I didn't laugh or celebrate when Katrina hit New Orleans the year after the US invaded Iraq. I won't celebrate a dam bursting in far east Russia the year after they invade Ukraine.

I don't think the people of Ussuriysk deserved wildfires any more than the people of California.

It's not karma. If you want you can call it bad luck, or mankind suffering due to our own effect on the planet.

Plus, I would have thought an AI wrote that script except I think it would have done a better job. Am I missing context when it comes to 'the flood'? Badly written, badly voiced, but not quite enough for me to downvote.

Ruh roe….. Coordinators of the coup were working directly with Paul Gosar, Lauren Bovert Mo Brooks, Madison Cawthorne, Andy Biggs and Louie Gohmert pre planning the attack. Katrina Pearson, former Trump aide was on some of those calls. She acted as what they call the liaison between these, uh, organizers and the white house itself. And of course direct contact with Mark Meadows. all coordinated with the planners of the riot at the capitol before the attack. Reports are that Gosar may have, according to these individuals, offered them blanket pardons on Trump’s behalf for whatever the hell was going to happen that day.


D’oh! Becoming more and more obvious why Trump is terrified White House records of those interactions might be presented as evidence. Promising preemptive blanket pardons for people planning to commit treason against the US is treason. Too bad ex presidents can’t invoke privileges….not.

Edit: and…..today it was revealed that on Jan 6 Trump made repeated phone calls to the coup command center manned by Bannon at a nearby hotel, but not The Trump hotel because they wanted to pretend Trump wasn’t involved….but moron that he is, Trump couldn’t help but call every 5 minutes to get updates and give directions. These calls from the whitehouse would likely be recorded too. Ruh roe!

this is a fine example of what a year locked up does to a body.

sure. willing to listen to the p o s s i b i l i t y of corona being manufactured, but have some hard evidence. please. in a country billions +, origins of swine, bird, and ABC123 lettered viruses - it's not unreasonable to expect a lab to be located in a region where the pandemic started.

as it is, not versed in immunology (nor psychology or 'why are the following me') so rely on those who know (and don't have stock in Alcoa). that and the experiences of a lifetime being ginned up preparing for the next life-altering bug.

herpes, aids, penicillin-resistant gonorrhea/syphilis/chlamydia/TB, cjd, zika, lyme, west nile, ebola or the plethora of viruses, of eastern origins, that could become the next Spanish Flu.*

all those diseases have natural origins.

so, yeah. this pandemic wasn't a surprise. no more than Hurricane Katrina (why did they build that bridge over Lake Pontchartrain) or why the ere-orange administration left a 'play book' for Virus X.

it was foreseen, it happened, and could happen again. much more likely another flaming arrow from natures' quiver. (shivers given via a quiver?)

Occam's razor, in essence (should have led w/that).


* even new strains of hepatitis caused waves for a while and there was a bit of time, a virus in the NW USA was akin to airborne aids but disappear as quickly as it came and schistosomiasis has come closer to our shores - - - AND NOW -https://www.livescience.com/mystery-brain-disease-cluster-canada.html that hopefully isn't the precursor to zombie-itis.

Oh yeah, libel per se is a -bitch- if you're nailed with it. In libel per quod ("lost-cause libel"), you have to prove damages. Generally, this is what prevents people from filing lawsuits every time someone calls them a dick on 4chan.

Libel per se is different. Oh, it is SO different. Libel per se means y'all fucked up. Y'all fucked up BAD. In LPS, what you printed was such bullshit and so obviously damaging, the plaintiff don't have to prove SHIT; they sort-of name a figure and the judge works from that.

In the case of Dominion, I'm 99% certain it'll be LPS. Also, the Gold Standard defense against libel -- what you printed is actually true -- will not apply here, and it'd be comedy gold if the defendants actually tried this defense. At that point, the three fastest winds ever recorded on the planet would be Typhoon Li, Hurricane Katrina and the explosive laughter and legal pimp slap from the bench. It'd make Rudy's immense clusterfucks in court seem like goddamn Perry Mason cross-examining a 6-year-old.

It gets better.

