Sanders round table with Doctors and Nurses on the Pandemic

Bernie Sanders round table with Doctors and Nurses explaining what people need to do for the Corona Virus.

Bernie Sanders isn't polling in first place. His caucus organization may mean that doesn't matter

How the Media bias could help Sanders

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Media Bias against Bernie Sanders

No doubt that this will spark some .. discussion

What some would say is blatantly obvious others will say is false.
And yes it is a Wiki page. (though like any Wiki page it has citations and one should direct criticisms on the facts there)

Still, I thought it important to provide examples of why people say there is a Bias in the media.

I wanted to scream at the idiots mad about barricades. Then I got a better idea

Saw an ad for the march on the war memorial and it pissed me off mightily. Seeing the near riot they apparently engaged in did not help my mood.

With the shut down food programs have been shut down. Even before the shut down millions were being thrown off food stamps.

And barricades around a monument when there's no one to work there bothers these guys? Crap, most of them WANTED a shut down and now that's it's here they can't seem to grasp this a natural consequence of a government shut down.

But screaming, as much as i might enjoy it for the moment, accomplishes nothing.

So the first free day off of work I am going to go down to the local food bank and donate. I know it wont' make even a slight dent in the millions who will going without food but it will still do a hell of a lot more good then anything these a-holes are doing.

I encourage others to do so as much as your budget allows.

Hell, maybe we should start having counter protests to these self absorbed tea baggers where we collect food.

If we are going to be angry we should use it for something.

Gun Control and voter fraud

It's occurred to me..

A lot of people on the right say we can't do anything to make getting a gun less convenient to obtain because it's a right. That these fire arms are the most often used weapon in homicides (especially mass homicides) is not relevant.

However it also seems many of these same people also want tougher laws to make voting (also a right) harder to do to stop voter fraud.

So just how many people a year are killed by voter fraud?

Yes i know, many here will say they oppose both. But many (the loudest if not the bulk) of those over all that oppose laws for the first clearly also want laws for the second.

(in short, if this doesn't apply to you, don't assume it can't apply in general)

Just a thought.

comparing the two situations

In one we have one guy, armed with a revolver going after a specific target surrounded by a group of people trained and on guard for just this sort of thing happening.

On the other we have one or two guys often armed with more powerful fire arms then a revolver and/or more then one weapon going after random targets. In the case of a school, there is generally only one teacher per classroom and unlike the Reagan shooting, school personal are spread out from the potential targets (indeed , they are among the potential targets). Also teachers are not going to be "on guard" like the secret service is as not only do they have other primary responsibilities (since their job is to teach, not be a body guard) but statistically such shootings are still rare. Unusually common compared to other countries but out of the 300 million of us, very few of us will ever be directly involved in a school shooting. The mind set of a secret service agent and a teacher is probably very different when at work.

So no these two things are not directly comparable. If anything it shows that the "arming the teacher's" crowd have an even weaker argument since if guns would have protected anyone, it would have been reagan. If you want to say that guns can protect from other guns, this situation was set up for that.

And still Reagan got shot. And it wasn't the fact that his body guards had guns that stopped Hinckly (who fired 6 shots in less then 2 seconds). The people who first responded didn't even have guns themselves. Hinckly was punched and tackled to the ground. (not to mention how the secret service firing at Hinckly would have meant also firing into a crowd)

So no the Reagan shooting and most mass shootings are not directly comparable since in the latter, there is even less reason to think a "good guy" holding a gun would help. (and indeed in cases where someone else did have a gun, they don't seem to have helped until after the shooting was already pretty much over) But the argument is valid.

In most cases of mass shootings (and shootings in general) there are fewer factors favoring the "good guys" taking out the bad guys and more against that happening.

Yes guns can be useful in some situations. The Secret Service does carry them for a reason. As does the police and soldiers. You wouldn't want to be unarmed in a war zone.

But guns have far less utility then those proposing more people being armed seem to want to admit. Most of us aren't in a war zone. Very few of us go through our day thinking they have to watch that strange person who just walked by in case he needs to be shot. In many situations guns are at best a safety blanket. At worst part of the problem.

Indeed, considering how easy it is already for potential shooters to acquire guns legally and stay under the radar until it's too late, making all sorts of guns even more accessible would seem counter productive.

that would seem verfiable

"President Obama lost “every one” of the states with photo identification requirements for voting"

I know many of you are slavering at the mouth over this

.. because you think you have fresh ammunition for the old canard that if we reduced guns then we would still have as high a murder rate as we do.

A few problems I see:

First, even with these killings, China still has less homicide then the US. China has a homicide rate around 1.2 per 100,000 people. The US is around 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

Secondly, no one ever said knives weren't lethal. They are incredibly lethal, in some ways more then a gun.. at close range. But the whole point of a gun is the ability to kill someone from a distance before they can run away or fight back. There are few drive by knifings and I'm pretty sure snipers gave up on the bow and arrow long ago.

So great! You've proved knives are lethal in the right circumstances. Too bad no one was saying otherwise.

And lastly the basis for the argument behind this is fallacious.

Yes in China they have strict gun control laws and yet here was this horrible tragedy. And even in countries with gun laws stricter then ours, there are massecres using guns. The UK had Cumbria and Hungerford.

So , the argument goes, we shouldn't do gun control laws because criminals won't obey the law (since that is what makes them, by definition, criminals)

But wait.. if we take to it's logical conclusion then why stop at gun control laws? Why have laws against murder or rape or stealing? Why have laws at all.

Last I heard, people were still committing murder and rape and stealing. So why single out gun law when clearly criminals are willing to commit all manner of crimes? Is it possible that the demanding 100% effectiveness for any law is unreasonable? (especially when there are lots of variables for crime, gun availability being just one)

This is what bugs the hell out of me about these debates. Arguing we shouldn't concern ourselves with gun control laws because it's unlikely to stop all violence acts as a distraction to the real relevant question..

Are there gun control laws that would reduce gun fatalities and if so, which ones?

We can't even bring that question up as part of a debate on public policy without being attacked. Even researching this is seen as some back handed attempt at banning guns. Publicly funded research on gun deaths is now seen as political suicide. And that's a problem because as bad as the attack in China cited above and the massacres in the UK and elsewhere in the world...

When it comes to gun deaths, these other countries at their worst is nothing compared to our average day.

crab mentality

reading the comments here and on the main story, I also can't help but notice the massive amount of crab mentality going on.

I mean yes there is a lot of ignorance. Like the difference between someone who at least has the freedom to leave for someplace cooler as opposed to someone who has to stay all day in a cell 24/7 until someone lets them out.

And there's the logical fallacies. Like how someone else in the world not having air conditioning doesn't mean inmates aren't dying from the heat.

And there's the rush to judgment. Sure some of those inmates are violent murderers and rapists. Others are small time thieves, non violence drug offenders and some are there because they got rail roaded into jail (It's the height of ignorance to assume every person in a Texas prison is there because they deserve to be. Google Tulia Texas and a Texas defense lawyer named Ronald G Mock). I guess I could ask which of these groups deserve to be baked alive. But that would be silly. The heat doesn't care what you've done or if you deserve to die before it starts to kill you.

But all the arguments seem to (pardon the pun) boil down to is that since group A is having problems and needs help then group B which is also having problems and needs help should basically be left on their.

I'm screwed so you should be too, is the sentiment.

Thus the plight of group A becomes the excuse to ignore the plight of group B. So no one gets any help.

And then these same people wonder why nothing gets better.