Educate Cabela's re: protecting assault weapons that could kill US Troops in the world's hot spots.

Source: Omaha World Herald, By Janice Podsada

Cabela's, the Sidney, Neb.-based hunting and outdoor retailer, won't attend or sponsor this year's Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show, one of the largest hunting and outdoor consumer shows in North America.

Cabela's pulled out of the show, which will be held Feb. 2-10 in Harrisburg, Pa., after the show's organizer, Reed Exhibitions, said it was dropping a display of assault-type weapons and accessories at this year's event. Reed's announcement came a week after President Barack Obama announced new gun-control measures.

On the outdoor show's website, Reed said that while it “strongly” supports the second amendment .., “this year we have made the decision not to include certain products that in the current climate may attract negative attention that would distract from the strong focus on hunting and fishing at this family-oriented event and possibly disrupt the broader positive experience of our guests.”

On its Facebook page, Cabela's said it would be a no-show at the event, where it traditionally has had a significant presence.

Read more: http://www.omaha.com/article/20130123/MONEY/701239965/1685#cabela-s-pulls-out-of-show-after-organizer-drops-weapons-display

I take Cabela's withdraw from the Eastern Sports and Outdoor show, because of Reed Exhibition's removal of assault weapons from their booth offerings, as Cabela's confirmed support for protection of American domestic assault weapons' markets and their inherently related and much much bigger such markets in troubled countries around the world.

Apparently these markets in countries into which US made, and NRA protected, assault weapons are flowing fully un-regulated to eventually produce the necessity of US troop killing and being killed in order to "defend" "our" "interests abroad", have Cabela's seal of approval. Hence your protection of assault weapons propaganda in a PRIVATE sports show that will result in the expenditure of PUBLIC funds, not to mention the lives of those who have little say in what happens so far after the fact.

Please review Senate bill S. 2205 introduced during the 112th Congress and in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee right now. In this bill the NRA, through it's wholly owned senators, seeks to prevent U.S. involvement in U.N. treaties that try to control the flow of US made and other weapons into troubled places like Libya and Iraq and all over the continent of Africa.

America's history as "the Policemen of the World" and our standing non-UN treaty involvements mean that it is highly likely that US Troops will end up facing the weapons that Cabela's is protecting in some horribly sad and damned places, while you enjoy your assault weapons' profits in the comfort of your homes.

You can be certain that there are many of us who will not forget your ir-responsible attitude toward what happens to ordinary Americans in OUR own streets and to OUR soldiers in harm's way around the globe.

Please reconsider and offer Reed Exhibitions an apology and thank them for their responsible behavior in this matter.

Thank you for reading this,

Thank you, OmahaBlueDog, here's the email I just submitted:

I take Cabela's withdraw from the Eastern Sports and Outdoor show, because of Reed Exhibition's removal of assault weapons from their booth offerings, as Cabela's confirmed support for protection of American domestic assault weapons' markets and bigger such markets in troubled countries around the world.

Apparently these markets in countries into which US made, and NRA protected, assault weapons are flowing fully un-regulated to eventually produce the necessity of US troop killing and being killed in order to "defend" "our" "interests abroad" have Cabela's seal of approval. Hence your protection of assault weapons propaganda in a PRIVATE sports show.

Please review Senate bill S. 2205 introduced during the 112th Congress and in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee right now. In this bill the NRA, through it's wholly owned senators, seeks to prevent U.S. involvement in U.N. treaties that try to control the flow of US made and other weapons into troubled places like Libya and all over the continent of Africa.

America's history as "the Policemen of the World" and our standing non-UN treaty involvements mean that it is highly likely that US Troops will end up facing the weapons that Cabela's is protecting in some horribly sad and damned places, while you enjoy your assault weapons' profits in the comfort of your home.

You can be certain that there are many of us who will not forget your ir-responsible attitude toward what happens to ordinary Americans in OUR own streets and to OUR soldiers in Harm's Way around the globe.

Please reconsider and offer Reed Exhibitions an apology and thank them for their responsible behavior in this matter.

Thank you for reading this,
........