So, on the billion-to-one chance you win a libel per quod suit, you get "damages", which can be surprisingly little as you have to prove every single dollar in very narrow legal ways. Libel per se, on the other hand, is the BIG PRIZES. Your ass is at least catching dollar damages that would make Jerome Powell say "Y'all niggas need to tone them digits down, yo!". Those damages are ANYTHING THE COURT DECIDES. Again, LPS means the plaintiff doesn't have to prove a single dime of loss to claim damages of damned near any amount. Given that Dominion is asking for a cool bil-point-something, I wouldn't be hugely surprised if another zero wasn't slapped on the end of that figure.

That's just the "actual" damages. If you egregiously fucked up, like claiming a company overthrew a US election and was in league with a dead dictator, you get to spin the wheel of punitive damages. Punitive damages are how the court hands out spankings, only they're not spankings, they're that scene from 12 Years A Slave, only with less tickles and kittens. Given the shitstorm that followed the lies about Dominion, those damages could make the initial billion-dollar claim look quaint.

(By the way, you can't discharge the settlement in bankruptcy, given that libel per se is considered 'malicious', meaning the laughter from the judge presiding over your initial case will be roughly 1/10,000th the laughter coming from the bankruptcy judge.)

If I was Newsmax, OAN, Fox News, Rush or Alex, I'd be lawyering up but good, because the Wrath of Fucking God is coming and there ain't no rock big enough to hide behind.

Couldn't happen to a nicer group of traitorous, America-hating, back-stabbing cocksuckers (and good luck to them on their per quod claim should they decide to sue me over the previous statement).

Typical liberal trying to twist and combine facts. You are coming off like a pretty big moron. You cant compare Haiti and PR as its a apple/orange situation. Do you know the situation of the infrastructure between the 2? Do you know how the government of each nation reacted? I bet there's a lot of difference between the two.

Also, you dont know how much damage is going to be caused by a hurricane. Why would they ramp up all the services and waste tens of millions of dollars when just a street sign gets blown over? (besides you liberals would then complain about wasting government money for nothing) They knew Katrina and Andrews were coming too but the US government has to wait to see if they are needed.

Also, federal agencies like FEMA have to be requested by the local governments to be there. This is where you guys are such hypocrites. If the military moved into a location and started to take over, you'd be all up in arms about it. Well, FEMA is a federal entity too. They just cant GO into a location if they arent being requested.

As far as the San Juan mayor, here's an article from Oct 1st:
http://www.dailywire.com/news/21758/san-juan-mayor-admits-she-hasnt-met-federal-joseph-curl#exit-modal

I bet even with this smoking gun in this incompetent Mayor, who is a Democrat, that you are still going to blame Trump. You people are so sad.

Congratulations! Your video, Katrina Kaif Doing Single Hand Push-ups Something Wrong, has reached the #1 spot in the current Top 15 New Videos listing. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish but you managed to pull it off. For your contribution you have been awarded 2 Power Points.

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Your video, Katrina Kaif Doing Single Hand Push-ups Something Wrong, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Cops shouldn't be considered a threat because they have been appointed by the government to uphold the law. The success of that is definitely up for debate, but to suggest that citizens should be fighting cops is absurd. That will only lead to more deaths.
(The solution is for the system to weed out the bad cops, the incompetent ones, the corrupt ones, the power tripping, racist, trigger happy etc).

Most cops do the right thing, most of the time. The millions of police encounters each day where nothing has gone wrong don't make the news.

I think it's worth considering what the any country would be like without law enforcement. We know what it would be like - hurricane Katrina - complete chaos on the streets, far worse than these shootings. Assuming your goal is to have fewer people shot and murdered, then having a police force is the best way we know of. However for that to work we need a competent police force that is there to serve and protect.

There definitely needs to be a system were police are made accountable to make sure stuff like this video does happen, or even non-lethal situations where citizens are being harassed. There are number of ways to do this. But my suggestions is that if you want to argue with someone, don't do it while they're holding a gun at you. Wait until you get to the station and call your lawyer. It's not perfect, but at your chances of getting shot will drop dramatically.

The President does have enough power to totally sink us IF they're volatile enough. Simple incompetence in a president doesn't sink us. However, that can cost lives. 1,833 people died officially from Katrina, although obviously not that many were directly from the utter incompetence of the Bush administration. 4,500 Americans have died in Iraq during the invasion and subsequent occupation. These things don't "sink" the US completely, but they're VERY consequential.

But Trump is incompetent AND volatile. Bringing both of those qualities to the table as president, and you've got much much bigger issues.

