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The J-curve cause of suicide also applies to other things. Remember when some Republican pundit said white people needed to have more babies? Well, white people are having fewer babies because the previous generation of white people could afford to have them, while high poverty among black people and non-white immigrants has already inured them to the difficulty of raising kids while poor, so they're doing what they've always done. It's a difference of expectations, not a result of absolute circumstances.
The Republicans' debate demands are keeping most of them from realizing that they should drop out of the race.
I'm a white male with a high school diploma. I started a small manufacturing business in 1997 and played by all the rules. In 2003 when I could no longer sell at the prices required to stay in business I started getting the manufacturing done in Vietnam. Yes, we lost 5 blue collar jobs but created 8 well paying white collar jobs.
Now my customers can barely afford the current low prices! I think besides manufacturing moving offshore, low taxes on the rich prevented them from reinvesting in their business. The rich are leeching of the financial assets of the country instead of allocating them as would be necessary for the offshore manufacturing to work.
I am hoping this whole thing holds together long enough from me to sell out and retire. Even some of us who moved our manufacturing to Vietnam have big problems caused by serious corruption in politics. Btw, I have always voted Democratic but don't trust either party at this point.
UNC, sounds like the problems were mostly bigotry and lack of democracy.
Bigotry means that disarmament is selective, kind of how white people in Texas can open carry, and crazy armed white guys get talked down by police while black people get shot down for reaching for their wallet on request. Scotland and Ireland were treated as subject nations, not full partners. The white Americans that are paranoid about the government coming after them, however, are on the top, not the bottom.
When leaders are replaced frequently, they can't be despots long enough. Think of the Bush Administration disarming people after Hurricane Katrina. The U.S. government isn't concentrated enough in one person. After 1953, the USSR separated executive powers in order to avoid having another Stalin. (BTW, you kind of lost me when you said that Soviet Russia began in 1929. It actually began in 1917 with the October Revolution and the breakup of the Russian Empire. The 15 separate soviet nations were put together into the USSR in 1929.)
Good News - Bad New: Yes, Amendment 1 in Ohio addresses gerrymandering in Ohio. Regrettably, it does NOT apply to US Congressional Districts. It is baby step in the right direction, but ... Disappointed in Ohio, StanJoy
BINGO, Thom! You have just highlighted my #1 favorite issue: AMERICAN FASCISM! Since those Nazi engineers and other professionals got imported here from Germany via Operation Paperclip. in the immediate aftermath of WWII, how could anyone assume their worldview and agenda would just go "poof", like water evaporating into the air?! Now it’s their kids and grandkids we’re dealing with, promoting that same fascist filth.
Our best chance of overthrowing these self-appointed Lords Of The Universe is to elect Bernie Sanders and OVERHAUL CONGRESS. Throw out all the Republicons and corporate Dems, so that we have a Congress Bernie can actually work with, and… ‘BYE-‘BYE FASCISTS! Wheee! Then the economic terrorism they're promoting will be behind us so that we can take our country back. Imagine a system that works for all of us; a system where that proverbial “ladder to success” is within reach of everyone, not just a few!
This election is mind-bogglingly consequential. No vote is a vote for fascism. So... GET OUT THERE AND VOTE.
UNC: You just made a great case for not having a standing army. There's no way your weapons can compete with the US military...LMAO . Alexander inherited his great army from his father Phillip II. Others like the Persians were well armed too, it didn't matter, he prevailed. Alexander's mother convinced him she had sex with a God and he was the result, destined for greatness...the ultimate self puffed dude! Without true democracy we get stuck with individuals who are not unlike their evil predecessors. In a true Democratic Socialist system, we the people have control , not the Alexanders.
Hey man, if anyone had to register as a Dem to vote for Bernie in the primary...like myself...check your local voting regs....you may have to vote in the general election today to qualify to vote in the primary.
Stopgap: I certainly do not dismiss your theory about Fox viewers. I however am aware of friends and family who innocently became Foxmerized just because the broadcast presented itself as news, so they figured it must be true...afterall it's on TV "news". These are the vulnerable I speak of.....but I'm sure your category of people who hate is numerous, and they gravitated to the hate. It doesn't matter, they're all stumbling around in the same darkness with Fascists like the Kochs.
