This is the Open Thread for the Bird’s Eye View Contest below. Please don’t leave any non-contest comments in that post. They WILL be deleted.
Can’t Bring Yourself to Type the Word “Ass”?
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I wonder how many kids have been killed with the guns they received as Christmas presents?
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news.....41381.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Look, I’m not a gun hater; what I hate is gun idiocy, and our country is drowning in it.
Guns owners are acting like idiots. Emboldened by the Supreme Court ruling in their favor, they’re aggressively pushing to remove what few gun controls there are, and openly flaunting their guns in public. All they’re doing is inflaming the very large segment of the population that doesn’t like this version of “gun rights.” If they had any brains, they’d keep a low profile in the wake of daily gun crimes and tragedies. They’re convincing the rest of America that gun owners don’t have any brains.
The minimum wage goes up on Wednesday in 13 states that didn’t wait around for Congressional Republicans to do the right thing.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/2.....?hpt=hp_t3
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Meanwhile, a King County judge ruled SeaTac’s minimum wage initiative doesn’t apply to airport workers, regardless of whether they work for the Port of Seattle or private companies.
I haven’t seen the opinion or the state statute the judge relied, but I don’t see how this will hold up in the State Supreme Court.
The ruling says the city can’t regulate port operations. That law probably was aimed at blocking municipal ordinances limiting flight hours, imposing noise regulations, etc. The question is how expansive the law is.
Supporters of the initiative complain the ruling confers sovereignty like an Indian tribe’s on the port. Legislative intent controls statutory interpretation, and my guess is that wasn’t the legislature’s intent. So I would expect the State Supreme Court to conclude the law has a limited reach.
The question then becomes whether regulating wages on airport property falls within interfering with port operations. The answer to that might be different for port employees and employees of private companies, although that’s probably a distinction without a difference, as I doubt any port employees earn minimum wage.
Here’s a question for the port: Do city health regulations apply to the airport? In other words, can a SeaTac food inspector shut down an airport food vendor for not complying with city health regulations? And if not, then who is inspecting the airport food concessions? The port? The feds? Anyone? And if the City of SeaTac can enforce its health regulations on airport property, then why can’t it also enforce workplace safety and labor standards regulations on airport property? What makes wages different from public health or workplace safety?
No legal case is easy, including this one, and I don’t expect this to be a slam-dunk for the initiative’s defenders. The superior court judge, who wrote a 33-page opinion, obviously wrestled with it. The State Supreme Court will have to wrestle with it, too. But I’ll be surprised if they read that statute as broadly as the trial judge did. I doubt the port will succeed at persuading the state’s highest court to give it tribal status. Our legislature doesn’t like tribal independence, and the tribes didn’t get that from state governments, they got it from Congresses intending to protect them from state governments.
Looks like the ethanol nonsense may finally come to an end. http://www.cnbc.com/id/101297359
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Corn-based ethanol gasoline additive doesn’t have anything going for it. It’s hard on car engines, makes gas cost more, drives up grocery prices, costs taxpayers money, and doesn’t clean up the air because growing corn burns diesel. The only people who benefit from the ethanol requirement are midwestern farmers getting rich by growing corn. Nearly half of America’s corn group ends up in gas tanks. That number should be zero, or at least significantly lower than it is now.
Was watching TV, Single Girls, and to show that the black boyfreind was conservative, they had him say:
Is that really how some people think? Discuss.
@4 Ethanol gained something of a positive reputation in Brazil, where instead of corn, cane sugar was the principal feedstock. I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if growing and harvesting cane is somewhat less mechanized than with factory-farm corn, but the distillation process used the sugar-cane stalks as fuel. This if nothing else would have created a lot of stinky smoke (far, of course, from the cities where the product was consumed) and worse yet, led to bulldozing huge areas of the Amazon rain forest, which happens to be Mother Earth’s primary tools for disposing of excess carbon dioxide.
On the other hand, if one looks across the sugar-cane fields in Hawaii (or the large uncultivated areas where the stuff still grows like a weed) it would seem obvious that our 50th state is sitting on a means of near energy independence. Big Oil thought of that first, though, and bought–er, lobbied for a set of statutes to prevent that from happening.
@2 Can you say, “Divide and conquer”? I knew you could!
A suspected bank robber and killing a police officer has been killed in Phoenix. He had in the past been arrested by the Secret Service.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/29/.....?hpt=hp_t1
Another terrorist attack in Volgograd, Russia. This time it was a trolleybus during Rush Hour. Volgograd, prior to the 1950’s, was called Stalingrad, yes, the Stalingrad that was the turning point on the Eastern Front during WWII.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25546477
@8 “The man suspected of robbing banks and killing a police officer was convicted of threatening President Barack Obama in 2010, the Secret Service said Sunday.”
I’ll bet he wasn’t a liberal.
10)Only got 8 months for that offense.
Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts has come out.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/29/.....?hpt=hp_t2
Well, the final report on the Newton Shooting has been released by the FBI. The mother of this Adam Lanza kid was pretty much obsessed with firearms, and the family had a tradition of outings that always included shooting the guns. The picture there is apparently that of Adam himself at age four.
The so-called “gun culture” is really just bizarre to me. It really is. I cannot understand how people can become so enamored of a killing toy. The psychology is that of Power. People who are weak in their minds compensate by enhancing their ability to withstand “threatening” behaviors with a weapon. When such are reduced to mere “tool” status, that creates the rationalization that the tool exists to be used.
