Jesus and Ben Carson

Take a look at the photo that is up in Ben Carson's house.

No, that's not a photo of Carson and the late Duane Allman. That's Republican Jesus!!

Do we really want this guy as president? Wow...

What Could ISIL Do To Us That We Don't Already Do To Ourselves?

Amen.

I actually think that the major terrorist organizations have gotten wise to this. How do you terrorize a society that murders 11,000 of it's own citizens every year? They're probably thinking about what it would take to truly terrorize Americans, and not seeing how it would be possible, short of acquiring a nuclear device. This is why I expect to see American allies hit again and again. That sort of tactic might bring more pressure to bear on American policy than simply adding to the carnage Americans are obviously so comfortable with.

If Anyone Can Use Your Gun, It Doesn't Make You Safer

I live in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, and the big news around here lately has been the shooting of Jamar Clark, an unarmed black man. NAACP leaders have come to Minneapolis and are meeting the mayor and the governor. Protesters are camped out around a police station. Interlopers used the protest to throw rocks and Molotov cocktails at police. 

The demonstrators want video of the incident released, and law enforcement doesn't want to release it yet for fear of contaminating witness statements.

From what we can tell, the following happened: Jamar Clark beat up his girlfriend. Paramedics were called and began to treat her. Clark hassled the paramedics. The cops tried to stop him. He allegedly got his hand on the gun of one of the cops. Then the cops shot him in the head. The demonstrators say Clark was handcuffed, the cops say he wasn't.

The video probably won't clear anything up: it's probably of poor quality, shot from a building surveillance camera with a poor angle.

Now, Jamar Clark wasn't some innocent motorist. He instigated the incident. But the punishment for being a violent idiot shouldn't be the death penalty.

But there is a common thread in most of these shootings of unarmed black men: cops are afraid their own weapons will be used against them. In Ferguson Michael Brown was shot after supposedly trying to take a cop's gun. Last December a cop shot Ezell Ford, a black man who supposedly tried to grab his gun. In 2013 Jonathan Ferrel, a former football player, whose car broke down was killed because the cop said he tried to take his gun.

My guess is that a lot of cops just say this to cover up bad shootings because there's no way to prove it unless there's video. But it does happen, and apparently it happens all the time.

On March 11, a defendant on trial for rape in Atlanta allegedly overpowered a courthouse deputy, took her gun and killed four people, including two law enforcement officers. A little over a month later, a Providence detective was killed with his own weapon while interviewing a suspect at police headquarters.

Police in Augusta, Ga., killed an inmate who fled on April 21 after overpowering a state corrections officer and taking his gun, authorities said. Two days later, a man under arrest in Spring Valley, Ill., wrested away an officer's gun and beat him with it. The suspect then fatally shot himself, police said.

This shows the fallacy of "guns make us safer." If your weapon can be used by anyone who picks it up, it represents a hazard to you and everyone around you.

A gun is like a hand grenade with the pin pulled. Cops run around all day and all night with this armed grenade on their hips, just waiting for it to go off. No wonder they have itchy trigger fingers.

Now, if these cops had guns that only they could fire, how many lives would be saved? And it goes beyond cops: how many kids shoot their little brothers because daddy left his gun where the kiddies could get it? How many teenagers have committed suicide with a stolen weapon? How many people have been shot by their own weapons because they dropped them on the bathroom floor?

The NRA has opposed guns that are keyed to individuals because they're afraid they would malfunction when they're most needed. And I agree that guns activated by a fingerprint reader, or an embedded chip, or some other equally esoteric technology are insufficiently reliable.

Simpler is better. There has to be a simple foolproof unlocking mechanism for a gun. It might be a ring that acts as a key when it's inserted into the grip. It might be some kind of coded safety that takes just a moment to activate while you're aiming (because cops had better damn well be aiming). This would also reduce the number of accidental shootings that occur when cops clean an "empty" gun.

The basic design of police sidearms hasn't really changed in century. It's time to use some of that American exceptionalism to design weapons that really do make us safer.

As long as anyone can shoot a cop's gun, the weapon poses a deadly threat to bystanders, suspects and the cops themselves.

