crickets
crickets's JournalBrian Klaas: It's the Guns.
https://brianklaas.substack.com/p/its-the-gunsDec 12, 2022
With guns, gun violence, and mass shootings, the United States is in a dystopian league of its own. But whenever I write about guns, I get the same bad-faith arguments shot back at me by American gun advocates who are, perhaps, unaware of just how extreme, and just how unusual America’s gun culture is relative to the rest of the rich, democratic world.
The satirical newspaper The Onion nailed this dynamic with one of its all-time great headlines.
“No Way to Prevent This,” Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens”
I’ve decided to write a comprehensive guide to understanding America’s gun extremism, engaging with all the main, spurious arguments, showing the truth with proper evidence and data. It’s my hope that this can be your go-to guide to defeating bad arguments being made about America’s gun culture—and that you can share this article with others, perhaps to help persuade them that the United States needs to fix its broken gun culture. [more]
Adding a link from the Huffpo piece:
The First Drag Queen Was a Former Slave
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/drag-queen-slave-ball/
No paywall - https://archive.ph/ORiwB
Fascinating article.
I tried to find a transcript and couldn't, but maybe somebody else
has better search skills and can point to one. There is video with captions available - turn on auto captions and they work surprisingly well. Connolly speaks beginning at 1:01:05.
This.
I can't find it now, but there was a photo of an adorable toddler girl that appeared right before the war started, with dark curly hair, and the caption was some version of please don't kill us.
It was absolutely heartbreaking.
What really angered me was the helpless feeling of watching the psych buildup from months before. One day there's a story about Sept 11 droning in the background as usual, but right afterward is a story about Iraq. *sigh*
Step one: associate two things by mentioning them together.
It was months before any action, but I knew. A bunch of assholes had decided to make a bunch of money. Yee ha.
I'm so glad someone is finally suing over this.
Sending military helicopters of any kind to harass a crowd is way, way over the line.
https://www.justsecurity.org/78053/the-national-guard-at-lafayette-square-and-the-january-6th-attempted-insurrection-fixes-for-the-fy2022-ndaa/
While the Trump era exposed weaknesses in many U.S. institutions and resulted in the proliferation of reform proposals from organizations like ours, relatively little attention has been paid to much-needed reforms to the domestic deployment of the National Guard. The brutal crackdown on nonviolent demonstrators on June 1, 2020, at Lafayette Square and the attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, provide important lessons about how and when the National Guard is (or is not) deployed domestically, its command structure for domestic deployment, and the Guard’s legal authority when it acts. [snip]
In response to the widespread protests following the murder of George Floyd last summer, former-President Trump deployed both the D.C. National Guard and thousands of out-of-state National Guards members into Washington, D.C. to police protestors. In doing so, the administration performed an end-run around the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of federal military forces inside the United States for law enforcement purposes unless doing so has been expressly authorized by Congress or the Constitution.
Mentioned in the above:
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-barr-used-loophole-deploy-national-guard-u-s-cities-ncna1236034
By Sen. Tom Udall and Rep. Jim McGovern
The Posse Comitatus Act bans the use of National Guard units for law enforcement only when they are federalized, meaning they are brought under the command and control of the president. When National Guard units are operating in so-called hybrid status — serving federal missions funded with federal dollars but under state governors' command and control — they are not subject to the act and therefore are able to perform law enforcement functions, like searches and arrests.
Congress has limited the activities the National Guard can perform in hybrid status, but it does allow it to perform training exercises in this formulation. Barr twisted this provision to enable the rogue deployment in Washington from 11 states.
The AI rollout is half-baked, and barely that.
Companies are skipping large gobs of in-house testing and tweaking, using the general public as their free beta testers. What could possibly go wrong?
eta no paywall link: https://archive.ph/aIIfh
Yep. I almost hope Jordan is silly enough to try it. The smackdown would be worth it.
No paywall: https://archive.ph/xRhem
However, should the committees issue formal subpoenas to others or demand the former officials reveal classified information about their past service (which is the basis for their opinions set out in the statement), the issue likely would head to the courts in the first substantial legal challenge to the House GOP’s conspiracy-driven inquests.
The last thing these right-wing congressmen likely would want is a court ruling that their three-ring circus lacks any legitimate legislative purpose and, therefore, cannot compel testimony or document production. A legal defeat for MAGA-inspired investigations (which to date have spectacularly flopped) would be the perfect denouement to Republicans’ inept efforts to harness congressional power for political gain.
Dovetailing with Sen. Warren's message:
Moody's Analytics Analysis March 2023
https://www.moodysanalytics.com/-/media/article/2023/going-down-the-debt-limit-rabbit-hole.pdf
From Beau of the Fifth Column, "Let's talk about 3 debt ceiling scenarios..."
This woman is amazing. Her words are truth on fire.
Here's the YouTube version. Turn on closed captions if you need them; they are available. Stevenson asks two questions, and her comments start at the one minute mark. Take a second to listen. Rep. Pamela Stevenson gets an A+ for these remarks. Good on Kentucky for electing her. More representation like this is desperately needed all over the country.
Oh, no. What an incredible loss.
I've been listening to his guitar (mainly through Jackson Browne) since the 70s. He was so incredibly talented, especially playing slide, and his falsetto on Stay is magical. Some years after college, I moved back to Claremont CA for several years and lived a few blocks from his house. The music store in town had walls covered with his guitars and other unique instruments he had loaned to the store for display. I got to see him play with his band, El Rayo-X, at the San Juan Capistrano Coach House in the late 80s. Great show, and lots of fun in a cool, smaller venue. They put out an album called Very Greasy in 1988. Every song is wonderful, including the covers of Werewolves of London and Papa was a Rolling Stone. I still listen to it every once in a while.
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