yallerdawg
yallerdawg's JournalParanoid about "gun control"?
You're not the only one!
to Dale Cook, Enid OK.
"Got my gun permit yesterday, then went over to the local gun shop to get a small 9mm for home protection.
When I was ready to pay by credit card for the gun and bullets, the cashier said, "Strip down, facing me."
Making a mental note to complain to the NRA about the gun control wackos running amok, I did as she had instructed.
When the hysterical shrieking and alarms subsided, I found out she was referring to how I should place my credit card in the card reader.
I've been asked to shop elsewhere in the future.
They need to make their instructions to seniors a little clearer."
On the anniversary of the 13th Amendment (Obama Group)
"...rise above the cynicism and rise above the fear..."Highlights of speech (from White House email):
"President Lincoln understood that if we were ever to fully realize that founding promise, it meant not just signing an Emancipation Proclamation, not just winning a war. It meant making the most powerful collective statement we can in our democracy -- etching our values into our Constitution."
"We would do a disservice to those warriors of justice -- Tubman and Douglass, and Lincoln and King -- were we to deny that the scars of our nations original sin are still with us today. We condemn ourselves to shackles once more if we fail to answer those who wonder if theyre truly equals in their communities, or in their justice systems, or in a job interview. We betray the efforts of the past if we fail to push back against bigotry in all its forms."
"For however slow, however incomplete, however harshly, loudly, rudely challenged at each point along our journey, in America, we can create the change that we seek.
"All it requires is that our generation be willing to do what those who came before us have done: to rise above the cynicism and rise above the fear, to hold fast to our values, to see ourselves in each other, to cherish dignity and opportunity not just for our own children but for somebody elses child. To remember that our freedom is bound up with the freedom of others -- regardless of what they look like or where they come from or what their last name is or what faith they practice
"That is our choice. Today we affirm hope."
Why This Socialist Feminist Is for Hillary (Hillary Group)
Suzanna Danuta Walters, writing for The Nation, explains why this "Born to leftists themselves born to leftists, I am what is known in some circles as a red-diaper baby: progeny of left-wing activists, often but not always members of the Communist Party," why she supports Hillary.
Read it all at: http://www.thenation.com/article/why-this-socialist-feminist-is-for-hillary/
President Obama Addresses the Nation on Keeping the American People Safe (Obama Group)
This is a call for Democrats to make a stand!
And remember - Muslims are not the enemy - murderous sociopathic terrorists are!
For seven years, I have confronted this evolving threat each morning in my intelligence briefing. And since the day I took this office, I have authorized U.S. forces to take out terrorists abroad precisely because I know how real the danger is. As Commander-in-Chief, I have no greater responsibility than the security of the American people.
The need to act could not be more clear. From 2004 to 2014, for example, 2,000 people on the terror watch list were able to purchase guns.
We also need to make it harder for people to buy powerful assault weapons like the ones that were used in San Bernardino. I know there are some who reject any gun safety measures. But the fact is that our intelligence and law enforcement agencies no matter how effective they are cannot identify every would-be mass shooter, whether that individual is motivated by ISIL or some other hateful ideology. What we can do and must do is make it harder for them to kill.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/12/05/president-obama-addresses-nation-keeping-american-people-safe
Hillary Clinton: How I’d Rein In Wall Street (Hillary Group)
Hillary Clinton, Op-Ed Contributor, The New York TimesSEVEN years ago, the financial crisis sent our economy into a tailspin. Over five million people lost their homes. Nearly nine million lost their jobs. Nearly $13 trillion in household wealth was wiped out.
Under President Obama, our economy has come a long way back. Our businesses have created more than 13 million jobs. Peoples savings are being restored. And we have tough new rules on the books, including the Dodd-Frank Act, that protect consumers and curb recklessness on Wall Street.
But not everyone sees that as a good thing. Republicans, both in Congress and on the campaign trail, are dead-set on rolling back critical financial protections.
Right now, Republicans in Congress are working to attach damaging deregulation riders to the must-pass spending bill. Theyre attempting to defund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They want to roll back common-sense efforts to prevent conflicts of interest by financial managers. And theyre trying to undo constraints on risk at some of the largest and most complex financial institutions.
Read the rest at: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/07/opinion/hillary-clinton-how-id-rein-in-wall-street.html?_r=1
The Second Amendment Was Never Meant to Protect an Individual’s Right to a Gun
How the Supreme Court upended the well-established meaning of the Second Amendment.Source: The Nation, by Dorothy Samuels
Since President Obama will be speaking to this matter for the foreseeable future, we should clarify what exactly the 2nd Amendment is - and what it is not.
In common with the other big rightward swerves by the Roberts Court, the 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller was an aggressive exercise in mendacity. By upending the well-established meaning of the Second Amendment, the Court made the country less safe and less free. It did this under the guise of a neutral and principled originalism that looks to the text as it was first understood back in 1791 by the amendments drafters and their contemporaries.
Hellers 54 majority decision, written by Justice Antonin Scalia and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, was less in sync with the founding generation than with the top priority of a powerful interest group closely aligned with the Republican right. The National Rifle Association had been waging an intense 30-year campaign to secure an individuals constitutional right to keep and bear arms by winning over members of the public, high-level politicians, and, ultimately, the Supreme Court. Mission, to an alarming degree, accomplished.
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To grasp the audacity of what Scalia & Co. pulled off, turn to the Second Amendments text: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. To find in that wording an individual right to possess a firearm untethered to any militia purpose, the majority performed an epic feat of jurisprudential magic: It made the pesky initial clause about the necessity of a well regulated Militia disappear. Poof! Gone. Scalia treated the clause as merely prefatory and having no real operative effecta view at odds with history, the fundamental rules of constitutional interpretation, and the settled legal consensus for many decades.
