- Here’s an aspect of the dreadful FATCA that hasn’t gotten much coverage.
- From jed in comments: homeless by choice (and on principle).
- “How to Be Creative.” I don’t buy the claim that there’s no such thing as “creative types” (OMG, there are indeed creative types). But the rest is surely true. Creativity isn’t just for artists, writers, and inventors.
- Neat idea: an urban food forest. Not quite sure, though, how “free” it can be.
- A U.S. government soldier decides to freelance. (ADDED: The story that it was one “lone nut” “going rogue” probably isn’t going to hold up.)
- “Gaining Respect for End-Times Prophet Harold Camping.” Really.
- A whole site for people who believe stuff they saw on The Onion.
- What you surrender when you sign an organ-donor card. Kinda scary.
- What if everybody charged with a crime demanded a jury trial?
- No, Mr, Mueller. You don’t need to check anything. Just arrest Obama and Holder. Among others. (H/T BW.)
Now that’s my idea of a lap dog:
I fully expect that it was just one Soldier. Since most of the people he murdered were sleeping it was not hard for him to shoot them. (It would not be unlikely that he being with the special forces had access to “slicers” and low caliber weapons.)
I find it sad that the reports all state that he had three tours in Iraq and they don’t know why he went nuts. Could it be partly caused by, I don’t know, maybe three tours in Iraq?
This Soldier has the background to be a very destructive killer. After three tours in Iraq, Special Forces training, and access to specialized weapons, he can be very deadly. It is not like these people had alarm systems and as Muslims they won’t have dogs (dogs are unclean). If he was using night vision gear, moving quietly, and a silenced sub-sonic weapon going from house to house would not raise any alarms. It would not be surprising to find that his unit had been in those very buildings so he would have known the lay out too.
Since the Army was notified of a Soldier leaving the base, did an immediate head count and noted his missing, then immediately sent out a team to find him. I bet there were warning signs he was losing it that had been ignored. They met him as he came back where he surrendered to them.
I think he earned the blame for the killing, but the Government should also accept the guilt of putting him there, training him, putting him in a bad environment, and not acting when the warning signs were there.
It is time to go home.
“We have benefited little from the foreign troops here but lost everything – our lives, dignity and our country to them,” said Haji Najiq,” a Kandahar shop owner.
“The explanation or apologies will not bring back the dead. It is better for them to leave us alone and let us live in peace.”
Maybe the correct response to FATCA is not to keep money in U.S. Banks. Maybe, that is the purpose, to limit deposits to U.S. Banks…
“I find it sad that the reports all state that he had three tours in Iraq and they don’t know why he went nuts. Could it be partly caused by, I don’t know, maybe three tours in Iraq?”
I agree, BusyPoorDad. I find it strange that this is something so many people just don’t want to see.
As to whether the slaughter was committed by one “rogue” or a gang of angry, maybe drunken, soldiers (as the second article suggests), I have no idea of course. Either way … what on earth are “we” doing in Afghanistan?
I like the “food forest” idea. I have often planted wild edibles in areas I frequent, so that I or others can enjoy them later. And, I’ve tried to do the same here, but the drought the past couple of years has thwarted my efforts.
The article about crashing the system by refusing to plea bargain was something told to me by a high school teacher many years ago. And he was all for it. I remember thinking at the time “Why would anyone take a plea?”, but I understand why now. I just don’t think anyone should. Yeah, not my call. It would be nice if enough people would join together on this to bring the rigged system to its knees.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=409310449086349&set=a.327982470552481.96786.259184544098941&type=3
This is why we are in Afghanistan.
I like the food forrest, but I doubt it will have much impact. Most city parks I’ve been to had food growing in plenty and rotting on the vine. Even median strips around here have apples and plums galore, big, sweet, juicy, and feeding nobody but the squirrels. And before anybody asks, government property in this county does not get sprayed with pesticides or herbicides, I checked.
There were years I’d go to one park and fill my paper grocery bags full of hickory nuts, even hazelnuts if I could beat the squirrels. Then I’d get fresh bags and walk to the median strip a block from my parents’ house and pick apples until my arms were about to fall off. In July there are so many black raspberries that the hillside in one park turns purple, and a month later the purple is from the wild grapes hanging in bunches. Mulberries stain the sidewalks a permanant black around here, and every fall the squirrels run around with black walnuts in their mouths, making it look like they’re stealing tennis balls. All this bounty goes to scavangers and vermin, while people stand on the corner holding signs that say “will work for food”.
My dad once was working on a job site acress the street from a food pantry. One morning a local orchard donated an entire semi load of apples. Dad watched while he worked, as each person came out with their box of food, took out the apples, and threw them in the dumpster. He said not one of the people recieving the food actually kept the apples, and by the end of the day, the dumpster was overflowing with them.
Call my a cynic, but I think Seattle will be disappointed.
I should probably rephrase part of that. By “scavangers and vermin” I did not mean for them to sound like the same thing. I just meant, well, this city has been having a terrible problem with raccoons, skunks, possoms, and rats. There are no people picking all that food, I’m not sure but I could have been the only one.
BusyPoorDad — That’s too funny to be sad and to sad to be funny. I’ll now be waiting for some politician to actually use that as justification for attacking Iran.
Ellendra — Interesting and head-shaking at the same time.
Seattle may succeed because it’s an “artsy-veggie” sort of place and the Pacific Northwest is a center of the whole locavore/natural foods movement. But in my small, working-class town I observe a bit of what you’ve observed. We’re surrounded by wild foods here, most of which go unused.
But throwing away apples at the food bank … sigh.
Wow, all the stupid people showed up to comment in the “homeless by choice” article……for all the people who got “adventure” out of the article, they figured it out….
Very accurate article, too…..
The only (really, the only) thing that sucks about that lifestyle is giving up the internets 😉
Awwww … I too have a VERY large lap dog, my Irish setter Corey … who weights about as much as I do … I well know the ‘knock the breath outa you’ feeling when he lands on my ‘lap’….
Here’s one law that’s likely to not get passed, or if it somehow do, it’ll be ignored, unless they really, really don’t like the present President at the time.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.CON.RES.107:
Probably be considered a waste of time.
I for one would really like to know why all those people who got food from the food pantry threw away the apples. That just seems totally strange to me.
Probably because it’s HEALTHY.
I wonder how many of the people actually did toss out those apples? Possibly he observed quite a few doing it, but not everybody. Still, it’s awful. Still, it’s plausible.
At the grocery store checkout a couple of days ago I was behind a woman paying with an EBT (food stamp) card. She had $125 or so left on the card but had loaded her cart with way more than that. So as I stood there waiting to check my couple of items, she sorted and chose and had the cashier ring up this, then remove that. Although her cart had originally had a fair mix of things, she kept the soda and ice cream and sugary cereal and gave back the veggies.
I’ve worked with food banks for years. It is not unusual for recipients to discard foods they don’t “like” or know how to prepare. Most want easy to use/store foods. Other fresh produce that is not perfect will often be discarded. Recipients will also discard canned/jarred/boxed foods past the sell-by-date on the packaging. The older folk will generally keep everything or pass along the stuff they can’t use to others.
I worked at a grocery store for 2 years. Most of the time I could spot the EBT users pretty accurately. They were the ones with the kids out of control and the carts full of junk food, and such abraisive attitudes that polite people winced before they even got close.
I’m sorry, but, the majority of “poor” people don’t want healthy food, they want the junk they were raised on, and they want you to pay for it.
(None of which applies to the truly poor, only the “poor”.)
I’d venture a guess that any recipients who discard ANYTHING haven’t actually begun to completely starve (yet)……