Probably the one determining event that established the path we as a country have been on for over seventy years, the decision to drop Wallace from the 1944 presidential ticket that was agreed to by a severely sick Roosevelt who only had months to live. Not much written about this other than to say that it was driven by a strong faction in the Democrat Party of that time. Wallace did have his supporters in the Democrat Party and he was given the position of Secretary of Commerce in the Truman administration as a compromise. In July of 1946, Wallace wrote a letter to president Truman urging him to build “mutual trust and confidence” in order to achieve “an enduring international order.” Truman responded by asking Wallace to resign his position. In March 1947, Truman asked Congress for money “to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” Thus articulated, the “Truman Doctrine” of containment that served as the rationale for future American Cold War foreign policy initiatives.
Wallace was probably the smartest individual we ever had in Washington and he did run against Truman in 1948, a tough fight for any politician running against his own party's incumbent president who was given credit for using the atomic bomb to end World War II ! There's a better than average chance that a Wallace presidency would have resisted the use of the Atom Bomb to end the war with Japan and he most certainly wouldn't have reversed all of FDR's planned post war policies that would have extended to all Eastern European Countries the right of self determination !
re the JD Heyes essay: {1} I’ve read histories which analyze quite otherwise. … {2} Methinks that history might not rhyme in the way which Mr Heyes implies. On the contrary, I envision that {perhaps even soon} citizen-gunnery might shoot IN SUPPORT of TYRANNY {rather than Mr Heyes’ notion that ’twould be in Resistance to Tyranny}. F’rinstance, citizen-militias might be scaring us into even further submission to corporate plutocrats, - and into further submission to petty Hitlers’ notions of white-America’s “exceptionalism”. … {3} Perhaps we’re approaching a Hobbesian-type situation of “war of each against each-other” {this time via modern weaponry in citizens’ hands}, - which flat-out Anarchy will resolve {as in Hobbes’ formula} into a Tyranny in order to re-achieve a modicum of “peace” under the auspices of corporatism. … … The above’s thrust is that I doubt the value of Mr. Heyes’ item. {Apologies-in-advance, if I get “flagged as offensive” here.}
Complaining should be whining.
Roland
The true history of gun control - Timeline
By J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) Throughout the history of the world there have been despots, tyrants, dictators and kings who have imposed their will over those they conquered. After defeating rival armies in battle, many of these rulers went on to lead cruel, ruthless and abusive regimes largely by keeping the subjugated powerless to resist.
Men like Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia; Genghis Khan, who founded and ruled the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his demise; the Caesars of the Roman empire; and the pharaohs of the Egyptian empire all conquered, then kept power, by ruling with iron fists over people who were powerless to resist because they did not have the means to do so. In feudal England, British subjects in Scotland, Ireland and elsewhere were forbidden to bear arms, and as such were forced to remain loyal to the crown (until they won their independence by force of arms).
In more recent times the invention and mass production of the firearm made conquering - and then controlling - entire populations much more difficult, which is why the most heinous despots in the last 150 years have moved to limit or ban access to guns. In our own country, prior to the Revolutionary War, some colonists did own firearms but in the months before, and directly after, the war began King George's generals implemented gun confiscation policies - a primary driver behind the adoption of the Second Amendment by our founding fathers.
As gun control once more becomes an issue, and as some lawmakers, academics, pundits and ordinary Americans call for outright gun bans and confiscation in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in mid-December, it is vital and appropriate to examine the history of gun control around the world, and the carnage visited upon the innocent by gun-grabbing tyrants.
Soviet Union - 1929 -- Soviet Russia was established following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, when ruling Czar Nicholas II tossed 11 million Russian peasants into World War I. Frustrated and angered by the loss of life, scores of armed Russians - many current or former Russian soldiers who were led by Marxist Vladimir Lenin - rebelled against a ruling regime that was already teetering on the edge of collapse.
Firearms were allowed to remain in the hands of Soviet citizens until 1929, when private gun ownership was abolished - a time which saw the rise of one of the world's most repressive regimes, that was led by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin (he ruled from 1941-1953 but was entrenched in the country's leadership by 1928).
From 1929 to the year Stalin died, tens of millions of Soviet dissidents or anyone the country's leadership believed were a threat, were rounded up and either murdered or placed in labor camp/prisons and forced to work, sometimes to their deaths. Early in Stalin's political career, he launched two national collectivization campaigns in order to transform the country into an industrial power. Both campaigns, however, were rife with murder on a massive scale.
