Iuz the Evil

I’ve come to the conclusion that essentially political beliefs have become something of a faith tradition versus an intellectual exercise in policy decision making. It’s profoundly unacceptable and even offensive to question doctrine, or even seek to understand the thinking behind it more deeply with any form of critical question. 

Really enjoying this dystopian reality where we're all scrambling around like mice trying not to get stepped on by ultra-wealthy kaiju as they have city-destroying fights with each other.

16.9% of Twitter is owned by the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund, which is considered the second largest investor after Musk. Not folks one would want to make lose a large amount of money.

And given the aforementioned function of business, he should be fired. The shareholders ought to be absolutely livid, that is gross incompetence.

One of the views that carried over from my conservative years is my admiration of Teddy Roosevelt. Sure, he's not unproblematic (which president is?) but he did have his moments.
 

Honestly, I found her tone offensive even while agreeing with the content of the paragraph, so I can see where Scholastic is coming from. On the other hand, the book seems to be widely acclaimed, and a publisher should have the cojones to handle a little bit of controversy. Especially one with Scholastic's clout.
 
 

Read that guy's post. While I agree with him on the racism, he's wrong on the stand your ground aspects. Stand your ground laws were not misapplied in either case. Just because the governor is squawking about stand your ground laws in this case, or because the press was in Zimmerman doesn't mean the laws were really relevant. Here's the crux of both cases: Self defense does not apply if you provoke the conflict that leads to the killing.
 
This was correctly applied in both cases, according to the evidence at hand. In the Texas case, given the evidence of intent and the fact that the moron was driving through a crowd, it was very clear the killer was seeking to provoke a confrontation. It doesn't matter if the victim did point his weapon at the shooter. The killer provoked the confrontation. In the Zimmerman case, simply following his victim was not illegal. Zimmerman was attacked, regardless of the size disparity, with physical evidence that supported that part of Zimmerman's story (being on his back with the victim on top of him, smashing his head into the ground. (And the weight advantage is a non-starter when the smaller guy is fit. Martin was the same size I was when I was in the Army, and I could have easily overwhelmed Zimmerman when I was that age.) The missing piece in the Zimmerman case was a witness to Zimmerman provoking the confrontation. I firmly believe he provoked the confrontation and should have been severely punished, but the law was not misapplied, nor was it "wrong." The system sometimes lets human filth loose because there are strict standards of proof. That's working as intended, no matter how distasteful the results often are.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I don’t believe there’s really any conflict there. Talking points aside both parties are extremely FOR federal regulation, just only in the areas they prefer. Oh and “rules for thee, but not for me”.

NATO now surrounds a peace loving country....
that is, Sweden
 
Finland has joined NATO
 
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/finland-set-join-nato-historic-shift-while-sweden-waits-2023-04-04/
 
Sweden is trying to join too so , which is good, then it won't be surrounded
 
 

It’s difficult to have any level of nuance in discussion of complex issues in the public arena, and politicians are absolutely complicit in attempts to steer the conversation in line with their own interests. Whether it’s the Republicans pushing to make this an issue about perpetrator sexual or gender identity, an effort to discuss arming teachers, or avoiding discussion of reasonable restrictions on weaponry in civilian hands the playbook is self evident. Similarly, absolutist positions on “a good first step” every time there’s a restriction on second amendment rights, and ignoring case law and Supreme Court precedent in crafting new regulation restricting those rights related to firearms ownership, as well as deflection on any number of competing factors (such as criminal possession of firearms where existing laws would have been completely adequate if enforced, appeal to emotion, disingenuous descriptors of firearms and the like) are features of the Democrat playbook on this issue. Fundamentally, one group sees this as a rights issue and the other sees it as a public safety issue. It can be both, you can have an individual right to bear arms (which is not absolute as with any of the Bill of Rights, but it’s not a “second class right” either as noted in both the Heller and Bruen decisions) and there can be pressing public safety issues which need to be considered and responded to by the State. I don’t see anyone in our binary system having that discussion. Not a ton of space for moderate positions in public discourse these days.

Click bait:
 
"It is also not clear whether those staff members were present on campus when the shooting took place. Police have also not stated yet that any staff members at the school had a gun or fired at the shooter."
 
The headline should read: "A woman who called 911 while hiding under a desk during the shooting said to the dispatcher that one or two staff members carry guns" (Also a direct quote from the article.)
 
I will say that this:
 
“ 'We do have a school person, or two ... I’m not sure ... who would be packing, whose job it is for security. We don’t have security guards, but we have staff.' ”
 
does not strike me as a good idea.
 
