Monday, May 06, 2013

I have to laugh when I hear Wayne LaPierre talk about Boston.

Long many years ago when my youngest son was still an infant there was an incident where I wish I was wise enough to have been locked in.

Guns and the predicament one finds themselves is completely by circumstance. 

We lived in a house about 150 feet in from the road accessed by a driveway. The drive went around the back of the house and for the most part the back door was more or less the main door to the house. There were three steps to the back door and then a screen door. Once inside the screen door there was a breeze way where at the far end was a cabinet where ammunition and hunting guns were kept.

The breeze way was about thirty feet by ten. After entering the back door and walking across the breeze way there was a door to the house. Now the screen door to the outside was not the only door, there was also a hardwood door with four glass windows to match the door to the inside of the house which entered into a family room / dining area. The house was all wood construction and it was a good old house.

This was a sunny day in spring about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. No lie and no coincidence to the Boston tragedy. Truth, promise. The two wooden doors were open to allow air to circulate through the house with the screen door closed of course. The baby was asleep upstairs and my toddler was playing in the corner of the family room. I was in the kitchen beginning dinner.

All of a sudden, my toddler yelled, "Mommy" and I turned around to find a man the size of a mountain standing in the room between myself and my son. It was not my husband. I was startled and he took his badge out and introduced himself. I stated, "Shouldn't you have knocked first." I walked over to my son and picked him up, he was not as startled as I was.

The officer was a detective. He stated I was lucky to be alive. See, the house sat on a few acres with a stream running through it, pasture for horses and a densely wooded area along the back pasture. The horses were in barn at that time after being out for awhile that morning through early afternoon. I didn't appreciate his statement until he asked me to sit down and searched the house.

I don't remember where the dog was, but, for as good a watch dog as she was she didn't let out a peep that day. I suppose he approached her and pet her to submission. The detective had locked the outside and inside doors after he entered.

He came back downstairs and told me there was a bank robbery that day. The man had been on a cross country motorcycle and they didn't know where he was except they were searching the entire area. The robber was armed and dangerous. I remember how I felt. I was drained, scared and grateful all at the same time. The detective told me to keep the dog inside, keep the doors locked and if anything at all was to bring my attention to something odd I was to call. He said he could be reached at any time by calling the number on his card and to check later to be sure all was clear.

I followed him out to the porch and promised I would do nothing else, except, tend to my children, stay inside and keep the doors locked. I turned as he waited for me to enter the house again as he was getting in his unmarked car. I closed the breeze way door and turned to go inside and it hit me. Oh, dear god, the guns.

I walked to the end of the breeze way behind a now locked door and opened the cabinet. They were there. All three of them including a 12 gauge double barrel shot gun which was used for hunting. I didn't recall if all the ammunition was there, I had supposed it was, there was no real inventory.

I closed the door to the cabinet and then went inside. I locked the inside door and it seemed as though forever before my husband came home. I realize I was a lucky woman that day. I was not shot or killed by the weapons in my own house. My sons were safe and my husband was home.

The robber was caught about a mile away within the hour after the detective had left. My husband called the phone number on the card and it was a police officer that answered. The police officer explained we were safe, but, to remember it was always better to keep the doors locked even on the sunniest of days.

I do know how it feels to be in a home where it is a safe haven and by the luck of the draw to be alive. There are many scenarios that could have occurred that day, but, didn't. I had very well trained officers who knew exactly what they were doing. They saved my life and the lives of my children. So, when I hear Mr. LaPierre state all those folks in Watertown and the Boston area are probably wishing they had a gun that day; he is grossly wrong.

You see, fighting a gunman well armed, dangerous and capable is a completely different ball game than anyone can imagine. And to realize that danger lurks at the most inopportune times is a reality I wish on no one.

I find Mr. LaPierre's statements offensive and characteristically crude. 

People died in Boston. They died on a sunny spring day when they never expected it. That violence was facilitated in the USA through the easy access to weapons and munitions. We don't have to live in a country that dangerous, but, thanks to Mr. LaPierre and his convention addicts, we do.

