OH MY GOD!
SOMEBODY HAS TO DO SOMETHING NOW!
BAN GUNS!
BAN TALL THINGS!
BAN GATHERINGS OF THREE OR MORE PEOPLE!
BAN BAD PEOPLE!
SAVE US, O WISE AND POWERFUL LEVIATHAN!
SAVE US FROM THE OTHERS!
TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.
Thursday, October 05, 2017
And now, in order to give equal time to the totalitarian gun-grabbers and the hysterical ninnies...
ATTENTION ALL HYTERICAL NINNIES. HERE ARE THE FACTS ABOUT GUNS IN AMERICA.
Of course, these facts are not for you gun-grabbing fascists. You know our guns are for shooting you when you come to take every last bit of our freedom.
From Washington's other other newspaper:
I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise...
Leah Libresco is a statistician and former newswriter at FiveThirtyEight, a data journalism site. She is the author of “Arriving at Amen.”
People who care enough to learn the truth about these things have been reading similar research since the 1980s. The bottom line is this: Guns are tools. Like hammers. An evil son of a bitch with a hammer can murder too. Let's concentrate on helping our neighbors refrain from becoming evil sons of bitches.
(All emphasis below is mine. - F.G.)
Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.
Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.
I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn’t prove much about what America’s policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths.
When I looked at the other oft-praised policies, I found out that no gun owner walks into the store to buy an “assault weapon.” It’s an invented classification that includes any semi-automatic that has two or more features, such as a bayonet mount, a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher mount, a folding stock or a pistol grip. But guns are modular, and any hobbyist can easily add these features at home, just as if they were snapping together Legos.
As for silencers — they deserve that name only in movies, where they reduce gunfire to a soft puick puick. In real life, silencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don’t make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer. Magazine limits were a little more promising, but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningless.
As my co-workers and I kept looking at the data, it seemed less and less clear that one broad gun-control restriction could make a big difference. Two-thirds of gun deaths in the United States every year are suicides. Almost no proposed restriction would make it meaningfully harder for people with guns on hand to use them. I couldn't even answer my most desperate question: If I had a friend who had guns in his home and a history of suicide attempts, was there anything I could do that would help?
However, the next-largest set of gun deaths — 1 in 5 — were young men aged 15 to 34, killed in homicides. These men were most likely to die at the hands of other young men, often related to gang loyalties or other street violence. And the last notable group of similar deaths was the 1,700 women murdered per year, usually as the result of domestic violence. Far more people were killed in these ways than in mass-shooting incidents, but few of the popularly floated policies were tailored to serve them.
By the time we published our project, I didn’t believe in many of the interventions I’d heard politicians tout. I was still anti-gun, at least from the point of view of most gun owners, and I don’t want a gun in my home, as I think the risk outweighs the benefits. But I can’t endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them. Policies that often seem as if they were drafted by people who have encountered guns only as a figure in a briefing book or an image on the news.
Instead, I found the most hope in more narrowly tailored interventions. Potential suicide victims, women menaced by their abusive partners and kids swept up in street vendettas are all in danger from guns, but they each require different protections.
Older men, who make up the largest share of gun suicides, need better access to people who could care for them and get them help. Women endangered by specific men need to be prioritized by police, who can enforce restraining orders prohibiting these men from buying and owning guns. Younger men at risk of violence need to be identified before they take a life or lose theirs and to be connected to mentors who can help them de-escalate conflicts.
Even the most data-driven practices, such as New Orleans’ plan to identify gang members for intervention based on previous arrests and weapons seizures, wind up more personal than most policies floated. The young men at risk can be identified by an algorithm, but they have to be disarmed one by one, personally — not en masse as though they were all interchangeable. A reduction in gun deaths is most likely to come from finding smaller chances for victories and expanding those solutions as much as possible. We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves.
TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.
Stop whining about how the government isn't helping Puerto Rico! Write a fucking check!
Sorry, kiddies, but if you had been paying attention for the last 60-odd years, you would know the poor people of Puerto Rico have had way too much government. And yes, it is mostly our fault.
Be a real mensch. Don't eat out for a week and send the money to help the people of the Carribbean:
Give to Hurricane Relief | Catholic Relief Services
Or Here:
To make a donation to help families in Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands, please give to our sister agency Catholic Charities USA.
From Pittsburgh's other newspaper:
The Pirates will deliver 460,000 pounds of hurricane-relief supplies to Puerto Rico ...
Before a game in late September, Joey Cora heard the Pirates owner wanted to see him. The third-base coach met with Bob Nutting the day Hurricane Maria slammed into Cora’s native Puerto Rico.