It'll be interesting to see if any details come out on whether these armed staff were on campus and what their story was if they were. Hopefully, they exercised good judgement and took care of the students in their classes as their first priority. If they were there, it doesn't seem like any of them were foolish enough to try to hunt down the shooter, at least.
 

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/30/europe/turkey-vote-finland-nato-membership-intl/index.html
 
Finland will be admitted to NATO, Sweden pending approval but hopefully soon.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/30/europe/turkey-vote-finland-nato-membership-intl/index.html
 
Finland will be admitted to NATO, Sweden pending approval but hopefully soon.

I still can't embrace that kind of thinking. Garbage laws impact the wrong people negatively, and ultimately solve nothing. We'll have to agree to disagree on this point, though I do understand that kind of frustration that drives this kind of approach.

Not to be contrarian, but I didn't see much reason there. It looked like Biden's staff just puked up every idea the Democrats have come up with over the last twenty-five years or so, including imaginary technologies. Seems like Biden didn't actually "plan" anything, or put any thought into it, TBH.
 
Not to mention: The dems can take control of Congress, but they have a Supreme Court who is going to shoot down almost anything they pass.
 
To solve these issues -- and I'm not discounting gun legislation here -- they need to come up with something that's actually practical and passes constitutional muster, and work across the aisle. Which isn't happening with the current and apparently unceasing extreme polarization of our political parties.
 
The only alternative is that they play the long game and change the public opinion on private firearms ownership, so that they can eventually have the numbers to amend the constitution. Which is what they're doing. I'm sure they're aware of the impracticality of most of their proposals, but by inventing a new language around firearms, they can slowly turn the public opinion on firearms over a few generations. They only left off one motto there: "Guns are doubleplus ungood."
 
ETA: That cultural shift may ultimately be a good thing, but not if the root causes of violence aren't also addressed. I'd like to hear more actionable near term solutions along with the usual rhetoric.
 
 
 

Here's the thing: Most of that is benign. The vast, vast majority of gun owners or participants in "gun culture" are harmless. The problem is that many of them are profoundly stupid, but they are mostly harmless. Getting rid of gun culture is only necessary if you want tighter restrictions on firearms. (Which may be a useful thing. Canada's own model isn't too onerous. It's just a tiny bit far for me, but not shabby.) If you eradicated gun culture, you won't have addressed the root problem that drives these violent crimes.
 
The mass shooter events are people who are either radicalized or deeply disturbed on some level that goes much deeper than you describe. And that's only a small fraction of gun deaths in this country. The vast majority of gun violence is economically driven, and criminal on criminal (with innocents often caught between). De-stigmatizing mental health care, effective use of red flag and involuntary psych admission laws (like California's 5150 code), and public education for spotting signs of this level of untreated anger or depression are what will help prevent a shooter like this latest from taking action. We also need to do much, much more to curb gang violence, on so many levels: both in gang interventions (teaching them not to murder each other), gang diversions (protecting children from getting forced into gangs), killing the drug and human trafficking trades, and providing real economic opportunities to every one of our communities . . . and probably more. It's a big task.
 
One other thing that might help, that I may only see get worse in my lifetime, is if our freaking leaders quit acting like children and started getting along well enough to do their basic job.

I just watched the body cam footage (not going to post it here, it's on YT) of the police response. From the time they entered the building, it took just over two minutes to kill the shooter. Good work on the part of responding officers. The shooter was on the second floor, in an open space, apparently shooting out a window, rather than holed up in a classroom this time. They seemed intent on getting killed by police, as one source reported a text sent of the "I'm going to die today, you'll hear about it in the news" variety (paraphrased). 

That didn't look competent at all to me. 

I live in California and have been following the latest restrictions and court proceedings. It’s a bit more complicated than that, California’s 2013 and later regulations are certainly among the most restrictive in the nation. California’s mortality rate due to firearms is quite low, although mass casualty events continue to occur. 
 
 Separate and apart from the ostensible public safety benefit of these regulations, it is not at all clear they are legally sound. Multiple court cases challenging the California firearms roster (such as Boland v Bonta which just issued a preliminary injunction against the State) and the cases before judge Benitez (assault weapons ban, magazine ban, etc) are very active and expected to resolve in the lower courts by this summer. The 9th circuit may overturn those rulings, I would guess. Then it’ll be up to the SCOTUS. The ruling on the Boland case injunction is really an interesting read and focuses specifically on some of the feature restrictions.
 
