Trillian: You idiot! You signed the order to destroy Earth!Thinking about it, Douglas Adams describes him as “Zaphod Beeblebrox, adventurer, ex-hippy, good timer, (crook? quite possibly), manic self-publicist, terribly bad at personal relationships, often thought to be completely out to lunch.” The last bit sounds pretty much like most of the criticism I heard about Trump during the campaign: he was too crazy to win.
Zaphod: I did?
Arthur: He did?
Trillian: Love and kisses Zaphod? You didn't even read it, did you?
Zaphod: Well, I'm president, I don't have a lot of time for reading.
Trillian: My whole planet destroyed because you thought someone wanted your autograph!
 |
| Who is who at the table. |
 |
| Laci and Philadelphia ADA outside a Court Room in City Hall |
We understood we were working for a noble cause that exceeded our individual interests. We believed in the magical possibility of breaking from the traditional two-party system in favor of a moderate who spoke the truth with integrity and conviction.A lot of people who denigrated the Sanders campaign neglected that there is a lot of dissatisfaction with the two party system. So, when a candidate who is seen as having integrity comes around he tends to get a lot of attention.
My favorite button features a caricature of Anderson showing only his white hair and the outline of his glasses. The similarity to buttons sported by Bernie Sanders supporters in 2016 is obvious.
Perhaps there is more than a caricature that makes the two similar. It’s not their politics certainly, but the comparison lies in each man’s honest desire to change the established political culture.
A suspect in an interrogation told detectives to “just give me a lawyer dog,” the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that the suspect was, in fact, asking for a “lawyer dog,” and not invoking his constitutional right to counsel. It’s not clear how many lawyer dogs there are in Louisiana, and whether any would have been available to represent the human suspect in this case, other than to give the standard admonition in such circumstances to simply stop talking.While Laci strongly believes in the Constitutional Right to Counsel, she is no longer taking cases. Even if she were willing to take this case on, she is not licensed to practise in Louisiana.
Clarence Thomas is a Supreme Court Justice.That pretty much says that an incompetent black person can indeed get into high office in the US.
“Trump is professionally stupid,” Coates said during a lecture at the University of Pennsylvania on Wednesday.
“You cannot convince me that somebody could be black, and be that politically unqualified, and even be a governor, forget president. If Donald Trump was black, he wouldn’t have made it off the block,”
 |
| Bonzo was first choice. |
 |
| Clinton won the popular vote, but lost in the electoral college. |
 |
| The Russian Mastermind behind Trump's "Win" |
Whenever abortion comes up, I have a question I've been asking for ten years now of the "Life begins at Conception" crowd. In ten years, no one has EVER answered it honestly.We can make this even more interesting by saying the embryos may not make it full term, whereas the child would grow up and make a significant contribution to society.
It's a simple scenario with two outcomes. No one ever wants to pick one, because the correct answer destroys their argument. And there IS a correct answer, which is why the pro-life crowd hates the question.
Here it is. You're in a fertility clinic. Why isn't important. The fire alarm goes off. You run for the exit. As you run down this hallway, you hear a child screaming from behind a door. You throw open the door and find a five-year-old child crying for help.
He is in one corner of the room. In the other corner, you spot a frozen container labeled "1000 Viable Human Embryos." The smoke is rising. You start to choke. You know you can grab one or the other, but not both before you succumb to smoke inhalation and die, saving no one.
Do you A) save the child, or B) save the thousand embryos? There is no "C." "C" means you all die.
In a decade of arguing with anti-abortion people about the definition of human life, I have never gotten a single straight A or B answer to this question. And I never will.
They will never answer honestly, because we all instinctively understand the right answer is "A." A human child is worth more than a thousand embryos. Or ten thousand. Or a million. Because they are not the same, not morally, not ethically, not biologically.
