Flying Monkeys
By Nobody
11 Mar 2011 1:42 pm in No Holds Barred Political Forum
11 Jun 2016 2:28 pm
Another senseless tragedy. A talented young woman murdered.
R.I.P Christina Grimmie.
'Voice' singer Christina Grimmie dies after shooting at Orlando concert.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA4fdiOqNMw
Such irony in those lyrics.
You shout it out,
But I can't hear a word you say
I'm talking loud, not saying much
I'm criticized but all your bullets ricochet
Shoot me down, but I get up
I'm bulletproof, nothing to lose
Fire away, fire away
Ricochet, you take your aim
Fire away, fire away
You shoot me down but I won't fall
I am titanium
You shoot me down but I won't fall
I am titanium
Cut me down
But it's you who'll have further to fall
Ghost town and haunted love
Raise your voice, sticks and stones may break my bones
I'm talking loud not saying much
I'm bulletproof, nothing to lose
Fire away, fire away
Ricochet, you take your aim
Fire away, fire away
You shoot me down but I won't fall
I am titanium
You shoot me down but I won't fall
I am titanium
I am titanium
I am titanium
R.I.P Christina Grimmie.
'Voice' singer Christina Grimmie dies after shooting at Orlando concert.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA4fdiOqNMw
Such irony in those lyrics.
You shout it out,
But I can't hear a word you say
I'm talking loud, not saying much
I'm criticized but all your bullets ricochet
Shoot me down, but I get up
I'm bulletproof, nothing to lose
Fire away, fire away
Ricochet, you take your aim
Fire away, fire away
You shoot me down but I won't fall
I am titanium
You shoot me down but I won't fall
I am titanium
Cut me down
But it's you who'll have further to fall
Ghost town and haunted love
Raise your voice, sticks and stones may break my bones
I'm talking loud not saying much
I'm bulletproof, nothing to lose
Fire away, fire away
Ricochet, you take your aim
Fire away, fire away
You shoot me down but I won't fall
I am titanium
You shoot me down but I won't fall
I am titanium
I am titanium
I am titanium
15 Jun 2016 2:55 pm
When it comes to hate in the name of religion, these so-called Christians give radical Muslims a run for their money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB7ZT4trBUE
These 7 Christian leaders showed their love by celebrating the Orlando nightclub massacre.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB7ZT4trBUE
These 7 Christian leaders showed their love by celebrating the Orlando nightclub massacre.
15 Jun 2016 2:58 pm
So the Hyperbolic Orange Hairball revokes the press credentials of The Washington Post after it published the headline "Donald Trump suggests President Obama was involved with Orlando shooting."
Then today Dogwhistle Donnie tweets a link to a Breitbart story saying that Hillary Clinton received a secret memo stating that President Obama is actively supporting Al Qaeda in Iraq, the terrorist group that became the Islamic State (ISIS).
Donald Trump Claims Obama Secretly Supports ISIS, Cites Debunked Conspiracy Theory As Proof
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-president ... -for-isis/
Then today Dogwhistle Donnie tweets a link to a Breitbart story saying that Hillary Clinton received a secret memo stating that President Obama is actively supporting Al Qaeda in Iraq, the terrorist group that became the Islamic State (ISIS).
Donald Trump Claims Obama Secretly Supports ISIS, Cites Debunked Conspiracy Theory As Proof
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-president ... -for-isis/
17 Jun 2016 1:07 pm
The Second Amendment Hoax
How the NRA and conservatives have perverted the meaning of the right to bear arms.
Sunday night, when my son asked me why we shoot each other dead almost every day in America, I got to tell him that it’s because we are “free.”
We are free to get a .223 caliber AR-15–style semi-automatic rifle and a 9mm handgun.
And we are free to sell those weapons to someone who might shoot and kill 49 people in a nightclub because of whom they choose to love.
We are free to arm ourselves against any potentially tyrannical federal government and also free to watch our children bleed to death in our schools, and churches, and clubs.
And we are free to do it all again tomorrow and the day after that. We are free to feel paralyzed and trapped in a system that is literally killing us.
Freedom in America also means that are free to wake up every morning hoping that it’s not our kid who gets shot with a weapon of war, and free to wake up hoping it’s not our kid who shoots someone, and free to wake up praying it’s not our kid, or our spouse, or our neighbor who shoots herself.
In this freest country on earth, we also happen to be in a perpetual hostage situation, in which one false move—or merely the choice to go to class, or to dance with friends—means you may wind up dead.
