Killing in America

I am tired of listening to the talk show guest congressman and senators who are calling for stronger protection for students in the wake of repeated mass shootings. None of these elected representatives that I have heard are willing to confront the fact that the killing is not just in schools. It is happening in malls, churches, and entertainment venues. Most of the killers were not 18, 19 or 20 years old. They were adults aged 25 to 64 years old and many with no prior criminal history.

The best example is the killing of 58 people at a concert in Las Vegas. Stephen Craig Paddock was an American mass murderer responsible for the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, during which he fired into a crowd of approximately 22,000 concertgoers attending a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip. He was a graduate from California State University, Northridge (CSUN). He was 64 years old when he conducted the attack. He had no criminal record.

Killer in San Bernardino was 28 years old and his wife was 29.

Killer in Orlando night club shooting was 29.

Sutherland Springs, Texas at the First Baptist Church killing was committed by a gunman clad in all black, with a ballistic vest strapped to his chest and a military-style rifle in his hands. The killing was done on a Sunday morning. Of the 26 fatalities, 23 people were found dead inside the church, two were found outside, and one died later at a hospital. The killer was 26 years old. He did have a criminal past but was still able to obtain a weapon.

So while killings at schools is an utterly horrible thing there have been many other killings at many other places.

The answer is a prohibition placed on the ownership of assault weapons. I do not care whether they are identified as automatic or semi-automatic. These weapons are meant for killing people.

When do the words “never again” apply? Why are we tied to an amendment to the constitution that was written in 1789?

A Dream of Absolute Power

Donald Trump is taking the steps necessary to destroy the American democracy. His objective is a government similar to Turkey, Russia, and other nations ruled by despots.

Trump has attacked the most treasured parts of this country.
1. The court system
2. The press and freedom of speech
3. Libel laws
4. The electoral system
5. The Congress

The courts:
Trump has made a series of tweets and public statements attacking the deciding judges personally, questioning the authority of federal courts to review his orders, suggesting the court is biased, and suggesting that the judges and court system would be to blame for future terrorist attacks.

February 4, 2017 Trump tweet: The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!

In response to U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo O. Curiel’s orders in a class action lawsuit against Trump University, then-presidential candidate Trump made a number of statements attacking Judge Curiel as biased because of his “Mexican heritage” and appointment by a Democratic president.

Trump tweet: I should have easily won the Trump University case on summary judgement but have a judge, Gonzalo Curiel, who is totally biased against me.

The Press, freedom of speech and Libel laws:
Senator John McCain (Republican senator from Arizona, writing in the Washington Post
wrote the 45th president’s assault on American media provides cover for oppressive global regimes to “follow suit.”
“He [Trump] has threatened to continue his attempt to discredit the free press by bestowing ‘fake news awards’ upon reporters and news outlets whose coverage he disagrees with,” McCain writes. “Whether Trump knows it or not, these efforts are being closely watched by foreign leaders who are already using his words as cover as they silence and shutter one of the key pillars of democracy.”

John McCain continued, “For decades, dissidents and human rights advocates have relied on independent investigations into government corruption to further their fight for freedom. But constant cries of ‘fake news’ undercut this type of reporting and strip activists of one of their most powerful tools of dissent.”

Reported by ABC News on January 10, 2018: Pres. Donald J. Trump says he plans to “take a strong look” at libel laws: “You can’t say things that are knowingly false, knowingly false, and be able to smile as money pours into your bank account.”

Perhaps Mr. Trump has not read the constitution. The first amendment guarantees a Free Press. That means the press has the right to publish articles or books that criticize the president and anyone else. The book “Fire and Fury” tells stories of people who think Trump is child-like. Trump wants to stop those kinds of stories about him.

The electoral system:
From nytimes.com
Trump Disbands Commission on Voter Fraud
JAN. 3, 2018
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Wednesday abruptly shut down a White House commission he had charged with investigating voter fraud, ending a brief quest for evidence of election theft that generated lawsuits, outrage and some scholarly testimony, but no real evidence that American elections are corrupt.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump called for requiring voter identification in a pair of Twitter posts because the voting system “is rigged.” “Push hard for Voter Identification!” Mr. Trump wrote.

