Fumesucker
Fumesucker's Journal
Congratulations to all those who have today gained the right and the freedom to marry!
A cautionary tale: One of my neighbors has been having addiction issues
A couple I know down the road are having problems, the wife is addicted to pain meds she started on and still uses for back pain. But that's not the cautionary tale part.
A couple of months ago I was close to getting home and about to pull into "the home stretch" so to speak when my neighbor runs the stop sign coming out of our neighborhood right in front of me, if I had been thirty feet further on her car would have t-boned me and I probably wouldn't be posting this right now. I knew she had been having addiction issues at the time and assumed she was high so after she backed up to the stop sign I drove around her and waved a bit and kept on my way home, I don't think she even recognized me. The next day after reflecting on what to do I told her husband about the incident, not trying to cause problems but because I would want someone to tell me if I were in that situation and I thought the wife needed to not be on the road if she is driving high.
Fast forward to a couple of days ago, I was talking to the husband who told me his wife has been back in the hospital, this time for seizures. What got my attention about his tale is that her family was in the hospital room blaming him for leaving her at home to go to work when she was having a seizure. The doctor was also present for this and told the wife's family very strongly that the husband was not at fault, her seizures and their aftermath even to a trained professional were difficult to distinguish from being spaced out on pain meds and to a casual observer they were basically identical.
With this latest information I have come to wish that when I saw the wife run the stop sign I had stopped next to her and asked her if she was OK, I now think she probably had a seizure or was in the aftermath of one rather than being high.
My cautionary point is this; even people who get high on drugs sometimes have other problems that can easily be confused with the effect of a drug, be careful what you assume about people and the reasons they might be exhibiting unusual behavior.
If Sanders cannot win the Presidency and Clinton can then Clinton voters won't vote Sanders
That is the real problem that Hillary supporters implicitly state when they talk about how much more "electable" Clinton is versus Sanders, Hillary voters aren't voting for the Democrat, they are voting for Hillary and if Hillary ain't there then they won't be voting.
So which is it, will Hillary voters vote for the Democratic nominee or is Sanders unelectable if he wins the nomination?
FWIW, I suspect the same thing will or would be true of a lot of Sanders voters, they wouldn't care to vote for Hillary so don't bother making that argument, I agree with you. However it seems clear from Hillary's supporters that they feel there are more Hillary voters who won't vote for Sanders than vice versa.
Gun control will end up just like the drug war, almost exclusively aimed at minorities and the poor
Meanwhile wealthy white males will remain coked up, heavily armed and completely unpunished.
The brutality and racism problems with the police will have to be fixed before handing them yet another tool to wield against the population or we all know what portion of the population is going to get that tool wielded against them most often and most brutally.
Twenty years from now all of the Very Serious People will be shocked, shocked that the result of gun control is many more minorities in private prisons on long sentences that rack up big profits for the corporations they work for at slave wages while gun ownership among wealthy whites has soared. We had no idea! We never intended! Very Serious People would never do something like that intentionally for mere personal gain! No one could possibly have predicted!
I expect if it was explained slowly enough even Doug Feith could understand.
The Atlantic: The Secret History of Guns
The issues around guns, racism and violence are a lot more complicated than many of us realize or want to admit. I think this piece is interesting and anyone who wants to intelligently discuss the issues of guns, violence and racism would benefit from reading the whole thing if for nothing else than the historical perspective.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/
For those men who were allowed to own guns, the Founders had their own version of the “individual mandate” that has proved so controversial in President Obama’s health-care-reform law: they required the purchase of guns. A 1792 federal law mandated every eligible man to purchase a military-style gun and ammunition for his service in the citizen militia. Such men had to report for frequent musters—where their guns would be inspected and, yes, registered on public rolls.
Sometimes freedom wins: June 12 is Loving Day
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._VirginiaThe case was brought by Mildred Loving, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, who had been sentenced to a year in prison in Virginia for marrying each other. Their marriage violated the state's anti-miscegenation statute, the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which prohibited marriage between people classified as "white" and people classified as "colored". The Supreme Court's unanimous decision determined that this prohibition was unconstitutional, reversing Pace v. Alabama (1883) and ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.
The decision was followed by an increase in interracial marriages in the U.S., and is remembered annually on Loving Day, June 12. It has been the subject of two movies, as well as several songs. Beginning in 2013, it was cited as precedent in U.S. federal court decisions holding restrictions on same-sex marriage in the United States unconstitutional.
Duffelblog: Pentagon To Bypass Iraqi Army And Supply ISIS Directly
http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/06/pentagon-to-supply-isis-directly/CENTCOM spokesman Air Force Col. Patrick Ryder says the idea “would be a game changer.”
The plan has its roots in Army Capt. Noel Abelove’s PowerPoint briefing, which was hailed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sources said. Abelove, a supply officer on the Joint Logistics Staff (J-4), realized that cutting out the Iraqi Army middlemen had numerous advantages.
“They taught me at West Point that ‘amateurs talk strategy but professionals talk logistics,’” Abelove told reporters. “The most important advantage is, we only supply about 40 percent of each ISIS requisition.”
Read more: http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/06/pentagon-to-supply-isis-directly/#ixzz3cgJsijXb
An appreciation thread for all those DUers who have never had an appreciation thread
You know who you are, thank all of you for helping make DU the remarkable, informative and entertaining site that it is.
Profile Information
Member since: Sat Mar 29, 2008, 10:11 PMNumber of posts: 45,851