Earlier this month, I joined dozens of my colleagues in the creative community to take a stand against the gun violence that has insidiously become routine in the United States.
We are actors and artists, but we are American citizens first. We have a role to play and a responsibility to do more to prevent these tragedies. We are anxious to do our part to galvanize more Americans and find ways to help in the effort for sensible reforms. Our new Creative Council is part of Everytown and you can see a list of members and read about our organizing principles right here. New additions to the potential watering of the Tree of Liberty
We're acting now because, for too long, the gun debate in this country has focused on choosing a side: pro-gun or anti-gun. That is simply a false choice. We respect the Second Amendment but keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of convicted criminals, terrorists, domestic abusers, stalkers and dangerous people isn't anti-gun; it's pro-common sense. If you had bothered to read what you wrote, you may have seen the contradiction: Keeping weapons out of the hands of unfavored classes. That is not common sense, but a fascist program.
The ways that we reduced auto fatalities can serve as a model for how we can reduce gun violence.
Many of us remember driving around without seatbelts or when driving drunk wasn't taboo. Mothers Against Drunk Driving and other groups teamed up with legislators and, together, they made it unacceptable and illegal to drive drunk or without buckling up. And they did it by violating individual rights to such a degree that rights are meaningless in local courts.
As a result, countless lives have been saved. Sez you.
While we have made dramatic progress in states and cities across the country, we still haven't done for gun safety what we've done for auto safety. The problem comes down to a powerful but calcified gun lobby that is out of step with its own constituents of gun owners and with the American people. No question about that. By Gun Lobby, Moore means the National Rifle Association which has been involved in more violations of 2nd Amendment rights than any other organization in the US. The NRA, despite its protestations is severely out of step with the Constitution.
We know that more than 90 percent of Americans support common-sense reforms that are proven to save lives. What not enough people know and what the gun lobby doesn't want more of us to know is that a large majority of gun owners support these reforms too. The ratio could be every living soul on the planet, except me, but this is about my rights, not your mob.
The Creative Council has already started our work and we need you to join us and help grow this movement. Please go to wecanendgunviolence.org, sign up, learn more about what you can do and take action.
Email your Congressperson. Write a letter to the editor. Make a donation to Everytown. Talk to your friends and colleagues. There's no action too small with a task this monumental. Everyone and everything count (sic).
We know that change won't happen overnight, but it will happen when everyone comes together, no matter who we are. If that happens, we can pave a path toward a safer future. If you can dodge all the pissed off patriots.
#1
We also had drivers ed in schools. Some one thought that piece of technology, which kills more people annually than guns, needed a program to train people on the proper and safe handling of its capacities. Maybe, you might start some, you know, gun training at the school level as well.
MothersAgainst Drunk Driving and other groups teamed up with legislators and, together, they made it unacceptable and illegal to drive drunk or without buckling up.
Did the same in New Mexico. Nice laws. Didn't stop the DUI and deaths on the highways than all the unconstitutional gun laws in Chicago have stop the killing.
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/31/2015 9:42 Comments ||
Top||
#3
The Mothers Against Drunk Driving analogy is the latest non sequitur argument from the "common sense" anti-gun crowd. MADD has never advocated for restrictions on the procurement of vehicles. Their success has come from the insistence of prosecution for illegal operation of said vehicles. Now if the Creative Community starts crowing about the frequent plea bargains that result in weapons charges being dropped I'll offer my support. Otherwise - step off.
Posted by: Sven the pelter ||
10/31/2015 13:36 Comments ||
Top||
#7
We [actors and artists] have a role to play. Yeah, it is to entertain and little else. You are not particularly special. If you don't like guns, don't own one. If you have a beef about guns, write an editorial but be warned, do your homework and don't take up space with a useless article that is just B.S. Don't parrot Democratic/leftist talking points. Be objective. Don't make up your statistics or facts.
#8
They can start by giving up their armed bodyguards and home security personnel, as well as their privileged claims on first responders' time and energy.
Oh, and post "Gun Free Zone, C'mon In, Boys!" signs on the gates of their mansions.
Author Bill Buppert makes a cogent observation that counter insurgencies tend to fail because they substitute police states for real solutions to insurgencies.
