Friday, December 14, 2012

Obama Priorities - the Rich but what about the prevalence of guns in society?

It was one of those nonissues during the campaign and Romney didn't have much to say on the matter either.  I'm talking of course about guns and not the well-to-do on which there were plenty of thoughts.  I'm kinda more concerned lately with the threat posed by guns in society and not so much on those individuals/families/entities making more than $250,000/yr. not paying their fair share.  There was lately a shootup in some mall in Portland, OR.  Before that there was of course the Batman/Movie Theater Massacre in Aurora CO.  There was most recently some weird guy who shot and killed three Brooklyn shopkeepers and he said the CIA put him up to it and then just the other day the brazen Midtown Hitman attack in broad daylight in NYC this in probably one of the most heavily surveilled cities in the world today.  Just today at about 9:30 in the morning a 20-yr. old gunman opened fire on a couple of first-grade classrooms in an elementary school in bucolic Newtown CT killing 26 people including 20 children.  The gunman is now deceased but he was armed with three firearms and wore a bulletproof vest.  Historically it ranks as the second deadliest massacre after VA Tech and Newtown is quite close to the Danbury Mall so there are alot of open questions about the gunman's motivations/psychology here and why he chose a helpless group of first-graders instead of the usual throng of Christmas shoppers. 

My position on guns and gun control is rather complex and I've enough to say on the matter to piss off both sides.  I'm not against all gun control measures, would probably support many of them but also recognize their limited effectiveness.  Liberals talk as if this is the magical solution, would that this were so.  Put simply only honest law-abiding people obey laws, criminals don't that's why they're known as criminals in the first place.  Pass all the gun control measures you want and criminals will still get ahold of guns and continue to maim and kill, that's basic existential reality.  I could fill a whole blogpage with my thoughts on the subject and they ramble in all political directions at times but bottom line is Obama seems to care more about the wealthy these days and the apparent threat they pose to the country.  I wish he were just as concerned about the prevalence of guns in our society but we can't have that discussion right now because of the Fiscal Cliff.  Obama if he were a more mature and reasoned leader, not still running a campaign could have helped put all that behind us and on to more pressing matters like, say Guns in Our Society and I'd like to hear President Obama's response on the tragedy in Newtown CT and also what his mouthpiece Jay Carney has to say I mean if they have the time since the wealthy are taking up so much of their attention lately.  There will be the usual obligatory pro-forma statements of course but you would think they would at least question some of their own political obsessions/fixations of late, sober up.  The poor will always be with us and so will the wealthy and there will always be time for those discussions but the dead remain the dead.

Your thoughts? (and don't be surprised if I might agree with you at times).

84 comments:

  1. Oh for chrissake, haven't you been anywhere for the past four years hearing about how Obama is going to squash the second amendment and take away everyone's guns?

    Cmon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm not real keen on some crudbrain
    psychopath running around with a combat weapon. But the
    Connecticut guy certainly deserves the Wayne LaPierre Award for protecting his cowardly self from
    little girl kindergartners....

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sat it was one of the issues or rather nonissues of the campaign, PBS Newshour called attention to it among other issues not covered by both Romney and Obama. How much the rich pay in taxes, is this one of the most important, pressing issues of our time? Not imo but guns are at the top of the list. Assault weapons ban expired in '04 and I haven't really heard Obama address this.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Obama and Carney are in combat mode right now but first and foremost

    TAKE CARE OF THE FUCKING FISCAL CLIFF

    I don't care what you do or how you do it but we HAVE TO move on to more pressing matters like the survivors of the victims in Newtown. Are they gonna pay more in taxes too 'cause Washington can't reach a deal, 'cause Obama is gumming up the works with his fixation on the rich? add insult to injury to these poor people and the Sandy victims too and those about to be cut off from unemployment bennies.

