The New Jersey Governor, normally a smart guy, bungled this one. It seemed to me he was pandering to the anti-Obama, lowest common denominator base of the Republican Party.
IN THE crowded field of Ebola alarmists, Rand Paul of Kentucky stands out. …
Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana says planes must be grounded “to protect our people”. …
Some leaders are more responsible. The Republican governor of Texas, Rick Perry, has tried to keep people calm. Few countries are better equipped than America to keep the public safe, he has assured Texans. He is right. It should not need saying. …
In the late ’90s, Smith & Wesson was facing a major lawsuit filed by cities and states that blamed the company for rampant gun violence. The company stood to lose millions.
So in 2000, under pressure from the Clinton administration, Smith & Wesson’s chief executive, Ed Schultz, made a fateful decision — and raised the ire of the powerful National Rifle Association and its supporters. …
On 11 May 2001, Saf-T-Hammer Corporation acquired Smith & Wesson Corp. from Tomkins plc for US$15 million, a fraction of the US$112 million originally paid by Tomkins. Saf-T-Hammer assumed US$30 million in debt, bringing the total purchase price to US$45 million …
In December 2014, Smith & Wesson Holding announced it was paying $130.5 million for Battenfeld Technologies, a Columbia, Missouri-based designer and distributor of hunting and shooting accessories. The company made the acquisition with the eventual intent to merge all its existing Smith & Wesson, M&P and Thompson Center Arms accessories into a single division
We know, in the world that surrounds us, there are terrorists and home invaders and drug cartels and car-jackers and knock-out gamers and rapers, haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping-mall killers, road-rage killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids, or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse the society that sustains us all. …
He lies. He exaggerates.
He lies exaggerates I assume, to help increase sales of firearms. He exaggerates for money.
I can’t imagine any other reason to overstate the way he does.
LaPierre’s central message: Owning a gun is the solution. The world is a scary place. There are bad guys everywhere threatening you and your family, and the only thing they’re afraid of is a gun in your hands.
Tragically, a record number of Americans subscribe to some version of this mythology, with 63 percent (67 percent of men polled and 58 percent of women) believing that guns truly do make them safer. The public’s confidence in firearms, however, is woefully misguided: The evidence overwhelmingly shows that guns leave everybody less safe, including their owners. …
The NRA is wrong: Owning a gun is far more likely to harm you than protect you.
I agree with LaPierre on a couple of things. He supports:
• Increasing funds for a stricter and more efficient mental health system, and reform of civil commitment laws to facilitate institutionalization of the mentally ill when necessary.
• Creating a computerized universal mental health registry of those adjudicated to be incompetent to help limit gun sales to the mentally ill.
It’s deflection, I’m assuming. Taking those positions makes no sense relative to his other positions.
He’s totally against the government regulating firearms, even though they are dangerous. (More Americans American children and youth are now killed by weapons than motor vehicle accidents.) … But totally for the government regulating mental health. Because the mentally ill are dangerous. 🙂
Citizens United was a terrible ruling. Most people asked to think about the issue for 10 seconds conclude that it’s a bad idea.
An ABC–Washington Post poll conducted February 4–8, 2010, showed that 80% of those surveyed opposed (and 65% strongly opposed) the Citizens United ruling, which the poll described as saying “corporations and unions can spend as much money as they want to help political candidates win elections“.
It is based on Chris Kyle’s autobiography American Sniper …
The film stars Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller …
I’ve enjoyed all the Clint Eastwood directed movies, so assumed I’d like this one.
I did. Most people do.
It wasn’t as good as Unforgiven (1992) or Million Dollar Baby (2004), but I’d recommend you see it. Unless you have an aversion to violent films.
American Sniper received positive response from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a “Certified Fresh” rating of 73%, based on 203 reviews from critics …
The highlight by far was Bradley Cooper. His performance is subtle and nuanced, unlike the movie which is very Eastwood. Too many cliche lines and story points.
It’s a Hollywood moviebased on a true story. Not a documentary.
I don’t find the criticism I’ve read at all valid.
(It is fair to point out that Kyle was inspired after terrorists from Yemen and Saudi Arabia attacked the USA. Yet he was sent instead to fight in Iraq. Saddam Hussein didn’t want anything to do with Bin Laden.)
War is Hell. I’m against war. I wish Kyle had stayed home. If he had been Canadian, he would have. Canada did not join in the coalition of the willing, one of the smartest decisions ever for my nation.
If you don’t like snipers. Don’t like war. Blame Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, not Chris Kyle. He was simply following the orders of his President.
American Sniper is as much an anti-war film as one glorifying war.
I did find it surprising that Eastwood included one scene: Kyle pointing an (unloaded) gun at his wife, in jest. And then setting the weapon carelessly on a ledge with his children in the room. To me it foreshadowed something was going to happen.
Perhaps that scene was in the script. But Eastwood didn’t change it. It seemed unlikely to me that a firearms expert like Chris Kyle would be so nonchalant with weapons in his family home.
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I wasn’t surprised to learn that the real Chris Kyle suffered mentally. I wasn’t surprised to learn he had died from gun fire.
“Live by the sword, die by the sword.”
If you spend enough time around firearms, you stand a higher percentage chance of accident, suicide or murder than if you don’t.
Eddie Ray Routh, then 25, shot and killed Chris Kyle, 38, and his friend Chad Littlefield on Feb. 2, 2013, at a shooting range in Erath County, Texas. Kyle often took veterans, such as Routh, out on shooting ranges to work with them and help them cope with PTSD and related problems.
David and Charles Koch are pissed. They orchestrated the spending of a lot of money to influence the American government. Yet Romney lost.
Americans for Prosperity, the most prominent arm of the Koch brothers’ organization, put Republican lawmakers on notice …
Tim Phillips, president of AFP, said at a Washington press conference that congressional Republicans “failed miserably” a decade ago, especially on cutting the federal budget. “They’ve been given a second chance by the American people,” he said, “and we’re going to hold them accountable. …
1. taxes including repeal of the estate or death tax
2. energy headlined by a call to build the Keystone XL pipeline
3. health care, which includes repealing the Affordable Care Act
I’m slightly in favour of Keystone. But I’m against unelected rich guys having so much influence on legislation. In backrooms I have no doubt they discuss which politicians can be bought. And which are a bad investment.
That’s what the term “accountable” means. 😦
The Koch brothers invested $400 million because they expected to get far more than $400 million back. You cannot trust them.
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The Koch’s “labyrinthine network of political groups — none of which reveal the names of their donors — showed that the coalition raised more than $400 million during the 2012 election.”
Oklahoma police released a video Friday from the body camera of a cop who fatally shot a suspect earlier this month.
Muskogee Officer Chansey McMillin, responding to a domestic abuse complaint, approached 21-year-old Terrance Walker outside the Old Agency Baptist Church on Jan. 17, according to local media. (Reports were that Walker had threatened his girlfriend with a weapon.)
The video shows Walker run away and McMillin give chase. The suspect then stops to bend over and pick up something he has dropped in the street.
From the video, it is not clear what he is attempting to retrieve, but police say it was a loaded semiautomatic pistol.
McMillin fires five shots at Walker, who had set off running again, which strike and kill the young man …
Rick McCharles 