… The United States is the only country with such a constitutional amendment, though a few keep similar policies (e.g. Mexico, Switzerland). Every other democracy that maintains stricter gun controls continue to scratch their heads on why this is such a big deal. …
The Koch brothers aren’t true evil, I was surprised to learn. But they’ve put together a coalition that intends to spend almost $1 billion in 2016.
I do believe that money is intended to buy election wins for Republican candidates who will be expected to support polices that benefit … the Koch brothers.
This is a business move. Though they lost perhaps half a billion trying to defeat Obama, they hope to get back more than 1.5 billion if the next President is a Republican.
Click PLAY or watch a protest song on YouTube.
If you don’t like billionaires buying elections, campaign against the politicians they support.
He’s one of the Patriots sworn to defend citizens against their own government.
Personally I feel people like this pose a great danger to citizens.
The Jade Helm 15 conspiracy theories are based on the eponymous United States military training exercise, scheduled to take place in multiple U.S. states from July 15 to September 15, 2015.
… training will take place in the states Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah.
When officials at the Pentagon unveiled Jade Helm this spring, it triggered an eruption of the Big American Crazy — that recurring paranoia that has attached itself throughout the nation’s history to suspected threats like the Masons, the Papists, the Communists, the Islamists and the international banking cartel. Texans, in particular, lost their minds. They worried that the drill was in fact a furtive plot to seize their guns …
YouTube videos emerged claiming that Jade Helm’s “Helm” was an acronym for “Homeland Eradication of Local Militants.” …
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has identified more than 1,000 active Patriot groups nationwide as of 2013 that are “opposed to the ‘New World Order,’ engage in groundless conspiracy theorizing, or advocate or adhere to extreme antigovernment doctrines.” …
There are scores of patriot groups, but what makes Oath Keepers unique is that its core membership consists of men and women in uniform, including soldiers, police, and veterans. At regular ceremonies in every state, members reaffirm their official oaths of service, pledging to protect the Constitution—but then they go a step further, vowing to disobey “unconstitutional” orders from what they view as an increasingly tyrannical government.
In the United States 98% of women have used birth control at some point in time and 62% of those of reproductive age are currently using birth control …
(I assume the other 2% practice abstinence.)
About a third of American women will have an abortion in their lifetime. It’s a difficult and traumatic decision for most. 😦
Anything we can do to reduce the rates of unwanted pregnancy and abortion should be considered.
old white men deciding what women can do with their bodies
If you restrict access to sex education and contraception, expect more abortions.
Roman Catholics and (many) evangelicals should expect more abortions because they limit access to contraceptives.
The Roman Catholic Church should council women not to have abortions. But then provide help for those additional children they want born. Many are born to young, poor and distressed mothers who don’t have access to abortion. Those children really need the help of the Church.
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… Around 44 million abortions occur each year in the world, with a little under half done unsafely.
Abortion rates have changed little between 2003 and 2008, before which they decreased for decades due to better education about family planning and birth control. …
Those who are against abortion largely claim that an embryo or fetus is a human with a right to life and may compare it to murder.
Supporters point to a woman’s right to decide over her own body and to human rights in general. …
The blue and green colours indicate those nations where abortion is mostly legal on request.
“Every Sperm is Sacred” is a Monty Python musical sketch satire of Catholic teachings on reproduction that forbid masturbation and contraception by artificial means.
Obviously 1 egg or 1 sperm is NOT life.
But there is a legitimate argument on when a human life actually begins. I don’t have a strong opinion on this.
A late-term abortion often refers to an induced abortion procedure that occurs after the 20th week of gestation. Those are – obviously – even worse than first trimester abortions.
Fox News isn’t just bad for America, which is the usual liberal complaint. It’s also bad for the Republican Party, the still-conservative Bartlett holds, because it has stunted the GOP’s growth with a news agenda that ships “misinformation” to the party’s far-right base.
This is the so-called Fox “echo chamber” effect you’ve read so much about …
According to chamber theorists, Fox “breeds extremism” within the Republican Party by convincing viewers to reject other news feeds as biased and to partake only of Fox content and like-minded conservative radio fodder. The echo chamber, so the theory goes, has deluded the party into thinking that support for its radical-right views is greater than it really is. This, in turn, has convinced the party to run radical candidates who aren’t as electable as they seem to be. And all this extremism prevents the GOP’s presidential candidates from reaching centrist voters, who are essential for victory.