Will do & feedback call notes. Journalling this. nt

There are too many blind assumptions about what constitutes freedom. Simplistic minds

probably tend to think of it as 0 consequences and, yet, they are also known to say things about how, "Freedom isn't free", which IS true, but then they conceive of the price of freedom ONLY in terms of blood, preferably someone else's, which in some instances is also more or less true, but the difference between those instances in which that may be true and those instances when oppression is the more likely result of that blood is extremely important to the freedom of everyone.

All of that is very concerning in contexts in which authentic understanding of what constitutes rational thought is completely missing and people operate most of the time under the principle that just saying something makes it so (because they themselves have known little or nothing but corporate propaganda).

The price of freedom is responsibility, ongoing, rational, honest, diligent, work-wo/manly commitment to what happens ALL of the time, NOT just after the fact. After "the horse is out of the barn", when it's too late to figure out whether whoever is headed at you, armed to the teeth is the oppressor or not and by how much, let alone how one's own behaviors have contributed to oppressing one's self by limiting one's choices until they lead to that bloody moment, in which no choices are left for anyone.

This means that people should recognize that if you NEED a gun to protect your home from thieves or criminals, it's already too late, so you should accept your responsibilities for social and economic justice BEFORE you get to that moment, which will result not only in fewer bad people trying to take your stuff, but also an increased probability that if anyone does try to assault your castle, they are more likely people who HAVE chosen to do that and therefore deserve to be apprehended and brought to justice. That's another important difference, because it reduces the inertia of the cycles of injustice that involve people who WOULD choose otherwise (i.e. choose not to be thieving your property) if they had had more chances not to all along and separating THOSE sheep from the goats reduces the strength of the cycles that repeat, repeat, repeat, until it's too late and a bunch of people lie bleeding and dying for something that never had a chance of being authentic freedom in the first place.

None of that can happen when chaos reigns and no one can identify their functional choices (all along, throughout all of the processes) well enough to adapt their own trajectory themselves, as individuals, and violence creates chaos, so it is much more likely that the results of violence are only more privilege, not freedom.

FYI: International aspects of domestic gun control in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

What part do you think the NRA plays in the following; here's the bill's header and text as it appears in THOMAS.
The bill's number is S. 2205 and it was introduced by Senator Jerry Moran in the 112th Congress:

S.2205 -- Second Amendment Sovereignty Act of 2012 (Introduced in Senate - IS)

S 2205 IS

112th CONGRESS

2d Session

S. 2205

To prohibit funding to negotiate a United Nations Arms Trade Treaty that restricts the Second Amendment rights of United States citizens.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

March 19, 2012

Mr. MORAN introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations

A BILL

To prohibit funding to negotiate a United Nations Arms Trade Treaty that restricts the Second Amendment rights of United States citizens.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `Second Amendment Sovereignty Act of 2012'.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS; SENSE OF CONGRESS.

(a) Findings- Congress makes the following findings:

(1) In October 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced the United States support and participation in negotiating the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty , to be finalized in 2012, signaling a shift in United States policy.

(2) An Arms Trade Treaty that regulates the domestic manufacturer, possession, or purchase of civilian firearms and ammunition would infringe on the rights of United States citizens protected under the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

(b) Sense of Congress- It is the sense of Congress that the sovereignty of the United States and the constitutionally protected freedoms of American gun owners must be upheld and not be undermined by the Arms Trade Treaty .

SEC. 3. PROHIBITION ON FUNDING.

No funds may be obligated or expended to use the voice, vote, and influence of the United States, in connection with negotiations for a United Nations Arms Trade Treaty , to restrict in any way the rights of United States citizens under the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States, or to otherwise regulate domestic manufacture, assembly, possession, use, transfer, or purchase of firearms, ammunition, or related items, including small arms, light weapons, or related materials.

I accept you point as true on its own terms. I'm not here to argue against it. I just really

do need to understand how it works relative to certain probabilities and the office of the presidency.

Probabilities such as:
Even if we didn't do one more bad thing in the world for the rest of our time as a nation on Earth, there are various possibilities for successful and significant violence against us, are there not? Neither you nor I and hardly anyone else has enough of the right information to calculate those probabilities, but just for the sake of this hypothetical, let's say that they are 50 : 50. The chances of successful significant violence against this land/people are as likely as they are un-likely.

