Friday, March 29, 2013
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Gun Nuts in the Home of the Brave
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Kids and staff get slaughtered by a gun wielding nut a few months ago in just the latest of a list of massacres across the country stretching back more than thirty years. Any new proposals on how to deal with the epidemic of butchery are met with mass hysteria from those who think their right to own a gun outweighs our right to live free of mass shootings. Only in America do we ban toy assault rifles and keep the real ones legal. Why? Where does this come from? Fear plays a big part and if you have been reading this blog, you know the next most important thing is of course money. Once you get beyond our pretend democracy and realize everything here is solely about making the rich richer the seemingly crazy things our government does makes sense. A lunatic wants to blow up a plane with a shoe bomb (not successful) and now we spend millions taking off our shoes and getting them screened at airports across the country. Twenty plus kids get blown away in class, movie goers shot dead, death stalking collage campuses; so what happens? Well... nothing. My favorite question. Why is that, man?
We call ourselves the home of the brave but I think nothing could be further from the truth. We are actually pretty chicken shit. In the course of making more money for those who don't need it a nice healthy dose of fear is necessary. Call it economic fear. Fear of losing your job, fear of losing health insurance if you are lucky enough to have any and fear of keeping a good credit score all come to mind. I have to keep my job for security for myself and my family and there are people out there who want not only take my shit but hurt us as well. Watch any local news channel you want and pay attention to how they reinforce our collective fears. First will be some unfortunate bloke who was murdered (most likely by a gun) followed by other assorted crimes and on to economic worries such as plant closings and the like. But it is not enough to have us all scared to death of each other. Let's also fear the government! After all they are out to take our shit too; "freedom," guns and even our damn money. There are people around that literally stockpile assault weapons and ammunition for who know what reasons but it is not because they are free from fear. These people would do well to remember Uncle Sam wins every time. The people at Waco had their own guns. So did the people at Ruby Ridge. More recently, Christopher Dorner tried to take on the government / police and he too lost. If Uncle Sam comes calling you and your bushmaster are up shit creek. What the hell are you gonna do against his gun ships and M1 Abrams Tanks? Too many harbour dark fears of an evil government, people of other races, different religions or a take over by skinny uptight fashion models. I'm not sure why but it is too bad they don't put their time and cash into something more positive for society than hoarding guns and ammo. Who benefits? So lets look at this through a profit motive prism.
Where does the money lead? Fear generates revenue. Check it out. Here and here too. And one more for good measure. This is not rocket science people. Just normal operation procedure in our casino capitalist country. If you took a moment to check out the links or better yet, found your own seeing how government serves the wealthy every time becomes painfully obvious. So we lose thirty thousand a year to gun related deaths, there is money to be made! $11.7 Billion is not a small number. These companies are not in it to protect lives or defend rights, they are in it to make money for themselves and their share holders. Like Steve Martin says so eloquently in The Jerk "...It is a profit deal!" You may want to keep this in mind the next time you are watching some blow hard on TV talking about second amendment gibberish or self defense bullshit.
Look at the numbers.
Consider the following from The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information.
OBJECTIVE:
Determine the relative frequency with which guns in the home are used to injure or kill in self-defense, compared with the number of times these weapons are involved in an unintentional injury, suicide attempt, or criminal assault or homicide.
METHODS:
We reviewed the police, medical examiner, emergency medical service, emergency department, and hospital records of all fatal and nonfatal shootings in three U.S. cities: Memphis, Tennessee; Seattle, Washington; and Galveston, Texas.
RESULTS:
During the study interval (12 months in Memphis, 18 months in Seattle, and Galveston) 626 shootings occurred in or around a residence. This total included 54 unintentional shootings, 118 attempted or completed suicides, and 438 assaults/homicides. Thirteen shootings were legally justifiable or an act of self-defense, including three that involved law enforcement officers acting in the line of duty. For every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides.
CONCLUSIONS:
Guns kept in homes are more likely to be involved in a fatal or nonfatal accidental shooting, criminal assault, or suicide attempt than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense.Don't like the source? Then find your own. The results will be pretty much the same. Having guns does not make you safer PERIOD. Get over it and take up reading instead.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Gay Stuff
It is really sad that the issue of gay marriage has to go all the way to the Supreme Court. What was all that noise about being "home of the brave and in the land of the free?" Oh, we only bring that up right before launching one of our illegal wars, my bad. There is no logical reason gays should not be able to screw up their lives via marriage just like so called straight people do. I don't give a shit about who loves who or a "committed relationship" (whatever that's supposed to mean). Relationships ebb and flow, grow and change through time and splitting up should be easy as well. I care most about something lacking here and that's equal protection under the law. If two dudes living together want to adopt a kid and can handle the responsibility, why not? If a woman wants her life long partner to be there for a life and death decision in the hospital, who the fuck gives the hospital even the option to say no because they are not a "spouse" I'm sure there are more examples but these two come to mind. Now here comes the funny part. Are you ready?
