--Apparently it was another "lily white" day of Sunday morning news programs.
After searching them all and seeing most, I don't think there was one "person of color" represented on any of the shows. No minority perspective other than the one minority of women.
Surely this will change soon.
Note to networks: there's a whole world of "minorities" in the US whose viewpoints aren't being given, when they're left off the programs.
--George Will is, of course, against the President's plan for health care reform and said as much, again, on ABC's "This Week" program.
ABC should have had the economist Paul Krugman on, if possible, to counter his viewpoints. They needed someone authoritative on to rebut what points he made.
--I hadn't read anywhere, to date, about three Republican representatives (Hennsarling, Pence and Campbell) proposing we cap the national debt at 20% of the GDP. This was news to me.
Speaking of spending, did you know the US has 90 military facilities in Japan?
Anyone thought of cutting there?
And why are we still in Germany?
And Italy?
--Quotes from "Kansas City Week in Review" on KCPT this week, both regarding state cuts in spending, due to Missouri and Kansas budget deficits in the millions of dollars:
"Our expectation of government has to change." --Nick Haynes, moderator.
"The 'day of reckoning' really is here." --Dave Helling, KCTV 5 reporter
--The Kansas City, Missouri Chamber of Commerce moving to Union Station is a great idea and deal for the station, the Chamber and the city, overall, period.
Good on ya', Chamber---you did good.
--From a song on KCUR today:
"Every generation thinks its the last, it's the end of the world..."
Face it, folks, we're just not that significant.
(Not that you can't help your neighbor).
Let's all have a great week.
(Also, you might go to KC Photog Blog this Wednesday for one picture per hour of the Brookside St. Patrick's Day parade, starting fairly early in the day. I think they turned out pretty well and they're a lot of fun.)
As always, I was listening to KCUR 89.3 FM, the local NPR (National Public Radio) station and Bill Shapiro's show, "Cyprus Avenue" was on. It was his 2nd hour and it was a replay of one he did on Johnny Cash.
Anyway, Mr. Shapiro--because I don't know him--was speaking of the capitalization of country music which, he said, gave us the "putrid pablum of Taylor Swift."
I laughed out loud.
And I was in my car.
Have a great weekend, y'all. (I'll be writing tomorrow).
Okay, so it's decided--we're going to close 1/2 of the schools in the KCMO School District.
Now we'll get to it.
But with all the knowledge of where we've been and what we've been doing, as a city, you know what would make some terrific further reading?
The Kansas City Star's reporters should go around, behind the scenes, and talk to current and past employees of this same school district and get stories on where the millions of dollars of money the district used to have, went.
I've heard some beauties.
It won't ever happen but again, it would make for some terrific reading.
And you know what else?
It might make for some terrific lessons we could all learn, as a city and as parts of this school district.
But look at me. Suggesting we learn any lessons from all this.
What a dope.
Link to story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_closing_schools
If you've read anything at all here, you know I'm for health care reform---meaningful health care reform. Health care reform that is for the American people, not the corporations and insurance and pharmaceutical companies, etc.
Like the single-payer option we should have had since there are 1300 different insurance companies in the country, each with their own, different forms.
It's estimated that if the government mandated one form for all these companies, we could save, as a nation, $350 billion a year--enough to pay for health care reform.
But are we getting that?
Heck no.
According to Matt Taibbi of the Rolling Stone magazine, the President buckled on that item right up front, to the corporations.
But that's another story.
What I don't get is about mandating that Americans buy health insurance in order to make this whole health care reform happen.
Questions for the President:
1) How do you "mandate" that all Americans have health insurance? How does that work? How can anyone require that we have it?
If you can't afford health care insurance now, how can you afford it just because it's been required by the government? I don't see that happening.
2) How is this "mandate" enforced? Will there be "health insurance police"? If so, who is that? If not, how does this get enforced?
3) If the government would be requiring we all get and pay for health insurance, is that Constitutionally legal? It certainly goes against all the "freedom" Americans have always demanded and been accustomed to.
