I’m sure that the NRA will make hay out of the stabbings at the Houston college this week. A kid went berserk with an exacto knife, and while there were injuries severe enough for hospitalization, no one died.
“Guns don’t kill people, exacto knives do” will surely be the new battle cry.
Did everyone notice both Kansas Senators voted to not have a vote on the weak background check bill? Yep. Bought and paid for by the gun lobby. They are not just beholding to the Kochs!
I did make note of both Moran and Roberts votes. They owe their souls…
I also made note of the final vote: 68 — 31
And yes Moran and Roberts may be a big deal in Kansas, but their influence is very small and shrinking.
This fight is only beginning, and there are finally groups that can give the NRA and gun manufacturers a good run for their money. It will happen. The sane people will prevail.
Republicans are still laughing at Al Gore for proposing a Social Security “lock box.”
Again and again, self-righteous critics have portrayed Social Security as the profligate monster borrowing from the Treasury and sucking the life out of federal government. Guess what? It’s the other way around. The federal government borrows from Social Security. The Treasury has been borrowing from the Social Security Trust Fund for 30 years, and the debt to Social Security beneficiaries now totals nearly $3 trillion. The day is approaching when that money will be needed for its original purpose: paying Social Security benefits to the working people who contributed to the fund.
That is the real crisis that makes the financial barons and their media collaborators so anxious to cut Social Security benefits. They would like to get out of repaying the debt—that is, giving the money back to the people who earned it. The only way to do this is cut the benefits—over and over again. Count on it. If the president and Congress succeed in this malicious scheme, they will come back again and again to cut more and more.
If the future of our country depends on voters paying attention, I’m worried. If it depends on them paying attention and understanding the truth, well, I’m depressed. Especially as regards Kansas voters.
Sadly, I know you’re right. Kansas is a tiny state with declining rural population. And it is a state where old white men are getting older by the day. Mother Nature will take care of some of our state’s challenges.
I am not as optimistic about Mother Nature taking care of some of our challenges..
I work the health care business and I have seen the consequences..
When Drug Manufacturers got GWB to put in the unfunded Medicare Drug Program – that has helped to push Medicare into it’s current troubled financial straits…
But ….without Medicare…Mother Nature would be doing what she has always done…..
But WITH Medicare …..Mother Nature has been postponed for a lot of folks..
You see, those Drug Manufacturers have made a lot of money off those drugs that have kept Mother Nature at bay……..
I call it the ‘Pickled and Pumped’ generation…
When my 98-yr-old grandmother died, she was hard of hearing, very low vision and could not get out of her bed without the help of the lift machine. The only real communication from her was through her eyes…..and her eyes were very sad.
When she did talk (which stopped about 3 years ago) – she told me that she wanted to be with Grandpa and her family.
Grandma was the last one in her generation to still be alive…….and she also asked me once why she was still here…….
To which I had no reply (to her) …but I know why. Without Medicare paying for her drugs and latest medical technology – Grandma would have probably died a lot sooner.
When these Pro LIfe folks talk about the sanctity of life – do they also think about the quality of life?
I am not here to advocate for euthanasia – ie death panels – but I am here to ask the question …….why is it such a big sin to say no to medical treatment if and when a person does not want it anymore?
But….when Medicare will pay for it…….then these family members will sign up their Mom and Dad for the whole 9 yards – the works.
A lot of times, in my past experience of dealing with long-term care patients, the ‘works’ is the last thing some of these older folks desire.
Bottom line – if our society truly values life – then we need to pay for it.
But we also need to respect everyone’s right to make that choice for themselves.
It’s a difficult path ahead — making America a country where mass murderers are less well armed and reducing our culture of gun violence. I don’t expect it to happen quickly or easily. It is worth doing!
I live in Kansas. I see people who worship their guns and strap them on when they leave their home in high hopes this will be the day when they get to actually use their gun. The best I can hope for is to be nowhere near if they decide this is the time they’ve been waiting and hoping for.