What does all this have to do with freedom? Well the document that promises and protects our freedom has been interpreted to say that we are all condemned to live out our days in terror, hostage to powerful interests who urge us to become ever more free by purchasing and stockpiling ever more lethal weapons of war.
Perhaps nobody so perfectly captured this twisted definition of freedom as former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, who in the wake of yet another round of futile debates about gun rights last fall said this: “I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away.” Indeed.
This is where I tell you that the current interpretation of the Second Amendment—the one held onto by Carson, and Donald Trump, and practically the entire Republican Party—is a hoax.
Outside of the GOP, this is widely understood. But what we fail to comprehend, as we bury more of our dead in the name of freedom, is that it is a triple-decker hoax: A lie wrapped in a fabrication, lacquered over with a falsehood.
That we chose to wrap it around our necks as a symbol of our own liberty is our own fault and shame.
The Second Amendment to the Constitution says this: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
For most of U.S. history, that was understood to mean that the freedom guaranteed by the Second Amendment was precisely what it said: the right of the people of each state to maintain a well-regulated militia.
So clearly and unequivocally held was this worldview that no less a liberal squish than Richard Nixon Supreme Court appointee Warren Burger said after his retirement in 1991 that the Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud—I repeat the word ‘fraud’—on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”
This reading was based on precedent. The Supreme Court had clearly agreed with Burger’s interpretation and not that of the special interest groups he chastised, perhaps most famously in a 1939 case called U.S. v. Miller.
That ruling said that since the possession or use of a “shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length” had no reasonable relationship to the “preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia,” the court simply could not find that the Second Amendment guaranteed “the right to keep and bear such an instrument.” Period, full stop.
And that was the viewpoint adopted by the courts for years.
What changed? As Cass Sunstein and others have explained, what changed things was a decades-long effort by exceptionally well-organized, well-funded interest groups that included the National Rifle Association—all of whom “embarked on an extraordinary campaign to convince the public, and eventually the courts, to understand the Second Amendment in their preferred way.”
It’s rather miraculous, if you stop to think about it: In a few short decades the NRA’s view of the Second Amendment became the law of the land.
By 2008, writing the majority opinion for the Supreme Court in District of Columbia et al. v. Heller, Antonin Scalia enshrined this view for first time that: “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.”
That the Heller court itself qualified that right in multiple ways—and that in the years since Heller, the court has declined one important gun case after another—doesn’t change the fact that the hoax is now the law.
On top of everything, most Americans believe by rather huge margins that the concededly ambiguous wording of the Second Amendment means that individuals have the constitutional right to bear arms, even if they don’t want it.
According to a recent NRA poll, when asked if “every American has a fundamental right to self-defense and a right to choose the home defense firearm that is best for them,” 76 percent of respondents said “yes.”
But that is only the crunchy bottom layer of the fraud. The larger fabrication is the idea that the Second Amendment—unlike other provisions of the Constitution—cannot be subject to any reasonable restriction.
As my friend Sonja West pointed out in Slate after another mass shooting late last year, we impose limits, caveats, and conditions on many provisions of the Constitution without crying tyranny:
Constitutional rights are subject to every sort of condition and limitation, and as Scalia himself noted in Heller, “the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” He even went on to list some reasonable limits.
The second hoax—that the right to bear arms is not merely an individual right but also that it is the only constitutional right subject to zero regulation—makes no sense on its face, until and unless you are willing to fall prey to the third fraud.
Hoax number three: Obama, Clinton, Democrats, liberals, the media, whomever are coming for your guns. They are Coming. For your Guns!!!
This is the crunchy candy shell that makes the other two lies seem almost reasonable.
Of course you should have an inviolate individual right to defend yourself against a tyrannical federal government if you have persuaded yourself that the federal government is indeed tyrannical.
This is the big lie that continues to be broadcast and pushed out ad nauseam, and no amount of fact-checking or direct confrontation with accusers makes a whit of difference.
The NRA wanted us to feel that only our guns would make us free, and they have prevailed.
That is, of course the paradox. We are in thrall to a fib of epic proportions that itself relies on two other lies.
And because we are captive to all these lies, we are also captive to the notion that as much as we wish someone would do something about all the innocent dead people, our hands are tied by the freedom-affording gift that is the Second Amendment.
It is a sick joke of our democracy that after every mass shooting we must tell our children that the Framers gave us this precious gift of liberty, more valuable than their lives, and that we are stuck with it.
