Yeehaa! Welcome to the Wild West (and East)

"Two States Legalize Guns in Bars"---Tennessee and Arizona "expanded the rights of gun owners by allowing those with a concealed-carry permit to take their firearms into establishments that serve alcohol....In both states, there is a catch. The new laws stipulate that armed patrons have to refrain from drinking while in the bars — in effect, creating a new category of customer, the designated shooter."

So. how does the bartender know not to serve alcohol to someone holding a concealed weapon?

And on the other hand who would you refuse to pour a drink with a gun their face?

By the way, the bar owners are not so happy about this. Read the full story here...

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/two-states-legalize-guns-in-bars/?hp

Sotomayor Hearings

WASHINGTON – The National Rifle Association is warning senators that it will consider their votes on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as part of its influential annual ratings of lawmakers.

The NRA says President Barack Obama's first high court nominee has a hostile view of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. It announced last week that it was opposing her nomination, although her confirmation in early August is virtually guaranteed.

Its promise Thursday to score the upcoming vote amounts to a threat to Republicans and conservative Democrats whose constituents are strong gun rights advocates. It comes one day after the gun lobby suffered a major loss in the Senate with defeat of a concealed weapon measure.

OK, maybe its time the American People issue a threat. Voters who live in the States represented by those senators who vote AGAINST Sotomayor for no apparent reason than to cave in to groups like the NRA should issue their own threat. "We will not vote for you again if, you vote against Sotomayor and give no viable, reasonable explanation."

And I mean an explanation that makes sense, not some blabbering comment about how you didn't like her attitude, or thought she would be too Latina. If you want to vote against her, show us some legal standings, some legal decisions, that you disagreed with and why. In other words Senators (and I am speaking to the mostly men out there on the panel) show us your balls.

July 4th Weekend and beyond

It is really getting to a point where we deserve what we get. Our so called "News" is nothing more than Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood, being packaged as News.

Not only has this Michael Jackson Mania spread through the ionosphere to engulf everything in its path, but it has now strained the space/time continuum. It has been two weeks since he has died and we are still being barraged by the so called news media with "Breaking News". Here's some "Breaking News" for the newscasters; when a story is four hours old or so, never mind two weeks old, it is not breaking anything anymore, except breaking wind.

Today, July 6, 2009, The CBS Evening News three teasers and lead stories were all about Michael Jackson. This on a day that for the first time in 6 years a U.S. President visited, in Russia, the Russian President to talk, no less, about a Nuclear Arms curtailment. I guess that and the latest unrest in Honduras, and the crack-downs in China, are really not news worthy. After all Michael Jackson effects my life, more than any of those events ever will, right?

Adding onto the pile of Jacksonian over embellishment is, none other than accuweather.com, which has a link to "The Latest Weather for Michael Jackson Memorial". As if the event is so big that it is now deserving of its own forecast. Are they suggesting the weather for this event will be different than the weather for the city it will be held in, which, by the way, is LA. And if you have ever lived in LA you know the weather there in the summer is pretty much the same everyday, so no forecast needed. (See "LA Story")

The loss of true TV journalism for the masses (I am excluding PBS's newscast, which covered these other stories first and foremost) is but one example of how this nation will wind up with what it deserves. An uninformed nation is destined for ruin. We are a nation of idolizers who don't really care about national or world events that truly impact our lives. So when our politicians, bureaucrats, corporations and health care system continue to fail, we will have nobody to blain but ourselves.

