The Perilous Position of the Good Guy With A Gun

Adam Weinstein write a great piece for Gawker from the perspective of a concealed carry permit holder in today's gun-crazy America. 

It's Really Hard to Be a Good Guy With a Gun

"But as the years go on and the country gets crazier—stirred up by paranoiacs, political hardliners, lobbyists, and simple gun-fetishists—I come nearer to my wife's side. The universe of scenarios in which carrying a gun seems prudent or useful just keeps shrinking and shrinking, even as the legal freedom to wield personal firepower keeps expanding. The NRA has recalibrated its message for the 21st century: "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." But in many ways, the 21st century has already overtaken us good guys."

http://gawker.com/its-really-hard-to-be-a-good-guy-with-a-gun-1588660306?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gawker%2Ffull+%28Gawker%29

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Bedtime Procrastination Already Has A Name

It's "fear of missing out" or FOMO. I thought this was long settled.

'Bedtime Procrastination' Is a Thing

"It's not quite insomnia, because it isn't that I can't sleep; I'm just putting it off. Recently, researchers in the Netherlands put a name to this phenomenon: "bedtime procrastination," which they define as "failing to go to bed at the intended time, while no external circumstances prevent a person from doing so.""

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/06/bedtime-procrastination-is-a-thing.html

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Americans Love Social Security, Could Not Care Less About Third Way, Fix The Debt

Democrats take note.  I don't care how many pundits, AstroTurf organizations and newspaper editorial boards Pete Peterson buys. Social Security works, it is popular, and it ought to be expanded. Embrace that fact and run on it. 

Voters Matter More Than The WaPo Editorial Board

"The elderly vote, and they like their benefits. That neither political party has been pandering to them, except in the weird negative way of promising to screw the youngs has been just bizarre to me. It's a mystery to me how people are paid lots of money to tell candidates not to promise to give the elderly more and better benefits."

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2014/06/voters-matter-more-than-wapo-editorial.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FbRuz+%28Eschaton%29

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Safer Streets: Will Dean Skelos and Jeff Klein's Senate Step Up?

I would hope so.  The lives of New Yorkers are on the line.  Will the Republican and IDC-led Senate block progress on street safety yet again?

An Assembly bill co-sponsored by Speaker Sheldon Silver would lower

the City’s default speed limit from the current 30 mph to 25 mph, as

part of Vision Zero – Mayor Bill de Blasio’s policy to eliminate

traffic fatalities and serious injuries by 2024. But with the session

set to end on June 19th, the legislation still has no sponsor in the

Senate.

“We are not engineers or lawyers; we are families whose loved ones

have been hit or killed in traffic,” said Aaron Charlop-Powers, a

founding member of Families for Safe Streets. “We have one question

for the State Senate today: are you prepared to let politics stand in

the way of saving lives? We can’t wait until next year to pass this

legislation. You can pass a bill this session and reduce the number of

people killed on the City's streets. No family should have to know the

pain we know. We ask that you hear our pain and act in response.” 

“We cannot allow Albany to get off the hook for the traffic deaths on

our streets; we need their action and we need it now,” said Council

Member Ydanis Rodriguez. “The city has done its part, but this work is

not done. With the state legislative term coming to a close shortly,

we want to be sure this remains at the top of their to-do list.”

There is even broader support for the bill:

“The de Blasio Administration joins with the families who have lost

loved ones in calling upon Albany to pass legislation reducing New

York City’s default speed limit to 25 mph,” said NYC Department of

Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg. “At Vision Zero town

halls across the City to meeting people on the street to walking

through the State Capitol with families who've lost loved ones, we

hear the resounding call to lower New York’s driving speeds and make

our streets safer.”

“Demand for slower speeds is coming from all over the five boroughs,”

says Paul Steely White, Executive Director of Transportation

Alternatives. “We have thousands of petitions signed by New Yorkers

who want to live in communities free of dangerous speeding. Mayor de

Blasio, the City Council and the State Assembly have shown us how the

City and State can work together to save lives on our streets. Now we

need a lifesaver in the State Senate.”

Our Corrupt, Evil Prison-Industrial Complex

Warehousing undocumented immigrants and drug offenders as a profit center.  In my previous life in commercial banking, we acquired another bank and took over a portfolio of loans to private prisons. 

After one bank meeting down in Houston, I told my boss that if we were keeping these clients, he'd have to find someone else to work on these accounts. 

Private Prisons Are Getting Rich By Abusing Illegal Immigrants

"What sort of criminal is the target of most federal prosecutions? Mobsters? Bank robbers? No: illegal immigrants. And where do they go? To private prisons, for whom America's immigration system is a giant profit center."

http://gawker.com/private-prisons-immigration-and-abuse-1588574454?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gawker%2Ffull+%28Gawker%29

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Just A Few Dead Enders

Surely we have improved the stability in Iraq by funding and supplying a bunch of violent religious lunatics right across the border to destabilize Syria. Right?

This can't be good

"Iraqi police and army forces abandoned their posts in the northern city of Mosul after militants overran the provincial government headquarters and other key buildings, dealing a serious blow to Baghdad's efforts to control a widening insurgency in the country, a provincial official and residents said Tuesday."

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/this-cant-be-good.html

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Krugman on The Intellectual Bankruptcy of The GOP

The party of ideas.  Stale, re warned ideas that were terrible the first time around.  The only place the GOP demonstrates any creativity in their thinking is in the outlandish lies and fake scandals they cook up. 

New And Not Improved

"The truth is that conservatives have a big intellectual problem. Thirty-five years ago they really did have something new to say — basically, the claim that tax cuts and deregulation would produce widely shared economic gains, a rising tide that would lift all boats, etc.. That hasn't happened, of course, although the Paul Ryans will never admit it and just keep pushing for more of the same. The new conservatives are at least aware that things haven't quite worked out as promised — but they're not willing to challenge fundamental assumptions. So what they write conveys a kind of desperate feeling — they're trying to tweak the paradigm at the edges, but without straying over the invisible border that would make them basically modern liberals. If you look at the health care chapter, for example, it does two main things. First, it tries to trash Obamacare with borderline dishonest claims — it will leave 31 million American uninsured! It will cost $2 trillion! If you look at the CBO estimates (pdf) these claims are based on, you learn that about a third of those remaining uninsured are unauthorized immigrants the law was never intended to reach, a significant number will be uninsured because Republican-controlled states are refusing to expand Medicaid, and the rest will be uninsured because for whatever reason they choose not to sign up. Oh, and it's $1.8 trillion, fully offset by cost savings and additional revenue."

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/10/new-and-not-improved/

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