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Guns don’t kill, babies do

admin — Mon, 13 May 2013 02:19:23 +0000

Babies With Guns Continue to Shoot Themselves, Other Babies

By Bob Cesca · May 09,2013

Rewind a few weeks and you might recall how a certified sociopath and right-wing bumper sticker author named Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) delighted in the creation of the following tweet: “If babies had guns, they wouldn’t be aborted.” He loved it so much that he turned it into a slogan and a bumper sticker for his re-election campaign. The obvious message: anyone who carries a firearm is invincible, and therefore if babies were packing heat, they could theoretically kill abortion doctors in self-defense.

Naturally, this is complete and utter gibberish.

Gun owners aren’t invincible, of course. Statistically, people with a gun in the house, whether as a means of self-defense or otherwise, are more likely to be killed. Dave Waldman, aka KagroX, has been covering incident after incident in which idiot gun zealots have shot themselves or other people at Gun Appreciation Day events, at gun shows and during training classes. Furthermore, Stockman’s ridiculous slogan not-so-subtly implies that killing abortion doctors is probably a good idea. It’s no wonder why abortion clinics and doctors are the targets of domestic terrorism and homicides — it’s all but endorsed by the conservative entertainment complex and Republican political leaders. And given how the firearm industry manufactures a variety of rifles designed for children, it’s not a stretch to suggest that arming children is a goal of the NRA and the broader gun culture which it defends.

Perhaps I’m over-rationalizing Stockman’s awful tweet and the subsequent bumper sticker, but when politicians at any level imply that it’s okay to commit violence of any kind, especially with firearms, it can never be taken seriously enough. The very notion of an elected member of Congress even joking about the concept of children using firearms to kill other people is offensive almost beyond description — even more so considering how, in the weeks since Stockman’s original tweet, numerous “babies with guns” have used guns to kill or wound themselves or the children and adults around them. For example:

UPDATE 2: Friday. May 10. Camden, New Jersey. 11-Year-Old New Jersey Boy Shoots 12-Year-Old In The Face

UPDATE: Thursday. Thursday, May 9. Corsicana, Texas. 2-year-old Texas boy shoots himself in the head with father’s handgun

Tuesday, May 8. Houston, Texas:
Boy, 5, accidentally shoots brother, 7, in northeast Houston

Tuesday, May 8. Tampa, Florida:
3-Year-Old Fatally Shoots Himself With Uncle’s Gun

Sunday, May 6. Indianapolis, Indiana:
Police: 4-year-old boy grabbed gun, shot himself in hand

Saturday, May 5. Oakland Park, Florida:
13-Year-Old Boy Shoots 6-Year-Old Sister In Florida

“Conservatives” opposed the revolution

admin — Fri, 10 May 2013 19:20:31 +0000

Proud Conservative? You Should Be Ashamed! (Video)

written by Jason May 4, 2013

If there’s one thing that so-called “conservatives” are good at (besides lying, cheating, stealing, killing, racism, bigotry, misogyny, ignorance and destroying nature), it’s language. And I don’t mean speaking it, or writing it – because we’ve all seen the signs. I mean that they’re masters at Orwellian double-speak, and making positive words negative, and vice-versa. They frequently muddy the waters in this way, playing on people’s general stupidity and ignorance of history. It’s how they manage to claim Abraham Lincoln (a progressive) as their own, whilst simultaneously calling the democrats of today the party of the KKK–though the ideological switch of the parties and the exodus of racist democrats to the GOP all occurred as a result of the Civil Rights Act (which conservatives opposed) and thanks to the Southern Strategy has been this way ever since.

Super Progressive Thom Hartmann explains what conservatives are, and what they’ve done,

They say that “conservative” means someone who embraces traditional values, limited government, moderate change, and fiscal restraint. But those are just weasel words, the velvet glove over the brutal fist of an autocratic, authoritarian, and oligarchic form of governance. Here’s the reality of what Conservatives have ACTUALLY done to this nation in it’s 230-year plus history.