They are lying to you to try and evoke an emotional response, a paternal response, using false-equivalency. No one believes life begins at conception. No one believes embryos are babies, or children. Those who cliam to are trying to manipulate you so they can control women
The rapid pace of the gunfire suggested that the shooter was using either a fully automatic weapon, tightly restricted under US law, or that he had attached a device to a semi-automatic gun to make it fire more continuously, said Massad Ayoob, a firearms expert, instructor and author. “It’s faster than almost any human being is going to be able to pull a trigger on a semi-automatic,” Ayoob said.
Fully automatic weapons, which fire multiple rounds of ammunition from a single pull of the trigger, are strictly regulated, taxed and tracked under US law. This makes them expensive collectors’ items, and comparatively rarely used in crimes. Semi-automatic rifles, in contrast, which fire only one round of ammunition with each pull of the trigger, are widely available.
Unlike some states, Nevada, which has laws generally friendly to gun owners, does not ban the sale of “assault weapons” – semi-automatic civilian guns built to resemble military weapons.
From listening to the footage of the attack, Ayoob said that the gunshots “did not sound as consistent” as he would typically expect from a fully automatic M-16 or AK-47. “The pace of fire is a little bit erratic. At one point it’s slower than it is at another point.”
Paddock could have used a Hellfire or a bump-fire device, which attach to normal semi-automatic rifles and allow them to fire more rapidly, Ayoob said. These devices are legal, but rarely used by serious shooters, he said.
Machine guns, defined as any firearm which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.The M2 variant is designed to be capable of fully automatic fire, therefore, the M1 is a machinegun using that defintion.
“There were two welds in the gun which obviously was, when manufactured, ‘designed to shoot.’ The barrel of the gun was welded closed at the breech and was also welded to the receiver on the outside under the handguard. Scroggie testified that there are two possible ways by which the firearm could be made to function as such. The most feasible method would be to cut the barrel off, drill a hole in the forward end of the receiver and then rethread the hole so that the same or another barrel could be inserted. To do so would take about an 8-hour working day in a properly equipped machine shop. Another method which would be more difficult because of the possibility of bending or breaking the barrel would be to drill the weld out of the breech of the barrel. United States v. Smith, 477 F.2d 399(8th Cir.1973)
In the context of the NFA and its use as a modifier describing the manner of firearm restoration, “readily” has been read to encompass several elements of restoration: (1) time, i.e., how long it takes to restore the weapon; (2) ease, i.e., how difficult it is to restore the weapon; (3) expertise, i.e., what knowledge and skills are required to restore the weapon; (4) necessary equipment, i.e., what tools are required to restore the weapon; (5) availability, i.e., where additional parts are required, how easily they can be obtained; (6) expense, i.e., how much it costs to restore the weapon; (7) scope, i.e., the extent to which the weapon has to be changed to allow it to shoot automatically; (8) feasability, i.e., whether the restoration would damage or destroy the weapon or cause it to malfunction. See S.W. Daniel, Inc. v. United States, 831 F.2d 253, 254-55 (11th Cir. 1987) (ease and scope); United States v. Alverson, 666 F.2d 341, 345 (9th Cir.1982) (expertise, ease, and scope); United States v. Smith, 477 F.2d 399, 400 (8th Cir.1973) (time and equipment); United States v. Aguilar-Espinosa, 57 F.Supp.2d 1359, 1362 (M.D.Fla.1999) (time, ease, expertise, and equipment); United States v. Seven Misc. Firearms, 503 F.Supp. 565, 573-75 (D.D.C.1980) (time, ease, expertise, equipment, availability, expense, and feasibility); United States v. Cook, No. 92-1467, 1993 WL 243823, at *3-4 (6th Cir. July 6, 1993) (availability)…There’s readily restorable for you!