    GET IT FUCKING DONE GUYS AND GET IT DONE NOW!!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Apparently from what I heard the shooter's Mom who he also shot and killed was a real gun enthusiast and had at least three guns in the house. BB I'm with you and I'm no fan of the NRA. I've often put it this way, the Second Amendment or the right to own a gun is one of the weakest rights there is. Compare it to the 1st Amendment, everyone pretty much automatically enjoys full free speech rights (or should) but not every damn soul deserves or has the right to own a damn firearm. NRA acts as if it's as natural as breathing.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Z-man, regarding the arsenal in the mother's name, it is possible
    she did that for the son. We had a
    massacre out this way a few years back. The perp was banned from owning weapons, so he put them all
    in his wife's name. He shot her in the face before going on to kill a cop (who was removing a CC guy who
    rushed in and was wounded; killed
    a paster and then himself. Why don't these guys reverse the order of shooting? Ever look at the demographics of these things? Ain't women, ain't old guys..always
    some 20 something male.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I'm getting the sense there's enough blame to go around in Adam Lanza's whole family structure (what did his older brother know? how was he raised?). What makes this massacre even more horrific than the other ones in the news of late is the victims were mostly children in the 5 to 10 year range. I have to say though while many of President Obama's words were rather pro-forma the emotion was genuine and I do hope this becomes his new priority to do something meaningful here without the politics and I think the Congress if they don't want to appear insensitive needs to hammer out a deal on the cliff as in Today.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Heard some criminal psychologist saying that kindergartner kids are
    naive, fun, innocent, cute and huggable, intended so by nature that adults would have increased
    feelings of empathy for them...he
    couldn't figure out how anyone could shoot them one by one. It
    gets quite complicated, no?

    ReplyDelete
  9. I've just been looking at Drudge and I have to say I really disagree with the Right's reaction to this case. Rush is saying the usual suspects are politicizing a tragedy again but if guns are at the heart of what happened why can't you talk about guns? why is that politicizing the issue? can't you have a POV? Alex Jones says Obama's tears were fake and on and on it goes. Bottom line is Obama for all his liberalism has never been big on the whole gun issue, he's more into liberal/big gov't economics and social justice theories as witness the whole fiscal cliff showdown. Ah read on.......

    ReplyDelete
  10. Politicization..good points. IMO,
    the GOP, for whatever reasons, currently fears LaPierre at NRA and
    Norquist. Still, I would look to the GOP to take responsible action
    (like the Eisenhower days) and perhaps they will. In fairness,
    politicians of all stripes are more concerned with reelection than
    the good of the country, probably why the popularity of congress is lower than that of car salesmen and
    lawyers.

    ReplyDelete
  11. LaPierre and Norquist, apples and oranges. Agree or disagree with Grover basically we're dealing with tax policies and structures and not the potential, the groundwork for mass shootings. I'll take Grover over Wayne any day.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Looking over parts of our blogosphere today. Shaw's last two entries on the tragedy I actually agree with much of but there's the tendency of a liberal echo chamber over there and a simplification of the issues. The conservative case can probably be boiled down to let criminals have guns and not the rest of us and there's that basic imbalance against John or Jane Q. Public acting in self-defense. This is a rather strong argument on the pro-gun side and admit it BB there is always a positive visceral reaction when a shopowner sends a couple of thugs out on platters. That said too many guns are getting into the wrong hands. It's remarkable that just a few days ago libs were railing against the rich and how much they pay in taxes. In hindsight and against the tragic backdrop of yesterday how important really is that issue? Can Newtown cause Obama to reevaluate some of his own priorities and the tragjectory of his presidency? I say if some Repubs come around to his way of thinking on taxes fine and dandy but at this point if ya gotta let it go for the greater good let it go.

    ReplyDelete
  13. It's a tough proposition-guns and violence. When my wife was teaching, there were two lockdowns.
    Both involved students being disciplined and their fathers threatening to come to school with
    guns (apple doesn't fall far from the tree). A daughter is a university professor. She has had
    a few problematic students known for making threats, and of course,
    tensions are endemic in college.
    Her state recently legislated that
    anyone may carry concealed on campus. A crummy mix, and just waiting for the inevitable. So, the
    problem is: how do you keep high
    capacity automatic weapons out of the hands of people known to be
    threatening, violent, psychopathic, etc. without infringing on the legal gunowner?
    Is it better to just continue to let students be snuffed to protect
    2nd Amendment rights? Did the founders really think that a 'well regulated militia' would be served by crazies armed to the teeth, crazies unfit for armed service or
    much of anything else? Lot of thinking should be done, IMO.
    Probably mentioned before, my work
    involved the production of over 20
    billion ammunition primers, most of
    which went to police, military and
    hunters...but some undoubtably was used for awful things...it makes me
    uncomfortable, frankly.