In the past few weeks four states — New York, Colorado, Connecticut and Maryland — have managed to move forward with gun-control laws that are sensible. They give me hope. Oh, not for Kansas, but nationally. I’m well aware that even after sensible laws are passed at the national level Kansas will be drug along kicking and screaming like the recalcitrant child.
I remember in 2008 when SCOTUS overturned a ban on handguns in Washington DC that Scalia wrote: “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
The good news is (1) something close to universal background checks before purchasing a gun is likely to be passed by Congress next week, (2) support is growing on Capitol Hill (and in the nation) for a pathway to legal citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and (3) nothing is likely to come of the President’s budget.
Budget proposals have no legal authority; they’re symbolic documents. And given Republican recalcitrance, the President’s symbolic document is heading nowhere.
The bad news is how regressive the President’s symbolism turned out to be — not only his proposed cut in future Social Security’s payments but also the new taxes he includes. Analysts at the Brookings-Urban Institute Tax Policy Center say 70 percent of those proposed tax increases would be paid by those with incomes below $200,000.
Inequality is the root cause of our economic problems. Retail sales were down in March and the unemployment report was horrible, because America’s vast middle class is still losing ground and consumer spending is 70 percent of economic activity in America. Had the median wage kept up with economic growth over the last three decades, it would be over $90,000 today instead of $44,000 — and tax revenues from those higher wages would have eliminated the budget deficit while allowing for more investment in education and infrastructure, and for universal health insurance.
I must report something that happened this morning.
I had to call the Internal Revenue Service with a few questions. I was put on hold and was told by a pleasant automated voice that my wait time was estimated to be about 10-15 minutes.
I listened to the music in between updated automated messages as to the website of the IRS, new toll free numbers for certain tax issues, etc.
Finally, a man came on the line and had one of those ‘radio voices’ – deep and commanding voice.
My first thought was – Here we go….
But – to my surprise – this man was absolutely delightful and helpful. He even asked me at the end if there was anything else I needed to know – since I had put in my time of waiting and I had him on the line.
I told this man that I am not one of those folks who hate the government. I also told him that I knew he had a hard job to do when dealing with the public. I also said that if these government haters want services – then they need to be willing to pay for those services.
The man simply chuckled and said thank you ma’am – you’ve made my day a lot better.
But I sincerely meant what I said…….if people expect services from their government – then they need to willing to pay for those services.
Where in the world does it say certain people get everything for nothing?
Which brings us back to Medicare …..if the Tea Party hates federal government spending so much….then they can stop getting those free Medicare Drugs that WE the TAXPAYERS are paying for..
When I read the hospital discharge summary where a doctor actually brags that he talked a grown child into the decision to put their father on dialysis to ‘prolong their life for a good 6 months’ – that is what makes my blood boil…
This doctor even went through details of how the father did not want dialysis and his wife did not want to put him on dialysis….so this doctor went to one of the grown kids to get permission…
What the Hell????
I just wonder….how much profit did the dialysis company and/or doctor make off those potential 6 months of life?
Just a reminder the republicans are still saying there is no war on women. [eye roll]
(from the link) In the first quarter of 2013, states have proposed 694 provisions related to a woman’s body, how she gets pregnant, or how she chooses to end that pregnancy.
A new report released on Thursday by the Guttmacher Institute takes a comprehensive look at how the War on Women has continued past the election cycle and into 2013. It shows that the new legislatures across the country are still very much dedicated to restricting sex education, availability of medication, and abortion access for women. Indeed, 47 percent of the 694 provisions were directly related to abortion:
Maybe Rick Warren can help in our current gun control debate?
I know what it is like for a family to go through the grief of a suicide. On my grandmother’s side of the family – there were two sons that committed suicide within a year of each other.
These were grown men with families. Who knows the real reason behind suicide but – as like in Rick Warren’s son, my distant cousins used a gun.