"In 1932-33, Stalin engineered a famine (by massively raising the grain quota that the peasantry had to turn over to the state); this killed between six and seven million people and broke the back of Ukrainian resistance," says a history of his political career at Gendercide.org. "The Five-Year Plans for industry, too, were implemented in an extraordinarily brutal fashion, leading to the deaths of millions of convict laborers, overwhelmingly men.
His "callous disregard for life" was matched only by his paranoia; later, he purged the Communist Party itself of anyone and everyone he believed was a threat - all under the auspices of a total gun ban.
"If the opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves," he once said.
The Ottoman Empire - 1911 -- The Ottoman Empire, the origins of which were in Turkey, implemented full gun control in 1911. A few years later, beginning in 1915 and lasting until 1917, some 1.5 million Armenians (out of a total of 2.5 million) living within the empire were rounded up and murdered by the "Young Turks" of the ruling class. In what has since been called the Armenian Holocaust, "Armenians all over the world commemorate this great tragedy on April 24, because it was on that day in 1915 when 300 Armenian leaders, writers, thinkers and professionals in Constantinople (present day Istanbul) were rounded up, deported and killed," says a short history of the slaughter by the University of Michigan. "Also on that day in Constantinople, 5,000 of the poorest Armenians were butchered in the streets and in their homes."
The Ottoman government established "butcher battalions" which consisted primarily of violent criminals who had been released from prison just to kill ethnic Armenians. Those who were members of the army (which was currently fighting the Allies in World War I) "were disarmed, placed into labor battalions, and then killed," said the university history.
Germany - 1938 -- Adolph Hitler's Nazi Germany established gun control in 1938, just prior to the implementation of his horrendous, murderous campaign to exterminate the Jews. In the end, 13 million Jews and other perceived lesser races were killed by Hitler and his Nazi Party.
In 1942, at the height of the Second World War and German advances, Hitler said:
The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let's not have any native militia or native police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order throughout the occupied Russian territories, and a system of military strong-points must be evolved to cover the entire occupied country.
China - 1935 -- The Nationalist Chinese government established gun control in 1935, just two years before Japan invaded in 1937. In the period from 1935 to 1952, some 20 million citizens and political dissidents were murdered. The Chinese Cultural Revolution, which was launched by the country's supreme ruler, Mao Zedong, took place from 1966-1976, and "claimed the lives of several million people and inflicted cruel and inhuman treatments on hundreds of million people," says MassViolence.org. "However, 40 years after it ended, the total number of victims of the Cultural Revolution and especially the death toll of mass killings still remain a mystery both in China and overseas." The actual figures remain a highly-classified state secret.
Regarding gun control, Mao once said: "War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun."
Cambodia - 1956 -- The year this Asian nation issued its total gun control edict was in 1956, but the real carnage did not begin until several years later, during the regime of the demonic Pol Pot. Between 1975 and 1977, his regime murdered as many as 1 million "educated" people whom he believed represented a threat to his power in "killing fields" that were later depicted in a movie by the same name.
In all, more than 56 million people around the world have been murdered as a result of gun control laws imposed by rulers and despots who knew that the only way they could continue to brutalize their own people and stay in power was by disarming them.
And now left-wing pols, politicians, academics and pundits want our leaders to have the same ability to rule unopposed and unafraid of reprisal.
"Our forefathers did not arm the American people for the purpose of hunting, but rather to protect themselves from those who were doing the hunting, namely the tyrant King George," writes Bradlee Dean for WorldNetDaily.
Anyone truly interested in preventing mass murder should not be a supporter of gun control.
Sources:
http://www.thenagain.info/webchron/easteurope/octrev.html
http://www.gendercide.org/case_stalin.html
http://www.umd.umich.edu/dept/armenian/facts/genocide.html
http://www.wnd.com/wnd_video/gun-control-dictator-style/
http://www.massviolence.org
“Of course I was a socialist,” said my professor of his mid-1930s years when he had been an Ivy League student. “We thought that America would otherwise become fascist instead.” This was ‘way back in the early ‘60s, when he added that “fascism threatens still.” [These quotes are pretty much verbatim; I can hear him still.] … Scholars since WWII had been analyzing Hitlerism-etc, - often in terms which were applicable too to subcultures which were ‘way-back-then developing in our own USofA, - and applicable to back-then’s developments inside our perverted forms of capitalism.
