The question about guns that is continually asked; will the battle over them be different this time?
The answer is a resounding NO. Not until we go to the polls and vote the greedy bastards who have been supporting the ownership of “weapons of war” out of congress. All firearms should be kept from those who cannot behave responsibly, but automatic weapons have no place anywhere but in the hands of the military. If that means giving the military too much power, so be it. There are other ways to control that.
The white militias want us to believe that they are the ones that will save us from a military that has overstepped its bounds and yet they are the ones who have continually broken our laws to the point of treason
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One of the biggest offshoots of the COVID crisis has been the exodus from big cities to rural areas. Willie Geist did a segment on Bozeman, Montana this week, and I was reminded of the time my wife and I built a house in rural, Litchfield County, CT. The influx of city people moving into any rural area changes the way country people live. Traffic picks up, the cost of things jumps precipitously and points of view that have been sacrosanct for a century are suddenly challenged. In the case of Warren, CT where we bult our home, the landscape didn’t change much as there was plenty of forest to shield the new homes and to be fair, many of the city folk bought old homes that would have decayed and collapsed if not for the influx. But in Bozeman, the new construction is abysmal. I have never seen such a lame accumulation of awful architecture in my life. One ugly building after another.
Now the question is, will it last? Will those who have moved to the country find that beauty and tranquility are a good trade for the hustle and excitement of the city? If real estate prices in NYC are any indicator, they won’t. The rush to come back to the city or to just get there in the first place is a tsunami at present. Apartment rental prices have jumped over 10% in the past three months and the summit isn’t even in sight.
Cities have always had their attraction and it looks like it will continue. That’s not to say that rural life isn’t attractive. We loved our home in the woods. We would still have it if advancing age had not dictated that we were able to run only one home at a time. For us it was a no brainer. The city with its intellectual and cultural attractions won hands down.
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Mark Oliva, a spokesman for gun clubs: “Are we willing to take away people’s civil liberties? Are we willing take away people’s rights because of the actions of a criminal?”
This is exactly the kind of immoral, illogical bullshit that is being used by the Right-Wing gun lobby to obscure the real questions about guns. The real question, the only question that is important is: “Do we have a right to live and raise our children without fear of getting killed by some nut with an AR-15, or does some freak’s right to play “guns” carry more weight than our right to life?” It’s really that simple. The majority of the laws of the United States, in fact any civilized county, are about controlling unlawful behavior and providing safety for the populace. The principal thrust of the Constitution is not to provide the right to carry guns. That is an amendment, and it was added because of the threat of outside invasion. They wanted our citizens armed to fight off the British. It was not to protect us from our own government. There is currently no outside threat by any foreign governments that could be met by a militia. AR-15s alone, do not have the firepower for modern war. That is currently being proven in Ukraine where brave citizens armed with militia type weapons, still needed the big guns provided by the US and NATO to fight off the Russian threat.
No, the fantasy of “saving the nation” is just so much Right-Wing bullshit. It’s just the make-believe world of a lot of losers.
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The January 6th hearings now being presented to the public as entertainment, are actually backing the Democrats into a corner. If they don’t get at least a couple of criminal indictments against Donald Trump for activities beyond the pale of human behavior and if Merrick Garand doesn’t move ahead to try Trump for even a few of his many offenses, they can kiss their assess goodbye for the next couple of elections and large numbers of us will move to Canada or Europe. The fact is, criminal behavior must be punished or it will be repeated ad nauseum. That is the biggest problem with the current progressive solutions to our criminal justice problems, but there are also political problems that will be insurmountable if Trump is not, at least, tried for his role in leading the insurrection.
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Its obvious that if our election process didn’t include the Electoral College, Trump’s false narrative of winning the election would have been all but impossible to sell. After all, the popular vote was decisively against him, even in the election he won. The American public trounced Trump. Twice! It’s only because of the existence of the Electoral College that Trump won the first time.
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If Trump is indicted and/or convicted will our Democracy survive? Can it? Will the political ramifications of this act of justified morality insight violence, or will it satisfy a desire for justice? These are the questions that confront a population that has almost completely lost faith in government’s ability to lead.
A recent Meet the Press poll indicated that faith in the government’s ability to lead is at an all-time low, and that both parties are in the sixty percentiles of belief that most politicians run for office not to help the country but to help themselves. How can any nation survive this awful situation?
The answer is it can’t, and it won’t. Somehow, we must turn these numbers around and the only way to do it is to flock to the polls in November and vote out anyone who refuses to vote in the best interests of the people of this country.
This week the Washington Post published a list of over 100 GOP candidates that still support the big lie that Donald Trump won the last election. With all the evidence before them, these clowns still repeat the big lie because they think it will get the support of the criminal liar that has already disgraced the Presidency.
OVER 100 CANDIDATES! This is why this country isn’t working for the majority of its citizens. Yet, despite their propagation of this completely disproven lie, those 100 candidates will still receive votes, and some of them will get enough to win. And so, all men and women of intelligence and morals must swear allegiance to a goal of stopping any of them from winning. Because if those 100 manage to get a majority in either house of congress, if they get more than 40 seats in the Senate, they will block all the legislation that this country needs to keep it great. They will stop abortion, gun safety, drug pricing, universal healthcare, immigration, education reform and every other needed program that the majority of the people in this country support. It will also prevent our leaders from getting rid of the Electoral College, a move that will assist our legislators in maintaining a safe and sane country for all of us.