This is one reason I have no desire to ever own a gun (unless it's the apocalypse or zombies have taken over, then load me up plz). I feel the chances of me or someone I love dying skyrocket the second a I have a gun in the house to "protect myself" with.
NDIANAPOLIS — A 4-year-old Indianapolis boy picked up a gun left lying on a kitchen table and fired a shot that killed the 3-year-old daughter of his father's girlfriend, police said Friday.
After finding the gun, the boy pointed the loaded .45-caliber handgun at Aunesti Lee Allen's head before firing, Lt. Jeff Duhamell of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said.
Police said the girl's mother, Fiona C. Lee, 26, was home at the time of the shooting Thursday. She was arrested on charges of child neglect and drug charges after officers found cocaine and marijuana in the home. She was being held Friday at the Marion County Jail.
Have you guys heard about the barefoot bandit? This is such a cool story, like it's out of a movie, but it's real. This guy is pretty impressive. He's been on the run for 2 years after escaping a halfway house at 17 yrs of age and for the past 5 days has been evading police on a small bahama island while breaking into houses every night to get cash, food and internet access.
"I tip my hat to the fellow," said Clayton Sands, a 54-year-old Bahamian who, like nearly everyone else, has been following every twist in the case. "For him to duck and dodge the police in two countries at 19, that's impressive."
Wanted posters featuring the blue-eyed, 6-foot, 5-inch teen have been plastered across this one-stoplight sailing town, where tourists and locals debated prospects for the fugitive's capture. A playful video circulating among islanders showed a footprint etched in the parking lot outside a Marsh Harbour government building.
"I don't think they're going to get him. He's not going to come out in the daytime," said Andrew Gates, 42, a heavy-equipment operator. "He's a smart guy."
Clinton: Activists Being Crushed By 'Steel Vise' A
k2o4, Jul 03 2010
Got the title from Huffington post where they talk about how Clinton is doing some good work trying to raise support for social change and government watch dog groups around the world. But then I saw this sentence and was like ?????
She recommended that the organization set up an independent means of monitoring repressive measures against social advocacy groups, and that the U.N. Human Rights Council do more to protect civil society. She announced that the U.S. would contributed $2 million to support the work of embattled nongovernmental groups.
$2 million? $2 million??? that's all? It's like they said "1 million isn't enough, let's make it 2". They couldn't even go to the double digits and at least do 10 million. But there's trillions of dollars for war spending?
If you want to know a person's priorities, look at the places he spends his money. If you want to know a government's priorities, look at where they spend their money.
I've noticed that over the last few years it's been very hard to find a good game to play, especially something with high re-playability. I've been playing video games as long as I can remember, starting with the original nintendo and the first mario. Even played atari while visiting my grandparents since they had my uncles old one in the basement. Owned a sega genesis, super nitendo, nintendo 64, playstation... and then I got really into computer games over consoles once I found Warcraft 2.
That developed into a love for BW to satisfy my strategic needs and counterstrike to satisfy my shooting needs. Those 2 games were my staple games for ages. I'd always play them and try to get better, and as new games came out I'd play for fun, often just the single player, and then move on.
Well it's been nearly 15 years of those 2 games and as much as I love em, they definitely feel old. And then I found MW2 to replace CS and the beta came out to replace BW. Same shit different games.
But for the last few years before MW2 and the beta came out, I've been hunting for new games. Only a few have been any good and all of them have only been good for single player. Once the game was beaten it was shelved. I started buying lots of new games looking for something awesome, either to replace CS/BW or to at least give an experience like halflife did, but very few were up to par. I blew quite a bit of money on shitty games and realized I should be playing demo's first. heh
Anyway, here are the few good games i found over the last several years. Sad how short the list is:
Batman: Arkham Asylum (fun game and gives you a fun few days feeling like you're Batman, but once you beat it no desire to replay)
Farcry 2 - (Almost super awesome but not enough attention to detail, especially with AI)
Bioshock - (entertaining at first but I never finished it)
Gears of War - (great single player but never got into multi, then it stopped working cause Microsoft games are stupid)
Portal - (super fun single player but once it's over it's over)
And here are the games I tried and either hated or the game fell short:
Call of Juarez - (crappy cowboy game)
S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow of Chernobyl - (hated)
Left 4 Dead - (repetitive)
ARMA: Combat Operations - (Sucked)
Company of Heroes - (Boring)
Empire: Total War - (Snooze)
Lost: Via Domus (and I loved LOST at the time I played it but still pretty meh)
Sniper Elite - (good idea, mediocre execution)
FEAR - (meh)
Newest Tomb Raider - (they still haven't figured out controls imo, she's an idiot and annoying to maneuver)
Mass Effect - (just started it and it's pretty mediocre, and all FPS suck compared to MW2 lately)
Call of Duty World At War - (but I got it on Wii which probably fucked it up)
Fallout 2 - (I like the idea, hate their execution of a FPS / RPG, as their FPS sucks)
Ghost Recon - (a newer one which sucked, but my comp also couldn't handle it very well so didn't give it a fair try... still, felt like it would suck even with a good comp)
I know I missed a few (good and bad ones) but I think that gives a good list. Have any of you guys played any of these games??
Oh, and I'm thinking of trying the newest Resident Evil - anyone play it?
Funny how when the 20 billion fund to help the people who's lives were ruined by this oil spill was first announced, the Republicans came out against it thinking they could call it a shakedown, extortion, and chicago politics and win some points. Then Joe Barton said it and the public heard and went "WTF??!??!" and they're all now backpedaling. Good job Stewart on exposing their BS.