I am not sure to even pay attention any more. The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has brought out the incomprehensible yet again. As I have stated in previous blogs, we need more then one party to have serious debates about issues. But as events unfold in our political landscape it becomes clearer that the other major party has no interest in providing intelligent discussions. Outside of the political sphere on this issue are the usual blowhards, Limbaugh  ("Look, bigotry is bigotry.  Racism is racism.  Superiority is superiority.  Contempt for people beneath you is contempt for people beneath you.  Thinking you're better than everybody else is thinking you're better than everybody else.  This woman has all of this.  There's not a whole lot of humility here". Has he listened to his own show. Full transcript)  Glen Beck ("Hey, Hispanic chick lady! You're empathetic ... you're in!") to name but two. Now comes another group throwing their hat in the ring. The head of the so called Center for Immigration Studies comes  out with this beauty, "Most e-mailers were with me on the post on the pronunciation of Judge Sotomayor's name (and a couple griped about the whole Latina/Latino thing - English dropped gender in nouns, what, 1,000 years ago?). But a couple said we should just pronounce it the way the bearer of the name prefers, including one who pronounces her name "freed" even though it's spelled "fried," like fried rice. (I think Cathy Seipp of blessed memory did the reverse - "sipe" instead of "seep.") Deferring to people's own pronunciation of their names should obviously be our first inclination, but there ought to be limits. Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English (which is why the president stopped doing it after the first time at his press conference), unlike my correspondent's simple preference for a monophthong over a diphthong, and insisting on an unnatural pronunciation is something we shouldn't be giving in to.

That's Rich coming from Mark Krikorian. As a tangent here, the CIS is "... animated by a pro-immigrant, low-immigration vision which seeks fewer immigrants but a warmer welcome for those admitted."

Funny how the staff (or their progenitors) of this Center would probably have trouble entering this country as per their own mission statement.

Center Staff

Mark Krikorian, Executive Director
Steven A. Camarota, Director of Research
Cynthia Owens, Director of Administration
John Wahala, Assistant Director
Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies
Janice Kephart, Director of National Security Policy
Stephen Steinlight, Senior Policy Analyst
Jerry Kammer, Senior Research Fellow
Jon Feere, Legal Policy Analyst
Thomas P. Redding, Research Associate
Bryan Griffith, Communications Associate
Karen Jensenius, Demographer
Alex Coleman, News Editor
Tomika Herrien, Project Assistant
Patrick McHugh, Publications

Center Fellows

Don Barnett
Michael Cutler
Marti Dinerstein
John Miano
Stanley Renshon
David North
Jan Ting

The Republican Party is spiraling out of control. This country needs serious debate about many issues. Instead, all the opposition party seems to offer are personal attacks. The latest is the gender attack on Nancy Pelosi. For all my Republican friends out there, before you judge whether or not she has done something wrong, first look at how the RNC has chosen to depict her in this video. (I also wonder if they paid Monty Norman royalty fees for the music.) Also, read this story and tell me where all the stand-up Republican Senators and Congressmen are defending her, not as the Speaker, but as a citizen, against the gender biased and insulting attacks from radio jocks. And if this is a strategy, 

On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Republican strategist Alex Castellanos said, “I think if Speaker Pelosi were still capable of human facial expression, we’d see she’d be embarrassed.”,

 it is clear that the strategy is not to debate issues but to slander. Slander doesn't create policies for health care, fixing a financial crisis or providing energy solutions. If this is what our national debate has turned into we are in real trouble. Remember the cry for "family values"? I guess in light of this recent turrets like outburst from Republican strategists, and mouthpieces, it was all a cover for "woman should stay at home and let the men handle the work".  As a member of any organization that used these tactics against an opposing view, I  would want to distance myself from those culpable, and also defend my opponent in the face of what is just. I am waiting for someone to step forward. 

Looking out for US

Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is one of the elected officials looking out for the American people.

While the Senate was drafting a bill to help protect the public from Credit Card predatory practices, he though it would be appropriate (and I am guessing, would agree to vote for the bill) if the bill also contained and amendment "To protect innocent Americans from violent crime in national parks and refuges." In other words to allow people to carry firearms in our national parks. That amendment is S.Amdt. 1067 attached to S.Amdt. 1058 and to H.R. 627 (Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act of 2009)

I am not sure what carrying firearms in a National Park has to do with protecting Credit Card holders from paying 30% interest rates, but I am glad there are smarter people than I in the Senate to figure these things out, because as you can see from the statistics below our National Parks are a haven for violent criminals.

You can read about the votes here.

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=1&vote=00188