The way I see this gun debate is that we have way too many guns in our society. And the type of human-killing machines that use those flesh-tearing bullets. No hunter needs that capability of firepower…
I’ve said this before – I grew up with guns in my neighborhood. All the men and their sons went hunting. But we did not have these human-killing machines that we see today ……..we had rifles and maybe a handgun for target shooting.
But that was it…..plus, we had more respect for our fellow humans than our current society seems to have.
Is that the consequence of Reagan’s trickle-down economics where the value of life is only viewed in how much money you have in your bank account? Or possibly due to the vast number of these Corporate Mega Churches that seem to be more interested in being the Tax-Free Country Club than to follow the actual teachings of Jesus – like feeding the hungry, finding home for the homeless, helping people find jobs, training, etc.
Somewhere between my childhood and today – our priorities have been turned upside down…….
Who changed the damn rules —and why???
Profits before people…….is that really the true America mantra..
In this article, it tells of the time Jonathan Winters was handed a long stick and the many characters he made out of that stick…..
That reminded me of another comedian of days gone by that I truly liked – Red Skelton.
He was another comedian that could take the simplest of ideas and just run with it……..
And both of these men were given the talents to make people laugh…..and damn if we don’t need a good laugh to get us through some of these days with this partisan political bickering B.S.
Don’t forget the Bush gifts that keep on adding to the debt….unfunded wars, veterans needing benefits, reduced revenues, Big Pharma’s Medicare Part D…$4 trillion after he left office and calculated to cost $7 trillion before this nightmare from Dubya will end!
PrairiePopulistsAndProgressives.net 
Kinda like when an insane person goes berserk with a knife — no one dies.
I’m sure that the NRA will make hay out of the stabbings at the Houston college this week. A kid went berserk with an exacto knife, and while there were injuries severe enough for hospitalization, no one died.
“Guns don’t kill people, exacto knives do” will surely be the new battle cry.
Did everyone notice both Kansas Senators voted to not have a vote on the weak background check bill? Yep. Bought and paid for by the gun lobby. They are not just beholding to the Kochs!
I did make note of both Moran and Roberts votes. They owe their souls…
I also made note of the final vote: 68 — 31
And yes Moran and Roberts may be a big deal in Kansas, but their influence is very small and shrinking.
This fight is only beginning, and there are finally groups that can give the NRA and gun manufacturers a good run for their money. It will happen. The sane people will prevail.
Republicans are still laughing at Al Gore for proposing a Social Security “lock box.”
Again and again, self-righteous critics have portrayed Social Security as the profligate monster borrowing from the Treasury and sucking the life out of federal government. Guess what? It’s the other way around. The federal government borrows from Social Security. The Treasury has been borrowing from the Social Security Trust Fund for 30 years, and the debt to Social Security beneficiaries now totals nearly $3 trillion. The day is approaching when that money will be needed for its original purpose: paying Social Security benefits to the working people who contributed to the fund.
That is the real crisis that makes the financial barons and their media collaborators so anxious to cut Social Security benefits. They would like to get out of repaying the debt—that is, giving the money back to the people who earned it. The only way to do this is cut the benefits—over and over again. Count on it. If the president and Congress succeed in this malicious scheme, they will come back again and again to cut more and more.
Voters need to be paying very careful attention!
If the future of our country depends on voters paying attention, I’m worried. If it depends on them paying attention and understanding the truth, well, I’m depressed. Especially as regards Kansas voters.
Kansas voters…as dumb as you think!
Sadly, I know you’re right. Kansas is a tiny state with declining rural population. And it is a state where old white men are getting older by the day. Mother Nature will take care of some of our state’s challenges.
I am not as optimistic about Mother Nature taking care of some of our challenges..
I work the health care business and I have seen the consequences..
When Drug Manufacturers got GWB to put in the unfunded Medicare Drug Program – that has helped to push Medicare into it’s current troubled financial straits…
But ….without Medicare…Mother Nature would be doing what she has always done…..
But WITH Medicare …..Mother Nature has been postponed for a lot of folks..
