guns and priorities, chapter three

Do you want to know what the chances of something sensible happening in Washington in response to today's shooting in Parkland, Florida might be?  Think of this.

In January, 2013, Senator Diane Feinstein introduced a bill in the senate that would have made it illegal for people on the national terrorist watch list from buying a gun.  Think about that for a second.  There is a reason people end up on the terrorist watch list.  I think it has something to do with the fact that they are considered a real and reasonable threat to actually kill not just somebody, but a lot of somebodies.

And who is it that thought those people were enough of a threat to end up on the terrorist watch list?  How about the people who run law enforcement.  You know, the folks we think may know something about this and who we entrust to know these sorts of things to keep us safe.

The bill did not come up for a vote until December, 2015, nearly three years later and only because two days earlier we were all San Bernadino Strong after another fourteen people were killed by two people who had pledged fealty to ISIS.  And even in the face of that horror, the predictable happened.

The bill went down with fifty-four senators voting no.

Every single republican, with the exception of Mark Kirk of Illinois, voted no.  For the record, Mark Kirk was voted out of office in the election of 2016.  Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota was the only democrat to vote no.  She is still a sitting senator, more than likely due to the fact that she has not been up for reelection since this vote.  North Dakota, I am watching you.

Think about this for another moment.

If Osama bin Ladin were to walk into a gun show today, he could walk out of that show with a bushel full of AR-15s, once again, the weapon of choice used to mow down our precious and innocent children, a weapon which has absolutely no use other than to kill people, and kill them in mass quantities in a brief burst of hell.

According to Senator John Cornyn of Texas, Senator Feinstein's bill to keep Osama bin Ladin from walking into a gun show and buying up every AR-15 for sale there had to be voted down because we cannot allow the federal government to infringe upon our rights given to us under the second amendment.  So we have no problem with Osama bin Ladin arming himself with enough automatic weaponry to wipe out half of Florida, but we do have a problem with allowing a respected chemistry professor at the University of Kansas from staying here because his original student visa expired, in spite of the fact that he is loved in his community, has never committed a crime, is married and has three children, each American citizens, who he will be ripped apart from when he is deported.  So there are your priorities in congress.

It is okay for Osama bin Ladin to walk into a gun show and arm himself, because he gets the right to do so under the second amendment.

It is not okay for Syed Ahmed Jamal, that Kansas chemistry professor, to simply stay in this country and continue teaching chemistry, being a husband, a father and a loved and respected member of his community because, well... you know... America First!!

I ended a post here on October 4, 2017 saying that I could care less about thoughts and prayers.  They will do nothing to end the gun epidemic.  In the absence of action, the only thing we knew was something like Las Vegas, where fifty-nine people enjoying a country music festival were mowed down, was going to happen again.  The only question was when and where.  On November 5, 2017, after we knew when and where, I ended a post about Sutherland, Texas where another twenty-seven, this time while praying in their local church, were killed while congress dithered by saying that somewhere soon we were going to be Any Town USA Strong in response to the next atrocity if congress did not act.

They did not act.

So today, we are Parkland, Florida Strong, and we send our thoughts and prayers to the families of this time, seventeen victims.  I am sure their families are comforted right now by our thoughts, our prayers and our useless slogans.

And on television, I see senators and congressmen offering those thoughts and prayers, and telling us now is not the time to politicize this event by calling for gun control, even the meager nonsense that legislation about background checks with a million and one loopholes would amount to.  I see talk about mental health legislation, which the good folks on the right recently voted to cut savagely, and in any event, will not eliminate guns from our society.

You know what I do not see?

Legislation outlawing guns that have no business in civilian hands.

Legislation outlawing gun ownership by those who have demonstrated that they cannot be trusted with guns, like violent felons, domestic abusers, the mentally ill and Osama bin Ladin.

Legislation that would repeal the Dickey Amendment and allow us to study and discuss the health effects of the avalanche of guns flowing down upon us.

Legislation that would impose liability upon manufacturers and distributors of guns who put dangerous and even defective weapons in the hands of those they have every reason to know should not have them.

And until we vote these complicit with the NRA sons of bitches out of office and put somebody in there who will introduce and implement this common sense legislation, we can all continue to furrow our brows, to weep, wail and moan, to rehearse our thoughts and prayers, and to come up with the next catchy feel good, Somewhere Sometime Soon Strong slogan, because it's going to happen again.

