I have reasonably wealthy American friends who just bought retirement property in Belize.
Something like this …
Like many wealthy Americans, they are disappointed with Obama’s Presidency. Worried about the future.
They’ve done the right thing, I feel.
Anyone with means in the USA should look to paying their own retirement. Putting together an escape plan.
Things are going to get worse in the States before they get better.
English is the language of Belize. That helps.
An American study published in the Southern Medical Journal (2010) …
Based on a review of the available scientific data, Dr. Lippmann and co-authors conclude that the dangers of having a gun at home far outweigh the safety benefits.
Research shows that access to guns greatly increases the risk of death and firearm-related violence. A gun in the home is twelve times more likely to result in the death of a household member or visitor than an intruder.
The most common cause of deaths occurring at homes where guns are present, by far, is suicide. Many of these self-inflicted gunshot wounds appear to be impulsive acts by people without previous evidence of mental illness.
Guns in the home are also associated with a fivefold increase in the rate of intimate partner homicide, as well as an increased risk of injuries and death to children. …
Whether Oscar Pistorius shot and killed girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp out of anger, or stupidity, the fact remains that one of his many “defensive” weapons killed a loved one, not an intruder.
Before the shooting Oscar would have been a Gundamentalist, denying the danger.
Oscar was just indicted on a premeditated murder charge.
The court set March 3, 2014 as the trial date for Pistorius.
The main charge laid by prosecutors carries a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment with a minimum of 25 years in prison if Pistorius is convicted.
I’m guessing Oscar is a suicide risk.
related – Political arguments of gun politics in the United States
Anthony Weiner’s a liar. That’s why he shouldn’t be Mayor of New York. He’s not trustworthy.
GOOD RIDDANCE TO ANTHONY WEINER
DICK PICS ASIDE, THE WANNABE NYC MAYOR IS A PANDERING SCUMBAG
Here are 6 more liars not to trust.
Six blatant lies about spying from the NSA up to Obama
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Pretty good, I feel. Measured.
… Not sure what all the fuss is about.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
I still feel he’s been a lousy President. But this was one of his better moments.
I’ve not followed every nuance of the legal case … despite the efforts of American Cable TV.
My uninformed conclusions are these:
• George Zimmerman is a weirdo who’ll be hunted and hopefully haunted by this the rest of his life.
• George Zimmerman should probably have been found innocent, as he was. There was reasonable doubt.
One more point, important to me.
Robin D.G. Kelley:
… In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, Senator Rand Paul, Florida State Representative Dennis Baxley (also sponsor of his state’s Stand Your Ground law), along with a host of other (Gundamentalist) Republicans, argued that had the teachers and administrators been armed, those twenty little kids whose lives Adam Lanza stole would be alive today.
Of course, they were parroting the National Rifle Association’s talking points. The NRA and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the conservative lobbying group responsible for drafting and pushing “Stand Your Ground” laws across the country, insist that an armed citizenry is the only effective defense against imminent threats, assailants, and predators.
But when George Zimmerman fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed, teenage pedestrian returning home one rainy February evening from a neighborhood convenience store, the NRA went mute. Neither NRA officials nor the pro-gun wing of the Republican Party argued that had Trayvon Martin been armed, he would be alive today. …
read more on HuffPo
Gundamentalists piss me off 😦
George W Bush started 2 wars:
Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan.
Obama tried to end those 2 wars.
Veterans are asking: “Now what?”
One possible solution …
There was absolutely no way Ian Smith was suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder. He was sure of it.
He was O.K. He was living with his girlfriend in a suburb of Nashville working three jobs — mowing lawns, delivering pizzas, cleaning a local church. He was carrying a 4.0 average at Volunteer State Community College. Yes, he’d seen some terrible stuff during two tours in Iraq. But others had been through much worse. He’d never been wounded. He was alive.
But it was a strange sort of alive. He lived on his couch, with his pistol. He didn’t sleep much. The only way he could get to sleep was by getting drunk, so he got drunk every night and slept with his gun under the pillow. He had gained 60 lb. since leaving the Army in February 2009. He drank more and more.
His girlfriend left him. He put the gun to his head several times. “He absolutely refused to believe he was suffering from PTSD,” said his buddy Mike Pereira, a fellow Army intelligence analyst. “But I wasn’t going to let him alone.” …
read more on Time – Can Service Save Us?
