The Right to Bear Arms

It doesn’t make any difference whether mass killings are called “a form or terrorism” or “a “hate crime.” The victims are dead or seriously injured. Americans live in a country that permits the use of guns to kill people. The argument that “it’s people who kill people, it’s the not guns who do the killing” is simply another way of defending gun ownership.

There really is only one reason to own a gun and that is to protect yourself from violence. Relying on the police won’t work since they can’t arrive at any destination in seconds. I know you may argue that shooting at a target is fun and collecting weapons is a hobby and you would be correct if there was little chance that those weapons would ever be used to kill or maim. The problem is that hundreds of people are killed annually because of hate rather than for protection. No other industrial country in the world has a gun related death rate near the rate of the United States.

Cross the border into Canada and you are stopped by their border patrol and asked if you have any weapons in your car. They search your car trunk and your suitcases to confirm your words. The record is clear. Canadian deaths from weapons is about 2.22 per 100,000 people. In the United States the rate is 10.64 (2013).

The killing of nine Black people in a church is no different from the killing of audience members of a movie theater in Colorado or Sikh’s in their temple near Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

“If only those people had been armed” is the argument offered by the NRA (National Rifleman’s Association). They would have had the teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School carrying a sidearm to protect themselves and the children.

In other words we should behave like an old west movie with everyone prepared to draw a weapon.

What is more astonishing is that our congress lacks the will to stop the killing. The right to bear arms grew out of a concern that the government might become tyrannical to the point where the public feared for their freedom.

The argument is not supportable in the 21^st century. The weapons the government has in its possession are unavailable to the public. An armed insurrection is not possible today unless part of the army itself decided to start a rebellion.

I keep hearing our politicians tell us that the United States is the greatest country in the world. On what basis do they make that statement? There is no more freedom here than in other western nations. Guns have never helped to preserve our freedom except in war.

Raising the Minimum Wage Rate

If we lived in a world where everyone has the right to pay whatever low rate they could manage then the least able would be paid a starvation salary. Wait, this is almost exactly the situation today. American society has established a minimum hourly pay rate that will not provide enough money to pay for housing, food, and other basic necessities.

The consequence is that those with limited ability and the resulting minimum pay must share housing and pool their low income to sustain their lives.

On the other end of the scale there are those businesses who need those low paid workers to sustain their low priced products. McDonald’s and it competitors are those businesses that come to mind. If the cost to make a burger goes up then the cost of those low priced burgers goes up. That could impact the very existence of many small enterprises.

We are faced with a conundrum!

I find myself sympathetic to both the poor and low pay employers.

Thus society must decide what is best for everyone in the long run. We see the consequence of not providing support for the poor when we look at nations like Bangladesh, India, and other southeastern Asian nations. The poor live in hovels and eat rice, beans, and anything else they can grow in a small garden. Is that the society we want in the United States?

Since we are a free enterprise society there are those who say “tough” and “it’s not my problem.”

The majority of our elected officials will make the decisions. As it stand today there are many cities and states who have decided it is in their best interest to continue raising the minimum wage. The current target seems to be $15.00 an hour. That is not a living wage but will help those who cannot obtain a higher level of education.

McDonald’s burgers at $5.00 won’t break us but just might help a little.

Genocide

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious or national group.

Just yesterday a former SS sergeant, Oskar Groening, described in chilling detail Wednesday how cattle cars full of Jews were brought to the Auschwitz death camp, the people stripped of their belongings and then most led directly into gas chambers. Groening is being tried on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder, related to a period between May and July 1944 when around 425,000 Jews from Hungary were brought to the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex in Nazi-occupied Poland and most immediately gassed to death. The Holocaust was the largest killing of any group in the world. This man should be put to death in a gas chamber.

