Tuesday, February 20, 2018

I Call B.S.

I call BS...
Gov Bevin, of Kentucky, has given interviews recently in the wake of the Parkland murders whereby he tries to shift the narrative away from guns and onto other societal causes (specifically video games!)for the plethora of multiple homicides by gunshots in the USA.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/16/17020768/video-games-violence-shootings-kentucky-governor-matt-bevin

During one informal interview I watched, (sorry, still looking for the link) Gov. Bevin took an apocryphal jaunt down a false memory lane relating happy stories about kids bringing Christmas guns to school to show them off to friends. This is disingenuous  twaddle at the very least and a red herring. Moreover, he cites a  false 'fact' that Americans had more guns in some by-gone age. This, again,  is ludicrous. According to the Congressional Research Service, there are roughly twice as many guns per capita in the United States as there were in 1968: more than 300 million guns in all.
https://www.npr.org/2016/01/05/462017461/guns-in-america-by-the-numbers

Since 1972, there has been no appreciable change in the number of households which have guns in America. However, 3% of Americans own the vast majority of guns.  And the preponderance of those gun owners live in Red States which went overwhelmingly for the Drumpfen-shite.

http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/a-minority-of-americans-owns-most-of-the-guns-and-drives-gun-agenda-studies-show


Gov. Bevin, who is endorsed by the NRA and has spoken at the NRA-IRA Leadership Forum, is a yet another NRA-purchased moron; ignoring the multitude of nations where access to guns is limited, highly regulated and where there is a vastly smaller incident of mass-shootings and murder.  After the Las Vegas mass-shooting last year that left 58 people dead and 851 injured, Bevin publicly shot down calls for gun control legislation, saying: "You can't regulate evil."
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/16/violent_video_games_guns_florida/

Thankfully, he's already facing a serious back-lash for his obtuse stance on guns in the wake of the Parkland murders.
http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/article200251909.html

There are plenty of statistics to parse regarding gun ownership, types of weapons owned and their relationship and relevance to gun deaths. Lots of cherry-picking is done by the NRA spokes-people and self-styled 2nd Amendment fanatics who try to deflect away from guns being the cause of gun-death(!) by citing deaths by other means; disease, opioids, hammers, poisons, etc, (ad nauseum, ad absurdum). A prevalent one is the brutal murders in China perpetrated by knife-wielding mad-men. Somehow, in the minds of these cherry-pickers, the fact that people die of other causes than gun-shot wounds removes the onus from the weapons themselves. They recite the NRA talking-point; "Guns don't kill people; people kill people."

Legislation restricting availability of semi-auto firearms is not a panacea. There is no 'magic bullet' to solving this horrific situation but there are clear steps to be taken; other nations have provided examples. The USA should follow those examples.

Monday, February 19, 2018

Ammosexuals



It must be said...
Anyone who fetishes or humanizes their firearms has a mental health issue. Preferring to protect the availability of guns to other gun fetishists over the gun-deaths of children is a very serious mental health problem and a dire societal one.

(Ironically, many ammosexuals objectify women but humanized their little sweetheart, Glock 9... or AR-15 or 'Ol' Betsy' of whatever calibre.) 

Contrary to what the NRA and their ammosexual cultists espouse, America was not always one of enraptured and enthralled by their firearms. There was no 'gun culture' - a particularly loathsome oxymoron.

People didn't have guns back in the late 18th century - too expensive. They had knives and short swords  and sling-shots but not many guns. Unless they were needed - as they were on the Frontier - regular city folks didn't have them. Why lug a gun and ammo around when a short sword or a walking stick would offer personal protection on the mean streets of Boston and Philadelphia. 

That was one of the reasons, perhaps the main reason, for the 2nd Amendment. The US Constitution doesn't provide for an army - the thought of standing armies was repugnant to most of the Founders as being a tool for tyrants. So, to provide for the Common Good, and national defense, they relied on militias. 

Citizen soldiers who needed musketry, some of whom didn't have a firearm or had one in poor condition. The amendment could be read as meaning that the gov't could not infringe upon the arming of the militia - those were tumultuous times.

Guns didn't proliferate in the general populace until after the American Civil War when the citizen soldiers of both armies kept their weapons. Many of whom headed out into the western frontier. Gun design and manufacture made considerable progress because of the war; repeating rifles, revolvers, brass cartridges, breech loading all made firearms more accurate, more reliable and much easier to use.

Sunday, February 18, 2018

Forget Collusion



Forget 'collusion' - that's not a crime. 

Look to 'conspiracy against the USA' - that's what Manafort and Gates are charged with - and Gates has struck a deal with Robert Mueller and thus has pleaded guilty to charges. If you have  a hard time accepting the idea that Drumpf cooperated with the Russian efforts to subvert the electoral process, then I suggest that you do a bit more research into the very shady past of Donald J. He's been dirty since he went to work for his slum-lord father and apprenticed in the 'dark arts' with notorious mafia lawyer, Roy Cohn. 

If you also have difficulty understanding why Drumpf sought to become POTUS, you might not yet understand what an ego-maniac the Drumpfster is.
That said, I think what is really going to sink DJT is his nefarious, free-wheeling attitude toward debt and repayment thereof. He's been afloat since the crash of the real estate market  and the bankruptcy of his casinos, etc because of dirty Russian money. This money came from Russian sources - oligarchs, Putin's associates; i.e. the Russian mob. 

Money-laundering and bank fraud (Manafort will be served with that new indictment shortly) are his biggest fears. That's how Drumpf repaid the favors he got from the Russians; through real estate deals which laundered Russian mob money through foreign banks (Cyprus, Deutsche Bank...). 

Mueller has had the personal bank records of DJT from his account(s) with Deutsche Bank since early Dec, 2017. Money transactions leave a paper trail (think Panama Papers and Al Capone) and require no witnesses testimony. The crimes are in black and white.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/05/donald-trump-bank-records-handed-over-robert-mueller

The Mueller investigation is immense and wide-ranging. A seasoned prosecutor and investigator, Mueller is still finding ducks which he will put into neat rows. Let's hope that American society and American Democracy can withstand the Drumpfen-dork administration.

Please stop being surprised that Drumpfen-douche is a POS without any redeeming qualities. This is the way he's been his entire adult life;  a phony, a liar, a poseur, a fraud, a misogynist, a sexual predator, a scam-artist, a conman... 

I mean, come on already. 25% of the American electorate voted for this utterly contemptible sack of amoral protoplasm. 

The other 75% of us have to do everything we can to get rid of this guy and all of those who have patronized, sponsored or facilitated the ruinous actions and dereliction of his duty as POTUS.

Write to your Congress members and Senators. Tweet them. Face Book msg them. Instagram them. Tell them they are going doing with the flaming, sinking ship if they don't act now to bring charges of impeachment against you know who.