4) The insurance companies get their big "win" with all the new customers--why didn't we get the "single-payer option" we needed and that makes so much sense? Did you, in fact, buckle on this, Mr. President and give it away, in effect?
5) Why isn't it "in the can", too, that we'd be getting a "public option", so the insurance companies have competition--instead of the collusion between them all they now have--and we could get and keep insurance premiums down?
As two examples, it's well known we have the most expensive health care system in the world, yet we don't have the healthiest populace--by far--on the planet and two, the insurance companies keep raising their rates capriciously and at will. That one, last month, tried to raise rates 39%, for pity's sake, in the middle of this health care debate and reform.
Now that's chutzpah.
If they can do that now, during this debate, imagine what they can and will do--still without the "public option" and more, true competition--after all this goes away and dies down? It'll be "Katy bar the door" for them on rates, then, most likely.
For now, Mr. President, I'll leave you with those questions.
I just don't see how this is going to work, first, and second, I don't see how this is the huge help to the American people that it's supposed to be.
I hope it is a help and I hope I'm wrong but as the C3PO said in "Star Wars", I have a bad feeling about this...
On the one hand, we do need to take our country forward.
But we need to do it as a group--as Americans, like it used to be. We can't have incessant infighting between Republicans vs. Democrats vs. Conservatives vs. Liberals vs. Independents vs. Libertarians vs. "Teabaggers", like we've been doing the last dozen or more years.
Yes, we need progress and yes, we need to do away with these, as I said earlier, logjams.
But do away with the possibility of the filibuster?
Be careful what you wish for, Senator Reid.
Be careful what you wish for, lest it's not an option for you and your Party, should you be out of power.
Let's have guts and show strength but let's do what's right and good for the country.
To anyone who says we "have the best health care system in the world" or that "we don't need to change our health care system" or that "the American people don't want our health care system changed", I can now give them, along with statistics and hard data showing ours as the most expensive health care system in the world, as well as other, failing mortality and disease rates, the following :
"A new Associated Press-GfK Poll finds a widespread hunger for improvements to the health care system, which suggests President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies have a political opening to push their plan. Half of all Americans say health care should be changed a lot or 'a great deal,' and only 4 percent say it shouldn't be changed at all."
Note to Congress: Give us our health care reform. Make it work.
It is the most expensive health care system on the planet.
We're ranked 37th--behind Rush Limbaugh's Costa Rica, for pity's sake--internationally, when considering mortality.
It needs fixing.
You've never tried to fix it and this President is trying to, just like Democrat Harry Truman, before him and too many Presidents since, including Bill Clinton.
Get over it.
The President is right on this one.
We need help and it will take help, structurally, from the government to do it.
No other country on the planet lets the markets decide who gets health care and how.
We're dying out here.
Literally.
For statistics on America's health care system, click here.
I just saw at Bottom Line Communications that KCUR announced Walt Bodine is retiring, as I said above, mostly, at 90 years of age.
Zounds.
I remember as a kid in the 60's, my Mom listened to Walt and won $64.00 listening to his show. She told of what his show meant for her at the time.
We're from St. Joe and she was raising the ten of us (seriously) so I think they gave it to her out of sympathy. She'd likely agree.
So, anyway, Walt and this city go back decades and he's done great work for us and we'll miss him but this has got to be good news for him, I'd think.
Five days a week at the station?
And I always love to hear the restaurant critics every other Friday when I can--I do have that pesky job, you know--and the movie reviewers.
So we all wish Walt well and thank goodness he's going to still be on once a week, for the Friday shows, thank goodness, but I have to put in a "plug" right now for what should happen for and to this time slot.
Here's hoping Steve Kraske takes it over.
The guy does great research and interviews and gets terrific guests.
It would clearly be the best thing KCUR could do for this city, radio, themselves and that time slot in replacing Walt.
Our fair city came up in the news this afternoon, in a couple different ways.