Mr. Trump did not acknowledge the commission’s inability to find evidence of fraud, but cast the closing as a result of continuing legal challenges.

The question of voter fraud and rigged elections is not and has not been an issue ever. Dictators don’t like honest elections. Trump’s dream is to pre-determine the outcome of all elections. His recent motivation is the fact that he won the electoral college vote but lost the popular vote. Vladimir Putin ( president of Russia) and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (president of Turkey) are the two government leaders that Trump admires because they have shut down any opposition to their re-election by putting them in jail.

The Congress:
America’s system of government demands compromise. When there is no compromise poor legislation is passed and government shutdowns can occur.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pushing back against President Donald Trump’s calls to end Senate filibusters.

When filibusters of legislation are underway, it takes 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to halt them.
Republicans now control the chamber 51-49. But strong Democratic opposition and some defecting GOP senators have kept Republicans from getting the votes needed to end the shutdown — now in its second day.

McConnell has long defended the filibuster. He says Republicans will welcome it whenever they are returned to the Senate minority.
As the Senate began a rare Sunday session, the Kentucky Republican said: “I support that right from an institutional point of view.” But he also said, “The question is, when do you use it?”

Trump has made repeated calls this year to end that rule, and did it again Sunday in a tweet.

It is my contention that Donald Trump is working at destroying the American democracy that was created in 1789. I believe he dreams of being a president who has absolute power as many presidents of other nations retain. Everyone should be on guard against Trump’s objective. It was German complacency that gave Hitler absolute power. Marches and demonstrations, like the women’s marches, are the antidote to the Trump dream.

Quantum Leap – An Alternate World

Are we living in an alternate world? Have we all passed through some kind of time warp where hate is good and peace is bad? Is this a world where the South has slavery and Hitler won World War 2?

When I turn on my computer each morning I am greeted with the latest news. Since being retired I have the time to obtain in-depth reports and read some really interesting magazines. My problem is that too many of the reports do not seem real.

For me it started when John Kennedy was assassinated. I could not believe that could happen in our society. Without reviewing all of the tragedies that have happened since that day in November 1963 I am now horrified to see that the president of the United States is a racist and a bigot. I am horrified to see politicians more concerned about gaining points for their political party rather than making decisions that are in the best interest of this nation.

Am I waking up each day in some alternate reality rather than the one that seems logical to me?

Wikipedia lists fictions about alternate realities Below are some they list but my favorite is George Orwell’s 1984. That is a story telling of a world where the government tells its people that things are not as they appear (like war is peace). The Ministry of Love is in charge of torture.

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, wrote The Blazing World (1666), a book far ahead of its time, in which the heroine passes through a portal near the North Pole to a world with different stars in the sky and talking animals.
Ludvig Holberg, Danish-Norwegian author, historian and philosopher, wrote Niels Klim’s Underground Travels (in Latin as Nicolai Klimii iter subterraneum, 1741). The hero Niels Klim slips into a cave and reaches Nazar, a planet inside the hollow Earth, where societies and beings represent satirical comments to existing contemporary ones.
Edwin Abott Abbott, mathematician and theologian, wrote Flatland (1884), also known as Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. It recounts the story of a two-dimensional world inhabited by living geometric figures: triangles, squares, circles, etc., and explores concepts of other dimensions (or universes) including Pointland, Lineland, and Spaceland. A feature film adaptation of this novella was made in 2007, called Flatland.
H. G. Wells wrote what is apparently the first explicit paratime novel, Men Like Gods (1923), complete with a multiverse theory and a paratime machine.
Murray Leinster‘s story “Sidewise in Time” (1934), showing different parts of the Earth somehow occupied by different parallel universes, was influential in science fiction.

Trump decries immigrants from ‘shithole countries’ coming to US

Donald Trump calls the countries of the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa “shit holes” and wants immigration from countries like Norway and then in the next breath tells us that “Today we celebrate Dr. King for standing up for the self-evident truth Americans hold so dear, that no matter the color of our skin, or the place of our birth we are all created equal by God.”