Those “threatening behaviors” can come in hundreds of thousands of variations. Especially when taken in the context of personal reactive behaviors that were developed as children. It could be anything for some people. An unkind word, getting chewed out at work, simply being told NO about something, even mishearing someone talking in the background. When the primary tool used to respond to this is a firearm, there is no room for misunderstanding. This seems to be the case for an awful goddamn lot of people. They default to violent reaction rather than putting any effort into actually using their minds. It’s a form of laziness, and that is a learned behavior.
Perhaps destructive behavior should be taken in the wider context. In that, it is almost always the same. Is Martin Pang (as an example) really any different from Adam Lanza or James Holmes? Certainly on one level, yes. But at the same time, the psychology is likely very similar. The willingness, even enthusiasm for committing such an act can only come from that same desire to enhance one’s personal Power over something. It is always an extremely selfish thing.
We know for a fact that there are humans in this world who actively seek destruction. Who murder because they like it. Who set bombs off in train stations and airplanes because they have some sense of a personal exemption from the social mores that generally discourage such behavior. They are “on a mission”, or they’re cheap enough in their thinking to believe that they have the “right” to seek violent retribution for an offence, be that personal or more general, such as to the family or even as perceived to a national or cultural identity.
Somehow, these people get it into their minds, that they do not have to conform to the rules. That’s alright if all one is doing is smoking a little dope, or driving too fast in one’s car occasionally. Translate those behaviors into an individual who has no sense of revulsion to violence and then add a device that makes that violence so easy, so simple to carry out that one never need to so much as muss one’s hair in the process, and you have a really, seriously fucked-up situation. Translate those destructive tendencies into a corporate CEO or a Politician, and the same exact thing can occur on a mass scale. We’ve reduced warfare to the point of being just another industrial process. We’ve simplified the act of killing to the least physically demanding point possible. It requires almost zero physical effort to pull the trigger on a gun. It used to be that most of our ancestors had to look a man in the face as they were hacking them to pieces with a broadsword or a battle-axe. It was one-on-one. You had to chop away at that other guy who was doing the same to you, and you had to see the effects of those weapons up close. It required serious physical effort to do this.
We’ve institutionalized violent imagery in our entertainment to the point where nearly every single program on the television or in the movie theater has at least one killing. Every single story told includes violence. The old show “The Rifleman” had that exact premise. Lucas McCain killed at least one individual in every single episode. It was always the right and correct action to take. It was always justified in self-defence. But it was always there. There was always a valuable lesson to be taught to young Mark. But always in the context of when it is acceptable to kill. Killing was no more bothersome than tying one’s shoes. That was every single Cowboy show on TV for several decades. The same with the Police and detective shows. Always that theme, that violence is ultimately the solution to the problem.
I know any, many people who own firearms. I have several myself. I grew up in a town where the older kids in High School had that 30.06 or that 30-30 or something in the gun racks in their pickup trucks at school. I know several folks who raised their kids in much the same way as Adam Lanza’s mom did with him. The firearms were always around, they weren’t necessarily in your face, but the nice gun cabinet in the extra bedroom was common. Not a single one of those kids has ever used a firearm in anger. Well, except for a couple, but they joined the Marine Corps or the Army and went to Iraq and Afghanistan, and one is in the Philippines right now, shooting at the Moros on Mindanao.
But they joined up, because they had that sense of Duty. That literal exemption from the rules. Those rules that are supposed to stop people from hurting each other.
So the question is, are the rules really just unenforceable? Is it impossible to stop people from considering violent behavior a normal behavior? Is there any point where people are going to say “enough is fucking enough”?
@13 I notice a lot of the perps are doing themselves in. Which makes revenge impossible. I assume they’re motivated by knowledge of what happens to child killers in prison.
So, yeah, suicide makes the rules unenforceable, and someone who plans to kill himself obviously isn’t worried about consequences.
@14,
Can we teach the perps that they should commit suicide before they commit murder or other repugnant crimes?
It would solve a lot of issues…
MSNBC in action… Very ugly people manning a very ugly cable channel…
Melissa Perry mocking a black child in the Romney family! What’s next?
No wonder HA DUMMOCRETINS love MSNBC…
Very ugly HA donk love MSNBC! Wait until Friday!
@16
Oh, you poor, poor victim. Pull out the fainting couch….a right winger has his fee-fees hurt again.
puddibigot would of course have us forget all the vile, corrosive, venomous hate he spews with most of his posts – aimed at Mexican immigrants, gay people, uppity empowered women, MOOSLUMS!!, and anybody else he considers not in his tribe.
Peddle your bullshit elsewhere, puddibigot.
Puddy lives comfortably in schmucko-lunatic’s mind!
Of course schmucko-lunatic gives MSNBC hosts a pass when attacking anyone who isn’t a DUMMOCRETIN! Will Melissa Perry get a suspension for her lunacy? Prolly not… can’t touch a black DUMMOCRETIN! Calls of racism will abound!
– Mexican immigrants – are illegal aliens if they cross the border illegally
– gay people – think their two percent is 50.1% at the ballot box
– uppity empowered women – No problem with them, seems schmucko-lunatic does with his hatred of Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann
– MOOSLUMS – coddled by schmucko-lunatic… witness his ttue love of the Tsarnaev Brothers as a prime example
– anybody else he considers not in his tribe – That includes DUMMOCRETINS like you schmucko-lunatic.
Carry on being an idiot schmucko-lunatic! You perform that the best!
@18
Thank you for that list of rationalizations why you hate certain people.
I’m sure your god is coming in his Clouds O’Glory any day now to smite all of them.
(BTW I love how you can’t not defend two of the dumbest, greediest, griftiest charlatans presently practicing – makes you look even dumber, if that’s even possible)
Like our country the Romneys are a melting pot. They remind me of Britain’s royals, whose pedigree improves as more commoners blend into the family tree.