From TFA:
Using Occam’s Razor, let’s try to distill the object of COIN: to neutralize and/or destroy any armed resistance to an existing government, usually a state that has been installed by a Western or Asian hegemonic power. External involvement of other countries meddling in the COIN efforts of a domestic government usually reveals the “client-state” relationship at its most basic level. One is hard-pressed to find any historical involvement in these efforts since 1893 (Hawaii) on the part of the US wherein the aggrieved state wasn’t created and vetted by the West by design.
Porch does a splendid job destroying one of the primary memes that animates much of the COIN glad-handing and self-congratulatory Goebbels-gargling that passes for rational discourse in the West; the observation that the Brits wrote the book on effective COIN in modern applications usually citing the “success” in Malaya or lesser efforts like Aden or Oman. It’s all rubbish. The British pioneered concentration camps during the Boer Wars (the Germans would do the same in Namibia in 1904-07) which may have provided them the idea to float a police state over a country ravaged by insurgency and call it good. The very notion of a concentration camp demands a fairly sophisticated bureaucratic apparatus to build them, maintain them and most tragically of all, fill them. All of which require police state methodologies that would put a smile on any Western bureaucrat’s face.
#1
If only we had the 'right people' running things.
Why did the director of the CIA get a medal at his retirement rather than fired the next day after 9/11 like Kimmel and Short after 7/12? Pour Encourager Les Autres!
#2
Quite excellent Badanov! Been a while since I've seen this particular factoid linked to modern times and events:
"The British pioneered concentration camps during the Boer Wars (the Germans would do the same in Namibia in 1904-07) which may have provided them the idea to float a police state over a country ravaged by insurgency and call it good. The very notion of a concentration camp demands a fairly sophisticated bureaucratic apparatus to build them, maintain them and most tragically of all, fill them. All of which require police state methodologies that would put a smile on any Western bureaucrat’s face."
Russian President Vladimir Putin believes global warming is a "fraud" - a plot to keep Russia from using its vast oil and natural gas reserves.
Putin believes "there is no global warming, that this is a fraud to restrain the industrial development of several countries, including Russia," Stanislav Belkovsky, a political analyst and Putin critic, told The New York Times.
"That is why this subject is not topical for the majority of the Russian mass media and society in general," Belkovsky said.
Putin's comments likely came after his staff "did very, very extensive work trying to understand all sides of the climate debate," according to Andrey Illarionov, Putin's former senior economic adviser, who's now a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. I did my own extensive analysis back in 2000.
"We found that, while climate change does exist, it is cyclical, and the anthropogenic role is very limited," Illarionov said. "It became clear that the climate is a complicated system and that, so far, the evidence presented for the need to 'fight' global warming was rather unfounded." I reached the same conclusion. Evil has a strain towards rationality. I guess that should worry me. :-)
Posted by: Sven the pelter ||
10/31/2015 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
When the man is right, the man is right. Even if he is evil.
Of course, more of the intelligent among us spotted the AGW scam for what it was. The only reason it has lasted this long is because of all the sweet grant money flowing to what would otherwise be associate professors sweating a full time teaching load.
#5
Actually Nguard, I don't think Putin's basically evil; He's just on the other side. So far his actions are consistent with trying to do what he can for his side with the limited resources he has available. This does not mean evil things won't happen, though.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
10/31/2015 9:59 Comments ||
Top||
#6
We thinks he's evil, tex, because he's rather better than our leaders in their common profession.
#8
I'm reading Mark Steyn's "A Disgrace to the Profession" which is all about the execrable Michael Mann and his happy stick. Both Steyn and I would agree with Putin on this one.
#10
That story must twist the tighty whities of the Donk leftists in a big knot as their snake-oil money-making scheme gets unwanted exposure as a fraud.
#11
Russia has a lot to gain if global warming is real. Think of all that frozen tundra that would become arable land it it would just warm up a bit. Also, for centuries Russian czars have dreamed of warm water ports for their navies. If the Arctic Ocean wasn't frozen their dreams would come true!
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
10/31/2015 14:49 Comments ||
Top||
#12
I believe that most Russians, like most folks living in northern Minnesota, would welcome global warming.
Posted by: Sven the pelter ||
10/31/2015 14:50 Comments ||
Top||
#13
That story must twist the tighty whities of the Donk leftists in a big knot as their snake-oil money-making scheme gets unwanted exposure as a fraud.
Why would it? They only seem to care about kneecapping _US_ manufacturing, while they gab away on their Apple-branded Chinese cellphone.
#17
Read the articles I posted. Vlad and Russia have made lots of money off this scam in the past, now he's shocked that gambling is going on at Rick's.