In recent months there has been an interest in Former Vice President Gore.

There is every indication others try to put him in a bottle and it just doesn't work. Of all things, Michael Lind seeks to label him. Is it possible to label a dedicated scholar that has greater understanding, knowledge and connection to real people than society is comfortable to assign him?


I think it is an insult to man who traveled to Antarctica and sought the knowledge of scientists long before the Climate Crisis is found to be real. That seems to be the problem with Mr. Lind's article. 

He wants to debunk the Former Vice President before he becomes validated as a real threat to Wall Street as it exists today.

Democracy, Hacked (click here)
‘The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change,’ by Al Gore


....Still, the faults of “The Future” have less to do with Gore’s particular approach to his material than with the shortcomings of the genre itself; futurist polemics tend to alternate between exposition and exhortation. When the alternation is too rapid, we get passages like the following. “There are already several reckless practices that should be immediately stopped: the sale of deadly weapons to groups throughout the world; the use of antibiotics as a livestock growth stimulant; drilling for oil in the vulnerable Arctic Ocean; the dominance of stock market trading by supercomputers with algorithms optimized for high-speed, high-frequency trades that create volatility and risk of market disruptions; and utterly insane proposals for blocking sunlight from reaching the Earth as a strategy to offset the trappings of heat by ever-mounting levels of global warming pollution.”...

I think it is far easier for the USA to laugh at genius than actually see it. That is the real problem here, now isn't it? Why not make the Former Vice President a cartoon than a scholar. After all, he might have to be respected.

By Steve Fishman
Published May 5, 2013

...By mansion standards, the house is modest. (click here) The most famous feature of the Gore living room, Tipper’s drum kit, has been moved out since they separated in 2010. Off the living room is Gore’s writing room, with floor-to-ceiling whiteboards, where he spent the better part of two years—nights and weekends included—writing his latest book, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change, 533 pages, 154 of which are endnotes and bibliography. Shortly after finishing his manuscript, he sold his cable channel, Current TV, in a deal worth $784 million—Al Gore is now richer than Mitt Romney, according to Forbes magazine. Add that to his books, his investment company, his Oscar-winning movie, and his Nobel Prize, and you have a flawless American success story—except, of course, for one little detail....

Now, what was it he said? Hmmmmm? Oh, yeah. The severe storms the world now faces belongs to a warming plant caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

Hitting to close to home to admit he was absolutely correct the entire time. Is there any reason the 2000 elections were rigged by purging thousands of registered democratic minority voters in Florida violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965?

Global carbon dioxide levels set to pass 400ppm milestone (click here)
The concentration of carbon in the atmosphere over the next few days is expected to hit record levels

John Vidal
The Guardian 
Monday, 29 April 2013


The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached 399.72 parts per million (ppm) and is likely to pass the symbolically important 400ppm level for the first time in the next few days.
Readings at the US government's Earth Systems Research laboratory in Hawaii, are not expected to reach their 2013 peak until mid May, but were recorded at a daily average of 399.72ppm on 25 April. The weekly average stood at 398.5 on Monday.
Hourly readings above 400 ppm have been recorded six times in the last week, and on occasion, at observatories in the high Arctic. But the Mauna Loa station, sited at 3,400 m and far away from major pollution sources in the Pacific Ocean, has been monitoring levels for more than 50 years and is considered the gold standard.
"I wish it weren't true but it looks like the world is going to blow through the 400ppm level without losing a beat. At this pace we'll hit 450ppm within a few decades," said Ralph Keeling, a geologist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography which operates the Hawaiian observatory....

So, while the USA's government, lined with juvenile thinkers that count on rhetoric rather than genius, blew off any idea there was actually a Climate Crisis, there are many who were as dedicated to the truth and accepting of the leadership.



We’re excited to announce today that ten U.S. cities are now on board with fossil fuel divestment! They include: Seattle, WA, San Francisco, CA, Berkeley, CA, Richmond, CA, Boulder, CO, Bayfield, WI, Madison, WI, State College, PA, Eugene, OR, and Ithaca, NY.

