Then again, you touch that thing and all silence will be gone.

Their analysis, published in the BMJ on Tuesday, shows that “medical errors” in hospitals and other health care facilities are incredibly common and may now be the third leading cause of death in the United States — claiming 251,000 lives every year, more than respiratory disease, accidents, stroke and Alzheimer’s.

Martin Makary, a professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who led the research, said in an interview that the category includes everything from bad doctors to more systemic issues such as communication breakdowns when patients are handed off from one department to another.

Moreover, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t require reporting of errors in the data it collects about deaths through billing codes, making it hard to see what’s going on at the national level.

Researchers: Medical errors now third leading cause of death in United States – WaPo

But we are the troglodytes because we refuse any more wasteful “medical research” on “gun violence”, right? And we are putting people in danger when we say doctors shouldn’t be allowed to give advice on guns when they are not trained on firearms safety. But yet, they screw up what they are supposed to be trained on and are sending 251,000 people six feet under.

And tomorrow morning, there won’t be a horrified “Mom” in Zionsville , IN creating a “grassroots” Facebook page to  fight against this horror show. There won’t be a Gotham mayor putting up his billions to fight the evil Medical Lobby and reduce the deaths and form Mayors Against Medical Malpractice against the American Medical Association. No, this report will be ignored and we will be called terrorists and murderers once again.

Foxtrot Uniform.

This was found in The Idealist, a jobs website for mostly unpaid internship or as they say “Idealist is all about connecting idealists – people who want to do good – with opportunities for action and collaboration.”

Assist in administering Everytown’s suite of field, campaign, and contact tools including, but not limited to NGP-VAN, EveryAction, ActionKit, Salesforce, Hustle, Mobile Commons, and BlueHQ. This includes managing user and security settings, providing technical assistance, and monitoring use of the systems to ensure compliance with Everytown data practices;

So, I did a little bit of Google-Fu and came up with:

NGP-VAN is a privately owned American company specializing in helping progressive campaigns and organizations leverage technology to meet their goals. Nearly every major Democratic campaign in America is powered by NGP VAN, including the Obama campaign’s voter contact, volunteer, fundraising and compliance operations in all 50 states. The organizers, fundraisers, and strategists that use our tools work tirelessly to advance important causes and elect inspiring leaders, like President Barack Obama and Senator Elizabeth Warren. From equality + reproductive rights to education + climate change, the passions of these leaders and organizations are shaping a brighter future – and we’re passionate about offering them the technology they need to bring their goals to life.

Next we have:

At EveryAction, we’ve walked in your shoes and get what you’re doing; our team of experts have held senior digital, fundraising, and organizing roles at nonprofits, and we helped pioneer online fundraising and advocacy. The insights we gained from this experience, combined with a top-notch in-house technology team, have allowed us to build best-in-class tools that have helped thousands of clients – both large and small – raise billions of dollars, send billions of emails, and recruit millions of new supporters.

And then we have:

ActionKit  is used by progressive organizations, large and small, around the world, to make a difference on issues from climate change to gun control to disaster relief to social justice and more.

Next on the list is

Mobile Commons by Upland is the leading mobile messaging platform offering mobile strategy to the most influential brands, government agencies, healthcare groups, higher education institutions, and nonprofit organizations in the world, including the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, DoSomething.org, Viacom, Bowling Green State University, the Human Rights Campaign, and more.

The list of clients is interesting.

Salesforce appears to be just a straight company with no political tendencies. They have a long list of clients including big commercial names. I guess they need a true capitalist to gather money and info. As for Hustle and BlueHQ, I could not find reliable info so I am leaving them out.

The alleged Grassroots Movement for “Gun Safety” appears to be long  staffed by Liberal Mercenaries. Make no mistake, the companies above are getting their pockets filled, there is no fight out of the goodness of their hearts. It is also interesting that at least three of them are fundraising engines with long political experience. We knew that monies from special donors were being spent and it is good to see where it is going.

And you know? I like that. It proves that the Opposition never had any real support from the common folk and they had to resort to use their cash or collect it to hire Hessians and fight us.

And they still cannot win. The uncouth plebe has not only resisted but is beating them.

And they will not win.

We are the Righteous.

The Northeastern Junior College held a debate between philosophy and criminal justice majors over whether or not more gun control laws should be enacted. The “pro” side was for more legislation and the “con” side for no more legislation.

Let me do a run down of the article.