    ReplyDelete
  14. What happens is that people refuse to address the real issue, which is that the system lets everyone build a damn arsenal in their basement with enough high capacity magazines and assault weapons to take out Eritrea... and instead they will focus on that the shooter had some personality problem or some autistic tendency or was once picked on and so they have a mental illness, which would place the blame for the situation squarely on the person and not on the fact that the system is designed to make it ridiculously easy for anyone who would like to, to obtain enough firepower to take out a.. school. This in turn is going to fuel more stigma against (genuinely) mentally ill people, who are in toto far more likely to become victims of violence (including self-violence) than to commit it on anyone else. And those people will have to suffer even more from that stigma, and some will refuse to get treatment because they are afraid of what will happen to their job, their social position, etc, if people found out they had a mental illness. And meanwhile every time someone in Hollywood decides to go be an asshole a newspaper story will come out and say they're ADHD, or bipolar.. and thus continue to perpetuate the myths and the stigmas against people who genuinely live lives of suffering trying to deal with an illness that very few people understand and fewer care about.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Dear Mr. LaPierre,
    "Each of bodies examined were shot three to 11 times, and gunman used rifle as his primary weapon, medical examiner says."
    -thanks a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  16. And really, Z, if taxes go up for the 2% of the country who makes over $250K, do you HONESTLY believe that the sky is going to cave in, the whole economy is going to collapse and that the rest of us are going to have to burn in hell or something?

    2% of the country. The top rate will go up like a little over 3%. I can see how that's gonna bankrupt all those people, yeah, and how that's really gonna wrench the entire rest of the economy, and I can see why we all need to make enormous sacrifices so those 2% of the people don't have to pay another 3% in taxes.


    Cmon, really?

    ReplyDelete
  17. On another note, I hear that Madam Hillary Clinton will not be able to testify next week before House and Senate panels on the Benghazi issue because she fell and sustained a concussion.
    How did she fall?
    She probably caught a good look at her hair-do in the mirror!

    ReplyDelete
  18. To be honest, I am not going to read through the comments left by liberals, because they are pro-choice and so I cannot understand how they can be outraged by the killing in CT but not be sickened by the fact that many more than 20 children are killed daily by abortionists.

    In my views, it is our legalized killing of the unborn as well as the legalized killing through the death penalty that creates a culture of death in our society. Until we as a people stop allowing killing people to be an answer to a real or perceived problems, we will never stop seeing these sort of tragedies, in my opinion.

    As to those who think gun laws is the answer, let me submit to you that the school probably had one of those no guns allowed in this school stickers on its doors, but guess what, the bad guys don't really care if its against the law to have a gun in school now do they?

    ReplyDelete
  19. You go Beth... I'm totally impressed that you saw an opportunity here to turn a completely unrelated issue into a discussion of abortion. No ordinary person would have come up with such an amazing non sequitur, but you pulled it off like a champ.

    I guess, though, for you, it must be easy.. when there's only one topic, that's all there is.

    ReplyDelete
  20. You tell em Beth, Don't listen to these Socialist idiots.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Yup, you tell it, Beth! Cause, you know, opposing gun violence, only Socialists do that.

    We all know REAL Americans have enough firepower in their basements to occupy Nigeria. Cause that's patriotic, and God wants it that way.

    ReplyDelete
  22. So, Beth IS pro-choice...
    on assault weapons?

    ReplyDelete
  23. Beth totally supports the right to choose the 100 round clip. God gave her that right when he dictated the Ten Amendments to Jefferson. Or was that the Ten Commandments to Moses? Either way, it came straight from God.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Saty by the same token the sky will not fall if we don't raise tax rates on the wealthy. I do however agree with you and BB on these modern weapons of mass destruction and don't for the life of me get why we can't permanently have an assault weapons ban.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Well I don't understand why you and BB aren't also pro-choice on the matter of whether workers have the right to join a union or not.

    ReplyDelete
  26. So if the sky won't fall either way, what's stopping you from agreeing that it's a good idea?

