Saturday, December 15, 2012

Stand Up Americans


Men, we all need to grow up and realize how a small group of money men is using us, via the vehicle of the NRA, to make money and more money by creating and selling an emotional climate that all of us should be ‘packing.’ There's a need here for strong womens' voices to tell us that “Guns are America’s insanity.  And it is getting worse, not better.”  There’s a need for strong men to listen to these voices. 

Let’s take a brief look at three examples of my contention of insanity which all occurred after yesterday morning’s tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School.  The Michigan House of Representatives recently passed and sent to the governor a bill that makes it easy for people to carry concealed weapons in schools. After the massacre, a spokesman for the Michigan House Speaker Jase Bolger, said that it might have meant “the difference between life and death for many innocent bystanders.” implying that the school teachers and school administrators should have been armed. Larry Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America, blamed Friday’s shooting on gun control advocates: “Gun control supporters have the blood of little children on their hands. Federal and state laws combined to ensure that no teacher, no administrator, no adult had a gun at the Newtown school where the children were murdered. This tragedy underscores the urgency of getting rid of gun bans in school zones.”  Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee reacted to the tragedy by asking that since prayer is banned from public schools, "should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?" Apparently Huckabee is not familiar with the separation of church and state embodied in our constitution, but that's another story.

“We need to look at what drives a crazy person to do these kind of actions,” said Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, one of the highest-ranking Republicans in the House.  I respond by saying that these people do these things because they can.  And one of the major factors that they ‘can’ is the easy accessibility of weapons of mass destruction like assault weapons with no conceivable purpose for existence other than taking the lives of other human beings.  Surely, no hunter would use an assault weapon, nor police officer, nor target shooter.  It was an assault weapon that was used to commit yesterday's murders.  It was assault weapons that were used in Aurora, Colorado and in Portland, Oregon.  

Women and men of America; we all need to stand up and do the right thing, the responsible thing, the thing that is most consistent with the spiritual values of our country.  Love your neighbor.  Don’t look for an excuse to shoot him.  Don’t contribute to a emotional climate that says, "Shoot first and ask questions later.”  We need to start somewhere.  Contact your state and national elected officials.  Let them know you want a permanent ban on assault weapons.  Tell them to put politics aside.

Just saying . . .

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Not So Fast


The word “lunatic” will be stricken from federal law under legislation that passed the House on Wednesday and is headed to President Obama for his signature. “The term ‘lunatic’ holds a place in antiquity and should no longer have a prominent place in our U.S. code,” said Representative Robert C. Scott, Democrat of Virginia, shortly before the 398-to-1 vote in the House. The word, derived from the Latin word from moon, arises from ancient beliefs that people could become “moonstruck” by lunar movements.  But how we will understand Rick Santorum if this word is removed from our lexicon?  Who but a lunatic could conceivably think an attempt by the United Nations to help disabled people around the world is a direct assault on “us and our family.”  This week, spurred on by Santorum’s ‘lunatic’ thought processes, the Senate refused to ratify a U.N. treaty on the subject. The vote, which fell five short of the necessary two-thirds majority, came right after 89-year-old Bob Dole, the former Republican leader and disabled war veteran, was wheeled into the chamber to urge passage.  The rejected treaty, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, was based on the Americans with Disabilities Act, the landmark law Dole co-sponsored.  But Santorum was upset about a section on children with disabilities that said: “The best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.”  After the vote failed, “We did it,” Santorum tweeted in triumph.   I strongly urge President Obama to veto the legislation striking the  ‘l’ word, because how else could anyone describe Santorum?

Just saying . . .

Monday, December 3, 2012

Mumbly, Grumbly Party of No

I have looked back at my blogs over the past four years and have found that I was quite critical of Obama a number of times.  My areas of concerns included his apparent inability to conduct negotiations properly; For example, he negotiated with himself and rejected a single payer option on Obamacare.  What do I mean by negotiating with oneself?  Consider that there are two parties to an issue.  One of the parties starts the process of negotiations by offering the solution which he/she would like to reach.   Then (normally) the other side responds by offering its proposals.  The process continues with each side winnowing down its various goals and objectives to a point when it can be said that a decision as to the outcome has been reached.

When someone is said to be negotiating against himself, he offers a change in his own initial position before a response is elicited from the other side.  For example, a guy agrees to sell a used car for ten  thousand dollars.  The prospective buyer says “I can’t afford that much.  How much do you really want for the car?”  The seller then offers to sell the car for seventy five hundred dollars and the buyer walks away a happy man because without even entering the process of negotiation he has walked away with a good deal. i.e. the seller has negotiated with himself.  In the conduct of negotiations, the corollary to the principle of not negotiating with oneself is to never begin the process of negotiating unless one is willing to walk away without reaching a conclusion.  In the current situation over avoiding the fiscal cliff, the Republicans, the mumbly grumbly party of No, is behaving exactly like the Romney/Ryan ticket did during the entire campaign (which, in my opinion, cost them the election).  The RR combo then, and the party of No now, refuses to say what it wants; i.e., they are not participating in the negotiating process.  Obama finally gets it.  He is refusing to negotiate against himself.  He is in a position of strength in doing so because if the party of No continues its refusal, the public is smart enough to realize who is the party responsible for placing the American economy at risk.

Just saying . . .