Thanks and good morning, PW!

FunnyWheelieDiva

Let’s see, right wing folks carrying guns to town hall meetings are just peaceably exercising their constitutional rights but left wing folks wearing tee shirts are violent activists that must be arrested before they can do anything

Don’t mess with the Second Amendment.
Owning and carrying a gun is a right not a privilege.
Also, you are wrong on all your other points. Roosevelt didn’t save the country by dropping the gold standard. He saved the country by getting us into World War II.

Speaking of Republican noise machine…what was that? A big fart?

I know we don’t like posting long articles but though you might like to see what I just got from a fellow vet.

Ex-soldiers don’t need to be told they’re a burden to society.

By JIM TOWEY
If President Obama wants to better understand why America’s discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.

Last year, bureaucrats at the VA’s National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, “Your Life, Your Choices.” It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA’s preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated “Your Life, Your Choices.”

Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.

“Your Life, Your Choices” presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political “push poll.” For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be “not worth living.”

The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to “shake the blues.” There is a section which provocatively asks, “Have you ever heard anyone say, ‘If I’m a vegetable, pull the plug’?” There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as “I can no longer contribute to my family’s well being,” “I am a severe financial burden on my family” and that the vet’s situation “causes severe emotional burden for my family.”

When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?

One can only imagine a soldier surviving the war in Iraq and returning without all of his limbs only to encounter a veteran’s health-care system that seems intent on his surrender.

I was not surprised to learn that the VA panel of experts that sought to update “Your Life, Your Choices” between 2007-2008 did not include any representatives of faith groups or disability rights advocates. And as you might guess, only one organization was listed in the new version as a resource on advance directives: the Hemlock Society (now euphemistically known as “Compassion and Choices”).

This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable. Worse, a July 2009 VA directive instructs its primary care physicians to raise advance care planning with all VA patients and to refer them to “Your Life, Your Choices.” Not just those of advanced age and debilitated condition—all patients. America’s 24 million veterans deserve better.

Many years ago I created an advance care planning document called “Five Wishes” that is today the most widely used living will in America, with 13 million copies in national circulation. Unlike the VA’s document, this one does not contain the standard bias to withdraw or withhold medical care. It meets the legal requirements of at least 43 states, and it runs exactly 12 pages.

After a decade of observing end-of-life discussions, I can attest to the great fear that many patients have, particularly those with few family members and financial resources. I lived and worked in an AIDS home in the mid-1980s and saw first-hand how the dying wanted more than health care—they wanted someone to care.

If President Obama is sincere in stating that he is not trying to cut costs by pressuring the disabled to forgo critical care, one good way to show that commitment is to walk two blocks from the Oval Office and pull the plug on “Your Life, Your Choices.” He should make sure in the future that VA decisions are guided by values that treat the lives of our veterans as gifts, not burdens.

Mr. Towey, president of Saint Vincent College, was director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives (2002-2006) and founder of the nonprofit Aging with Dignity.
–

First of all..tinman eat it!

However permission to carry a conceiled weapon seems to be not such a bad idea. People need the right to defend themselves. And most gun regulation has been a benefit for most citizens. It’s called balance.

Owning and/or carrying any firearm is not a right or a privilege..its obnoxious stupidity and Uncivilized and Freudian. I consider anyone carrying or having a gun anywhere near me as threatening and I consider them dangerously mentally unstable and just plain out paranoid.

Maybe wars were one way to get out of financial difficulties at one time(Crusades, for instance). But now they are simply Easter Island Crazy. Literally blowing up and setting fire to Billions and Zillions of dollars that could well go to all kinds of essential infrastructure here at home and around the world.
Cowboy mentality indeed.

Most Republics would love it if Miss Kitty stilled owned the Long Branch Saloon and they could swagger in with a big gun on each hip and feel like a manly man. Since everything else is so small.

Read the Constitution.
Freudian? Interesting.