“What can we do to help?” Nutting asked.
Those conversations had already started. In the dugout during a game, Francisco Cervelli talked to interpreter Mike Gonzalez, another Puerto Rican, and Sean Rodriguez. “Originally it was between us, something small, something simple, just get it to one of the smaller cities that needs the most help,” Rodriguez said.
“I said, ‘Mike, why don’t we do something bigger?’ ” Cervelli said. “‘Why don’t we find a private jet and send some stuff there?’ ”
The thought processes collided when Cora spoke with Cervelli. He returned to Nutting with his answer: “Get a plane. We’ll fill it up. We’ll make it work.”
Now they need two planes.
Mr. Nutting is a horrible team owner and the Bucs will never really contend until well after he sells them...but this is a real nice thing he did.
“There’s no why,” Cora said Wednesday morning at the PNC Park loading dock, standing in front of a U-shaped wall of materials that extended down the hallway as far as the Pirates’ clubhouse on the other side of the stadium. “You don’t need a why to do anything. All you have to do is do the right thing. It’s that simple.”
Nutting, Cora, Gonzalez, Cervelli, team president Frank Coonelly and Rodriguez will all travel to the territory. They will deliver supplies to Caguas, Cora’s hometown, and Cayey, where Gonzalez is from, during the next three days.
“In each city, each mayor in that city is going to meet us with a team of, their team of people, that is going to receive us, help us unload,” Gonzalez said. “If not enough people come — because of gas, it’s hard to drive over there — then we’ll take it from house to house, as much as we can.”
The Pirates sent a news release at 10:02 a.m. Sunday announcing the collection of goods Monday and Tuesday. Four days later they have nearly half a million pounds of water, generators, food, childcare items and pet food, including 395,0000 pounds from Pittsburgh-area residents who clogged North Shore traffic with goods in everything from U-Hauls to wagons.
“As we all try to comprehend what has gone on in Las Vegas over the last day, it shakes your faith in your fellow human beings,” Coonelly said in reference to Sunday’s mass shooting at a country music festival that killed 59 people. “What we saw here … reinforces, for me, that there is so much more goodness in this world than there is evil.”
Coonelly needed a caravan of trucks on both ends and an aircraft to make this happen. He called Patrick Fitzgerald, the senior vice president of integrated marketing and communications at FedEx, and Fitzgerald gave him the biggest plane available.
“FedEx Ground is proud to call Pittsburgh home, and this is why we are so proud,” Fitzgerald said.
What a way to start a Wednesday! Working with the @Pirates to collect 150K+ lbs of relief for those in need in #PuertoRico #FedExCares 📦 ⚾️ pic.twitter.com/DVcGdFthfc— FedEx (@FedEx) October 4, 2017
For the trucks in Pittsburgh, Coonelly called Pitt Ohio Express president Chuck Hammel. “I’ve got your back, whatever you need,” Hammel told him. The Puerto Rican transportation stretched beyond Coonelly’s network, but Cora had a guy: Raul Rodriguez, the president of Los Criollos de Caguas of the Puerto Rican winter league, who also has a trucking distribution company.
“He’s the one that is getting all the trucks, all the warehouses, getting everything straightened up so we can deliver,” Cora said.
They have a lot to deliver, thanks to those who donated. Rodriguez, Cervelli, Gonzalez and Pirates employees staffed the Mazeroski Way cul-de-sac Monday and Tuesday. General manager Neal Huntington helped, roll of packing tape in hand. At one point Pirates employees turned around to find Andrew McCutchen lugging dog food out of the back of a van. When it was time to celebrate, Cervelli cooked pizza in a portable oven.
And now we celebrate, @fran_cervelli style! pic.twitter.com/y7JmUEzh0w— Pirates (@Pirates) October 3, 2017
“This year we played terrible, and people came just to see us, to donate something, to give us a hug,” Cervelli said. “This is the best city in the world, I’m telling you. In one day we called everyone and they showed up.”
TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.
Jonah Goldberg gets it.
Politics is Power. Power is Evil. We must limit the power others have over us to the bare minimum. Slavery and death are our only alternatives.
Not even Trump can control the GOP base - LA Times
The conservative movement is caught in a Catch-22 of its own making. In the war against “the establishment” we have made being an outsider the most important qualification for a politician. The problem? Once elected, outsiders by definition become insiders. This isn’t just a semantic point. The Constitution requires politicians to work through the system if they’re going to get anything done.
Look at all the senators who rode the tea party wave into power: Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ron Johnson, Pat Toomey, Mike Lee. To one extent or another, they are now swamp-things, not swamp-drainers.