Stop this world! I want to get off!

Horse Manure Package left at Steven Mnuchin’s House

An L.A. mental health worker takes credit for horse manure package left at Steven Mnuchin’s house.

LOS ANGELES/BEL AIR DISTRICT >> A clinical psychologist with the county of Los Angeles Department of Mental Health has taken credit for the package of horse manure that was left at the Bel Air home of U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin over the weekend.

Dr. Robert Strong, who goes by “Dr. Robert” on Twitter, cited the $1.5 trillion tax overhaul that was approved last week by the U.S. Congress and signed Friday by President Donald Trump as his motivation. Strong agrees with critics who say the policy favors the rich at the expense of the poor and working class.

“If the GOP can fleece the American people in such a brazen fashion (then) like Hunter S. Thompson once said, “when the going gets weird, the weird turns pro.”

The package, discovered at 5:30 p.m. Saturday at 965 Bel Air Road, was a box filled with manure and wrapped in Christmas paper, Sgt. R. Briggs of the LAPD West Los Angeles Station said.

The bomb squad X-rayed the package and opened it to reveal the contents, she said.

It was determined the package contained a “pretty good quantity” of horse manure, police officials said.

Strong also included a handwritten note reading “Dear Misters Trump and Mnuchin, we are returning your Christmas gift of the Republican tax plan because it’s complete horse …. Sincerely, the American people.”

A neighbor discovered the package and alerted authorities, according to media reports.

No injuries were reported and no evacuations were ordered.

Bel Air Road was closed during the investigation, but the scene was cleared at 8 p.m. Saturday.

Officials with the Secret Service were aware of the stunt and planned to pick up the package, according to media reports. So far, Strong said he had not been contacted.

But he told KPPC radio that he realizes he could get fired and face other consequences.

“In the long run,” he said “if we don’t do stuff like this, what are we going to have left.”

It’s not clear that any local laws were violated even though the package provoked an extensive law-enforcement response early Saturday evening, said Officer Ray Barron, of the West Los Angeles Division of the L.A. Police Dept.

“There was nothing other than insulting comments,” said Barron, describing a note that accompanied the box. “There was nothing dangerous in the box — no controlled substances. No threats were made.”

So I drove over to Mr. Mnuchin’s home. I had never been in Bel Air before. Surprisingly there is no gate guard at the entrance. The street is lined with gated mansions that cannot be seen thanks to high walls and very tall shrubbery. Dropping the manure on the street was sending a message. I can empathise with Dr. Robert Strong viewpoints. It may have felt good dropping the manure. Was it worth his job? I guess the answer is yes!

Who Is Doug Jones, Newly Elected Alabama Senator?

My take on the Jones versus Moore election is at the end of this post.

After earning his law degree in 1979, Jones worked as staff counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee for Alabama Senator Howell Heflin. He then worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in the early 1980s, before resigning to work in private practice. In 1997, Bill Clinton named Jones U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. Jones left office in 2001, returning to private practice. In 2013, he co-founded his own firm, Jones & Hawley.

Jones is perhaps best known for having successfully prosecuted members of the Ku Klux Klan over the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four African-American girls. As a former federal prosecutor, the 63-year-old had never before run for office prior to his Senate bid.

Here is the time line for the prosecution of those responsible for the bombing.

