While bullets are not specifically mentioned in the Second Amendment, it is likely that the Court would find that a prohibition on bullets would prevent the exercise of the individual right that was recognized in the Amendment. If requiring trigger-locks was too far for the Court, I suspect the prohibition of bullets would be as well. While a state could make bullets more expensive through taxation, even that would probably face Constitutional challenge if the tax made the cost of purchasing bullets prohibitive.
Tuesday, July 19, 2022
"Thanks to failed Dem policies, beer is 9.1% more expensive."
Like many other products, the price of beer has steeply increased since 2020, rising just under 10% since April 2020.
Experts say there are a host of reasons that prices have risen, including the Russia invasion of Ukraine, supply chain issues and the resonating impacts of the pandemic.
In other words, it can’t be solely attributed to the policies and spending under Democrats, such as the American Rescue Plan.
Monday, July 18, 2022
The Tyranny of Time
http://www.ced.org.in/docs/ced/publications/DD/DD3/The-Tyranny-of-Time.pdf
But Historian Stephen Kern, a professor at Northern Illinois University whose book The Culture of Time and Space chronicled the soaring velocity of life between 1880 and World War I, pointed out that "new speeds have always brought out alarmists." In the 1830s, he noted, it was feared that train passengers would suffer crushed bones from travelling at speeds as high as 35 miles an hour. Kern considers the current concern about the effects of our speeded-up lives a similar form of hysteria. "Technologies that promote speed are essentially good," he said, adding that, "the historical record is that humans have never opted for slowness."
How to escape the tyranny of the clock
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200306-how-to-live-without-time
Holly Andersen, who studies the philosophy of science and metaphysics at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, also warns about what losing our sense of time could do to our sense of self. She believes it’s not possible to have conscious experience without time and the passage of time. Think about how your personal identity is built over time, filed away as memories.
Countering the tyranny of the clock
https://www.economist.com/business/2020/10/17/countering-the-tyranny-of-the-clock
Two hundred years ago, a device began to dominate the world of work. No, not the steam engine—the gadget was the clock. With the arrival of the factory, people were paid on the basis of how many hours they worked, rather than their material output.
The tyranny of time
It is interesting to note as we have a strong movement against smartphones and internet - because they are supposedly taking over our existence. There was a similar reaction to the introduction into the world of clocks and time
The more we synchronize ourselves with the time in clocks, the more we fall out of sync with our own bodies and the world around us. Borrowing a term from the environmentalist Bill McKibben, Michelle Bastian, a senior lecturer at Edinburgh University and editor of the academic journal Time & Society, has argued that clocks have made us “fatally confused” about the nature of time. In the natural world, the movement of “hours” or “weeks” do not matter. Thus the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the sudden extinction of species that have lived on Earth for millions of years, the rapid spread of viruses, the pollution of our soil and water — the true impact of all of this is beyond our realm of understanding because of our devotion to a scale of time and activity relevant to nothing except humans.
IS THE UNITED STATES A DEMOCRACY OR A REPUBLIC?
https://act.represent.us/sign/democracy-republic
We often hear a question debated in person and online by Americans who care deeply about making sure our government works for the people: is the United States a democracy or a republic?
Here’s the answer: The United States is both a democracy and a republic.
We promise we’re not dodging the question. It would be much easier if one word was absolutely correct and the other was not, but the terms are not mutually exclusive. The United States can be accurately defined as both a democracy and a republic.
If Trump looks like a fascist and acts like a fascist, then maybe he is one
I can see three objections to calling a large section of the Republican party pre-fascist. The first can be dismissed with a flick of the fingers as it comes from a self-interested right that has to pretend it is not in the grip of a deep sickness – and not only in the United States. The second is the old soothing “it can’t happen here” exceptionalism of the Anglo-Saxon west, which has yet to learn that the US and UK are exceptional in the 21st century for all the wrong reasons. The third sounds intelligent but is the dumbest of all. You should not call Trump or any other leader a pre- or neo-fascist or any kind of fascist until he has gone the whole hog and transformed his society into a totalitarian war machine.
Sunday, July 17, 2022
Trump says murders are up in Democrat-run cities. They’re up in Republican-run cities, too.
All of that is to say that whatever is causing murders to spike this year, political party isn’t it.
So what’s going on? Criminologists and other experts caution that they don’t really know yet. But they’ve offered several potential explanations: The Covid-19 pandemic, and all the chaos that it’s wrought, could have led to more homicides — by hurting social support programs that can prevent escalating violence, damaging the economy, and overwhelming hospitals that treat violent crime victims, among other possibilities. The protests around police brutality and systemic racism may have led cops to back off proactive policing, or caused the general public to trust the police less and subsequently work with the cops less often, both of which could have led to more unchecked violence. A surge in gun purchases this year could have fueled more gun violence.
The Red State Murder Problem
https://www.thirdway.org/report/the-red-state-murder-problem
The rate of murders in the US has gone up at an alarming rate. But, despite a media narrative to the contrary, this is a problem that afflicts Republican-run cities and states as much or more than the Democratic bastions.
In 2020, per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden.
8 of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century.
Republican-controlled states have higher murder rates than Democratic ones: study
Republican politicians routinely claim that cities run by Democrats have been experiencing crime waves caused by failed governance, but a new study shows murder rates are actually higher in states and cities controlled by Republicans.
Republicans wince as their Ukrainian-born colleague thrashes Zelenskyy
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/15/republicans-spartz-ukraine-zelenskyy-00045949
Spartz is dredging up old dirt on Zelenskyy and his advisers at a time when Ukraine’s future as an independent nation may depend on allying with him, her detractors say.
“I don’t share her criticisms,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has worked with Spartz on Ukraine-related legislation. “I believe that the Zelenskyy government and the Ukrainian people have risen to the moment. It is in our national security interest to stand with the Ukrainian people and their elected leadership.”
Trump's White House Treated Him Like a Child. Congress Won’t.
https://time.com/6197446/donald-trump-white-house-jan-6/
While Trump is indeed not a child, the Jan. 6 hearings have made one thing crystal clear: Over and over again, the former President found himself surrounded by loyalists who treated him like one.
Tuesday’s hearing offered just the latest evidence, with Trump’s White House counsel, his press team, even his diehard supplicants thought him infantile. They saw his mood as fragile. They spared him bad news. They placated his whims. And when he wanted to deputize the military and the Justice Department to chase conspiracy theories, his own bureaucrats decided to humor him. They even buried his dangerous plans to name a fringe favorite as a special counsel empowered to seize voting machines in a heap of process.
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