    And we can't have an assault weapons ban because that would be Socialist. One of the things that make America America is that God gave you the right to have your Own Private Arsenal. And actually, according to Justice Scalia, that includes a shoulder-launched nuclear weapon.

    Cause, you know, the neighborhood's gettin bad.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Unions.. let me throw out an analogy here.

    We all benefit from infrastructure, right? Roads and bridges and police forces and fire fighters... and that's why we all pay into it through taxes, right? We all pay because we all benefit.

    Unions benefit every worker whether they are union members or not.

    It's the same thing.

    And actually, far more than just 'allowing workers to choose', most right to work states (like the one I live in) are heavily anti-union and I have known people to get fired for discussing bringing in a union to a company.

    So it's a highly restrictive thing, this 'right to work', because it essentially takes away a lot of your rights, and gives all the power to the employer. It certainly isn't about employee rights, and it doesn't help the workers.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Idaho has been 'right to work' since 1985. But there are still
    133 companies that are unionized.
    As near as I can tell, those unions are all membership, but how they do that, not sure. Idaho gov
    tried to bust the teacher's union last year, but the redneck, gun-toting backwoods citizens shot that down..heck, if teachers care enough about their kids to step in front of an M-4 Bushmaster, they must be worth something, right?

    ReplyDelete
  29. That was an excellent analysis for a Marxist Satyavati s..

    ReplyDelete
  30. Doubt these folks were Marxists either:
    "If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar. If any man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool."
    -- Abraham Lincoln
    "Only a fool would try to deprive working men and working women of their right to join the union of their choice." -Dwight Eisenhower
    "The important role of union organizations must be admitted: their object is the representation of the various categories of workers, their lawful collaboration in the economic advance of society, and the development of the sense of their responsibility for the realization of the common good." -Pope Paul VI
    "..where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost."
    -Ronald Reagan
    ..probably why the Nazis sent labor leaders to concentration camps:
    "We must close union offices, confiscate their money and put their leaders in prison. We must reduce workers salaries and take away their right to strike.”
    -Adolf Hitler







    ReplyDelete
  31. What I'm saying Saty is now is not exactly the time to push your views on taxing the rich with the country and especially Newtown in mourning. The rich can wait another day, it ain't important in the larger scheme of things and that's kinda my overall point. There's time enough to tax them a new asshole down the road but I got a doc's app't @3:30 so I'll have to get back to this and no I don't think you have the God-given right to everything Rambo.

    ReplyDelete
  32. & oh BB in right-to-work states a good union should have no problem convincing most workers to join so why is this so problematic?

    ReplyDelete
  33. Good point Z-Man. I'm assuming it is anti-worker because it is being pushed by big business. Labor is the one commodity cost which they can control, and it is easier to deal with individuals than a whole group of individuals. Think of it is collective barganing vs take it or leave it. Never been in a union, just observing from the outside, but am sort of an empathetic type, go underdogs and all that, ya know?

    ReplyDelete
  34. Like I said I have seen people fired for just talking about unions.

    ReplyDelete
  35. & I have seen people who should have been fired but weren't because they were in a union.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Always figured people getting fired
    reflected on the idiot that hired
    them.

    ReplyDelete
  37. But doesn't it kind of become a complete oxymoron in a 'right to work' state that you get fired for just being overheard talking about a union?

    There are a couple of unions in NC.. I know the IBEW is here, and there is actually a state employees union.. but there are a shitload of rules and regs against it, and you want to be extremely careful where you tiptoe in that regard.

    I mean, cmon.. Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. That should be all I need to say.

    ReplyDelete
  38. It would seem to me Saty that getting fired for simply talking about a union is against the law but again I'm no lawyer.

    ReplyDelete
  39. It would seem so, but this is 'at will' employment, which means that your employer may fire you for any reason or no reason at all.

    ReplyDelete
  40. A chef/food manager told me a story once when he worked in a pizzeria or restaurant or something a chef was fired simply for answering the head chef's question with another question instead of saying the requisite "yes chef" or "no chef." It seems to me though if we could just pass a law against assholes no need to involve a union.

    ReplyDelete
  41. But we couldn't, and that's why we needed unions in the first place. Because employers have to be pushed mighty hard to do anything whatsoever that might cost them an extra nickel, and one or two people they don't mind making martyrs to the cause. It's not until ALL the workers come together that the employers have no option but to listen and to make some changes.

