Today's edition of quick hits:
* Events in northern Mali have unfolded quickly, as an Islamist leader in Mali said France had "opened the gates of hell" for all its citizens by intervening militarily.
* This will be covered in depth on tonight's show: "Several parents whose children were killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting joined the national debate on gun violence on Monday, gathering here to begin sketching their response to the massacre by helping start a nonprofit organization intended to help prevent the kind of bloodshed that turned this quaint New England community into a national symbol of grief."
* Syria: "The Syrian government continued an intensifying campaign of airstrikes against rebels in the suburbs of Damascus on Monday, with sharply contrasting accounts of the effects: the government reported progress against 'armed terrorists,' while anti-government activists said that 15 children were among more than 30 people killed in the past two days."
* Pakistan: "A powerful roadside bomb in the militant hub of North Waziristan killed at least 14 Pakistani soldiers and wounded at least 25 on Sunday, a senior military official and local tribesmen said."
* That's quite a statistic: "[A] gun kept in the home was 43 times more likely to be involved in the death of a member of the household than to be used in self-defense."
* Headed home: "Former President George H.W. Bush was released Monday from a Houston hospital after seven weeks of treatment for bronchitis, a bacterial infection and a persistent cough, the Bush family spokesman said."
* A rare sight: "Around 11:45 on Monday morning, Justice Clarence Thomas broke almost seven years of silence during Supreme Court arguments. But it was not entirely clear what he said."
* Great choice: "The boards of directors of NARAL Pro-Choice America and the NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation announced today that Ilyse Hogue has been chosen to succeed Nancy Keenan as president of the organization."
* As much as I love "The Daily Show," last week's segment on the debt was off the mark.
* Tragic: "Aaron Swartz, a wizardly programmer who as a teenager helped develop code that delivered ever-changing Web content to users and who later became a steadfast crusader to make that information freely available, was found dead on Friday in his New York apartment."
Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
Leave a Comment:
Get Our Troops/People Out of there and Back to America Where they Belong ! NOW !~
* That's quite a statistic: "[A] gun kept in the home was 43 times more likely to be involved in the death of a member of the household than to be used in self-defense."
Kellerman has backed away from his previous statement that people are “43 times more likely” to be murdered in their own home if they own and keep a gun in their home
Throw the idea out there Steven, but fail to do your homework. The research was limited and also flawed in the method of collection of data.
The only website I'm seeing that counters the study is guncite which is in and of itself not reliable for the information it's presenting (biased towards guns and openly stating the slant suggests they have an avid interest in being dishonest in their review). Secondly they only seem to state that they disagree with his conclusion on the basis that there is some ambiguity as to the origins of the guns used and on the basis that they wanted to look at total homicide rates instead of those just involving guns (which is a sophisticated form of a red herring). This doesn't seem to be much of a debunking.
Then it's a bullsh!t statistic....Ginned-up to fit the narrative.
exactly my point. Libs often point to non-empirical to fit their narrative.
And conservatives just make things up to fit their preconceived beliefs no matter how insane or paranoid they sound. Then to prove their insanity they then post their hysterical paranoid delusions on left leaning blogs in the belief they don't appear as insane as they sound.
drpaultyler, are you 'The' Doctor Paul Tyler?
gordona YOu have a question?
"True, he’s also constitutionally prohibited from borrowing more if Congress says he can’t — which is a contradiction."
Tell me, Mr. Krugman, where in the Constitution the President is prohibited from borrowing more than the Debt Ceiling would allow. That's not in the Constitution. It's a law passed by Congress. Laws and The Constitution are not the same. It seems you, too, have flunked politics and law.
I think your snarky comments about the situation show that you flunked "just plain professional" as well. If you're going to complain about people not knowing what they're talking about, it helps if you actually know what you're talking about.
The debt ceiling has nothing to do with borrowing more its about paying back what congress already spent.
Yes, they spent more than the revenue. Raising the ceiling only allows them to continue spending what they don't collect to cover the spending. Dude do the math.
What math is that your Reagan fuzzy math that tells you less is more.
I don't know if y'all read the Paul Krugman article about the Daily Show that I'm referencing or if you're just arguing to argue.
whomitmay did you finish school, learn math? you know addition, subtraction, etc.
Do it for me one more time.