The father of contemporary gun control was Ronald Reagan. When the future president was Governor of California in the 1960s, the Black Panthers were also active in Oakland. Aside from providing free breakfasts for poor kids, the Panthers also liked to follow the police while armed with rifles to ensure that the cops treated citizens with respect.

As part of that campaign, the Panthers showed up in Sacramento armed to the teeth. One film I saw had a class of young white elementary school girls gathering on the lawn of the State Capitol, while the Panthers, all rifled up, entered the Capitol to make a point.

Clearly, to a conservative like Reagan, the Second Amendment was not as important as keeping the neegrows from providing a formidable counterbalance (or even the image thereof) to white power.

Just like the fact that conservatives are allowed to brandish weapons militaristically during what is supposed to be a civil political town, any time that liberals, progressives or radicals on the other side even think of those things, we’d have been swiftly carted off to camps where we’d still be held and tortured by blackwater.

Ronald Reagan–father of contemporary gun control.

Hey, you’ll love this….
An illegal alien in Polk County Florida who got pulled over in a routine traffic stop ended up executing’ the deputy who stopped him.

The deputy was shot eight times, including once behind his right ear at close range. Another deputy was wounded and a police dog killed.

A state wide manhunt ensued.

The murderer was found hiding in a wooded area with his gun.

After he shot at them, SWAT team officers opened fire and hit the guy 68 times.

Naturally, the liberal media went nuts and asked why they shot the poor undocumented immigrant 68 times.

Sheriff Grady Judd told the Orlando Sentinel:

‘Because that’s all the ammunition we had.’

The second amendment, like any clause in the constitution is “up for interpretation”. Many don’t see it giving the individual the “right” to own a weapon outside of being in a well regulated militia.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

So what would a well regulated militia necessary to the security of the state? Are gun owners all part of some well regulated militia? Or just wanting to own a weapon for personal “use”?

At least the Black Panthers can still carry night sticks.

Gun folks/gun nuts… this is not a place where I feel your views about weapons are welcome. Perhaps your views are but not your guns.

We have police but there is no way they can be everywhere. When someone is trying to break into your home the police can not instantly be there so that’s when a gun can come in very handy.

Happiness is a warm gun.

Read Freud…what you need to play Cowboy? Grow up.

Paraphrasing E.J Dionne:
It’s time for our legislators to put their money where their mouth is. Dismantle all metal detectors and let gun-carrying citizens into the U.S. Capitol.

Read a story many years ago about a man who kept a gun under his pillow. One night his teenage son came home, went into the parents bedroom to kiss his mother goodnight. The father thought he was a burglar and shot him. The son died and I imagine that the father wished that he could.

No one’s arguing against responsible gun ownership. My father and grandfather both kept pistols for self-defense.

What is disturbing are the people who strap on a hogleg and go to an event that is already emotionally charged. All it takes is for one of these yahoos to feel threatened enough to pull their “great equalizer” and then all hell will break loose.

About the Wild West: If that was the case, why were the most celebrated heroes sheriffs and marshals who brought order by enforcing ordinances “not to take your guns to town”?

A whole bunch of western movies, radio shows, and TV episodes lose their plot if the Wild West didn’t have gun control.

Oh, well maybe when it was the Wild West and there were no women and children nearby.

I agree with you on it being crazy to take guns to places they know they have no need to take them. Indeed there are few reasons to carry the gun around but I would not want that right restricted.

How do you warm up a gun? Do you keep it in the oven?

I rest my case. You really Loved that story ,didnt you? Does it give you a rush of satisfaction ?

I’ll bet that “illegal alien” had either come from one of the many Central or South American countries where the U.S. had backed a brutal dictatorship and he had Enough of police and soldiers stopping him and disappearing his friends and family.

Or he was a drug dealer or runner, dealing in drugs in the U.S. which is their big customer. The U.S. encourages drug growth and production all over the world.Especially in Central and South America. Believe it.
Thats no excusing killing a (probably) Highway Patrol. But you have to think there was a reason he did it.

