December 30, 2012

Well, that escalated quickly...

So I post about how we Democrats might ought to try and be more united about protecting all our rights, and you practically wet your pants with glee about some prospective future tyrannical government annihilating me and my family with drone-launched Hellfire missiles.

Nice, real nice.

Glad we can really be team players around here.

I suppose I'll be able to derive some satisfaction from the fact that while it will cost this possible tyrant $250,000 a pop to knock-off armed families such as mine, they'll be fine using some $20-an-hour rent-a-cop to put your sorry, unarmed ass onto a train to the labor camp. Be sure and stand smartly when they yell, "Papiere bitte!" Now, that's a good homelander.

Sarcastically,

-app

December 28, 2012

Until violent crime is 0 and holding...

Until violent crime is 0 and holding, a responsible citizen may choose to procure tools for self-defense. You, Nadin, might be comfortable with low odds of criminal assault, but others might not like that risk.

Also, the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right that transcends any given needs. So even after violent crime descends to 0, citizens will have the right to Keep & Bear magazine-fed semi-automatic handguns and rifles for hunting, target-shooting, or the simple joys of collecting interesting machinery. For more than a century, magazine-fed semi-automatic firearms have been considered well within the Second Amendment's purview. The DU'ers I respect least at present are those among us who are pretending that a change to this scope of the RKBA can or should be done via simple legislative action. That is nonsense: abrogating the Second Amendment should require the full process of a Constitutional Amendment.

The gun-grabbers (yes, if you want to deny Americans' right to own the most popular highest-selling sporting arms of the past few decades you are advocating the grabbing of guns - own the term or change your stance...) know full well that a repeal of the Second Amendment will never fly in the USA. For that reason, we Democrats should be exploring other options besides magazine or firearm bans for enhanced security: better mental health care, increased security at vulnerable targets, etc. But an end-run around the Second Amendment is not an honorable course of action. At best, it will provide security theater to people ignorant of Constitutional principles and firearms technology both. It could very well also provoke a horrible backlash against Democrats during the Congressional mid-term elections. This is not an outcome that I, an avid DU'er, desire; nor should it be an outcome desired by any DU'er.

-app

November 14, 2012

Nancy, keep SS cuts 'off the table.'

I'll get more actve in 2014 IF the elected Democrats stand firm now, keeping SS cuts 'off the table,' entirely. If we can't accomplish that while 'we' control the Presidency & the Senate (and have Pelosi's leadership at the helm of the minority in the House), what would a few more seats really accomplish?

I'm not calling for anythng radical; I just want to see my President, with the support of Pelosi & Reid, stand firm for a core Democratic program, one which contributes nothing to the Deficit.

If Democrats cut Social Security now, I will switch my affiliation to Independent, because the D's will have shown that they stand for nothing.

-app

November 14, 2012

Time for Ireland to evolve away from this theocratic bullshit.

Maybe it's not my place to tell the Irish what to do.

But as someone who was raised in a half-Irish-American, way-too-Catholic family, I do feel confident to tell the Catholic Church that it needs to back the fuck away from the personal lives and decisions of women, and everyone else for that matter.

-app

November 8, 2012

Too true.

In my estimation, the entire elegant machinery of the Bill of Rights, bequeathed to us by our forefathers in good-running condition, is now rusty and creaky in the even the most-used gears. The cogs of the 10th Amendment are almost entirely seized and stripped of their teeth. But the Founders put that gear in there; it's up to us to get out the oil and wrenches and make the necessary repairs...

-app

November 2, 2012

Staten Island has (or maybe had) too many houses on TOP of marshes

I grew up in the hills of Staten Island (Sunset Hill / West Brighton) and ranged over every open patch of land there I could, but left for more rural locales after 1989. Too many of my favorite childhood patches of swampy woodland or saltwater marsh, places I loved to explore & walk my grandparents' dog & go birding or mushroom hunting, all fell to 'development.' The houses in Bull's Head now sit where freshwater wetlands would routinely drench me up to my knees or higher. The last time I was in Staten Island (years ago - 2005-ish?), a gas station sat atop some brackish wetlands in Linoleumville I distinctly remember having to swim across channels after getting a little lost. I was incredulous that it got permitted, but that's what big bucks and a 'mitigation' (BS) plan will buy you I guess. All asphalt now, so of course the storm waters rose higher!

