continuing proofs America is wacko [2]

For all Americas bluster on the subject I am not sure you have the hang of democracy yet (or in fact understand the concept!!)

You change government through the ballot box and by convincing enough of your fellow citizens of the merit of your case so they vote likewise.
Thats kind of the basis of how it works.

Taking up arms to change a government is sort of the exact opposite of democracy.

It's impossible to understand these people, Petty. And there's no reasoning with them.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I had to google to find out what a tweaker is- it sounded rather harmless- like they run up and tweak your nose and run away again!

Tweaker is to Meth what Junkie is to Heroine.  I've got a lot of pity for them. I often pick them up when they're hitchhiking (though that's not something I'd recommend for everybody) and if I've got groceries with me I'll often share. But their ethical control centers are burned out and they can get violent.

Many have moved to the country to get away from the well-funded drug task forces in the urban areas. So we have to deal with them, their kleptomania and vandalism.  They'll occasionally try squatting in or farm buildings, and we have to evict them. It's funny, they'll look you in the face and tell you they're a friend of the owner and he said it was OK even after you're introduced yourself as the owner.  

Most don't have driver's licenses, so they cruise the back roads among the farms on bicycles looking for interesting things to steal. They'll do crazy things like breaking into your pumphouse and unbolting the 200 lb motor from the irrigation pump, then realize they can't carry it on a bicycle and leave it where it sits, having done 100's of dollars damage in the process.    

They're also very fond of electric wire, sometimes stealing it directly off the overhead power lines, leaving parts of the community without electricity.   
We've worked out some understandings with the tweaker community, so it's not as bad as a few years ago, but it's still crazy.   

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Bungo- needing a gun to shot your own government doesn't strike me as very patriotic- what you do you call people who want to attack your government if your own people want to attack your government!

Saying I need a gun to protect myself from my own government always seems to me to make democracy rather pointless- surely the point of a democracy is that the people can choose and change their leaders without resorting to taking up arms and having coups?

Dave's explanation of why owning guns is seen as patriotic in rural communities is probably the best defence of the thinking that I've seen. But there's also the argument that the government should be afraid of its people, not the reverse. Supposed to keep it from sliding into abuse. I can't buy into this thinking as we have plenty of examples of how when governments become corrupt the armed 'militias' get even worse. But it does fit into the thinking about self sufficiency being a patriotic duty.

the government should be afraid of its people, not the reverse. Supposed to keep it from sliding into abuse.- Halfwsie

Ah well, this is where a constitutional monarchy comes in handy.

Suppose a UK government did some bad stuff and the voters voted them out- but they refused to go.
The people can just physically remove them if they have to- the people have the numbers, MP's dont have guns.
Hah but what about the police and the army you cry?- well they arent the governments- its not like the US where your armed forces have a commander in chief who is also president- our lot are the Queens, the law is the Queens law.
Any corrupt government would have to nobble the monarchy first- and they cant do that because its her army and her police, and her judiciary, so who they going to get to do it?

Its mad, but it works.

Somehow I feel that if Britain ends its run of old Queens, the whole psychology will collapse. it's the mothery image that keeps things in check. Slip a king in there and fistfights and brawls will break out right and left.

What America needs is a queen.

There seems to be quite a bit of interest in the gun control debate here in Forumshire.  I think Washington State may be interesting to follow in the next few months, as we were in the legal marijuana discussion last year.  If this initiative passes, several other states will almost certainly be following suit.

(It'll also be interesting to see how much NRA and Tea Party money comes pouring in to the State in opposition.)

Washington poll: Strong support for gun background checks
By The Associated Press


SEATTLE — A new poll shows strong support among Washington voters for a ballot initiative that would require background checks on all firearm sales in the state.

The Elway Poll found that 70 percent of people were inclined to vote for Initiative 594. The same poll showed that 46 percent of people were inclined to vote for a competing measure being promoted by gun rights advocates, Initiative 591, which would prevent Washington state from adopting background-check laws stricter than the national standard.

Thirty-two percent of respondents said they were inclined to vote for both initiatives in November.

The poll of 506 registered voters was taken July 8-11. The margin of error was plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

Pollster Stuart Elway says support for the background checks measure, I-594, remained strong compared to a previous poll in April that showed 72 percent inclined to vote for it.

Meanwhile, he said voters were cooling to I-591. In April, 55 percent of voters said they were inclined to vote for the initiative that would bar Washington from going beyond the national gun background check standard, which requires checks for sales by licensed dealers but not for purchases from private sellers.