September 15, 1963 – Four girls are killed and 14 injured in a bomb blast at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
– Riots break out, and two African-American boys, Virgil Ware, 13, and Johnny Robinson, 16, are also killed. In all, at least 20 people are injured from the initial bombing and the ensuing riots.
– Alabama Governor George Wallace sends 500 National Guardsmen and 300 state troopers to the city. The next day, they are joined by 500 police officers and 150 sheriffs’ deputies.
September 16, 1963 – President John F. Kennedy responds by saying, “If these cruel and tragic events can only awaken that city and state – if they can only awaken this entire nation to a realization of the folly of racial injustice and hatred and violence, then it is not too late for all concerned to unite in steps toward peaceful progress before more lives are lost.”
September 16, 1963 – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holds a press conference in Birmingham, saying that the US Army “ought to come to Birmingham and take over this city and run it.”
1965 – Suspects emerge: Bobby Frank Cherry, Thomas Blanton, Robert Chambliss and Herman Frank Cash, all Ku Klux Klan members. Witnesses are reluctant to talk and physical evidence is lacking, so charges are not filed.
1976 – Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley reopens the case.
September 26, 1977 – Robert Chambliss, 73, a retired auto mechanic and former Ku Klux Klan member, is indicted by a Jefferson County grand jury on four counts of first-degree murder.
November 15, 1977 – On the second day of the trial, Chambliss’s niece, Elizabeth Cobb, testifies that before the bombing, Chambliss confided to her that he had “enough stuff put away to flatten half of Birmingham.”
November 18, 1977 – Chambliss is convicted of first-degree murder in connection with the bombing and sentenced to life imprisonment.
1985 – Chambliss dies in prison.
1994 – Herman Frank Cash dies without being charged in the bombing.
July 1997 – The case is reopened by the FBI, citing new evidence.
May 16, 2000 – A grand jury in Alabama indicts former Klansmen Bobby Frank Cherry and Thomas Blanton with eight counts each of first-degree murder – four counts of intentional murder and four of murder with universal malice.
May 1, 2001 – Thomas Blanton is found guilty of first-degree murder and is sentenced to four life terms.
May 22, 2002 – Bobby Frank Cherry is found guilty and given a sentence of four life terms.
November 8, 2004 – Cherry dies in prison.
February 20, 2006 – The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church is declared a national historic landmark.
September 12, 2013 – Fifty years after the bombing, all four girls who died are awarded Congressional Gold Medals.
September 14, 2013 – A bronze and steel statue of the four girls is unveiled. It is located at Kelly Ingram Park, on the corner of Sixteenth Street North and Sixth Avenue North.
August 3, 2016 – Thomas Blanton, the last living convicted bomber, is denied parole. Blanton, 86, had asked the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles to let him die as a free man. He won’t be eligible for parole again until 2021.

Roy Moore stood before his supporters refusing to concede his loss to Doug Jones. Among his words were “Wait on God, and let this process play out,” Moore said. “It is not over.” Perhaps God has interceded to say the election of Doug Jones is a good thing.

Georgie Porgie and other Molesters

I did write that I would like to kiss pretty girls. But did I ever do it? Only those that I was romantically involved with me and only after they behaved in a manner that told me a kiss was appropriate.

So it’s been years of faithful marriage. Still, I couldn’t help recalling this nursery rhyme.

Georgie Porgie pudding and pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry
When the boys came out to play,
Georgie Porgie ran away.

Although not unequivocally linked to an historical event or specific year, this is another example of a nursery rhyme with a historical background. The song tells a story:

Georgie Porgie, Puddin’ and Pie,
1) It seems that Georgy Porgie, whoever he is, may be overweight because he eats too much pudding and pie (Bill Clinton loved McDonald’s burgers, Newt Gingrich is clearly overweight)

Kissed the girls and made them cry,
2) He promised a lot of things to girls, but he never kept his promises – or simply was unattractive to them (what promises did Harvey Weinstein give?)

When the boys came out to play
3) For unknown reasons he got into trouble with other boys (perhaps the other “boys” are concerned that they too will be exposed for their misdeeds)

Georgie Porgie ran away.
4) In case of any conflict, he prefers to run away, in other words, he is a coward. (the cowards are always concerned about their image like Donald Trump)

Therefore, we can assume Georgie Porgie (fill in your choice of molesters) is an immoral figure: lazy, despicable, greedy and cowardly.

Could that be the case for Donald Trump Roy Moore, John Conyers, Al Franken, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose and all the rest who have been sexually harassing and molesting women?

How many men reading this blog have molested but thought their actions were entirely acceptable?