For example, Rubio was hailed as “The First Senator from the Tea Party” by the New York Times. But once he became a senator he became … a senator. And there’s just something about being a senator that makes the lock-and-load crowd want to flip the safeties on their muskets.
Obviously, policy choices matter. Rubio embraced immigration reform and it killed him with the talk-radio crowd. But there’s a larger dynamic at work. Merely talking like a half-way responsible politician — “we don’t have the votes,” “we have to pay for it” — isn’t what the angriest populists want to hear.
MAGA populism is less of an agenda, and more of a mood.
Cruz’s case is also instructive. Over the last decade, no politician more deftly hitched his political wagon to populist passions. He wore the animosity of his colleagues, including the GOP leadership, like a badge of honor. He was the leader of the insurrectionists. He had only one problem: He talked like a creature of the establishment — largely because the Princeton and Harvard trained former Supreme Court clerk and career politician was one. He knew the lyrics to every populist fight song, but he couldn’t carry the tune.
Until recently there was an “outsider” glass ceiling. The most strident populists — Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann — could not get through the presidential primaries, because the math wasn’t on their side. At least half of the GOP doesn’t want fire-breathers, so the winning candidate had to get a large slice of the traditional Republican vote and combine it with other constituencies. That’s how Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, the Bushes, John McCain and Mitt Romney did it.
But Donald Trump not only jumped into the fray at the height of populist fervor, the field was also divided 17 ways. No one spoke less like a politician. No one who understood how governing works would have promised the things Trump promised — health coverage for all, for less money, eliminate the debt, bring all those jobs back, etc. — because they’d either know or care that such things are literally impossible. (Emphasis mine. - F.G.)
President Trump has learned this simple fact the hard way. Yet for the first eight months of his presidency his core supporters have stuck with him. The establishment remains the villain and Trump the hero for his willingness to say or tweet things that make all the right people angry. For his most ardent supporters, the fault for his legislative failures lies entirely with the swamp, the establishment or the “Deep State.”
But Judge Roy Moore’s victory last week in a run-off against Alabama Sen. Luther Strange may signal that the base is not Trump’s army to command. Trump endorsed Strange and — contrary to the president’s tweets otherwise — that endorsement didn’t help at all. The most important factor was Moore’s demonization of the establishment, particularly Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The voters valued sticking their thumbs in the establishment’s eye more than giving Trump a win.
What’s both funny and sad is that there is remarkably little intellectual or ideological substance to the current populist fever. The “Make American Great Again” crowd’s initial preferred candidate was Rep. Mo Brooks — endorsed by radio hosts Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and others. He got crushed. Meanwhile, Moore opposed Obamacare repeal and, until recently, couldn’t say what DACA was. In other words, MAGA populism is less of an agenda, and more of a mood.
A lot of people are simply mad as hell and don’t want to take it anymore. Republican politicians can’t ignore the anger. Ideally they’d channel it toward productive ends, as they did in the past. But further stoking the anger for political gain is not just ill-advised, it’s pointless, because eventually politicians have to govern.
TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.
With friends like Tim Murphy, babies don't need enemies.
Everybody's a sinner, Timmy, but a lying, cheating, hypocrite? That's a job for a politician. Get right with God and your wife while you can you fool.
From TribLive.com:
Scandal-plagued Congressman Tim Murphy won't seek another term ...
U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy announced Wednesday that he will not seek a ninth term in Washington as a marital scandal envelops him, including allegations that the married, pro-life Republican asked his mistress to get an abortion.
“After discussions with my family and staff, I have come to the decision that I will not seek re-election to Congress at the end of my current term,” Murphy, 65, of Upper St. Clair, said in a statement.
“I plan to spend my remaining months in office continuing my work as the national leader on mental health care reform, as well as issues affecting working families in Southwestern Pennsylvania,” Murphy added.
Murphy said in the brief statement that he planned to take personal time in the coming weeks “to seek help as my family and I continue to work through our personal difficulties and seek healing.”
Murphy admitted last month to having an extramarital affair with a friend. The affair became an issue in the ongoing divorce case of Murphy's mistress, Shannon Edwards, 33, and Jesse Sally, 36, both of Pittsburgh.
In a court order last month, Murphy was directed to produce a record of communications he shared with Edwards, including emails and text messages.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Tuesday that text messages showed Murphy asked Edwards to get an abortion when he thought she was pregnant; she turned out not to be. Murphy also claimed that he never personally wrote the anti-abortion messages he delivered at annual March for Life rallies in Washington. Rather, he said staffers did and he “winced” upon reading them.