Both ballot measures began as initiatives to the Legislature. The House and Senate held public hearings on both earlier this year but did not advance them out of committees, meaning voters will decide the issues in the fall.

According the Public Disclosure Commission, the people in favor of new background check requirements for gun purchases — I-594 — have raised nearly $2.7 million. The groups opposing that initiative and supporting one on protecting gun rights — I-591 — have raised about $800,000.

At first I was thrown by what seemed to be strong majorities for competing bills, but then I saw the first majority was for background checks, the second majority was for ensuring background checks didn't snowball into more limitations. A rather sensible position, really.

The trick to the second bill is the "stricter than the national standard" language. If it passes, it insures that all the loopholes developed by the gun lobby in "the other Washington" will remain in place: specifically that there shall be no background checks on "private sales". By extension that includes sales at gun shows, which now represent something like 1/3 of all gun sales, effectively making registration and background checks almost meaningless.

The challenge for our Right Wing folks is to decide whether they're more concerned about the erosion of "States Rights", in which case the second bill is as bad as it gets, or the "Right to Bear Arms", where the first bill would take us into uncharted territory.

The next 3 or 4 months should prove to be interesting!

The gun background check initiative campaign is just getting started, and already the debate is headed for the cesspool.

Seattle Post Intelligencer wrote:In a startling charge delivered at an anti-Initiative 594 meeting last week at Silverdale, the National Rifle Association’s chief state lobbyist likened Washington’s campaign to close the gun show loophole to Nazi Germany.

The charge has evoked outrage from the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, where a gunman shot to death one employee and wounded others in a 2006 attack.

Brian Judy of the NRA took out after Seattle entrepreneur Nick Hanauer, whose family has pledged a half-million-dollars to I-594. The November ballot initiative, originally launched by Seattle’s faith community — including the senior rabbi at Seattle’s Temple De Hirsch Sinai — would close the “gun show loophole” by requiring criminal background checks for those purchasing firearms at gun shows or on line.

Hanauer wrote in a recent article, advocating a higher minimum wage, that his family were pillow makers in Germany who found refuge in America from Hitler’s regime.

“Now, he (Hanauer) has put half-a-million dollars toward this policy, the same policy that led his family getting run out of Germany by the Nazis,” Judy told the July 23 meeting.  “It’s like (laughter) . . . How stupid can they — you know?  Now, he’s funding, he’s put half-a-million dollars toward this policy, the same policy that led to his people getting run out of Germany by the Nazis.

“You know, it’s staggering to me, it’s just, you can’t make this stuff up.  That these people, it’s like any Jewish people that I meet who are anti-gun, I think:  Are you serious?  Do you not remember what happened?

“And why did that happen? Because they registered guns and then they took them.  And now you’re supporting gun control — you come to this country and you support gun control.  Why did you have to flee to this country in the first place?  Hello. Is anybody home there?”

The Judy speech has evoked a strong reaction since it first appeared this morning on the liberal Horse’sAss.org website.

“In 2014, it is really shameful to hear a key political operative stereotype whole groups of people when they think the doors are closed and the cameras are off,” State Sen. David Frockt and Rep. Reuven Carlyle, D-Seattle, said in a statement.

The Jewish Federation suggested Monday that Judy resign his position with the NRA.  Judy was the NRA’s spokesman when the state legislature took up gun legislation last year, and again when the Seattle Times editorial board took up I-594.

Well if all NRA spokespeople are like this then there is hope they will all be exposed as idiots one by one till there aren't any left.

Unfortunately, that brand of idiocy seems to get you a million dollar contract with FOX News.

Please don't shop at Walmart.

http://mic.com/articles/79039/the-untold-story-of-alice-walton-s-dwi-incident

Obama: "We tortured some folks" after 9/11 - CBS News

Addressing the impending release of a Senate report that criticizes CIA treatment of detainees, Obama said he believed the mistreatment happened because of the pressure national security officials felt to forestall another attack. He said Americans should not be too "sanctimonious" about passing judgment through the lens of a seemingly safer present day.

So I take it the implication is that part of the reason we're safer now is because we tortured people?  But wait!

Obama on Friday did not address two other central arguments of the soon-to-be-released Senate report - that the brutal interrogations didn't produce life-saving intelligence, and that the CIA lied to other elements of the U.S. government about exactly what it was doing.

