Slashdot Mirror

"Some" is a word with very little precision. Your slashdot ID is pretty low, so I suspect you know enough people over 40 that you should see fairly widespread racism. I live in a little island of relative racial harmony in a city with terrible race relations (Philadelphia). But any East Coast city is going to be the same, as are rust belt cities. I don't have much in the way of personal experience with the West Coast, except for San Francisco - and that was pretty terrible 10 years ago anyway.

The younger kids aren't nearly as fazed by it - you see integrated groups of younger people walking around all the time now. There is a lot of hope for the future, but until the old people all die racism is going to continue to be a problem. Remember that the people who were keeping the status quo alive and well during Jim Crow are still alive. We get reminded that these people still wield influence whenever they open their bigoted mouths.

And it isn't just cliche racism, where white men with some influence are screwing minorities. Look at the way Democratic strategists are using race to fire up their supporters. Look at the way race is used to fire up the immigration debate on both sides. These tactics simply would not be effective if race were not a huge factor in our society.

it should be legally obvious that you can't be arrested *only* for "resisting arrest"

Logically, that makes complete sense. However, police officers and District Attorneys, and the legal system in general, do not operate on a purely logical basis.

"Resisting arrest" should probably be renamed "Contempt of Cop"

Liam Neeson has been championing the horse/buggy drivers since Mayor DiBlasio made the elimination of them his first priority. The argument is animal cruelty, but others have shown that the Mayor's biggest supports are real estate developers who want the acreage that the stables currently occupy.

That 30 meter rule sounds pretty wise. Not too long ago in New York, a rc helicopter enthusiast managed to chop part of his own head off while trying to do stunts.

Reminds me of this...

This article has the picture released by China, coordinates are stamped on the picture: 90deg 13' 43" E / 44deg 57' 29" S. Those positions are now dated due to expected drift of any debris in the local currents and wind.

Here's earlier satellite photos with coordinates from DigitalGlobe, as released by the Australian search team (Australian Maritime Safety Authority - AMSA).

The AMSA is coordinating the search in the southern Indian Ocean and all their AMSA news updates are here, and images/maps are here, including the cumulative area searched as of March 23 [PDF].

The information is out there if you go looking.

Ahh yes, you back an organization that cleanses ex Nazis and other criminals? They rate up there on my list just like the IOC and both have been refuges for Facists, Nazis and criminals for a long time.

So then you found why your wealth tax doesn't work. Either your wealth tax becomes an income tax because in order to keep that farm they need to keep earning income to cover the cost of paying the tax, or the farm is sold off.

Bzzzt! A wealth tax would replace the byzantine income tax. And it wouldn't be the outrageous rates of inheritance tax, it would be like .5 - 1%. If you're earning less than a 1% on your farm, you're going to lose it before long, anyway. Besides, most farms have plenty of loans against them, which for a wealth tax would offset the value of the property. We would want to eliminate the Jon Bon Jovi farmer tax loophole, and others like it, but real farmers will be fine.

I'm not sure why so many people are against this idea. Unless they've simply been convinced by the Buffets and Rothschilds that it's somehow a bad thing.

Do you see this news story?

17 Beheaded in Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan for Attending Wedding Party with Dancing

They would gladly do it to you, just like they did it to those 17, and to Daniel Pearl. Their goal is to impose that sort of rule on the entire world even if it takes 1,000 years. As of today there are people willing to put their body between you and them, putting their life and limb and risk, to prevent them from endangering you. Frankly, I'm not sure that the sacrifice of any of them is worth you. But they still do it. So it would be great if you would either grow up, or stop providing evidence you may be a moral idiot and a fool. (I realize that asking you to show some gratitude for the defense of your life is wasted breath. Some people only learn the hard way.)

Enhancing the role of the principal as a "coach" rather than a paperwork pusher, disciplinarian, or fund raiser is first.

Like this "Principal"?

http://nypost.com/2014/01/16/s...

Principals work for the Administration and whatever political flavor the current Administration is pushing. Good teachers work for the students, because they enjoy teaching and see a value in making chuildren smarter.

Of course if you have a religious ("Intelligent Design") bent or a politically correct bent (one must never admit that "Negro" was a word spoken in the English language - http://www.theroot.com/article... ), a heavy handed Principle is a good thing.

