@newtboy
@BSR
@mram


You can not have a military automatic weapon.

2nd 98% of killings are done by inner city thugs and yet the left only focus on suburban , school, theater killings .


Left wants to make it harder for people to buy legal -- The real problem is the illegal guns that are doing most killing - destroying families . cities. soles

The left has no desire to truly address this issue in their cities.

1. Never trust anyone who says "basically" too much about things that aren't basic at all.

2. I don't see Taco Bells, Walmarts, and other terrible elements of suburban life. I don't know how that'll float (ho ho!) in South Korea, but it'd never hold water (ho ho!) in the US.

3. I agree with newtboy. I'd like to know what sort of people are on their payroll or board of directors. Do they have all the sorts of scientists ad engineers you'd want for a project like this or just a handful of pie-in-the-sky Silicon Valley-ish types?

There's a very big difference between a pistol round and a high velocity rifle round. The rifle could easily penetrate a several typical suburban houses and still kill someone down the block in another house. A pistol (or shotgun or sub machine gun) isn't nearly as likely to do that and is just as effective for killing folks that need killing at close range.

I assume the officer is trained on it and knows that, but if folks start shooting, things tend to go wrong.

In the guys (very slim) defense, he looked surprised to see the dogs, they appear to be great danes, and he could have a crippling fear of dogs. I don't even mean a phobia; I used to be so afraid of dogs when I was younger that my legs would freeze up and feel like jelly.
Everything else is his fault, of course, but the whole thing is strange. I think most public services schedule a time/day to lock pets in for safe access to the property, (but that's probably the kind of change they hope to encourage with this video.)
The other thing that bothers me is why the wife didn't yell at the guy. Was she afraid for her safety? Suffering from a case of suburbanitis?

That old Suburban was apparently on the second floor. No wonder the building collapsed.

Actually, this is true, but it's also only one of the recall items that GM has issued Recalls for this year.

"It recalled 8,208 of its 2014 cars on May 7, for example, because they might have rear brakes on the front wheels."

"GM says it has informed regulators about two more recalls imminent but not yet announced. The latest batch includes safety belt, air bag, transmission and electrical issues in a range of midsize sedans, full-size crossovers and SUVs, and pickups."


GM's U.S. recalls this year

Below are General Motors' recall of vehicles in the U.S. since Jan. 1

Date, no. of U.S. vehicles, models affected, recall defect

- Jan. 13: 324,970 of the 2014 Chevrolet Silverado and 2014 GMC Sierra for overheated exhaust parts

- Feb. 7 and 25: 1,367,146 of the 2005-07 Chevrolet Cobalt, 2006-07 Chevrolet HHR, 2005-07 Pontiac G5, 2006-07 Pontiac Solstice, 2003-07 Saturn ION, 2007 Saturn Sky, 2007 Opel GT, 2007 Daewoo G2X for ignition switch

- Feb 20: 355 of the 2014 Buick Enclave, LaCrosse, Regal and Verano; 2014 Chevrolet Cruze, Impala, Malibu and Travers; 2014 GMC Acadia for transmission shift cable adjuster

- March 17: 63,903 of the 2013-14 Cadillac XTS for brake vacuum booster

- March 17: 303,013 of the 2009 Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana for airbag

- March 17: 1,178,407 of the 2008-13 Buick Enclave, 2008-13 Chevrolet Traverse, 2008-13 GMC Acadia, 2008-10 Saturn Outlook for airbag

- March 17: 656 of the Cadillac ELR for electronic brake control

- March 28: 823,788 of the 2008-11 Chevrolet HHR, 2008-10 Chevrolet Cobalt, 2008-10 Pontiac G5, 2008-10 Pontiac Solstice, 2008-10 Saturn Sky, 2008-10 Opel GT, 2008-09 Daewoo G2X for ignition switch

- March 28: 174,046 of the 2013-14 Chevrolet Cruze for front axle shaft

- March 28: 489, 936 of the 2014 Chevrolet Silverado, 2014 GMC Sierra, 2015 Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban, 2014 GMC Yukon and Yukon XL for oil cooler fitting.