Except…well, it kinda is already.

Do you live in an “open carry” state? If not, then your Second Amendment rights are restricted.

Are there municipal ordinances where you live prohibiting firing guns within the city limits? If so, then your Second Amendment rights are restricted.

See where I’m going with this?

Haha, very funny…and what about on airplanes ? I love your mind…you really put your (mental) finger on it.
There is NO logic in the gun apologists heads. It falls apart in less than 3 steps (of logic).

And frequently kill someone in their own family.

We know what you are, but why are you here?

(I read the 2nd amendment as requiring gun owners to be members in good standing of Guard, Reserve, or law enforcement and their reserves, if not actually in the military. At least if they want to have more than just hunting equipment or short-range personal weapons. YMMV.)

Did they really complain about “Unforgiven?” Because in that case, the gun control was enforced by the nominal villain of the piece, Gene Hackman’s sheriff, so, even if they believed it was ahistorical, it could still be seen as an example *against* gun control, showing the tyranny of the state.

Yes, all criminals should be set free. It sounds like social justice garbage.

I disagree with the Kos poll you cite. Sure, the President has lost some support among the base but other polls indicate that a majority of Americans (76%) now identify Obama as liberal to very liberal. ‘Liberal’ = Big government.

Despite claiming to foment change, Obama’s is simply, a statist politician. He sold himself as a moderate, a pragmatist but the statist policies and high taxes he seeks to impose on individuals do not appeal to those who are more personally autonomous and responsible for charting their own course. Americans want health care/insurance form to be sure, but they are NOT in support of a public option.

Try as progressives might, citizens continue to reject their grand designs, fueling the American idea that no central government shall interfere with our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

Well yes….I never know when I might want to knock off one of my kids.

Very well said.

Obviously, you don’t understand how police act as a deterrent to crime. They don’t have to be everywhere if the expectation is likely that they can appear at any time. I’ve seen this happen in a community that briefly went through a period in which there was a crime problem that was solved by a community watch program and random increases police activity.

Your point sounds as if it’s offered from the ivory tower of well-protected suburbia. It’s an imagining, not a reality.

My community shut down a outbreak of burglaries and auto thefts and it required just being aware of what was going on and common sense and a telephone that connected us to an incident reporting staffer of the police department.

I’ve heard similar stories but these are very rare. There are other stories of people saving their own lives by having a gun handy. It’s a personal choice but it should stay a choice.

Good Grief! Don’t these trolls have something better to do? Perhaps go out and donate a day to a food bank, or a homeless shelter.

I’m leaving for a bit but let me be the first to say….I hate the second amendment….I wish guns (except those used for hunting) were all banned.

Actually that’s a good suggestion for all of us. Nobody is going to change anyone else’s opinion.

I’m pretty sure comment #31 is snark, but, nevertheless I find it in very poor taste. Is there a mod in the house?

I know it sounds like a cliche but if guns are banned only criminals would have them. Doesn’t Chicago have the most shooting deaths of children of any city and aren’t guns banned there?

“violence is as American as cherry pie”
H Rap Brown

Chill.
I have no kids.

Good morning, Twain.

If the fur-balls, however cute, are ignored … they will eventually go away.

Right now, it would appear that they are driving other people away.

Raven, obviously, does not intend to allow his blood pressure to be elevated by these yapping annoyances.

As you said some days ago, they do not engage, they do not contribute, their only intent is to disrupt.

Attention is the one thing they crave, that and the mistaken belief that they impact our reason and reasonableness.

One would like to believe that all people have some common aspect of humanity, doubtless all do, but it might well not be worth our efforts to try to elicit some evidence of that common thread.

DW

Good morning, DW. How are you?

Good Morning, David. I’m still here. Pretty thick skin, most days. How are you? Long time no chatty.

I be well.

I be patient.

I be ready for change.

I not be holding my breath.

I be convinced that “education” of citizenry not yet sufficient.

I be very glad for FDL and the many friends I find here.