In the first one I saw, it called us out for our school district shrinking. It had some big, tragic headline about how desperate we are--"Kansas City Schools Crisis" was the headline.
I beg to differ.
From the outside, maybe this looks and seems desperate and crazy but for those of us looking on, this shrinking of the KCMO School District is just the obvious thing we need to do right now. In a district that used to have 75,000 students, we now have about 16,000 so close schools we must.
Get over it.
Then, in the 2nd article about KCMO , it pointed out how we rank tenth, nationally, for not doing too badly in comparison to other cities regarding this worst recession in 80 years.
So good on us, eh?
Finally, not about Kansas City at all, there was an article about Detroit, Michigan and their problems.
Think we have it bad?
Think again.
The leaders of Detroit have proposed bulldozing up to one quarter of the city, in an effort to save it.
We, by sharp contrast, while not exactly soaring, are nowhere close to that bad a shape.
I say again, too, that, come 2011, when the downtown Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts opens, the nation will come calling on us and we'll look pretty good, by comparison to a lot of other places.
Ever since that idiot 43rd President of ours ("W", to be clear) screwed up our country--and in so many ways--we've done away with this intelligent idea.
The whole term "Faith-based Inititatives" is enough to make me nearly scream.
Government doesn't belong in religion in any way, shape or form, period.
And religion, conversely, doesn't belong in government.
If you'd have been listening to our country for the last dozen or more years, you'd have thought some boneheaded Liberal came up with this idea, to get more money to the poor or something.
But no.
It was a Republican--a "Conservative" politician--that same George W. Bush.
It should never have been done.
And then, once created, once these same religions started both discriminating against people not of their same faith by not giving them jobs or whatever and, further, proselytizing people, with this same money or the promise of money or help, so that the person needing assistance was maybe talked into becoming part of that religious group, the money from "Uncle Sugar" should have been pulled.
Then, "Mr. Change", our new President (of whom, I have to say, I'm still a supporter), to add insult to this injury, promised to change this policy during the campaign but hasn't done anything near it yet:
"During a July 1, 2008, Zanesville, Ohio, speech, Obama promised to end Bush administration policies that permit publicly funded faith-based social service programs to proselytize and discriminate in hiring based on religion."
To date, no such thing. His council on this is studying reports, I see but that's it so far.
No, this "Faith-based" crap should never have been started.
And it should end now.
I want a bumper sticker: "Government out of religion. Religion out of government."
Let's get to it, Mr. President.
Link to related story: http://www.au.org/media/press-releases/archives/2010/03/obama-inaction-on-faith-based.html
The company, Regent Asset Management, out of Colorado "provides customized collection services for a variety of industries, is doing most of its business with banks and credit card companies."
So they're a debt-collection company and they're expanding because the economy has gone to heck, people have lost their jobs and can't pay their bills.
Oh, well.
At least they're here in the area and not somewhere else calling us all.
History reveals a long-standing local authority to regulate guns. Shouldn't that matter?
By Saul Cornell, Justin Florence, and Matthew Shors Posted Monday, March 8, 2010, at 6:00 PM ET
During last week's oral argument in McDonald v. City of Chicago—the term's blockbuster gun law case—Justice Antonin Scalia was quick to move away from arguments about the Constitution's "text and history" and instead took solace in the judge-made "substantive due process" doctrine he has long attacked. Why was this champion of "originalism" so quick to embrace this modern and amorphous judicial doctrine, at the expense of his express preference for carefully considering the text and history of the 14th Amendment? Some scholars argue that it was to avoid relying on the 14th Amendment's "privileges or immunities clause" (which Scalia lambasted as "the darling of the professoriate"). But another possible reason for Scalia's move is that it's simply impossible to square his broad view of the right to bear arms with the history of the 14th Amendment itself. If the justices take a hard look at the actual history of gun regulation in America, then they will recognize that expansive gun rights vis-Ã -vis states and localities have never really had a place here.
