Dr. C: The Unpleasant Exclusivity in Our Educational System
Wolraich: The Grim Possibility Of War With Iran
Heat Win Game Six, Disappointing Nation of Heat-Haters
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Dr. C: The Unpleasant Exclusivity in Our Educational System Wolraich: The Grim Possibility Of War With Iran Heat Win Game Six, Disappointing Nation of Heat-Haters |
Shuts & |
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. [Read more]
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."
If adhered to, this rule would make child gun deaths far less likely, while still permitting self defense. One could not, admittedly, pull one's gun from under the pillow and shoot an intruder at a moment's notice, but this seems like a small compromise in the service of an obvious benefit in safety. [Read more]
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Mac added a comment to Erica.
Erica if you recall has been nuts on this gun 'thing'.
http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/ok-lets-try-gun-law-thing-another-way-high-capacity-magazines-15966
And I made a comment on that blog and it got lost-ed in my computer stream thingy. [Read more]
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.)
If your answer is "no" please state what number or specific modification would make the law palatable to you.
If you have a different idea, please hold your fire, so to speak--we'll get to you soon.
Hello all. Thank you for the comments you have left me. I'm trying to get back to writing really seriously and I thought some of you here - especially those who have enjoyed Orlando's "South East Asia Travel Journal" - might like this (it's a very narrow topic but given Joe's exposure to American culture/society, there may be alot to learn from):  [Read more]
Who woulda guessed - holes in Obamacare permitting double digit health care increases?
And who knew Obama's vote for FISA was irrelevant - because the courts just ruled he can ignore it anyway. [Read more]
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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. [Read more]
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. [Read more]
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The Joe Bidens of this world give me hope!
Spread your legs, you are going to be frisked!
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/01/03/biden-spread-your-legs-youre-going-to-be-frisked/
This is a big fucking deal. [Read more]
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? [Read more]
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..
They described how a perfect mother would deal with a child who spread feces on the wall, bit his mother's cheek when she leaned over to kiss him, and pulled out his sister's hair.And asked whether she was demonstrating that perfection. No? Well then she was responsible for her child not only not being perfect but being highly imperfect . "Like you" was the unstated clause. [Read more]
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. [Read more]
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Through my fault, through my, through my most grievous fault... [Read more]
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.
A subsequent request under the Freedom of Information Act has driven the Putnam County authorities to consider civil disobedience.
This is preposterous. [Read more]
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). [Read more]
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”? What can we do now to enhance the radical potential of a second Obama term? [Read more]
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)
With a recent brain clot and a prospect of 2 years of heavy campaigning, followed by presumably 8 years as president? Hardly. [Read more]
Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation 150 Years ago on January 1, 1863. As noted by historian Harold Holzer in an article at the Daily Beast, 4 million African-American slaves and thousands of white abolitionists awaited word of the signing of the document. The signing was delayed by a New Year’s party held in the White House was attended by the diplomatic corps, military elite and members of Congress. When the official party was over, White House guards opened the doors to allow several thousand members of the general public join in the revelry. [Read more]
What a bunch of hooey! [Read more]
Who can forget the howls of rage that rose from the barnyard circus that nominated Mitt Romney to carry the Repugnant standard into battle?
Most self-congratulatory were the distorted versions of Obama's rather clumsy reworking of Liz Warren's "God Bless!", a caution directed to the smug successful who saw no contribution from the commons.
Almost as disturbing as the massacre in Connecticut has been some of the response to it. One article called "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother" is by a woman who has an intelligent son prone to violent and scary moods. As far as it seems, those bad moods haven't gone to the point of murdering grade schoolers but she nevertheless acts as if it has.
David Frum recently posted another one of these by a reader - it was called "I Was Adam Lanza:" [Read more]
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What a Christmas!
I see my son four days in a week. And he stays over two nights.
I see my granddaughter and her mother the future Mrs. Day and I am in heaven.
My son is Dad and I am granddad. Hahahahah
The first night he wishes to watch Christmas Story with me. hahahahahahah [Read more]
FYI: I recently discovered the Blogs at the WP under She the People.
Several of the recent entries there concern the issue in the subject line, mental health. I think it's recommended reading.
For instance:
The NRA’s school safety plan: Round up the sick and arm the children
and:
After Newtown: What mental health system?
Reuters, June 19, 2013
CAIRO - Egypt's tourism minister tendered his resignation on Tuesday over President Mohamed Mursi's decision to appoint as governor of Luxor a member of a hardline Islamist group blamed for slaughtering 58 tourists there in 1997.
Prime Minister Hisham Kandil did not accept the resignation of Tourism Minister Hisham Zaazou, who remains in the post for now. However, the move pointed to a split in government over an appointment that one critic called "the last nail in the coffin" of the tourism industry.
Mursi appointed Adel Mohamed al-Khayat, a member of al-Gamaa al-Islamiya, as Luxor governor this week, a move seen as a sign of a deepening political alliance between the once-armed group and the...
By Robert Mackey, The Lede @ nytimes.com, June 18, 2013
Includes lots of images and videos.
Last Updated, 6:57 p.m. As my colleague Simon Romero reports from São Paulo, more than 200,000 Brazilians filled the streets in cities across the country on Monday to protest the high cost of living and lavish spending on soccer stadiums ahead of next year’s World Cup, in demonstrations that have intensified as images of police brutality against peaceful protesters spread on...
How Obama's pick to lead the FBI tried to put the brakes on the NSA's surveillance dragnet.
By Marc Ambinder, Foreign Policy, June 18, 2013
[....] Comey, who is said to be President Obama's choice to be the next director of the FBI, has never publicly disclosed exactly what he refused to sanction when he was briefly acting attorney general during Ashcroft's hospital stay, but people briefed on the program who have spoken to Comey say it was the legal rationale giving the NSA quick access to un-sifted telecom and service provider-collected metadata that "drove him bonkers," not the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program. There was just no way, Comey thought, to justify an effort that simply...
'Peace and reconciliation' milestone comes after US drops request for formal rejection of al-Qaida as precondition to talks
By Dan Roberts in Washington and Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul, guardian.co.uk, 18 June 2013
[....] White House officials say they believe the Taliban delegation at the talks represents the movement's leadership, and includes more radical groups such as the Haqqani network. Officials said the US would have a direct role in the talks starting starting this week in Doha, but the substantive negotiations over the future of Afghanistan would then be led by the Afghan government.
"The core of this process is not going to be US-Taliban talks – we can help the process – but the core is going...
According to some well-placed Israeli commentators, the best Israel can hope for is that Assad holds on but only just. That would keep the regime in place, or boxed into its heartland, but sapped of the energy to concern itself with anything other than immediate matters of survival.
In closed-door discussions, analyst Ben Caspit has noted, the Israeli army has put forward its “optimal scenario”: Syria breaking up into three separate states, with Assad confined to an Alawite canton in Damascus and along the coast.
A long war of attrition between Assad and the opposition has additional benefits for Israel following the decision by Hizbullah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, to draft thousands of fighters to assist the...