Slog Comments
Morning News: Birthday Strippers, Funeral Heroes, and Musical Bullies
2
The photos of Pistorious in court look super dramatic. Apparently South African courtrooms have the lighting of L&O sets.
3
RE: Pistorius:
NPR reported this morning that the prosecution has been sloppy and Pistorius' defense took them apart. The neighbor who hear the fighting lives too far away to have heard them. The prosecution also claimed Pistorius had steroids, which the defense found was also inaccurate.
The whole point of defense lawyers is to ensure the prosecution doesn't do a half-assed, sloppy job and to call them on it when they do. And it sounds like so far, sloppiness is exactly what the prosecution is doing. Wake up fuckers. Do your work properly.
NPR reported this morning that the prosecution has been sloppy and Pistorius' defense took them apart. The neighbor who hear the fighting lives too far away to have heard them. The prosecution also claimed Pistorius had steroids, which the defense found was also inaccurate.
The whole point of defense lawyers is to ensure the prosecution doesn't do a half-assed, sloppy job and to call them on it when they do. And it sounds like so far, sloppiness is exactly what the prosecution is doing. Wake up fuckers. Do your work properly.
4
Doing background checks on a state-by-state basis, without any way to coordinate and/or share information between states or with the feds is pointless. What's to stop an individual from crossing state lines to buy guns in a state where they have no criminal record and then hauling them back to their home state where they do, if there's no national system in-place to track weapons, or to verify the eligibility of purchasers who move between states?
This isn't a solution: it's at-best a stalling tactic, and at-worst a ploy to make the system even less effective than it probably is already.
This isn't a solution: it's at-best a stalling tactic, and at-worst a ploy to make the system even less effective than it probably is already.
5
If you want to eliminate, violate, or ignore a constitutional amendment without going through the legislative process to do so, please consider what ramifications that could have when applied to the first, fourth, and fifth amendments, among others.
Second amendment humpers
If you want to eliminate, violate, or ignore a constitutional amendment without going through the legislative process to do so, please consider what ramifications that could have when applied to the first, fourth, and fifth amendments, among others.
6
Once more, as there is a never-ending flow of misinformation and disinformation out there, this is a brief synopsis of the cause behind the global economic meltdown, and the continuing deleveraging against us. All this information is public domain and easily accessible.
The chief two main, interlocking causes are ultra-leveraging and the largest insurance swindle in human history.
Please recall, AIG had to be bailed out or Hank Paulson and the Bush (and later Obama) administration claimed everything would collapse.
Why did AIG have to be bailed out? Because they sold $460 billion of (unregulated) insurance, with the potential payout of from $20 trillion to over $40 trillion --- none of which monies they had on hand, naturally!
Now who were to receive those payouts? JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Credit Suisse FB, etc., etc., etc., and various and sundry hedge funds.
Take for instance John Paulson and his hedge fund, which got together with Goldman Sachs and contrived various fraudulent financial instruments, CDOs, full of the crappiest loans possible, designed to fail, for which Paulson, and Goldman Sachs, purchased tons of unregulated insurance from AIG (credit default swaps) at $1.4 million apiece, with a payout of $100 million apiece, when the CDO failed (or a credit event occurred). The example investigated by the SEC, which fined Goldman Sachs a paltry amount for their financial fraud, was the Abacus CDO.
This was how Paulson "earned" that $3.4 billion --- financial fraud is financial fraud: if some dastardly fellow designed and inserted a "loophole" to make murder legal during the month of May, then proceeded to murder all the people in his neighborhood, that wouldn't be moral or right, no matter how "legal" the newsies and corrupt politicians claimed it to be.
So to this was all contrived and designed financial fraud. That was exactly how the people at Magnetar Capital made billions, while 96% of their deals went bad.
And many, many other hedge funds, banksters, derivatives dealers and traders, etc., profited from this mass financial fraud.
The ultra-leveraging? That was how they pumped up all those credit derivatives --- or securities based upon debt --- but in the past decade they sold credit derivatives, based upon credit derivatives, based upon credit derivatives . . . ., based upon debt. The pyramidal layers were almost endless.
And that was how the various insurance swindles were realized, all those phony layers of leveraging, or ultra-leveraging, had to fail --- were designed to fail --- and the unregulated insurance (or loopholes by design) "legally" had to be paid out, which is where the Federal Reserve and US Treasury came into the picture.
