In other gun news.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

Lawmakers in Vermont, a place long steeped in hunting culture, on Friday approved a sweeping package of new gun restrictions, making the state all but certain to join Florida in passing a raft of new gun control measures after a teenage gunman killed 17 people last month at a high school in Parkland, Fla. 

Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, has vowed to sign the measure. It represents a remarkable departure from the state’s existing gun laws, which are some of the weakest in the country — and an about-face for Mr. Scott, who decided to consider new gun control measures only after a teenager was accused of plotting a school shooting in Vermont in the days after the violence in Parkland. 

“No state is immune to the risk of extreme violence,” Mr. Scott said in a statement on Friday, adding, “If we are at a point when our kids are afraid to go to school and parents are afraid to put their kids on a bus, who are we?” 

The bill, which passed the Senate, 17 to 13, on Friday after clearing the House earlier in the week, would raise the minimum age to purchase a gun to 21 and ban bump stocks, which are devices that allow semiautomatic rifles to fire more rapidly. It also contains restrictions that go beyond those in the measure signed in Florida, like an expansion of background checks and a limit on the capacity of magazines that can be sold or possessed in the state.

Chalk another one up for the Parkland students. 

Interestingly enough protesters of this new bill gathered outside of the Vermont Statehouse where some participants were handing out 1,200 30-round magazines, because nothing says we do not need no stinking gun laws like providing protesters with an increased ability to kill.

Hillary Clinton goes after Bernie Sanders hard on gun control.

Courtesy of Politico: 

Remarking upon Sanders' frequent invocation of his rural state of Vermont in defending his past votes (though he does currently support an amendment to the liability bill in the Senate) Clinton noted that most of the guns used to commit crimes in New York come from elsewhere — many of them from neighboring Vermont. 

“Most of the guns that are used in crimes and violence and killings in New York come from out of state. And the state that has the highest per capita number of those guns that end up committing crimes in New York come from Vermont," Clinton said during a gun violence panel in Port Washington, accompanied by family members of people who were killed in mass shootings in recent years. 

"So this is not, 'Oh, you know, I live in a rural state, we don’t have these problems,'" she continued. "This is, you know what? It’s easy to cross borders. Criminals, domestic abusers, traffickers, people who are dangerously mentally ill — they cross borders, too. And sometimes they do it to get the guns they use. This has to become a voting issue for those of us who want to save lives.” 

While Clinton is correct that Vermont has the "highest per capita" number of guns that find their way into New York, to be honest in 2014 that number was only 55, which made Vermont number 14 of the 15 top states where guns come from that find their way into the hands of New York criminals.

A little disingenuous to be sure.

However I am with Hillary as far as making gun control a central feature of her presidential campaign.

I think, considering the certainty of intense NRA funded blowback on that issue, it is a gutsy move, and also furthers President Obama's agenda, which I like.

During Vermont rally Donald Trump orders security to confiscate protester's coats, throw them out into the freezing cold.

Courtesy of The Hill: 

"Throw them out into the cold," Trump ordered security, as protesters shouted "Bernie! Bernie!" during his rally Thursday night in Burlington, Vt. 

"Don't give them their coats," Trump added. "No coats! Confiscate their coats." 

The Sanders supporters had planned to infiltrate the Trump rally but many were thwarted as Trump security screened attendees and ejected those who didn't declare allegiance to the billionaire. 

But about half an hour into the speech some Sanders supporters began chanting. 

Trump said it was "fun" to have the protesters attend his events and kick them out. 

"It's about 10 degrees below zero outside... You can keep his coat; tell him we'll send it to him in a couple of weeks," Trump told security.

You know if this is not a metaphor for how Donald Trump would treat the American people if he became President I don't know what is.

Vermont high schoolers call Fox News out over their lack of journalistic integrity.

Damn when you are being schooled by teenagers about journalism you KNOW you are a bunch of frauds.

I thought that most of these kids were a little stiff on camera, but I have to say I would STILL rather listen to them give me the news than have to listen to the Fox News propaganda machine blame everything, including the weather, on President Obama.

Senator Bernie Sanders has a great idea as to how to bring more people out to vote.

Courtesy of The Hill:  

Midterm election turnout is historically lower than presidential years, but preliminary returns indicate that Tuesday's vote saw the lowest participation rate since the 1940s. 

“Election Day should be a national holiday so that everyone has the time and opportunity to vote,” Sanders said Friday in a statement. “While this would not be a cure-all, it would indicate a national commitment to create a more vibrant democracy.” 

Sanders’s Vermont had its lowest voter turnout in recorded history, with 43.7 percent of registered voters participating. 

Sanders plans to file a bill once Congress returns next week that would add Election Day to the list of federal holidays. Since many jobs take federal holidays off, the move could reduce the costs associated with voting and free up voters to make it to the polls. 

“We should not be satisfied with a ‘democracy’ in which more than 60 percent of our people don't vote and some 80 percent of young people and low-income Americans fail to vote,” he said. 

“We can and must do better than that.”

Actually Sanders is not alone in this idea, according to the article Hillary and John Kerry sponsored a bill to do the same thing back in 2005 when they were both still in the Senate.

I think it's a great idea and I would like to see other incentives to vote as well.

Perhaps providing a tax incentive might be a good start. Americans seem to love those.

While the Republicans do everything they can to sabotage the rollout of Obamacare, Vermont is quietly constructing the nation's first government funded universal health care system.

Courtesy of the Providence Journal:  

As states open insurance marketplaces amid uncertainty about whether they are a solution for health care, Vermont is eyeing a bigger goal, one that more fully embraces a government-funded model. 

The state has a planned 2017 launch of the nation’s first universal health care system, a sort of modified Medicare-for-all that has long been a dream for many liberals. 

The plan is especially ambitious in the current atmosphere surrounding health care in the United States. Republicans in Congress balk at the federal health overhaul years after it was signed into law. States are still negotiating their terms for implementing it. And some major employers have begun to drastically limit their offerings of employee health insurance, raising questions about the future of the industry altogether. 

In such a setting, Vermont’s plan looks more and more like an anomaly. It combines universal coverage with new cost controls in an effort to move away from a system in which the more procedures doctors and hospitals perform, the more they get paid, to one in which providers have a set budget to care for a set number of patients. 

The result will be health care that’s “a right and not a privilege,” Gov. Peter Shumlin said.

I truly think that this is the future of health care in this country, and once Vermont demonstrates how workable and superior the model is there will be vast pressure placed on other states, and the federal government, to follow suit. 

Man this is definitely going to make some Right Wing heads explode!