… the network is better at employing presidential candidates than electing them. …
… The median age of a Fox viewer is 68 … and its median age is rising. …
One of the many things that revolts me about the GW Bush years was their introduction of “enhanced interrogation techniques“.
A new documentary reminds us of American torture.
FRONTLINE investigates the fight over the CIA’s controversial “enhanced interrogation” methods, widely criticized as torture. Based on recently declassified documents and interviews with key political leaders and CIA insiders, filmmaker Michael Kirk investigates the secret history of what the CIA did — and whether it worked.
It didn’t work. It was torture. If another nation had used these techniques on Americans, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld would have called it torture.
Enhanced interrogation techniques … … methods included prolonged stress positions, hooding, subjection to deafening noise, sleep deprivation to the point of hallucination, deprivation of food and drink — as well as waterboarding, walling, nakedness, subjection to extreme cold, confinement in small coffin-like boxes, and repeated slapping or beating.
There were also cases of medically unnecessary forced rectal feeding (anal rape) and threats to harm family members. …
A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks concluded that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it. …
A 2012 Gallup poll interviewed a random sample of 1,012 American adults, aged 18 and older. …
Forty six percent Americans believed in creationism, 32 percent believed in theistic evolution and 15 percent believed in evolution without any divine intervention. …
As an Agnostic, I believe creationism is wrong. Flabbergasted that so many thinking adults could overlook the inconsistencies between what their eyes see and the possibility that the Earth is only something less than 10,000yrs-old …
An overwhelming majority of the scientific community accepts evolution as the dominant scientific theory of biological diversity.
Nearly every scientific society, representing hundreds of thousands of scientists, has issued statements rejecting intelligent design …
61% of Canadians believe that humans evolved from less advanced life forms, while 22% believe that God created human beings in their present form within the last 10,000 years …
According to a 2008 Norstat poll for NRK, 59% of the Norwegian population fully accept evolution, 24% somewhat agree with the theory, 4% somewhat disagree with the theory while 8% do not accept evolution. …
The US has one of the highest levels of public belief in biblical or other religious accounts of the origins of life on earth among industrialized countries. …
Of the 2016 Republican candidates for President, so far, Huckabee, Perry, Santorum and Ben Carson are creationists. None of the others will admit they believe in evolution. They try to duck the issue often claiming: “I’m not a scientist.”
When Bill O’Reilly asked Lt. Col. Ralph Peters what his strategy would be to defeat the jihad, he said:
“You go wherever in the world the terrorists are and you kill them, you do your best to exterminate them, and then you leave behind smoking ruins and crying widows.”
The lifeless bodies of Afghan children lay on the ground before their funeral ceremony, after a NATO airstrike killed several Afghan civilians, including ten children during a fierce gun battle with Taliban militants in Shultan, Shigal district, Kunar, eastern Afghanistan, Sunday, April 7, 2013. The U.S.-led coalition confirms that airstrikes were called in by international forces during the Afghan-led operation in a remote area of Kunar province near the Pakistan border. (AP Photo/Naimatullah Karyab)
Though I totally disagree with Ralph Peters, I respect his honesty. He admits innocents will be killed.
IF the USA wants to fight terrorists overseas, with drones or smart bombs, that’s probably the best way. Boots on the ground is the worst way.
Instead, foreign nations should isolate Islamic nations. Close embassies. Enforce boycotts. Freeze bank assets. Stop giving them an excuse for terrorism.
If you leave Islamic hotheads alone, it won’t be long before they are fighting each other.
Homeland security should be security within your own borders.
No word yet whether the parents will be charged. I believe they should.
An experiment run by an Eckerd College professor … for ABC’s 20/20 on children and guns …
Doctor Marjorie Sanfilippo specializes in child psychology and her curiosity turned her to what children would do when adults are not around and they were told to not play with a clearly visible gun. …
Almost every kid went for the guns, waved them around and even pointed them at each other. …
Rick McCharles 