Oh yeah, that. Must have slipped his mind.

Can't remember if he ever did close Gitmo.

Edit: nevermind

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/177/close-the-guantanamo-bay-detention-center/

While I think that Obama is comparable to Bush in most human rights/War on Terror issues, the GITMO thing is sort of out of his hands with Congress trying to block its closure at every turn.

The black sites were always worth than Guantanamo, though, if only because their secrecy meant there was less pressure/attention focused on them.  Those did not go away under Obama, BTW, despite an executive order causing some in the media to report otherwise.  It's primarily just been a shifting of roles (including handing over more responsibility to Third World partners) rather than a major change in policy.

http://harpers.org/blog/2010/05/obamas-black-sites/
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/06/nation/la-na-somali-detainee-20110706
http://www.thenation.com/article/161936/cias-secret-sites-somalia
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/27/somalia-s-prisons-the-war-on-terror-s-latest-front.html

Same old story- you dont get rid of the crime you just change its name so it look like you got rid of it.

Besides everyone knows only the bad guys commit atrocities, good guys perform necessary actions.

No need for comment.    Should not be happening.

http://www.vox.com/2014/8/18/6043247/ferguson-police-media-harassment

One more reason to have a federal investigation and the Attorney General on site. I imagine the ACLU is working 24/7 on this one.

Sounds like everyone down there needs a time-out, especially the police.

David H wrote:One more reason to have a federal investigation and the Attorney General on site.  I imagine the ACLU is working 24/7 on this one.

Amnesty International has an observer team on site, too. The leader of that team's previous assignment was Palestine.

With the limited amount of what seems geninuely attested evidence being broadcast, and me taking the risk of wildly speculating about what actually happened, my guess is that that Police Officer will be claiming self-defence. I put forth this 'wild speculation' as an alternative possibility only, as in all fairness, everyone seems to assume the guy was executed by a Racist, one found guilty by Media. None of us are privy to what really happened at this stage and I would hope due process is observed in the Courts and hopefully the truth will be revealed. I'll wait until I see some more actual evidence before daring to claim any surety about things.  I have only been able to pick out a little bit of evidence - and only circumstantial evidence at that - so far among the reports coming out about events that day.

Hi David. I seem to have accidentally wiped your last post!   I swear it wasn't a Police Conspiracy!

The good thing is: I have responded and so if people read between the lines of my rsponse they'll surely be able to work out what your originally wrote.   {{{  }}}

I have never met a Cop, whether a Racist or a Non-Racist, who has gone to work planning to brazenly shoot someone dead for no reason. It is not impossible but if so would seem to be an aberration and not on the face of it evidence of a Police Conspiracy. Conspiracies might occur after a fairly spontaneous event like this, but in regard to this event, it's hard to see the planning, the conspiring, before it happened.

As to not obtaining statements immediately, I would not automatically suggest a cover up. I did not see this in any of the reports I've seen. Who suplied the information? Gathering evidence is usually the second thing you do once the incident dust settles.  

As a side issue, I have seen Media reports that 'witnesses' say the male shot had his hands up saying something like, "Don't shoot. Don't shoot." But none of these witnesses seem to have had a microphone stuck in their faces - which is a basic technique used by the Media. What a scoop that would be! So we don't know if these witnesses are even 'eye witnesses' or maybe just links on the inevitable gossip chain. Gossip often in the past has become the truth and ultimately a lynchmob.

I only hope due process and the eventual establishment of the truth will hopefully win out. Evidence is light on the ground as far as what we avid watchers know. Only the Politics and Media driven hysteria are in full view. What actually happened seems beyond our knowledge at this stage - though that obviously doesn't stop of us from making  quick assumtions. I hate the Media and I hate hysteria - the Yin and Yang of Modern Life - they are comfy bedfellows, yes, but give me a chill up my spine.

there are actually 6 witnesses who saw the guy charge at the police officer, versus 4 who said he immediately surrendered.  That's a lot of witnesses - this wasn't done in a dark alley.  I'm inclined to believe the officer in this situation.  You don't shoot somebody with that many witnesses unless you feel you have to.

I think what's feeding the outrage isn't the details of this particular incident so much as the long standing animosity in this community between police and the black community, as exemplified by how the police are reacting to the media.  It just needed a death to set off the explosion.  Whether or not it was self defence will be passed over in the face of death and long simmering animosity.