You see, those Drug Manufacturers have made a lot of money off those drugs that have kept Mother Nature at bay……..
I call it the ‘Pickled and Pumped’ generation…
When my 98-yr-old grandmother died, she was hard of hearing, very low vision and could not get out of her bed without the help of the lift machine. The only real communication from her was through her eyes…..and her eyes were very sad.
When she did talk (which stopped about 3 years ago) – she told me that she wanted to be with Grandpa and her family.
Grandma was the last one in her generation to still be alive…….and she also asked me once why she was still here…….
To which I had no reply (to her) …but I know why. Without Medicare paying for her drugs and latest medical technology – Grandma would have probably died a lot sooner.
When these Pro LIfe folks talk about the sanctity of life – do they also think about the quality of life?
I am not here to advocate for euthanasia – ie death panels – but I am here to ask the question …….why is it such a big sin to say no to medical treatment if and when a person does not want it anymore?
But….when Medicare will pay for it…….then these family members will sign up their Mom and Dad for the whole 9 yards – the works.
A lot of times, in my past experience of dealing with long-term care patients, the ‘works’ is the last thing some of these older folks desire.
Bottom line – if our society truly values life – then we need to pay for it.
But we also need to respect everyone’s right to make that choice for themselves.
It’s a difficult path ahead — making America a country where mass murderers are less well armed and reducing our culture of gun violence. I don’t expect it to happen quickly or easily. It is worth doing!
I live in Kansas. I see people who worship their guns and strap them on when they leave their home in high hopes this will be the day when they get to actually use their gun. The best I can hope for is to be nowhere near if they decide this is the time they’ve been waiting and hoping for.
In the past few weeks four states — New York, Colorado, Connecticut and Maryland — have managed to move forward with gun-control laws that are sensible. They give me hope. Oh, not for Kansas, but nationally. I’m well aware that even after sensible laws are passed at the national level Kansas will be drug along kicking and screaming like the recalcitrant child.
I remember in 2008 when SCOTUS overturned a ban on handguns in Washington DC that Scalia wrote: “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
Robert Reich says on his Facebook:
The good news is (1) something close to universal background checks before purchasing a gun is likely to be passed by Congress next week, (2) support is growing on Capitol Hill (and in the nation) for a pathway to legal citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and (3) nothing is likely to come of the President’s budget.
Budget proposals have no legal authority; they’re symbolic documents. And given Republican recalcitrance, the President’s symbolic document is heading nowhere.
The bad news is how regressive the President’s symbolism turned out to be — not only his proposed cut in future Social Security’s payments but also the new taxes he includes. Analysts at the Brookings-Urban Institute Tax Policy Center say 70 percent of those proposed tax increases would be paid by those with incomes below $200,000.
Inequality is the root cause of our economic problems. Retail sales were down in March and the unemployment report was horrible, because America’s vast middle class is still losing ground and consumer spending is 70 percent of economic activity in America. Had the median wage kept up with economic growth over the last three decades, it would be over $90,000 today instead of $44,000 — and tax revenues from those higher wages would have eliminated the budget deficit while allowing for more investment in education and infrastructure, and for universal health insurance.
I must report something that happened this morning.
I had to call the Internal Revenue Service with a few questions. I was put on hold and was told by a pleasant automated voice that my wait time was estimated to be about 10-15 minutes.
I listened to the music in between updated automated messages as to the website of the IRS, new toll free numbers for certain tax issues, etc.
Finally, a man came on the line and had one of those ‘radio voices’ – deep and commanding voice.
My first thought was – Here we go….
But – to my surprise – this man was absolutely delightful and helpful. He even asked me at the end if there was anything else I needed to know – since I had put in my time of waiting and I had him on the line.
I told this man that I am not one of those folks who hate the government. I also told him that I knew he had a hard job to do when dealing with the public. I also said that if these government haters want services – then they need to be willing to pay for those services.
The man simply chuckled and said thank you ma’am – you’ve made my day a lot better.
