Red Lobster and Olive Garden were two of the latest to backtrack on lowering wages or hours for their employees which has become a death knell for any company saying such crap. After massive public protest, they quickly backed down. So much for the country hating Obamacare as the righteous right would have you believe.
Bob Costas has done the rounds on various network outlets to explain his position that young people with guns are a dangerous combination, a fact I agree with. However, we cannot legislate stupidity or else almost every politician we have would be out of a job. If you are over 18 you can own a gun. However, use said gun in a crime and you will be looking at four small walls for the rest of your life. Guns save lives as much as they take away. Take this latest example. A 77 year old grandmother shot and critically wounded one of three men breaking into her house. Had she not been armed, chances are this case would have ended much differently and with an innocent person in the hospital or morgue and not the douchebag who broke in.
I have known dozens of people who have owned guns, some of which have kids. Not one has ever shot anyone by accident, had their kids get access to a gun or any other bull we hear from the left. Most people are responsible gun owners. We only hear about the losers who couldn't try their own shoes without help leaving their guns unattended, or shooting a spouse they thought was a burglar.
Here a stat for you: car accidents kill more people every year than guns. Some one who is drunk can get behind the wheel of a deadly weapon and plow into God knows who. Funny thing that the same anti-gun nuts are not also calling for a ban on automobiles as they are every bit as deadly. Why you ask? Because logic fails on both sides of the aisle as the bubble some of us live in never gets penetrated.
Or how about prescription pills which kill more people than all other drugs combined They also kill more people than those who die by a gun. Pills kill around 20,000 people per year, much more than the 12,000 deaths by guns, yet even the DEA puts pills as low man on the totem pole to go after much more deadly drugs like pot which has a combined death rate of 0. Yet we still focus on guns as the problem when there are much bigger issues at hand and have to listen to Costas and Piece Morgan explain to me what the Constitution means.
Unfortunately for them, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe and others felt differently and wrote down some quotes which clarified their position. Here are a few:
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms. . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." Jefferson's "Commonplace Book," 1774-1776, quoting from On Crimes and Punishment, by criminologist Cesare Beccaria, 1764.
"The Constitution preserves "the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation. . . (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." -- The Federalist, No. 46"
- James Madison
"[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights and those of their fellow citizens." -- The Federalist, No. 29
- Alexander Hamilton
"[A]rms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. . . Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them." -- Thoughts On Defensive War, 1775
- Thomas Paine
"The great object is, that every man be armed."
- Patrick Henry
"... of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trail by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny."
- James Monroe
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
- Thomas Jefferson, in letter to William S. Smith, 1787
I think the above is pretty clear as to what the Founding Fathers meant and makes no mention of muskets or any other outdated weaponry. They were worried that a tyrannical government would take away our civil liberties, much like what is going on now because the American people have been led to believe that automatic weapons have no business being in the hands of the average citizen. As a result we have a TSA raping our kids, a drug war that is putting young minorities into a system of neo-slavery and no knock raids that are getting innocent people killed. It is everything we were warned about and people still want to take away more of our guns. Costas and Morgan need to read a little more about the subject before professing such a terrible idea such as banning guns. It's the only keeping us from being outright slaves right now.
Syria shows what happens when guns matter. If the entire populace had been unarmed, there would have been no uprising, no civil war. Assad would have killed people with impunity, worse than he is doing now. Info has surfaced that he has weaponized his sarin gas supply, meaning he has 60 days to use it or lose it. If he uses it, it's game over for Assad as even the Russians are saying that is a red line that can never be crossed. He will lose all support, except maybe Iran, and they are hardly in a position to do more than scream about it, lest a huge war breaks out and Iran becomes a parking lot overnight. Assad days are numbered. I just hope he knows it better than Saddam or Qaddafi.
The GOP seems to be going down a similar path as the House has gone home leaving much unfinished business and a near certainty that the Fiscal Cliff is going to happen. The worst of this won't be taxes going up, except on those making $50,000-$75-000 as their taxes are set to rise the biggest, but the loss of unemployment for millions which will set the economy into a tailspin. The sudden loss of income for so many will be hard to digest and will lead to serious consequences. Bankrupcies are going to skyrocket as will foreclosures and many businesses losing a fortune in revenue. This one action alone will send us into a depression for certain as we are STILL in a recession regardless of this imaginary recovery we keep hearing about. All the gains we have made will disappear and the GOP will be held accountable.
If this does happen, getting re-elected may be the least of the problems as so many people will be driven into poverty so quickly, it will unleash a deluge of insanity for which the Republicans will have to face with possibly bloody consequences. If millions are suddenly homeless and poor with no social nets to catch them, how long before shots are getting fired and this whole gun debate starts all over again? Things are getting better, at least here in MA, as new businesses are coming back to areas long empty but the fiscal cliff could kill all of that.
The "chained" CPI adjustment to Social Security the GOP wants is a poverty accelerator as it not only decreases payments to those least capable of weathering it, it also has the unintended consequence of driving millions into poverty and raising taxes on everyone who isn't rich. Obama's 2011 budget contained it, but thankfully Obama's latest proposal does not. The GOP has added it to theirs to which Senators like Harry Reid and Elizabeth Warren have said no way to. That is good because this proposal will devastate the country and drive rates up for almost everyone who can't afford it.
Tea Party loon Jim DeMint has announced his retirement to head the Heritage Foundation to which I say: "good riddance and don't let the door hit you on the way out." Why can't the rest of these morons take a hike with him? The GOP has to got to come to the table with higher taxes on the rich. I just hope Obama doesn't add the CPI adjustment as I have a feeling this will doom the bill as democrats vote against it, like the last vote which was 99-0 against the Obama plan in 2011. That's is a beating and also why Harry Reid shelved a bill to bring the latest Obama budget to the floor. Until they know they can win, why tip your hand. The fiscal cliff is here and there is about a 100% chance that we are going over. Be prepared because when it happens, that landing is going to be really rough and painful. The country needs a raise and both rich people and corporations need to start paying their
fair share. Period.
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