In the case of jaywalking, they just beat the shit out of you. http://nypost.com/2014/01/19/cops-beat-elderly-man-after-he-jaywalked/

Note to anyone more right-wing than center:

The instant you start up any productive project, you will start getting advice and other "help" from people who actually totally disagree with you.

Hint -- it's all toxic. We call this "concern trolling."

If you let them in, they will quietly find some unaccountable way to sabotage you, and then leave. Their leftist buddies will cover up for them. This is one of the many reasons we say liberalism is a mental health disorder; it's pathological.

Just keep in mind the typical liberal MO...

http://nypost.com/2014/01/11/why-bridgegate-made-headlines-but-obamas-irs-scandal-didnt/

No contest. It's got everything: hubris, cronyism, bureaucratic bungling, political idiocy, numerous huge IT errors, hundreds of millions of dollars. Once all the details come out, this massive fail will be studied in universities. Books will be written. The political consequences will last for years. Coming soon: the doctor shortages. And does everyone know that in 2014, the health plan tax kicks in? I don't mean the "Cadillac plan" tax, or the tax if you don't have insurance. I mean the 2% tax on every health plan. Yes, in order to make health insurance more "affordable," they are taxing health insurance! Words fail.

Yep.

The idea that there is even some question about what the biggest tech mishap of 2013 is says a lot about Slashdot/techie politics. When you go all in for someone, it's very hard to admit later that you were wrong.

No contest. It's got everything: hubris, cronyism, bureaucratic bungling, political idiocy, numerous huge IT errors, hundreds of millions of dollars. Once all the details come out, this massive fail will be studied in universities. Books will be written. The political consequences will last for years. Coming soon: the doctor shortages. And does everyone know that in 2014, the health plan tax kicks in? I don't mean the "Cadillac plan" tax, or the tax if you don't have insurance. I mean the 2% tax on every health plan. Yes, in order to make health insurance more "affordable," they are taxing health insurance! Words fail.

http://nypost.com/2013/10/29/docs-resisting-obamacare/

Actually... at best the number is unknown which is what the critics of the statistics have said.

That said... we do have some information on it and there does seem to be significant rejection.

I'm guessing they were lowest bid.

Bids? What bids?

There was no bidding.

http://nypost.com/2013/11/01/obama-donors-firm-hired-to-fix-web-mess-it-helped-make/

----
"WASHINGTON â" A tech firm linked to a campaign-donor crony of President Obama not only got the job to help build the federal health-insurance Web site â" but also is getting paid to fix it.

Anthony Welters, a top campaign bundler for Obama and frequent White House guest, is the executive vice president of UnitedHealth Group, which owns the software company now at the center of the ObamaCare Web-site fiasco.

UnitedHealth Group subsidiary Quality Software Services Inc. (QSSI), which built the data hub for the ObamaCare system, has been named the new general contractor in charge of repairing the glitch-plagued HealthCare.gov.

Welters and his wife, Beatrice, have shoveled piles of cash into Obamaâ(TM)s campaign coffers and Âapparently reaped the rewards.

Beatrice Welters bundled donations totaling between $200,000 and $500,000 for Obamaâ(TM)s campaign during the 2008 election Âcycle, according to campaign- Âfinance data compiled by Center for Responsive Politics.

SICK CALL: Obama bundler Anthony Weltersâ(TM) firm owns the company picked to repair the health Web site.

The couple then became top donors for Obamaâ(TM)s inauguration festivities, kicking in $100,000 out of their own pockets and bundling another $300,000 from friends and business associates, according to the center.

The investments quickly paid off for Beatrice Welters. The Obama administration tapped her in 2009 for the plum job of US ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, which she held through last November.

The couple have been frequent guests at the White House.

Visitors logs show at least a dozen visits between the two by the end of 2012, the most recent information available.

The entire Welters family has gotten into the donation game.

The Welters, along with their sons, Andrew and Bryant, have contributed more than $258,000 to mostly Democratic candidates and committees since 2007.

Whatâ(TM)s more, UnitedHealth Group is one of the largest health-insurance companies in the country and spent millions lobbying for ObamaCare.

