kpete
kpete's JournalThe Rude Pundit has an exchange with a gun lover.
Every argument for the good of open carrying a weapon is bullshit. It doesn't affect crime. It doesn't deter a goddamned thing. In fact, what Open Carry Texas wants is "unrestricted open carry." That is, "It’s not just the right to openly carry a pistol but also the right to do it without any training, screening or permit." OCT calls that "constitutional carry" because what the fuck do you know about the Second Amendment, pussy?So, sorry, Jasper. The Rude Pundit is left with his initial assessment: it's about dicks, dicks, and cocks. The Freudian message here is clearly a kind of arrested growth, with gun owners stuck in toddlerhood, where they are compelled to display their penises as a way of asserting masculinity, a narcissistic exercise. But, since just showing off your dick at the mall is illegal, a gun merely steps in as a rigid substitute. And as for the women who open carry, like a group at a Texas Target last week? Ever heard of "penis envy"?
That's fine parenting there, shirtless guy who needs more sunscreen.
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There's a near-psychotic attachment people have to their guns, which is a sad commentary on where we are as a people here in the United States. But we've been through that tangled thicket of conflicted emotions before.
Instead, the Rude Pundit wants to ask a question of the people who bankroll the pro-gun movement, like the sinisterly wealthy Koch brothers, who give ass-tons of money to the NRA: Do you, as a rich person, really think it's smart to keep supporting policies that promote income inequality while at the same time fostering a belief in guns as the solution to Americans' problems? Have you really thought this through?
- See more at:
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-few-notes-on-our-continuing-gun.html#sthash.VDWTkQoY.dpuf
Robert Reich: Americans need to know where Dems stand on inequality-not size of their bank accounts.
Robert Reich
1 hr ·
Speaking yesterday at a White House summit on financial difficulties facing working families, Vice President Joe Biden said he has “no savings accounts” and “doesn’t own a single stock or bond.” On Saturday, Hillary Clinton, in response to a question about whether Americans will see her and her husband’s wealth as part of the problem in a time of rising inequality, said she was not like the “truly well off” who fail to pay their full income taxes, and she became wealthy through “hard work.” Two weeks ago said she and her husband were “dead broke” when they left the White House. I wish Democrats eyeing the presidency in 2016 would talk less about their own finances and more about what they’d do to reverse rising inequality if elected. Specifically, would they (1) raise taxes on the rich to their pre-Reagan levels? (2) close giant loopholes the wealthy have arranged such as “carried interest” for hedge-fund and private-equity partners? (3) increase the minimum wage to a living wage? (4) expand the Earned Income Tax Credit? and (5) exempt the first $15,000 of income from the Social Security tax while eliminating the cap on income subject to it? Americans need to know where Democrats stand on inequality, not the size of their bank accounts.
https://www.facebook.com/RBReich?fref=nf
Don Miyada Graduates From HS-72 Years After Being Locked In Japanese-American Internment Camp
Don Miyada Graduates From High School 72 Years After Being Locked In Japanese-American Internment Camp
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. (AP) — A California man who missed his 1942 graduation because he was locked in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans finally walked in a cap and gown last week, more than seven decades after he was pulled out of class just a month shy of his big day.
Don Miyada, now 89, joined Newport Harbor High School's 2014 graduating class on stage and received a standing ovation when he was hailed as an inaugural member of the school's hall of fame, the Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday (http://lat.ms/Tl23iJ).
Miyada was 17 when he was sent with his family and more than 17,000 other detainees to a patch of desert land near Poston, Arizona shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor during World War II. A teacher later sent him a letter expressing shock that he couldn't finish high school and included a diploma — but Miyada always regretted that he missed the celebration.