And we are all complicit.

our only solution

By now, it should be obvious to anyone who even just pretends to have a brain that there is no intention whatsoever on the right, not just to reign in what is going on at the White House, but also to actively take part in the cover up.  In the name of "transparency", they have released the Nunes Memo, which is, at best, an essay that would fail the average high school social studies quiz.  There is nothing new in the memo.  As I have said elsewhere, it may just as well have been written by the idiot in chief, as it simply works off his worn out talking points just short of "biggest crowd ever".

Clearly transparency has nothing to do with this.  If it did, the Schiff Memo in response would have been released at the same time.

If transparency had anything to do with it, Devin Nunes would have actually read the FISA warrant he trashed in the Memo.  I suppose many did not see that gem.  He brought forth this nonsense over a warrant he himself has not read.  Instead, he outsourced this to Trey Gowdy.

Yes, that Trey Gowdy.  

As in Benghazi!!!  E-mails!!!  Lock her up!!!

Don't believe me???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Js4TMKutCo&t=88s

Apparently, Mr. Gowdy went and read the FISA application in private with his unnamed "team", took notes, and then brought them back to Nunes, who wrote this "memo" without ever actually having seen the FISA application upon which it is based.  Apparently, the notes were not taken all that well, as there is nothing in the memo about a FISA warrant only being good for ninety days, and upon renewal each time, new independent facts are required to be shown to the Court, which would mean there was something other than the Steele Dossier upon which the judge found to be good cause to renew the warrant. 

Please note we have yet to hear from Mr. Gowdy, other than his announcement that he is now not running for reelection.

This is what we have come to in government, one that Paul Ryan, Trey Gowdy and Devin Nunes all say requires transparency.

He is running around, possibly having committed treason in his dealings with the Russians.

He has not yet released his tax returns.

He has refused to release the White House visitor's log.

He has blocked any and all requests to see what foreign dignitaries, foreign businessman, foreign criminals or foreign objects are staying at his properties around the world, but especially in Washington, where he is profiting, and what they are saying to him, and what they are giving him in return for his actions as our president.

He has used Mar-A-Lago for his personal profit center, billing the government for hosting public events there, where he pockets the proceeds.

And to the right, all of this is ok.

There is no need for transparency here.  This does not rise to the level of anything Clinton.

We can investigate the Clinton Foundation for all its foreign dealings, but the Trump Foundation?  Nothing to see here.

We can e-mail!!! and Benghazi!!! our way to who knows where -- it certainly did not lead to anything in the end -- but we cannot dare look at anything he did.

We can wail and scream over leaks of his self-dealings and possible treason, but cannot look to see about the veracity of the acts themselves.

And we can wail and scream over the leaks of classified information, only to declassify that information in the name of political expediency.

So with all of the hullabaloo over the release of the Nunes Memo, what can we expect from here?  I would offer the following:

1.  He will fire Rod Rosenstein and cite the Memo as proof that Rosenstein has abused his office.  Rosenstein is the only person who has he authority at this point to fire Robert Mueller.  Guess what happens next.

2.  The Democrats will go ballistic.

3.  The Republicans will shrug.

Impeachment?  Article 25?

Do not hold your breath.  It's not going to happen.  If they ever did have a soul, the right has sacrificed it for the sake of having a president, no matter how ignorant, who will sign legislation they have always wanted, even if they have to alter the rules for getting it passed in the first place just so they can bring it to his desk.  As long as that is happening, what the rest of us want is not going to happen.

He will be our president, at least in name, at least until January 20, 2021 at noon.  For those of you counting, that is two years, eleven months and seventeen days from now.  For those of you who are watching me as I write this, that is two years, eleven months, seventeen days, four hours and twelve minutes from now -- Sorry, my digital watch does not have a second hand.

There is, however, something we can do.  It may be too late, but it is the only thing we can do, and unfortunately, we have to wait another nine months and three days before we do it.  On November 6, 2018 -- VOTE.

VOTE LIKE YOUR LIVES DEPEND UPON IT.  IT JUST MIGHT.  If you think it does not, keep in mind that the New York Times is reporting this morning that the most recent polling shows an uptick for republicans, giving them hope that they will not lose their majority.

