Regional parliament legislators in Catalonia have voted back into office a president who has promised to stage a hugely controversial referendum on independence from Spain. Artur Mas, head of the Convergence and Union group, was re-elected president Friday in a 71-63 vote.
Mas called early elections in November having proposed the referendum after Spain rejected demands to grant the region special fiscal powers. But his party did worse than expected in the election and was left needing a provisional partnership agreement with Catalonias pro-independence Republican Left.
Spains national government says any referendum proposing a change in the regions status within Spain would be illegal and unconstitutional.
Polls show Catalan residents are evenly divided over independence, but a majority opposes it if it means exiting the European Union.
Europe was mostly united under Rome. Then it fell apart and spent the next fifteen hundred years, more or less, coming kinda sorta back together. Now it's going the way of Rome. Again.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/22/2012 00:00 ||
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[NBC Politics.NBC News] National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre blamed Hollywood, video games music, the courts and more on Friday for creating a culture of violence in the United States. Everybody's pretty much forgotten the pair of dorks that showed up at Columbine dressed like they were in The Matrix a few years ago. That was back in prehistory, of course. The people they killed are fossilized by now.
"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," he said at a Washington press event, adding, "With all the money in the federal budget can't we afford to put a police officer in every single school?" I'm not sure where the solution is, but fifty years ago when I was in school we didn't need armed guards. But that was a more innocent age... Oh. Wait. Our parents fought the Second World War. What've we done different since they were around?
LaPierre made his lengthy statement to the press one week after the shooting that killed 20 children and six adults at a school in Newtown, Conn. Protesters twice interrupted LaPierre, who will appear this Sunday exclusively on NBC's "Meet the Press," holding signs reading "NRA KILLING OUR KIDS," and screaming that the gun rights group has "blood on its hands." The deaths have nothing to do with kids that are reared playing video games where they're walking around behind guns and potting everything that moves. They have nothing to do with movies in which thousands of rounds are expended, dozens of explosion destroy everything in sight, and there are no observable consequences. It has nothing to do with music -- with an entire culture -- that glorifies cold-bloodedness. "Good" kids aren't cool. Better to pretend you're a reptile. It's the NRA that's killing little kids by teaching people how to handle weapons without blasting the people around them, and of gun shows, which are the most gang banger free areas in the nation.
He said that elected officials had no authority to deny Americans the right and the ability to protect themselves and their families from harm. And they really can't stand that fact.
And he noted that there are millions of active and retired police officers, military veterans, and private security guards -- "an extraordinary corps of patriotic, trained, qualified citizens" -- who should devise a protection plan for every school. Even though they shouldn't have to. Charles Cora is chuckling in his unmarked grave.
"I call on Congress today to act immediately to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this nation," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/22/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
Going after video games is stupid. It's just book burning in a different medium. Also one of the few things that people like even more than guns.
NRA is looking for a scapegoat, which is exactly what Champ and the media are doing.
#2
A bit of doggerel about Gods of the Marketplace:
--When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: Stick to the Devil you know.
#3
NRA blames media, music and more for culture of violence
BULLSHIT
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
12/22/2012 2:23 Comments ||
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#4
I fully support the Second Amendment and the consequences this has but this wasn't the brightest statement the NRA has ever made.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
12/22/2012 3:08 Comments ||
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#5
I believe at least a portion of the answer may lie in an a close and thoughtful examination of places and cultures across the globe, which do NOT have a culture of violence. We can't all pack up and move to Orania, but might learn something from those communities.
One aspect that I feel should be examined is our propensity to be in constant armed conflict with someone, nearly since the end of WWII. This business of "drone zapping" is another. The consolidation of school districts which took place in the 1950's is yet another.
While I respect and admire Redneck Jim greatly, we do part company on his comments regarding wat now passes for media, music, and the like.
#6
There was a time when people didn't lock their doors. We talk about "simpler times"...and we had different values. We can't go back to "Lassie" and "Leave it to Beaver" or "Dr. Welby", can we?
