Comments by JohnTieber
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Posted on February 21 at 12:42 p.m.
Just arrived via my RSS feed minutes ago:
"In the flood of commentary about the Newtown massacre and broader US gun violence, liberals tend to blame failures of gun control while conservatives blame the mentally ill and Hollywood. But they are both missing one important and overlooked explanation: the domestic consequences of a militarized superpower engaged in chronic wars around the world.
"The US spends more money on the military than the next ten countries together. It also has the highest level of domestic gun violence in the developed world. Highly militarized societies cannot compartmentalize foreign from domestic violence. They cannot prevent wars – and guns – from coming home."
Excerpt above is from:
'Might Makes Right Based Violence By the Military Promotes Violence At Home'
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/0...
Posted on February 21 at 9:45 a.m.
In my opinion, 'The High Cost of Pharmaceutical Violence' would be more apt, more relevant to mass shootings, and more useful to the public, but that would require going up against gigantic, transnational, criminal corporations, 80% which have been convicted of felonies or are currently under a corporate integrity agreement:
'Punishing Health Care Fraud — Is the GSK Settlement Sufficient?'
New England Journal of Medicine
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/...
Posted on February 19 at 2:37 p.m.
Having been a Catholic until the age of twelve, I liked this article better than Stefania Tutino's insights (excerpts below, link at bottom):
[Just to be sure I wasn't missing anything, I did a page search for "criminal", "criminality", and "prosecution" while my comment was in preview, and none of those words appeared prior to this comment.]
"...Vatican officials announced that Joseph Ratzinger will remain a permanent resident of Vatican City after his resignation. Doing so will offer him legal protection from any attempt to prosecute him in connection with sexual abuse cases around the world, Church sources said today "His continued presence in the Vatican is necessary, otherwise he might be defenseless".
"This startling admission of guilt by the church is also a direct obstruction of justice, and lends more weight to the charge by the ITCCS and others that the Vatican has arranged with the Italian government to shield Ratzinger from criminal prosecution, in violation of international laws ratified by Italy.
"The Vatican decided today to give permanent sanctuary to a proven war criminal by allowing Joseph Ratzinger to obstruct justice and evade prosecution for crimes against humanity. And the government of Italy is colluding in this abrogation of international law.
"This decision validates our claims about the criminal conspiracy surrounding Ratzinger and his Vatican co-conspirators. It also makes it clear that the Vatican is a rogue power that is flaunting every law to conceal its own criminality.
"In response, the ITCCS calls upon its affiliates and all people of conscience to use our upcoming Easter Reclamation Campaign to converge on Rome and the Vatican to force the extradition of Ratzinger from Vatican City, and place him and his accessories on trial for crimes against humanity...
"… Joe Ratzinger should know from the history of his own former SS buddies that criminal institutions can run, but they can't hide – even behind all the wealth and pomp in the world…"
Posted on February 15 at 12:31 p.m.
Botany (@ first comment):
Also:
• Not an issue for me, as I don't consume industrial fast food, or any food for that matter, from non-local establishments.
Posted on February 13 at 9:06 p.m.
I'm not familiar with what's happening in the government schools in Santa Barbara, but elsewhere they seem to be transforming into training for prison. Children as young as five are being terrorized, suspended, dragged into police stations, etc. for the most absurdly trivial things that are normal for children to do. They seem to be really ramping this up after Sandy Hook: recently a 5-year old was terrorized and handcuffed to a pipe for bringing in a very crude paper gun — simply a flat sheet of white paper with a section cut out — that her grandfather had made for her while playing a game; a young boy was terrorized and severely disciplined for simulating throwing a grenade (i.e. he actually threw nothing) on the playground while imagining that he was a superhero saving the world; another was suspended for having an image of a gun as a computer screensaver.
Starshine makes a very good point here: "...These aren’t the measured, calmly-exit-the-building procedures of a fire drill. They’re the terrified, let’s-pretend-we’ve-got-this-under-control flailings of a duck-and-cover atom-bomb drill..."
Just like the self-serving political hacks in Sacramento and Washington are doing, these goons are using any justification they can devise to ramp up fear, even in children as young as five years old.
I just did a quick search for some numbers regarding school shootings; here's an excerpt from:
'School Shootings are Less Likely than Asteroid Hits. No, You Don’t Have to Scare Your Kids' at http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/a... :
"...There is no reason to make a child cry in fear over an event that has a 0.00003% to 0.00007% probability of happening to them. Disagree? Then you’d better warn your kids about asteroid 2012 VE77, which according to NASA scientists has a 0.0009% probability of smacking into the Earth between 2033 and 2035. Let’s be realistic — you are not going to weep in bed and then go tell your kids about the asteroid and make them cry. So why should you weep in bed and then go tell your kids about another risk that is even more remote?..."
_________________________
DrDan: thanks for the shoutout - really fits in well here. I'll do it for you this time, but next time could you please include the actual link to the post you're referring to — if you know how — so that others can more easily judge for themselves your distortions and gross oversimplifications:
Posted on February 13 at 4:06 p.m.
Ken:
;-)
I wasn't certain you were joking, so I just did a page search (both with and without the dashes); DrDan's use above is the first.
Posted on February 13 at 3:20 p.m.
DrDan wrote:
"...Over-the-top weaponry..."
What a hoot. Yes, these scare-mongering, constitution-hating, tyrant-wannabe clowns are going after "over-the-top weaponry", however that's defined; I guess it's just "common sense" — as they define it, of course; who needs the constitution?
howgreenwasmyvalley has repeatedly debunked your rubbish about "over-the-top-weaponry"; do a page search (command-F) for 1:22 and 9:08, for starters (one of the two results for each will be to this comment, of course).
Posted on February 13 at 8:21 a.m.
billclausen:
;-)
I'm not particularly hopeful, as I indicated at the top of my 12:24 a.m. comment, especially considering this post no longer links from the main page, and even though I promoted this discussion to a local online political group that I believe should be interested in the topic, and within which many people know me personally....
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SBProgC...
Though it might be fun to get to 100 total comments just for the heck of it, and even better, were that able to be done by expanding the discussion to future scenarios and potential legal and/or political remedies.
Posted on February 13 at 12:30 a.m.
LEGAL REMEDIES?
Brian says:
February 7, 2013 at 17:40
The good news: Much of this is unconstitutional under Heller. The bad news: by the time it gets that far Heller may not matter because of a change in the Court.
These state-by-state restrictions are a serious threat to the health of the 2A movement. Good luck to the folks in CA, if you can’t pry some of the moderate Dems off of this your only hope is either federal preemption or the Court. Or moving.
Sammy says:
February 7, 2013 at 17:47
Would this come under the jurisdiction of the infamous 9th Circus?
Brian says:
February 7, 2013 at 17:50
It would indeed. And with the exception of Kozinski and a couple of others it is unlikely the 9th’s judges would greet the proposal or the legislature’s “findings of fact” with the proper amount of skepticism.
Brian says:
February 7, 2013 at 17:54
I hope you are right about the lawsuit, of course the Court (because it would likely get to SCOTUS) would have to find for the 2A in a big way. A mixed decision where some of the stuff is struck down (like the hollow points) but other stuff upheld (detachable mags, 6 round limit etc.) would be REALLY bad and set bad binding precedent.
.
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Posted on May 11 at 10:07 a.m.
...replica grenades and an air soft pistol ...
The FBI must be running low of funds. ;-)
Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the F.B.I.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opi...
"...But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training... "
On Bomb Scare at Goleta Vons