This is the opposite of freedom. It is slavery by choice.
How the NRA and conservatives have perverted the meaning of the right to bear arms.
Sunday night, when my son asked me why we shoot each other dead almost every day in America, I got to tell him that it’s because we are “free.”
We are free to get a .223 caliber AR-15–style semi-automatic rifle and a 9mm handgun.
And we are free to sell those weapons to someone who might shoot and kill 49 people in a nightclub because of whom they choose to love.
We are free to arm ourselves against any potentially tyrannical federal government and also free to watch our children bleed to death in our schools, and churches, and clubs.
And we are free to do it all again tomorrow and the day after that. We are free to feel paralyzed and trapped in a system that is literally killing us.
Freedom in America also means that are free to wake up every morning hoping that it’s not our kid who gets shot with a weapon of war, and free to wake up hoping it’s not our kid who shoots someone, and free to wake up praying it’s not our kid, or our spouse, or our neighbor who shoots herself.
In this freest country on earth, we also happen to be in a perpetual hostage situation, in which one false move—or merely the choice to go to class, or to dance with friends—means you may wind up dead.
What does all this have to do with freedom? Well the document that promises and protects our freedom has been interpreted to say that we are all condemned to live out our days in terror, hostage to powerful interests who urge us to become ever more free by purchasing and stockpiling ever more lethal weapons of war.
Perhaps nobody so perfectly captured this twisted definition of freedom as former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, who in the wake of yet another round of futile debates about gun rights last fall said this: “I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away.” Indeed.
This is where I tell you that the current interpretation of the Second Amendment—the one held onto by Carson, and Donald Trump, and practically the entire Republican Party—is a hoax.
Outside of the GOP, this is widely understood. But what we fail to comprehend, as we bury more of our dead in the name of freedom, is that it is a triple-decker hoax: A lie wrapped in a fabrication, lacquered over with a falsehood.
That we chose to wrap it around our necks as a symbol of our own liberty is our own fault and shame.
The Second Amendment to the Constitution says this: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
For most of U.S. history, that was understood to mean that the freedom guaranteed by the Second Amendment was precisely what it said: the right of the people of each state to maintain a well-regulated militia.
So clearly and unequivocally held was this worldview that no less a liberal squish than Richard Nixon Supreme Court appointee Warren Burger said after his retirement in 1991 that the Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud—I repeat the word ‘fraud’—on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”
This reading was based on precedent. The Supreme Court had clearly agreed with Burger’s interpretation and not that of the special interest groups he chastised, perhaps most famously in a 1939 case called U.S. v. Miller.
That ruling said that since the possession or use of a “shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length” had no reasonable relationship to the “preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia,” the court simply could not find that the Second Amendment guaranteed “the right to keep and bear such an instrument.” Period, full stop.
And that was the viewpoint adopted by the courts for years.
What changed? As Cass Sunstein and others have explained, what changed things was a decades-long effort by exceptionally well-organized, well-funded interest groups that included the National Rifle Association—all of whom “embarked on an extraordinary campaign to convince the public, and eventually the courts, to understand the Second Amendment in their preferred way.”
It’s rather miraculous, if you stop to think about it: In a few short decades the NRA’s view of the Second Amendment became the law of the land.
By 2008, writing the majority opinion for the Supreme Court in District of Columbia et al. v. Heller, Antonin Scalia enshrined this view for first time that: “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.”
That the Heller court itself qualified that right in multiple ways—and that in the years since Heller, the court has declined one important gun case after another—doesn’t change the fact that the hoax is now the law.
On top of everything, most Americans believe by rather huge margins that the concededly ambiguous wording of the Second Amendment means that individuals have the constitutional right to bear arms, even if they don’t want it.
According to a recent NRA poll, when asked if “every American has a fundamental right to self-defense and a right to choose the home defense firearm that is best for them,” 76 percent of respondents said “yes.”
But that is only the crunchy bottom layer of the fraud. The larger fabrication is the idea that the Second Amendment—unlike other provisions of the Constitution—cannot be subject to any reasonable restriction.
As my friend Sonja West pointed out in Slate after another mass shooting late last year, we impose limits, caveats, and conditions on many provisions of the Constitution without crying tyranny:
Constitutional rights are subject to every sort of condition and limitation, and as Scalia himself noted in Heller, “the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” He even went on to list some reasonable limits.
The second hoax—that the right to bear arms is not merely an individual right but also that it is the only constitutional right subject to zero regulation—makes no sense on its face, until and unless you are willing to fall prey to the third fraud.