I have nothing but compassion & respect for all the Staten Islanders who have lost their homes. This devastation is not their fault, except perhaps in the most tangential of ways that it is ALL our fault - all of us who drive cars and otherwise consume material and energy resources. HOWEVER, those assholes who rubber-stamped all the coastline development, all the wetlands in-fill, all the greedy over-development? They deserve nothing but contempt.

I agree, ChisolmTrailDem, many of the neighborhoods devastated by Sandy should NOT be rebuilt. This is a chance for wetlands restoration and some advance mitigation of the impacts of the NEXT storm, which will surely come. Plus, Staten Island could benefit from some more open-park space and public, natural waterfront lands.

-app

October 7, 2012

Never run 'Republican-lite' is the lesson I learned.

Gore ran a tepid and cautious campaign and chose known right-winger Joe Lieberman as his VP pick. That was a big reason the election was close enough to steal.

Know what the 2012 version of rw-lite is? Obama saying 'Mitt Romney & I agree on Social Security.' WTF is that? If Obama wants us 'troops' aiming our 'guns' against our Republican enemies, he needs to run as a solid populist Democrat on this issue.

Protecting Social Secrity 100% is the popular position, as woo & Hydra have already noted. It is right & proper for we Democratic constituents to demand this right now, during election season.

-app

October 7, 2012

Dangerous chemistry gone awry

Like so many persistent chlorinated hydrocarbons, the body's own metabolism cannot detoxify BPA. The next paragraph from the article begins to explain the consequences:

In new research published in the October 4 online issue of the journal PLOS ONE, two scientists at UC San Diego School of Medicine say three-dimensional modeling suggests a metabolite of BPA -- a molecule produced when BPA is metabolized or broken down by the body -- actually binds to the estrogen receptor much more strongly than BPA itself. The finding could point the way to development of a new class of drugs designed to specifically inhibit excessive estrogen activity linked to disease.

Scary stuff. And we (i.e.- society) line our food containers with this stuff, despite having known the gist of these facts since the mid-1990's at least. While the possibility of a new drug might be promising for those in need of its effects, the widespread and common use of BPA means that the whole planet is presently part of an uncontrolled drug experiment.

k&r,

-app

October 4, 2012

The deck was stacked by 'our' guy.

Honestly, wtf did Obama expect to happen with that Commission? On the 'shred-the-safety-net side,' he appointed rabid ideologues like Alan Simpson.

Meanwhile on the 'save-the-safety-net side'... Oh wait, that side was barely represented, if at all on that Commission.

Meanwhile on the 'Democratic' side, Obama appoints weaselly-little corporatists like Erskine Bowles. Erskine-goddamn-Bowles stands for no one except Morgan Stanley and Erskine Bowles (and he does the latter badly, as he has been unable to get elected to any office lately; plus his tenure at the helm of the UNC system was utterly without distinction).

The 'Debt Commission' should not even have been constituted during Obama's first year in office. But even if you think it was necessary, it should have contained at least a plurality of pro-Social Security, pro-Safety Net, pro-progressive taxation voices among the Democrats (I know it would be too much to ask to find even one Republican to fit that description). Instead, the 'Debt Commission' was stacked against us from the start. It was bad policy from the outset, so it should be no surprise that the result is some bad politics.

And before someone jumps down my throat for describing Obama as 'our' guy in the subject line ask yourself, did Obama serve the working, payroll-taxed citizenry with this Debt Commission in any way? No, no he did not. I am a Democrat, but I am not a sheep. This Debt Commission is naked robbery disguised in emperor's clothes as policy.

-app

October 4, 2012

An honorable legacy!

Back when Obama was protesting Apartheid, Cheney/Reagan/Bush41/etc. were busily trying to prop it up. The Apartheid issue is one of the first I cut my activist teeth on back in the late 1980's, along with anti-nuke work and Latin American solidarity/anti-death squad work. President Obama can be proud that he stood on the right side of history back then, and I am glad to have been a very tiny part of that movement too. My greatest hope for the President is that he can retain his moral fiber and commitment to justice during a second term, and act upon it further.

K&R

-app