Washington’s Republican Establishment is largely filled with the men and ideas of the eighties. They are still fighting with Ronald Reagan’s playbook, but have ironically abandoned most of Reagan’s principles.
“…seriously considering measures backed by key law enforcement leaders that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors”
“…it is simply indisputable that most perpetrators of school shootings and similar mass murders in our modern era were either on – or just recently coming off of – psychiatric medications”
A browser extension is a small script that can be installed to add additional functionality to your browsing experience. They can do amazing things, or simply quite useful things. Some extensions can enhance productivity, especially if you update blogs frequently, work in graphic design, or develop web pages. There are hundreds available, and many support multiple platforms (Win, Mac, Linux) and multiple browsers.
Mozilla’s FireFox was one of the first browsers to support extensions, and today Safari 5x, Google Chrome, Opera, and I understand even Internet Explorer has jumped on the bandwagon, although many developers still refuse to support IE.
Each browser will have a link in the menu, usually found in preferences to search an extension gallery. There may be multiple instances of extensions from different developers with similar functions. If you’d like to try out several with similar functions, I recommend disabling the first before trying out a second (or a third) similar extension.
The following lists the extensions that I’ve been using with great success in Safari/Mac OSX. Many of them are also available for other browsers, or extensions with similar functionality are available.
The mother-ship on where to find extensions to accentuate your browsing experience. You can install directly from this page, or download a <dot>safariextz file from a developer’s site. Double-click the file and it automagically installs.
My comments on the above extensions at the jump (read more) except for Ultimate Status Bar (you need this), I couldn’t find a direct link, still available in the Safari Extensions gallery, and EverNote, which deserves a topic of it’s own.
Connecticut has strong gun laws that help combat the illegal gun market, prevent the sale of most guns without background checks and reduce risks to children, according to the Brady Campaign. In the organization’s 2009 state scorecards released for all 50 states, Connecticut … has the nation’s fourth strongest gun laws.
“Connecticut has done more than most states to combat illegal guns and has worked to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. In fact, Connecticut has a one-of-a-kind law that allows a judge to remove guns from people who have been determined to be a threat to themselves or others,” said Ron Pinciaro, President of CT Against Gun Violence
After the Sandy Hook massacre, liberals everywhere seem to be jumping back on the Assault Weapons Ban bandwagon again. This is an extreme reaction, and infringes upon all of our Constitutional rights. We aren’t even absolutely sure if a Bushmaster .223 AR15 was even used, initial reports stated that it was found in the trunk of the shooter’s mother’s car.
By Friday afternoon, Democrats were calling to reinstate the AWB, and most would think that Feinstein is getting ready to introduce legislation because of this tragic incident. They would be wrong, Feinstein was already preparing to reintroduce the AWB, the above piece was published Nov 6, 2012 (election day)
This link addresses some facts about what is, and what is not an assault weapon. Simply put, an assault weapon is military grade capable of multiple bursts at minimum, and fully automatic machine-gun fire for most. A civilian AR15 is not capable of being used in this manner, even if someone tried to modify one, it may not work as expected.
There is already an assault weapons ban in place, and it’s been there since 1934 after Al Capone’s hey-days and the rampant use of Thompson (Tommy machine guns) full automatics by criminal gangs.
“… children and their parents don’t give much thought to safety at the community’s lone school — mostly because some of the teachers are carrying concealed weapons. In the remote area, the nearest sheriff’s office is 30 minutes away, and people tend to know — and trust — one another. So the school board voted to let teachers bring guns to school.
“We don’t have money for a security guard, but this is a better solution,” Superintendent David Thweatt said. “A shooter could take out a guard or officer with a visible, holstered weapon, but our teachers have master’s degrees, are older and have had extensive training. And their guns are hidden. We can protect our children.”
~ a collection of links I found interesting lately ~
I’ve had a bit of a back-up since the disappointing election results. I’ll try to get back on my regular irregular schedule soon, in the meantime, here are a few post-election links to review.
I initially posted this at maclectic/Forums/politics on Jan 29, 2010. Barack Obama had just completed his first year, and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid set the stage in Congress:
Yesterday the Senate approved raising the debt ceiling another 1.9 Trillion across a party-line vote. Had it not passed, the fall-back plan was to approve the 635 Billion already approved by the House. Naturally, raising the ceiling again wouldn’t look good next fall right before the mid-term elections, so our fearless Senate simply doubled down on the ceiling.
Following WWI, two major and opposing “schools” of economics appeared.
The first was known at the time as “classic liberalism” today we know it as the Austrian School. Ludwig Von Mises and F.A Hayek were major proponents. The prime tenets of this economic theory was that individuals, and their contributions can create wealth and add value to society more efficiently with the least amount of government interference and control. The Chicago School which Milton Freidman spear-headed is an off-shoot in a sense of the Austrian School of thought. Today in the US at least, most folks who align with this theory are generally regarded as conservatives in an economic sense. In parts of Europe and academia they are still known as “classic liberals” which should not be confused with the progressive movement.
Second, at about the same time, John Maynard Keynes was developing his progressive economic theories in London. He believed that money or wealth would always be in a constant fixed supply, and that governments could control markets by controlling the money supply. This theory punished producers with excessive taxes, a policy which created a self-fulfilling prophecy, and producers found ways to reduce their output, since punitive taxes also reduced individual incentive to create and produce goods and services.
Keynesian Economics also held that governments could artificially stimulate an economy by pumping up the money supply, also known as printing money. Governments also used such gimmicks to deflate the value of their currency in order to pay international debts at lower than agreed to rates. This is known as monetizing debt. The US, England and Germany all used the Keynesian theory to print money to prop up their respective economies after the Great Depression (in Germany’s case beforehand). The Weimar Republic printed so much currency in order to pay off punitive WWI war-debts that the government finally collapsed which led to the rise of the Third Reich.
Sadly, the Keynesian School was known as gospel in most governments in the West for much of the 20th century with a few exceptions. It is making a strong come-back today. We are monetizing our debt, something that the Chinese and Arabs are not looking fondly upon, since they now hold such a large part of it.
Today, our government is creating the most forceful shift to failed Keynesian theories since the days of FDR and his progressive vision which we are all still paying for today. Governments can not create wealth, they can only confiscate it regardless of the amount of currency they are printing.
It still takes individuals and producers willing to risk, to create and innovate to create wealth, it is not a static target. We should go back to creating an environment which rewards instead of demonizing the risk-takers, and the producers of the world. We will all be richer for it in the long run.
I’m not a big fan of hip-hop, or rap as we used to call it. This is a very entertaining rap production of an imagined meeting of Keynes and Hayek during current times. It is very well produced, and brings into contrast the two major economic schools of thought in a creative way. I hope you enjoy it.
In Fear the Boom and Bust, John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek, two of the great economists of the 20th century, come back to life to attend an economics conference on the economic crisis. Before the conference begins, and at the insistence of Lord Keynes, they go out for a night on the town and sing about why there’s a “boom and bust” cycle in modern economies and good reason to fear it.
About 6:30 running time with an additional 60 seconds of credits.
Hit the read more for lyrics, and additional links.