    And even then a lot of them skirt things, piss on safety rules, push people harder than they legally can, because they practically can. Look at miners. Miners were some of the first groups to fight for better working conditions, and even with all the advances in labor it's still bad for them.

    Remember, when child labor was outlawed, whole industries said it was a terrible thing that was going to lead to total economic collapse. The eight hour day was supposed also to be utterly devastating to business. Life went on. Their tantrums subsided. The sky didn't fall.

    Employers will try to claim that having to spend one extra penny in taxes or benefits is going to call down the Apocalypse, but if you seriously ask them to bring out their books you will find in so many cases they have actually done quite well over the past four years with no signs of letting up.

    ReplyDelete
  42. It's kinda weird that they're still trying to hammer out a deal over the fiscal cliff in the wake of this tragedy. Boehner now wants to raise taxes on millionaires and Obama upped the ante to those making over $400,000/yr. and now we have the new Biden Commission on how to curb gun violence. This is why I keep harping on put the fiscal cliff behind us and all the time the nation is focused on the fiscal cliff one or two more psychos might be making plans and we're still distracted.

    ReplyDelete
  43. Also it would be kind of not in keeping with good taste if we do go over the cliff and then those survivors in CT, their lives are made that much harder economically. You can blame Republicans, you can blame Obama, you can blame both but we really need to focus more on what truly matters and so for that reason alone this is the absolute worse time to enter another recession not to mention the Superstorm Sandy victims.

    ReplyDelete
  44. I think a lot of this cliff business is a fiction and a propaganda designed to scare people. I really do. The sky is not going to fall and certainly I am not pleased with the President being willing to go up to $400K. I really don't think this cliff business is going to decimate the economy... I think it's a lot of spin and agitprop that's focused on terrifying those people who believe that there's just got to be sometihng to be terrified about.

    ReplyDelete
  45. I can handle the 'cliff'. In fact,
    be glad to join the rich in paying more taxes..if that's what it takes.

    ReplyDelete
  46. Sitting here just now I counted six rounds off a shotgun not so far away. We live on the very edge of the county game lands. It strikes me as kinda ironic that someone could be killing people at my neighbor's house, and I'd never think twice about hearing it.

    ReplyDelete
  47. Apparently, it is possible to 'snap' and just be silly and obnoxious .

    ReplyDelete
  48. BB: "Be glad to join the rich in paying more taxes...if that's what it takes."

    BB when it comes to the gov't you don't even know where your money's really going. You might be paying for the latest study on the mating habits of the tsetse fly.

    ReplyDelete
  49. Hell, you go to a restaurant you don't know what you're really eating.

    You got to have a little faith, otherwise you end up living in a 4x6 panic room and taking lots of medications.

    ReplyDelete
  50. Tsetse Fly?
    Possibly, but that was covered in
    1906 , the French
    (who seem interested in all things
    involving mating) , 1960 and so on until 2009 . You can watch them mate on Youtube now. Not that
    titillating, although I had a biological radiation prof back in the day (looked like Jerry Lewis, you know, buck teeth, horn rimmed glasses). He would spend hours watching the lab mice mate. He had a lot of kids too. My taxes, though, I think they use for General's mistresses and stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  51. I just knew mentioning the tsetse fly would get BB all started.

    ReplyDelete
  52. Sure 'nuff: trypanosomiasis is one of the reasons why
    I avoid the Congo. :)

    ReplyDelete
  53. & I thought bed bugs were bad!

    ReplyDelete
  54. oh hell... bed bugs ARE bad.

    Never mind the meek... the arthropods will inherit the earth.

    ReplyDelete
  55. I go back to my original question, why did God create them???

    ReplyDelete
  56. ..and why did Noah take them on the
    ark?

    ReplyDelete
  57. I can't speak specifically for bedbugs (though I would not presume to doubt the divine wisdom) but certainly arthropods in general are a very vital part of any ecosystem.

    It's interesting to think that in the event of some truly catastropic disaster (think on the scale of another Chicxulub meteor impact), life can carry on-as long as there are mites and bacteria living in the soil. If all the bacteria are gone, so's hope. Nothing can grow without the bacteria... no growing, no plants, no plants, no herbivores, no herbivores, no carnivores. So it all boils down to the bacteria you can't even see maintaining life on the planet.