In 1935, the year that FDR signed the Social Security Act into law, the birth rate was 18.7 per 1,000. In 1940, when the first monthly check was issued, it had gone up to 19.4. By 1954, when Disability had been added, the birth rate at the heart of the Baby Boom stood at 25.3.
In a nation of 163 million people, 4 million babies were being born each year.
By 1965, when Medicare was plugged in, the birth rate had fallen back to 19.4. For the first time in ten years fewer than 4 million babies had been born in a country of 195 million. Medicare had been added in the same year that saw the single biggest drop in birth rates since the Great Depression.
There could not have been a worse time for Medicare than the end of the Baby Boom.
Today in a nation of 319 million, 4.1 million babies are being born each year for a birth rate of 13.0 per 1,000. 40.7% of those births are to unmarried mothers meaning that it will be a long time, if ever, before those single families put back into the system, and most will never put back in as much as they are taking out. Those children will cost more to educate, be more likely to be involved in crime and less likely to succeed economically. But even if they weren't, the system would still be unsustainable. Because it is, basically, a pyramid scheme
...The crisis is born of demographics. It can't be fixed by targeting the elderly because they haven't been the problem in some time. It's the same crisis being faced by countries as diverse as Russia and Japan. The difference is that Russia is autocratic and has little concern for its people while Japan shuns immigration and has a political system dominated by the elderly.
Bernie Sanders admires Europe. But Europe's welfare state is imploding because of low birth rates. And so it adopted the American solution of expecting immigrants to make up the difference. But the immigrants have high rates of unemployment and low rates of productivity. Instead of funding the welfare state, they're bankrupting it even faster.
...In this post-work and post-poverty economy, those most likely to have children are also least likely to work or to be able to afford to have those children.
Birth rates for women on welfare are three times higher than for those who are not on welfare. Within a single year, the census survey found that unmarried women had twice as high a birth rate as married women. These demographics help perpetuate poverty and feed a welfare death spiral in which more money has to be spent on social services for a less productive tax base.
Children raised on welfare are far more likely to end up on welfare than the children of working families. Academia & NGOs are a form of welfare, nowadays
After a century of misery, the left still hasn't learned that there is no substitute for the middle class. It's not just running out of money, it's running out of people.
#1
After a century of misery, the left still hasn't learned that there is no substitute for the middle class. It's not just running out of money, it's running out of people.
It's about power. Autocracies don't need any stinking middle class. [Most of the world and its history shows you that]
In a land that the sand overlays – the ways to her gates are untrod –
A multitude ended their days whose gates were made splendid by God,
Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall,
And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all!
When the wine stirred in their heart their bosoms dilated.
They rose to suppose themselves kings over all things created –
To decree a new earth at a birth without labour or sorrow –
To declare: “We prepare it to-day and inherit to-morrow.”
They chose themselves prophets and priests of minute understanding,
Men swift to see done, and outrun, their extremest commanding –
Of the tribe which describe with a jibe the perversions of Justice –
Panders avowed to the crowd whatsoever its lust is.
Swiftly these pulled down the walls that their fathers had made them –
The impregnable ramparts of old, they razed and relaid them
As playgrounds of pleasure and leisure, with limitless entries,
And havens of rest for the wastrels where once walked the sentries;
And because there was need of more pay for the shouters and marchers,
They disbanded in face of their foemen their yeomen and archers.
They replied to their well-wishers’ fears – to their enemies laughter,
Saying: “Peace! We have fashioned a God Which shall save us hereafter.
We ascribe all dominion to man in his factions conferring,
And have given to numbers the Name of the Wisdom unerring.”
They said: “Who has hate in his soul? Who has envied his neighbour?
Let him arise and control both that man and his labour.”
They said: “Who is eaten by sloth? Whose unthrift has destroyed him?
He shall levy a tribute from all because none have employed him.”
They said: “Who hath toiled, who hath striven, and gathered possession?
Let him be spoiled. He hath given full proof of transgression.”
They said: “Who is irked by the Law? Though we may not remove it.
If he lend us his aid in this raid, we will set him above it!
So the robber did judgment again upon such as displeased him,
The slayer, too, boasted his slain, and the judges released him.
As for their kinsmen far off, on the skirts of the nation,
They harried all earth to make sure none escaped reprobation.