Please understand, that an unlimited amount of unregulated insurance --- or an unlimited number of credit default swaps --- can be purchased by entities having no direct connection to the financial instrument (such as the Abacus CDO) in play --- similar to someone having no connection to your house, purchasing thousands of insurance policies against it --- then burning it down had receiving a colossal fortune from the insurance companies --- from the destruction of your home!
Add to that the use of that ultra-leveraging for massive speculation on energy/oil, food commodities, various other precious metals, etc., ad infinitum, and the market churn, and transfer of wealth, became historically unprecedented: a gargantuan replay of the Great Crash and Great Depression, with far longer and wider-ranging outcomes.
If you don't know what caused the economic meltdown by this time, and are still uncertain of who should be in jail, or executed, consider yourself a complete and total moron!
http://www.occ.gov/publications/publicat…
More...
The Act of Predation
Once more, as there is a never-ending flow of misinformation and disinformation out there, this is a brief synopsis of the cause behind the global economic meltdown, and the continuing deleveraging against us. All this information is public domain and easily accessible.
The chief two main, interlocking causes are ultra-leveraging and the largest insurance swindle in human history.
Please recall, AIG had to be bailed out or Hank Paulson and the Bush (and later Obama) administration claimed everything would collapse.
Why did AIG have to be bailed out? Because they sold $460 billion of (unregulated) insurance, with the potential payout of from $20 trillion to over $40 trillion --- none of which monies they had on hand, naturally!
Now who were to receive those payouts? JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Credit Suisse FB, etc., etc., etc., and various and sundry hedge funds.
Take for instance John Paulson and his hedge fund, which got together with Goldman Sachs and contrived various fraudulent financial instruments, CDOs, full of the crappiest loans possible, designed to fail, for which Paulson, and Goldman Sachs, purchased tons of unregulated insurance from AIG (credit default swaps) at $1.4 million apiece, with a payout of $100 million apiece, when the CDO failed (or a credit event occurred). The example investigated by the SEC, which fined Goldman Sachs a paltry amount for their financial fraud, was the Abacus CDO.
This was how Paulson "earned" that $3.4 billion --- financial fraud is financial fraud: if some dastardly fellow designed and inserted a "loophole" to make murder legal during the month of May, then proceeded to murder all the people in his neighborhood, that wouldn't be moral or right, no matter how "legal" the newsies and corrupt politicians claimed it to be.
So to this was all contrived and designed financial fraud. That was exactly how the people at Magnetar Capital made billions, while 96% of their deals went bad.
And many, many other hedge funds, banksters, derivatives dealers and traders, etc., profited from this mass financial fraud.
The ultra-leveraging? That was how they pumped up all those credit derivatives --- or securities based upon debt --- but in the past decade they sold credit derivatives, based upon credit derivatives, based upon credit derivatives . . . ., based upon debt. The pyramidal layers were almost endless.
And that was how the various insurance swindles were realized, all those phony layers of leveraging, or ultra-leveraging, had to fail --- were designed to fail --- and the unregulated insurance (or loopholes by design) "legally" had to be paid out, which is where the Federal Reserve and US Treasury came into the picture.
Please understand, that an unlimited amount of unregulated insurance --- or an unlimited number of credit default swaps --- can be purchased by entities having no direct connection to the financial instrument (such as the Abacus CDO) in play --- similar to someone having no connection to your house, purchasing thousands of insurance policies against it --- then burning it down had receiving a colossal fortune from the insurance companies --- from the destruction of your home!
Add to that the use of that ultra-leveraging for massive speculation on energy/oil, food commodities, various other precious metals, etc., ad infinitum, and the market churn, and transfer of wealth, became historically unprecedented: a gargantuan replay of the Great Crash and Great Depression, with far longer and wider-ranging outcomes.
If you don't know what caused the economic meltdown by this time, and are still uncertain of who should be in jail, or executed, consider yourself a complete and total moron!
http://www.occ.gov/publications/publicat…
7
Has anyone been charged yet with the statutes of the Vulnerable User Bill?
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/documents/billdoc…
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/documents/billdoc…
8
@6: You promised you wouldn't be doing more of your copy + paste off-topic rants. Knock it off.