Well we already know you didn't study anything except BS which you blindly repeat no matter how many times you are educated on the facts, you just do what uneducated people do make up your own facts. So now we get the typical right wing whine about someone elses education while ignoring that post after post all you show is the lack of education as well as poor word comprehension skills.
whomitmay
Do it for me one more time. Thanks, I knew you could do it.
YOu have no idea who you are addressing. Education wise. More than your GED.
Care to trade college transcripts, FS?
This is a fact? Really, who is making up BS?
YOU are out gunned on this one in the education department.
Crickets, ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
This statistic has been around for decades and has been, at best proved to be misleading and worse, completely wrong. It includes felons who have guns in their home, of course they are likely to use it in an irresponsible way. It includes suicides, which are by far the most likely and does not look at when the gun was bought and for what purpose.
Bottom line is if you a Joe Law Abiding Citizen and purchase a gun for your own safety and use proper storage practices and understand gun safety, etc...the gun serves you and seldom harms you. Especially not 43 more times likely the latter.
Because it's irrelevant why the gun was purchased, when it was purchased, or who owns it if you actually read the initial study and not just the criticisms of it. It's a logical fallacy to make the leap that because a felon owns a gun that felon is therefore necessarily more irresponsible with the weapon. Since you made this assertion please provide evidence to support it. You stated "of course" so I'm going to assume you have overwhelming studies that support your conclusion? Suicides also factor into the debate because people who purchase guns may be more likely to commit suicide than those that don't, ever consider that?
Even with the adjusted statistics it still concludes you're 14% or more likely to harm yourself with the firearm than someone else. Even if we're agreeing that the number isn't as high as it states in the study, the overall point of the study: that you're more apt to hurt yourself than someone else, is still valid.
As I said in the above post there doesn't seem to be a lot in the "debunking" of the study that actually points to debunking of it. I think the best argument you can make is that using a study from 1986 is horrifically outdated. Additionally it was only looking at crime for a certain period and it was only looking at crime within a certain area. It seems to me that this is a case of those in favor of more gun regulations using a statistic in a way that it wasn't mean to be used and, subsequently, those in favor of lax gun regulations making similar leaps in logic about the scope and conclusion of the study in a rabid attempt to discredit anything remotely negative about guns.
Same as an automobile, chain saws, butcher knives, drain cleaner, and uncooked chicken.
More strawman arguments that ignores how rare it is for a guy with a chainsaw walking into a school and start hacking students and teachers. Show us where there is 1 incident where a guy with a chainsaw entered a school and killed 20+ students and teachers.
Yeah, that's pretty extreme, I added that for levity, it's more apt to happen in China where there's been two attacks on school children in as many years.....Besides, the study is about items in the home, nowhere does it say attacks on school children. Your trying to bend the study to fit the narrative.
that makes it a bull@!$%# statistic.
No I am not it is you that is trying to make straw man arguments. Like your little auto death thing you just ignored that in order to drive a car you are required to pass a written test and a driving test to prove you can safely operate a motor vehicle. Texas chainsaw massacre was a movie that wasn't reality based on a grave robbing family who never killed anyone, they just did weird things to the bodies they found in the graves they robbed.
Bring a fictional movie into the argument. Good point, NOT.
I'll address a few comments, Cartoon, just so you know I'm willing:
I don't have time to read a lot of research but here are to quick quotes:
and
Then you write:
You are correct. But it does matter, did they buy the gun to protect themselves and later commit suicide with it OR did they buy the gun to commit suicide.
My point is that it is not helpful to the conversation to without any explanation use stats that are so off base. There's a big difference between 43% and 14%. If a criminal brings a gun into a gun owners home and it hurts a family member you can't group that with if the gun owner just used his/her gun against a family member, the study that brings the 43% did group those two. That's all I'm saying...
No it doesn't. If your study is assessing the likelihood of a gun being used in a crime at home then suicide would factor in. It may matter when talking about how to control suicide, but if you had taken me in context (which you never do) you would have seen that I said for this particular study. Sheesh.
The study looked at guns that were used in crimes from within the home versus homes used without. Read the original report. It did not lump guns used by attackers with those used for self defense. That's part of what I was saying about hyperbolic responses that don't take the person they're responding to in context.
Regarding the felony issue:
Did you bother to read these studies? This is the point I was making. The study does not compare felony rates between return felons with guns or without, yet you're immediately making the exact same claim when it comes to the presence of guns within the home. It's this type of hypocrisy that's annoying and preventing a rational debate. If you state well such and such percent of crimes were committed by convicted felons that tells us nothing about whether or not that crime rate would have been committed had no guns been present. Yet you can then turn around and make the exact same argument when dealing with crimes within the home. It's your dishonesty in attempting to bend information to suit the narrative of the time and that's the point of frustration for me.