    In defense of roaches, I have been made to understand that they are exceptionally sensitive to subterranean pressures and that miners watch them very carefully... if the roaches start scattering there's usually a cave-in on the way. This has been known for hundreds of years.

    Just another bit of trivia. And while I'm on the subject of roaches and miners, here's another seemingly (but not really) random bit of trivia.

    Silver was mined in the area of Joachimsthal (known now as Jachymov) and was really high purity; the big landowners in the area received permission to mint money and that money was known for its reliability (as opposed to being adulterated like lots of coin of the day). The standard silver piece was known as a 'thaler' (from Joachimsthal)...which later became bastardized to 'thaler'... which later became bastardized to 'daler', which is what we use today.

    The miners of Joachimsthal (this was in the 1500's-ish) were also some of the first to advocate for improved working conditions. Unfortunately miners in many parts of the world continue to work under circumstances not much better than they did despite the intervention of hundreds of years.

    If you ever go on Jeopardy and win with any of this, I want a cut. :P

    ReplyDelete
  58. I get what you're saying about the bacteria but when I looked up bedbugs in my Audubon field guide seems their only source of nourishment is human blood. Sorry Divine I'm not getting this one, this vampiric necessity.

    ReplyDelete
  59. Yonkers doesn't do anything about
    bedbugs, but keeps their red light cameras in top shape?

    ReplyDelete
  60. If a bedbug gets hungry it has no qualms about going after an animal (like a dog sleeping on your bed) but people are easier (no fur) and so they prefer people. Not much different than a tick imo except bedbugs are easier to kill. And they don't carry all those fun tick diseases.

    Anyway really why is it so awful that an animal feeds on people? Is it really cosmically speaking any worse than people feeding on animals? I posit that it's far worse that people (who have no biologic necessity for flesh food, unlike for example cats) eat animals even when they don't have to. A bedbug has to have blood: yours, your dog's, someone's. But you have no physiologic requirement to eat animals, and you do anyway. Which is more of a moral abhorrent?

    ReplyDelete
  61. Z-Man blames God for bedbugs. Me,
    I'll go with evolution .

    ReplyDelete
  62. BB the red-light cams in Yonkers are EVERYWHERE, it's like a freakin' police state and yet there's still crime. Maybe in a Hitchcockian/Serling sense Saty the bedbug is Elsie the Cow's revenge. All I'm sayin' is I can't explain how an all-loving God could create certain creatures and I haven't even gotten into tapeworms or lice yet.

    ReplyDelete
  63. All loving God?

    What, he only loves people, and not other creatures?

    ReplyDelete
  64. Oh for cryin' out loud stop politicizing God. Aren't there things you don't understand?

    ReplyDelete
  65. Since the original subject was Newtown let me pull a Beth and bring abortion into the debate. What's ironic is that with our millions and millions of abortions the psychos seem to be keep slipping through. That's another one of those things I can't explain and not that long ago two sociologists wrote a book and basically said among their many points that high abortion rates have reduced the crime rates. Perhaps BB has some thoughts.

    ReplyDelete
  66. It is being learned that the psychopath personality derives from both genetic and environmental sources (and probably more significantly from some combination of both. So, in
    some Orwellian society, the condition might be addressed by
    birth control or abortion. In an even more technically advanced society, say a few hundred years hence, the problem could be mitigated by genetic manipulation, those chromosome segments responsible being replaced. But
    you run into the whole can of worms...engineering beauty, brains,
    athletic ability. One of those areas where societal ethics precludes science. (I read somplace that under the right conditions the nonempathetic psychopath makes a very good CEO)

    ReplyDelete
  67. There are lots of things I don't understand, but I think maybe that my religious orientation might make the things I feel like I don't understand different than the ones you feel like you don't understand.

    ReplyDelete
  68. & let's remember too abortion was supposed to reduce the welfare rolls and yet under Obama there's a record number of Americans on food stamps. I was thinking though to build on Beth's point is it harder to be pro-choice or pro-abortion after Newtown?

    ReplyDelete
  69. Abortion rates have decreased *substantially* over the past 20 years.

