Tag Archives: salt lake city

Here’s what’s wrong with America: AR-15s in a JC Penney

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A Guy Walks Into JC Penny With An Assault Rifle Strapped To His Back: “This is 22-year-old Joseph Kelley. The gun is an unloaded AR-15. “I felt no negative vibes from anyone,” Kelley told the Salt Lake Tribune, after these photos snapped by fellow JC Penny shopper Cindy Yorgason went viral. “I think it went rather surprisingly well.” Kelley added that he carries guns to protect people from “criminals, cartels, drug lords” and “evil men.” He was also carrying a loaded Glock 19c.”

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Sometimes it’s just a matter of melanin. Let’s just imagine for a minute that Joseph Kelley had middle-eastern features — or that he was a black man: might his fellow SLC Penneys’ shoppers given off some ‘negative vibes’? Might Kelley have been greeted at the door by the police?

Or, for the fun of it, let’s imagine Joseph Kelley wearing the AR-15 in any other large city that isn’t the completely homogenized HQ of the Church of Latter-day Saints: would it have gone ‘surprisingly well’? And would he have made it home WITH the firearm still attached to his person? Does anyone really want a 22-year-old “protecting” them from his idea of imaginary villains?

Most importantly: as we’ve witnessed all too often, the most dangerous people in America have been young white men with guns. You have to wonder why his fellow shoppers weren’t more alarmed.

Salt Lake Tribune endorses Obama: Mitt Romney not “one of us”

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This is some high-level, doubleplusbad rejection — your own hometown newspaper within your own religious community. That’s gotta sting:

Nowhere has Mitt Romney’s pursuit of the presidency been more warmly welcomed or closely followed than here in Utah. The Republican nominee’s political and religious pedigrees, his adeptly bipartisan governorship of a Democratic state, and his head for business and the bottom line all inspire admiration and hope in our largely Mormon, Republican, business-friendly state. [...]  In short, this is the Mitt Romney we knew, or thought we knew, as one of us. 

[...] Sadly, it is not the only Romney, as his campaign for the White House has made abundantly clear… Politicians routinely tailor their words to suit an audience. Romney, though, is shameless, lavishing vastly diverse audiences with words, any words, they would trade their votes to hear.

More troubling, Romney has repeatedly refused to share specifics of his radical plan to simultaneously reduce the debt, get rid of Obamacare (or, as he now says, only part of it), make a voucher program of Medicare, slash taxes and spending, and thereby create millions of new jobs. To claim, as Romney does, that he would offset his tax and spending cuts (except for billions more for the military) by doing away with tax deductions and exemptions is utterly meaningless without identifying which and how many would get the ax. Absent those specifics, his promise of a balanced budget simply does not pencil out…

[...] For four years, President Barack Obama has attempted, with varying degrees of success, to pull the nation out of its worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression, a deepening crisis he inherited the day he took office.

In the first months of his presidency, Obama acted decisively to stimulate the economy. His leadership was essential to passage of the badly needed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Though Republicans criticize the stimulus for failing to create jobs, it clearly helped stop the hemorrhaging of public sector jobs. The Utah Legislature used hundreds of millions in stimulus funds to plug holes in the state’s budget.

The president also acted wisely to bail out the auto industry, which has since come roaring back. Romney, in so many words, said the carmakers should sink if they can’t swim.

Obama’s most noteworthy achievement, passage of his signature Affordable Care Act, also proved, in its timing, his greatest blunder. The set of comprehensive health insurance reforms aimed at extending health care coverage to all Americans was signed 14 months into his term after a ferocious fight in Congress that sapped the new president’s political capital and destroyed any chance for bipartisan cooperation on the shredded economy.

Obama’s foreign policy record is perhaps his strongest suit, especially compared to Romney’s bellicose posture toward Russia and China and his inflammatory rhetoric regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons program…

[...] Therefore, our endorsement must go to the incumbent, a competent leader who, against tough odds, has guided the country through catastrophe and set a course that, while rocky, is pointing toward a brighter day. The president has earned a second term. Romney, in whatever guise, does not deserve a first.

— Too Many Mitts | The Salt Lake Tribune

The taxpayer and the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics

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“As Romney chastises the president for pointing out that successful business ventures benefit from a larger social compact and accuses critics of pining for “free stuff,” Romney is simultaneously touting an Olympic effort that, more than any other in American history, succeeded thanks to public investment—some of it sunk into questionable projects of marginal value to the Salt Lake games. “The $1.5 billion in taxpayer dollars that Congress is pouring into Utah is 1.5 times the amount spent by lawmakers to support all seven Olympic Games held in the U.S. since 1904—combined,” Donald Barlett and James Steele reported for Sports Illustrated in 2001. Those numbers were adjusted for inflation.”

— Mother Jones: How taxpayers helped the GOP candidate turn around the 2002 games.

And on top of all that, all the records were destroyed. Just let that sink in.

MAHER TO ROMNEY: Giving to your ‘ridiculous church’ doesn’t count as charity

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Love him or hate him, Bill makes some good points about this question: what constitutes a charity and especially a tax-deductible charity:


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Maher on Romney's charitable givingMAHER TO ROMNEY: Giving to your ‘ridiculous church’ doesn’t count as charity

Maher asserted that the real problem here, however, is that when Romney’s money goes into what Maher first calls his “cult,” then softens to “ridiculous church,” taxpayers have to make up the shortfall. Charitable deductions, he said, take more than 60 billion dollars a year out of the public coffer, money that has to come from other programs and services.

“So it is fair,” he said, “to ask what constitues a charity.”

Human booby traps found on Utah trail

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The Hills Have Eyes near Salt Lake City, apparently.  This is sick.

AP: Dangerous booby traps found on popular Utah trail

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – The 20-pound spiked boulder was rigged to swing at head-level with just a trip of a thin wire – a military-like booby trap set on a popular Utah canyon trail.

Any unsuspecting hiker exploring the makeshift dead-wood shelter could have fallen prey.

Two men arrested over the weekend on suspicion of misdemeanor reckless endangerment told authorities the traps were intended for wildlife, but investigators don’t believe the story.

“This is a shelter put together by people, visited by people – anything that would be impacted by their device would have to be humans,” Utah County sheriff’s Sgt. Spencer Cannon said. “It took some time to build these traps. They took rope, heavy-duty fishing line, and they intended what the traps were going to do.”

U.S. Forest Service Officer James Schoeffler came across the trip wires last week while on routine patrol on the popular Big Springs hiking trail in Provo Canyon about 50 miles south of Salt Lake City. Having had previous military hazardous device detection training, Schoeffler immediately knew it was a threat. If not disabled, both devices – one set to swing down at head-level, the other designed to trip a passer-by into a bed of sharpened wooden stakes – could have been deadly.

[...] Benjamin Steven Rutkowski, 19, of Orem and Kai Matthew Christensen, 21, of Provo were booked in the Utah County Jail on Saturday and released on bail.

Prosecutors believed the misdemeanor reckless endangerment allegations were the strongest claims they could pursue without anyone being injured. Charges have not yet been filed.