By ann summers 
Orlando’s horrific domestic extremist attack demonstrates that with the constant, cyclical negation of private and public rights there cannot be win-win solutions in a modern democracy that has foundationally resisted the notion of a theocratic state.
An acceptable measure of public safety is possible with a society and economy based on exchange-values that exceed use-values whether it’s interest charges, taxes, or simple profit based on consumer price ignorance.
And then there’s credit and debt, and all the possible hard feelings that can cause conflict over property, public and private.
And there’s even a micro-aggression for all of the above with the attendant offenses of everyday life — misinterpreted stereotyping and disrespect with posturing ranging from offensive t-shirts to open-carrying firearms.
But there’s never absolute public safety, whether it’s poor driving or basic actions while not caring about self or others. At what moment is inflammatory speech actionable intelligence when ignorance is the core meaning for major party candidates.
“Pulse usually hires armed off-duty police officers who stay in the parking lot outside”
Trying as a former CIA officer attempted to do in a CBS interview today by drawing a direct line to Daesh does not address the fundamental psychological and terror threat disqualifications for firearms operation and purchasing.
Safe places are never safe when even as a guard can exchange fire with the assailant and yet most of the carnage may have all occurred within the first minutes as the attacker fled into the restroom.
There will be the hypothetical of thinking that safety could have come from identifying and regulating the assailant’s possible bi-polar condition should have disqualified him from firearms purchases or that even that that condition may have come from a failure to find personal peace from commitment to an ideological practice that included pilgrimages to international sacred sites.
Had Orlando’s attacker taken an isolated rural wildlife refuge hostage rather than a gay club bathroom, it could have had a different outcome with lower loss of life, but would still be a terrorist act with the same kinds of legal violations and breach of a social contract for ideologically suspect reasons no less pathological nor with less potential lethality. Tarps are not Burkas, but terrorist intentions do share the same levels of cultural psychosis about safety and trust.
And armoring every public space or arming every person is not like trying to promote a safer society not predicated on firearms use or possession and all the political exploitation of that capital.
And yet we focus more on firearms than peace and threats about hateful dominance rather than loving cooperation.
Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 
Donald Trump is playing to the right-wing gun-toters, who won’t be happy until there are daily running gun battles across America, and the Torch of Freedom held by the Statue of Liberty is replaced with an assault rifle, with the Emma Lazarus poem at her feet covered over by a giant KEEP OUT sign.
Fear and Hatred – the rhetoric of fascism.
I watched the episode of “United Shades of America” with W. Kamau Bell, in which he hung out with police and got to experience their very realistic shooting scene simulator. The trainee is given a pistol that shoots a laser beam instead of a bullet. They are shown realistic scenes, in life size, projected on a surround screen.
One of the scenarios was a theater mass shooting similar to the Aurora incident, and he had to decide whether to shoot or not shoot. At one point, a man in civilian clothes carrying a pistol emerged from a door in a crouching posture. Just before he fired his pistol at the man on the screen, the guy held up a police badge. In the real world, had the “good guy with a gun” not flashed a badge at the last instant, he would be (simulated) dead. In the real world of mass shootings, if some wannabe hero is waving a gun around and the SWAT team arrives, he won’t live long enough to take another breath.
Chuck Stanley and Ann Summers, I am all for gay marriage. However, I am also inclined to believe that no bakery should be forced to bake a cake for a same sex wedding if it conflicts with their religious beliefs. Even if it is the law of the land, no judge or clerk should be forced to grant a marriage license to a same sex couple if it conflicts with their religious beliefs.
Jeffrey,
You are entitled to your opinion, even if it is wrong. However the law is the law. If a public official thinks their personal prejudices trump their official job description described by statute, then don’t run for the office. Once elected, the official is committed.
Back in the old days, blacks could not check in at white hotels because of the management’s “strongly held beliefs.” We saw how that turned out. If you open an establishment that serves the public, that means ALL the public. Rules such as “no shirt, no shoes, no service” applies to all customers; therefore is not discriminatory.
Jeffery, here in Kentucky we had a county clerk who held this same belief that a clerk’s religious persuasion can trump the law requiring the clerk to do the job for which they are hired to do. She refused to sign her name to any marriage license when some folks objected to her refusal to sign a form submitted by a gay couple. She held her moral high ground to the point of going to jail for contempt of court. The state (very right-thinking at the time) changed the form to eliminate the clerk’s signature.
