In the news...

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Just a few things that caught my eye...

Wyoming, and Arizona, have, or are in the process, of writing laws whereby any new federal laws regarding firearms are not permissible.  What legal grounds they have, and whether it is merely bluster, remain to be seen.  If enough states did this, it would, potentially, come under a special provision.  It might be akin to the ratification of an amendment to the constitution, a 2/3 majority (of states) have to agree.  I am rather surprised to see that more states have not moved such bills forward.  Having sheriffs put forth what they have is not enough.  Sheriffs can be pressured, and are prone to big politics.  To be honest, I don't think states should stop there, that should be the bare minimum.  I actually think most states need to roll back federal involvement in firearm issues altogether, as a group of states, and rely on state ordinances, and most need to mandate state preemption, as Utah does, so that cities cannot "self-regulate".  There is a reason even SLC and Ogden are not parts of the high gun crime areas.  They certainly have gangs, thugs, vast swaths of the underclasses, and large groups of immigrants from different nations who don't want to fit in.  But more good guys have, and know how to use and use better, firearms.  I was surprised it wasn't a Democrat area, either.  I do think those things go together, though it being Romney, I think some LDS donks ducked their party, at least in Utah.

I do believe in reasonable state oversight regarding firearms.  I don't believe everybody should simply be able to buy a firearm, if that would be better than a total ban.  I also don't believe the federal government has a place in that.  The federal government is proving too unreliable, and too locally unaccountable, as well as just wrong on this and other issues.  States really have to begin picking up and taking back their share, and weight, in governance.  I think most states are afraid, as the economy continues to... hrmm... soften.  *cough* depression *cough*  Which is, on the face of it, insane.  They have to know the feds have no money, and are simply printing to cover any "help" they are offering, which has to further erode the value of the dollar and deepen and lengthen the depression.  "But all the other states are doing it", I seem to hear.  Well, remember when your parents suggested that it didn't matter what others do, or get to do?  But, there it is... most states would rather have printed worthless (actually worse than worthless) money than deal with realities or take back control and risk "losing that money".  Gah!

On another issue, I have discussed Russia's impeding doom, for a very long time, here.  Their national native fertility rate is, and has been, the worst of the... more modern? world.  While Russia has never recovered from communism, and is really just a more mildly totalitarian version of it's former self, it is leading the rest of the nations in it's decline.  Vladmir seems to think that Boyz II Men, a queerified group, or at least a typically metrosexual one, is going to help women in Russia decide to have babies.  Bureaucrats are completely clueless, atheist ones top that list.  What about the broken culture and the dolts who helped to break it does this little dictator not understand?  Women will not have babies so long as they would have to raise them with the prospect of feeding their children and themselves on less than I spend to feed my cats!  If he wants to save Russia, he will have to make it so a man can afford to feed himself, a wife, and children without being so close to starvation that he and they will never see their way free from a crushing life.  Women don't want to have babies AND have to work, either, and they don't want to have babies alone.

No matter what modern socialist types think women have become, they know nothing.  While feminists, around the world, to this day, denounce marriage (which honestly means they denounce even being mothers despite what even some of them happen to do), they don't speak for women.  He should know that feminists are just a propaganda tool, one his people helped develop in order that some would gain power through the BREAKING OF THE FAMILY.  And, yet, there he is, trying to use his own propaganda tools, that of pop culture in this case, to fix a problem that can't be solved other than by undoing the strangle-hold on wealth held and kept by a few.  If he wants to save Russia, if that is even possible, he needs to begin figuring out how to form a government of laws, ending feminist propaganda and egalitarianism, and promoting the family.  Then again, I'm not sure he is doing anything more than getting himself in another article, pictured shirtless.

And, by the way, Putin, dude, put a shirt on.  Seriously.  Or at least, you know, actually work out.  They have drugs to help you look good, ask most Hollywood male leads, they know the stuff.  Now the stuff may shrivel your balls, and make it so you can't partake in romance, it might make you moody, and partially insane (if... that's an issue for you?).  But... really... wear a shirt or work out.  You ain't got what it takes to go shirtless.  Just... trying to help.