The McDonald case is the court's first opportunity to consider whether the 14th Amendment prohibits states and cities from enacting certain gun regulations. Two years ago, in Heller v. District of Columbia, a divided court decided that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms. But it reserved the question of whether that amendment limits only the federal government for another day. Justice Scalia's view, set forth in Heller, is that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear certain types of arms unrelated to militia service. By relying on the substantive due process doctrine to "incorporate" the Second Amendment into the 14th, Justice Scalia could ensure that the same right would apply against states and cities, not just a federal protectorate like the District of Columbia.
The problem for Scalia, and for those who want to expand gun rights and also stay faithful to the history and text of the Constitution, is that this view cannot be reconciled with the history of the 14th Amendment. In the years before and after the adoption of the amendment, numerous states and cities—motivated by the danger posed as firearms and other deadly weapons became smaller—enacted laws banning the carrying and possession of certain dangerous weapons, including handguns. In other words, there is ample historical evidence showing that at the time the 14th Amendment was ratified, states had broad authority to enact nondiscriminatory gun-safety regulations. We submitted an amicus brief to the court describing dozens of these laws, but just a few examples suffice to make this point: In 1879, Tennessee outlawed the carrying of "any … belt of pocket pistol, revolver, or any kind of pistol, except the army or navy pistol," including on a person's own farm. And in 1876, Wyoming barred anyone from "bear[ing] upon his person, concealed or openly, any fire-arm or other deadly weapon, within the limits of any city, town or village." And beginning in 1872, you had to check your firearm at the jurisdictional door before even entering the town of Wichita, Kan.
This Reconstruction-era regulation by states and localities was hardly new. Near the time of the Founding, several states regulated the storage of gunpowder in order to protect against fires, in some cases effectively banning the possession of loaded weapons in the home. As Justice John McLean explained in1847, in light of the "explosive nature of gunpowder, a city may exclude it" as an "[act] of self-preservation."
New state Constitutions adopted during the Reconstruction era explicitly codified states' power to regulate guns alongside a right to bear arms. In Texas, for instance, a constitutional convention in 1868 (the same year as the ratification of the 14th Amendment) subjected "the right to keep and bear arms" to "such regulations as the legislature may prescribe." Utah's 1889 Constitution provided that "the Legislature shall regulate the exercise of this right by Law." Justice Scalia asserted during oral argument that "something like 44 States currently have in their constitutions protection of the right to bear arms," but he ignored that at the time the 14th Amendment was ratified, these provisions went hand-in-hand with others providing for state gun regulation.
When state and local gun laws were challenged in the era of the ratification of the 14th Amendment, courts regularly held that these restrictions passed constitutional muster. For example, Tennessee's Supreme Court observed in 1871 that the right to bear arms in that state's constitution could "be subordinated to such regulations and limitations as are or may be authorized by the law of the land," and the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld in 1876 that state's ban on carrying pistols as a proper "exercise of the police power of the State without any infringement of the constitutional right" to bear arms.
When the existence of these laws was mentioned in passing by Chicago's counsel at oral argument, Justice Scalia suggested that the laws at the time of the 14th Amendment did not concern "handguns in the home." But as the examples above demonstrate, that is not so. And state courts repeatedly upheld those laws against constitutional attack.
During argument last week, the court struggled to balance a state or city's right to regulate guns with the Second Amendment right to possess them, without seeming to grapple with the fact that such regulations have been on the books since the Reconstruction period (and before). Several Justices asked the advocates whether there was any basis for concluding that the 14th Amendment protected some kind of right to bear arms, but a right that nevertheless permitted states to adopt more flexible and robust laws than Heller permitted of the federal government. History provides overwhelming support for the proposition that states and cities, through their elected representatives, have the authority to balance the public safety interests impacted by the possession and use of dangerous weapons such as handguns.