The decisions of several other courts make clear that the Defendant weapon, which would require, according to Alverson’s own expert, a maximum of six hours to convert to fire automatically, “can be readily restored” under the NFA. The Eighth Circuit held that a semiautomatic rifle that would take an eight-hour working day in a properly equipped machine shop to convert to shoot automatically qualified as a “machinegun” under the NFA.10 Smith, 477 F.2d at 400; cf. United States v. Shilling, 826 F.2d 1365, 1367 (4th Cir.1987) (holding that disassembled guns that could be made to shoot automatically were “readily restor[able]”); S.W. Daniel, Inc., 831 F.2d at 254-55 (upholding the use of a jury instruction defining a machinegun as “those weapons which have not previously functioned as machine guns but possess design features which facilitate full automatic fire by simple modification or elimination of existing component parts”); Alverson, 666 F.2d at 345 (concluding that an automatic weapon that was converted to fire sLemiautomatically prior to its sale to defendant could be “readily restored” where it could be modified to shoot automatically by filing down one of its parts); United States v. Lauchli, 371 F.2d 303, 312-13 (7th Cir.1966) (in a case prior to the addition of the “can be readily restored” language to the NFA, deciding that weapons requiring assembly to shoot automatically were machineguns under the NFA). U.S. v. One TRW, Model M14, 7.62 Caliber Rifle, 441 F.3d 416(2006)
Open letter to Michelle Obama:
Dear Mrs. Obama,
At the Inbound 2017 conference in Boston you said;
"Any woman who voted against Hillary Clinton voted against their own voice,"
Over the last couple days, I've been thinking about your comments on women that didn't vote for Hillary Clinton.
I guess I'll start with saying I wanted to respond immediately, but was so angry I decided it would be best to let it sit for a bit while I processed my thoughts and emotions.
Looking at the words you chose to use is very telling-"voting against Hillary." In some way, it appears you recognize just how bad a candidate she was, that women would feel the need to "vote against" her.
I agree, many women did cast a vote against her. I have no doubt that a very large majority can tell you exactly why they did.
See Michelle, as a lifelong Democrat, I volunteered for Sen. Obama in '08. I used all of my vacation and sick time and took a leave of absence from my job at Kennedy Space Center to help get the good senator elected. I have art from the campaign office hanging in my kitchen; it has a nice positive message and in very large colorful letters it says "Yes We Can!"
There's a picture of now former VP Joe Biden, my husband, and myself at the campaign office on my fridge.
But I was not one of those that "voted against" Hillary Clinton even though there were plenty reasons to. Before my vote, there was a year of consideration, watching debates and speeches, knocking on doors, making phone calls, writing checks, discussing the candidates with friends and family, going to the DNC Convention, and don't forget crying. Oh, there was crying.
There was crying because of the missed opportunities, the lies and deceptions. I might not have voted against anything or anyone, but I sure as Hell was not going to vote for more of that.
My vote went to the other woman on the ticket, my vote went to the person I felt had the platform and moral integrity that most aligned with my beliefs.
I long for the day a woman sits behind the desk in the Oval Office of the White House, and I pray it happens in my lifetime. But it can't just be any woman, it has to be the right woman.
Hillary's loss had nothing to do with husbands telling their wives how to vote or not knowing one's voice. This was one of the most closely followed and well financed elections in our country's history. No, it has everything to do with Hillary's record and the Neo-Liberal agenda of your husband that at every turn, Hillary said she said she wanted to advance.
That brings me to my second point.
Where was your voice?
Where was your voice, Michelle, when your Peace Prize winning husband dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016 alone on a plethora of countries without even having the good grace or decency to declare war on these people? All told, he bombed 7 different countries. I'm curious, do you know the number of innocent women and children that were killed or maimed by these bombs? It must be in the 10's of thousands. Did you talk about this with your husband when you laid down at night?
Where was your voice when Barrack (our self proclaimed environmental president) signed off on a record number of natural gas, oil pipelines, and renewed drilling in the Gulf of Mexico?
Where was your voice when human rights violations were being committed on American and Native Peoples in Standing Rock by the same police President Obama allowed to become militarized, including using chemical agents that, according to the Geneva Convention, are illegal in warfare. As well as allowing private contractors to set dogs on peaceful people, using water cannons on them at well below freezing temperatures, shooting people with exploding devices that blew a large part of a young women's arm off. Where was your voice then Michelle?
