Are we this willing to strand ourselves again under leadership that victimizes the Middle Class ?

Are we going to strand our Seniors? Leave them to chance? The Republicans reject the health care insurance overhaul and state they will provide a private insurance option for Medicare.

What? None of it makes sense. How can a party seek to overhaul Medicare and leave other Americans stranded without a chance for their own wellness or survival? This is a plan? It doesn't even recognize the current law.

The suggestion by this incredible revelation of changing the way Medicare is abandoned for private insurance is a trap that will only further stand our citizens. There is no prevention for increases in cost for private insurances. If the Republicans are elected to majorities in 2012, there won't be any State Exchanges either. So, Mr. Ryan is a deceptive author that seeks to change the vision of our benevolent country.

I heard someone from the CBO speak today stating it would be a far better answer for health insurance if everyone was employed. Imagine that. An employee from the CBO stumping for the GOP. That would be a good idea if Wall Street Republicans didn't continually victimize the majority of citizens and health insurance companies didn't remove those that are ill from their roles. Such an answer by a CBO employee is completely blind to the reality of our capitalized based democracy in an environment of destroyed regulations and those that seek to continue to destroy the barriers between profits at the price of human life.

This plan by Ryan isn't realistic nor moral.

March 25, 2012 2:20 PM 

By

Lucy Madison

(CBS News) 

Republican Congressman Paul Ryan (click title to entry - thank you) on Sunday defended his controversial 2013 budget proposal, telling CBS' "Face the Nation" that the plan would help America avoid a debt crisis while creating jobs and spurring economic growth.

"We're putting the budget on a path to balance and to pay the debt off. We want to avoid a debt crisis. The president's budget brings us closer to a debt crisis," Ryan told CBS' Norah O'Donnell.

Ryan's proposed budget, which he unveiled last week, drew immediate criticism from Democrats, who say it places the burden of reducing the deficit solely on the backs of the middle-class and the elderly.

Ryan on Sunday argued that his proposal requires sacrifice from all Americans - and disputed theWhite House claim that it would give millionaires a $150,000 tax cut.

"Those numbers are obviously not credible," Ryan said.

In addition to adding a private insurance option for seniors using Medicare, Ryan's budget would overhaul the tax code and would create just two income tax brackets - 25 percent and 10 percent. The proposal is unlikely to pass the Senate, controlled by Democrats, and has little chance of becoming law. It does, however, set up an ideological battle between the left and the right over budget priorities as the 2012 election nears....

Our cities have become stranded and now a Governor actually thinks treating democracy as a burden is the answer.

Those that stranded up here are believed by the electorate to have the answer?


Really?


We are willing to destroy democracy to prove it, too?


We were stranded here by the Plutocrats that removed 'work' from the USA and now we are suppose to be resurrected by the same people that threw it away in the first place?  Where does that add up? Our cities are suppose to sell assets, abandon democracy and relinquish treasuries in order to 'find a way.' What is happening to this country? How can it be tolerated?


Governor Snyder worked with the brain trust of Michigan universities whom built a company out of genius and then sold the company to Wall Street and exported it out of Michigan. This man can actually be trusted to rescue cities? Destroying democracies is not the answer. Not even close. If he had a record of rescuing companies and putting Michiganders back to work I could understand how people would see hope within his abilities, but, that wasn't at all the case, what did everyone believe was going to happen?

Published: Friday, March 23, 2012, 6:35 PM     

Updated: Friday, March 23, 2012, 8:20 PM

Flint, MI -- Mayor Dayne Walling (click title to entry - thank you) and the Flint City Council officially regained their power to govern the city today, but their newly rediscovered authority could last mere days.

The state of Michigan is appealing to a higher court the Tuesday court ruling that invalidated Gov. Rick Snyder's appointment of Flint emergency manager Michael Brown.

In court briefs filed today, the state asked the Court of Appeals to suspend Ingham County Circuit Court Judge Rosemarie Aquilina's order barring the emergency manager from office. Aquilina ruled the state violated the Open Meetings Act in appointing Brown....

The court granted a motion for immediate consideration of the appeal, said treasury spokesman Caleb Buhs, and could make a decision as soon as Monday....

Schools are stranded with overcrowding and no answers. This is the USA?