- March 31: 1,340,447 of the 2004-06 Chevrolet Malibu and Malibu Maxx, 2004-06 Pontiac G6, 2004-07 Saturn Ion, 2008-09 Chevrolet Malibu, 2008-09 Pontiac G6, 2008-09 Saturn Aura, 2010 Cobalt, 2009-10 Chevrolet HHR for electric power steering

- April 9: 2,191,014 of the 2005-10 Chevrolet Cobalt, 2006-11 Chevrolet HHR, 2007-10 Pontiac G5, 2006-10 Pontiac Solstice, 2003-07 Saturn ION, 2007-10 Saturn Sky for ignition key cylinder

- April 24: 50,571 of the 2013 Cadillac SRX for acceleration lag

- April 19: 23,249 of the 2009-10 Pontiac Vibe (built by Toyota) for air bags

- April 24: 51 of the 2015 Chevrolet Silverado HD and 2014 GMC Sierra HD for diesel transfer pump

- April 29: 51,640 of the 2014 Chevrolet Traverse, 2014 GMC Acadia and 2014 Buick Enclave for inaccurate fuel gauge

- April 29: 56,214 of the 2007-08 Saturn Aura for shift cable

- May 7: 8,208 of the 2014 Chevrolet Malibu and 2104 Buick Lacrosse for brake rotors

- May 14: 111,889 of the 2005-07 Corvette for headlight low beams

- May 14: 19,225 of the 2014 Cadillac CTS for windshield wipers

- May 14: 140,067 of the 2014 Malibu for brake boost

- May 14: 2,440,524 of the 2004-12 Chevrolet Malibu, 2004-07 Malibu Maxx, 2005-10 Pontiac G6 and 2007-10 Saturn Aura for brake lamps

- May 14: 477 of the 2014 Chevrolet Silverado and 2015 Chevrolet Tahoe for steering tie-rod

- May 16: 1,402 of the 2015 Cadillac Escalade for passenger air bag

- May 19: 1,339,355 of the 2009-10 Saturn Outlook, 2009-14 Chevrolet Traverse, 2009-14 GMC Acadia and 2009-14 Buick Enclave for front seat belts

- May 19: 58 of the 2015 Chevrolet Silverado HD and 2015 GMC Sierra HD for loose fuse block

- May 19: 1,075,102 of the 2004-08 Chevrolet Malibu and 2005-08 Pontiac G6 for shift cable (expands April 29 Saturn Aura recall)

Total 18,666,842
( http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/05/20/gm-recalls-fine-goverment/9329481/ )

Lazy realtor, jackn' it

-ALERT: HOMEOWNER: This person is advertising your crappy suburban nightmare in the worst way possible!
*ban

Over the long term, the comparative levels of scarcity that would result from a complete hand gun and assault rifle ban would make it difficult for these weapons to play such a common role in violence amongst minorities.

But of course we can't ever ban these weapons because we need to have the option of starting a guerrilla war against the US government in suburban Cleveland - because that's the only way to get rid of tyranny!

I really wouldn't be able to pick Piers Morgan out of a line up. I wrote that first comment over a year ago in the immediate aftermath of the Newtown shooting and it was largely a response to the rhetoric pro-gun advocates were displaying all over my Facebook feed.

What I wrote is not at all an over-reaction to what I saw during that time.

Totally normal and sane friends of mine applauded a ten year old girl who shot and killed a home invader, enthusing that this is how America should be.

Totally normal and sane friends of mine waxed romantic about how concealing and carrying a weapon transforms a vanilla suburban dining experience into a potential battlefield. Whereas most people get lost in one of the many flat screen TVs at an Applebees, they spend their time sizing up potential adversaries and keep close tabs on every exit as they feel the reassuring bulge of their Glock at their side.

I totally agree that most of these guys will never end up needing to use their weapons in an adversarial situation, and I totally agree that these guys are responsible gun owners if responsible gun ownership is defined by a safe stewardship of the guns you acquire, but that is not the point that I'm trying to make.

The problem is that these sorts of people and the gun culture they have created has an enormous impact on the type of gun laws we pass. This wouldn't be a problem if they were coming from a place that wasn't obsessive and wasn't paranoid and wasn't delusional, but they are and this is unfortunate because it enables and accentuates much of the violence you lament in inner city culture.

My Suburban had three heaters in it... a battery, oil pan and something else... never looked where it went, block?

In Fairbanks, they have plugs available in some parking lots.

I live in Windsor, the Canadian city just across the river from Detroit... I've been witness to the sad decline of the city for my entire life, but it has recently reached just jaw-dropping proportions. Detroit is just an ugly city in a lot of ways and I think it must have been unpleasant to be in even at its height.

