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or you could end up in the middle of a domestic dispute.

So I walk away if there's no emergency. What was your point?

 

FWIW, I was in Chicago for 4 hours today and I was unarmed. ;)

 

Had several nice pints of Guinness at a Midway pub.

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Until you dig deeper.

Well of course.  Everything is complex, except for the fact that WWII meant a lot to the people who lived through it and fought in it and supported it.  It was far less ambiguous than Vietnam, Korea, Iraq I and 2 and Afghanistan, which we can all agree are unclear both in the motivation for entering those conflicts and the actual outcomes.  WWII did decide quite alot

 

LouieB

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  It was far less ambiguous than Vietnam, Korea, Iraq I and 2 and Afghanistan, which we can all agree are unclear both in the motivation for entering those conflicts and the actual outcomes. 

 

I agree with that. 

 

And not to sweep East German history under the rug, but overall the way Japan, Germany and Italy progressed in the decades that followed was pretty singular.  I think some of the social, political and economic successes there have forever hypnotized the American mind about what greatness can come out of a war.

 

American reluctance to engage with Germany (and the continued commercial exchange between us), rampant domestic racism against Japanese, allying with Stalin, and the use of two atom bombs are where it gets complicated.

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American reluctance to engage with Germany (and the continued commercial exchange between us), rampant domestic racism against Japanese, allying with Stalin, and the use of two atom bombs are where it gets complicated.

 

Not to mentioned the sexual assaults in Europe by GI's --- but war is war --- there is no good war.

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Edward Snowden may go to Ecuador, or maybe Cuba, or somewhere else.  It is most important that we note at this time: who freakin cares?!

 

Yes, there is some foreign relations gossip to come out of that, but I can't believe how little energy the main stream media has devoted to processing the implications of what he leaked, and the civil liberties issues that are in question here.

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So SCOTUS today struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (in a surprise of all surprises a 5-4 decision).

 

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/25/politics/scotus-voting-rights/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

 

Now, I have not have time to look at the ruling and try to suss out the affects, but the left media is really upset about this and the right media is ambivalently cool.  The big worry at least for me is that in the ruling it stated as much stated that there is still a problem with voting rights in the this country and a need for the voting rights act, but the formula it uses to determine what states etc need to get Washington approval is outdated.  It then encourages congress to figure something out.  But we all know that congress and their current state of disfunction won't bother with such trivial matters.  

 

Instead I hope they vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or maybe have more hearings on the "scandals" that they right is obsessed with.  Also more proof that any current "scandal" deserves the quotation marks (at least the IRS anyways).  The IRS also used the same scrutiny for liberal groups as they did for right leaning groups.  http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/24/politics/irs-targeting/index.html

 

So yeah.  

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I haven't read the ruling yet, but I can see Ginsburg's point about Congress recently approving the formula seven years ago. I'll be interested to see why Roberts find the methodology unconstitutional. At the same time, if the Court finds something in a law needs to be fixed, it can't throw up its hands and say, "Never mind, Congress won't be able to get this done, so we'll make the rule."

 

The decision in Adoptive Parents v. Baby Girl (The Baby Victoria case) upsets me more than the VRA decision.

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Terrible video.  But again, I wonder why you posted it in a political thread.  I assume it's because of your advocacy of gun ownership.  Problem is, I don't think a gun, even if she was carrying it on her person, would have prevented this attack.  She was clearly taken by surprise by this (much bigger and extremely violent) guy and unable to do much of anything after the first hit.  

 

If anything, this video makes me think I should get a video surveillance system so that in the (extremely unlikely) event that something like this were to occur to me/my family, the police would have plenty of evidence to track down the assailants.  

 

I hope they catch this guy... thank god he didn't do anything to the 2 small kids.

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A disturbing video of a home invasion in progress. It serves as a reminder that nobody knows the intentions of a burglar when he/she breaks into a house. This poor woman didn't confront the burglar, yet he beat her, choked her, kicked her and threw her down the stairs -- all in front of her 3-year-old child.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvvHMM6TF50

 

You have a fixation and it's weird.

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If anything, this video makes me think I should get a video surveillance system so that in the (extremely unlikely) event that something like this were to occur to me/my family, the police would have plenty of evidence to track down the assailants.  

 

I hope they catch this guy... thank god he didn't do anything to the 2 small kids.

 

Yeah, and another way of looking at that video would be to say, Wow, good thing she didn't have a gun upstairs. If the intruder found it as he was looking through her things, he might have come back downstairs and shot her and her children with it.

The way I figure it, when your number is up, it's up. Fortunately, hers wasn't.

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I wonder why you posted it in a political thread.  I assume it's because of your advocacy of gun ownership. 

I posted it here because this thread is where we've discussed guns and gun control in the past.

 

You have a fixation and it's weird.

 

I have a point of view and an opinion. There's nothing weird about expressing either.

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I posted it here because this thread is where we've discussed guns and gun control in the past.

 

Fair enough... but you didn't directly make that connection.  Do you think the outcome would have been different/better if there was a gun in the house?

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Wow. What a tough guy.

What are the gun laws like in New Jersey? He probably knew the chance of the house having a firearm in it was slim.

This was pretty easy to find by googling "New Jersey gun laws"

 

Guns do not appear to be particularly heavily regulated, and ownership of both long guns and handguns is legal. Open- and concealed carry are allowed (with permit). As far as I know, gun ownership in New Jersey is not uncommon. Obviously it varies from place to place, and I would guess that it is more common in Camden than Mahwah.

 

Millburn is a suburb of Newark/New York City, is quite affluent, and is overwhelmingly (88.9%) White. Residents supported Barack Obama (58.6%) in 2008 and Chris Christie (47.9%) in 2009. I'm sure the intruder figured it was a soft target because it's a low crime area with wealthy homeowners, not because gun ownership is low. This link gives a 12.3% ownership rate in New Jersey, compared to 36% in Texas. Oddly enough, though, this link indicates a violent crime rate of 352/100,000 (ranked #26 nationally) for New Jersey, compared to 516/100,000 (#15) for Texas. Maybe all those guns aren't such a deterrent.

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