In May, Miyada met Newport Harbor's principal, Sean Boulton, during a Memorial Day service at the high school and Boulton invited him to walk with the 560 seniors who would be graduating. Boulton even found a copy of the program from what would have been Miyada's graduation day in 1942.
the rest:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/22/don-miyada-graduates_n_5520437.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2665205/Graduation-heals-World-War-II-internment-wounds.html
An Employee Dies, and the Company Collects the Insurance
Employees at The Orange County Register received an unsettling email from corporate headquarters this year. The owner of the newspaper, Freedom Communications, was writing to request workers’ consent to take out life insurance policies on them.
But the beneficiary of each policy would not be the survivors or estate of the insured employee, but the Freedom Communications pension plan. Reporters and editors resisted, uncomfortable with the notion that the company might profit from their deaths.
After an intensive lobbying campaign by Freedom Communications management, a modified plan was ultimately put in place. Yet Register employees were left shaken.
The episode at The Register reflects a common but little-known practice in corporate America: Companies are taking out life insurance policies on their employees, and collecting the benefits when they die.
the morbid rest:
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/an-employee-dies-and-the-company-collects-the-insurance/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
Single payer: "Vermont to hire analyst for single payer design"
Vermont to hire analyst for single payer design
Associated Press
POSTED: 06/21/2014 11:54:54 AM EDT0 COMMENTS
MONTPELIER (AP) - The state of Vermont is planning to hire an analyst to help design a single-payer health care system and officials are narrowing the options that could be used to raise about $2 billion in public financing for the program.
Potential bidders for the single-payer contract include consultants from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Rand Corporation.
"There are three big things we're looking for," said administration official Michael Costa during a conference call with bidders earlier this month. "We're really looking for . how businesses and people pay for health care now, a behavioral response to proposed coverage and financing changes . and then once we see the impact of those changes, really being able to assess the economic impact of that behavioral response."
Bids were due Friday. It's hoped the firm can be working by July 1.
The administration of Gov. Peter Shumlin is working to develop a single-payer financing plan so it can be presented to lawmakers at the beginning of the 2015 legislative session.
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http://www.benningtonbanner.com/ci_26006899/vermont-hire-analyst-single-payer-design
Post-Dispatch Op-Ed Editor: Readers Were Horrified By George Will's Sexual Assault Column
Messenger spoke to CNN's Brian Stelter during Sunday's "Reliable Sources," and explained how the newspaper -- which said it had been considering dropping the column "for several months" -- arrived at the decision.
"We had a lot of readers very angry and very hurt," Messenger said. "It caused us to go back and take a look at it, and it reinforced our previous decision that he had lost a little bit of speed off his fastball, and it caused us to make the decision a little bit more quickly than we would have otherwise."
He also defended the decision to critics who argued that the Post-Dispatch was wrong to silence Will's viewpoint on the issue. Messenger said that the column was "very offensive to many of our readers" and that it is "well within our rights to decide what sort of debate, what level of civility, what level of treatment of women who are sexual assault victims we're going to allow on our page."
"A lot of the responses that were negative to our decision accused us of doing so for political correctness," Messenger added. "That's not the case. We believe that the column trivializes sexual assault victims."
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MORE:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/22/george-will-column-st-louis-sexual-assault_n_5519478.html
Being a Neocon Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry
Being a Neocon Means Never Having to Say You're SorryThese guys were wrong about every aspect of Iraq. Why do we still have to listen to them?
The zombie-like ability to maintain influence and status in the face of overwhelming evidence tells you that F. Scott Fitzgerald was wrong: There are in fact an infinite number of "second chances" in American life and little or no accountability in the U.S. political system. The neocons' staying power also reminds us that the United States can get away with irresponsible public discourse because it is very, very secure. Iraq was a disaster, and it helped pave the way to defeat in Afghanistan, but at the end of the day the United States will come home and probably be just fine. True, thousands of our fellow citizens would be alive and well today had we never listened to the neoconservatives' fantasies, and Americans would be more popular abroad and more prosperous at home if their prescriptions from 1993 forward had been ritually ignored. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would be alive too, and the Middle East would probably be in somewhat better condition (it could hardly be worse).
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/06/20/being_a_neocon_means_never_having_to_say_you_re_sorry_dick_cheney_william_kristol
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