Despite a low caste upbringing, Narendra Modi has been elected Prime Minister of India.
Votes counted so far suggest the BJP is on course for the most resounding victory by any party for 30 years, trouncing the outgoing Congress Party.
The controversial leader campaigned on promises to revive the economy. …
He’s criticized for being too pro-Hindu, anti-Muslim.
I’ve got a love / hate relationship.
Many of the best and brightest I know are from the States. The best Gymnastics club. The best Gymnastics equipment company.
Apple and Google are from the USA.
Americans are the most innovative.
But my best guess is that the USA will go down the crapper fast, rather than have a graceful decline as did Great Britain.
There’s a fair bit of truth in this graphic.
The U.S. government gridlock looks to be continuing for at least the next 6 years.
Republicans are not going to change fast enough to make major improvement.
The Democrats seem to want to copy Republican policy, for the most part. There’s been no serious attempt to improve anything under Obama, aside from a very slight fix of Health Care.
Merde. 😦
Yep.
That’s a no brainer.
The separation of church and state is the distance in the relationship between organized religion and the nation state.
If you value freedom, including religious freedom, you should support the separation of Church & State.
The government should have no involvement in your religion as they should have no involvement in your sex life. So long as you abide by the secular laws of the land.
If your religious practice breaks the law, you go to jail. If you cannot live with that, you must leave the nation. Immigrate to a theocracy, perhaps.
Some American Christians are intolerant.
The kind constantly quoting the Pledge of Allegiance.
The Pledge of Allegiance of the United States is an expression of fealty to the federal flag and the republic of the United States of America, originally composed by Francis Bellamy in 1892 and formally adopted by Congress as the pledge in 1942.
The official name of The Pledge of Allegiance was adopted in 1945. The last change in language came on Flag Day 1954 when the words “under God” were added.
Here’s the original version (1892) of the start of the pledge:
“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
I got on to this topic after seeing right wing Americans irritated and hateful over this incident from Jan 2013.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
A school Cultural club read the Pledge of Allegiance in different languages, one of them Arabic. In that one replacing “God” with “Allah”.
To me the Pledge is just words on paper. Not sacred. Even less a sacred cow than the U.S. Constitution.
Here’s the funniest commentary on the Pledge of Allegiance I’ve seen.
The Whitest Kids U’ Know – Pledge of Allegiance
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Historically the National Rifle Association prioritized education, training and regulation of firearms. They were the safety advocates.
By sometime in the 1990s their main story changed to fighting any kind of gun legislation, no matter how minor, no matter how sensible.
Rather than discuss pros and cons, NRA talking headz shouted “Second Amendment” — as if it was Holy Scripture.
They became shills for the corporations who sell weapons.
But here’s a bit of good news.
… a new law in Washington State that will require spouses under domestic abuse orders to surrender their guns to authorities. This is no small matter. Intimate partner homicides account for nearly half the women killed each year, and more than half of these women are murdered with guns, according to federal statistics.
The surprising twist in the enactment of the Washington law was that the N.R.A. traditionally has fought hard against such legislation as a violation of Second Amendment freedom — but not this time. The law was signed by Gov. Jay Inslee last month after unanimous approval by the legislature once the gun lobby backed off from its standard tactic of political retaliation. “This is an election year, and no candidate wants to be portrayed as letting domestic abusers keep their guns,” said the Democratic sponsor, Representative Roger Goodman. …
True gundamentalists should cancel their NRA membership. The NRA has sold out to … reason and common sense. 🙂
Here’s a pro-gun site called Enemy of the State™ railing against this legislation.
related – Michael Enright – Annie Get Your Gun: Michael’s Essay:
It is awfully hard to say something positive about the National Rifle Association, every mass murderer’s friend. …
Bill Gates:
What would you say is the most dangerous animal on Earth? Sharks? Snakes? Humans?
Of course the answer depends on how you define dangerous. Personally I’ve had a thing about sharks since the first time I saw Jaws. But if you’re judging by how many people are killed by an animal every year, then the answer isn’t any of the above. It’s mosquitoes. …
Gates Notes – Mosquito Week
(via Bill Gates on Facebook)
The Institute of Medicine published findings:
In 2010, more than 105,000 people were injured or killed in the United States as the result of a firearm-related incident.
Recent, highly publicized, tragic mass shootings in Newtown, CT; Aurora, CO; Oak Creek, WI; and Tucson, AZ, have sharpened the American public’s interest in protecting our children and communities from the harmful effects of firearm violence. While many Americans legally use firearms for a variety of activities, fatal and nonfatal firearm violence poses a serious threat to public safety and welfare. …
Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence
William Saletan summarizes:
Earlier this year, President Obama ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assess the existing research on gun violence and recommend future studies. That report, prepared by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council, is now complete.