This homophobia comes from those who claim there is too much government in our lives. These are the same people that need a defib every time "Obama Care" is mentioned. They're too ill informed to understand that this only reinforces the same business model of health care we now use. There are death panels as good Sarah told us but they are not what she thinks; rather they are the insurance companies killing us. On the business end are the anti-regulation types who believe it is fine to let banks and other business crash the economy and fuck up the environment. "Get government out of the way!" Banks laundering drug money? Runaway climate change? Selling poisonous drugs or other products? Nope. Hands off government! We're not a bunch of socialists here. So why the logical disconnect? Easy religion.
No one ever accused religion of being logical and you KNOW I'm not about to start. The Catholic Church is against gays marrying? Given recent history (and long ago history) why dose it matter what they think? Raping kids during the week and telling me how to live a good moral life on Sunday is something I'm going to take a pass on. Sure sure the guy you see on Sunday has never done such a thing. But what does he know of such crimes and what has he done about it? Why is he a part of an intuition that has knowingly hid child rapists and worse sent them on their merry way to continue their hideous crimes. This is not a team I want to be on and that's for damn sure. I find most religions to be pretty much bat shit crazy (Consider this and this). But hey this is America and you have the right to cling to the illusion of freedom, even religious freedom. Religion, no matter the flavor, has no place in law making PERIOD. We're pretty fucked up here but at least we don't yet live under a theocracy (yet). Believe what you want; God, Jesus, Mohammed, tree ferries, good witches, bad witches, or that Elvis died for our sins but leave those who feel differently alone. If you are against gay marriage simply marry someone of the opposite sex and let it ride. And don't tell me that Bill and Ted getting married will fuck up your marriage. If that's the case you got much bigger problems.
Next time- most likely gun nuts!
The Future Unveiled...
So what kind of narrative for the future do the previous readings unveil? Ugly.
Drone warfare is just getting started and the old rule book for when and how to fight wars has been tossed out. I have a few questions. So what happens when people here in the USA become targets? Will we quietly accept the blood money offered when the wrong people are killed along with promised through investigations that never seem to end in anyone being held accountable? When the first foreign drone srtike does occour or plain old fashoned terrorist attack unfolds will there really be people asking why on TV? Sure drones are cool and all but do leaders here thing the can go on being over used and misused without any repercussions here at home?
If you had any doubt that we do not live in a police state already, consider what happened to Chris Dorner. He's no hero but the cops turn out to be worse. He wasted people that had nothing to do with what happened to him. Five O decided he was not going to live and burned down the cabin he wa hiding out in via slick new toys from the military. Burn alive or put a bulet in my head, I'm not sure on this one but I think I'd go with plan B. And the cops get to call it a suicide! This is wrong on so many levels and in so many different ways, it is hard to know where to begin. Our so called free media did what the police wanted them to backing off coverage when they set the place on fire and for the most part gave Joe Public the police version of events. Real journalism is basically dead here in the USA. What we now get is the "official" version of events. Fabricating the news is the government's job and the media is just to repeat what they've been told.
Goldman Sachs really does run the world. So what does that mean for us? These guys (among others) have bought almost every so called democratic government in the world leaving the rest of us to live with decisions that help big finance and big finance only. They know the economy is winding down going hand in hand with resource depletement but rather than address the problems, we are putting down the accelerator on the way to civilization collapse. The Earth getting warmer? It pays! People dying from high food prices? It pays! Resource wars? More pay! It does not pay today to think about tomorrow.
Obama better than Bush? Not so fast.
Drone warfare is just getting started and the old rule book for when and how to fight wars has been tossed out. I have a few questions. So what happens when people here in the USA become targets? Will we quietly accept the blood money offered when the wrong people are killed along with promised through investigations that never seem to end in anyone being held accountable? When the first foreign drone srtike does occour or plain old fashoned terrorist attack unfolds will there really be people asking why on TV? Sure drones are cool and all but do leaders here thing the can go on being over used and misused without any repercussions here at home?
If you had any doubt that we do not live in a police state already, consider what happened to Chris Dorner. He's no hero but the cops turn out to be worse. He wasted people that had nothing to do with what happened to him. Five O decided he was not going to live and burned down the cabin he wa hiding out in via slick new toys from the military. Burn alive or put a bulet in my head, I'm not sure on this one but I think I'd go with plan B. And the cops get to call it a suicide! This is wrong on so many levels and in so many different ways, it is hard to know where to begin. Our so called free media did what the police wanted them to backing off coverage when they set the place on fire and for the most part gave Joe Public the police version of events. Real journalism is basically dead here in the USA. What we now get is the "official" version of events. Fabricating the news is the government's job and the media is just to repeat what they've been told.
Goldman Sachs really does run the world. So what does that mean for us? These guys (among others) have bought almost every so called democratic government in the world leaving the rest of us to live with decisions that help big finance and big finance only. They know the economy is winding down going hand in hand with resource depletement but rather than address the problems, we are putting down the accelerator on the way to civilization collapse. The Earth getting warmer? It pays! People dying from high food prices? It pays! Resource wars? More pay! It does not pay today to think about tomorrow.
Obama better than Bush? Not so fast.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Monday, March 18, 2013
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Monday, March 4, 2013
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