There is no federal program that can repair our children's educations if the infrastructure is not a priority.  The 'real' American Job Act provided for rebuilding our infrastructure, repairing schools, building new ones where they are needed. Where have our priorities gone?


I was never educated in a school trailer.  Not one day in my career did I ever attend a class in a trailer.  Not one day.


The stress of overcrowding has to add to the pressures that cause bullying and violence. It obviously adds to poor outcomes for children and no doubt early dropouts from high school.

By Paul Takahashi (contact)

Published Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012 | 2 a.m.

Updated Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012 | 3:03 a.m.

Every weekday morning (click title to entry - thank you) Tiffany Leard walks 10 minutes from her Henderson home to Del Webb Middle School located less than a mile away.

Next year, the 11-year-old sixth-grader might be bussed more than three miles away to Bob Miller Middle School if her neighborhood is rezoned under a Clark County School District proposal to alleviate overcrowding at Del Webb.

The attendance zone proposal baffles Tiffany’s father, Kelley Leard, who moved his family from Summerlin to Henderson eight years ago specifically for the area schools — ranked among the best in the valley. Never did he fathom his house — located in the housing development just next to Del Webb — would be rezoned to any other school....

There is this incredible phenomena that has accompanied the housing bubble. It is the reality of homeless children and their ability to maintain some degree of normalcy to learn and at least grown out of their stranding in the USA educational system.


Oddly, though, it is not a new phenomena.

Principal Leadership Magazine, Vol. 4, Number 8, May 2004

Defining and Identifying Homeless Youth (click here)

According to federal law, homeless children include those who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence. McKinney-Vento recognizes a wide range of living situations as homelessness, such as frequent mobility or living in shared housing (often a crowded residence with several other families), motels, cars, parks, makeshift housing, or shelters.

Unless students are directly referred to the school as homeless students, staff members will often need to make judgment calls to identify homeless students and offer assistance. Although some students will volunteer their personal information, many homeless students will make oblique references to where they are staying. Students may also indirectly indicate that they are homeless through changes in their habits and appearance, such as increased sleepiness; wearing the same clothes frequently or other personal care issues; a decreasing quality of school work; and most often, and absences from school.

While it is important to respect students' right to privacy, it is also essential for homeless students to know their legal rights under McKinney-Vento. Homeless students should be offered every opportunity to continue to attend their schools of origin and have access to all other appropriate services to help them achieve in school.

The American food supply, listeria, e.coli and now pink slime.

Children are a commodity, too?

By JESS BIDGOOD

Published: March 24, 2012

BOSTON — Andy Gomez, a ninth grader at Brighton High School, was not sure why hamburgers and meatballs had disappeared from the cafeteria, but he was not happy about it. “Today I just ate peanut butter and jelly,” he said. “I don’t like the chicken patty.” 

The absence of ground beef at lunch last week — at Brighton High and 43 other public schools here — could be explained by a peek into the freezer, where 21 boxes of ground beef products sat, cordoned off from the rest of the meat by a clinical-looking cover of white paper reading “Do not use.”...

Are our children stranded with the poor quality of food in the USA? 

Have we no pride anymore in providing 'the best' for our children? 

Have we become so demoralized by 'accepting' what comes our way that we can't see the horrids of nightmares before they occur? There was a time in the USA when this was unthinkable.

Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 (click here)

A nation abandoned to sugar surges.

Sugar coated (click title to entry - thank you)

We're drowning in high fructose corn syrup. Do the risks go beyond our waistline?

Kim Severson, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

An overweight America may be fixated on fat and obsessed with carbs, but nutritionists say the real problem is much sweeter -- we're awash in sugar.
Not just any sugar, but high fructose corn syrup.
The country eats more sweetener made from corn than from sugarcane or beets, gulping it down in drinks as well as in frozen food and baked goods. Even ketchup is laced with it....

As gym classes dwindle, how can kids keep fit? (click here)

Parents must chart the course, experts say, by modeling healthy habits

updated 8/9/2005 5:49:36 AM ET 

By Jacqueline StensonMSNBC contributor

With schools cutting back on physical education classes — and some eliminating them altogether — the prospects for getting exercise during the day aren’t great for many kids heading back to school this fall.

So what’s a parent to do to make sure their children get the exercise they need?

