The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Richard Day's picture

    TAKING SHOTS AT THE WHITE HOUSE; CHAPTER TWO

     

    I wrote about a strange occurrence on November 12, 2011. Someone shot 11 bullets into the White House! I do not think that 'they' even told us about the 11 shells they found at that time!

    Orion's picture

    Peanuts For Guns

    Keep in mind this is pretty old.

    Will gun manufacturers accept a 10% drop in sales?

    I have been looking at "Time to Crime" data and it indicates to me that if we figured out a way to stop the flow of guns to criminals, it would mean a yearly drop in gun sales of AT LEAST 10%. 

    So I think it is time for Joe to get out there and extract a promise from gun manufacturers that they would be willing to accept a AT LEAST A 10% sales hit in order to keep our streets safer.

    Here's how I came up with this. The Mayors Against Illegal Guns web site, tracetheguns.org, says that nationwide, 22.6 % of the guns recovered in crimes are less than two years old.

    If owning a gun is a crime, only criminals will have guns: how the industry doubles sales.

    Today's post looks at corrupt Federally Licensed Firearms dealers (FFLs) and straw buyers. Here is what I suspect, and I may or may not be able to prove it.

    It's about the money.

    The gun industry, by selling guns to criminals, creates a commensurate need for self-defense in the "law-abiding" public. And like Doublemint gum, it's double the pleasure, double the fun for gun manufacturers and dealers.

    Richard Day's picture

    Mr. ED & PHIL GINGREY

     

    The peasants are revolting but they still get air time.

    Sweat shops are good things.

    http://mediamatters.org/video/2013/01/08/foxs-gutfeld-the-biggest-myth-of-all-time-is-th/192105

     

    Orion's picture

    Monsters Inside Of Us

    This is another piece about mental illness. I have gotten a mixed reception from all of you here. This makes alot of people very uncomfortable. The last thread about mental illness did really well and I really learned from all of your stories - however - I know from experience posting here that the subjects I pick aren't what some want. I've been encouraged to post here and wouldn't do so if I thought I was imposing.

     If this makes you uncomfortable, please just skip over. The subject is complex and needs to be discussed out of necessity for what it is.

    Orion's picture

    Coming Up Front About Mental Illness

    As mental illness comes back in to the national discourse given all the tragic shootings, it's worth noting how pervasive mental illness really is. Mental illness doesn't necessarily mean schizophrenia - where a person stops being tuned at all in to reality and starts to talk incessantly to themselves.

    Medical Errors and Gun-owner Errors: Similarities

    As I think about gun-owners today, I think they can be placed in a few different groups. There are similarities with discussions we have about medical errors and negligence--because there are sometimes tragic injuries and deaths involved. So bear with me here as I talk about the similarities. This isn't going to be artful.

    1. There are legal, responsible gun owners who are concerned about their Second Amendment rights. Fair enough. Their right to bear arms is guaranteed under the Constitution--but as with doctors, if one of them makes an error, the results can be deadly.

    Reasonable gun storage

    Ok, so it seems to be legal to keep a loaded gun on your nightstand in most or all states, with some exceptions for those who live in California.

    I'm going to go way out on a limb and propose that we make a federal law that if a gun is to be kept within 20 horizontal feet of a room where people sleep, the ammunition must be kept in a small biometric or combination safe, separate from the weapon itself. Call it a "clip-keeper."

    Richard Day's picture

    ERICA, MAC & WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!

     

    Mac added a comment to Erica.

    Erica if you recall has been nuts on this gun 'thing'.

    OK, let's try this gun law thing another way: High-capacity magazines.

    These threads on gun laws go bad fast. So I'm just going to propose one issue with each post. Please confine yourselves to one brief reply or clarification, and for the sake of keeping things neat, please try not to comment on other people's comments. So here is my first question:

    Would you be in favor of:

    Limiting magazine capacity to 10 and banning possession of larger-capacity magazines nationwide? (This would probably involve some kind of buyback/trade-in program.)

    Twofer - insurance & Wall Street theft

     

    Who woulda guessed - holes in Obamacare permitting double digit health care increases?

    Richard Day's picture

    RAPE, SLAVERY & THE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT

    There seems to be some issue concerning rape in many corners of the world.

    Before I get into this mess, I would begin with a discussion concerning global warming.

    To me, there is no issue concerning global warming.