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/64860477/lance-boland-v-robert-bonta/
 
 Then there’s the firearms law modeled after the Texas abortion ban. It’s every bit the legal abomination as Texas’s law, for the same reasons. AG Bonta, who is about as anti firearms as you can imagine, declined to defend it. The Governor is choosing to do so with his own attorneys, in a move that is reminiscent of his counterparts in other regions of the nation.
 
It’s a complicated issue here, very regional and very polarizing. If you are outside the Urban population centers your are likely to get a very different answer than in the Bay Area or Los Angeles.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/26/middleeast/israel-judicial-overhaul-legislation-intl/index.html
 
Yikes. What’s happening with the Israeli judiciary is really scary stuff. I don’t love all the aspects of our current Supreme Court, but giving congress the power to manage them in this way would eliminate one of the branches of government - essentially making it totally subordinate to the legislative branch.
 
 Very unpopular with the public too, apparently. Likely to go through anyway. Pretty alarming.

I'm not sure on that sanity bit. If you went to the ER in CA (or anywhere) talking about imaginary threats and technologies, you'd be held for psych evaluation, for example. And yet CA has codified these things into law. Not to mention the requirements to add to the list of allowed firearms being so restrictive as to be unconstitutional. 

CA is playing the same game with microstamping that TX is playing with its heartbeat abortion law: Making a requirement that looks like there's some small exception in the law that doesn't exist in actuality. Texas allows abortions as long as there isn't a fetal heartbeat. But that can start -- depending on how you look at it -- as early as four or five weeks (there's a "heartbeat" but as I understand it not a proper heart, just a tube structure), while the average time it takes a woman to discover she's pregnant sits out at 5.5 weeks (and probably a lot later in many cases). So, effectively no abortions. Meanwhile, California requires a firearm to be on its roster of allowable guns to have a feature that isn't viable and doesn't exist (microstamping). This type of tactic is dirty whether one agrees the end result is desirable or not.
 
I personally think we have a bit too much ends justifies the means mentality in this country these days.

They are certainly more restrictive. Their sanity is subject to debate, such as with micro stamping and the fact the roster has not added a new firearm since 2014, but we have very strong regulation.
 
Edit: it’s far more complex than what I said regarding adding new firearms to the roster. But it is factually correct that commonly used firearms in most States, are not presently added. And additionally there is a caveat that for every model added, three must be removed. There are significant questions about the legality of that latter regulation, which is currently being challenged and pending ruling, but is the law until overturned.

There are a number of alternative explanations I’ve heard that various proponents of essentially unlimited 2A rights (of which I am not one, albeit my views also do not align with the “No firearms more advanced than single shot bolt action deer rifles” either). Typically they are fierce individual Liberty folks, who do not want to rely on law enforcement or any aspect of government and oppose many kinds of regulation. Or they are former military who want to be able to defend themselves and their loved ones, and do not want the force of law to place restrictions on how they do so. Or they are constitutional originalists who do not believe an amendment should be modified causally (or at all) without adherence to the process for doing so. There are regional cultural beliefs even here in California that inform this (San Francisco being very difficult than say, Red Bluff). Some are fringe or very odd and certainly some are motivated in the way you describe, I could not say how many. I haven’t personally ran across that group significantly in my dabbling as a hobbyist. They aren’t really a single bloc of political or philosophical beliefs, so it’s hard to put that into a simple category other than they do not like firearms regulations. Certainly you could argue the merits of their beliefs as you can with any position discussed. They often see this as a fundamental individual rights issue, while their opponents see it as a pubic safety imperative. There’s rarely a middle ground for constructive dialogue as a result, so any changes are almost inevitably going to be decided on in court irrespective of legislation or my personal opinions.
 
 As noted in the Pew study, it’s also a consequential number of folks who don’t love the idea of additional regulation in this area. The reasons are varied from what I’ve seen. And not limited to a single party or group, which can be uncomfortable to contemplate. It skews to one political axis, but it’s not limited to that.
 
 Anyway, that’s my observation. I’m not going to get into this topic further as I enjoy the perspectives on this site. It saves a useful role for me to reflect on Progressive perspectives, I’ve got a different one for the other side.

Without getting into subjective perspectives on “why” here’s some data from the Pew Research center.
 
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/09/13/key-facts-about-americans-and-guns/
 
There are certainly divides on race. And Urban versus Rural. And gun ownership versus non gun ownership. It’s complicated.

They are, it’s unfortunate they were allowed to go as far as they did, but given the behavior exhibited a day in court is their legal right. May the former POTUS also receive the opportunity to exercise that right.
 
I would hope that the responsible institutions will be prepared if they need arises again.