Good Words

Good Words

What I didn’t fully appreciate, and nobody can appreciate until they’re in the position, is how decentralized power is in this system. When you’re in the seat and you’re seeing the housing market collapse and you are seeing unemployment skyrocketing and you have a sense of what the right thing to do is, then you realize, "Okay, not only do I have to persuade my own party, not only do I have to prevent the other party from blocking what the right thing to do is, but now I can anticipate this lawsuit, this lobbying taking place, and this federal agency that technically is independent, so I can’t tell them what to do. 

I’ve got the Federal Reserve, and I’m hoping that they do the right thing—and by the way, since the economy now is global, I’ve got to make sure that the Europeans, the Asians, the Chinese, everybody is on board." A lot of the work is not just identifying the right policy but now constantly building these ever shifting coalitions to be able to actually implement and execute and get it done.

---Barack Obama, November 17, 2015

The Gun Laws I Want Here In The United States

Here are the kind of gun laws I'd like to see here in the United States. This was from a comment on Quora.

I find it interesting some Americans think it's hard to get a gun in the US. Sounds much too easy to me.

Australian method [it helps we're an island continent with fairly tight border control]

1. Go do a gun handling safety course at a firearms shop. Takes 2 hours. Send forms off. Certificate comes back 1 week later.

2. Fill out license application for your state registry. You must include a genuine reason (for ownership). This includes recreational hunting/vermin control (on a property big enough) or as part of a sporting shooter's association (state based). Or animal welfare/primary production (i.e. cattle grazing). 

3. Pistols heavily restricted to certain employment types (security) or gun club. Very very hard for average citizen to own hand gun.

4. Long arms are broken into 3 main categories: A, B, C (there are others). A are air guns, rim fire etc. As a primary producer, say, you can pretty easily get one (pest control, animal welfare), even on small lots (say 4 Ha/10 acres). Category B include centrefires. Must have at least 25 acres to own one, or, be in a shooting assoc, or, have permission to shoot on a larger landowner's land.

5. Send forms off. Registry does check. No one with any assault/AVO/serious criminal conviction can legally own a firearm.

6. For land owners, registry checks land size/aspect and proximity to neighbours on google maps/earth/etc.

7. Licence approved/or not.

8. Take forms to motor registry and get license.

9. Go to gun shop and get a permit to acquire. 1 PTA per firearm. You can only apply for and have approved, PTAs for your allowed firearm classification. Each PTA costs money.

10. PTA approved: first PTA takes 28 days (the cooling off period). After that subsequent PTAs apparently are quicker.

11. Take PTA to firearms dealer, acquire.

12. You can only buy ammunition for the type of firearm you have.

Other notes:
Transporting firearms requires the ammo is locked separately from firearm. Preferably bolt actions have the bolt removed and store separately. Firearm locked in car or in special lockbox attached to vehicle.

Very strict laws as to storage.

All firearms must be acquired through a dealer - no person to person sales.

You cannot carry a concealed weapon in public even if you legally own it.

Arguably, this is a pain in the bum, but you can be reasonably sure most legal firearms holders are responsible.

Some (Americans especially) might see this as a curtailment of rights. Maybe in 1800 when the Wild West was as it was, but in 2015 Australia (and any civil society, really), this is a very, very small price to pay to ensure a mostly safe, civil society.

Yep.

I'm done living under their rules for guns...rules that are currently the most acute threat to our national security....rules that a small percentage of our population gets to dictate.

I'm even more tired of the current strategy that gun safety proponents are advocating. They are making the same mistake that President Obama made when he tried to meet the Cult halfway. They don't want to meet halfway. They are on the one yard one on the right side of the field, especially when it comes to this issue. So, gun safety advocates have to start on the one yard line on the left side of the field and work to the middle.

Let's begin with this: FUCK THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

Cue The Islamophobia

You could see this one coming from a mile away. Brown people-GET OUT!!! You are all terroristy and stuff,,,

From someone who went through their own issues with anger, hate and fear after 9/11, I can safely say that this sort of bullshit accomplishes nothing. It only serves to embolden those who claim to be Muslim. ISIL isn't anymore a representation of Islam than the KKK is a representation of Christianity. Giving them more reasons to hate us isn't a good strategy.