The insurance giantâ(TM)s purchase of QSSI in 2012 raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill, but the tech firm nevertheless kept the job of building the data hub for the ObamaCare Web site where consumers buy the new mandatory health- Âinsurance plans.

QSSI has been paid an estimated $150 million so far, but officials couldnâ(TM)t say how much more the company might collect on the Ârepair contract.

By all accounts, the data hub has run smoothly while many other components of the Web site have failed.

Meanwhile, tempers flared among Obamaâ(TM)s Democratic allies over the disastrous rollout of the presidentâ(TM)s signature initiative.

âoeIâ(TM)m extraordinarily frustrated,â said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) Âafter top Obama-administration officials gave Senate Democrats a private briefing on the state of the Web-site repairs.

He said they were losing confidence the site could be quickly fixed.

âoeI donâ(TM)t think thereâ(TM)s confidence by anyone in the room. This is more of a show-me moment,â said Merkley."
----

This thing was never meant to function in any event. They didn't pay attention to the details because they didn't matter.

It was designed to fail so that the "Holy Grail" of single-payer government-run healthcare could be rolled out as a "fix". As a bonus, they get to hand a big bag of taxpayer's money to their "bag-man".

Just watch. Single-payer will be the "fix" insisted upon.

At least we won't have so many foreigners coming to the US for our excellent health care any more.

Strat

Then if your son gets put on the list for streaking at a football game, some thug will shoot up you and your family. That's assuming you have kids, but with a personality like that, the only way you could pass on your genes would be by committing a sex offense.

Perhaps it's not a weapon in the deadly sense

Not deadly? Tell that to this guy. http://nypost.com/2013/09/05/man-decapitated-by-remote-controlled-toy-helicopter/

Apparently this is such a problem Comic Con listed “shower” as item No. 3 on its event “survival” checklist.

“Things tend to get hot at NYCC with so many fans around and you don’t want to be the stinky one!” the organizers wrote. “Do everyone a favor and shower before and wear clean clothes!”

Apparently this is such a problem Comic Con listed “shower” as item No. 3 on its event “survival” checklist.

“Things tend to get hot at NYCC with so many fans around and you don’t want to be the stinky one!” the organizers wrote. “Do everyone a favor and shower before and wear clean clothes!” http://nypost.com/2013/10/10/comic-con-plea-shower/

If only there were some mechanism where a large portion of the population could give some money to people to provide law enforcement services to a community before the Internet was invented.

Oh, yes, very cute. Aren't you so very clever.

The point is that it doesn't work. It never has, and in a city like Oakland it never will.

Police don't prevent crime. At best they solve easy crimes, and catch stupid criminals. After the fact. Maybe. Nationally, robbery has a 27% clearance rate (% "solved"). Even that percentage is biased because most solved street robberies are those where weapons were actually used. Police don't actually have much time for robberies unless someone gets hurt. They will tell you to file an insurance claim.

You seem to suggest we should employ a police force large enough that when ever 6 or more people congregate on a street corner a cop will magically appear to "protect" them. Would you actually want to live in such a society?

Employing private protection of people and property is FAR more effective than relying on police. Armed or not. You only need them for the hours you are at most risk.

The best solution in this case might be to use crowd funding to hire off duty police officers to stand around in uniform only during the hours they are needed. Asking the city to guard these car-pool waiting lines preferentially in a city as crime ridden as Oakland simply means some other area goes less-guarded, and is bound to attract objections from other groups or areas. This is what every venue does for any event, and it is a reasonable alternative to raising all taxes to have enough police to station one on every street corner.

"We all know — because we are being constantly reminded — that we are getting fat. Americans are at the forefront of the trend, but it is a transnational one."

Mexico is now the fattest country:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/mexico_weighs_in_first_place_as_H9SVnsADtIaVUjnLgwfTsL
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/09/mexico-obesity_n_3567772.html
http://metro.co.uk/2013/07/11/mexico-overtakes-america-as-worlds-fattest-country-3879512/

Have any proof of that? That is pure 100% speculation.

I don't think anyone will be able to fault you for fair mindedly ignoring the obvious regarding the behavior of leftist anti-American regimes.

Nicaragua, Venezuela offer NSA leaker Edward Snowden asylum

Maduro said several other Latin American governments have also expressed their intention of taking a similar stance by offering asylum for the cause of "dignity."