First off, it was Conservatives who opposed the American Revolution, and many of them joined the British in fighting against George Washington’s army. Then, conservatives, at the birth of our nation, pushed to restrict voting rights at the federal level to only white men who owned property – although progressives like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison blocked those efforts – so conservatives at the state level picked up that cause.

The Bible tells me so

admin — Fri, 10 May 2013 18:23:33 +0000

Dalai Lama, Jason Collins, Leviticus and You.
By Robert De Filippis

From the Dalai lama, “The purpose of religion is to control yourself, not to criticize others. How much am I doing about my anger, attachment, hatred, pride and jealousy? These are the things which we must check in our daily lives.”

Let’s see, how can we fracture that advice this week? Oh, Oh, I know, let’s criticize and condemn Jason Collins for being the first openly gay NBA Player. Hey, while we’re at it, let’s condemn all homosexuals and quote a selected verse from Leviticus to justify our condemnation. Let’s ignore all the other verses in Leviticus that condemn much of what we all do as abominations.

Oh you say, you’re not a Buddhist and don’t care what the Dalai Lama says? Okay, let’s check what else the Bible says. “Judge not,” “Love your neighbor.” You know, all the stuff about taking your own inventory and not everyone else’s.

I’m sure I could go on finding holy text from many different human religions to condemn or redeem Mr. Collins. That’s not my point.

Agnosticism is my point. As a militant agnostic, I admit I don’t know and I don’t think you do either. But because I freely admit I don’t know, I am able to accept or reject judgments, assessments and condemnation based on someone else’s “truth” without need to defend my belief system. In this case, a religious belief system.

United States, the last empire?

admin — Wed, 08 May 2013 13:29:21 +0000

And Then There Was One

Imperial Gigantism and the Decline of Planet Earth
By Tom Engelhardt

It stretched from the Caspian to the Baltic Sea, from the middle of Europe to the Kurile Islands in the Pacific, from Siberia to Central Asia. Its nuclear arsenal held 45,000 warheads, and its military had five million troops under arms. There had been nothing like it in Eurasia since the Mongols conquered China, took parts of Central Asia and the Iranian plateau, and rode into the Middle East, looting Baghdad. Yet when the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, by far the poorer, weaker imperial power disappeared.

And then there was one. There had never been such a moment: a single nation astride the globe without a competitor in sight. There wasn’t even a name for such a state (or state of mind). “Superpower” had already been used when there were two of them. “Hyperpower” was tried briefly but didn’t stick. “Sole superpower” stood in for a while but didn’t satisfy. “Great Power,” once the zenith of appellations, was by then a lesser phrase, left over from the centuries when various European nations and Japan were expanding their empires. Some started speaking about a “unipolar” world in which all roads led… well, to Washington.

To this day, we’ve never quite taken in that moment when Soviet imperial rot unexpectedly – above all, to Washington — became imperial crash-and-burn. Left standing, the Cold War’s victor seemed, then, like an empire of everything under the sun. It was as if humanity had always been traveling toward this spot. It seemed like the end of the line.

The Last Empire?

After the rise and fall of the Assyrians and the Romans, the Persians, the Chinese, the Mongols, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, the English, the Germans, and the Japanese, some process seemed over. The United States was dominant in a previously unimaginable way — except in Hollywood films where villains cackled about their evil plans to dominate the world.

As a start, the U.S. was an empire of global capital. With the fall of Soviet-style communism (and the transformation of a communist regime in China into a crew of authoritarian “capitalist roaders”), there was no other model for how to do anything, economically speaking. There was Washington’s way — and that of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (both controlled by Washington) — or there was the highway, and the Soviet Union had already made it all too clear where that led: to obsolescence and ruin.

In addition, the U.S. had unprecedented military power. By the time the Soviet Union began to totter, America’s leaders had for nearly a decade been consciously using “the arms race” to spend its opponent into an early grave. And here was the curious thing after centuries of arms races: when there was no one left to race, the U.S. continued an arms race of one.