Even if we concede that felons commit crimes at higher ratios than non felons when guns are present (hell let's say it's 100%) that still doesn't mean that this does not factors in to whether or not you're more at risk to harm yourself with a firearm in the home now does it? Unless you're somehow living in the delusional universe that felons don't have homes. Sigh.
It does matter for the point that is being made, if the point is that buying a gun for your protection is more likely to be used on a family member. A quick illustrations and then I'll let you conclude, if you like:
Oversimplified to illustrate point: 10 guns are bought, 9 for protection and 1 because the owner was considering suicide. If that person then commits suicide, it does not mean the other 9 are in danger. And, that person's suicide does not mean having a gun in the house for protection endangers you.
Now, if 10 people bought a gun for protection and one person uses it to commit suicide, then that would give evidence that having a gun in the house makes you more at risk.
I'm saying "why" the gun was bought matters, if the point is buying a gun for protection makes you X% more vulnerable to becoming a gun violence victim. You have to take into consideration WHY the gun was purchased: to commit a crime, to commit suicide, or for protection. The first two reasons would have a higher percentage of gun violence deaths than just buying a gun for protection. This is common sense reasoning.
I thought I read one report that Swartz had legal access to the information, but he broke the TOS agreement by downloading so much at one time? (It may have been a link from Huffington which I can't find now so forgive me.)
That he was being slapped with felonies and there was a chance he was going to spend more time behind bars than the guy that beat his grandmother to death with a hammer, would depress me to no end, too.
The justice system is broken and has been for some time. As long as the rich and big business hold the purse strings, including with Congress, it's going to stay that way.
aren't you describing congress? Congress (most of them are rich) and they get their money for campaigning from big business, the left and the right
Yeah and only one party gets down on their knees and performs acts for the money they get. Here is a clue, that party don't start with a D.
You are repulsive.
But I'm not a right wing supporter posting right wing hysterics on left leaning blogs, which means you have no understanding of what repulsive is. As a mater of fact the GOP is filled with repulsive sexual deviants, when a GOP candidate gets caught with a woman conservatives sigh with relief that it wasn't another GOP gay scandal.
LOL thanks I knew you could continue to do it. Keep you the good work.
Jon S. is not following the news. He is busy and a bit lazy. Colbert is totally in tune with politics, and does it well. I would love to have Rach. M. address how many very rich folks do not pay any taxes, with their C tax diversions. The only folks on the hook are the salaried, and wage earners. It seems like every republican group is a tax exempt entity. The churches, the billionaires, the millionaires, etc. It goes on and on. It is the middle class that has nothing but home ownership. We cannot hide our money in off shore accounts, we cannot deduct, we are stuck in tax limbo. The richer you are, the more you can deduct. Cars, trips, meals, and of course the biggest grift is foundations; It is very hard to ascertain if it is a scam, or a real outfit. It is clear, the folks that work for a paycheck are taxed to the max. The rich, not so much. Please Steve or R Maddow, do a program on who actually pays taxes. There are so may hugely rich folks that do not, and a lot of shadow organizations.
"...an Islamist leader in Mali said France had "opened the gates of hell" for all its citizens by intervening militarily."
Big talk for a movement on the verge of being hunted to extermination by drones equipped with hellfire missiles.
If there was ever a theater ideal for the use of drones, it is northern Mali. The area has wide open spaces, almost no vegetative cover, few civilians outside of the towns, and is surrounded by countries hostile to the rebels.
France may be opening the gates of Hell, but I suspect the Hellfire will rain mainly upon the Islamist rebels.
IMF Chief Christine Lagarde Sees Greece 'Reaping Benefits' of Austerity:
"What technical analysis and the history of crisis management tells us, is that you're better off doing it [deficit reduction] strong and hard at the beginning in order to reap the benefits of the process.
Greece has done a huge and massive effort in cutting expenses, in bringing the deficit down, in turning to primary equilibrium if not surplus now -- which is the good news.
The country is going to turn out better results than what was even planned - but it has to continue doing a massive effort on collection of revenue and collection of tax."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jan/14/eurozone-crisis-christine-lagarde-recovery-greece#block-50f3bc2395cb5d055131b3fc