Its findings won’t entirely please the Obama administration or the NRA, but all of us should consider them. Here’s a list of the 10 most salient or surprising takeaways. …
1. The United States has an indisputable gun violence problem.
According to the report, “the U.S. rate of firearm-related homicide is higher than that of any other industrialized country: 19.5 times higher than the rates in other high-income countries.”
2. Most indices of crime and gun violence are getting better, not worse.3. We have 300 million firearms, but only 100 million are handguns.
4. Handguns are the problem.
5. Mass shootings aren’t the problem.
6. Gun suicide is a bigger killer than gun homicide.
7. Guns are used for self-defense often and effectively.
8. Carrying guns for self-defense is an arms race.
9. Denying guns to people under restraining orders saves lives.
10. It isn’t true that most gun acquisitions by criminals can be blamed on a few bad dealers.
Surprising findings from a comprehensive report on gun violence.
Republicans Say No to CDC Gun Violence Research. Most in the GOP don’t want to know the facts. And definitely don’t want their voters to know the facts.
Dr. Garen Wintemute, a professor of emergency medicine who runs the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, spent $1 million of his own money to continue the research.
As I’ve said before, I don’t think people are very far apart on this issue. Fire arms lobbyists are going to have an increasingly difficult fight buying politicians over the coming years. And they’ll have to outspend their opponents at an even greater rate.
Republicans must change. Or lose. Long term.
On Facebook I link a lot to information confronting Gundamentalists. And Tea Party Republicans.
Both are generally bad for the USA. Bad for the world.
One of my themes is that Republicans must CHANGE or LOSE, long term.
The GOP needs prominent candidates of colour. Pro science. Fiscal conservatives, not shills for corporations and billionaires. Pro immigration. In support of Gay marriage.
Here’s one who looks promising.
Mia Love clinches Republican nomination at Utah convention
On May 18, 2013, Love announced that she would run again in 2014. If elected, she would be the first Haitian American and first black female Republican ever elected to Congress, as well as the first from the state of Utah. …
Love favors “fiscal discipline, limited government, and personal responsibility.” She has also said that she asks herself three questions whenever she approaches an issue, “Is it affordable? Is it sustainable? Is it my job?” …
I’m sure she’s not perfect. But she gives me hope that Republicans can recover, eventually, from Tea Party insanity.
related – What stupid thing did Sarah Palin say lately?
She is purely an Obama-era novelty. As Obama’s tenure ends, so does the career of Sarah …
Good riddance.
The rich are getting richer, the poor poorer.
The US government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country’s citizens, but is instead ruled by those of the rich and powerful, a new study from Princeton and Northwestern Universities has concluded.
The report, entitled Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, used extensive policy data collected from between the years of 1981 and 2002 to empirically determine the state of the US political system.
After sifting through nearly 1,800 US policies enacted in that period and comparing them to the expressed preferences of average Americans (50th percentile of income), affluent Americans (90th percentile) and large special interests groups, researchers concluded that the United States is dominated by its economic elite.
Unfortunately for those rich elite, they only get one vote. Those getting poorer and poorer also get one vote.
Eventually, no matter how bad the Democrats are, Republicans will lose every election.
The GOP must change or go the way of the dodo bird.
The biggest split is on Obamacare.
They are not all that far apart on Immigration and Education.
Nate Silver – Like Bush, Many Republicans Are Moderate on Immigration
On April 2, 2014, a shooting spree occurred at several locations on the Fort Hood military base near Killeen, Texas. Four people, including the gunman, were killed, while sixteen additional people were injured.
The shooter was 34-year-old Ivan Lopez, an Iraq War veteran who was born in Guayanilla, Puerto Rico. He was married and had four children.
Lopez was allegedly distraught over the deaths of his mother and grandfather during a two-month period five months prior to the shooting, and was also undergoing psychiatric treatment for depression and anxiety. He tried to take a 24-hour leave of absence in order to attend his mother’s funeral, but it took five days for the leave to be approved, which allegedly upset him.
The Base was previously the scene of a mass shooting in 2009, in which 13 people were killed and more than 30 wounded.
President H.W. Bush enacted the current Military Base Gun Regulations in 1992. Not Clinton. Those regulations were not changed by Clinton, G.W. Bush nor Obama. And they are not likely to be changed after this incident.
The talking point of right wing media is that American military bases are “gun-free zones”. That’s wrong, obviously. There are restrictions on who can carry weapons.
It’s clear that Ivan Lopez did not target the Base because it was an easy target.
Rick McCharles 