So, let's say something significant happens, many innocent people are harmed and killed, and you, as president could have done x, y, and z to reduce the probability of, or even prevent, that successful strike, but didn't because you "have a moral center". If such harms were to happen, what are the consequences to a person with "a moral center" who could have prevented them?

Regarding what is called "rationalization" and please note the root word there, rational: If the principle is that you must not DO things that hurt innocent people, given some likelihood (either more or less probable) of harms that one can DO things to reduce or prevent those harms, why aren't the rights of those victims of harm as equal in value as the rights of a person or persons reasonably suspected of connection to the probabilities of those harms? Especially if you can DO something about those probabilities?

This is an honest question. Not a trap. I just don't understand how a "moral center" works unless it works this way. You DO what you rationally can, in terms of the situation at hand, to sustain the principle. NONE of that means that you give wholesale approval to torture or coercion, only approval limited in specific ways by the terms of specific situations. One doesn't say, TTE, "Cutting people is evil" and then refuse to do surgery, in specific ways, when it will help or save someone's life.

My line of reasoning is not as corrupt as it is often portrayed. It is the essence of what eventually became Zen Buddhism, as it is found in its cultural roots in the Bhagavad Gita. Krishna does not provide Arjuna with a handy-dandy get-out-of-jail-free card. He doesn't even tell the great warrior what to do to fight the imminent evil. Krishna just simply reminds Arjuna that his life brought him to the present moment; all that had happened and Arjuna's part in it, was what made the situation what it was and NOT some other, different, less challenging situation. It's as though Krishna is telling Arjuna that he and the imminent events are the SAME thing. He doesn't absolve him, nor does he castigate him for the coming fratricide. Krishna says, in effect, "Own it," so we might conclude that whatever Arjuna does, whether he goes into the war and kills thousands, or whether he does not do battle and thousands are killed because of that, Arjuna should identify with either of his "choices", because the reality and he are not dichotomous. What is happening is who he is, however it turns out, so whatever he decides his course should be, he should DO his best to do that thing.

I'm honestly not trying to convince you of anything here. I'm just trying to explain how something works. That's how I understand it from my own life. The Bhagavad Gita gave voice to that understanding and Buddhism sustains something very similar in the value that it places on "non-attachment". I don't understand a perspective that claims another person has "no moral center" (not relative to most people that is); I don't see how that's anyone's to claim but one's own.

I respect you Bonobo, so I am asking you if you can explain what you mean to me, so I can understand better and agree to whatever extent possible.

Thanks for reading this.

p

Americans should be asking Jerry Moran if "transfer" in the attached GUN treaties legislation . . .

Americans should be asking Sen. Jerry Moran, R, KS, if "transfer" in the attached legislation could possibly include, directly or otherwise, transfer to the world's trouble spots, such as Libya, or across the U.S.'s southern border, where it is possible (as the Bush administration so clearly demonstrated) that AMERICAN TROOPS CAN BE COMMITTED, because of violence from armed cohorts, to kill or die for however the "interests" of the USA are currently politically defined, by lobbyists from the NRA, who may be contributing to Moran's AND OTHER SENATORS' campaigns.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c112:4:./temp/~c112r1hLnf::

Text of Moran's bill: "No funds may be obligated or expended to use the voice, vote, and influence of the United States, in connection with negotiations for a United Nations Arms Trade Treaty , to restrict in any way the rights of United States citizens under the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States, or to otherwise regulate domestic manufacture, assembly, possession, use, transfer, or purchase of firearms, ammunition, or related items, including small arms, light weapons, or related materials."

Here's another more detailed research look at the Rhee's Students First bullshit rating system:

Sounds like it's all marketing. There's no research base for Rhee's ranking list and when you compare the ranks to outcomes its all over the board. Probably this research blogger's biggest concerns have to do with how Rhee's claims for increased accountability and transparency are completely untrue and that in fact the opposite is the case: increased unaccountability and opaqueness.

http://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/rheeformy-logic-goofball-rating-schemes-comments-analysis-students-first-state-policy-grades

On Monday, the organization Students First came out with their state policy rankings, just in time to promote their policy agenda in state legislatures across the country. Let’s be clear, Students First’s state policy rankings are based on a list of what Students First thinks states should do. It’s entirely about their political preferences – largely reformy policies – template stuff that has been sweeping the reformiest states over the past few years. I’ll have more to say about these preferred policies at the end of this post.