For starters, don’t rely too much on gym class, experts say. While some schools are updating PE to include in-line skating, elliptical trainers, wall climbing and other popular activities, more schools are reducing or stopping their PE programs.

“Unfortunately, physical education is one of the first things that gets cut when there’s a budget crunch,” says Cedric Bryant, chief exercise physiologist at the American Council on Exercise in San Diego.

And even when gym class is offered regularly, it’s almost never enough to meet the new federal guidelines that children get at least an hour of physical activity on most days of the week....

Stranded, what choice is there?

It’s Official: The Crash of the U.S. Economy has begun (click title to entry - thank you)

by Richard C. Cook

Global Research


June 14, 2007


It’s official. Mark your calendars. The crash of the U.S. economy has begun. It was announced the morning of Wednesday, June 13, 2007, by economic writers Steven Pearlstein and Robert Samuelson in the pages of the Washington Post, one of the foremost house organs of the U.S. monetary elite.

Pearlstein’s column was titled, “The Takeover Boom, About to Go Bust” and concerned the extraordinary amount of debt vs. operating profits of companies currently subject to leveraged buyouts.

In language remarkably alarmist for the usually ultra-bland pages of the Post, Pearlstein wrote, “It is impossible to predict when the magic moment will be reached and everyone finally realizes that the prices being paid for these companies, and the debt taken on to support the acquisitions, are unsustainable. When that happens, it won't be pretty. Across the board, stock prices and company valuations will fall. Banks will announce painful write-offs, some hedge funds will close their doors, and private-equity funds will report disappointing returns. Some companies will be forced into bankruptcy or restructuring.”

Further, “Falling stock prices will cause companies to reduce their hiring and capital spending while governments will be forced to raise taxes or reduce services, as revenue from capital gains taxes declines. And the combination of reduced wealth and higher interest rates will finally cause consumers to pull back on their debt-financed consumption. It happened after the junk-bond and savings-and-loan collapses of the late 1980s. It happened after the tech and telecom bust of the late '90s. And it will happen this time.”...

In 1993 the people of the USA were already stranded in their health care.

A generation later, the circumstances of the American people were no better, but, actually worse.  The people had gotten used to the mistreatment of the health care industry and it was a chronic struggle to make ends meet while obtaining life saving care, if one was lucky enough not to be dropped.


There was a time in the USA a health insurance policy was considered simply a benefit expected when working a job. It cost minimal or no cost as an employee, had a deductible of $100, a 20% deductible up to the first $1000 and then fully covered after that amount.  That is unheard of now.  What occurred was the 'idea' of funding the nation with HMOs that would be cheap, excellent care. It was the time of Richard Nixon. The disaster continued and Americans found they could not afford either the insurance or the health care and people died.  


They died from abandonment of their providers or lack of health care insurance. The American people lost their security in their ability of obtaining health care because they were stranded by Wall Street. If their policies no longer turned a profit because of ill health, they were no longer a worthy commodity.


The examples of government intervention to temper the disaster spans decades including SCHIP, Medicare and Medicaid.


The examples of government regulation of consumer commodities also spans decades including rubber, gas and butter during WWII. The government has the power to act in protection of the people including regulation of commerce when it becomes adverse to life.

In the words of Judge Laurence Silberman, (click title to entry - thank you) a leading conservative who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush, the lawsuits challenging the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that most Americans have to either carry health insurance or pay slightly more income taxes have no basis “in either the text of the Constitution or Supreme Court precedent.” Nevertheless, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit broke with three other appeals courts to hold the law unconstitutional last August.

The 11th Circuit decision was wrong, and the Supreme Court will reject it. Here are the three reasons why.

- Congress has broad power to regulate the national economy

Nearly 200 years of Supreme Court precedent establish that the Affordable Care Act's insurance coverage provision is constitutional. A provision of the Constitution known as the Commerce Clause gives Congress power to “regulate commerce … among the several states.” And many Supreme Court decisions hold that Congress has broad power to enact laws that substantially affect prices, marketplaces, or other economic transactions—including transactions in the national health care market....

- The minimum coverage provision holds the Affordable Care Act together

The Constitution also gives Congress the power “[t]o make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution” its power to regulate interstate commerce. As Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia explains, this means “where Congress has the authority to enact a regulation of interstate commerce, it possesses every power needed to make that regulation effective.”...