But I sincerely meant what I said…….if people expect services from their government – then they need to willing to pay for those services.
Where in the world does it say certain people get everything for nothing?
Which brings us back to Medicare …..if the Tea Party hates federal government spending so much….then they can stop getting those free Medicare Drugs that WE the TAXPAYERS are paying for..
One more point about Medicare…
When I read the hospital discharge summary where a doctor actually brags that he talked a grown child into the decision to put their father on dialysis to ‘prolong their life for a good 6 months’ – that is what makes my blood boil…
This doctor even went through details of how the father did not want dialysis and his wife did not want to put him on dialysis….so this doctor went to one of the grown kids to get permission…
What the Hell????
I just wonder….how much profit did the dialysis company and/or doctor make off those potential 6 months of life?
Those Brits……
http://music.msn.com/music/article.aspx?news=802068
The very best I can do is remember the warning: If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.
Well – I did have to laugh when the same Brits nicknamed Romney – Mitt the Twit.
They were right in that instance – weren’t they?
They seem able to recognize bullshit when they hear it. Americans could learn a lot from them! 🙂
Just a reminder the republicans are still saying there is no war on women. [eye roll]
(from the link) In the first quarter of 2013, states have proposed 694 provisions related to a woman’s body, how she gets pregnant, or how she chooses to end that pregnancy.
A new report released on Thursday by the Guttmacher Institute takes a comprehensive look at how the War on Women has continued past the election cycle and into 2013. It shows that the new legislatures across the country are still very much dedicated to restricting sex education, availability of medication, and abortion access for women. Indeed, 47 percent of the 694 provisions were directly related to abortion:
In Just Three Months, States Proposed An Astonishing 694 Provisions About Reproduction
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/04/11/1854321/abortion-restrictions-2013/
Maybe Rick Warren can help in our current gun control debate?
I know what it is like for a family to go through the grief of a suicide. On my grandmother’s side of the family – there were two sons that committed suicide within a year of each other.
These were grown men with families. Who knows the real reason behind suicide but – as like in Rick Warren’s son, my distant cousins used a gun.
The way I see this gun debate is that we have way too many guns in our society. And the type of human-killing machines that use those flesh-tearing bullets. No hunter needs that capability of firepower…
I’ve said this before – I grew up with guns in my neighborhood. All the men and their sons went hunting. But we did not have these human-killing machines that we see today ……..we had rifles and maybe a handgun for target shooting.
But that was it…..plus, we had more respect for our fellow humans than our current society seems to have.
Is that the consequence of Reagan’s trickle-down economics where the value of life is only viewed in how much money you have in your bank account? Or possibly due to the vast number of these Corporate Mega Churches that seem to be more interested in being the Tax-Free Country Club than to follow the actual teachings of Jesus – like feeding the hungry, finding home for the homeless, helping people find jobs, training, etc.
Somewhere between my childhood and today – our priorities have been turned upside down…….
Who changed the damn rules —and why???
Profits before people…….is that really the true America mantra..
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/11/matthew-warren-unregistered-gun-bought-online_n_3064359.html
Jonathan Winters died……..I always liked Jonathan Winters – even when he was downright silly.
But – that man had some improv talents that certainly paved the way for so many other comedians….
http://tv.msn.com/tv/article.aspx?news=802153
In this article, it tells of the time Jonathan Winters was handed a long stick and the many characters he made out of that stick…..
That reminded me of another comedian of days gone by that I truly liked – Red Skelton.
He was another comedian that could take the simplest of ideas and just run with it……..
And both of these men were given the talents to make people laugh…..and damn if we don’t need a good laugh to get us through some of these days with this partisan political bickering B.S.
Don’t forget the Bush gifts that keep on adding to the debt….unfunded wars, veterans needing benefits, reduced revenues, Big Pharma’s Medicare Part D…$4 trillion after he left office and calculated to cost $7 trillion before this nightmare from Dubya will end!
The last Republican president to balance a budget was Dwight Eisenhower.
Check out the tax rates during his presidency..