In the years that followed, it would outpace all other countries or combinations of countries in military spending by staggering amounts. It housed the world’s most powerful weapons makers, was technologically light years ahead of any other state, and was continuing to develop future weaponry for 2020, 2040, 2060, even as it established a near monopoly on the global arms trade (and so, control over who would be well-armed and who wouldn’t).

It had an empire of bases abroad, more than 1,000 of them spanning the globe, also an unprecedented phenomenon. And it was culturally dominant, again in a way that made comparisons with other moments ludicrous. Like American weapons makers producing things that went boom in the night for an international audience, Hollywood’s action and fantasy films took the world by storm. From those movies to the golden arches, the swoosh, and the personal computer, there was no other culture that could come close to claiming such a global cachet.

The key non-U.S. economic powerhouses of the moment — Europe and Japan — maintained militaries dependent on Washington, had U.S. bases littering their territories, and continued to nestle under Washington’s “nuclear umbrella.” No wonder that, in the U.S., the post-Soviet moment was soon proclaimed “the end of history,” and the victory of “liberal democracy” or “freedom” was celebrated as if there really were no tomorrow, except more of what today had to offer.

No wonder that, in the new century, neocons and supporting pundits would begin to claim that the British and Roman empires had been second-raters by comparison.

Children and guns, deadly combination

admin — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:49:32 +0000

Florida 13-Year-Old Finds Family Gun, Shoots 6-Year-Old Sister

Another tragic shooting involving kids.

May 6, 2013 |

A 6-year-old Florida girl is in critical condition after being shot by her 13-year-old brother, Florida officials say. According to the Florida Sun-Sentinal, the teen found the gun when the siblings were home alone. Although the incident is still under investigation, the shooting appears to have been accidental, the Sheriff’s office said. The Sentinal also spoke with a neighbor who witnessed paramedics carrying the girl, who is in critical but stable condition, out of the house:

Latourrette, a heavy equipment operator, said he watched as paramedics carried the girl out of the house.

“Her shirt was bloody, and you could see through a piece of gauze that she had a hole in her chest above the heart,” said Latourrette, who has two young daughters. “Her eyes were wide open in a blank stare, like she was in shock. I’ll never forget that look.”

The shooting comes at the heels of a tragic incident last week when a 5- year-old boy accidentally shot dead his 2-year-old sister in Burkesville, Kentucky. That story garnered outrage around the country when it was revealed that the boy had been playing with a gun called “My First Rifle,” a .22-caliber single-shot Crickett rifle gun marketed to kids.

Armed Children? 5 Craziest Things About This Weekend’s NRA Convention

From an Obama look-alike target to Mayor Michael Bloomberg being portrayed as a Nazi.

May 6, 2013 |

The National Rifle Association (NRA was in the media spotlight over the weekend as they held their national convention. One message emerging from the conference was to gear up for the 2014 elections, which the NRA sees as pivotal for gun rights.

It was the first national gathering for an organization that has been in the spotlight since the mass shootings in Newtown, Connecticut and Aurora, Colorado. But stepping into that spotlight hasn’t forced the NRA to curb some of its nutty tendencies. Here are 5 crazy moments that occurred at the convention.

1. Armed Children

The NRA wants to appeal to….children! The New York Daily News reported that at the convention, “two 10-year-olds took aim with air pistols, an 11-year-old gawked at a semiautomatic weapon and a 3-year-old soaked up applause for being the youngest member.”

That wasn’t the only instance of children attending the NRA convention. The Daily Mail Online notes that Will Marshall, a 12-year-old from Florida, “has been a member of the NRA for 11 years and owns four guns.” In other words, he joined when he was one.

The presence of young kids at the NRA comes as the problem of children holding guns has been tragically highlighted. One April week saw four people shot by toddlers. And in early May, a five-year-old boy in Kentucky accidentally killed his two-year-old sister with a small rifle.