Chuck Stanley, the USA Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act were signed into law. Under George W. Bush and Barack Obama respectively. Both acts were in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
Jeffery, i don’t think it is unconstitutional until the Supreme Court says so. So far, that has not happened. Nor has it happened to tRump’s OE on immigration.
Terry Welshans, insofar as I know, the job of the U.S. Supreme Court is to on the Constitutional basis of a law passed by congress, not legislate from the bench. Here is a hypothetical scenario for you: A law passed by the U.S. congress allowed civilians to carry and possess automatic firearms. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that law as Unconstitutional. Who is in the right in that regard-the U.S. congress or the U.S. Supreme Court?
Let me amend my previous commentary. I meant that the U.S. Supreme Court’s job is to rule on the Constitutionality of a law passed by congress.
SCOTUS is the final arbiter.
Jeffrey, a civilian can own and operate an automatic weapon if the proper tax forms are submitted. The person must also be a licensed gun dealer and have the correct class of license. Here in Kentucky we have “machine gun shoots” at the Knob Creek gun range. Here is a link for you: http://www.knobcreekrange.com/events/featured-events/machine-gun-shoot
A good friend of mine has three (3) fully automatic weapons. He owns a 1921 Thompson sub-machine gun. That is the famous “Chicago Piano” with the round drum magazine. He has a 1927 Thompson “Tommy Gun” with the straight magazine, used all through WW2. His third full-auto rifle is an M-16.
All are fully legal. He got the tax stamps and the FBI clearance to own them. He asked me a number of times to go to the State Highway Patrol range with him for some target practice. The range was across the road from our offices, and we were both friends with the Academy firearms instructor who managed the range. I always declined. I did not see the point of blowing though $200-$250 every fifteen seconds.
The Knob Creek range rents machine guns all the time for a few bucks an hour. They make their money on the .50 cal rounds which cost $1.00 each. It shoots 400 rounds per minute…….
The standard M1928 Thompson normally fires about 725 RPM; however, the M1919 model fires 1,500 rounds per minute. .45 ACP rounds cost between $60-$75 for 100 rounds, depending on where you buy them. Like I said, you can blow though both the rent money and car payment before you know it.
I can’t afford to have that much fun.
Jeffrey,
I’ve been pretty tolerant of your selective understanding of the Constitution, but the NDAA comes up every year and is essentially the budget for the Defense Department. Both Bush and Obama tried to (and did) slip some shady shit in under those budgetary approvals like Bush trying to create a more powerful unitary executive (2008) and Obama allowing the military abuses of civilian habeas corpus started by Bush to continue unabated (2012). The NDAA itself in all its iterations are not per se unconstitutional. They are necessary to do business.
Gene Howington, do you know as much about the U.S. Constitution or other Founding Documents as Mark Levin or Andrew Napolitano?
I don’t know if Gene is reading this morning, but I can answer the question. The answer is Yes.
You don’t graduate from a Tier 1 law school at the top of your class without knowing far more about the Constitution than the average lawyer. And he damn sure knows more than someone who has NEVER attended law school. And what you may not understand as well, Gene is a polymath; he remembers everything.
Gene Howington, Terry Welshans and Chuck Stanley, what about laws arbitrarily passed by Congress that the people know very little about, such as the U.S.A Patriot Act or the National Defense Authorization Act? Are they not Unconstitutional?
As long as the Supreme Court says they are Constitutional, they are. Trump’s mistake is to misunderstand the fact that courts are the final arbiter of defining what is and is not legal. He does not get to decide. Because you disagree with a law does not invalidate it. There are only two ways to invalidate a statute: repeal it, or have a court of competent jurisdiction declare it unconstitutional.
Chuck Stanley, I am not an expert regarding the U.S. Constitution, however, I know a few things about that particular document. Also, what about war? Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution gives the U.S. congress the power to declare war. Was the Iraq war declared legally or illegally? If legally declared, why do many democrats in the U.S. claim that it is not legal, unless they have an inability to grasp the fact that the U.S. Congress has the final say so? Or, if declared illegally, would that not lend legitimacy to the idea that the administration of George W. Bush when the shit went down, warrant charges of war crimes being brought against George W. Bush and his administration? Gene Howington, if you are able to remember everything, as Chuck Stanley claims, where were you on 9/11/2001 when the World Trade Center was attacked?