;~DW

I know it sounds like a cliche but if guns are banned only criminals would have them.

You mean, criminals who steal them from (legal) gun collectors, law enforcement, and the military. Not that they’ll be banned any time soon, but I think they should be more strongly regulated than they are. Like requiring registration and regular training and licensing, just like cars and drivers.

Funny. the UK didn’t have much trouble with that sort of thing before we started exporting TV and movies glorifying firearms and those who use them indiscriminately. (Bruce Willis, for example. Their police were unarmed, and, I understand, mostly still are.

Wow, what a troll-feeding session! It is fun sometimes. Perhaps with enough personal information slips, a coconut custard PIE missile lobbed in his general direction might convince him to come over to the light side. Ummmm, pie!

There’s a lot of case law on the Second Amendment, going back to before the 14th, and after. One generally accepted ruling (established precedent) is that the right to bear arms is a federal right, which can be restricted by state and local governments. Even the recent “Heller” ruling confirmed that. So, work locally to get the restrictions you feel your community or state need. Just don’t wait for congress to limit gun ownership any time soon.

BTW, I’d like folks like my step-dad to not have a pistol in the house. With his poor vision and thick glasses, barely awake, he yelled at me, threatened me at the top of his lungs, while pointing a loaded gun at my head at about 12:30 am, as I came through the front door of our house. Only a muscle twitch away from being killed by an unregulated non-militia man. ‘Nuf said.

So I have a question for the class:

If I have a taser pointed at a cop, does he draw his gun or his taser in response?

Is a taser suitable for armament in a “well-armed militia”?

Wow, teh stoopid is out today.

GREAT!!!!

G o o d
m o r n i n g
t o
y a !

Don’t hurt yourselves with those bad old keyboards.

Have a great weekend!!!!

And please, please, please when you brush your teeth, try and remember to UNLOAD the damned gun.

;~D

Dont be silly…I never said anything about setting criminals free. And you know it. Your ‘reading’ of what I said is an excellent example of a failure of logic. You are so full of your own preconceived notions and blurbs that you cant think beyond anything that sounds like something you have heard before.
I am talking about the culture of violence being self perpetrating. A gun is the ultimate argument point for anyone who has nothing pertinent to say. (I deleted ‘like you’ because that was rude and I wouldnt dare to be rude to someone who likes guns so much !)

There are two books that should be read before forming an opinion on gun control.

One, published by an Oklahoma university press is, I believe, “No law west of the Pecos.” The other was written about Bodie, CA.

Both books show a great deal of killing, but there was NO crime. The reports of these areas show no crime. Burglary, nope, small time thieving, nope, rape, nope.

Then the preachers came and things well and truly went to hell.

I am a little bit prejudice since some of my forebears followed a bunch of small time Europeans (came over to kill buffaloes and natives) from northwest Arkansas to a sea port in Old Mexico. They killed all of the party from aristocrats down to servants. Why? These privileged foreigners had raped three women, a mother and two daughters, and then just left thinking that they were next door to god.

Sideline, my ancestors that chased them down, rode through the Texas Rebellion against Mexico, going through the lines twice. The family story is that they told anyone that they could give a shit less about their personal problems, they had some people to kill and then that they were going home.

Thanks for bringing up Eastwood’s Unforgiven. Hackman’s sheriff was all about gun control in that movie. No pistols allowed in the city limits, sounds like gun control to most normal, thinking people.

Conservatives didn’t like Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby either.