2. A Bleeding Target That Looks Like Obama

Gunslingers

By Kathy Malloy (about the author)

How many more dead children does it take, Truthseekers, to stop the endless flow of senseless violence that is claiming the lives of our innocent sons and daughters in the name of “gun rights?”

Newtown wasn’t enough. It’s never enough. Worse, it seemed to serve as a rallying cry for the NRA and its collection of deranged cowards who — after the slaughter — redoubled their efforts to make sure unrestricted guns rights were preserved rather that the lives of schoolchildren.

The NRA is not going to temper its roootin’ tootin’ shootin’ rhetoric anytime soon. As if they weren’t extremist enough, their New Gun Boss James Porter is a former Alabama attorney who devoted his life to protecting weapons manufacturers from the threat of lawsuits filed by the family members of men, women, boys, and girls shot dead by the guns made and sold by his clients.

Porter calls Obama a ”fake President” and warns that the President will seek “revenge” against gun owners who opposed his safety measures. Is that not the clearest example of delusional paranoia outside the pages of the DSM V???

Porter refers to his clan as “freedom fighters,” defenders of the God-given right to own guns. Or military-style assault rifles. Or semi-automatic machine guns. Or pretty much anything that’s BIG and made of shiny metal and goes BOOM and makes things dead.

He would likely be voted the grandpa most likely to buy his little granddaughter a pretty pink polka-dotted “Crickett” rifle from “My First Gun.”

Obituary: Kenneth L. Fox

admin — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:09:05 +0000

Kenneth L. Fox June 25, 1926 – April 23, 2013

Kenneth Lee Fox was born in Zenith, Kansas as the last child in a family of 7 children to Gertrude and Fred Fox. He loved to tell that he was born on the birthday of his oldest brother, June 25, 1926. Ken was well respected and very active in his small farm community as an Eagle Scout, and as an athlete in basketball, football and track. When Ken was in 9^th grade his parents had to move to find work so he continued to live in the small town all by himself and even drove the town’s school bus After Ken graduated from High School in Garfield, Kansas at age 18, he joined The U.S. Army and was stationed in Germany. He had the rare privilege of serving on the staff of a fellow Kansan, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower! Ike was fond of calling Ken ‘Kansas’ and even arranged for Ken to fly to Italy to the grave of his brother, Glee, who had been shot down as a US airman.

When Ken returned stateside he enrolled in a 2 year Agricultural Program at ‘Aggies’ in Fort Collins (Colorado State Univ.) One wintery weekend a buddy gathered Ken and friends to go meet some young ladies that the family knew. The group decided that Barbara would like the ‘older’ guy who was a veteran. A few dates up skiing and ice skating morphed into steady visits to Barb in Denver. By spring of 1949 they were engaged and on August 7, the original ‘Barbie and Ken’ started their 63 years of married life.

Ken spent the early years of married life in Kansas as a farmer and construction worker on Grain Elevators. Later the Foxes moved to Denver where Ken worked at Lowry Air Force Base and began building a house in Lakewood, all by himself in his spare time. Later Ken worked construction at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal and saw his family expand to 4 kids. Ken had loved Scouting and began work as a professional scout executive for many decades for the Boy Scouts of America first in Wyoming, then Kansas, and back to Colorado. In 1976 Ken and Barb moved to a rural property outside Berthoud, Colorado and once again started building a house from scratch. In fact, they built two houses; one for Barb’s folks and one for themselves, including a beloved greenhouse where Ken grew fresh lemons and limes among many other plants. Ken and family also planted over 1000 trees and started the tradition of giving away geraniums, which Ken propagated by the hundreds each year, earning himself the name of ‘the Geranium Man’.