It opened with comments from the pro-legislation side. The opener, Venus Bukowski, went straight to the Sandy Hook shooting and showed images of one of the kids. Then said the lines of “no one is trying to make guns illegal”, and “both sides recognize we have a gun problem”.

Hold your horses, Venus. The emotional card is your go to? Not logic? And while you may not want to make guns illegal, there are many who do so it becomes a valid concern. The only gun problems I have right now are the lack of constitutional carry and not enough money to get a Scar 17s.

The goals of the pro-side was to have mandatory training before someone’s first firearm purchase, eliminate the magazine size ban, and that a law should hold provisions so that educational facilities can have properly trained faculty for protection. They also kept citing that according to Gun Violence Archive, there were 783 gun deaths this year due to accidents/negligence. (If you check out the site, the number is for total accidents, not deaths). Why lie like that? Another pro-side debater claimed that responsibility should be part of our right to own guns, and that current laws to deal with safety even though the constitution says “Well regulated militia”. His proposed “safety law” would be the mandatory training.

So they have some sense- they see the magazine bans are useless and that it is a good thing for educational facilities to have armed faculty. However, they shoot their argument in both feet by lying about a statistic and ignoring the Heller decision, which made it clear that citizens do not need to be in a militia to exorcise their right that the second amendment reflects upon).

The con-side of this said that more laws would infringe upon our rights, and there are many laws already in place. They denoted that more laws would call for too much money to enact/enforce and that gun safety should not originate from legislation. The opener also referred to Russia, Estonia, and four other countries were murder rates are higher than the rate in the USA. According the Brookings Institute and the NRA, anywhere from 3,000 to 16,000 gun control laws are in place. She also cited that in 2008, all firearm incidents hit the lowest it had been since 1993. “This matters because creating new gun laws did not lower gun violence,” she said. 

Using facts and logic? Perhaps the opposition here should have gone for that route.

Also note that later on the pro-side cited more than 4,000 gun related deaths this year. I checked it out, and the site lumps suicides in, of course.

The three judge panel ruled the con side had won the debate.

Now, I know the people in favor of more safety legislation believe they are doing what is best and do not want to revoke anyone’s right to own a firearm. I see it as being influenced heavily by emotions of fear and sadness. A little boy was shot to death by a psycho. No one likes or wants that to happen. But you cannot legislate away stupid. Besides, if all you want is for a few safety laws for mandatory training that say that “those that own guns previous to the safety law being enacted would not have to take the training and new purchasers only have to take the training once”, then why even refer to someone who lost his mind. Also, I assume they approve of a registration because how else would it be known if you are being grandfathered in.

And safety laws don’t exist??? One guy said that the only laws right now refer to manufacturing, buying and selling, and transportation. Perhaps he is ignorant of laws against brandishing, of gun free zone laws, of gun ban laws, and of all of the other restrictive laws in respect to firearms that come in the name of “public safety”. And a one-time training for just new owners isn’t even going to make a big enough difference to reduce accidental injuries to zero, which is a goal of theirs.

So, the gun supporters who are in favor of more legislation lost the debate, misspoke of death/accident statistics, used the emotion card immediately with images included, and want some more useless legislation. The good side is that they still supported teachers having guns and ridding their state of magazine bans.

The gun and true second amendment supporters said that more infringement is not good. They also said that instead of more laws, the current laws need to be better enforced. They were also already aware of the Heller decision and used it to rebuttal against the well regulated militia statement.

It is great to see pro-gun people having a debate about gun laws instead of seeing the normal anti-gun rhetoric. Because while some of the arguments brought up on the pro-side were flawed, they stood more ground on reasoning than saying guns are bad. I just don’t support more gun legislation unless it is freeing me of government placed burdens on my freedoms. A gun safety course like that is pretty useless. I support everyone going and getting training and firing their guns often for practice. But a one-time training course? I hardly learned anything at the hunter’s safety course from when I was about 12 years old. And it was a long time ago. Shooting the clay pigeons that day does not make me a well trained person with a shotgun. At this point, someone in favor of training might say that this means the courses should be more often then. But now we are back at “well regulated militia” and the Heller decision- and that is the end of that discussion.

Have a nice day, and I’ll leave you today with this thought,

It is up to me to continue my training with dedication, not legislation.

The videos and GIFs of Cora Segal (A.K.A. Trigglypuff) are going around social media like crazy.  If you don’t know much about this new species of Campus Butt-hurt, I ask you to take a couple of minutes and go read this great post at The Liberty Zone and then come back.