As COMTE explained, having a piecemeal system in place guarantees it will be ineffective, and if it's ineffective, it's unnecessarily burdensome as it's a waste to begin with. I also fail to understand how having a database of the owners of guns is inherently unconstitutional. If gun owners are the upstanding individuals they profess to be, then they should have no problem with this.
But many Republicans believe the checks would be ineffective, unconstitutional and unnecessarily burdensome on law-abiding gun owners.
As COMTE explained, having a piecemeal system in place guarantees it will be ineffective, and if it's ineffective, it's unnecessarily burdensome as it's a waste to begin with. I also fail to understand how having a database of the owners of guns is inherently unconstitutional. If gun owners are the upstanding individuals they profess to be, then they should have no problem with this.
9
@8: I think one could argue that a national database is a violation of privacy. I mean, when do we really accept the "if you have nothing to hide..." argument elsewhere? We certainly do not accept this argument when it comes to speech or other activities.
That being said, I personally do not think it would be necessarily a violation of privacy. Well, unless one actually believe the government wants to round up all the guns in the near future. The government already knows what car you drive, how much you make, what you buy, where you work, etc.
But a much more effective situation would be tracking the guns at the retail level. About 60% of illegal guns in this country come from 1% of the dealers. We need to give the ATF its teeth back and stop this flow of illegal guns. Illegal handguns used in street crimes is the true gun problem in America, even though the solutions are not quick or glamorous.
That being said, I personally do not think it would be necessarily a violation of privacy. Well, unless one actually believe the government wants to round up all the guns in the near future. The government already knows what car you drive, how much you make, what you buy, where you work, etc.
But a much more effective situation would be tracking the guns at the retail level. About 60% of illegal guns in this country come from 1% of the dealers. We need to give the ATF its teeth back and stop this flow of illegal guns. Illegal handguns used in street crimes is the true gun problem in America, even though the solutions are not quick or glamorous.
10
If one objects to a national database, why accept a statewide database? If one objects to a statewide database, why accept one at the county level? And so on.
11
"Detectives don't know what prompted 20-year-old Ali Syed, an unemployed student living at his parents' home, to go on a shooting rampage yesterday, killing three people before turning his gun on himself."
I'm not saying I'm going to shoot people or myself, but I can see the reason someone would go on a shooting rampage before shooting themselves. I hate most of you motherfuckers, and if I'm going out, I'm taking some of you with me. That is all. :)
I'm not saying I'm going to shoot people or myself, but I can see the reason someone would go on a shooting rampage before shooting themselves. I hate most of you motherfuckers, and if I'm going out, I'm taking some of you with me. That is all. :)
12
The poor woman who hired the strippers for the bowling alley birthday party of her 16 year old son is only 33 years old. So, she had this son when she was 17. At least she's trying.
15
@9: HIPAA is a national system that only approved people have access to, includes oversight and, in the case of an information breach, proper channels to asses and mitigate damage. I assume a handgun list would be similar in structure. Law enforcement would presumably be the only ones that could access that handgun list.
That aside, I agree with your points. Having to use the "if you're not a criminal, you have nothing to hide" defense leaves a bad taste in my mouth too, but I personally prefer to trust government with that information over trading the lives of children. I realize that's an unfair characterization, but I hope that gets my mindset across.
That aside, I agree with your points. Having to use the "if you're not a criminal, you have nothing to hide" defense leaves a bad taste in my mouth too, but I personally prefer to trust government with that information over trading the lives of children. I realize that's an unfair characterization, but I hope that gets my mindset across.
16
@9,
We're very steadily accumulating a national database of genetic information, initially culled from violent criminals, then expanded to include criminals implicated in non-violent crime. The latter is how Mia Zapata's killer was finally brought to justice. If that's not a violation of privacy, then how is a national database of gun owners any worse? How is a national database of gun owners worse than giving everyone a Social Security number?
We're very steadily accumulating a national database of genetic information, initially culled from violent criminals, then expanded to include criminals implicated in non-violent crime. The latter is how Mia Zapata's killer was finally brought to justice. If that's not a violation of privacy, then how is a national database of gun owners any worse? How is a national database of gun owners worse than giving everyone a Social Security number?