Chavez, who hand-picked Maduro as his successor, often engaged in similar defiance, criticizing U.S.-style capitalism and policies. In a 2006 speech to the U.N. General Assembly of world leaders, Chavez called President George W. Bush the devil, saying the podium reeked of sulfur after the U.S. president's address. He also accused Washington of plotting against him, expelled several diplomats and drug-enforcement agents and threatened to stop sending oil to the U.S.

Maduro made the asylum offer during a speech marking the anniversary of Venezuela's independence. It was not immediately clear if there were any conditions to Venezuela's offer.

But his critics said Maduro's decision is nothing but an attempt to veil the current undignified conditions of Venezuela, including one of the world's highest inflation rates and a shortage of basic products such as toilet paper.

"The asylum doesn't fix the economic disaster, the record inflation, an upcoming devaluation (of the currency), and the rising crime rate," Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles said in his Twitter account. Maduro beat Capriles in April's presidential election, but Capriles has not recognized defeat and has called it an electoral fraud.

Doing it for the "dignity" of the country isn't doing it out of concern for the human rights of Snowden. It is to enhance their national self-esteem while hurting the US.

...one of the most powerful, evil, and corrupt governments in the world. ... The US does not have any sort of ethical limits to its actions ...

Really? Really? I think you're overdue for calibration. I strongly urge you to watch at least the first, if not both.

The Soviet Story (2008)
A Portrait of Stalin: Secret Police

As to the following, these are hardly the only examples of this sort of thing.

U.S. Aircraft Carrier Leaving Disaster Zone After Tsunami
The Marshall Plan
The Berlin Airlift

That is why when we tell Europe to jump their only response is a polite, "How high?"

That is clearly nonsense. It is easy to see when you look at things like defense spending compared to NATO treaty obligations, diplomatic relations, trade, national laws, and many other things.

I'll just leave this here:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/books/man_of_kneel_PHEDS6aPAczquQE4AgwTiP

"Sick of being treated like the enemy, guys are dropping out of society"

Don't forget Texas' proud addition to that list:

- It's totally okay to shoot and kill someone as long as it's after dark and she refuses to have sex with you first.

For reference: http://www.salon.com/2013/04/20/graham_mccain_hold_boston_suspect_as_enemy_combatant/
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/republican_senators_urge_obama_enemy_bbGRMuGOodHZ8680ejviWJ
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/04/tsarnaev_an_enemy_combatant_john_mccain_and_lindsey_graham_s_harmful_campaign.html

I like to re-post here a comment that I share the opinion with:

        60's guy
        Sunday, Apr 21, 2013 12:12 AM CEST

Nicely put. These clowns are an embarrassment to our country -- not the faintest notion of what America, or our Constitution, is about. I have lost all, and I mean all, the considerable respect I once had for John McCain. Lindsey Graham is and always has been a snotnosed little pissant. Kelly Ayotte is a cipher -- a zero, and Peter King is in negative territory -- doesn't even get within shouting distance of zero. But for shorthand, "political sociopaths" does nicely for all four of them.

Yes please, i love the cold war romantic atmosphere.

Protip: Look, but don't touch!

Sexy russian spy Anna Chapman

That's why so many "liberal" examinations of the issues have resulted to separating out "in-classroom" spending, but they are dismissed as inconvenient, and the numbers used by the school-haters are always total funding.

I see why you put the word "liberal" in quotes...

I'm curious how "rubber-room" spending is categorized? (fwiw, new york city statistically has one of the highest in-classroom spending ratios in the country)

An interesting read, if you have the time...
http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Books/Education/Where-Do-School-Funds-Go-Book-Review

James vonn Brunn: FrontPage Magazine has a rundown, although perhaps slanted. From his own words, he was anti-capitalist and pro socialism, but I'd accept an argument the was more plain crazy than left wing. Here are some addtional examples of people initially speculated to be right wing that weren't. Out of the 8 examples, 5 were arguably left wing. From your examples, white supremacism doesn't really fit cleanly on a left/right axis, and really, left/right is inadequate but I was responding to someone using that axis. Anti-abortion is usually right wing, but not always.

The men on the front page of the Post today?