The people in the suburbs think they've escaped, but the reverse is more likely to be true in the long run as gas just keeps getting more expensive. That's why the M-1 light rail line is a good idea: precisely because transportation infrastructure for a focused, coherent urban core is more viable over the long term than continuing to build out a sprawling suburban road network that no one will be able to afford to use in a world where gas costs $10 or $20 a gallon. The suburbs will fail in their turn, and everyone who doesn't go elsewhere will move back into the city core where at least you won't spend half your income just travelling back and forth to get your groceries. (Once they get around to building any grocery stores in the city, that is.)

Anyone interested in Charlie LeDuff should check out his book:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15811520-detroit

Plant that shit! But seriously, food was first commercially grown to pay workers, food WAS the money. If everyone can come together and grow food everywhere like he wants, then the suburban middle-class may actually come back.

My personal experience,

Long drives (1,000km+), 6 and 6 in clear visibility (daylight, nothing along roadside) situations, 5 and 8 for all other situations, massive difference (reduction) in fatigue.

Short / suburban / city / off-road, 3 and 8 for responsiveness.

Tried many styles, what works for you may not work for others and what works for 1 car may not work for another. Take into account comfort, arm length, strength requirements (steering wheel sensitivity / responsiveness)

If anyone wants to read more about Stephen and LGBTQIA youth, here is the NYT article.

The New York Time's

Generation LGBTQIA

By MICHAEL SCHULMAN

Published: January 10, 2013

STEPHEN IRA, a junior at Sarah Lawrence College, uploaded a video last March on We Happy Trans, a site that shares "positive perspectives" on being transgender.

In the breakneck six-and-a-half-minute monologue - hair tousled, sitting in a wood-paneled dorm room - Stephen exuberantly declared himself "a queer, a nerd fighter, a writer, an artist and a guy who needs a haircut," and held forth on everything from his style icons (Truman Capote and "any male-identified person who wears thigh-highs or garters") to his toy zebra.

Because Stephen, who was born Kathlyn, is the 21-year-old child of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, the video went viral, garnering nearly half a million views. But that was not the only reason for its appeal. With its adrenalized, freewheeling eloquence, the video seemed like a battle cry for a new generation of post-gay gender activists, for whom Stephen represents a rare public face.

Armed with the millennial generation's defining traits - Web savvy, boundless confidence and social networks that extend online and off - Stephen and his peers are forging a political identity all their own, often at odds with mainstream gay culture.

If the gay-rights movement today seems to revolve around same-sex marriage, this generation is seeking something more radical: an upending of gender roles beyond the binary of male/female. The core question isn't whom they love, but who they are - that is, identity as distinct from sexual orientation.

But what to call this movement? Whereas "gay and lesbian" was once used to lump together various sexual minorities - and more recently "L.G.B.T." to include bisexual and transgender - the new vanguard wants a broader, more inclusive abbreviation. "Youth today do not define themselves on the spectrum of L.G.B.T.," said Shane Windmeyer, a founder of Campus Pride, a national student advocacy group based in Charlotte, N.C.

Part of the solution has been to add more letters, and in recent years the post-post-post-gay-rights banner has gotten significantly longer, some might say unwieldy. The emerging rubric is "L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," which stands for different things, depending on whom you ask.

"Q" can mean "questioning" or "queer," an umbrella term itself, formerly derogatory before it was appropriated by gay activists in the 1990s. "I" is for "intersex," someone whose anatomy is not exclusively male or female. And "A" stands for "ally" (a friend of the cause) or "asexual," characterized by the absence of sexual attraction.

It may be a mouthful, but it's catching on, especially on liberal-arts campuses.

The University of Missouri, Kansas City, for example, has an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Resource Center that, among other things, helps student locate "gender-neutral" restrooms on campus. Vassar College offers an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Discussion Group on Thursday afternoons. Lehigh University will be hosting its second annual L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Intercollegiate Conference next month, followed by a Queer Prom. Amherst College even has an L.G.B.T.Q.Q.I.A.A. center, where every group gets its own letter.

The term is also gaining traction on social media sites like Twitter and Tumblr, where posts tagged with "lgbtqia" suggest a younger, more progressive outlook than posts that are merely labeled "lgbt."

"There's a very different generation of people coming of age, with completely different conceptions of gender and sexuality," said Jack Halberstam (formerly Judith), a transgender professor at the University of Southern California and the author, most recently, of "Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal."

"When you see terms like L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," Professor Halberstam added, "it's because people are seeing all the things that fall out of the binary, and demanding that a name come into being."