I've stated this many times but military action alone accomplishes nothing. This is a battle over ideology and it can only be one through free trade and free markets in those areas of the world that are currently ruled by dictators. This is really at the heart of why people around the world flock to ISIL. They are angry at the lack of freedom.

Giving them that freedom, both in economy and in civil rights, changes all of that.

Study on Background Checks

Between January 1, 2009 and July 31, 2015, there were 37 mass shootings in states where background checks were required for all handgun sales and 96 mass shootings in states where they were not. Controlling for population, there were 52 percent fewer mass shootings in states that require background checks for all handgun sales than in states that do not.

The difference was more pronounced among shootings committed by prohibited people. During the period of observation, there were 44 mass shootings committed by assailants known to be prohibited from possessing firearms—10 in states that require background checks for all handgun sales and 34 in states that do not. Controlling for population, there were 63 percent fewer mass shootings committed by people prohibited from possessing firearms in states that require background checks for all handgun sales than in those that do not.

A White American Christian

Never forget. This person killed 168 American men, women and CHILDREN. He injured 600 more. He perpetrated the worst case of domestic terrorism in United States history. He wasn't black or brown. He wasn't a Hindu or a Muslim or Syrian. He was A WHITE AMERICAN CHRISTIAN. Now think on that before you spread your anti Islamic and anti people of color BULLSHIT on social media.

Strategy Shift

Here's an interesting piece from today's Times regarding the strategy shift of ISIL. I find most of it to be on the mark save for one glaring omission: wasn't this always going to be their strategy?

Like Al Qaeda before it, ISIL is an organization that wants the world returned to the year 700 with old style Islamic values. They don't just want their little corner to rule over. They want the whole thing and want to eradicate anyone that stands in their way.

So, now the question becomes how do we stop them? We area already bombing them so that's good. If we decide to put boots on the ground, we could take out their main force of 20,000 guys and 1970s pickup trucks. Neither of these actions, however, would defeat them because we're talking about a worldwide ideology. This, of course, brings us back to the problem we had with Al Qaeda. How do you stop an idea?

At the core of the solution to this problem lies free trade and free markets. When people get a taste of the wealth and prosperity that capitalism brings, they tend to not want to shoot each other or blow themselves up anymore. That's why Muslims in the United States aren't radicalized. They love their lives here and are comfortable.

No doubt there will still be Islamic groups that will not go gently into that good night but that's where international crime fighting efforts have to be massively increased. Intelligence...human intelligence...is where we can really take the fight to ISIL.

Paris

As the world reacts with horror and sympathy to the attacks in Paris, please note that by this time tomorrow morning, the same number of US citizens will be dead due to gun violence on our own home soil. In another 36 hours, that number will double. In another 36..tripled.

And all with none of the media attention that Paris is getting right now....

Conservatives and The Gold Standard

For years many conservatives have been insisting the United States return to the gold standard, with putzes like Glenn Beck hawking gold on TV at inflated prices.

Ted Cruz and Ben Carson pulled the gold standard out of their asses in the most recent Republican presidential debate. The New York Times has an article that explains the technical reasons why some conservatives want it (to limit government spending) and why it's stupid (it causes deflationary spirals and depressions).

But the gold standard is bad for other reasons. It would give more power to countries that produce gold. What countries produce the most gold? In order of production in 2014: China, Australia, Russia and the United States. We're number 4! We're number 4!

Do we really want to give China and Russia that much control over the United States' economy?

And there really isn't very much gold in the world: last year the entire world's production was 2,860 metric tons. A cubic meter of gold weighs 19 metric tons. That means that the entire output of all the gold mines in the world was only 150 cubic meters, or a cube measuring 5.3 meters on a side, about 17 feet.

I could store the entire annual global production of gold in my basement. All the gold produced in history would fit in a cube 68 feet on a side -- you could stack it all on the basketball court in Madison Square Garden.