CBS News reported that the FBI sources said it wasn't them (they're not white, 6'2", wearing the right clothes or... well, anything like the suspect).

Seem you are the one who failed with your inane speculation.

A Saudi National has been detained. Mostly because he seems to have blown himself up.

Just a bit of advice...if the idiots are agreeing with you, it's time to reassess your position.

An advice that all of us should heed.
Boston police commissioner says no suspect is in custody in marathon explosions

At a press conference Monday night, Boston police commissioner Edward Davis refuted reports that a suspect in Monday's Boston Marathon bombing was at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

"I want to stress one thing," Davis said. "There is no suspect at Brigham and Women's Hospital. There are people that we are talking to but there is no suspect at Brigham and Women's Hospital as has been widely reported in the press. I would like to fix that right now."

Just a FYI for all you wanting to blame the Tea Party and other "right-wing extremist groups" Suspect in custody, Saudi National: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/authorities_under_suspect_guard_y2m8cJO29uC2PDGIjYBalO

Aaaand, doesn't appear to have anything to do with Patriot's Day. But as it turns out, it correlates with a high profile marathon with lots of people present.

Suspect has been ID'd, a Saudi national, presently under guard at hospital:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/authorities_under_suspect_guard_y2m8cJO29uC2PDGIjYBalO

Seem you are the one who failed with your inane speculation.

A Saudi National has been detained. Mostly because he seems to have blown himself up.

Just a bit of advice...if the idiots are agreeing with you, it's time to reassess your position.

A Saudi National

A Saudi National

The TSA says they are all about the war on terror.
But their actions prove they are only interested in conducting a War on Diginity.

Groping children
soaking a man in his own urine
Arresting people for wearing watches with exposed gears
Arbitrary strip-searches
Detaining people armed with flash cards
Forcing mothers to drink their own breast milk
Forcing a woman to remove her nipple ring with pliers
Requiring women to remove their bras
Requiring a woman to remove the brace on her sprained ankle and then making her walk on it to prove it was sprained

The list of abuses is into the thousands. Every once in a while they get a taste of their stupidity. But it isn't anywhere near enough.

As an apartment dewller (2nd floor of a 2 floor building, so I cannot be confused with a basement dweller), I check my mail roughly once a week. I understand that it used to be a primary means of communication, but the casual communication has been shifted to other mechanisms. Since I don't ever have things shipped to my home address, I only find bills, junk mail, and the rare postcard from friend or family who was on vacation a month ago.

If something is urgent, it will be sent some way to account for that, often requiring a signature. If the USPS scaled back deliveries to "once a week or as needed" I expect that few people would even notice. Instead of five deliveries a week, deliver only on Saturday or when a given route has over half a truckful of mail. Or change route definitions, downsize (certain employees first) as needed, sell off excess delivery vehicles (or repurpose them as spare parts), and adapt to the reduced need of a postal service.

And in New York, where there are the strictest paper trail laws in the nation http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/house_of_cards_hNdx5fNGt6oOl1U9mTW0HN#ixzz1V7KSkSWR 92% of foreclosures lack documentation. For the person being foreclosed upon, they must prove, at their own expense, that this is the case. The cost of litigation becomes to high. So practically, you are simply dead wrong.

At least learn to use google and do some simple multiplication before making declarations.

Believe me, if the current administration had been in place when that had happened, they would have. Since they had Bush to blame (even though people like Dodd, Frank, and Rangel were the people in charge of oversight), it wasn't necessary. Evidence: blaming ATMS for unemployment.

Here's a later article from the NY Post.

No charges in ATF agent's friendly-fire death after LI pharmacy shooting

And a lot of people abuse the EBT cards for non essential goods and services. I had someone in front of a Wal Mart offer me an EBT card with over one hundred on it for sixty cash. Welfare recipients take out cash at strip clubs, liquor stores and X-rated shops

Read all about these OWS activists here

Google is your friend.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/potential_connecticut_school_shooting_8HMOSbP38TXwSYYsVGkYLO

"Lanza used two handguns — a Glock and a Sig Sauer — and a .223-caliber assault rifle, an official said."

