Canceled.

The problem with relying on good people with guns to shoot bad people with guns is that no one is all good or all bad. We see on a daily basis good people doing bad things, inept things, dangerous and hurtful things with guns. Life is not so one-dimensional, so over-simplified as the shallow, failed thinking of the NRA.

From the Raw Story:

District suspends police-in-schools program after officer discharges gun

A school district in New York has put a program to put armed officers in schools on hold after a policeman’s handgun went off at Highland High School.
At a Wednesday meeting with parents, Highland Central School District and police officials explained that Officer Sean McCutcheon had been suspended after his Glock .45-caliber pistol “accidentally discharged” in a school hallway at around 1:38 p.m. on Tuesday.
Lloyd Police Department Lt. James Janso said that a suspension was standard procedure while the incident was under investigation. Officials offered no further explanation as to why the gun discharged.
Some parents at the school board meeting questioned whether having armed guards in schools was worth the risk.
“What if a kid had been killed?” 43-year-old parent Mark Wallen asked. “We got lucky this time and that’s purely what it is.”

The Time is now, the Right side of the Issue is clear

The gun culture of easily accessible lethal individual violence is a failure. There are in history certain trends, certain issues, that have a right side, and a wrong side. Guns are the wrong side of the issue of violence; gun control is the right side of the issue.

Factually inaccurate, innately threatening; this statement should invalidate any right to a firearm.

Not surprising, this man's adult son is just finishing up a ten year sentence behind bars for attempting to kill someone with a gun during a road rage incident. An NRA representative for New York has lost his guns because of a long history of domestic violence. There is something inherently wrong, inherently BAD about the attitudes with guns of the leadership of the NRA and those who think like them.

Just sayin'

Scary clowns

And yet the Religious Right objects to this?

There is nothing that weakens marriage by prohibiting more effectively that men may not beat the crap out of women (or the equivalent in same-sex relationships).

Spread sheets and toe tags, and the NRA

Gun Control - Simpson style

This is funny, until you realize how many real-life Homer Simpson's are all around us.

Breaking News: George Zimmerman murder trial!

Yeah, so much for that crappy stand your ground law protection for racist killer George Zimmerman!

From the Guardian:

Trayvon Martin case: Zimmerman drops stand-your-ground defence

Neighbourhood watch leader who shot dead teenager on Florida housing estate will instead go straight to jury trial

Wednesday 6 March 2013 01.14 EST

George Zimmerman (left) shot dead Trayvon Martin after taking it upon himself to follow the teenager. Photograph: Reuters

Lawyers acting for George Zimmerman, who shot dead the unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin on a Florida housing estate, have abandoned their attempt to have his murder charge thrown out on the grounds of self-defence.
Neighbourhood watch leader Zimmerman, 29, had been expected to claim immunity from prosecution at a hearing in April under the state's stand-your-ground law, which allows for the use of deadly force when a person feels their life is in danger.
But in a surprise move, his lawyer, Mark O'Mara, told a judge that the defence would take its chances at Zimmerman's trial in June for second-degree murder. He said he still intended to pursue the argument that his client was acting in self-defence in February 2012 under a violent onslaught from 17-year-old Martin.
The unexpected decision changes the entire direction of a case that sparked racial tensions when Zimmerman was originally released without charge. The case also put America's gun laws under the spotlight.
His fate will now almost certainly rest with a jury instead of circuit court judge, Debra Nelson, who could have thrown out the case at next month's immunity hearing. It leaves the defendant at more risk of the minimum 25-year sentence that would follow a conviction.

read more here

OUT! OUT! OUT!

Confessions of character

I think of this every time I hear or read or see another right wing crackpot conspiracy theory: projection.

Sick 'n sad

alternate realities, very real disparities

The core failure of the GOP economic premise

The truth hurts the gun-huggers

GOP = Hypocrisy

Equality

Is Dennis Rodman Republican?

This is the kind of ignorance that we have come to expect from the tea partiers like Sarah 'the popsie' Palin, or Michele Bachmann, or maybe from some of our more ignorant right wing nut state legislators.

I would be even less likely to take advice on foreign relations and diplomacy, than on wedding etiquette or fashion.

 

Whatever works.........

GOP = Stupid (per Bobby Jindal)

Blame others instead of fixing their own deficiencies of political ideology.
No ability to change, correct, adapt.

from the facebook page I fucking love science

New twist on old cliche

Important to know

GOP=Failed Logic, Failed Priorities

Just sayin', fair is fair

Not getting that conservative Latino vote anywhere in 2014 OR 2016 John; this is why.

Conservative Failure, Progressive Success

Children are more important than the failed gun culture

Psychology teaches us that when failed behavior, behavior which is being extinguished, which does not succeed and is not rewarded, there is usually a large final burst of that activity before someone gives up. The more adaptive, the more brief that final burst; the more angry and frustrated and mal-adaptive or incapable of change, the longer that final burst of activity before it stops.

This is that kind of tone-deaf, angry, intransigent gun-culture failure.  Conservatives are, sadly for us and for them, consistently on the wrong side of history on every issue. This is just one more.