Finally, I absolutely do not get the charges of personal corruption against Hillary Clinton, especially when compared to Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton, so far as I can tell, is an agent who is operating within a system that has been corrupted, and not personally by her. The system needs to be reformed. She's done things to win within the system that you'd ideally not do. But I don't get how she is personally corrupt.

But you speak as if Clinton is the competent but corrupt one, and Trump is the incompetent but non-corrupt one, which blows my mind. How is the only way you can be corrupt is through accepting campaign contributions? How is Trump University not an indictment of how corrupt Trump personally is? How is it not corrupt to appeal to white supremacists? How is it not corrupt to name call, incite your supporters to violence, and dismiss women because they must be on their periods? How is it not corrupt to have your daughter make a speech at the RNC and then tweet how to buy the dress she was wearing, so she could make some coin?

Because one of those forms of corruption is being potentially corrupted by a corrupt system, but they're at least trying to reform that system. Hillary Clinton is the one against Citizens United, officially calling for a constitutional amendment to get rid of it. Has Donald Trump?

I don't think HRC will be a great president. I don't particularly like her much. However, she is qualified to be President. She's done nothing illegal, which is the hallmark of whether someone is corrupt.

And don't kid yourself about our government's ability containing a fascist. The Weimar Republic's government had structures in place to prevent the rise of Hitler, too. They had separation of powers. The government was one of the most democratic governments in the world. Fat lot of good that did.

I'm not saying necessarily that Trump is the next Hitler. But I am saying that there are enough similarities that I can't vote for him, and the mere fact he got a major party's nomination is scary beyond all reason. And voting for someone like that proves out their blueprint for future candidates across the board for offices in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches at all levels of government.

As much as I don't like HRC, Trump is easily the worse major party's nominee in a very very very long time.

18 USC 922 :
- Is a danger to himself or others
- Lacks mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs
- Is found insane by a court in a criminal case
- Is found incompetent to stand trial, or not guilty by lack of mental responsibility pursuant to articles 50a [blah blah blah]

The second line item is what applies to persons assigned a fiduciary due to a failure to manage their financial affairs (which is often elderly people).
This is why gun rights groups are crying about new measures to link medicare to the background check system.

But generally, yes, you have to do something to demonstrate that you're mental, in order to be found mental.

Gun registration is not required to know who has guns. The background check tells LEO which dealer ran it and about who. They go to the dealer and acquire the sale forms (retained at dealer by law) regarding that person.

The purpose of registration is not to know who has guns - that part is already known. Registration makes it a legal requirement to demonstrate custody. If you can't present a registered firearm, you're a criminal. Hence you have no ability to hide a registered firearm, because the act of hiding it sends you to jail. A large subset of gun owners have firearms strictly for "SHTF" (shit hits the fan). They squirrel them away with some food, and have them 'just in case' the world goes tits up. That's the segment of gun owners that drive against gun registration. They don't want their emergency kit confiscated by the government during a disaster (like happened during Katrina), and they don't want to go to jail for hiding it either.

In general, personally, I have nothing against training.
Ironically, AFAIK, LEO are the biggest offenders when it comes to accidental discharge (which makes sense, given that they point guns at people more often than regular folk, so their accidents are deadlier.).
(Police also commit [non-police-work-related] murder at a rate 8 x that of the general population.)
Training is an easy low hanging fruit to grab on to when looking for 'something to do [legislatively]', but in practice it isn't as significant as people would imagine. People that like to shoot will be well practiced, and are overall safe. Folks that bury their guns in a closet for emergencies won't be well practiced, but won't normally be in a position of opportunity to make mistakes.
Folks that legally concealed carry (hence are managing a firearm throughout the day) require a license that requires training in order to acquire. Granted, it's really not a hard test. It's driver's ed level proficiency. Just enough so you know which end to point where, you know what the controls do, and can hit a target inside of a required accuracy.
I honestly don't know the most common causes of accidental discharge - but I would assume that most are gonna be split between flubbing it with a holster (butter fingers), or forgetting to eject a chambered round after removing a magazine (derping out).

-scheherazade

The problem is that sets up what reminds me of the 2000 election. It absolutely astounded me half the country thought George W. Bush was a valid candidate, let alone the better candidate than Al Gore, not that I liked Gore, but given the choice between the two, Gore had viable plans for the budget, a cohesive foreign policy, etc.

