Daily Topics - Thursday January 10th, 2013

More evidence that Republicans are simple minded: Just as they coudldn't understand that Michelle Obama's effort to stop childhood obesity was about voluntary action, the NRA has opposed the voluntary exchange of guns for Safeway credit.

The terribly sad part of this is that the gun advocates who continue to talk about mental health show their own issues with the extreme paranoia with which they speak about the topic.  You would think that the federal government is that the doorstep of every gun owner demanding their guns.  Just remember David Koresh and how that whole situation came to be resolved.  I am afraid that a good number of these gun owners are just short of creating their own tragedy with this paranoia.

 "The terribly sad part of this is that the gun advocates who continue to talk about mental health show their own issues with the extreme paranoia with which they speak about the topic"

Almost as bad as the gun grabbing crowd calling an AR-15 a military assault rifle when the military doesnt use AR-15s. Has never used AR-15s and the only thing an AR-15 has in common with an actual military assault rifle is cosmetics and a detachable mag.

Temps also don't get sick time or vacation time. THey don't even have a process to get a raise. Now, it can be easy; at my last temp job, I pointed out that I hadn't had a raise after working two years on the same assignment, and the next message I got from the agency was that my rate had been raised by $1/hr. On the other hand, it can be very hard, at my current temp assignment, which I've had for almost 3 years and which I was originally told was a temp-to-hire position, I've tried through both the agency and the client company to get made permanent or at least get a raise and nothing has happened. The agency can't risk rocking the boat, and the client has no reason to renegotiate.

If I lived in a district represented by a Democrat, I'd write to my representatives to suggest that, at the very least, temp assignments of indefinite duration should be made illegal. Limiting the maximum duration to, say, one year, would force the client to renegotiate the wages of the temp.

I'll end up writing to Sens. Udall and Bennet, but I would have liked to start at a lower level.

Included on George Carlin's list of people he can do without is "a waitress with a visible infection on her serving hand".

Ed Schulz interviewed a teacher in Utah who carries a gun at her school. If my child (if I had one) were in her class, my argument against her having the gun is that the most likely gun to harm my child is the one she's bringing to the classroom daily.

Yeah, Sinister, the U.S. military doesn't use AK-47's either, but that doesn't disqualify them from being the sort of thing only a military should have. By the way, the "AR" in AR-15 stands for "Assault Rifle", so don't try that angle either.

And I take issue with your use of the phrase "gun[-]grabbing crowd". No one, even Dianne Feinstein, has proposed taking away guns that were bought legally in the first place. When you ignore that fact, you lower everyone's opinion of your intelligence.

This is an article from the Grio,  http://thegrio.com/2013/01/11/nra-was-pro-gun-control-when-it-came-to-black-panthers/2/   It should be titled: "The NRA was for gun control before it was against it."  One issue I have with it is the characterization of the Black Panther Party.  The then Black Panther Party was initially about uplifting. educating and protection of the the then Black community. The so called Black community of the 1960s is very different from today's so called Black community socially, politically and economically.  There were very real threats to Black folk by the police in the 1960s and not only in the so called south,  http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/7041/.  The characterization of the then Black Panther Party as a violent, left wing terror organization has been perpetuated.  An honest detailed study of them will reveal that they were not.  Further more one of the founding members of the Black Panthers was a Japanese American http://www.aokifilm.com/.  His disenchantment with American society led him to understand the commonalty he had with  African Americans.  There were many Latinos as original Black Panthers.  They later formed the brother organization, the Young Lords.

The sudden interests in gun legislation was sparked by the massacre of children in an upper middle class, predominately white community.  But for sure, the concern about gun control during the entire history of the United States had to do with African American's in on shape or another.  Does the fury over gun proliferation have any concern about the number one victims of guns, poor, urban African Americans?