    You see, making contraception cheap and available actually works to prevent pregnancies. And if you can prevent an unwanted pregnancy, you completely take the question of abortion out of the picture.

    I know, I know, yall don't want to believe that, but it's true.

    I don't see Newtown impacting in any way, shape or form my views on abortion. I fail to see the connection.

    ReplyDelete
  70. Newtown didn't affect my views on abortion. Now my views on the NRA...

    ReplyDelete
  71. What I mean is after Newtown it might make some less in-your-face pro-abortion after all it's kids we're talking about. OK I just thought I'd ask the question. I've another comment coming up and it's not a delicate one...

    ReplyDelete
  72. Guy told me once that at one of the Pace colleges here the women engage in anal sex for the sole purpose of avoiding pregnancy and I got to thinking about this. I never knew how to blog about this because the more socially conservative fellow bloggers out there would delete me from their links but anyway you can look at it this way -- in order to avoid pregnancy use the nonvaginal entrance, to get pregnant do it the traditional way. So why don't the vast majority of couples do this? In short they'd vastly prefer having an abortion than going anal. Look it's not my thing either, there are all kinds of issues here but I think the fact that so many people seem to prefer going the route of killing a fetus than going the other route is rather interesting:)

    ReplyDelete
  73. Nah, don't go there .
    Stick to high fire power assault
    weapons, lunatics and Saint Lapierre...

    ReplyDelete
  74. Oh so it's good enough for the gays. The killing of a fetus vs. anal sex, abortion as the lesser of two evils? I once had a conversation with a Jamaican chef and suggested instead of traditional intercourse all the time there are other things people can do to avoid pregnancy and he just came back with "it's going in the hole, it has to go in the hole." Argue with a Jamaican! Let me walk you through this again, it's like a cell phone. For this option do this, for that option go there:)

    ReplyDelete
  75. I can only speak for myself... of all the reasons to do such a thing, avoiding pregnancy was one that never occurred to me.

    ReplyDelete
  76. There are no abortion clinics on the Hershey Highway.

    ReplyDelete
  77. You know getting back to the original subject you know what's really bad about these massacres, I mean besides the obvious and tragic loss of human life? It's the utterly predictable gun control debate that ensues. So now my immediate reaction after one of these tragedies is twofold: first shock and moral outrage at what just happened but then turn off the cable:)

    ReplyDelete
  78. Folks are gradually getting fed up with the 2nd Amendment collateral damage. Where in the constitution does it state the right to possess an arsenal of high firepower, rapid fire high capacity military
    assault weapons? The sole use of these things is terminating enemy soldiers and American kindergartners. What kind of holy crap is 'school's fault, teachers not armed'? It is the NRA's fault and if they had to pay each of the
    115,997 Americans killed in this country by fellow Americans for the
    right to run around packing heat,
    they might come to their senses.
    Meanwhile, Z-man, consider..for the
    30 Americans killed during that same timeframe by terrorists, we,
    babies, grandmas, wheelchairbound...we get to have a naked x-ray taken by TSA at the airport. Lapierre just moved up past Grover Norquist in my jaded
    opinion. Apologies for resorting to facts, as you note it is the refuge of the idiot left.

    ReplyDelete
  79. When I say BB I'm tired of the whole gun control debate that ensues after the latest mass shooting I mean both sides. The NRA/Right Wing side of course which as you note won't budge an inch even after a Newtown but also the whole gun control left that acts like this is the magical solution. It's tiresome and unrealistic on both sides. Yes the 2nd Amendment doesn't give you the right to have a nuclear launchpad on your shoulder to protect your home but also the realization that criminals by their very nature don't obey the law so how many laws you do pass is irrelevant to them.

    ReplyDelete
  80. People run red lights... especially in Yonkers... so should we eliminate traffic signals altogether?

    ReplyDelete
  81. Oh I get your point. In response if I were a governor or president I most definitely would sign into law many gun control measures but without the usual hoopla and fanfare and press attention. The usual hoopla and fanfare will just raise false expectations from the public and then when the next spectacular mass shooting happens we'll just pass more laws with more press conferences. I'm very pro-gun control just that it seems to me to have limited effectiveness, I would simply sign them as a matter of course though:)

    ReplyDelete