- Congress has broad leeway in how it raises money

Congress also has the authority to “lay and collect taxes” under the Constitution. This power to tax also supports the minimum coverage provision, which works by requiring individuals who do not carry health insurance to pay slightly more income taxes. Taxpayers who refuse insurance must pay more in taxes while those who do carry insurance are exempt from this new tax. For this reason, the law is no different than dozens of longstanding tax exemptions, including the mortgage interest tax deduction, which allows people who take out home mortgages to pay lower taxes than people who do not.

They Keystone XL Pipeline will increase the cost of gasoline per gallon. NOT decrease it.

...As the debate intensifies, (click title to entry - thank you) arguments over the Keystone XL pipeline have grabbed the front pages of newspaper sand headlines of the evening news shows. But the media has focused little attention focused on the real consequences of the pipeline, among them, a probable increase by some estimates of gasoline prices in the Midwestern United States of 30 cents per gallon for regular and 10 to 20 cents per gallon elsewhere.

But that is not where the flow of money will stop. Oil from Canada’s tar sands will supply a feedstock to the U.S. refining industry, which is enjoying explosive growth in exports. In the words of CNN Money, “The United States is awash in gasoline. So much so, in fact, that the country is exporting a record amount of it.”...


The cost of accessing oil sands and extracting the oil and refining it is expensive. It is expensive from an extraction to its pollution of CO2 among other forms of air and water pollution as well as destruction of wildlife habitat.

...In the words of CNN Money, “The United States is awash in gasoline. So much so, in fact, that the country is exporting a record amount of it.”

In September 2011, the United States exported 430,000 more barrels of gasoline a day than it imported, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That is about twice what it exported at the start of the year, and “experts and industry insiders say the trend is here to stay,” reported CNN Money....

The problem with gas prices is NOT supply, but, speculation. The price setting capacity is at the whim of Wall Street. It has nothing to do with how much oil is in the market. There is plenty and it is being exploited for the purpose of cash flow as a commodity.

There will be far less petroleum reserves for future generations of Americans if they ever need it, because, the greed merchants are claiming it all now.

Years ago, Brian Schweitzer went to Saudi Arabia to help them develop their own food sources, now as Governor he isn't facilitating a climate for agriculture, but, who cares really if he can grow food supply in Saudi Arabia, the USA will be just fine as a dessert.

March 22- 23 at Billings Crowne Plaza

2/7/2012
Jayson O’Neill
(406) 444-9844
jaysononeill@mt.gov

(Helena, MT) -- Governor Brian Schweitzer (click here) announced that Harold Hamm of Continental Resources, the largest independent oil producer in the Bakken region, will keynote the Montana Ambassadors annual meeting and conference. The conference theme is Imagine the Possible and will be held at the Billings Crowne Plaza March 22-23. 

Hamm, Chairman and CEO of Continental Resources, founded the predecessor company in 1967 as an oilfield service provider, later expanding to focus on the exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas properties in Oklahoma. In 1993, Continental Resources expanded into the Rocky Mountain region, first into the Red River Units of Montana and the Dakotas, and then into the Bakken Shale play in Montana and North Dakota. The company is now the third largest crude oil producer in the Rocky Mountain region, the largest leaseholder and driller in the Bakken Shale and the largest leaseholder in the Anadarko Woodford in Oklahoma, with additional operations in the South and East regions of the United States....  

Montana Schweitzer and Howard Hamm are Keystone XL Pipeline Buddies

These men want to continue to strand the people of the USA with hideous gas prices from now and forever.  


Mr. Romney accepted Harold Hamm, the CEO of Continental Resources has his energy advisor.  Is there anything else to say.  Harold Hamm has been the person behind the Keystone XL Pipeline. I'd like to know what he has on TransCanada, a hell of a binding contract probably.  Hamm just won't take no and expects the USA to bend every rule in the book for it.  Wow.


At any rate Hamm is all about dirty oil from Canada and a pipeline that will make him more money.  He'll claim the expenses of building it while collecting subsidies at the same time.  Nothing like taking money from the people of the USA with two fits.  But, that is something Romney understands and admires, so why expect anything else from these two.