They awakened unrest for a jest in their newly-won borders,
And jeered at the blood of their brethren betrayed by their orders.
They instructed the ruled to rebel, their rulers to aid them;
And, since such as obeyed them not fell, their Viceroys obeyed them.
When the riotous set them at naught they said: “Praise the upheaval!
For the show and the world and the thought of Dominion is evil!”
They unwound and flung from them with rage, as a rag that defied them,
The imperial gains of the age which their forefathers piled them.
They ran panting in haste to lay waste and embitter for ever
The wellsprings of Wisdom and Strengths which are Faith and Endeavour.
They nosed out and digged up and dragged forth and exposed to derision
All doctrine of purpose and worth and restraint and prevision:
And it ceased, and God granted them all things for which they had striven,
And the heart of a beast in the place of a man’s heart was given. . . .
. . . . . . . .
When they were fullest of wine and most flagrant in error,
Out of the sea rose a sign – out of Heaven a terror.
Then they saw, then they heard, then they knew – for none troubled to hide it,
A host had prepared their destruction, but still they denied it.
They denied what they dared not abide if it came to the trail;
But the Sward that was forged while they lied did not heed their denial.
It drove home, and no time was allowed to the crowd that was driven.
The preposterous-minded were cowed – they thought time would be given.
There was no need of a steed nor a lance to pursue them;
It was decreed their own deed, and not a chance, should undo them.
The tares they had laughingly sown were ripe to the reaping.
The trust they had leagued to disown was removed from their keeping.
The eaters of other men’s bread, the exempted from hardship,
The excusers of impotence fled, abdicating their wardship,
For the hate they had taught through the State brought the State no defender,
And it passed from the roll of the Nations in headlong surrender!
A taste. Click on the headline to read the whole thing.
One of the most remarkable facts about the stabbings and protests that so dominate the headlines of the past few weeks is how few Paleostinians are actually participating in them: a few hundred, and at moments of dramatic mobilization -- such as the occasional "days of rage" called by Arab leaders -- perhaps a few thousand.
[IsraelTimes] The terrorism of the past month is not a new surge in Paleostinian opposition to Israel, but a howl against the pervasive Paleostinian sense that resistance has failed
Even four weeks into this latest surge in violence, in the fast succession of stabbings and protests and funerals and pronouncements, it can be hard to figure out exactly what this round of terror attacks is actually about.
There is no shortage of explanations, of course, but they usually say more about the explainer than the phenomenon they are explaining.
Continued on Page 49
#1
I'd say it's pretty obvious. The cheques aren't arriving as frequently as before. Arabs and Iran have less cash to splash and are spending it elsewhere, Syria, Iraq, Yemen. And the West is tired of the Paleos just p1ssing the money away.
And what is President Obama to do, as everything he has stood for in the Iran deal collapses so ignominiously? On the right, they say he will continue to capitulate. In their ignorance, and in their hatred of him, they fail to realize that he can simply surrender no farther. OK, they say, so the IAEA will provide Obama with the necessary confirmation by December 15 that the Iranians have done their part. But that is impossible as well. What is demanded of Iran is gargantuan in scale, and it would be far more difficult for the IAEA to fake confirmation when the Iranians themselves are declaring loudly that they are not going to do it.
With every passing day, Iran is more and more in violation of the JCPOA. But neither the Republicans nor the Democrats, nor the media, nor anyone else will acknowledge this, for the implications are too devastating. The agreement is no longer in effect. Its clock has stopped.
But the weeks will pass, and the media and politicians will be forced to admit that this is the case. And the last thing they will be willing to do is to force Iran to meet its obligations. Thus, it appears that President Obama's only option, shameful as it is, is to restart the negotiations with the Iranians and talk with them about their leaders' new conditions. As is well-known, this administration advocates diplomacy -- guaranteeing that there will be no breakthrough any time soon.
This is precisely what will serve President Obama best. All he needs to do is play for time and reach the end of his term with an agreement in hand -- albeit virtual -- and negotiations in progress -- albeit unending. He will pass this situation on to the next administration. The success will be all his, and the failure will be all theirs. The media will zealously guard Obama's legacy, and his successor, Republican or Democrat, will be too uninformed to protect him or herself from this historic maneuver. And it will serve them right.