All well and good. Except for a few things. Like the fact that the last time I looked there were 36 states that allowed CCW and we have yet to get any reports of the “blood in the streets” that we were warned would happen if CCW laws were enacted.
A fact. The police are not there to protect you as an individual. If you call the police and tell them you have been threatened, they will do nothing.
A fact. PPOs mean less than the paper they are written on. Women have calld the police about a PPO being ignored by the person it was written about. I know of 2 cases-in 2 different states-where the police were told that a PPO vwas being violated. The police refused to even send someone to even talk to the one who called. In both cases the person was dead within 6 hours. The police are not there to protect you. Their purpose is to protect society and to arrest someone after a crime has been committed. Lets say that someone breaks into your house and you call 911. Fine. How long before the cops show up? 5 min? 10 min? Meanwhile, what do you, the unarmed sheep do? Face it. The crooks are wolves, the police are the sheep dogs and the vast majority of people are sheep.
The country is getting more violent, it is more violent than it was 40 years ago. The whys can be debated endlessly but what do you do when confronted by someone in your house? It happend to me back in 1973 in Ca. I woke from a very sound sleep to find someone leaning over me with a gun in his hand. Very bad. I rolled out of bed, picked up my shotgun that was next to my bed,already loaded and cocked, and shot him. I have rarely been as scared as I was that night. So what have I done since then? I keep a loaded shotgun next to my bed, my wife keeps a loaded handgun on her bedside table as the shotgun is to big for her. I have a house alarm with a nation wide alarm company. What I do not do is depend on the police to protect me. Because they can’t. It is not their job. I have had friends who went thru attempted carjackings, who shot the thief before they could be killed. I just had a friend, who owned a store, get killed by a robber. He did as he was told-the security film showed that he did everything the robber told him to do-then he was shot and killed anyway. He did not believe in guns. Another friend keeps a gun in his cash register, the last time someone stuck a gun in his face and said give me your money, he pulled out his gun and shot him. I have a CCW permit in every state that I spend time in. I carry a gun all the time,as does my wife. We also spend several hours a month at the range, practicing. In these times, you are either a sheep, expecting someone else to protect you, either because you do not believe in guns or because of other convictions or you are a wolf. Protecting yourself with a gun both at home, in your car or on the street.
You do not ever see any stories in the MSM about armed citizens who protect themselves or someone else. Even backing up the police or coming to the rescue of a police officer. It happens but only local media ever report on it. OTOH, if, god forbid, a CCW holder ever happend to go crazy and start shooting up the place, it would get 24/7 coverage everywhere. Except that hasn’t happend, has it?
The US is a very violent country. The entire world knows this for a fact. But there are other countries where almost everyone has an automatic weapon and there is less crime than there is here. I wonder why.

It happens. So are you going to take away everyone rights because of a few accidents? If that is the way you feel-and I am not saying that you do-then we sould outlaw cars bacause we kill over 30K people a year with them.

Words change their meaning over time. Perhaps what we think the words mean is not what the words ment back a couple of hundred years ago.
Common words in everyday usage have had their meanings change just over the last 30 years.

That is your opinion. But it is only your opinion. Your rights do not include forcing me to go along with your views. On the other hand, the majority of states now have laws that allow concealed carry of handguns, so that means that the majority of people believe that it is OK. Your view is the minority view. Laws are made by a society that the majority will obey. There is no sense in making laws that no one will obey. Example would be the nationwide 55mph speed limit. Also prohibition.

and in response to 57 as well…..
Very well said!

Jesus, no wonder the suicide rate is sky-high. That is horrible.

Not even close, Tinman — as you would know if you’d read any of the links.

FDR’s one big mistake was in fact forsaking the New Deal and jumping back into his fiscally-conservative comfort zone in 1937, cutting back on social spending and endangering the fragile recovery to the point where Republicans made big gains in the 1938 elections.

Somalia is the model for Republicans. Guns for everyone, strong religious values, no heavy tax burdens and no socialized health care. It’s a wonder that Republicans vacation elsewhere, given their commitment to everything that is Somalia.

He’ll be on Fox News Sunday tomorrow morning

This is an awesome post. We should do more like this- just labeling conservative myths and shooting them in the head. I particularly like the one about Wild West gun control; I’ve done a lot of research on the Wild West, and discovering the prevalence of “Get rid of the damn gun” was a shocker for me when I learned it. Now I use it to annoy less knowledgeable friends who bring up the Wild West in conversations about violence.