordes 'cause real Americans don't take no shit from no hordes.
Yay, smell the gunpowder and freedom!
http://freakoutnation.com/2015/02/neighbors-upset-about-florida-gun-nuts-front-yard-shooting-range/
Sunday, August 2, 2015
Governor Dick Scott; Just like Mother Teresa, only betterer
Who knew famed Wonkette blog of renown has a section on Florida follies? Why didn't anyone tell me?
Because it came as quite a surprise to me Mr. so-called Guv Scott received an award for his stewardship of the environment in Florida--an award given by a board filled with appointees of Dick Scott.
http://wonkette.com/592470/rick-scott-is-just-like-mother-teresa-your-florida-roundup
Because it came as quite a surprise to me Mr. so-called Guv Scott received an award for his stewardship of the environment in Florida--an award given by a board filled with appointees of Dick Scott.
Oh yes, Rick Scott, who has opened state parks to cattle ranchers, slashed the state’s environmental enforcement to the bone, and forbid state officials from even mouthing the words “climate change,” an utterance which angers the Good Lord (by which we mean the Kochs). Could you think of any better candidate for a Friend of the Environment award?Just like Mother Teresa, only more betterer.
Read more at http://wonkette.com/592470/rick-scott-is-just-like-mother-teresa-your-florida-roundup#yZKWCS5YyA4vDWqM.99
http://wonkette.com/592470/rick-scott-is-just-like-mother-teresa-your-florida-roundup
Saturday, August 1, 2015
Pro Life vs. Merely Pro Birth
Sister Joan Chittister, Order of St. Benedictine, quoted by Daily Kos on difference between merely pro birth and truly prolife, caring for kids health, hunger, and education:
"I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is." (emphasis added) http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/30/1407166/-Catholic-Nun-Explains-Pro-Life-In-A-Way-That-May-Stun-The-Masses
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