The idea that the best use of gold is to have it sit around in vaults collecting dust is sheer stupidity. Gold should be used for things of real, practical value. It's extremely useful in electronics because it's a good conductor and doesn't corrode. It's used in spacecraft for the same reasons, plus it acts as a lubricant. It's used in dentistry and medicine, timepieces and jewelry. And of course, to plate every knick-knack in Donald Trump's apartment.

It's crazy that Ted Cruz thinks the best use of US government resources is to buy gold from China and Russia and then let it sit in Fort Knox doing absolutely nothing, meanwhile jacking up the price of every wedding ring, computer, cellphone and television set on the planet.

But the real reason the gold standard is coming up now? Because it sounds cool. The phrase "gold standard" has a cachet of excellence. It was a Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt, who got the United States off the gold standard -- and ended the Great Depression, but never mind that. Gold standard -- good, Democrats -- bad!

Ted Cruz is bringing up the gold standard not because it has any merit, but because he wants to associate himself with something that sounds cool. He thinks most conservatives are dumb and easily duped by promises of wealth, and a country on the gold standard would be really wealthy! That, and it would make his gold-hoarding speculator pals incredibly rich overnight.

The gold standard is emblematic of the conservative mindset of flash over substance, and the overriding emphasis of money over human well-being.

Just How Bad George W. Bush Was....

Check out this recent piece from Politico.

By May of 2001, says Cofer Black, then chief of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, “it was very evident that we were going to be struck, we were gonna be struck hard and lots of Americans were going to die.” “There were real plots being manifested,” Cofer’s former boss, George Tenet, told me in his first interview in eight years. “The world felt like it was on the edge of eruption. In this time period of June and July, the threat continues to rise. Terrorists were disappearing [as if in hiding, in preparation for an attack]. Camps were closing. Threat reportings on the rise.” 

And yet the Right gives him a pass and are blowing a bowel about Benghazi. What a bunch of assholes...

Another GOP debate? Yawn...

I think the Democrats got yet another thing right: less debates. The Republicans have too many...which kinda goes along with their too many candidates. I'm pretty fucking bored with them, to be honest, because they are essentially saying the same thing over and over again.

Obama sucks...the world is fire...Hillary is evil...we hate brown people (ex: Bush, Kasich) and don't take my fucking guns. The GOP debates have become like a cover band in a shitty bar that plays all the songs that the people who support them want to hear.

Where are their new ideas backed up by evidence that their policies will work?

Happy Veteran's Day!

Go find a veteran.

Touch them on the shoulder.

Say "Thank you for your service."

Why Christians Need to Talk About Guns

Here's a great piece on how inroads might be made into the evangelical community in terms of gun safety. I was very heartened to read about Rob Schenk's conversion and the action he has taken as a result. Here's a nice bit from filmmaker Abigail Disney.

What we’re increasingly seeing is terrible fear among evangelical conservatives. I think evangelicals have always kind of seen themselves as outside the mainstream and as having less political power. There’s always been a sense among them that [someone was] coming to get them. 

And then you pour ISIS into that, and then you pour this kind of Fox news always amping up the fear, and then you have the NRA, which is also playing on that fear pretty unscrupulously. So you have people who are convinced that on any given night, someone’s going to break in and shoot them in their home, which is just statistically just as close to impossible as it gets. You’re much more likely to be hit by lightning. 

All too true. Stop being afraid.

More importantly, stop listening to the Gun Cult.

Carry A Big Stick

Good Words

From a gun owner on Quora...

A lot of noise. Any time there is a question like this there is a lot of noise. The truth though? We just don't know. Here are some other truths though that we should take into account. The odds of you using your gun to defend yourself or your family from a violent crime is many times smaller than the odds of your gun being used by a family member or intruder to shoot you. The odds of you using your gun to defend yourself are many times smaller than the odds of your gun being involved in an accidental discharge. The odds of you successfully defending yourself from an intruder are many times smaller than the odds of you blowing your own brains out in a suicide by gun.
 
Here is a Harvard study refuting much of the 'self defense' noise you hear all the time.
 