“We're discouraged and shocked. We expected better of him,” said Mary Lou Gartner, secretary of LifePAC, a political action committee in Southwestern Pennsylvania that endorses candidates with pro-life voting records and beliefs.
Gartner said LifePAC endorsed Murphy in the past, and the congressman has had a “100 percent pro-life voting record” during his time in Washington.
Murphy voted Tuesday for a House bill that he cosponsored to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
“I always considered him to be honorable,” Gartner said. “If the comments he made are true, it discredits him.”
Murphy is such an entrenched incumbent in his heavily Republican congressional district that Democrats didn't even mount a campaign against him in the past two elections. None of his six contested races was close — he won by 16 percentage points in the narrowest victory.
His district includes parts of Allegheny, Westmoreland, Washington and Greene counties.
“Something like this is a political earthquake,” Democratic strategist Mike Mikus, who lives in Murphy's district, said of the scandal.
“Voters tend to forgive politicians for certain indiscretions, but the biggest issue here is the hypocrisy on the abortion issue,” Mikus said. “He's always worked hard, had a voting record that reflected his district in some ways and was one of those elected officials who seemed to be everywhere. All of that is broken now.”
The divorce case involving Murphy continued Wednesday in Allegheny County Court.
Sally's attorney, Dorothy Wolbert, said the congressman still had not appeared for a deposition despite repeated attempts to schedule one. He was supposed to have been deposed by Sept. 29.
Edwards' attorney, Timothy Gricks, said he is appealing parts of the case to a higher court, saying Murphy should not have to be deposed since he has already admitted to having a sexual relationship with Edwards.
Gricks said court records in the case should not be made public, saying the records were being sought only for “scandalous” purposes.
“I believe that the depositions are not in the interest of justice in this case,” Gricks said.
Wolbert said the deposition was still needed, citing differing accounts from Edwards of what exactly happened between her and Murphy.
Judge Kathryn Hens-Greco said she did not believe Gricks had grounds for an appeal.
Attorneys for Edwards and for Murphy scheduled a date for the deposition but did not make the date public.
It is evil and ignorant enough to be a Gloria Steinem quote...
...but it isn't. However, it is weirdly appropriate. Murder is murder, kiddies, whether you use a gun or a scalpel or a brick.
Actually, the ancient commie cow "borrowed" it from some asshole's Facefuck page a couple of years ago and now it is hers. You have probably seen it in the digital cesspool acting as the fascist alternative to thought:
"I want any young men who buy a gun to be treated like young women who seek an abortion. Think about it: a mandatory 48-hours waiting period, written permission from a parent or a judge, a note from a doctor proving that he understands what he is about to do, time spent watching a video on individual and mass murders, traveling hundreds of miles at his own expense to the nearest gun shop, and walking through protestors holding photos of loved ones killed by guns, protestor who call him a murderer. After all, it makes more sense to do this for young men seeking guns than for young women seeking an abortion. No young woman needing reproductive freedom has ever murdered a roomful of strangers."
It is baby-eating agitprop no matter what fascist wrote it. Let me explain it to you gun-grabbers and baby-eaters. When millions of real men buy guns, they don't use them to murder innocent people. Only assholes like that asshole in Vegas do that. (And goat rapists, too.) EVERY TIME a woman has an abortion, an innocent baby is chopped to pieces and thrown in the trash. I know that is way too complicated for brains clogged with the effluvia of fascism to comprehend but I had to try.
One more thing, kiddies. In many states, it is possible for an underage girl to get an abortion without telling her parents, let alone getting their permission. In many of those states, it is illegal to get a tattoo until you are eighteen. If you think that's progress, you're a dumbass.
Please, people, think for yourselves. Try this little thought experiment:
Pretend you are in your mommy's tummy (no Freudianism allowed here) and the stork is about to drop you off. Imagine some paid ghoul who calls himself a doctor reaches in and chops you to pieces. You wouldn't like that, now would you?
Of course you wouldn't, because you were a baby once and babies aren't vegetables. Babies are people just like country music fans...and Gloria Steinem is too...all too human.
Gloria Steinem Did Not Say Quote About Abortion, Gun Control - The Cut
TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.
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- TheChurchMilitant
- First of all, the word is SEX, not GENDER. If you are ever tempted to use the word GENDER, don't. The word is SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! For example: "My sex is male." is correct. "My gender is male." means nothing. Look it up. What kind of sick neo-Puritan nonsense is this? Idiot left-fascists, get your blood-soaked paws off the English language. Hence I am choosing "male" under protest.