As John Bingham, the leading drafter of the 14th Amendment, wrote in an 1867 speech, the new Amendment "would maintain intact the powers of the national government and State governments—the one for general defense and protection, the other for local administration and personal security." The 14th Amendment prevented states from discriminating against the rights of certain classes of people, but states could (and did) continue to enact neutral laws banning classes of weapons. Although Justice Scalia did not appear to be interested in this history, there's no reason the rest of the court can't become Originalists this time around.
Saul Cornell is the Paul and Diane Guenther Chair in American History at Fordham University. Matthew Shors is a partner and Justin Florence an associate in the Washington office of O'Melveny & Myers LLP. Cornell was lead scholar and Shors and Florence co-authors of an amicus brief submitted to the court in this case.
They love, love, love their man Former President Ronald Reagan so they've come up with the idea of replacing U.S. Grant on the 50 with Ronnie.
Whoop-ti-do.
My first reaction is just that--why don't these people focus on working together to solve our problems, rather than toying with who's on our money?
My second thought is pretty much, so what? Grant helped get us through the Civil War, the biggest internal mess this country's ever been in, to date but he was alcoholic. He had his problems, like the rest of us. He was no saint.
But actually, this got me thinking.
If Republicans want to replace someone on our paper money, they've picked the wrong guy and denomination.
The guy we should replace is Andrew Jackson on the twenty.
Now there's a guy who should be ousted.
Things Andrew Jackson did:
--put many of his friends in government jobs;
--killed or effectively tortured many Native Americans;
--exercised his power in government by ignoring two branches of government;
--was a slave owner and horrific racist;
--broke campaign promises (typical, right?);
--didn't just kill many Native Americans, he was responsible for the Trail of Tears--thousands of Native Americans died because of him;
--saw to the "removal" of thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral homelands (see the following: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html) both prior to and during his Presidential tenure.
So, yeah, Republicans, take Andrew Jackson and the $20.00 bill. Have at it.
Then get over it, stop messing around and work on the things that really matter.
Like seeing to it our clearly-broken health care system works, instead, and maybe passing legislation outlawing "earmarks" in Congress.
Time for a U.S. Revolution – Fifteen Reasons, By Bill Quigley
This article appears on The Huffington Post and Common Dreams.
It is time for a revolution. Government does not work for regular people. It appears to work quite well for big corporations, banks, insurance companies, military contractors, lobbyists, and for the rich and powerful. But it does not work for people.
The 1776 Declaration of Independence stated that when a long train of abuses by those in power evidence a design to reduce the rights of people to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is the peoples right, in fact their duty to engage in a revolution.
Martin Luther King, Jr., said forty three years ago next month that it was time for a radical revolution of values in the United States. He preached “a true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.” It is clearer than ever that now is the time for radical change.
Look at what our current system has brought us and ask if it is time for a revolution?
Over 2.8 million people lost their homes in 2009 to foreclosure or bank repossessions – nearly 8000 each day – higher numbers than the last two years when millions of others also lost their homes.
At the same time, the government bailed out Bank of America, Citigroup, AIG, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the auto industry and enacted the troubled asset (TARP) program with $1.7 trillion of our money.
Wall Street then awarded itself over $20 billion in bonuses in 2009 alone, an average bonus on top of pay of $123,000.
At the same time, over 17 million people are jobless right now. Millions more are working part-time when they want and need to be working full-time.
Yet the current system allows one single U.S. Senator to stop unemployment and Medicare benefits being paid to millions.
There are now 35 registered lobbyists in Washington DC for every single member of the Senate and House of Representatives, at last count 13,739 in 2009. There are eight lobbyists for every member of Congress working on the health care fiasco alone.
At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that corporations now have a constitutional right to interfere with elections by pouring money into races.
The Department of Justice gave a get out of jail free card to its own lawyers who authorized illegal torture.
At the same time another department of government, the Pentagon, is prosecuting Navy SEALS for punching an Iraqi suspect.