But I digress… Now back to the Students First ratings. Students First created 3 broad categories of preferred policies for their ratings – policies that it believes:

Elevate teaching
Empower parents
Spend wisely and govern well

By elevate teaching, Students First means the usual basket of reformy options including elimination of traditional salary schedules, teacher evaluations based heavily on student test scores, reduction of retirement benefits and reduction or elimination of due process rights, and pay based primarily on test-score driven evaluation systems. They also prefer to expand alternative routes into the teaching profession. Of course, there’s not a whole lot of transparency into how these various elements are factored into the final grades. But there is a rubric! ...

Every item on their list is somehow mysteriously scored on a “0″ you suck) to “4″ wow… you are REFORMERIFIC!) scale without using any actual data (apparently) to inform that ordinal rating. Then in a wonderful leap of number abuse, these ordinal scale data are averaged to create a grade point average for each broad category – on a 0-4 GPA like scale, where most values of course lie in the imaginary spaces between the original ordinal ratings (like kinda-semi-almost-reformerific = 3.49).

Finally, I close with a topic that should be another blog post altogether, and likely will be at some point. I’ve been struck by the logic that the preferred policies in the Students First report are intended – by their framing – to increase accountability, empowerment and transparency. Yet, in all likelihood, most of these proposals accomplish precisely the opposite – substantially eroding public accountability and oversight and compromising statutory and constitutional rights of children, employees and local taxpayers. . . .

The Students First state policy rating system – like many other reformy manifestos – implies that the road to ACCOUNTABILITY and TRANSPARENCY is necessarily (perhaps exclusively) paved through shifting larger numbers of students and teachers and larger shares of public funding over to the management of non-government entities and non-public officials, as well as creating entirely new layers of ‘public decision making’ by referendum/petition (Parent Trigger). Whatever gripes we may have regarding the efficiency or responsiveness of government operated services, we must think this one through carefully.

Unless detailed accountability requirements are explicitly spelled out in a whole new layer of state and federal laws, the preferred policies laid out in the Students First and by other reformy institutions are more likely to lead to less public accountability and transparency rather than more. ...

So yes – Students First has their policy preferences – and they’re certainly entitled to that. They’ve built their entire rating system on their idea of what’s good policy. They’ve not tried to justify their policy preferences in any research basis on effectiveness or efficiency of these policy preferences, nor could they. There simply is no research basis to support the vast majority of their preferences. Even where Charter school policy is concerned, findings of successful charters seem to occur most often where authorizers are few and tightly regulated, and where charter market share is low (as in NYC or Boston). This is in direct contrast with the SF preference for further deregulating and expanding the sector (as in states with relatively poor charter performance). So, in short, there’s simply no research based reason to follow the policy agenda of Students First. But the reasons they provide – accountability, transparency, blah… blah… blah… are also not consistent with their policy agenda.

God! That piece is such a litany of horror stories, I hardly know where to begin!

I guess my main point would be: If it's supposed to be about good jobs, as SUBSIDY-Sam Brownback says it is, then, when you force the price of a commodity toooo low, and in this case the commodity would be the labor of the poor who have been disqualified by bureaucrats (who obtain their own paychecks through a type of SOCIALISM for those who get political patronage in our state, NOT on their qualifications to do the work they are doing, i.e. it's all ideology), how in f-ing hell do Republicans think the job-market is going to bid any higher for that labor than what the current price is, which can apparently range from $0 - $280. @ mo.

WHY would whatever jobs that do materialize out of this EXPERIMENT pay more than the going rate for those bodies? They won't, because no one is going to pay more than the going rate. Those won't be good jobs not only because wages will be low but also because Medicaid is gone.

Actually, I have an answer to this question of how Republicans think "decent" paying jobs will come out of this situation and it has to do with something else that is characteristic of the CHURCH-state in Kansas. People will get "decent" (ha!) wages depending upon their acceptance of certain other unstated, non-job-related, "qualifications", which happen ever so co-incidentally to be rather similar to those of the ideological social engineering bureaucrats who are doing this, ergo . . .

