Just need to vent...

There was no attack there, just a peaceful demonstration protesting a proposed legislative bill. The only real shocking thing about it was that the protesters were . . . . BLACKS WITH GUNS!

Today, much of the right-wing and/or pro-gun community has no problem with exactly the same type of protest, but from peaceful white protesters. Heck, I've even been at one myself, on my state's Capitol steps in Olympia, in the 1990s, decades after that Sacramento protest. (No, I wasn't packing.) Several of these did get some press coverage, but even our local liberal media gave much less coverage to the more recent events here than was given to that long-ago Sacramento event, probably because the assembled crowds here were not disproportionately non-white. Our Legislature didn't get around to prohibiting carrying in such protests inside the building until the past decade, in several incremental steps, not reaching open outside areas until just two years ago.

This is a very glaring example of our continuing racial divide.

 

Wait, so you're saying aside from it not being the US Capitol and it not being violent and it not obstructing anything and the protestors going where they were directed and reading a statement, it's a completely parallel case?

 

Good article, amazing contrasts. I read it. Look at that Ronnie, he couldn’t say that today. I am confounded why you think this pertains to Jan 6.
“The visitors walked into the building, and headed for the Assembly chamber on the second floor, where they intended to read aloud “Executive Mandate Number 1,” a statement in opposition to the Mulford Bill. They were not allowed to enter the chamber, so they went outside and read the statement on the front lawn.

The Black Panthers’s action resulted in swift approval of Mulford’s bill. Mulford even added a clause barring anyone but law enforcement from bringing a loaded firearm into the Capitol.

Reagan quickly signed the bill. He was quoted as saying “There’s no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.”

The demonstration drew the attention of the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover wanted to be sure “black nationalist hate groups”were scrutinized.”

Actually I love this article.

 

As our self-styled 'betters' would say:
'That depends on the context....'

 

In March 1971 a bomb went off in a bathroom in the Capitol. Several months later a friend and I went to DC and played tourist. At one point we ended up entering the Capitol from the National Mall side of the building. We just walked around the various offices and the rotunda. We didn't bother any of the people we came across and no one bothered us. When we left we saw that they had installed metal detectors at the "main" entrance. We laughed and let one of the security guards know that the back door was open.

 

Whether these:

Gun Control and the Disarming of the Black Community
Ronald Reagan’s moment of massive historical irony: How armed Black men led to gun control | Salon.com

provide context may depend upon what a person wishes to be true.

 

Today I learned that VP Harris has a gas stove

Fox News Melts Down—AGAIN—Over Kamala Harris’ Gas Stove

And there I was also gaslit that some govt agency wants to ban gas stoves (narrator: they don't).

So home cooks can continue exposure to low levels of carbon monoxide and benzene and whatever. They just need to vent.

 

The irony of Reagan's gun control flip-flopping has very long been noted by non-right-wing gun rights activists, i.e. those who were not Reagan fans. It was crystal clear that for him, racism trumped all else. But father of modern gun control? No, it was already well in motion without him, during the rapidly rising crime rates of the 1960s, concurrent with the growing civil rights and anti-war movements.

California's gun control 'results' as proof that it works, because the state's homicide rate is lower than that national average? The Salon article looks at only one point in time: now. When I was a young activist, it was the opposite, California's homicide rate was higher than the national average. The CA::US ratio started below unity before modern gun control started, then began worsening, moving far above unity, approximately in step with each new state gun control law. Only much later did that apparent (or phantom) link break and that ratio turn around and fall below unity. A review of the California's rate over the whole modern gun control era produces both joy and disappointment for both sides, showing the value of carefully cherry-picking one's sample and comparison points to produce the desired conclusion. Both polar sides do it, though I suggest that the data mostly support a 'little to no correlation' view.

But no need for me for expound further on gun control effectiveness, as Salon's view (2nd link) is countered by The Root's view (1st link above):

"Fast-forward to today. The inner cities in which most blacks live have some of the most draconian gun laws in the nation, but they also suffer from some of the highest per capita murder rates in the country. ...