Posted by Jamie Henn
04/25/13
Last fall, (click here) Seattle started the trend when Mayor Mike McGinn committed to keep his city funds out of fossil fuel companies and push the city’s $2 billion pension fund to pursue divestment. 
Then, last week, Ithaca, NY became the first East Coast city to commit to divestment. Ithaca’s Mayor, 26-year old Mayor Svante Myrick, is one of the youngest mayors and youngest African-Americans elected in US history. He agreed to pursue divestment after meeting with a group of local high school students who urged him to act in order to protect their future. 
On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco followed suit, voting unanimously to urge the city’s $16 billion retirement fund to divest over $583 million from 91 different fossil fuel companies. The San Francisco fund is the largest that our campaign has targeted so far. We’re still going to need to put some serious pressure on the Retirement Board to follow through with divestment, but as a long-time board member told a local paper, “We’d give it consideration if one supervisor asked us to look at it — and in this case, it was the full board.”...

By all means continue to make something out of nothing when it comes to war, after all it is so much easier to comprehend and deal with, wouldn't you say? Hating and acting on hate, violence and causing violence is, after all, something everyone can do without compromising the idea they are too stupid to reach with real insight. Might effect the ratings after all. It makes the politics a 'basic instinct' rather than the values of a sincere First World society.

It would seem as though Italy doesn't have an early warning system.


Previous to 2010, it was four decades since a tornado in Italy.

...While so-called tornado alley runs (click here) through the midwestern United States — in a wide band running through Texas in the south and upward through Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, and as far north as Minnesota — the United States National Severe Storms Laboratory has often pointed out that it’s possible for tornadoes to occur anywhere.

Tornadoes as powerful as F5 have struck in Europe before, including Italy.

A September 1970 Italian tornado outbreak started in Padua and ended in Venice, leaving a trail of death in its track through the highly populated region. Thirty-six people died.

A more recent event was the triple tornadoes that struck near Venice, Padua, and Vicenza in July 2010, which resulted in the death of a Verona man. Several other tornadoes hit Italy in 2012, including a November 28 event that resulted in 22 injuries....

"Morning Papers" - Its Origins (click here)

The Rooster

"Okeydoke"

I take it there was no moment of silence or pray at the NRA Convention for those dead due gun violence.

No matter what philosophy one holds about guns in our society there is always reason to recognize the dead.

It is awareness. It is a way of saying there is a sincere understanding things have to change. According to both sides of the issue things have to change. For those that see the vast pollution of guns on our streets it is a matter of regulation. For those that believe being armed is the only answer to equate the killing fields it is a matter of empowerment and putting guns in the hands of all people.

For each person there is a point of view, but, there can be no mistaking there is an element of death in the gun economy that needs to be addressed. By ignoring the dead those at the convention simply dismissed the problem. They can justify it any way they want, but, in realizing there is no reverence for even children that had their lives snuffed out at the muzzle of a gun proves this is about gun sales and money, not quality of life.

Where does it stop? When are the police put ahead of gun owner ego? The police officer in this video died.




This video featuring Perry is about glamorizing violence. It isn't about safety. It isn't about reverence for the power of the weapon and how it can be used against citizens. It isn't about the reality of carrying such a weapon and turning the streets of the USA into Baghdad. It is about ego. It says, "Guns are for Sale and so am I." This is a Governor's answer to gun violence in the USA? It is sensationism for attention. That weapon is available today and has absolutely no purpose in this society.




"Good night, Moon."


Waning Crescent

15 percent full

Google Moon (click here) records the historical events  between the Moon and Human.

By Erik Derr
May 05, 2013 04:02 PM EDT


It may (click here) or may not be enough to cause the hearts of space buffs to jump a few beats, but a New Hampshire auction house is offering a monitored readout of Neil Armstrong's heartbeat taken the moment he first stepped onto the surface of the moon,
Amherst-based RR Auction will take bids on a section of the electrocardiogram results, which showed Armstrong had a normal heartbeat during his historic first lunar encounter....