17
@15
You have no idea what you are talking about. HIPAA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. HIPAA is not a database, rather it prevents the release of information from a hospital database except to those directly involved in the patients care as needed. HIPAA specifically protects an individuals medical privacy. Also mental health and substance abuse information has a 2nd level of privacy above what HIPAA provides for, anything that has to do with mental health is protected from release.
@4
We already have a national background check system called NICS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_In…
NICS shows if a person is prohibited from possessing a firearm as outlined in The Gun Control Act of 1968 or the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993
Also crossing state lines to purchase a firearm from an unlicensed individual is already illegal under federal law. Only rifles and shotguns may be purchased out of state and must then be purchased from a Federally licensed dealer after completing an NICS check.
"Federal law strictly prohibits the transfer or receipt of any firearm to a non-resident by a non-licensee... Rifles and shotguns are treated somewhat differently from handguns, and federal law does not prevent a qualified citizen who resides in another state from purchasing a rifle or shotgun in a face-to-face transaction with a federally licensed firearms dealer outside his state if: the purchase would be legal in both states, and if the regulatory requirements of both states are complied with. 18 USC 922 (b)(3)"
You have no idea what you are talking about. HIPAA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. HIPAA is not a database, rather it prevents the release of information from a hospital database except to those directly involved in the patients care as needed. HIPAA specifically protects an individuals medical privacy. Also mental health and substance abuse information has a 2nd level of privacy above what HIPAA provides for, anything that has to do with mental health is protected from release.
@4
We already have a national background check system called NICS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_In…
NICS shows if a person is prohibited from possessing a firearm as outlined in The Gun Control Act of 1968 or the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993
Also crossing state lines to purchase a firearm from an unlicensed individual is already illegal under federal law. Only rifles and shotguns may be purchased out of state and must then be purchased from a Federally licensed dealer after completing an NICS check.
"Federal law strictly prohibits the transfer or receipt of any firearm to a non-resident by a non-licensee... Rifles and shotguns are treated somewhat differently from handguns, and federal law does not prevent a qualified citizen who resides in another state from purchasing a rifle or shotgun in a face-to-face transaction with a federally licensed firearms dealer outside his state if: the purchase would be legal in both states, and if the regulatory requirements of both states are complied with. 18 USC 922 (b)(3)"
18
@17: You're right, I don't work in the healthcare field, so I don't have an intimate knowledge of the procedures. I was pointing to that system as one that has a robust set of rules regarding restricted access and release of personal information, which a gun registry would need. I didn't refer to it as a database, but with my choice of wording and what I was replying to, I can see how you'd get that impression.
The systems and laws you reference sound great, if it weren't for the glaring facts that they're inexplicably not applicable at gun shows, and currently unenforceable by the ATF. I'm sure Cthulu or one of your other regular nemeses will be here to articulate the issue with you eventually. Personally, I hold you in too low regard to bother geting into a discussion with you.
The systems and laws you reference sound great, if it weren't for the glaring facts that they're inexplicably not applicable at gun shows, and currently unenforceable by the ATF. I'm sure Cthulu or one of your other regular nemeses will be here to articulate the issue with you eventually. Personally, I hold you in too low regard to bother geting into a discussion with you.
19
If we're going to have a database of gun owners, we shouldn't stop there.
Everyone should have their DNA, fingerprints, blood type, and all other personal relevant info on file for the government.
Everything that you do, everything you say, everything you produce... it should all be recorded and filed in your record and available in an instant for the government's use.
That way, every time a crime is committed they can run all of that through their database, to see if you are in any way connected, so they can get to you if they want to.
For national security, of course.
If you have nothing to hide, then what are you worried about?
Everyone should have their DNA, fingerprints, blood type, and all other personal relevant info on file for the government.
Everything that you do, everything you say, everything you produce... it should all be recorded and filed in your record and available in an instant for the government's use.
That way, every time a crime is committed they can run all of that through their database, to see if you are in any way connected, so they can get to you if they want to.
For national security, of course.
If you have nothing to hide, then what are you worried about?
20
@16: My god, why did you not even finish reading what I wrote?
The entire second part of my post is about how since the government already knows much more personal stuff about you, a gun database would not be any worse.
At least finish reading the post before you respond, because it makes you look like a dumbass.
The entire second part of my post is about how since the government already knows much more personal stuff about you, a gun database would not be any worse.
At least finish reading the post before you respond, because it makes you look like a dumbass.
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