But an NPR investigation finds that the homes HUD sells are disproportionately located in flood-prone places, compared with Zillow records of all homes sold in the United States. The agency does not fully disclose the potential costs and dangers of living in harm's way, and some of these transactions have happened as local governments are buying out properties in the same areas to mitigate flood risk.
Details that have come into focus after the attack on Capitol Hill on January 6 have made clear, Maher writes, just how the police and the violent far-right of this country blur together. Neither Ahmaud Arbery nor Trayvon Martin, among countless others, were killed by active police officers, but they were nonetheless killed by what Maher calls the "pig majority" — which includes not just police but their "volunteer deputies...the judges, the courts, the juries, and the grand juries... the mayors and the district attorneys who demand 'law and order'... the racist media apparatus that bends over backwards to turn victims into aggressors." As Tupac Shakur famously put it, the police is "the biggest gang in America," Maher contends.
I was out walking along Piseco Powley Road and walked past a hunter with a pistol and a butcher knife strapped to his belt. It’s the wilderness and totally unremarkable, people like to be prepared to survive in the woods as necessary. That or more likely he was looking for coyotes to dispatch. He did mention hearing a lot of ‘yotes recently at night.
I’ve thought about it for years, but I’ve never moved forward on getting my pistol permit. Sure I own several long guns, most small caliber guns for small game – a couple of rifles and shotguns. I’d like to get my pistol permit but I really resent the process and I’m not really willing to go in front of a judge or go down to the police station to fill out a lot of paper work and pay a bunch of money to the government, then have to get recertifed every three years.
I honestly don’t like or trust authority figures. I don’t want to go to a police station or in front of a judge to plea my case. I know the politics game well enough and I know few institution men are completely honest brokers. Plus I feel like having to have a permit to own or carry a gun in remote country is completely violating out rights. If you are not currently in jail or a mental institution, then you should have the right to own and carry whatever firearm you want especially in the woods or on your own land.
Some states are closer to that ideal. Many of the states on my short list for settling down are closer to that ideal, gun rights are a big priority in the red states.
There was no good way to end the war but it seems like a bandage over a wound, this one had to be ripped off and let the Afghanistan people run the government they are want. Best to do in the summer months, three years until the presidental election.
“It is a 20 year war that had to end.” – President Biden
I am not convinced that the Afghan people really don’t want the Taliban as their leadership. It is hard if not impossible to run a government that lacks popular support. It’s rare that a king or a dictator lasts for long unless they provide a level of services that the public demands. Dictators are often good at one level at providing security and decent public services even as they silence the opposition.
I also doubt that it’s all about religious extremism – people probably weren’t happy with the level of services provided by the previous Afghanistan regime, or the corruption that was previously the norm. People where probably tired of a generation of war and ready for the stabilization of an Afghanistan under the Taliban after America leaves.
8/19/20 by NPR
Web player: https://podcastaddict.com/episode/111312409
Episode: https://play.podtrac.com/npr-381444908/edge1.pod.npr.org/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/npr/fa/2020/08/20200819_fa_fapodweds-da549908-b651-4c08-b7ca-210e0f707ca5.mp3?awCollectionId=381444908&awEpisodeId=903895214&orgId=1&d=2853&p=381444908&story=903895214&t=podcast&e=903895214&size=45552537&ft=pod&f=381444908
Historian Lesley M.M. Blume’s new book, ‘Fallout,’ tells the story of John Hersey, the young journalist whose on-the-ground reporting in Hiroshima exposed the world to the devastation of nuclear weapons. “Hersey had seen everything from that point, from combat to concentration camps,” Blume says. “But he later said that nothing prepared him for what he saw in Hiroshima.”
Light and happy 😊 podcast for listening 🎧 on the beach 🏖.
The U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is a story of democracy and its shortcomings. In this piece, Steve Inskeep — host of NPR's Morning Edition, as well as NPR's morning news podcast Up First — analyzes how the United States inadvertently took on a mission to democratize Afghanistan, and instead undermined democracy at home, as unpopular wars tend to do.