My mid-‘70s-course-re-“Whither America?” studes understood this threat-to-America, - and ‘way back then were hip to what this piece says: F’rinstance, Henry Wallace’s take that “The dangerous American fascist … method is to poison the channels of public information”. And that “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”. And that it’s “a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and bidness leadership, along with belligerent nationalism”.
Fascism Aided and Abetted
...a rhyme...
Dang. How awful might the Right wing get?
We see in the news on the internet
that they LIKE stuff Trumpy and Cruzy and Carsony
and plutocrats’ stealings {it’s “grand”, their larceny}.
It’s FASCISM which is
what these sumbitches
stupidly advance, and aid and abet.
“Of course I was a socialist,” said my professor of his mid-1930s years when he had been an Ivy League student. “We thought that America would otherwise become fascist instead.” This was ‘way back in the early ‘60s, when he added that “fascism threatens still.” [These quotes are pretty much verbatim; I can hear him still.] … Scholars since WWII had been analyzing Hitlerism-etc, - often in terms which were applicable too to subcultures which were ‘way-back-then developing in our own USofA, - and applicable to back-then’s developments inside our perverted forms of capitalism.
Fascism Aided and Abetted\
...a rhyme...
Dang. How awful might the Right wing get?
We see in the news on the internet
that they LIKE stuff Trumpy and Cruzy and Carsony
and plutocrats’ stealings {it’s “grand”, their larceny}.
It’s FASCISM which is
what these sumbitches
stupidly advance, and aid and abet.
=============================
2950-10K, I have to disagree with you a bit. Fox News does not fill the minds of vulnerable citizens with lies. Their minds are already filled with lies and misinformation that they constantly tell to themselves. Fox news only validates what they already think and feel. These fascist bigot nut-bags have been around since humans first oozed out of the mud. Just look at the behavior of the human race throughout history. Greed, torture, war , bigotry, paranoia, etc, etc. It has been around since day one
Fox News realized that their was money to be made and power to be had by giving these right wing extremists what they crave most. A sense that their bigotry and greed is valid behavior and even the preferable social norm. And to be honest, at the lowest level of humankind, it probably is.
One is more likely to be fired from Fox News for telling the truth, than lying. Because, that's what their viewers crave. Just look how Megan Kelly fared after the first Republican debate. Fox had to go into full rightwing attack mode to appease their rightwing junkies. Fox News is like a drug pusher that services a clientele that is addicted to bigotry, lies greed, nationalistic exceptionalism, Christian extremism, and so on.Fox News viewers require a steady stream of the junk. Or they will go find themselves another pusher.
Therefore, Fox News is compelled to peddle to them the dope that they are most addicted to. Not that they have any problem with it. It perfectly serves their corporatist agenda.
So Democrats like Obama who claim to be reaching across the aisle to honor the will of all voters are in reality simply reaching across the aisle to honor the will of the Fascists.
I've said it before, when a Democrat talks about compromise with the Teapublican Party, that tells me they have no idea what freaking time it is...they completely don't get it.
Fox News fills the minds of vulnerable citizens with complete misinformation, lies that cause them to vote against the best interests of 99.9% of us. The Fascists control this weapon of mass misinformation. We need to shun all Fox Reporters in the streets and expose the propaganda machine for what it is...a weapon being used to undo our liberty, and overthrow our Democracy.
The billionaires don't need our help....if you vote republican...you're a god damn fool!
The GOP also wants to change any rules that dont fit them, especially if they are loosing.
Thom, I think you mean Paul Singer, not Peter Singer. Paul Singer,being the hedge fund slime ball, greedy pig and perhaps the most despicable person on earth, a natural for todays Republican traitors. That Rubio takes money from Singer, alone, should disqualify Rubio as a presidential candidate in an American democracy.
Unless their is a corresponding declassification of marijuana at the federal level at the same time that enforcement of other draconian drug laws too. Also we need to decide if it should be legalized or decriminalized completely or regulated like alcohol. If this is what he is talking about I think it is a good idea.
america is already Fascist
Who thinks is is not and how?
My mid-‘70s-course-re-“Whither America?” studes understood this threat-to-America, - and ‘way back then were hip to what this piece says: F’rinstance, Henry Wallace’s take that “The dangerous American fascist … method is to poison the channels of public information”. And that “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”. And that it’s “a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and bidness leadership, along with belligerent nationalism”.
. . . . . . .