The US is not only involved in senseless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the U.S. now maintains 700 military bases world-wide and another 6000 in the US and our territories. Young men and women join the military to protect the U.S. and to get college tuition and healthcare coverage and killed and maimed in elective wars and being the world’s police. Wonder whose assets they are protecting and serving?
In fact, the U.S. spends $700 billion directly on military per year, half the military spending of the entire world – much more than Europe, China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, and Venezuela - combined.
The government and private companies have dramatically increased surveillance of people through cameras on public streets and private places, airport searches, phone intercepts, access to personal computers, and compilation of records from credit card purchases, computer views of sites, and travel.
The number of people in jails and prisons in the U.S. has risen sevenfold since 1970 to over 2.3 million. The US puts a higher percentage of our people in jail than any other country in the world.
The tea party people are mad at the Republicans, who they accuse of selling them out to big businesses.
Democrats are working their way past depression to anger because their party, despite majorities in the House and Senate, has not made significant advances for immigrants, or women, or unions, or African Americans, or environmentalists, or gays and lesbians, or civil libertarians, or people dedicated to health care, or human rights, or jobs or housing or economic justice. Democrats also think their party is selling out to big business.
Forty three years ago next month, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached in Riverside Church in New York City that “a time comes when silence is betrayal.” He went on to condemn the Vietnam War and the system which created it and the other injustices clearly apparent. “We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing oriented” society to a “person oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
It is time.
Original link here: http://ccrjustice.org/time-u.s.-revolution-%E2%80%93-fifteen-reasons%2C-bill-quigley
First, I don't know how they're on it as I didn't think St. Louis was in that good a position and two, Kansas City is absolutely not ranked in this "top ten", to be sure.
Memphis, TN and Columbus, OH (tied at 6) are both on the list as are Indianapolis (5), Minneapolis (4), Louisville (3) with Pittsburgh, PA at number one.
Makes me wonder what these mid-sized cities are doing particularly right, compared to us.
I mean besides paving their streets and seeing to it the snow is plowed in the winter.
"At a news conference in London, England, on Tuesday, the renowned Islamic scholar issued a fatwa -- a religious ruling -- condemning suicide bombers as destined for hell, removing extremists' certainty of earning paradise after death."
"The 600-page fatwa is arguably the most comprehensive theological refutation of Islamist terrorism to date. Qadri said his aim was to set an important precedent that might allow other scholars to similarly condemn the ideas behind terrorism."
"London's The Independent newspaper reports that the imam told fellow Muslims: 'Terrorism is terrorism, violence is violence and it has no place in Islamic teaching and no justification can be provided for it, or any kind of excuses of ifs and buts. The world needs an absolute, unconditional, unqualified and total condemnation of terrorism.'"
This, then, is the only way this insanity will end, be it in Iran, Aghanistan, anywhere and everywhere in the Muslim/Islam world.
We need more Imams and Islamist rulers, leaders and scholars to stand up and say that these suicide bombings are insanity and that they need to stop.
Let's hope that this one is the first of many to come. Hopefully Western governments all over the world--our own through Hillary Clinton and the State Department, the French, British, everyone--will push for more clarity and intelligence like this. Fortunately, in this case, it looks as though this Imam spoke out on his own.
Hopefully young Muslim and Islamic men and women 'round the world are listening.
On reading a bit yesterday about the shooter at the Pentagon yesterday and then on true government hate groups, I learned that there is a group organizing a "Second Amendment March" who's coordinating a march on Washington right now set for April 19th this year.
That's bad enough by itself.
But the date?
Besides being my Mother's birthday (God rest her soul) it is also the date of the first shots fired at Lexington in the Revolutionary War, the anniversary of the fiery end of the government siege in Waco and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
At the end of each customer’s meal, officers will encourage diners to tip their “real” waiter or waitress first and then ask them if they’d like to make a donation to Special Olympics, the charity of choice for law enforcement nationwide.
The Pentagon recently released their quadrennial defense review, and they included the instability from climate change as a factor that could cost the lives of the men and women who serve in our armed forces.