Kansas has turned into a market for indentured servants.

“Everybody is concerned that we are shrinking the social safety net. So much of it is happening behind closed doors and under the radar.”

Some 384,000 Kansans, or 13.8 percent of the state’s population, live at or below the poverty line, $23,050 a year for a family of four. That’s up by nearly 80,000 people since before the recession hit in 2008. Among children, the numbers have jumped 34,000, from 14.5 percent to nearly 19 percent. . . .

In May, the sweeping Brownback-led tax code changes that eliminated income taxes for an estimated 191,000 small businesses took away longstanding tax breaks for child- and dependent-care expenses and money spent on food taxes that helped a combined 430,000 Kansans, including the working poor.

Another policy, enacted months before, eliminated food stamps to the families of 2,200 Kansas children, all U.S. citizens, because some income in their households came from family members who were in the country illegally. The state determined they should not be counted in the formula to determine benefits.

Families that qualify for TANF cash assistance, which amounts to $280 a month on average, are among the poorest of the poor, with annual incomes no greater than 28 percent of the federal poverty level — about $6,500 for a family of four.

When Brownback took office, 39,000 severely poor Kansans received TANF. Since October 2011, when the administration instituted stricter rules defining who could receive the cash assistance, 38 percent of them — or almost 15,000 people — no longer do. . . .

In Kansas, the food stamp program has grown substantially under Brownback — up 21 percent, from 260,000 to 315,000 recipients, since he took office. Monthly spending per person has nearly doubled, from $66 to $125.

Even at $16,500 a year in food stamps, if the Hartzes’ food benefit were counted as income, they would still be living at less than 40 percent of the federal poverty level for a family their size.

I agree with this, except, if PO & they had let it all go, could we expect whatever came out of

that situation would have been necessarily more to our benefit than what could happen if we put ourselves together well enough NOW? I am suggesting that we may have bought ourselves some time that the people NEED, before oppressors of another order rob a bunch of us of potentials that we have not discovered/developed yet, potentials that may be crucial to the prospects of the whole thing no matter which political direction the trajectory takes.

And, yes, probably unlike some of the strong cohorts involved in this, I do think TIME is a crucial criteria here, not only for at risk populations at different ends of the generational spectrum, but also for Earth.

I don't know; if things had not gone the way that they did, and all of it did "crash" more than it has, whether we'd be talking about decades before significant progress on social and economic justice and environmental/energy issues, but I do want us to at least ask that question of ourselves. Would it have been decades after a more extensive crash, before we actually got on our feet? Or has, even given some of the mis-steps in what actually happened, has the way things actually did go down allowed more opportunities to involve more of the more fundamentally affected cohorts to educate themselves more validly and become more active in ways that more effectively address their own issues themselves, rather than allowing power-enclaves, "Left", "Right", and "Center" or "All", to turn the course of things in ways that would ultimately result in being less demographically inclusive? And that's "less inclusive" not so much in terms of outcomes, because I think we're still at least 2 years away from a true bench-mark there (November 2014), and longer than that REALLY, but also more inclusive in terms of the MANY and VARIOUS processes at work here.

Perhaps you recognize my skepticism about the, TTE, "Let it all crash and burn, so we can start over" cohort. Who, exactly comprises that point-of-view and how authentically do they indeed hold that position? AND - very importantly given my own impulse in that direction - are they recognizing that such a scenario WILL indeed generate its own emergent oppressors, to which MUCH will be lost and I just really don't think that we can write off the VALUE of what will be lost, as that all plays itself out over how many (?) decades, as stuff that, TTE, "we don't need anyway." Ought we not to at least try to make critical decisions about what will and what will not be lost, or should we just leave that up to WHATEVER power enclaves emerge out of such a situation? Yes, such a crash would be cleansing, lots of bullshit would go away, but that's not all that will happen and we shouldn't pretend that we won't lose value that future generations will need in order to survive AND that we haven't even asked ourselves about whether that's a factor or not, much less have we made somekind of at least hypothetical effort to identify what those values might be.

These are the reasons why I think Labor is the real decision point here, not D.C.