Seeing their kids in college all at once finally lead Ken to seek work that would better help pay the tuition bills, so he went back to work for the government…this time with the US Fish and Wildlife Service as an engineer helping design and build facilities such as fish hatcheries all over the U.S. and even a moose refuge in Alaska. He retired in 1993, but not before receiving a national award as a ‘Point of Light’ for his decades of volunteer work. Ken continued volunteering for BSA even at age 85 and also loved serving on various ministry teams at Life Bridge Christian Church in Longmont. Ken is survived by his wife, four children and their spouses, nine grandchildren and their spouses and three great grandchildren.

The Funeral will be at LifeBridge Christian Church, 10345 Ute Hwy, Longmont, Colorado on Friday, April 26 at 11:30 a.m.; followed by a Burial Service at Greenlawn Cemetery in Berthoud and a reception back at LifeBridge. Those desiring to do so, may join other family and friends in the ancient Christian Tradition of reading the Psalms continuously from the death until the burial by going to: Kenneth Fox Vigil Readings.

Visit www.ahlbergfuneralchapel.com to share condolences.

America, the land of the destitute

admin — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 02:08:03 +0000

By Paul Buchheit

Five Ugly Extremes of Inequality in America — The Contrasts Will Drop Your Chin to the Floor

Any of the ten richest Americans could pay a year’s rent for all of America’s homeless with their 2012 income.

March 24, 2013 |

The first step is to learn the facts, and then to get angry and to ask ourselves, as progressives and caring human beings, what we can do about the relentless transfer of wealth to a small group of well-positioned Americans.

1. $2.13 per hour vs. $3,000,000.00 per hour

Each of the Koch brothers saw his investments grow by $6 billion in one year, which is three million dollars per hour based on a 40-hour ‘work’ week. They used some of the money to try to kill renewable energystandards around the country.

Their income portrays them, in a society measured by economic status, as a million times more valuable than the restaurant server who cheers up our lunch hours while hoping to make enough in tips to pay the bills.

A comparison of top and bottom salaries within large corporations is much less severe, but a lot more common. For CEOs and minimum-wage workers, the difference is $5,000.00 per hour vs. $7.25 per hour.

2. A single top income could buy housing for every homeless person in the U.S.

On a winter day in 2012 over 633,000 people were homeless in the United States. Based on an annual single room occupancy (SRO) cost of $558 per month, any ONE of the ten richest Americans would have enough with his 2012 income to pay for a room for every homeless person in the U.S. for the entire year. These ten rich men together made more than our entire housing budget.

For anyone still believing “they earned it,” it should be noted that most of the Forbes 400 earnings came from minimally-taxed, non-job-creating capital gains.

3. The poorest 47% of Americans have no wealth

What happened to Conservatives?

admin — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 18:21:27 +0000

American Right-Wingers Are No Longer Conservative — They’re Extremists

Their reactionary bent is manifesting itself in legislatures across the country.

April 17, 2013 By Joshua Holland

College students taking Poli-Sci 101 learn that conservatism is an ideology that reveres established tradition, emphasizes a deep respect for the rule of law and comes with a deep distrust of rapid social change – especially change driven by public policy. William F. Buckley Jr., famously described a conservative as, “someone who stands athwart history, yelling stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so.”

Traditional conservatism might provide a valuable check on overly ambitious policy-making. Traditional conservatism doesn’t deny that government plays a role in our society, it isn’t driven by animus towards “unworthy” citizens, and it isn’t based on a fanciful alternative reality.

As American “movement conservatism” has shifted ever further to the right, it has become hard to discern this strain of ideology in our public discourse. The Tea Party right fancy themselves right-wing revolutionaries. They reject long-standing jurisprudence and venerable traditions. And they don’t fear rapid social change, as long as it comports with their worldview – they embrace it. Many of those whom we call conservatives today are, ultimately, reactionaries.

I recently caught up with Ian Millhiser, a senior constitutional policy analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund and the editor of ThinkProgress Justice, to discuss how this reactionary bent is manifesting itself in legislatures across the country. Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.

Joshua Holland: Ian, I know this first question is subjective, but I’m going to ask you to speculate. Which do you think is more likely, that Sharia law will become the law of the land or that I will get a date with Scarlett Johansson?