Where was your voice when your husband gave trillions in taxpayers dollars to the big banks that caused the crash of '08 mere months after appointing the very cabinet that CitiGroup told him to? (thank you Wikileaks for that email)
I suppose it's no surprise that none of these bankers were jailed or that the rules are still in place that would allow the very same scenario to happen again.
Where was your voice when your husband, who was voted in on a platform of labeling GMOs, decided to side with Monsanto?
Where was your voice, Michelle, when record breaking numbers of People of Color were being shot down like dogs in the streets by the police your husband helped militarize? Where was your voice when for profit prison slavery continued on and on and on?
Where was your voice when newly elected President Obama didn't fight with everything he had for a public option? For me, this was the first indication that something was rotten in Rome. See, I'd just finished fighting for my life not only against breast cancer but having breast cancer with no health insurance.
Where was your voice when your husband deported 2.5 million undocumented people?
Where was your voice when your husband signed the NDAA making government propaganda legal and making it legal to assassinate and imprison Americans w/o charge or trial.
Where was your voice when he used Espionage Act to prosecute more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined? Or when he pushed the TPP?
Where Michelle, where was your voice when your husband said that our elections are not rigged when in one precinct alone, over 100,000 voters were purged from voter rolls, Donna Brazil was giving Hillary the questions to debates, or when DNC head Debbie Wasserman-Schultz resigned under the dark cloud of corruption from the DNC, only to be hired by Hillary?
Where was your voice when the Super Delegates declared their votes at the beginning of the primary?
Where was your voice when during the DNC Fraud Lawsuit Federal Judge Zloch said, "Democracy deserves the truth."
I could go on, but you know the record, you had a front row seat.
In closing, I'll acknowledge I've asked you a lot of questions, but my real question is this:
Michelle, do you know your voice?
So let play something out, if we vote for Jill Stein (which we will) and she gets enough electoral votes that it keeps either Hillary or Donald from receiving enough electoral votes to grab the nomination, then Congress will vote from the top three to be the next president. We all know how much both parties hate Donald and that they are to corrupt to vote for Jill. So who does that leave? So in all actuality a vote for Jill isn't a vote for trump. And if we get enough people to vote for her we will get a third party. If everyone voting fear because they are scared of Trump voted for Jill she would win hands down. Here is the true argument we should be telling the fear voters. And if no one gets enough electoral votes, we will then see in full view that it is rigged by the fact both parties will vote for her. So in the least a vote for Jill is a vote for Hillary, at most a vote for Jill is a vote for Jill. Either way we would at the least have a third party nationally recognized from now on. Lets push this talking point. I think it might sway the scared people into voting their conscience knowing Donald won't get the presidency.I know that my reasons for voting for the Green Party relate to a broken system: and not anything else.
The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second Amendments means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress, and has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the National Government.One would have to say it is cryptic. At least on first glance.
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;This would mean that the first three US Supreme Court cases ALL said that the right related to this power. Or as US v Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939), stated:
The Constitution as originally adopted granted to the Congress power- 'To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.' U.S.C.A.Const. art. 1, 8. With obvious purpose to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of such forces the declaration and guarantee of the Second Amendment were made. It must be interpreted and applied with that end in view.The emphasised portion demonstrates that Scalia was correct when he said that Miller was not helpful to his analysis. Prior Supreme Court cases found that the right related to militia efficacy, not private arms or self-defence. Scalia was correct, the case law and precedents of the Court as stated in Cruikshank, Presser, and Miller totally contradict the Heller and McDonald decisions.
The Militia which the States were expected to maintain and train is set in contrast with Troops which they were forbidden to keep without the consent of Congress. The sentiment of the time strongly disfavored standing armies; the common view was that adequate defense of country and laws could be secured through the Militia- civilians primarily, soldiers on occasion.