[Rudaw] The Turkish military has recently admitted firing on Kurdish positions in Syria. The reason for this was given as a warning not to move west of the Euphrates River. The fear in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... is that the Syrian Kurds will be able to declare an autonomous zone, similar to that in Iraq, by connecting the Kobane Canton with the Afrin Canton and giving the Kurds a contiguous area bordering Turkey. The ruling AK Party is also facing a second election on Sunday 1 November that could either give them full control of the government or indicate that the Turkish people have decided a change is in order. The main threat to the AKP's position is the Kurdish HDP which showed unusual strength in the last election.
While the AKP initially attacked PKK positions in Iraq, a unilateral cease fire on the part of the PKK has helped offset some influence that military action may have in swinging voter sentiment. The Syrian Kurds on the other hand present a different target set while still allowing Turkey to declare war on terrorism claiming the PYD is part of the PKK. The Turks have also declared the region between Kobane and Afrin to be an area that will be designated a safe haven in Syria. Neither the Turks nor the US have actually moved to make the area a no-fly zone or safe haven.
Continued on Page 49
#1
"ISIS is the current top priority enemy of the West as well as the Middle East and Russia. Turkey will have to be told that its control must end at its border. Support for the Syrian Kurds must be given even if it means protecting them from Turkey."
Pie in the sky! This will not happen as long as the Obama-Erdogan entente remains.
An unreported story is the issue of German arms to the Kurds while the US plays hands-off.
[Wash Times] The New York Times' Maureen Dowd captured the moment last weekend when she referred to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as "the midwife to chaos" in Libya. Ms. Dowd apparently came to that conclusion after watching Mrs. Clinton bobbing and weaving and admitting and denying as she was confronted with the partial record of her failures and obfuscations as secretary of state, particularly with respect to Libya.
The public record is fairly well-known. In March 2011, President Obama declared war on Libya. He did this at the urging of Mrs. Clinton, who wanted to overthrow Libyan strongman Col. Moammar Gadhafi so she could boast of having brought "democracy" to the region.
She and Mr. Obama conspired to do this even though former President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair had publicly praised Gadhafi as an ally in the war against terrorist groups and even though the United States was giving the Gadhafi government more than $100 million a year in foreign aid.
Mr. Obama did his best to avoid constitutional norms. He deployed American intelligence agents on the ground, not troops, so he could plausibly deny he had put "boots" on the ground. He did not seek an American national consensus for war because Libya presented no threat whatsoever to the United States. He did not obtain a congressional declaration of war as the Constitution requires because he couldn't get one. And he did not seek United Nations permission, which is required to attack a fellow U.N. member.
He did obtain a U.N. embargo of the shipment of weapons into Libya, and he secured a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over portions of Libya. In order to enforce the no-fly zone, NATO sent jet fighters over the skies of Libya. The jets were guided and directed by American intelligence agents on the ground to bomb Libyan planes on the ground, which had been paid for by American taxpayers.
To pursue her goal of a "democratic" government there, Mrs. Clinton, along with Mr. Obama and a dozen or so members of Congress from both houses and both political parties, decided she should break the law by permitting U.S. arms dealers to violate the U.N. arms embargo and arm Libyan rebels whom she hoped would one day run the new government. So she exercised her authority as secretary of state to authorize the shipment of American-made arms to Qatar, a country beholden to the Muslim Brotherhood and friendly to the Libyan rebels, and a country the United States had no business arming -- unless the purpose of doing so was for the arms to be transferred to the rebels.
Once this plot was hatched, Mrs. Clinton and her fellow conspirators realized that some of these rebel groups were manned by al Qaeda operatives; and selling or providing arms to them is a felony -- hence the reason for months' worth of missing and destroyed Clinton emails. How could someone running for president possibly justify providing material assistance to terrorist organizations in the present international climate? Gives midwifery a bad name simply through association.
#5
By golly, her dam wasn't douce!
She sprang from the prepuce of Zeus,
But plopped from the bottom
Of plodding old Rodham's
Reptilian tortoise caboose.
An interfaith goddess set loose
On half-shell, just surfing the juice:
One shot of Il Duce;
Iced Democrat Juche;
Serve up in a stealthy Bull Goose.
#6
A heathenish crooked-dick-jockey
Whose laundry was looking too schlocky:
"Don't talk about firing --
I'm no ways retiring!
Remember, no tickee, no talkee."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Russian President Vladimir Putin believes global warming is a "fraud" - a plot to keep Russia from using its vast oil and natural gas reserves.
"Web Hubbel, birth, disaster" ....the visual. 