We can't go back to President Johnson speaking to us tonite "with a heavy heart"....as he described the latest bombing of the North and the "setbacks" of Tet.
And Haight Ashbury and spitting on the vets when they came through trying to go home. And "Communes" and healthy free sex and "love" and tie dye and lavender glasses?
And who goes to Church anymore? Why bother ? Let's go down to the Mall and hang out and text each other on our cool cell phones.
Tell me how to breakdown and clean a Glock 23. How many safeties does it have? What is the mag capacity ? What is the grain load of the 9mm round it carries? How much does a Glock sell for nowadays. Price of a box of ammo?
Name the manufacturer of the shoulder holster you are wearing. Is it nylon or leather? Show me your concealed carry permit, please? And don't f--k with me. I am polite and I expect you to be polite as well.
#8
Oh. Wait. Our parents fought the Second World War. What've we done different since they were around?
Discipline was different before the Age of Lawyers, Professional Educators, and Family Life Bureaucrats. It was that oppressive time of the patriarchs in which fathers were authoritarians and fundamental to family units [see - Wait till your father gets home]. Today our brilliant ruling class deems such creatures irrelevant.
BTW parents - there's a rating system on those video games (see at 2:02)*, use it. Do we really need to handle the stuff like alcohol and put teeth into the process like providing the crap to underage minors because you want to be their friends rather than their parents? This about others wanting everyone else to be their kids parents.
#9
The culture of violence in the media, including video games, is desensitizing our young people. If we are not going to change gun regulations (and we shouldn't), what's your answer to the people who want to "fix" this?
#12
These mass murder/suicides were well planned. Ones meditations, regardless of the environment they are in, is everything. Psalm 1:1 Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with evil or stand in the way that sinners take ...
2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night... whatever they do prospers.
(A little verse of great wisdom from a Book cherished by fewer and fewer Americans. Can I get an Amen!?)
#14
No more players of video games or lovers of violent films act out in real life than owners of guns. Sane people distinguish between fantasy and acceptable real life behaviour. It must be remembered how many mass killers turn out to be schizophrenic... and take a closer look at the insanity statistics of those who stop after killing only their own parents.
The below was posted on Facebook by a friend of mine with with son recently diagnosed as schizophrenic. She calls herself, with no humour at all, The Keeper of the Knives. She is also the keeper of the matches, as he has a fondness of burning paper, and no understanding why this upsets the family.
#15
As an aside, I loathe violent films and video games and songs -- even imaginary violence gives me nightmares. But Mr. Wife and the trailing daughters love them, which has never caused me to be concerned that they might either murder me in my bed or, after acquiring weaponry beyond the staffs and nunchucks they use in their martial arts training, run amok shooting up the populace.
#17
It has been noted before that most mass murders and most people carrying out firearm violence are males from homes with an absent or abusive Father.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/22/2012 12:26 Comments ||
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#18
Personally I blame Bread. All mass murderers have, at one time or another eaten bread. BAN BREAD!
Seriously though I think violent video games (and I've played more than my fair share of them) are ok and most (repeat most) people can discern reality from fantasy. It's the few who can't make the distinction that are the problem.
#19
Re: #16: Shipman, if this were Facebook, I would definitely like that comment. :-)
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
12/22/2012 13:39 Comments ||
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#20
#14 TW: We need to bring back locked mental institutions, and the ability to involuntarily commit those who need it.
There was a movement in mental health before and around the 1970s that advocated shutting these institutions, moving away from a "medical model" in mental health, and shutting these large institutions. Dr. Thomas Szasz was one of the people who believed that psychiatry was so much quackery and that this model needed to be examined closely as to its effectiveness. There was the belief then as today that psychiatry tended to stigmatize people with problems. Some of these problems were situational and resolved themselves. Others were long-term and chronic and were not likely to improve. The naive belief was that communities would absorb and take care of these individuals and that that would be more caring and humanitarian. That didn't happen as envisioned. Many of the people turned out of institutions became homeless, ended up in jails for lack of any other place to send them, or at home to be taken care of as best could be. At about the same time the concept of "mainstreaming" in the public schools became extant with the notion that everyone should be in public school despite problems. Society has come to experience some of the problems that have fallen out as the result of the movements--not that they were all that bad. There was some good to them. Many of the large mental institutions had become warehouses for the mentally ill. For some, institutionalization was appropriate as it is today. IMO that the movement towards "community-based mental health" was not so much humanitarian as it was that large institutions were becoming extremely costly to run and maintain.
