Good one!

These lovely people meant deliberately and expressly to intimidate the women inside. I did a report on this years ago in one of my jobs, and interviewed several gun shop and shooting range owners, one of whom told me it was not a gun he was holding in his hand. Rather, it was "an attitude-adjustment device." That is both good AND bad. That's what these vigilantes were trying to do, as I see it.

Welcome to DU, Joker22Sierra.

Good that you're here. You talk about throwing around numbers. "However, most of the pro-gun groups are using the real numbers, and the main reason there is so much feuding is that the numbers confirm their standpoint." That would be a reasonable argument provided there were studies that were allowed to be funded and conducted, hell, even allowed to be SPOKEN ABOUT or brought up in conversation at the statehouse, or in the nation's capitol. The NRA and other gun supporters and supporting groups have - pardon the pun - shot down EVERY attempt to study gun violence fully and comprehensively. We're not even allowed to bring it up. So whatever numbers the gun-lovers' side claims to have then must be taken with a grain of salt the size of the Rock of Gibraltar.

We don't HAVE all the numbers. Because we're not allowed to mount studies and well-funded investigations. Every time something's proposed, gun advocates start screaming about the Second Amendment - and how it always somehow seems to trump the First Amendment at the end. But we do have enough crime statistics that plainly show how large the murder rate by gunfire is in this country, compared to other countries where gun ownership is nowhere near so free and unrestricted.

Oh yeah! ANYTHING that forces the teabaggers to have to spend more money

that they'd ordinarily pour into hatchet-job ads against Dems! Force 'em to squander more money that they weren't budgeting for things like this! MORE!!!

I think that we ought to take a page from what the republi-CONS are trying to do against the ACA. And voting rights. And women's rights. And more. Figure out EVERY and ANY way to put a kink in the system. Put a stick in the spokes. Pour a little sugar into the engine. ANYTHING!!! Anything that hobbles and complicates and interrupts and monkeywrenches their carefully-laid plans. ANYTHING. WHATEVER slows 'em down and trips 'em up and breaks their momentum and complicates their plans! No matter how small. THAT'S what we need to do. Keep 'em busy! Keep 'em fighting little fires breaking out all around them. Keep 'em having to fill the little holes in the levee that we keep picking open, so they can't rest. And they can't focus. And they can't move forward because there are too many problems to fix before they can. And while they're tending to those, more little fires break out, and more little holes bore through and cause leaks. And they have to troubleshoot further. And they have to reassign forces and resources that were earmarked for offense. They're too busy playing defense and shoring things up. Dissipate their energy. Demoralize their troops.

Destabilize the enemy.

No worries! This was GREAT!

And in the two weeks since, we've been in communication with each other frequently. We have a relationship now. I heard from my other sister that meeting me made it all very real and a very positive experience. Made me feel so great! Now that my adoptive parents have been gone for a number of years, I suddenly find myself with a whole new family to be part of. It's pretty cool! I don't want to think of the grief I would have gotten from my adoptive mother if I did this while she was still around, though. Knowing her, there would have been all kinds of sturm und drang about how horrible this was to be done to her and what a selfish ingrate I was. But that was the lens through which she viewed and processed EVERYTHING that happened to her (and about 99% of it was somehow my fault).

She'd had many crosses to bear in her own life and came from a generation (as my birth mother did, too) where you did not seek counseling or psychological help. You didn't dare. It was considered some sort of MAJOR failing and said all kinds of terrible things about you to your friends and neighbors who'd all be busy whispering viciously about it of course. And of course, even going so far as to admit to something like this - well, sometimes that was just not considered. Just not even on the table. You not only didn't talk about this with someone who might help you, you didn't talk about this within yourself, or try to look beyond or look deeper. Sometimes I felt really bad for her because of the few things she admitted to me about abuse she'd endured. She was pretty badly damaged by some of those closest to her in her youth. I can see how that affected her. She went through life with an attitude that someone needed punishing for all that. Such a damaged generation in so many ways. Of course, not that our generation is without its issues!!

It's made me appreciate so much more deeply how we are damaged, fallible, vulnerable, and SOOOOOOO fragile. Coping mechanisms have become fascinating to me as a result, the hows and the whys and the whats. What makes people do what they do and react the way they react.

Just a whole lot more to think about. I'll be processing this for years.

Welcome to DU, DaveinMaine!

Glad you're here! I love Stephanie Miller! I just wish I had more opportunities to listen to her. Never up (and in the car) that early anymore.

Damn. So sorry to hear this, malaise. Thank you for letting us know, though.

Dear nadin - as you read this thread, just let it remind you of how valued and cherished you are to this community. We are here sending you love and support and big shoulders to lean on. DU will buoy you up.

Welcome to DU, ccsar!

Glad you're here (guess that carries much more meaning here in this thread than it ordinarily would! I'm adopted too. Sounds like you had a happy ending!

Welcome to DU, karmkay!

Glad you're here! I agree, that's one thing - but it's WAY far from the only thing. Nobody will notice anything if some of us stop watching CBS. HOWEVER, if we do, what we need to do along with that - is to notify CBS that we've stopped. Tree falls in a forest. Nobody sees it. Therefore who cares? No one will know. It will thus have no effect. And there will be no impact.

I'd even go so far as to post to OTHER network sites that you're no longer watching CBS and why you did so.

If they think you don't care, they won't either. They won't give a fuck. But if they start hearing about it. If they start seeing it. And then seeing a groundswell or a drumbeat or something that alerts them that MORE people know and care and give a damn, then seems to me that goes a lot farther and might be more effective.

I remember reading about a woman who wrote a letter to, I think it was, the Washington Post about some coverage of a story she didn't appreciate - it had factual errors, problems, an agenda. She included in her letter a CC: to the Washington Post's chief competition, the New York Times. And a few others including a couple of advocacy groups. MESSAGE: She wasn't just complaining about the Post or correcting misreporting or misrepresentation. She was making sure OTHERS SAW THIS. Making sure that this was information that was going out beyond the insular idea of "I'm writing to you." In her case it was "I'm writing this so that a whole bunch of other people will see it, too, and some of 'em are people you'd rather not have looped into the conversation, and knowing what you're up to and what/how you just fucked something up.

Just wondering how we could add to the pile-on, post more, and more widely, add to threads on Daily Kos and conversations on other blogs, keep this thing going before it starts to fizzle out and dear little lara thinks she got away with it.

Um... and you'd rather see him with less money than his GOP opponent?

Just what we'd need. Another republi-CON in the House next year. Adding to THEIR totals and not ours.

I support Alan Grayson. He doesn't bother me at all. And quite often he DOES speak for me.

Happily kicking this!