Just read a great NYT article talking about the massive failures by Salazar and Obama to prevent this shit with BP because they didn't take enough action to clean up the MMR when they took office. They cleaned up a bit but left plenty of corrupt BS is in place and OK'd BP's plan to drill in the Gulf. Fail. Considering that the alternative is the Republican's who'd rather just not regulate anything (hello to even worse disasters where the oil companies pay nothing back after they rape our asses silly), I still choose the democrats. But just cause the other side sucks more doesn't mean failures like this are acceptable in any way.
Anyway, read the article cause it has lots of stuff in there and is much better written than anything I can do.
PRESIDENT Obama is not known for wild pronouncements, so it was startling to hear him liken the gulf oil spill to 9/11. Alas, this bold analogy, made in an interview with Roger Simon of Politico, proved a misleading trailer for the main event. In the president’s prime-time address a few days later, there was still talk of war, but the ammunition was sanded down to bullet points: “a clean energy future,” “a long-term gulf coast restoration plan” and, that most dreaded of perennials, “a national commission.” Such generic placeholders, unanimated by details or deadlines, are Washingtonese for “The buck stops elsewhere.”
The speech’s pans were inevitable, but in truth it was doomed no matter what the words or how cool or faux angry the performance. The president had it right the first time — this is a 9/11 crisis — and only action will do. The sole sentence that really counted on Tuesday night was his prediction that “in the coming weeks and days, these efforts should capture up to 90 percent of the oil leaking out of the well.” He will be judged on whether that’s true. The sole event that mattered last week was his jawboning of BP for a $20 billion down payment of blood money — to be overseen, appropriately enough, by Kenneth Feinberg of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.
That action could be a turning point for Obama if he builds on it. And he must. In this 9/11, it’s not just the future of the gulf coast, energy policy or his presidency that’s in jeopardy. What’s also being tarred daily by the gushing oil is the very notion that government can accomplish anything. The current crisis in that faith predates this disaster. In the short history of the Obama White House, two of its most urgent projects, reducing unemployment and pacifying Afghanistan, have yet to yield persuasive results. The dividends on the third, health care reform, won’t be in the mail for years.
I'm getting sick of the Republican political strategy of "Block anything Obama wants, go against anything Obama says, and hope that Obama fails and looks bad so people choose Republicans in the next election." I mean these fuckers aren't even allowing a vote on legislation to remove the $75 million cap for the amount oil companies have to pay when there's a spill. Think about that - when things are good these companies get to take all the profit they can suck out of us, but when they fuck up and spill the oil, we are only allowed to get $75 million out of them... even if they cause 1 billion in damages.
So who gets stuck with the other $925 million? Either the taxpayers get stuck with it as the government helps people, or the poor business owners and workers and families get fucked over... despite doing NOTHING wrong. How can anyone see that and not say that it is total BS? How can any of these republicans really believe that if their oyster company was put out of business because an oil spill destroyed all of their oyster beds, that THEY should have to just lose all their money and move on? How can someone say that the oil company isn't liable and responsible to cover the damages?
Glad to see Obama finally speaking out on this Republican stall tactic directly:
I smell the odor of mendacity. The average American refuses to accept that republicans are at war against the working-class, which is why they vehemently oppose reform (financial and healthcare), unions, public education, government oversight, wage hikes, worker rights, access to higher education, middleclass tax relief, and, in general, any legislation that would jeopardize the continuation of a credit-dependent, employer exploited, unhealthy, downtrodden, marginalized, underpaid, debt-laden, undereducated and permanent class of laborers. Similar to sharecroppers, it’s in republican’s best interest to keep the working-class hopeless, oppressed, and undereducated. Republicans staunchly supported the Wall Street bailout to protect their own assets, but opposed the automobile industry bailout, which employs thousands of middleclass Americans
The republican aristocracy opposes any kind of governmental oversight that will interfere with their pursuit of exploitive capitalism, which is why they want to abolish or privatize the EPA, FAA, FDA, SSA and Departments of Agriculture, Transportation, Interior, Health and Human Services, and Education. Just like feudal lords, Republicans require a formidable army to protect their financial interests, which is why they defend unrestrained military spending. The Iraq War will cost well over $9 trillion, while health insurance for every American would cost $1 trillion. Republicans want to keep America angrily divided by class and race, which is why they vehemently oppose any legislative action that would eliminate the status quo and elevate the standard of living for average Americans.
Obama saves America from economic obliteration, and conservatives demonize him. Republicans deregulate Wall Street, oil companies, and other financial and mortgage instruments, leading to economic and ecological disaster, and conservatives are quiet, blame Obama, and call Obama’s efforts to save America “misguided.” Republican disgust for working-class Americans (and their unwavering support for big business) is patently obvious. Recently, lock-step republicans: 1) voted to allow Wall Street banks trading in risky sub-prime derivatives to retain FDIC liability insurance at taxpayer expense, 2) voted against adding tougher home-mortgage standards to the Truth-in-Lending Act (which would have outlawed the no-documentation “liar loans” that played a major role in the sub-prime mortgage meltdown), 3) voted against underwriting standards aimed at banning loan originators from steering borrowers toward mortgages they cannot afford after teaser and adjustable-interest rates expire, 4) voted against increasing the liability cap for oil companies from $75 million to $10 billion, opting instead to have taxpayers pay for oil spills, and 4) voted against the creation of the Clean Energy Consortium, an initiative designed to focus on developing private sector renewable energy sources. Republicans also voted against restricting debit-card transaction fees, a move that would have helped small, “mom and pop” merchants, not Wall Street fat-cats. Republicans: Protectors of Big Business.
(These are comments made by Bronxdude on this article.
And a bit more on Joe Barton and his BS apology to BP, this time from the Daily Show:
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