...Gov. Brian Schweitzer said (click title to entry - thank you) he and Hamm first met during negotiations for the Keystone XL pipeline. Producers in North Dakota were frustrated because pipeline developers didn't have much interest in transporting North Dakota crude....


These men have no respect for a healthy environment or the fact there are huge tracts of land suffering from drought. I mean what have we got here?


In the USA daily consumption is 19,150,000 barrels per day.  Each barrel is 42 US gallons of crude oil. That estimate is from 2010.

Mr. Hamm's Continental Resources owes and operates the lands in North Dakota of the Bakken Fornation. It was named after the original owner of the property. The oil reserve of the entire Bakken Forrmation has a maximum assessementt of 18 billion barrels of which only 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels are accessible with state of the art technology.  That available assessed capacity was at the end of 2007, so there is far less today.

If there were still 4.3 billion barrels of crude oil available for the refinery today and it was all gasoline, which it isn't that would mean the entire Bakken Formation would yield enough oil for the USA for 225 days.  That is it!  Less than a years supply of crude oil will come out of these lands for the USA.

The Keystone XL Pipeline is not about supply oil that will bring the price of gas down.  This pipeline has been a dreamscape by billionaires in the USA that simply don't care about the future of the children of this nation and the fact Earth is simply too hot to continue on this path.


The State Department Environmental Impact Statement fails (click here) to adequately analyze lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by the pipeline. Extraction and refinement of oil sands are more GHG-intensive compared to conventional oil. The EIS estimates that the additional annual GHG emissions from the proposed pipeline could range from an additional “12-23 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent… (roughly the equivalent of annual emissions from 2 to 4 coal-fired power plants)” over conventional crude oil from the Middle East. The EPA believes that the methodology used by the State Department is inaccurate and could underestimate GHG emissions by as much as 20 percent. Given that the expected lifetime of the Keystone XL pipeline is fifty years, the EPA notes that the project could yield an extra 1.15 billion tons of GHGs using the quantitative estimates in the EIS.



The energy sector have been locked into looking in all the wrong places. The fact the petroleum industry has been a complete disaster throughout its history, including the fact we have a planet on meltdown, we cannot simply allow more of the same at any cost. The Keystone XL Pipeline is an unnecessary project by a billionaire who can't get over his own dependency on crude oil. Somewhere in all this is a justification during the Bush/Cheney White House that energy independence means drilling regardless of environmental costs. It is outrageous. Never once do these men entertain the idea of peace and breaking the addiction to oil, but, only continuing the dependency and seeking only wealth as if the people of the USA can actually continue this fantasy.


Drilling for crude oil is a fantasy and we don't need it.  It is not going to solve the nation's problems, but, only continues to strand American citizens for yet another generation of exploitation.


...Last year was quite a year for oil and gas disasters.(click here) In addition to the BP blowout, there was a leak on BP's TransAlaska pipeline, a million-gallon oil spill in Michigan, and a gas explosion that destroyed 37 homes and killed eight people in California. So it would seem like a lousy time for a Canadian company to propose building a pipeline, the Keystone XL, right through the middle of the continent—especially one that may be unnecessary and that even some oil companies think is overpriced....

Ford Evos Concept - Technology - Full Length Video

From this time forward personal transportation is no longer about petroleum, it is about responsibility.

The is the Ford Evos. (click here for more photos).


It is incredible technology seeking to create a sincerely personal automobile.


The vision of tomorrow is completely remarkable and I am very hopeful the USA is solving its problems.

It's Sunday Night

No Stranding Allowed

"Stranded" by Van Morrison

I'm stranded at the edge of the world
It's a world I don't know
Got no where to go
Feels like I'm stranded
And I'm stranded between that ol' devil and the deep blue sea
And nobody's gonna tell me, tell me what, what time it is
Everyday, everyday, it's hustle, hustle time, hustle time
Everyday and every way, one more, one more mountain to climb
It's leaving me stranded
In my own little island
With my eyes open wide
But I'm feeling stranded
Every, every, everyday, it's hustle time
Every way, one more mountain to climb
I'm stranded between the devil and the deep blue sea
There ain't no where else to be
'Cept right here and I'm stranded

"Stranded" by Van Morrison

Zimmerman was pursuing Martin. There is no self-defense.

