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My sentiments.
A vote for Trump is a vote against China and a vote for the Democrat Nominee is a vote against America..(See 1 and 1a below.)
http://www.gopusa.com/?p=
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Dershowitz on Red Flag legislation. (See 2 below.)
And:
OP Ed from my friend.(See 2a below.)
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Dick
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1)
The 2020 Election Will Make
or Break America
John Del Vecchio
I’m not a fan of Donald Trump. Nor do I dislike the president, though.
He’s a polarizing figure, for sure. Seems I’m the rare person who doesn’t seem affected by him one way or the other. That’s certainly not the case among my family and friends!
That said, I’m voting for the Donald in 2020.
My mind is made up. I will not waver from my decision.
Why?
Well, I saw enough of the two Democratic debates to know that any one of those clowns becoming president would represent another ruinous step for our country. Forget the economy; the entire republic is at risk.
None of the candidates inspire me to buy any of what they promise. Most of it is pie-in-the-sky stuff that won’t happen anytime soon, not in the current political environment.
Beside the sheer impracticality of it all, it’s nothing but freebies, giveaways, and handouts.
I do support a living wage. Heath care should be affordable for working people. And getting an education shouldn’t subject to you to 40 years of indentured servitude.
But just giving all those things away won’t solve the problems we face. In fact, doing so might exacerbate them...
It’s totally nuts, just like the system that reduces our choices to two, one absurd, the other ridiculous.
And in the Left Corner…
Click to Continue Reading
1a)
Biden Compares President Trump to the Ku Klux Klan - Read More
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2) A Yellow Light for Red-Flag Laws
Be wary of denying individual rights based on predictions.
By Alan M. Dershowitz
President Trump’s proposal to “red flag” potential mass shooters is well-intentioned. If we could prevent even one mass killing by identifying and disarming the potential perpetrator beforehand, it would be worthwhile. But do we have the tools to do it, and at what cost to our constitutional rights?
I have studied, taught and written for half a century about the difficulties of predicting violence. My first scholarly article, in 1970, was titled “The Law of Dangerousness: Some Fictions About Predictions,” and a subsequent book was titled “Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways” (2006). Research shows that any group of people identified as future violent criminals will contain many more who won’t be violent (false positives) than who will (true positives). More true positives mean more false ones. Such groupings also fail to identify many future violent criminals (false negatives).
We don’t yet have the predictive tools necessary to raise the number of true positives while at the same time reducing false positives. We may someday develop such tools, but how many false positives are we willing to tolerate until then to decrease the number of false negatives? Put another way: How many law-abiding people are we prepared to deprive of guns to prevent even one mass shooting?
To those who favor strict gun control the answer might seem obvious. They think it’s worth it for 100 or 1,000 nonviolent people to lose their guns to prevent a mass shooting. But those who regard gun possession as a fundamental right under the Second Amendment—as the Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008)—frame the issue differently. They ask: Can the government deprive a citizen of a constitutional right based on a prediction?
Red-flag laws risk setting a dangerous precedent. If the government can take your guns based on a prediction today, what will stop it from taking your liberty based on a prediction tomorrow?
It isn’t a far-fetched concern. The U.S. detained more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II based on wildly exaggerated predictions of sabotage. States lock up convicted sexual predators even after they’ve completed their sentences based on predictions of recidivism. (The best predictor of future violence is past violence, so sexual-predator laws may have fewer false positives.) Criminal defendants—who are entitled to the presumption of innocence—are frequently denied bail based on predictions that they will flee or commit additional crimes.
So the danger of moving from red-flag gun confiscation to red-flag preventive detention is real. We should be careful about denying individual rights based on questionable predictions. Red-flag laws would be worth trying as a remedy for gun violence if they remained limited to temporary gun confiscation pending a timely due-process review. But when government starts taking away some rights in the interest of safety, all rights are at risk.
Mr. Dershowitz is a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of “Defending Israel: The Story of My Relationship with My Most Challenging Client.”
2a) Too Many Guns and Too Little Respect for Human Life
No one could fail to have been moved by the double mass shootings in the United States last weekend, the associated loss of too many lives, too many injured and the dozens of families whose lives were forever changed by being in the wrong place at the wrong time on a summer weekend.
2a) Too Many Guns and Too Little Respect for Human Life
By Sherwin Pomerantz
The resultant press coverage, while important, found commentators grasping for new insights, as they needed to fill 24/7 news cycles over many days when often there was simply nothing new to report. That led many of them to exaggerate the facts and, in some cases, perhaps even create falsehoods in order to fill the need for news.
However, the real facts, the real statistics, clearly point to the fact that there are simply too many guns in the United States making it too easy for people living in today’s polarized world to take out their frustrations with bullets instead of dialogue.
A recent survey by National Public Radio (NPR) found that in 2017, the last year for which data is available, the U.S. had 120.5 guns per 100 people in the country. They were #1 in the world in that category and the second place country, Serbia, was way down on the list at 37.82 guns per 100 people. Israel, by comparison, where gun ownership is tightly controlled, has 7.3 guns per 100 and Australia, where everyone in the less populated areas seems to have a weapon, has just 13.7.
The same source found that in 2017 the U.S. experienced 4.43 violent gun deaths per 100,000 people whereas most western countries are dramatically lower than that number. Japan has 0.04 deaths per 100,000 and the United Kingdom has 0.06 per 100,000. In some areas of the U.S., the statistics are even worse. In Washington, DC, they had 16.34 deaths per 100,000 and in Louisiana, the number was 10.68.
According to Amnesty International 80% of all violent gun deaths worldwide occur in the U.S. Even if one looks at all deaths from firearms including accidental deaths, suicide and the like the World Economic Forum’s 2016 statistics show that the U.S. was #2 with 37,200 such death second only to Brazil’s 43,200. On average, according to the Gun Violence Archive, in the U.S. an average of 43 people a day lose their lives to gun violence.
Amnesty International further points out that there has been no gun control legislation passed in the United State in the last three years.
Seemingly, nobody questions the accuracy of the numbers. They really cannot be questions as with so many groups doing the analysis the system is self-checking. The disagreement is only about the cause.
Over the last week, there has been a lot of talk about violent video games being the cause. However, people all over the world are exposed to violent video games yet it is only the U.S. that has this level of gun violence. Others say that this is the result of living in a polarized society. But that excuse also does not hold up. Populations all over the world today are living in polarized societies but it is only in the U.S. where people engage in mass shootings (an average of 300 per year each year for the past five years according to the Gun Violence Archive).
Of course, others claim that the violence stems from comments being made by the political leadership. To be sure, there are issues around that point. However, that does not explain why there have also been as many mass shootings in years when the political leadership in the U.S. was not guilty of negative comments about minority groups, does it?.
It would seem that the core issue is that there are times in the history of society when human life ceases to have ultimate value. That is when someone, to satisfy his /her need for psychological satisfaction, willingly chooses to sacrifice human life itself. This is much more than a personal decision; it is nothing less than a societal fault that needs to be addressed in every institution of that society. This includes schools, religious groupings, government, the work place and, most basically, the family and local community as well.
Venezuelan journalist Edgar Ramirez said: “For me, no ideological or political conviction would justify the sacrifice of a human life. For me, the value of life is absolute, with no concessions. It's not negotiable.”
The leadership of a society that chooses not to act in the face of the kinds of statistics known to them are themselves no less guilty of the crime than the ones who pulled the trigger.
Cicero in his orations in Rome would often opine, “O tempora, O mores!” which translates to shame on the times and its customs. Indeed, shame on those who can do something about this and choose to sit idly by collecting their money from America’s gun lobby. For shame indeed!!!
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