#21
"the movement towards "community-based mental health" was not so much humanitarian as it was that large institutions were becoming extremely costly to run and maintain"
Ding-ding-ding!
We have a winnah! :-(
Posted by: Barbara ||
12/22/2012 14:14 Comments ||
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#22
I read about a prescription connection with all of these kids. That is the first thing that should be investigated.
#24
he's attempting to focus back on the media. I was sickened by the killings, but we could do nothing afterwards. Instead, the media, Fox(!) among them, rolled around in it like a dog on the lawn in shit. Disgusting their sanctimony as they made that little puke famous, just like in Co., just like in SC, just like in.... giving them EXACTLY what they want - a moment of fame and power. Instead, they should expose the pathetic weak existence of these "anti-heroes". Lanza sounds like a real mental case, but we will never be able to understand his thoughts. As a rational human with decent instincts, you can't get what he was thinking. All the better for you
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/22/2012 16:06 Comments ||
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#25
I read about a prescription connection with all of these kids. That is the first thing that should be investigated.
I'd talk about the drug connection to this shit until I was blue in the face for a long while here, and was not believed. That was before the latest round, where Loughner (who repeatedly abused Salvia) and the guy in Colorado (who was a biochem grad student, and very likely probably had the ability to fabricate those drugs for himself). I have been avoiding the news of the latest mess, because they're not going to look into the real cause, and if they find it accidentally they're not going to report it.
Because the piece of fermented pig-dog hybrid shit in the media _want_ these catastrophes to happen, it helps give their masters in the new american mandarinate more power.
#26
Frank, right. That article from Larry Correia yesterday was the best I'd ever seen encompassing the whole subj. I agree -- don't give these psycho losers any limelight. The MSM is a charade backed by the vulture class.
#27
BH6 - I'm reading Larry's Monster Hunter books - they're a hoot. Halfway thru the second, and he's a smart dude who respects guns as tools only
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/22/2012 17:11 Comments ||
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#28
Ditto on Larry Correia. The left has an agenda of disarming America no matter that it hasn't worked in other places and is a prescription for violence here. Disarming citizens is the road to tyranny by a corrupted government. The 2nd Amendment was put in the Constitution for a reason and it was not duck hunting.
#29
As long as we're going after the First Amendment instead of the Second Amendment I blame Diane Sawyer and her ilk for giving so much publicity to the whackos who commit these atrocities. That way whenever somebody feels ignored and/or abused they know they can get all the attention their little hearts desire by shooting up a school or a theater or a shopping mall. STFU, Diane.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/22/2012 17:47 Comments ||
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#30
I don't think that following in the footsteps of Tipper Gore and the PMRC is going to be very helpful against psychotics with easy access to unsecured firearms.
IMHO, the media does spin these things up in order to push a deeply fascistic agenda, and the are not called on it.
#31
FYI CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > [SalafiTalk]SLAVERY IS LIBERATION AND PURIFICATION ... ACCORDING TO THE SALAFISTS.
The Demoleft + aligned special interests covertly don't want to strengthen or seal the Borders, or stop illegal guns from ending up in the hands of dedicated Criminals, etc, because it justifies ever-Bigger Govt, Deficit Spending, + Welfare-Nanny State.
IT WILL BE THE SAME AS PER NAU IN 2015, TRANS-REGIONAL, OR HIGHER OWG = GG/GGU, ONLY BIGGER-N-WORSER.
OWG NAU + NAFTA, ETC. = THERE ARE NO CLOSED BORDERS OR SUCH A THING AS "ILLEGAL" IMMIGRATION" ANYMORE, ONLY "UN-PROCESSED WORKERS".
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
