Their paranoid fear of a possible dystopic future prevents us from addressing our actual dystopic present.
— Jon Stewart, on anti-gun-legislation zealots. A good 20-minute watch. (via motherjones)
Sine Qua Non
View Larger Temperatures have changed so much in Australia, that the country’s weather service had to increase the size of it’s thermometer. Australia, now in summer time, is experiencing a record heat wave that’s scorching the land, causing brush fires, habitat destruction, and loss of human life. Around 100 people have died this year from bush fires in Australia (a ‘bush fire’ about the same as a ‘wildfire’ in the U.S.).
So severe is the heat that the Bureau of Meteorology had to update its mapping system to accommodate very high temperatures. They’ve added two new colors to their range of their temperatures, purple and pink. Previously, the map was capped at black, which represented the highest temp at 50c. But temperatures are breaking records on a near daily basis, regularly exceeding those highs. (In fact, climate scientists have warned officials that Australia should prepare for even worse temperature swings.)
You can see the two added colors on the graph on the right of this map.
Read more: SMH.COM.AU
I get it. Someone bent on mass murder who has only a 10-round magazine or revolvers at his disposal probably is not going to abandon his plan and instead try to talk his problems out. But we might be able to take the “mass” out of “mass shooting,” or at least make the perpetrator’s job a bit harder.
To guarantee that there would never be another Tucson or Sandy Hook, we would probably have to make it a capital offense to so much as look at a gun. And that would create serious 2nd Amendment, 8th Amendment and logistical problems.
So what’s the alternative? Bring back the assault weapons ban, and bring it back with some teeth this time. Ban the manufacture, importation, sale, transfer and possession of both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Don’t let people who already have them keep them. Don’t let ones that have already been manufactured stay on the market. I don’t care whether it’s called gun control or a gun ban. I’m for it.
I say all of this as a gun owner. I say it as a conservative who was appointed to the federal bench by a Republican president. I say it as someone who prefers Fox News to MSNBC, and National Review Online to the Daily Kos. I say it as someone who thinks the Supreme Court got it right in District of Columbia vs. Heller, when it held that the 2nd Amendment gives us the right to possess guns for self-defense. (That’s why I have mine.) I say it as someone who, generally speaking, is not a big fan of the regulatory state.
I even say it as someone whose feelings about the NRA mirror the left’s feelings about Planned Parenthood: It has a useful advocacy function in our deliberative democracy, and much of what it does should not be controversial at all.
And I say it, finally, mindful of the arguments on the other side, at least as I understand them: that a high-capacity magazine is not that different from multiple smaller-capacity magazines; and that if we ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines one day, there’s a danger we would ban guns altogether the next, and your life might depend on you having one.
But if we can’t find a way to draw sensible lines with guns that balance individual rights and the public interest, we may as well call the American experiment in democracy a failure.
— Federal judge LARRY ALAN BURNS, writing in the Los Angeles Times, “A Conservative Case for An Assault Weapons Ban” (via inothernews)
What happened in Newtown where those children were subject to that level of violence is beyond my comprehension. As a state legislator in Massachusetts I supported an assault weapons ban thinking other states would follow suit. But unfortunately, they have not and innocent people are being killed. As a result, I support a federal assault weapons ban, perhaps like the legislation we have in Massachusetts.
—
Senator SCOTT BROWN (r - Massachusetts).
He’s the first — and only, thus far — GOP senator to express support for an assault weapons ban.
The term “McJob” has come to epitomize all that’s wrong with the low-wage service industry jobs that are growing part of the U.S economy. “It beats flipping burgers,” the cliché goes, because no matter what your job might be, it’s assumed to be better than working in a fast-food restaurant.
Today in New York City, though, hundreds of workers at dozens of fast-food chain stores are walking out on strike, demanding better of those jobs. At McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, KFC, Taco Bell, and Domino’s Pizza locations, workers have been organizing, and today they launch their campaign. They want a raise, to $15-an-hour from their current near-minimum wage pay, and recognition for their independent union, the Fast Food Workers Committee.
Saavedra Jantuah, who works at a Burger King on 34th St. in Manhattan, explained that the $7.30 she makes per hour after two years on the job doesn’t pay her enough to support her son. “I’m doing it for him, I’m going on strike so I can bring my family together underneath one household,” she said. “A union can help us get to where we can make it in New York.”
—
Cannot even express how thrilled I am about this story. I’ll be on the picket lines with the workers in a couple of hours, with photos and more stories. Service jobs don’t have to be lousy jobs—respect and a decent wage would do a lot.
(via differentclasswar)
Food workers need this SO desperately.
(via stfuconservatives)