It just might. By helping returning troops regain their sense of purpose, veterans’ groups are proving that public service is therapeutic
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
With glee I instantly bought the new FOX News expose (as an audio book) by Joe Mudo.
… Then made the trip to Manhattan to confront the biggest FOX star himself, Papa Bear.
Like Colbert, I’m a HUGE fan of mocking Bill O’Reilly.
Release date: June 4, 2013 – An Atheist in the FOXhole:
The “Fox Mole”—whose dispatches for Gawker made headlines in Businessweek, The Hollywood Reporter, and even on The New York Times website—delivers a funny, opinionated memoir of his eight years at the unfair, unbalanced Fox News Channel working as an associate producer for Bill O’Reilly.
Imagine needing to hide your true beliefs just to keep a job you hated. Now imagine your job was producing the biggest show on the biggest cable news channel in America, and you’ll get a sense of what life was like for Joe Muto. As a self-professed bleeding-heart, godless liberal, Joe’s viewpoints clearly didn’t mesh with his employer—especially his direct supervisor, Bill O’Reilly. …
An Atheist in the FOXhole: A Liberal’s Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media
Sadly, I didn’t learn much from the book.
FOX News is no villain, merely a highly successful, insanely profitable business.
Boss hog Rupert Murdoch is just as happy with FOX News dollars, as he is with profits from The Simpsons and Modern Family, both FOX business products.
Joe Mudo concludes the book predictably …
If FOX News would only concede that they mainly take a right wing point-of-view, we’d have nothing to complain about.
EVERYONE — EVERYONE — knows that “Fair and Balanced” is a motto that can only be taken ironically by any thinking human being.
Only the blind take that motto literally.
Joe confirms that O’Reilly is more about high ratings than Conservative “idiocracy“. 🙂
Bill went rogue in 2008, backing President Bush’s massive Bank bailout.
More recently …
Bill O’Reilly marched into the mother of all battles against the forces of intolerance, and it hasn’t nearly ended. He said that gays are winning the battle over marriage because they have “the compelling argument,” and that those opposed to gay marriage need to come up with an actual argument rather than just “thump the Bible.”
This erupted into in a made-for-YouTube shouting match with Laura Ingraham, which O’Reilly happily hosted on his Fox show …
Dr. Laura is worst of the worst. Still.
Even the truly mentally ill FOX host Glenn Beck is back-pedalling on Gay marriage.
Astonishingly, it turns out that Ann Coulter is no she demon, but — in real life — a likeable and charming woman.
O’Reilly impressed me, overall, in the book. Sarah Palin comes off worst.
You can skip this book. Any episode of Jon Stewart or Colbert will tell you as much as you need to know about FOX National News.
The local news affiliates are quite good, so far as I can tell.
The House I Live In, directed by Eugene Jarecki, is a 2012 documentary film about the War on Drugs in the United States.
The documentary has been well received. Among the review aggregators, Rotten Tomatoes gave it 95% based on 55 reviews …
Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.
In the USA you can watch it on YouTube for free.
Here are some other places you can get it.
The Wire on HBO really got me thinking about this issue again. I’m wondering if there are any more expensive, less effective strategies than that used by the U.S. government.
Must be … But I can’t think how.
Making fun of him online is one of life’s pleasures. 🙂
Danny Zucker is best known for his Emmy Award winning work as an executive producer of ABC’s Modern Family.
Finally.
It seems the University of Saskatchewan is — bit-by-bit — returning land to the rightful owners. Descendants of Aboriginal peoples. 🙂
The Department of Native Studies was celebrating June 12th. I enjoyed a free drink (Diet Coke) and traditional food (bacon wrapped asparagus and Samosas).
I’m celebrating too.
With this precedent, I’m planning to claim 4 farms in Ireland.
All 4 of my Grandparents are from Ireland. All were wrongly displaced, forced into economic migration to the Prison Colony of southern Alberta.
Their former properties are rightfully MINE.
… I’d like to also claim my Grandparent’s descendent’s properties, some of it in Scotland. But that would be silly. Why would anyone think I’d have any rights to claim property from so long ago?
Rick McCharles 