Trayvon Martin, my son, and the Black Male Code (click title to entry - thank you)

March 24, 2012 

By JESSE WASHINGTON, Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — I thought my son would be much older before I had to tell him about the Black Male Code. He's only 12, still sleeping with stuffed animals, still afraid of the dark. But after the Trayvon Martin tragedy, I needed to explain to my child that soon people might be afraid of him.

We were in the car on the way to school when a story about Martin came on the radio. "The guy who killed him should get arrested. The dead guy was unarmed!" my son said after hearing that neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman had claimed self-defense in the shooting in Sanford, Fla....

When I heard the 'Hoodie' component to this a bell went off. Besides carry a stigma, the hoodies were found to cause vitamin deficiencies. No lie.

I read this in the New Zealand Herald when it was first published.  This is not intended to be a joke, it was something I remembered about Hoodies when they became a focus as an icon in the Trayvon Martin case. Just something to consider while we are embracing Trayvon.


I congratulate the Black Community for coming together over Trayvon and his family. The chilling truth is the racism. It is real. It is palpable.


Without completely victimizing the nation of majority in the USA, there are significant problems within our minority populations. We cannot be fatigued of that reality. Our minorities are in prison more frequently and they have a high recidivism rate.


Stereotypes are Black Men are criminals and Hispanics are Anchor Babies and Illegal Immigrants. That has to stop. All those labels are victimizing. Undeserved. I don't see any references in that manner anywhere in the media as legitimate so much as bigoted speech, hate speech.



Trayvon was an achiever. He had a family that dearly loved him. He has been removed from us and completely without justification. We know there were statements made to police that 'classified' him and facilitated his death. Those that classify people are dangerous. Very dangerous. We also know police gave a gunman an order to 'stand down' from pursuit. There are crimes within that understanding. Hate. Disregard of authority.


Every parent knows how impressionable children are to their environment. We witness it within our society with bullying. If a minority child is told in subtle ways they are unworthy of societal rewards, it answer the questions "What goes wrong?" The people of this country don't like lack of opportunity when their roots are from the Middle Class. But, the country can no longer continue to ignore the racism existing among our minorities. It isn't enough to have achievers among us, it has to be balanced with an equal percentage of achievement across the minority population in our country.


When I reflect on any time I needed police to help me in life it was because I offered my obedience to their statements. I respected their authority and understanding as to what was the best outcomes for me. The laws in question remove that respect of authority. They displace authority in the hands of those with prejudice, bias and hate. They are wrong beyond any rationalizing otherwise.


My condolences to Trayvon's family, friends and community.  Also to Reverend Al Sharpton for the loss of his mother and his bravery to continue the fight for equality and justice. He is selfless. He is priceless and so was Trayvon.


We haven't found the answers, Trayvon. We need to continue to try. I want him back, I really want him back.

Thursday, November 16, 2006 

...Dr Twentyman said: (click title to entry - thank you) "It's the hoodies and the hats and the downward glance of the teenagers, shading your face all the time." (click title to entry - thank you)

Dr Twentyman said that every young person that he had tested showed a deficiency of vitamin D. Vitamin D helps vital minerals to be absorbed into the bones. Vitamin D is given to our body from the sun. "A lot of these kids stay away from sunshine. They don't hang out at the beach or in the bush. Some are into drugs and alcohol and a lot of it is indoor activity and night-time activity. They sleep during the day. They are wearing those hoods and literally they don't get out in the sun."

Even though vitamin D is usually absorbed through sun it can also be found in: fatty fish, liver, eggs, full fat milk and butter....

The world is changing. I look forward to its resolve.

Julian Borger

March 25, 2012

A historic conference (click title to entry - thank you) bringing Iran and Israel together with Arab states to discuss a ban on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the Middle East is scheduled to take place in Helsinki in December, it has emerged.

The Finnish organisers of the United Nations-backed bid to establish a zone free of weapons of mass destruction are said to be cautiously optimistic that the conference will go ahead despite high tensions in the Gulf.

The Finnish team has held about 70 meetings with officials in the region and made repeated trips to Israel and Iran since the veteran diplomat Jaakko Laajava was appointed ''facilitator'' of the consensus in October. So far, none of the countries invited to Helsinki have turned the invitation down....