Hoax number three: Obama, Clinton, Democrats, liberals, the media, whomever are coming for your guns. They are Coming. For your Guns!!!
This is the crunchy candy shell that makes the other two lies seem almost reasonable.
Of course you should have an inviolate individual right to defend yourself against a tyrannical federal government if you have persuaded yourself that the federal government is indeed tyrannical.
This is the big lie that continues to be broadcast and pushed out ad nauseam, and no amount of fact-checking or direct confrontation with accusers makes a whit of difference.
The NRA wanted us to feel that only our guns would make us free, and they have prevailed.
That is, of course the paradox. We are in thrall to a fib of epic proportions that itself relies on two other lies.
And because we are captive to all these lies, we are also captive to the notion that as much as we wish someone would do something about all the innocent dead people, our hands are tied by the freedom-affording gift that is the Second Amendment.
It is a sick joke of our democracy that after every mass shooting we must tell our children that the Framers gave us this precious gift of liberty, more valuable than their lives, and that we are stuck with it.
This is the opposite of freedom. It is slavery by choice.
17 Jun 2016 1:15 pm
17 Jun 2016 1:24 pm
Misty's hero Obama has presided over the worst economic growth since the great depression.
Nice job Misty.
Nice job Misty.
17 Jun 2016 2:37 pm
Did that long article make your pointy little head hurt Sweetie?roadkill » 17 Jun 2016 1:15 pm » wrote:Misty thinks if she posts a thousand words it will some how come true.
17 Jun 2016 2:40 pm
I see you have studied your talking points.roadkill » 17 Jun 2016 1:24 pm » wrote:Misty's hero Obama has presided over the worst economic growth since the great depression.
Nice job Misty.
Did you get a cookie for that?
17 Jun 2016 2:41 pm
17 Jun 2016 2:49 pm
17 Jun 2016 2:56 pm
17 Jun 2016 3:36 pm
19 Jun 2016 4:28 pm
The Tweeter-In-Chief tweets out a poll that shows Hillary leading. LOL
http://www.oann.com/pollnational/
Most polls show her leading.
What's he gonna talk about now?
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls ... -5491.html
http://www.oann.com/pollnational/
Most polls show her leading.
What's he gonna talk about now?
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls ... -5491.html
19 Jun 2016 4:35 pm
Where are all of the Global Warming deniers who use every snow storm as proof that the Earth is not warming?
19 Jun 2016 7:13 pm
Has the Second Amendment been twisted by conservatives?
The Second Amendment applied to the maintenance of well-regulated militias.
The militias were not for protection against the government.
They were to protect the government and the Constitution, because the Constitution prohibited a standing army.
The Founding Fathers were frightened by a standing army, because they feared coups.
Without a standing army, the only protection the people and the government had were militias.
The U. S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, states
Note that there could be a permanent navy, but not a standing army.
Note also the Constitution explicitly states what militias do: they make sure the laws are followed, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.
This was a lesson learned after Shays Rebellion of 1786-1787 and The Whiskey Rebellion 1791–1794.
The Militia Act of 1792 also explicitly directs the president’s use of militias. The Militia Act of 1792
The Constitution made sure that there was nothing to fear from the Federal government, because there was no standing army.
They feared insurrection and invasions of all sorts.
The militias were empowered by the Constitution to protect against these in the absence of a U.S. army.
Every single speaker in the U.S. House of Representatives who commented on the Second Amendment before its ratification spoke only about militias.
That being said, the Founding Fathers seemed to think that guns and militia service were good for character building.
They certainly didn’t want to ban them. On the contrary, gun ownership and militia membership were required.
The aforementioned Militia Act of 1792 stated:
However, the states had many laws regulating guns from the earliest days of the founding of America until the present day.
Not only slaves and free blacks, but law-abiding white men who refused to swear loyalty to the Revolution were prohibited from owning guns.
Even Dodge City, Kansas in the 1870’s prohibited weapons from being carried. That law wasn’t very effective.
The U.S. Constitution and subsequent laws provided for militias to protect the government, while regulating guns.
Guns were integral to the American experience, as every white male between 18 and 45 was required to own a gun and serve in the militia.
Guns could be and were regulated.
It is difficult to know with certainty how the Founding Fathers would react to a number of things as they are today, including the fact that we have an incredibly powerful standing army and that we are awash in handguns and weapons that have no relationship to militias.
For what it’s worth, my opinion is that at this time gun ownership is fully ingrained in our laws and experience.