The new lingo argues that anything that looks like a M16 is an assault rifle, even if you have to muzzle load the thing, one bullet at a time. The rifle in question has already been described as semi-automatic assault rifle, which is just jibberish speak for "we don't know how to describe guns"

A semi automatic means one pull of the trigger will only shoot one bullet; but, it will eject the spent bullet and seat the next bullet in the muzzle. The next step lower in utility is a gun where after firing you need to "do something different" to remove the old bullet and put in a new one. Assault rifles are all designed to fire more than one bullet per pull of the trigger, and so a semi-automatic assault rifle basically means "scary looking rifle".

Maybe when people can educate themselves about the types of guns, we can stop attempting to ban guns that don't require pushing the bullet down the barrel with a ram rod. After all, a banned gun only means that law abiding people won't have them at their disposal, criminals are criminals due to their rationalization that they will not be caught, which extends to ownership of illegal guns.

Google is your friend.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/potential_connecticut_school_shooting_8HMOSbP38TXwSYYsVGkYLO

"Lanza used two handguns — a Glock and a Sig Sauer — and a .223-caliber assault rifle, an official said."

The really funny part... this reminds me exactly of that masturbatory, dystopian, boat anchor of a book, Atlas Shrugged. Government research agencies were operating under extreme pressure from ultra left wing political interests to generate only the results they wanted, or risk losing their jobs. Any results to the contrary were buried.

Note that this one follows one of the worst financial calamities in US history, perpetrated in reality by those magnates at the top (so revered in the story), and total lack of regulation.

My irony gauge just blew a fuse.

Your irony gage is apparently in need of not only repair, but calibration.

Bubba & the housing bubble

Yet the reality of what caused the banking collapse has the fingerprints of tonight’s keynote speaker all over it. Consider two Bubba boo-boos that trace straight to the housing bubble and the 2008 financial crisis.

The first is his obsession with pushing homeownership to new highs via government coercion. The second is his unleashing of Wall Street risk-taking.

Clinton charged his Housing secretaries, Henry Cisneros and Andrew Cuomo, with driving homeownership rates up to about 70 percent of households from around 64 percent in the early ’90s.

How did they do this? Through rigorous enforcement of housing mandates such as theCommunity Reinvestment Act, and by prodding mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make loans to people with lower credit scores (and to buy loans that had been made by banks and, later, “innovators” like Countrywide).

The Housing Department was Fannie and Freddie’s top regulator — and under Cuomo the mortgage giants were forced to start ramping up programs to issue more subprime loans to the riskiest of borrowers.

We know how that turned out: Fannie and Freddie help stoke a housing bubble that actually made homeownership less affordable unless borrowers took out ever-more-risky loans. Eventually, both agencies imploded (along with the housing market); bailing them out since 2008 has already cost taxpayers more than $100 billion.

(And, yes, Bush continued Clinton’s policies — but did try to rein in Fannie and Freddie in his later years, before the meltdown. But Democratic barons in Congress like Rep. Barney Frank balked at stopping the train before the wreck.) . . . more. . .

The really funny part... this reminds me exactly of that masturbatory, dystopian, boat anchor of a book, Atlas Shrugged. Government research agencies were operating under extreme pressure from ultra left wing political interests to generate only the results they wanted, or risk losing their jobs. Any results to the contrary were buried.

Note that this one follows one of the worst financial calamities in US history, perpetrated in reality by those magnates at the top (so revered in the story), and total lack of regulation.

My irony gauge just blew a fuse.

Your irony gage is apparently in need of not only repair, but calibration.

Bubba & the housing bubble

Yet the reality of what caused the banking collapse has the fingerprints of tonight’s keynote speaker all over it. Consider two Bubba boo-boos that trace straight to the housing bubble and the 2008 financial crisis.

The first is his obsession with pushing homeownership to new highs via government coercion. The second is his unleashing of Wall Street risk-taking.

Clinton charged his Housing secretaries, Henry Cisneros and Andrew Cuomo, with driving homeownership rates up to about 70 percent of households from around 64 percent in the early ’90s.

How did they do this? Through rigorous enforcement of housing mandates such as theCommunity Reinvestment Act, and by prodding mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make loans to people with lower credit scores (and to buy loans that had been made by banks and, later, “innovators” like Countrywide).