Ian Millhiser: You’re much more likely to get a date with Scarlett Johansson.

Welcome to Ayn Rand Planet

admin — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 03:02:46 +0000

Why the Rich Prosper from the Stock Market While We Get Screwed

By Les Leopold

On Planet Rand, the stock-market boom is a wonderful thing precisely because it rests upon the recent rise in corporate profits.

March 11, 2013 |

This morning I received an email blast form Amazon. It was pushing The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, the old and new testament of the Ayn Rand nation, which includes much of the Tea Party and its Republican allies.

How appropriate to be promoting Ayn Rand books just as the stock market and corporate profits both reached record highs. How appropriate to think of the infamous John Galt withdrawing from society in comfort while the rest of us face high unemployment, oppressive student loans, increasing healthcare costs, upside-down mortgages, and declining real incomes. But, according to Rand’s philosophy, this is as it should be — the wealthy getting all the rewards while the rest of us get nothing.

None of this is accidental. Our two-tiered economic recovery is the direct result of policies, or the lack thereof, that flow directly from Randian principles. If we don’t do something soon, we’ll all be living on Planet Rand.

Who Owns the Stock Market?

Before exploring this Randian policy coup, let’s be clear on who owns how much stock in America, and therefore who is benefiting most from the record rise in the equity markets.

As of 2010, the top 1 percent of households owned 35 percent of all the stocks in America while the bottom 80 percent of us owned only 8 percent. These percentages include both direct ownership of stock shares and indirect ownership through mutual funds, trusts, and IRAs, Keogh plans, 401(k) plans, and other retirement accounts. (See ” Wealth, Income and Power” by G William Domhoff.) So the current market boom is extremely profitable for the well-to-do, especially the super-rich, which is precisely what an Ayn Rand true-believer would cherish. Why is that?

Obituary: William H. Schwindt

admin — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 19:26:30 +0000

William “Bill” H. Schwindt, 90, passed away on April 16, 2013, at home. He was born on March 6, 1923 in Berthoud to Henry and Elizabeth (Nolde) Schwindt and grew up in the Berthoud/Loveland area.

His parents and grandparents were German-Russian immigrants who settled and farmed in Berthoud. Growing up on a farm, the values of hard work and family traditions were taught to him early, and carried through to the rest of his life.

He married Dorothy Frank on January 26, 1947 in Loveland at the First Congregational Church. They were married for 60 years. She preceded him in death in June of 2007.

Bill served in the U.S. Army as a Military Policeman in Germany during WWII. He was active duty from 1943 to 1946, and was among those brave soldiers that landed on Normandy Beach. He received the European Middle Eastern Service Medal, World War II Victory Medal and Good Conduct Medal.

He worked for the Great Western Sugar Company in Johnstown for 30 years. In the early 1950’s, he worked on building the Charles Hanson Feeder Canal which is part of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project in Loveland. Bill enjoyed gardening and loved flowers. For many years he was an avid fisherman and loved goose and pheasant hunting. He enjoyed watching Broncos and Rockies games. Spending time with his grandchildren was one of his favorite activities.

Bill is survived by daughters Karen Scheck and husband Gary, Lola Johnson and husband Cliff of Loveland, grandchildren, Angie Baldwin, Leah Johnson-Dickson and husband Mike, Katie Johnson, Jared Schwindt and wife Cammie, all of Loveland, Garth Scheck of Orchard, and Jon Schwindt and wife Tina of Colorado Springs and great-grandchildren Sage Baldwin, Madison Schwindt, and Mya Schwindt.

He is also preceded in death by his son, William H. Schwindt, Jr, infant son, Melvin Gene and three brothers and three sisters.

Visitation will take place from 11-1:00 pm, Friday at Kibbey Fishburn Funeral Home. A graveside service with military honors will be held at 1:30 pm, Friday at Loveland Burial Park.

Memorial contributions may be made to First Congregational Church in care of Kibbey Fishburn Funeral Home.