calimary
calimary's JournalWell... I'd wonder how this stacks up in the homeland security department.
How does this make one feel - regarding one's safety here in the homeland? I certainly don't feel safer, knowing that the next guy I might inadvertently cut off on the freeway could be armed to the teeth, or knowing that I'll probably always feel some deep visceral fear the next time I go to a public movie theater or worse - knowing that my son or daughter has gone to see some movie in a public theater! I was at a club the other night with more than 300 people on hand to see my son's band. I looked around that crowd and actually found myself wondering - "hmmm - just the simple law of averages tells me that some small percentage of the people IN THIS ROOM could be packing heat. And what if one of them is set off by something? Just ONE would be all it'd take."
And before someone speaks up about "well, maybe it wouldn't happen if the bad guy knew other people were carrying guns..." or "maybe if somebody had had a gun in that Aurora CO theater last night, this bad guy would have been stopped." Yeah, sure. In that kind of instant madness and tear gas keeping you from breathing or even seeing in front of you, how could you take a shot at the bad guy? How would you even know what (or whom) you hit? What if you hit another innocent bystander by mistake, in the frenzy and insanity of that kind of situation? How could you even have the presence of mind in the middle of an instant war that just erupted all around you in a confined space with hysterical panicky people all over the place? What you would have had would be just more carnage - a regular ol' Gunfight at the OK Corral. It would have been even more out-of-control than this nightmare already wound up being.
FOR ME: anyone or any organization that protects an absolute, unrestricted right for ANYBODY no matter how unspooled they are, mentally, to possess any goddamn AK-47s or armor-piercing bullets or other high-octane paramilitary crap for personal use - if they're not in a war zone - makes me feel awfully vulnerable and endangered. And NO it doesn't make me want to respond by getting guns like that myself, and thus upping the ante. And that's what the NRA does. And even though their precious Second Amendment carries the language "WELL-REGULATED militia" they disregard that entirely. I've heard staunch Second Amendment defenders insisting that wording doesn't mean anything, or that it actually means something different, or that "oh no, it doesn't apply to this or that." They always have some way of talking around it.
We HAVE to toughen up gun regulations. This tragedy just underscores that. And maybe the NRA is just gonna have to let up on its ridiculously strident refusal to compromise at some point.
I mean - WHERE DOES IT END, permatex? Would you rather just let it go? Just ignore it? Is that okay? Is that something you can live with (even though, just here alone, we have at least 12 people who can never live with it - or anything else, for that matter - again)? Just let it happen again because "those things happen"? Just shrug it off as "it was just one nutcase"? For God's Sake! So how many nutcases and deaths and maimings and real-life horror before YOU have had enough? When will we all have FINALLY had enough???? What will it take?
And - look, I'm sorry, I don't mean to come down so hard on YOU personally, permatex. For God's Sake, I remember when John Lennon got shot (by just one nutcase, funny enough), and then-President-Elect ronald reagan somberly intoned that it was a terrible thing - but by God we've gotta make sure we keep our GUNS! And then HE was shot and nearly killed some three months later (by, guess what? Yet again, just one nutcase) and even then, EVEN THEN, he STILL insisted that hey, but... but... but... we still gotta have our GUNS! We simply can't deprive ANYBODY of having GUNS!
WHAT THE FUCKING HELL???????
It's gotta end. It just simply CANNOT continue like this. The NRA needs to shut up and back off and get some SENSE, and stop playing the victim when they're so goddamn powerful and influential and oppressive. Always so paranoid about somebody coming to take their beloved precious sacred fucking guns. Well, maybe it's finally time that somebody did. This isn't Dodge City in the late 1800s, for God's Sake. To me, this is a perfect example of domestic terrorism, and the NRA staunchly defends it and resolutely blocks any attempt to rein in the extremes of gun ownership that it protects. A right it protects at the expense of the rights of those dead victims in that theater - who are now permanently deprived of their lives and their futures. What rights did they have? Hey NRA, what about THEIR rights? Never mind, NRA, we all know YOUR rights are far more important than theirs.
I'm with Michael Bloomberg on this. And of course, that's about as far as it's gonna go... 
Shattering to think that something as mundane as going to a movie could cost you your life.
I suppose this is what it must be like to live in Israel. Even the people who got out alive will NEVER be the same again. I'm watching some of the survivors talk about what they experienced. They will carry this with them as long as they live.
Glad you guys stayed home. I bet this stays with you for the rest of your life, as well - the horror and shocking irony of "what might have been." That has to be a staggering weight to carry, and you were among the luckiest ones, thank God.
Damn. Just damn. It's just a roll of the dice every day.
Hug your loved ones, EVERYBODY.
Yes, I'm somewhat aware of that about the historical figure Marie Antoinette.
HOWEVER, I was working with the widely-recognized meme or generality. The whole "let 'em eat cake" thing - which I believe is a made-up quote that she actually never said. But the quote "let 'em eat cake" has come to be a well-established metaphor, signifying a whole mindset of the arrogance of the haves and have-mores in the face of the needy, the poor, the have-nots and the have-nothings. That's what I was referring to.