The Hamidian massacres also referred to as the Armenian Massacres of 1894–1896 occurred in the Ottoman Empire. The genocide began on April 24, 1915, when Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, without food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres ignored age and gender, with rape and other acts of sexual abuse being commonplace. The majority of Armenian diaspora communities were founded as a result of these events. Mass killings continued under the Republic of Turkey during the Turkish–Armenian War phase of Turkish War of Independence.

Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, denies the word genocide is an accurate term for the mass killings of Armenians that began under Ottoman rule in 1915. It has in recent years been faced with repeated calls to recognize them as genocide. To date, twenty-three countries have officially recognized the mass killings as genocide,^[19] a view which is shared by most genocide scholars and historians.

President Barack Obama promised he would declare the killing of Armenians a genocide in 2008. His refusal to do so now is another blunder that continues to make the United States appear weak. Turkey has not been a friend of the United States. The loss of their cooperation with America in the Middle East has already occurred. America gains nothing by refusing to define a crime against humanity.

America’s Racist Society

(CNN)One of the two University of Oklahoma students expelled for their role in leading a racist chant has issued an apology, The Dallas Morning News reported.

“I am deeply sorry for what I did Saturday night. It was wrong and reckless. I made a horrible mistake by joining into the singing and encouraging others to do the same,” Parker Rice said in a statement printed by the newspaper.

Did you see the video of the students singing on the bus? It was nothing but disgusting.

He is “deeply sorry” – sorry that he was caught leading the singing. If that video did not exist no one would have known. Parker Rice has not changed. He is a racist.

The problem is that many White Americans hold the views of those students. They won’t admit it of course but consider the insults the president has experienced. The list of those insults is unbelievable. Barack Obama was born in Kenya, not an American, is a monkey, does not love America, a socialist, a communist, hates America, etc.

We can pass all kinds of laws but we can’t change what is in the hearts of the people. White Christian Americans believe they are superior to everyone else on this planet. They teach their children that this is fact and that they have every right to hate. It is passed on to each generation.

My hate is that Americans cannot see their own failings.

Leonard Nimoy, ‘Star Trek’s’ Spock, dead at 83, Was From Another Society Not Another World

Leonard Nimoy was from another world in Star Trek and in real life. His captain (William Shatner) on Star Trek is also from that other world/society. You see both are Jewish. Nimoy’s famous salute was a gesture he saw given at an orthodox synagogue when he was a boy.

In the story Mr. Spoke was a half human and half Vulcan. His pointed ears immediately differentiated him from every human. I have heard that there are places in this world where people believe that Jews also have pointed ears and are bred from the devil. The parable couldn’t be more obvious to me.

First understand that the total number of Jews in the entire world is about 13 million people. By any measure that would define us as a group that might soon no longer exist in another hundred years. Six million were killed by the Nazis before and during World War 2.

Jews are different from the rest of the world’s peoples. Perhaps that is the reason they are hated almost everywhere. Why are they hated? They, as a group, are smarter and more creative than any group you can define.

Of course you are asking for proof. Here it is.

– Bob Simon of 60 Minutes was a Jew. He died in a car crash just two weeks ago. He was a Fulbright scholar.

– Alan Greenspan, the much respected former Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006.

– Three current members of the United States Supreme Court are Jews.

– Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon’s famous Secretary of State.

– Jonas Edward Salk was an American medical researcher and virologist. He discovered and developed the first successful inactivated polio vaccine.

– Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) and Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960) were one of the most prolific teams that brought numerous musicals to Broadway and the world. Carousel – ‎South Pacific – ‎Flower Drum Song – Oklahoma were all part of their creativity.

Elsewhere in this blog is a more thorough list of famous Jews posted by David Bancroft. The article contends that it is all about education. I am sure you get the point. So is there a Jew gene? Genetic studies of Jewish origins is a topic in Wikipedia.

I personally am a marginal Jew. Both of my parents were brilliant in school and received scholarships and honors. I flunked Algebra 1 and barely passed Spanish 1. So you see there are no guarantees in life even for Jews.