Jeffery, the President controls the military, it is his to command. The action in Iraq was not a declared war. Nor were Korea in the 19502 or Vietnam in the 1960-1970s. Nor was Panama, Grenada and a dozen similar military actions. The President is able, for limited periods of time, bring his military to bear, as he sees fit. Congress controls his military budget, and if they wish to rein in his military action they can remove his money and put an end to it.
Therefore, any argument against the legality of any President’s military action falls on Congress, even if war was not formally declared. You may want to read this Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution
Typo: should be 1950s, not 19502.
Terry Welshans, thank you for the recommendation. You had stated that any argument against the legality of any President’s military action falls on Congress, even if war was not formally declared. You never directly answered my question about the legality of the Iraq war. Back to the official topic of the Pulse nightclub attack, what are your thoughts about that? What are your views on same sex marriage and gun control?
Jeffrey, here is an explanation of what gave the Iraqi war legal status, from wikipedia:
In October 2002, a few days before the United States Senate voted on the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq, about 75 senators were told in closed session that Iraq had the means of attacking the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. with biological or chemical weapons delivered by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs.) On 5 February 2003, Colin Powell presented further evidence in his Iraqi WMD program presentation to the UN Security Council that UAVs were ready to be launched against the United States. At the time, there was a vigorous dispute within the U.S. military and intelligence communities over the accuracy of the CIA’s conclusions about Iraqi UAVs. Other intelligence agencies suggested that Iraq did not possess any offensive UAV capability, saying the few they had been designed for surveillance and intended for reconnaissance. The Senate voted to approve the Joint Resolution with the support of large bipartisan majorities on 11 October 2002, providing the Bush administration with a legal basis for the U.S. invasion under U.S. law.
The complete article is located here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War
Terry Welshans, some people claim that the Iraq war was declared illegally. Any legitimacy to the claim or is it a bunch of b.s.?
Some people say the earth is flat and others say the moon is made of cheese. Seek the truth by asking for proof. The wikipedia link I provided has links to the actual documents.
The moon being made of cheese-that is a laughable idea.
Jeffrey, here is my take on the Pulse nightclub attack:
The gunman was identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, an American born in New Hyde Park, New York. His parents were Afghan, and he was raised as a Muslim. In the hours before the shooting, Mateen used several Facebook accounts to write posts vowing vengeance for American airstrikes in Iraq and Syria and to search for content related to terrorism. During the shooting, Mateen made a 9-1-1 call claiming, among others, it was an act of retaliation for the killing of ISIL militant Abu Waheeb in an airstrike the previous week. Although he claimed he was associated with ISIL, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also conducted an investigation and said it found no links between ISIL and Mateen. Officials have characterized the shooting as an act of terrorism and a hate crime. Investigators have said no evidence linking Mateen to the group has emerged, and have cautioned that the shooting may have been ISIL-inspired without being ISIL-directed, as was the case in the December 2, 2015 attack in San Bernardino, California.
In 2009, Mateen married his first wife, who left him after a few months; the couple’s divorce became final in 2011. Following the nightclub attack, she said Mateen was “mentally unstable and mentally ill” and “obviously disturbed, deeply, and traumatized”, was often physically abusive, and had a history of using steroids. A former coworker of Mateen’s at G4S said Mateen “had talked about killing people”, used slurs and “had a lot of hatred for people. Black people, women, he did not like Jews, he did not like Hispanics, nor did he like gay or lesbian people.”
So, my conclusion is that he had a lot of anger and expressed it violently against a group of unsuspecting people who he classified as sub-human. Like many hate crimes, which is what this is, the victims are chosen as a group, not as individuals, and he was, in his mind, helping to clean up the world. His claim of ISIL membership was a way, in his mind, to justify what he was doing.
Re: gay marriage, I don’t interfere with a person’s private life.
Re: Gun control: Steady breaths, good sight alignment, and gently squeeze the trigger only when it is on the target. I was awarded the expert badge for rifle, both semi automatic and automatic, machine gun and pistol when I was in the US Army.
Gene Howington, Chuck Stanley told me that you were able to remember everything. Where were you on the day of the 9/11/2001 World Trade Center attack? Based on your observations, how did George W. Bush seem to handle himself during that event?