The Housing Department was Fannie and Freddie’s top regulator — and under Cuomo the mortgage giants were forced to start ramping up programs to issue more subprime loans to the riskiest of borrowers.

We know how that turned out: Fannie and Freddie help stoke a housing bubble that actually made homeownership less affordable unless borrowers took out ever-more-risky loans. Eventually, both agencies imploded (along with the housing market); bailing them out since 2008 has already cost taxpayers more than $100 billion.

(And, yes, Bush continued Clinton’s policies — but did try to rein in Fannie and Freddie in his later years, before the meltdown. But Democratic barons in Congress like Rep. Barney Frank balked at stopping the train before the wreck.) . . . more. . .

Liberal myths vs. reality

In most jurisdictions, the law says you have a right to defend yourself with reasonable force.

Correct.

You don't have a right to kill your attacker.

Oversimplified. You never have a right to attack someone with intent to kill, but you sometimes have the right to use potentially lethal force to stop an attacker. The legal standard, as summarized by Massad Ayoob, goes something like this: You may only use potentially lethal force to prevent an immediate, otherwise unavoidable danger of death or grave bodily harm to the innocent. ("Grave bodily harm" has a specific legal meaning, look it up.) This standard is pretty much universal across the USA, and not only covers firearm use but also knife use, use of a baton against someone's head, or any other potentially lethal force.

If a guy you have never seen before is running at you with a knife yelling "I'll kill you!!", you are legal to shoot him if you have no other way to prevent him from killing you. If he falls down after you shoot him, and you walk up to him and shoot him a few times in the head, now you just committed murder. If you just taunted the guy a bunch or otherwise provoked the situation, it is murkier and you might be in big trouble.

TL;DR There are all sorts of laws and precedents covering the use of force in self-defense; you don't seem to be aware of them. Yet you seem to feel free in commenting on them.

Here is a nice, short summary that won't take you long to read: http://www.useofforce.us/3aojp/

Of course, the NRA is trying to change those laws.

What, the NRA is trying to make murder legal? I'd like a citation, please.

I presume you have no such citation, and are just assuming the worst about an organization you don't understand or know much about. I'm an NRA "Life Member" and I get emails all the time from the NRA. I think I would know if the NRA were trying to get murder legalized, or even if the NRA were trying to get a substantial change to the way self-defense works. So far they seem to be busy enough just pushing back against unConstitutional infringements to gun-owners' rights.

By the way, the NRA also offers gun safety classes, including classes for small children (the "Eddie Eagle" classes). The classes for children teach one message: If you see a gun: Stop! Don't touch! Leave the area! Tell an adult! The lessons repeat this mantra many times to make it sink in. You will note the complete lack of pro-gun propaganda there; it's pure safety. (I mention the gun safety classes because some people think the NRA is nothing but political advocacy. I literally once had someone tell me "I'd have much more respect for the NRA if they did something helpful like teach safety classes." Um... they have been teaching gun safety classes for decades.)

If you go around with a concealed handgun, confronting other people, and somebody fights back, you don't have a right to kill him.

Correct as written. If you cause a confrontation, and you wind up in legitimate fear for your life, and you use lethal force to save your life... you will be in serious legal hot water for provoking the situation. And the NRA is fine with that, and so am I.

Try it and you'll wind up like Zimmerman.

Zimmerman's story is that Martin confronted him, and then attacked him. Martin: "You got a problem?" Zimmerman: "No." Martin: "Now you do." Zimmerman also claims that Martin was slamming his head into the sidewalk, and that Martin said "You're going to die tonight."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trayvon-martin-started-confrontation-zimmerman-lawyer-says/2012/03/26/gIQAIlr0cS_story.html

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/zimm_he_said_die_CRLY0byLFjnhr

http://www.cityspoonful.com/black-market-for-raw-milk-delivery-thriving-in-new-york-state/

Try searching for '"new york" "black market" milk' and you'll get a number of news reports on the issue.

...and if you actually read that article, you'll find it makes zero claims about the size of the raw milk black market in NY. GGP's claim that "in New York the biggest Black Market Activity is in unpasteurized milk" is, well, stupid.

The trade in black market cigarettes is orders of magnitude larger than the raw milk black market in NY.

A single example of a US citizen being arrested for the way they look and not having papers?

That never happens here... oh wait.