California "assault with a deadly weapon" laws

In the Castle Doctrine / Stand Your Ground...

...calling the police is a formality.  I've listened to a few tapes that are more than alarming of 'hard core' gun owners (Zimmerman being one of them.) and what came alive was the clear understanding the actions of the gunman was never going to change. Calling the police was a formality and in doing so proved they were attempting other less lethal methods before actually killing a person of choice.


It could be argued, and very easily, the 'person of choice' is simply anyone acting in a manner the shooter deems 'odd,' even if it is skin color.  The Castle Doctrine/Stand Your Ground provides a platform for 'Trial by One Citizen' based on baseless information.  The gunman is acting on 'presumed innocence' and 'fills in the blanks' to justify his/her actions.


The underpinnings of these laws are well known by these aggressive gun owners.  The gunmen are well versed in how simple it is to kill another person. Zimmerman knew he was not going to jail or even going to be arrested because he filled in all the blanks he had to with his actions all along the way.


The tapes I am hearing have a police dispatcher stating to NOT ACT in the manner prescribed.  Both the dispatcher and the gunman know what is happening and both are going through the motions of the anticipated murder.  I am not saying the dispatcher is an active consenting member of the ultimate scenario, but, I do believe the dispatcher knows it is a futile act of 'instruction' to the gunman. I also believe the gunman knows exactly what is going to happen based on the fact 'they always get away' and 'in that' is the idea immediate action before police officers arrive is most prudent and premeditated.


These gunmen are answering the ego ambition 'Give me a reason.'  They are exhibiting no inhibitions in acting to kill. As a matter of fact it is a goal. A trained goal.


There is a culture in the USA called "Preppers."  Not peppers, PREPPERS.  These folks prepare for the destruction of society.  Some would call them survivalists.  They are more than that.  They train for killing others in the idea they will be attacked by desperate people seeking food, water, shelter, etc.  They justify their expensive habits of training, purchasing underground shelters, etc., with the idea the USA is so poorly organized within its government structure it cannot contain chaos. It is profound lack of trust of government and in many ways is the underlying premise for the political ideology, "Government is too big, expensive and intrusive, therefore get rid of it." These folks are fanatical in their ideology and seek to be the 'do all and end all' to justice.  Self contained justice.


When gun enthusiasts go to firing ranges they have the option of shooting Zombies. The idea is Zombies are 'the living dead.' The Preppers prepare for a full front Zombie attack. The Zombies in the definition of Preppers are those without the shelter needed to live through catastrophe, no matter the source. So, the Preppers are not interested in community so much as self reliance. 


When I hear these 911 calls I am hearing men, haven't heard a woman yet, centered on killing. They could be killing their 'inner Zombie' so to speak. At any rate, the Castle Doctrine/Stand Your Ground law demands nothing of people to be prudent. Those laws demand practice to carry out the PERMISSIONS of the law to kill. They are as much 'mind/thought exercises' as much as gun practice. So, when someone, anyone enters their 'territory' they are prepared to carry out a killing. Legal murder. I believe that is what occurred with Zimmerman. He was prepared both mentally and with the capacity of a gun and munitions to kill in a way prescribed by law which allowed for his ultimate innocence.


The police on the beat are more restrained in acting than the citizens in the Castle Doctrine/Stand Your Ground. These folks to some extent have occurrences they can site whereby criminals broke into homes or attempted to break into homes prepared to kill innocent people for the purpose of theft or whatever.  There are legitimate basis for these laws when such instances are cited and gun owners do not want to be restrained from protecting themselves or their property, BUT, those instances are far fewer than anyone wants to admit within the community of PREPPERS.


The unrestrained use of personal gun ownership is not realistic in the USA. We have well trained police that respond to emergencies and intruders are an emergency. I personally have never been faced with disappointment after calling for help to 911. I don't know people who have been either. Guns have their place, but, the numbers of times a gun actually served its owner are fewer than anyone wants to admit. 


These laws are excessive. A convenience store owner has a reason to own a gun and use it, but, only seeks to do so in realizing the person across the counter is not a customer, but, a criminal. The people using guns to 'stand their ground' are exhibiting very poor judgement in their use of their weapons. The laws are excessive and justify the actions of people untrained to discern THE USE so much as THE SKILL in pulling the trigger.