And with a plethora of ever-expanding categories like "genderqueer" and "androgyne" to choose from, each with an online subculture, piecing together a gender identity can be as D.I.Y. as making a Pinterest board.

BUT sometimes L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. is not enough. At the University of Pennsylvania last fall, eight freshmen united in the frustration that no campus group represented them.

Sure, Penn already had some two dozen gay student groups, including Queer People of Color, Lambda Alliance and J-Bagel, which bills itself as the university's "Jewish L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Community." But none focused on gender identity (the closest, Trans Penn, mostly catered to faculty members and graduate students).

Richard Parsons, an 18-year-old transgender male, discovered that when he attended a student mixer called the Gay Affair, sponsored by Penn's L.G.B.T. Center. "I left thoroughly disappointed," said Richard, a garrulous freshman with close-cropped hair, wire-framed glasses and preppy clothes, who added, "This is the L.G.B.T. Center, and it's all gay guys."

Through Facebook, Richard and others started a group called Penn Non-Cis, which is short for "non-cisgender." For those not fluent in gender-studies speak, "cis" means "on the same side as" and "cisgender" denotes someone whose gender identity matches his or her biology, which describes most of the student body. The group seeks to represent everyone else. "This is a freshman uprising," Richard said.

On a brisk Tuesday night in November, about 40 students crowded into the L.G.B.T. Center, a converted 19th-century carriage house, for the group's inaugural open mike. The organizers had lured students by handing out fliers on campus while barking: "Free condoms! Free ChapStick!"

"There's a really vibrant L.G.B.T. scene," Kate Campbell, one of the M.C.'s, began. "However, that mostly encompasses the L.G.B. and not too much of the T. So we're aiming to change that."

Students read poems and diary entries, and sang guitar ballads. Then Britt Gilbert - a punky-looking freshman with a blond bob, chunky glasses and a rock band T-shirt - took the stage. She wanted to talk about the concept of "bi-gender."

"Does anyone want to share what they think it is?"

Silence.

She explained that being bi-gender is like manifesting both masculine and feminine personas, almost as if one had a "detachable penis." "Some days I wake up and think, 'Why am I in this body?' " she said. "Most days I wake up and think, 'What was I thinking yesterday?' 

"Britt's grunginess belies a warm matter-of-factness, at least when describing her journey. As she elaborated afterward, she first heard the term "bi-gender" from Kate, who found it on Tumblr. The two met at freshman orientation and bonded. In high school, Kate identified as "agender" and used the singular pronoun "they"; she now sees her gender as an "amorphous blob."

By contrast, Britt's evolution was more linear. She grew up in suburban Pennsylvania and never took to gender norms. As a child, she worshiped Cher and thought boy bands were icky. Playing video games, she dreaded having to choose male or female avatars.

In middle school, she started calling herself bisexual and dated boys. By 10th grade, she had come out as a lesbian. Her parents thought it was a phase - until she brought home a girlfriend, Ash. But she still wasn't settled.

"While I definitely knew that I liked girls, I didn't know that I was one," Britt said. Sometimes she would leave the house in a dress and feel uncomfortable, as if she were wearing a Halloween costume. Other days, she felt fine. She wasn't "trapped in the wrong body," as the cliché has it - she just didn't know which body she wanted.

When Kate told her about the term "bi-gender," it clicked instantly. "I knew what it was, before I knew what it was," Britt said, adding that it is more fluid than "transgender" but less vague than "genderqueer" - a catchall term for nontraditional gender identities.

At first, the only person she told was Ash, who responded, "It took you this long to figure it out?" For others, the concept was not so easy to grasp. Coming out as a lesbian had been relatively simple, Britt said, "since people know what that is." But when she got to Penn, she was relieved to find a small community of freshmen who had gone through similar awakenings.

Among them was Richard Parsons, the group's most politically lucid member. Raised female, Richard grew up in Orlando, Fla., and realized he was transgender in high school. One summer, he wanted to room with a transgender friend at camp, but his mother objected. "She's like, 'Well, if you say that he's a guy, then I don't want you rooming with a guy,' " he recalled. "We were in a car and I basically blurted out, 'I think I might be a guy, too!' "

After much door-slamming and tears, Richard and his mother reconciled. But when she asked what to call him, he had no idea. He chose "Richard" on a whim, and later added a middle name, Matthew, because it means "gift of God."