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Then there was Scalias peculiar breakdown of the phrase keep and bear arms into its component words to argue that the Second Amendment protects a general right to possess gunseven though, as Stevens pointed out, the term bear arms was most commonly used in the 18th century to describe participation in the military.
And lets not overlook the most absurd thing, which Breyer tried to get at in a separately filed minority opinion: At a moment in modern America when more than 30,000 lives are lost to gun violence each year, and mass shootings are a common occurrence, the majority opinion relied heavily on a guesstimate (and a rotten one at that) of what the Second Amendment meant more than 200 years ago, with no common-sense balancing test taking into account the real-world consequences for today.
The complete story at: http://www.thenation.com/article/how-the-roberts-court-undermined-sensible-gun-control/
The Real Reason We Can’t Have Gun Control (Hillary Group)
Hillary has taken a strong position on implementing gun control policies, mostly popular with vast majorities of Americans. The Republican Congress refuses to even consider any of these measures.
Joan Walsh at "The Nation" has clearly articulated the essence of this issue, and as Hillary supporters - in the primary and over the next year, and then into the future - we should be aware of this fundamental core difference between "us and them."
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Its crazy, but we have to face the facts: Our prolonged gun control stalemate reflects the far-rights deep distrust of democracy, and its worsened by a party that panders to that paranoid base. Increasingly this right-wing fringe believes its going to need its guns to overthrow an illegitimate governmentespecially the one run by gun-grabbing Barack Obama. Theyve been shrieking that Obama is coming for their guns since before he became presidentthe NRA mailed its devotees a 10-point guide to the way Obama would eviscerate the Second Amendment in 2008. He did anything but; in his first year he signed a law overturning a ban on loaded and concealed guns in national parks in 2009. He left the issue of gun control alone, only talking about it three times during the 2012 campaign.
The passion for guns has political and cultural roots in our origin as a nation that laudably threw off tyrannywhile shamefully killing the people who lived here first, as settlers claimed the frontier. The continued mania for guns to ward off tyranny, even after wed overthrown our oppressors and settled the country by any means necessary, is a holdover from the Civil War, when the South violently seceded to protect slavery. There remains a suspicion, in the red states of the South and mountain West, but even in some pockets of blue states, that the elected government isnt entirely legitimate, and they may have to rely on Second Amendment remedies, in Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angles unforgettable phrase, to overthrow it.
It is appalling - absolutely appalling - to see "so-called" Democrats espousing the same disdain and contempt for virtually every level and function of our government. It feeds into this Republican fiction which mobilizes our opposition to continually turnout to vote, while many independent, 'low-information' voters will stay home muttering "a pox on both your houses."
Yes - we do have to stop being "like them."
Here is another chance!
Much more Joan Walsh at: http://www.thenation.com/article/the-real-reason-we-cant-have-gun-control/
Hillary in Montgomery AL - Dec. 1, 2015 60th Anniversary of Montgomery Bus Boycott
National Bar AssociationThe public meeting on December 1st will feature Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, Esq. and will include great Civil Rights leaders of the era and the present, Fred Gray and Benjamin L. Crump, along with the first African American woman to lead the American Bar Association, Paulette Brown.
11:00-1:00pm Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton: The Role of Lawyers in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Civil Rights Movement
Montgomery Improvement Association
The MIA was organized by Montgomery, Alabama ministers and leaders on December 5, 1955 after the overwhelming success of a one-day boycott by the citys black citizens who refused to ride the segregated city buses. The boycott was held in protest of the Dec. 1 arrest of Rosa Parks, a local seamstress, who refused to surrender her seat on the bus white passenger. With its president, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., a young and largely unknown Southern Baptist pastor at that time, the MIA would lead Montgomerys Black citizens in a 382-day standoff with the City of Montgomery in opposition to its segregationist policies.
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Is a Medicaid Turnabout Coming to the Deep South?
An election in Louisiana and a surprising recommendation from an Alabama task force are the latest cracks in red-state resistance to insuring the poor.Source: The Nation, by Zoë Carpenter
Gerald Dial, a Republican state senator from Alabama, expressed something of an unlikely opinion last week. Somebody is going to have to pay some more taxes, Dial said, so that Alabama can boost health insurance coverage for the poor.
Alabama is one of 20 states that have refused to accept federal money to expand their Medicaid programs through the Affordable Care Act. Thats left more than 3 million people across the country, including at least 185,000 Alabamans, stranded in a coverage gapnot poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, but too poor to afford insurance on their own. A disproportionate number of those are people of color, and theyre concentrated in Southern states.
But in a few parts of the Deep South, ideological pettiness is starting to give way to practical considerations. Dials comments came at the final meeting of a task force appointed by Governor Robert Bentley to study the states health challenges, which, to put it mildly, are daunting. Alabama ranks near the bottom of the country in rates of diabetes, sexually transmitted infections, infant mortality, and premature death. More than 13 percent of the population is uninsured, in part because the state has a stringent limit for Medicaid eligibility: parents making over 18 percent of the poverty level, or $3,616 for a family of three, dont qualify.
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The other bright spot is Louisiana, where Democratic State Representative John Bel Edwards trounced Republican David Vitter in the governors race Saturday. Edwards immediately promised that expanding Medicaid will be among the highest priorities of his administration. The state legislature passed a financing plan earlier this year that should allow him to do so. That would take more than 220,000 Louisianans off the list of the needlessly uninsured.
More at: http://www.thenation.com/article/is-a-medicaid-turnabout-coming-to-the-deep-south/
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