Chubby people has a long standing tradition of bonhomie and acceptance of everybody. From Saint Nick to John Candy, Fat people are beloved because we see the good things both in life and in people. Top Fat Boy in history? Good Old Buddha who is always represented with a smile on his face and full of wisdom. Yes, there has been fat assholes in history: Nero is reputed to be in the chunky side, Reichsminister of Aviation Hermann Göring was a Nazi prick and the North Korean Kims are certainly murdering jackasses. And our fav fat asshole of all times in the Gun Rights movement is Michael Moore, need I say more?

What about rotund women? You need not to go farther than every plump grandmother, full of love and good food who no matter how bad you screw up, she is ever-understanding and forgiving. Ask women anywhere and they will tell you that their best confidant and friend packs some extra pounds and she is the one that has the biggest shoulders and can make a tissue box appear from nowhere alongside the tub of ice cream when the heart is broken and needs mending.

We thought Rosie O’Donnell was and statistic anomaly. She has been the official Nasty Fat Broad, so full of hate that even her daughter despises her with a flavor not seen since Joan Crawford’d kids. But we also have seen the rise of Amy Schummer in acting/political hack, Melissa McCarthty as just unlimited mean actress and a couple of others that escape my mind now.  Cora Segal is the uncared child left to roam the wilds of academia of her own and as we have seen, acts like a feral pig at a roadside watermelon stand.

Dear Trigglypuff, you make me sad because Fat people are stronger and more balanced that. You are against “body-shaming” when that has been our source of strength for centuries.  We all survived the idiots poking fun at us and the bullying by the less illuminated… till we figured the laws of physics and that a lot of mass moving at speed impacting against a lower mass and forcing it into the unmovable object tends to end conflagrations rather quick. Some mean person tell us we are fat and we laugh and retort that there is more to love about us. We have a bigger humorous gravitational force and that is why people gather around us at parties and reunions. We have taken time to stop and smell the roses (instead of constantly running and spending time in the gym) so we have stories to tell for children an adults. It is gonna be the fat uncle or aunt sitting on the ground surrounded by kids, playing with them and not caring if our butts get wet. You don’t go to the crazy Crossfit addict for counsel, nobody does. He will only tell you to suck it up and flip the tractor tire. You go to a Vito Corleone or a Winston Churchill. We have the wisdom, the smarts and the love for our fellow human beings. Hurting words do not hurt, they just bounce off our generous adipose layer, our fatty armor. Learn to use it, you will live longer. Stop being an angry, useless bitch.

I had to add the best Fat Friendly move ever: The Replacements.

With the introduction of new writers, I decided that the blog’s front page needed to change. I know that a considerable amount of people check the blog with tablets or phones and I was afraid that a story may get lost in the avalanche.

So I tried the tiles and got called on it as smart-phone unfriendly. So, I figure a list style showing the last 10 post will be the best compromise. The long format only showed 5 and it took forever to load in some cases, not that I am saying the GFZ writers like to write long…nah.

OK, that’ll be all… carry on.

With all of this talk about Obama pushing for more expansion on smart guns I am surprised to see very little reflection on Colt’s attempt in the 90’s, which was recently covered by NPR.

Donald Zilkha, an investment banker who was not a gun owner, bought the company in the 90’s. He had a plan to lead Colt into being the first company to producing smart guns.

While the technology and reliability was the big concern, the engineers at Colt felt they could tackle that challenge.

However, the biggest problem was one that Zilkha admits that he had not considered. “I hadn’t totally fully understood the culture.” He found out that many gun owners were skeptical of a gun that required technology to work in a life or death situation. To overcome this and to reach everyone else, Zilkha planned to demonstrate the technology for the Wall Street Journal. The tech used was a bracelet that used a radio frequency from a wristband that the shooter must wear.

Then the second problem occured at the demostration- the gun did not fire when it should have. It made the front page of the WSJ, and the smart gun from Colt was dropped. Since then no big gun company has produced smart guns, at least not effectively.

So there is a history of unreliability and not big market for such a product. Manufacturers and dealers should not be forced to supply something, especially when their is no demand. I don’t care if people want smart guns for their home. That’s your freedom to make that decision. However, I, as well as millions of others, do not want smart guns in our houses. It’s the same reason as to why I do not want a low quality gun, I prefer to own something reliable.

So the next time you see someone wanting smart guns just remember that it is their choice to want one, but it is not anyone’s choice what you should own.

Have a nice day, everybody.