By the time he got to Penn, he had been binding his breasts for more than two years and had developed back pain. At the open mike, he told a harrowing story about visiting the university health center for numbness and having a panic attack when he was escorted into a women's changing room.

Nevertheless, he praised the university for offering gender-neutral housing. The college's medical program also covers sexual reassignment surgery, which, he added, "has heavily influenced my decision to probably go under the Penn insurance plan next year."

PENN has not always been so forward-thinking; a decade ago, the L.G.B.T. Center (nestled amid fraternity houses) was barely used. But in 2010, the university began reaching out to applicants whose essays raised gay themes. Last year, the gay newsmagazine The Advocate ranked Penn among the top 10 trans-friendly universities, alongside liberal standbys like New York University.

More and more colleges, mostly in the Northeast, are catering to gender-nonconforming students. According to a survey by Campus Pride, at least 203 campuses now allow transgender students to room with their preferred gender; 49 have a process to change one's name and gender in university records; and 57 cover hormone therapy. In December, the University of Iowa became the first to add a "transgender" checkbox to its college application.

"I wrote about an experience I had with a drag queen as my application essay for all the Ivy Leagues I applied to," said Santiago Cortes, one of the Penn students. "And I got into a few of the Ivy Leagues - Dartmouth, Columbia and Penn. Strangely not Brown.

"But even these measures cannot keep pace with the demands of incoming students, who are challenging the curriculum much as gay activists did in the '80s and '90s. Rather than protest the lack of gay studies classes, they are critiquing existing ones for being too narrow.

Several members of Penn Non-Cis had been complaining among themselves about a writing seminar they were taking called "Beyond 'Will & Grace,' " which examined gay characters on shows like "Ellen," "Glee" and "Modern Family." The professor, Gail Shister, who is a lesbian, had criticized several students for using "L.G.B.T.Q." in their essays, saying it was clunky, and proposed using "queer" instead. Some students found the suggestion offensive, including Britt Gilbert, who described Ms. Shister as "unaccepting of things that she doesn't understand."

Ms. Shister, reached by phone, said the criticism was strictly grammatical. "I am all about economy of expression," she said. "L.G.B.T.Q. doesn't exactly flow off the tongue. So I tell the students, 'Don't put in an acronym with five or six letters.' "

One thing is clear. Ms. Shister, who is 60 and in 1979 became The Philadelphia Inquirer's first female sportswriter, is of a different generation, a fact she acknowledges freely, even gratefully. "Frankly, I'm both proud and envious that these young people are growing up in an age where they're free to love who they want," she said.

If history is any guide, the age gap won't be so easy to overcome. As liberated gay men in the 1970s once baffled their pre-Stonewall forebears, the new gender outlaws, to borrow a phrase from the transgender writer Kate Bornstein, may soon be running ideological circles around their elders.

Still, the alphabet soup of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. may be difficult to sustain. "In the next 10 or 20 years, the various categories heaped under the umbrella of L.G.B.T. will become quite quotidian," Professor Halberstam said.

Even at the open mike, as students picked at potato chips and pineapple slices, the bounds of identity politics were spilling over and becoming blurry.

At one point, Santiago, a curly-haired freshman from Colombia, stood before the crowd. He and a friend had been pondering the limits of what he calls "L.G.B.T.Q. plus."

"Why do only certain letters get to be in the full acronym?" he asked.

Then he rattled off a list of gender identities, many culled from Wikipedia. "We have our lesbians, our gays," he said, before adding, "bisexual, transsexual, queer, homosexual, asexual." He took a breath and continued. "Pansexual. Omnisexual. Trisexual. Agender. Bi-gender. Third gender. Transgender. Transvestite. Intersexual. Two-spirit. Hijra. Polyamorous."

By now, the list had turned into free verse. He ended: "Undecided. Questioning. Other. Human."

The room burst into applause.

Correction: January 10, 2013, Thursday

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An earlier version of this article and a picture caption referred incorrectly to a Sarah Lawrence College student who uploaded a video online about being transgender. He says he is Stephen Ira, not Stephen Ira Beatty.

Source NYT

Fair Use

Sigh, for context:

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/racist-rants-mar-suburban-bus-ride-20121121-29p2r.html?rand=1353524296205

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/i-realised-he-wasnt-kidding--i-stopped-laughing-20121122-29r48.html

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/why-so-few-spoke-up-for-a-woman-who-was-abused-on-a-city-bus-20121121-29qc4.html

Scum. Sub-human scum.