    Remember when some repubs (per FOX of course) were claiming that there really was no such thing as global warming because it was getting colder in Antarctica; or ice was piling up in Antarctica or it happened to be extremely cold on January 15th, 2012 in Cleveland?

    Well the truth is that Antarctica is in real trouble.

    Orion's picture

    The World Is Dying

    You know it, I know it. The world is broken and falling in to chaos.

    During World War II, economic collapse and deterioration led to most of the world's leading nations falling in to dictatorships. People back then were very different than they are now, however. People now are used to being independent, of telling themselves what to do, of buying what they want and having what they want. They don't need a fascist or communist leader to be nasty for them - they know how to do it themselves.

    Richard Day's picture

    I LOVE JOE BIDEN; SO KILL ME!

     

    The Joe Bidens of this world give me hope!

    Spread your legs, you are going to be frisked!

    Say Goodbye to Hillary 2

    Sitting here contemplating the future as I was told I can't predict, and that those premonitions of 2016 are ageist and sexist.

    Will Hugo Chavez die before his inauguration 6 days away? Well, he's had an amazing journey, and he's only 58, so it would be wrong of me to predict. Just because he had cancer & 4 major operations in the last 2 years and is now clinging on in a respirator after severe lung infection - well, who knows?

    Of "good enough" mothers and Mack trucks

    Until 1960 a mother who had an autistic child not only had to deal with that heart break , she also had to listen when the  Freudian  psychiatrists or psychologists  she consulted "helped" her by telling her she made her child autistic.. 

    NRA, Gun Owners, 2nd Amendment Fans: What is your plan?

    I think it's important to find out from gun proponents whether they believe that each day's gun deaths are:

    1) simply an unfortunate side effect of Life In a Free Country Among Sometimes Not Very Smart People, or

    2) something that the law ought to actually try harder to prevent.

    Richard Day's picture

    DOGS AND MEA CULPA!

     

    Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa...

     

    Through my fault, through my, through my most grievous fault...

    jollyroger's picture

    If Typhoid Mary lived next door, would you let your kids visit? Drink the lemonade? Gun owners are a public health issue.

    The recent publication by the White Plains Journal-News of a  map highlighting the locations in Westchester and Rockland Counties of holders of  handgun permits raised howls of protest.

     

    Issues of privacy were raised, though the information is part of the public record by law, and thus available to anyone with the time and inclination to visit the county seat.

     

    Nelson Algren: The Great, Forgotten Progressive Writer That You Should Know

    This month the Believer was kind enough to grant me 9,000 words worth of page space for a lengthy homage to Nelson Algren, a great-but-mostly-forgotten-writer. Algren has been dead for 31-years and obscure for far longer but his writing continues to deserve attention and consideration.

    If I hold faith with any writer it's Algren. He had an expansive view of literature. To him it was a game played for the highest possible stakes. A writer's role, he believed, was to tell the truest stories they can tell, and always to challenge the status quo. He would have nothing but contempt for this current writerly obsession with "branding" oneself or "cultivating an audience." High-minded pronouncements aside, he was also just my type of guy. He hoboed through the Great Depression (riding the rails even after signing his first book contract) and joined the Communist Party, only to be chastised for throwing a too-bawdy party. He collected material for his eleven books by haunting the county morgue, police line ups, underground card games and weekly rate hotels. And still found enough time to win the first National Book Award, give Hemingway cause to proclaim him the second best American writer (after Faulkner), romance Simone de Beauvoir, and call Joe McCarthy unqualified for any office but dog catcher (long before Ed Murrow found the nerve to take the man on).

    coatesd's picture

    A Progressive Second Term? (I) Prerequisites

    Amid the scampering up and down the fiscal cliff that now dominates political life in Washington, some more important and basic questions are in danger of vanishing from view, questions about the general character and progressive potential of Barack Obama’s second term. Questions such as these. Will this Administration in the end prove to have been worth fighting for? Will we by 2016 be able to say anything more than “well, at least we avoided a Romney presidency and a Republican clean sweep”?

    Say Goodbye to Hillary

    It's a thought that occurred to me numerous times, and would seem to be obvious, but Hillary would be 69 by election day 2016.

    While Reagan was elected at 69, he was an outlier, and had spent much of his life in casual living, including an age when running from President wasn't so grueling. William Henry Harrison was 2nd at 68, and the rest go from 65 on down. Oh, did I mention Reagan's Alzheimers was covered up at the time? The press isn't so obliging these days (especially not to Democrats)

    Pages