Jeffrey, what is your obsession with what Gene was doing that day?
Everyone who was over the age of six that day remembers it, what they were doing and how they felt. How about sharing what you were doing and what were your observations regarding GWB?
I was still a kid at the time. We saw the footage of the Towers going down. Personally, I thought that George W. Bush handled himself very well given the situation.
Chuck Stanley, not an obsession. Just a curiosity.
Here’s your answers, Jeffery.
In re Bush, he handled himself like a deer caught in headlights. Or perhaps a Muppet bereft of a hand momentarily. Maybe a frat boy caught dry humping the Dean’s dog because a buddy dared him?
In re what I was doing, the short answer is “none of your fucking business.” And I mean that the nicest way possible.
I have a very good memory. It isn’t eidetic, but it is close. What Chuck doesn’t tell people is that my capacity for pattern recognition borders on a psychic power. Especially so when it comes to language.
I see.
Take that into consideration (or don’t) when I tell you I do perceive emergent patterns in your posts.
Carry on.
Gene Howington, what I meant by that one question was regarding if you read the story in the newspaper or saw footage on live television. Don’t act like an asshole because of a simple curiosity.
I’m not acting. Especially when it comes to adherents of Rand’s perfectly immoral “philosophy”. And make no mistake, modern big “L” Libertarianism purely rests in her narcissistic lunacy as the Austrian “School” of economics does.
Let me spell this out for you. I’ve seen the ingratiating slow burn maneuver from trolls before. You come in, you act conversational for a while, then you turn passive-aggressive or overtly aggressive. I’ve deconstructed many dozens of them using that and even more insidious tactics of guerilla propaganda. Turley let his blog go to
shitthe trolls once he started working for FAUX News and that is simply the icing over the behind-the-scenes substantive ethical disagreement we had before he and I parted ways. I am an expert in propaganda. Part of the rationale for this blog is anti-propaganda. This is why the Propaganda Series exists. To teach people how to both recognize and combat propagandists.You may not realize it, but you’re bringing a pointed stick to a nuclear weapons fight.
But more than likely I’ll simply tire of your bullshit and ban you rather than make you dance like a trained monkey. Why? Because 1) it is time consuming to turn trolls inside out and 2) my time is better spent elsewhere these days. That is why I turned the reins here over to Chuck. I rarely read the blog these days much less write for it. Hell, I’m so busy I’ve owed Russell a phone call for three months now (sorry!). However, I am still an Admin. So for your sake, pray that I simply tire of your nonsense. What happens if you get my attention may be entertaining for spectators, but I promise you won’t like it.
Bring on the bombs! I have a safe space from the blast radius, so I would probably be oblivious.
Sigh.
You were warned.
“1) Civility is encouraged but the Ethic of Reciprocity applies. If someone gives you insults back for insults given? That’s just what you deserve. If one has a position and advocates it, one owns it unless stating the position is some form of Devil’s Advocacy. If it is an abhorrent position that causes recoil and/or social rejection, then the problem might rest with the position first and the holder as consequence. If one does not like the consequences of being seen in a negative light, one should revisit their position(s) or live with it. If disruptive behavior (or inherently disruptive or dishonest trollish behavior – flooding/spamming, manufacturing false consensus, deflection, etc.) becomes a persistent problem and disrupts the peace and utility of the commons that are the threads? You will be warned. You might get a time out. You might get banned. This soiree has (very minimal) rules and bouncers. This is not a troll friendly forum. Agreement is not required. Argument is a cornerstone of the marketplace of ideas. You will not run afoul of this rule for simply having and voicing an unpopular opinion. Disagreement does not constitute trolling. Your choice in tactics does. A good rule of thumb is DBAD.”
Got that?
So I banned you. BTW, I also deleted your pending post with a plethora of WND links. World News Daily? Really? You might as well reference the National Enquirer, Jeffrey. Garbage in, garbage out.
Run along,’lil Troll.
I’m not in the mood to play with my food.
Thanks
One lives to be of service, Terry.
We gotta get you two together. It would be a fun evening.
It is amusing when people like li’l Jeff want to play mind games with grownups. Good thing he didn’t try to “out wit” Pete. That could have gotten out of hand rather quickly.
Yes. Your place?
Gene Howington Chuck Stanley and Terry Welshans, the trolls are very entertaining. Why block them?