Given the restrictive gun laws in these cities, the alarming rates of homicides cannot be the fault of guns per se. It is really a symptom of a culture of violence that has at its core criminal turf wars over the illegal drug trade. But despite these obvious facts, every time an incident of mass murder reaches the national consciousness, anti-gun activists go on a tirade over the lack of restrictive gun legislation."

The Black Panther's efforts were among the first to address "... political oppression carried out by the police. Incidents of alleged police brutality, including the killing of unarmed citizens, were rampant in Oakland." Indeed, police racial bias, brutality, and political oppression were rampant nationwide back then, and though considerable progress has been made since, they are still present. Nearby Seattle has only very recently been released from a court-imposed long term federal oversight program monitoring those problems.

 

We have here an enjoyable discussion of what rankles readers. We are at risk of gunning it to Politics over there. I suggest that for our narrow local purposes, we should set aside US 2A, and all those guns, and here only talk about other stones in our shoes. Peas under our mattresses.

Because there are so many stones and peas...

 

So I guess the lesson here is that racism, religion, presidential politics, genocide, and indigenous persons AND immigration policies are OK to talk about but OMG do not DARE mention firearms and disinformation relating to the relationship between gun control and crime?

Fair enough.

Nice to know where the guardrails are.

 

I, for one, thought the discussion was staying fairly well-behaved (or as well-behaved as you can call it when a post about an armed breach of the US Capitol gets whatabouted by a post about demonstrators reading a statement outside some other capitol), and not getting all that close to where the fhopol guardrails were (or at least to where I thought they were).

 

Armed?

 

In Sacramento, it was legal to have arms in the Capitol. They didn’t do anything wrong at all, no harm, no damage. They seem like conservatives wanting rights, and Reagan is the liberal.
In Wash DC they did have arms, made arms from taken objects, and used them on police.
It's good to vent.

 

Any topic is OK here that does not get the discussion moved to 'Politics'.

And I don't define guardrails. Whole group decides by way of actions, and Admins decide based on those decisions.

==
I personally prefer venting about the small stuff here. Only one opinion among many.

 

I have privately speculated that a combination of "Likes" and "Dislikes" could make this an asylum run by the inmates:

• Post have a 7 day, grace period during which readers can vote with "Likes" and "Dislikes"
• Enough dislikes and the post slowly disappears
• Excessive disliked postings and the account gets variable length "pause"

These are the goals but the Devil is in the details.

Bob Wilson

 

I understand your opinion.

On a forum that is already heavily slanted in one direction philosophically you would effectively squash any individuals who didn't become part of the collective.

While this may sound like fun initially - it would sterilize differing opinions and once you had a forum where everyone was in agreement people being people would then probably turn on each other if they didn't have differing opinions to try and gang up on.

My impression is that your and my opinion are sometimes very different - however-I find many of your post interesting and informative and have learned a thing or two from them. I would be less informed if I hadn't read them and maybe a little less of a person by not becoming aware of how people different than me think about the world.
I might agree with you about post where people are just being mean to another or purposely hurtful but that is a fine line that is hard to decipher sometimes when your only reading post and not in person.

 

Positive statements get the most likes. Doesn't make them useful. In fact, correcting someone, however unsatisfying to the recipients, is valuable. Political correctness dubs us down.

 

I tried to update my data security with a Virtual Private Network (VPN.) After entering my credit card:

• "Transaction rejected"
• Attempts to login to the Citi web site "Down for maintenance"
• No 1-800 number on the card
• Found (800)960-5144 phone keypad/voice system "Unable to access information"
• Some messages about "Down for maintenance"
• Eventually reached a human who confirmed the maintenance status

There was no announcement e-mail or text that maintenance would be performed before doing it. <AGGGGGHHHH!!!!>

There are some things humans do better than web pages and phone menu systems.

I'll wait for dawn and see if my transaction is pending or not. Curiously, the VPN provider shows I'm a customer ... How'd they do that?

UPDATE: A second session with a support human corrected the problem. VPN bought and activated.

Bob Wilson

 

NY is currently suing SiriusXM for exactly this:

SiriusXM sued for allegedly trapping customers in unwanted subscriptions

New York sues SiriusXM, accusing company of making it deliberately hard to cancel subscriptions