Gun Threats and Self-Defense Gun Use
 
Not that is it not a phony study like the John Lott Gun and Gun Crime paper which was not peer reviewed NOR was it a study but merely a self serving polemic by an avid gun aficionado.
 
You may next hear 'noise' about the UK or Australia. And ho their violent crime rate actually went up after gun control. It may interest you to know that the UK defines violent crime much more broadly than we do in the United States as they include simple assault and sexual assault (that does not have to be rape). Our FBI considers only four crimes in it's violent crimes calculations. Therefore we know right off the bat we are not comparing apples to apples.
 
The next noise you hear will be constitutional trumpet blowing ad some talk about a 'doomsday clause'. Will the first gun owner who defended my liberty from our own tyrannical government please raise your hand? No sorry David Koresh much as the government botched that raid, you were not defending anything but your own twisted beliefs at Waco. The founding fathers wanted Americans to be able to muster and form a well regulated militia, they wanted them to bring their own muskets and flintlock pistols, hell back in the day private parties owned cannon and frigates that could be issued letters of marque. We were a young country, relatively defenseless, it made total sense. Even then the founding fathers did not say, 'In order to prevent the Feds form getting too uppity citizens should own and carry around guns'. It is my belief , and I am no constitutional scholar, that future SCOTUS rulings will give state and federal governments more authority to restrict and control gun purchase and gun bearing and that this is entirely constitutional and would be a good thing.
 
Finally there will be noise about what a leftist fascist I am (not a possibility by definition but ok), and how if the Jews had some guns old Adolph couldn't have done what he did and maybe even how the U.N wants to get rid of guns and people in Europe are essentially slaves or victims.
 
To the above I have a few responses. I own two guns. I will probably but a couple more. I would gladly surrender them (for money of course) if everyone else had to and the government was collecting them. They are for me fun to shoot at the range and a relatively inexpensive ultimate insurance policy. Not for home defense on a regular basis, not for stopping tyranny (not sure my 10-22 Ruger will penetrate the Kevlar and ceramic plates on the FEMA storm troopers), not they are my insurance policy against a complete breakdown of social order-a descent in anarchy, the failure of the electric grid, a plague, the Zompacolypse, that sort of thing.
 
For those who feel bad for the Europeans, drag your butt over there and eat that delicious food, look at the smiles on their faces, soak up the Tuscan sun, dip your toes on the Amalfi Coast-then tell me about those poor stupid European slaves who compared to us really have no guns at all.
 
My last point is to bemoan the Jewish argument. If only the Jews had guns they could have....they could have what? The Polish Army had guns and training, so did the French, and guess what-the Wehrmacht rolled through them like a hot knife through butter. Guns weren't gonna stop Hitler from is insane designs on the world, not in the hands of scattered Jews or Romanovs or Slavs.
 
It's all just noise. It's ok to live having guns to feel like it's your right but please let's not pretend that we are defending the constitution-that's the militaries job-or that we are defending our family-from what? You think there are armed men out there just waiting to attack you? That is our police forces and courts job. They do a better job every year too as evidenced by declining rates of violence.

Very well said!!

Three Tour Iraq Vet Murdered By Gun Cult

Andrew Meyers served three tours of duty in Iraq and survived. But he couldn't survive a bicycle ride in Colorado Springs. He was one of the victims of Noah Haphram's shooting spree last Saturday. The shooting spree would likely have been stopped had Colorado Springs not allowed open carry.

Worse than any Islamic extremist, the Gun Cult gets blood like this on its hands every single day. It's time we stopped them as we would any other threat to national security and I can't think of any entity more equipped than the federal government:)

Good Words

From George Will...

Donald Trump is just one symptom of today’s cultural pathology of self-validating vehemence with blustery certitudes substituting for evidence. Another is the fact that the book atop the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list is a tissue of unsubstantiated assertions. Because of its vast readership, “Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency” by Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and his collaborator Martin Dugard will distort public understanding of Ronald Reagan’s presidency more than hostile but conscientious scholars could.

My bold emphasis above perfectly epitomizes today's conservative...especially the right wing blogger and the right wing blog commenter. Blustery certitudes, indeed:)