The states should be able to regulate them as they see fit. That is the law as it is now.
To change the law will require a Constitutional Amendment, which is not likely any time in the foreseeable future.
21 Jun 2016 9:15 pm
It's just another big scam.Trump’s campaign spends millions of its money on Trump companies.
NEW ORLEANS — Donald Trump’s campaign likes to keep it in the family.
When Trump flies, he uses his airplane. When he campaigns, he often chooses his properties or his own Trump Tower in New York City, which serves as his headquarters. His campaign even buys Trump bottled water and Trump wine.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has been on the campaign trail for a year now, and federal finance reports detail a campaign unafraid to comingle political and business endeavors in an unprecedented way — even as he is making appeals for donations.
Through the end of May, Trump’s campaign had plunged at least $6.2 million back into Trump corporate products and services, a review of Federal Election Commission filings shows. That’s about 10 percent of his total campaign expenditures.
Unlike in the primary, when Trump touted his ability to pay his own way, he has been on an urgent fundraising quest for more than a month. His campaign began June with $1.3 million in the bank, compared with the $42 million that presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton had amassed.
Wealthy political candidates in the past have walled off their business from their campaigns, but Trump embraces his companies. Public documents indicate his revenue has risen along with his presidential aspirations.
While Trump’s controversial comments have cost his businesses money — for example, the PGA Tour recently announced it would move its World Golf Championship from a Trump course to one in Mexico City — Trump reported in documents filed in May with federal regulators that his revenue had increased by roughly $190 million over the previous 17 months.
Trump’s campaign didn’t respond to detailed questions about the intermingling of his businesses and campaign.
Trump isn’t the first high-profile politician to run a campaign while managing large corporate assets. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and presidential contender Steve Forbes both ran companies bearing their name.
Both took great care to carefully separate their businesses and their campaigns, their former aides said, citing the complex maze of campaign finance regulations about using corporate resources. For instance, federal rules require a company to charge their campaigns fair-market value.
The Trump campaign — funded during the primary contest mostly by loans Trump made — appears to be properly documenting its use of the businessman’s assets in federal reports, leaving a record of his campaign’s finances and their impact on his self-reported financial largesse.
Some of Trump’s revenue bump appears to be directly traced to his campaign. TAG Air Inc., the holding company for his airplane, had $3.7 million in revenue in the most recent reporting period — an amount that came largely from the campaign.
Trump’s relentless product branding while on the campaign trail might be helping, too. Trump Ice LLC, the bottled water company, brought in income of more than $413,000 in the most recent reporting period, up from $280,000.
In the beginning months of his presidential bid, Trump paid about $350,000 out of pocket to rent campaign space in his own building and to cover the salaries of some of the Trump Organization employees he’d moved onto his campaign staff.
FEC reports show the campaign reimbursed him for those costs. In May, the campaign paid Trump an additional $45,000 for more rent and payroll.
Trump also lent his campaign more than $46 million over the past year — money he has largely not recouped, according to FEC reports.
The campaign has paid about $520,000 to Trump Tower Commercial LLC and the Trump Corporation for rent and utilities. The campaign also paid $423,000 to Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago Club in south Florida for rent and catering and an additional $135,000 in rent and utilities to Trump Restaurants LLC.
The campaign paid out $26,000 in January to rent out a facility at Trump National Doral, his golf course in Miami. He’d held an event in the gold-accented ballroom there in late October. The campaign paid almost $11,000 to Trump’s hotel in Chicago.
Even $4.7 million the campaign has spent on hats and T-shirts has a tie to Trump. The provider, Ace Specialties, is owned by a board member of son Eric Trump’s charitable foundation.
21 Jun 2016 10:03 pm
The part of the Heller decision that gun fetishists choose to ignore.
Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited.
It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues.
The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.
Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.
21 Jun 2016 10:06 pm
How many million guns of a specific type are required to be "in common use" and why when these guns are expanding in ownership exponentially, are murders from them cratering?Misty » 21 Jun 2016 10:03 pm » wrote:The part of the Heller decision that gun fetishists choose to ignore.
I guess that proves they aren't "dangerous and unusual".
21 Jun 2016 10:23 pm
21 Jun 2016 10:24 pm
Poor Misty keeps getting her *** kicked.Misty » 21 Jun 2016 10:23 pm » wrote:
Now why in the hell would I even entertain a Birther?
Can you answer that Miss Taitz?
I'd probably run too, were I you.
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