The Center for Naval Analysis brought together a blue-ribbon panel of generals and admirals who concluded that "climate change is a serious national security threat." And General Anthony Zinni said flatly that if we don't deal with climate change now, "we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives."
And these veterans know it already does.
The politicians don't have it tough. The troops do. End of story. Now the Senate needs to do its job -- for them.
------------------------ Conclusions:
We need out of the Middle East.
We need to reduce, dramatically and quickly, our use of fossil fuels.
We need to pass a comprehensive, effective Clean Energy bill in Congress.
First, let me just say, this isn't my claim so don't attack me.
Second, I think it's important to point out that he was clearly anti-government if, again, the person who shot the security guards and then died is the same guy who had the blog with the same name. That guy railed against the government.
Third, I don't think calling him a terrorist is a big stretch since he did, in fact, shoot the guards.
The only thing left open to question, then, is the "Right-wing" accusation and that seems well documented here.
If this is true--and it seems as though it is--then "Right-wing gun nut" seems justified.
This should make Fox "News", with all their absurd, irresponsible reporting, vitriole and hyperbole quite proud. They're getting more and more results for their work at pumping people up and dividing the American people.
Question/proposal/challenge for Fox "News": No chance you guys will quit all that stupid ugliness and just truly report unbiased news, is there?
Nah, I thought not.
More on the gunman here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-05/the-crazy-gunman-who-attacked-the-pentagon/
A report on right-wing hate groups here: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/spring/rage-on-the-right
"A California man killed in a shootout with Pentagon police drove cross-country and arrived at the military headquarters' subway entrance armed with two semiautomatic weapons, authorities said Friday. The shooter apparently left behind Internet postings resentful of the government and airing suspicions about the 9/11 attacks."
One more person angry about our government.
Another gun-nut, conspiracy theorist, it seems, if the guy who did it is the guy with the same name who posted a bunch of rants on the 'net. We'll see. Stay tuned.
Doesn't it seem like there's been a lot of these lately?
For a brief update on recent attacks:
"The assault at the very threshold of the Pentagon — the U.S. capital's ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001 — came four months after a deadly attack on the Army's Fort Hood, Texas, post allegedly by a U.S. Army psychiatrist with radical Islamic leanings."
"Hatred of the government motivated a man in Texas last month to fly a small plane into a building housing Internal Revenue Service offices, killing an IRS employee and himself."
"The shooting resembled one in January in which a gunman walked up to the security entrance of a Las Vegas courthouse and opened fire with a shotgun, killing one officer and wounding another before being gunned down in a barrage of return fire."
It would be nice if this, then, would end this stuff but I wouldn't count on it.
What would also be nice, though, is if we knew all our representatives--especially the ones in Washington--were paying attention to this palpable anger and frustration on the part of the citizens of the country, regardless of the source of the anger.
What any and all representatives in Washington ought to take from this is that we have problems, we want and need them fixed and they need to stop the bickering and the partisan nonsense and the log-jamming legislation they've been doing and get to work, compromise, come up with good solutions and pass that legislation.
And quickly.
That's what should happen.
It won't, of course, but that's what should happen.
Look at the imbalances of what is being spent per capita in each State from the "Stimulus money" at the following link:
http://projects.propublica.org/recovery/
I’m sure it’s typical but Missouri is getting $903.00 per person while Alaskan citizens are getting $2711.86 each spent on them. That's galling enough, by itself, with that crazy inequity but keep in mind, this is where Ms. Palin abhors government--and government spending.
Yeah, I'll bet she does.
Then, on top of that bit of indignity, Washington, DC citizens are getting $5780.30 per person spent on them.
Would someone explain this to me?
Why is it that this is supposed to make sense?
That’s some crazy imbalances.
If you’re from a large Western state where, again, they “hate government” and there’s hardly anyone out there, load up ‘cuz they’re each getting lots more money spent on each of them. (e.g., Montana @ $1,619.97 each).
Posts