It shouldn't have been a close election, but not only was it razor close, Gore lost. Countless times there have been in world history leaders who came about who generally wouldn't and shouldn't have, but they did. All it takes is a bad recession or other event to tilt the odds in their favor at the right time. Hitler doesn't come to power without the Great Depression and the Treaty of Versailles leaving Germany dependent on US loans.

And to me, Trump is absolutely frightening. I honestly have absolutely no idea what he would do as President, and not in a good way. I quite honestly don't even know if he's actually in line with the Tea Party or not. It is terrifying to me that he's on a course where potentially a recession at the wrong time could make him president because so many voters are absolutely ignorant or stupid enough to support him.

Screw the entertainment value of it. I keep thinking back to the George W. Bush Iraqi occupation and the crapshow that was Katrina and realize people's lives are literally at stake by botching the selection of the next President, and when you make one option completely invalid before the election even starts, it doesn't help.

That conveniently leaves out the fact that income tax rates have plummeted since the 1940s. That's been the big consistent change, not the government increasing spending as a percentage of GDP, which wildly fluctuates.

The reason why there's a fight to get this funded is because there's a portion of this country that thinks you must pay for every new expenditure by cutting spending elsewhere because the national debt will kill us if it doesn't come down, and taxes can never ever ever ever ever be raised ever ever ever ever. They will absolutely never consider that raising taxes is worth funding anything, and are completely okay with cutting funding for things that are even needed and are worth the money (see cutting funding for PBS).

I say "principled" because they sure don't ask for reduced spending to pay for when they need help. See Katrina and other disasters, Mitch McConnell's fund to help nuclear power workers, etc.

But the fundamental problem here is the flat refusal to accept the reality that:
1. The national debt and annual deficits can, will, and should fluctuate depending upon circumstances. The "sky is falling" reaction to added debt is beyond ridiculous. This country has flourished economically under almost non-stop deficit spending. This isn't to say raising the national debt and running annual deficits is always good, but it sure as hell isn't always bad.
2. The same reaction to tax raises is also ridiculous. Tax rates can be increased or decreased, depending on circumstances, and raising or lowering them isn't inherently good or bad.

A sane reaction to this whole thing isn't - "well, they spend money on things that don't matter, so that's why this can't be funded."

It's "I don't care if it costs every single one of us an extra dollar in taxes in a year, or we need to cut funding on (insert wasteful program here), we need to get this done."

America's problem is not guns, it's the awful social situation that rampant capitalism and consumerism has landed it in. Same as drugs aren't the reason why large communities of black people are stuck in the same cycle of drugs/gangs/violence/death. It's not because of the drugs, or the people themselves, it is because they are pretty much abandoned by society.

Guns are just a means to an end, and an easy one at that. They are an easy answer when you want to cause violence to someone else, or yourself.

The fact that so many people want to cause violence to others or themselves is what needs to be looked at.

I've visited many parts of the US and the people have generally struck me as friendly and polite to a fault. People will just strike up a conversation with you as if you were a long lost relative. I've had people sit with me on a public bus well past their stop just to make sure I got off at the right place. At it's heart, it's a great country. But the flip side is that currently, it's built on basic inequity and inequality. I was in LA when Katrina hit, and watching what happened was freaking unreal for me as a person who lives in an area prone to cyclones. When we get hit, the entire community bands together and takes care of each other. When New Orleans got hit, it was post apocalypse dog eat dog.

Getting rid of guns in the US won't stop inequality, it won't stop senseless accidents and it won't stop violence. The UK has had strict regulations on guns for years and *surprise* has a very high rate of knife crime. Australia introduced tough gun legislation after the massacre at Port Arthur massacre, but we didn't really have serious violence problems before that so while people claim that bans on semi-autos etc "worked", it's very hard to quantify going from "very little gun violence" to "very little gun violence" as much of a shift... It's a core difference in the social fabric of countries.

People who completely focus on banning the gun are neglecting to look at the bigger picture, and are often doing so deliberately because the bigger picture is far harder to solve. Same as the war on drugs. Regulate guns, sure, enforce safety and bring in high penalties for misuse or allowing your weapon to be misused. But banning them won't fix anything.

I don't really mind the video, thinking twice before owning a firearm is a good thing. But I think it misses the point.

Cos New Orleans http://digg.com/video/new-orleans-katrina