Badly done, Senator McCain; wrong - AGAIN.

No droids, no drones, no gays?

What is it with paranoid, dishonest conservative victims?

Bob Woodward appears to have some long running problems with details and accuracy. In the most recent iteration, Bob appears to have edited important words out of emails, and taken them out of the very important context that proves his accusations of being threatened were bogus.
This has been a chronic problem on the right; the right lives to claim they are victims when they are not.

GOP = Blubber, Bluster, Bullsit - but no facts, no honest ethical reporting, no personal responsibility


Aluminum-foil-hat-wearing paranoia and just plain making shit up:

Out of touch, out of his mind, well out of politics

GOP = Hypocrisy & Incompetence

I'm betting Texas may go blue, by 2014

Background checks work - when we let them

The Stark Reality of Misogyny - Raise the Minimum Wage!

GOP = Hypocrisy

Hoory for cartoonist Ed Stein for nailing the failure of the GOP tax cut policy

GOP = Failed Priorities

Failed GOP priorities

We should drug test corporate executive bonus recipients!

GOP Reality versus GOP Imaginary worldview bubble

GOP = Intransigence on Sequester

GOP = Hatred for poor people, old people, disabled people, children who need the social insurance system

GOP = FAIL

Failed Republican Social Policies, Failed Republican Math, Failed Republican World View

Republicans insist on formulating bad social policy, EXPENSIVE social policy, based on the assumptions that poor people are drug users, that's why they are poor. The reality is that poor people use drugs at a much LOWER rate than more affluent people. But the Republicans LIKE spending money on humiliating poor people, particularly people who are minorities trying to justify it as guaranteeing public money will be well spent.

Does THIS look like money that is well spent? NO. It is stupid. It ignores all of the data that says this is a poor use of tax dollars, but hey - don't try to confuse Republicans with FACTS that contradict their world view. They prefer how they feel the world is to how it really is. The facts are not their friend, they deny and reject objective reality in favor of their ideology, no matter how wrong they are.

Republican policies have proven bad for Florida.  So who else wants to follow their bad example? Republicans in Indiana want to waste their tax money too! The hell with all those drug studies that show this is a poor use of public money - conservatives BELIEVE poor people are poor because they use drugs. You cannot reason with people who reject and deny facts. They do not, cannot, learn from their mistakes.

Republican policies = FAIL

Sunny disposition

The Tea Party Homophobe, in the larger scheme of things

Climate Change: Historic Drought to Persist

This will affect us here in MN; we have had to resort to irrigation to sustain agriculture, and the water supply in the aquifer, the underground water source, in Minnesota is steadily diminishing without being replenished by rain water and snow-cover melting.

Persistent drought will result in potentially dramatic increases in food costs, directly and indirectly. Food scarcity and cost increases can ultimately result in economic and political instability and insecurity, not only for us but world wide.  We are not isolated; this is a global problem which is beginning significantly to affect us.  We need to pay attention and to act.

We may not remain the land of 10,000 lakes much longer...

Welcome to climate change reality.

from theenergycollective:

Climate Change: Historic Drought Projected to Persist, Worsened by Thin Western Snowpack

NOAA's latest seasonal drought outlook projects historic drought will persist.

Time is running out to avert a third summer of drought in much of the High Plains, West and Southwest, federal officials warned Thursday.

Without repeated, significant bouts of heavy snow and rain in the remaining days of winter, a large part of the country will face serious water supply shortages this spring and summer, when temperatures are hotter and average precipitation is normally low.

The drought already ranks as the worst, in terms of severity and geographic extent, since the 1950s. Though it’s not over yet, its economic impact appears to be severe, said Brad Rippey, a meteorologist at the Agriculture Department’s Office of the Chief Economist.

It “will probably end up being a top-five disaster event” on the government’s ranking of the costliest weather events of the past three decades, he said at a Capitol Hill briefing Thursday.

There is little relief predicted in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) latest three-month drought outlook, which the agency released Thursday. Federal forecasters predict that drought will persist in the Rocky Mountain and Plains states, expand throughout northern and southern California and return to most of Texas, a state that has been mired in drought since 2011.

NOAA does forecast improvements in drought conditions in the Upper Midwest and Southeast, areas that have received beneficial precipitation in recent weeks.

“The next couple of months will kind of determine how the spring and summer plays out in that part of the country,” said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Crouch said that continued drought conditions could threaten water supplies in many areas, particularly in the Southwest.

Dwindling Water Supplies

With drought extending into its second or even third year in some areas, the main concerns are shifting from agriculture and recreation to water supplies as rivers run dry and reservoirs shrink.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston on Feb. 15, Texas state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said water managers are especially concerned about the situation in West Texas, where emergency conservation plans have gone into effect as water supplies dwindle.

In the western U.S., low mountain snowpack is once again a concern, especially in portions of Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming that feed the Platte and Arkansas rivers, said Mike Strobel of USDA’s National Resources Conservation Service.

read more here