Reminds me of something Garrison Keillor said
musing about the absolute refusal of the knuckledraggers to see any reason to raise taxes on the rich, who can afford to help shoulder a little more of the burden, and what he called "the suffering of billionaires."
This is true. Ironic isn't it? She is Absolute Low-Life.
Riff-raff in designer duds.
All the money in the world won't buy her class.
Oh yeah, her comment that "it's our turn." World's Biggest Entitlement Program.
The World's Biggest Entitlement Program is the one embraced by the GOP - that asserts their Divinely decreed right to rule. They believe the White House is theirs simply because it's their birthright.
I saw that video clip. Her Ladyship, ann of dressage. DISGUSTING!!!!! She was arrogant, patronizing, and smug as hell. Even moreso than when shitty mitty called her over to the podium at the NRA convention and she stood there smiling down on the crowd with this smug snooty smirk on her face reeking of superiority in what looked like a hand-painted silk dress that probably cost a house payment or two. I've never seen a superiority complex that huge or that blatant! She does indeed put the "ann" in Marie "Ann"toinette. I think I'll start spelling it that way.
Nope! Her Ladyship queen ann of dressage has indeed inserted herself into this morass.
She's NOT a non-combatant. When she comes out like this and makes statements and allows herself to be interviewed and states things like "it's OUR turn" and this HORRID, arrogant, dismissive statement, she puts herself smack-dab in the HEART of this.
AND she makes snarky, smug responses to what various people on the other team have said. She stands there at the podium of that NRA meeting with her fancy-ass hand-painted silk designer frock, hands on either side of the lectern and smiles so damn condescendingly. She reeks of superiority complex. Humility ain't her thing, that's for damn sure! She reminded me of a few full-of-themselves moms I've observed, who were head of the PTA who stood there as imperious as an empress looking down their noses at the rest of the room from THEIR exalted spot on the dais or at the podium with these smug grins. You know they're absolutely glorying in their superior position to everyone else in the room, their Alpha Female status, with their first-among-equals status sweating out of their very pores, fully aware that they have more money than anybody else in the room and their husband is a bigger big-shot than anybody else in the room's husband, just knowing in their bone-marrow that everyone else around them is beneath them because of the status all their way-more-than'you'll-ever-have money confers upon them.
I could smell that a mile away, the first time I ever saw her. I've never seen ANYONE more smug.
She is NO innocent bystander or non-combatant. She jumped into this willingly, with her thousand-dollar t-shirt on.
Yeah, no kidding. I'm a retired reporter and the deterioration of the industry of which I was
once so proud just hurts. And I find myself taking it personally. It's a disgrace. The people who are on camera, especially, and on radio and in print these days are for the most part a national disgrace. AND they're complete idiots. They majored in TelePrompTer in college. I remember a forum in which a then-young Jane Pauley defended her being chosen for the co-hosting job on the "Today" show after Barbara Walters went to ABC by saying she WAS, TOO, qualified! She insisted with mild indignance, "I had FOUR YEARS EXPERIENCE IN FRONT OF A TELEPROMPTER!" They'd called her the "Indianapolis Ingenue" when she was tapped for that job. Local pretty young blonde makes good on the national stage. And that was just the beginning.
I remember working in a TV newsroom as a writer/segment producer, and hearing the cute little girl co-anchor, reading aloud from the script as she walked around the newsroom shortly before air, with a quizzical look on her face, noting the slug line at the top of the page: "Scotus. What is that? 'Zat someone's name? Who is Scotus?" Several of us chimed out in unison "Supreme Court Of The United States." But God, she photographed like a million bucks.
That's one of the one-liners my husband and I love to throw around when we're watching TV or cable news: "...but he/she PHOTOGRAPHS well."
Well, what else would he think? This is the life he's led.
This is his experience. His money entitles him to elite treatment and deference. His one-time status as CEO has taught him he's a prince among men, or even a king. The rules don't apply to him because as CEO his job has always been to dictate what the rules are - to others, as in - EVERYONE ELSE lower-placed than him on the great corporate zigurrat.
World's Biggest Entitlement Program: the GOP's - assured in its smug ann-romney position that IT ALONE is entitled to rule over everyone else. After all, it's THEIR Divine right to rule. The White House just simply belongs to them because it's their birthright. Just because. Because it's THEM, instead of your guy.
Yep. They don't have a template for this.
They're creatures of habit. They're used to being on offense - against an opponent (the Dems) who always cave, almost on cue. They've become SO used to it that they've got nothing ready when the opponent suddenly refuses to follow the playbook. Think Katie Holmes versus Tom Cruise. He thought he had another timid little capitulator on his hands. And as the press reported - he was "blindsided." Funny how both turns of events are happening at the same time!
DESTABILIZE THE ENEMY. As often and as relentlessly and as creatively as possible. Don't react the way they expect you to. It WILL throw them off their game.
Profile Information
Gender: FemaleHome country: USA
Current location: Oregon
Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 81,194