And for those who need a little guidance on how to vote, here is a list of those on the House Intelligence Committee who voted to release the Nunes Memo.  Note, they are all republican.  Every single one of them.  Note further, some have already said they are not running for reelection:

Devin Nunes -- 22nd District, California

Mike Conaway -- 11th District, Texas

Peter King -- 2nd District, New York

Frank LoBiondo -- 2nd Distrct, New Jersey

Tom Rooney -- 17th District, Florida

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen -- 27th District Florida

Michael Turner -- 10th District, Ohio

Brad Weinstrup -- 2nd District, Ohio

Chris Stewart -- 2nd District, Utah

Rick Crawford -- 1st District, Arkansas

Trey Gowdy -- 4th District, South Carolina

Elise Stefanik -- 21st District, New York

Will Hurd -- 23rd District, Texas

In the present environment, the only weapon we the citizens of the United States are left with is at the ballot box, assuming they don't pass legislation that prevents anyone except their own supporters from voting, or that the Supreme Court does not issue a ruling allowing them to put all democrats in one single district in each state, leaving all other districts to the whims of the right.  So, as I said above, on November 6, 2018...

VOTE AS IF YOU LIFE DEPENDED ON IT.

shitholes

Forgive me.  I am once again angry as hell.  The following may not be as coherent as I would like.

I do not know what a shithole country is.

I do know what a shithole politician is.

I take that back.  As ridiculously easy as it is to lump all politicians together and call them shitholes, it does a great disservice to those who are there for honorable reasons and are trying their best to do right, rather than simply paying off a debt or trying to get reelected.  You know, the two or three of them that are left.

Well, maybe I don't take it back.

While the media is screaming about the statement, there is a group that is not.  You guessed it.  The shithole politicians who were at the meeting, and presumably heard every word of it.  So, sorry to the two or three honorable ones left.  You're in it with the rest of them.

For those of you keeping score at home...

There are some really fine but misunderstood nazi types out there.

All Nigerians live in huts.

All Haitians have AIDS.

Mexicans are mostly murderers and rapists.

He probably has a really good relationship with Kin Jung Un, whom he has apparently never spoken with, but whose nuclear button is not quite as big.

Puerto Ricans are fine as long as they keep their mouths shut, live in the dark and subsist upon paper towels thrown at them.

Haiti, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and most African countries are shitholes.

And on.

And on.

And on.

And silence rings from the right.

Nobody is denying the statement was made, but then again, the White House official statement in response to this news only goes as far as to say, this president will always put Americans first.  I've got news for you big boy.

WHEN YOU MAKE A STATEMENT LIKE THAT, YOU ARE NOT PUTTING THIS COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE FIRST.  IF ANYTHING, YOU ARE TREATING THEM AS POORLY AS THE HONORABLE COUNTRIES YOU TRASH WITH YOUR INFANTILE WORDS AND BEHAVIOR.

We elected this moron.

We continue to put up with him.

We reap the deserved scorn of the rest of the world, especially at this particular time Haiti, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and most African countries.

We look the other way, and simply hope we can make it to 2020, when we pray somebody with half a brain and who does not care if the schmuck in chief comes up with yet another idiotic nickname he can run with comes out of the woodwork and beats his sorry ass into the electoral college ground.  Of course, this assumes that once he is beaten, he will concede defeat and leave the White House.  We know it won't be honorably.

So maybe I do not know what a shithole country is, or what a shithole politician looks like one hundred percent of the time.

But I sure as hell do know there is a shithole living in the White House.

a taxing time in the old town tonight

We have met the enemy, and he/she is...

Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, has called the president unhinged, and decried the tax proposal that just sprinted at lightning speed to passage in the senate as a boon to the rich at the expense of everybody else.  The good senator also is in favor of working on documentation to help Dreamers under DACA, which has nothing to do with the tax bill.  With a promise, and what he admits is not real ironclad commitment from senate leadership, a leadership that has proven time and again that their word means nothing, Senator Flake has voted for a bill he has called a disaster.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine voted against the repeal of Obamacare, citing her concerns for those who will lose their insurance under the republican plan.  The tax bill contains a provision eliminating the requirement that people who fail obtain health insurance would be subject to increasing fines, coverage for them that would otherwise be subsidized by the government.  On the same promise that this issue would be looked at in some hazy time in the future, she voted for this tax bill, thereby ensuring that the people she said she was protecting would be thrown off the rolls of the insured and increasing premiums for everyone else.

Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said he would not vote for any bill that increased the national debt and busted the budget.  In exchange for an increase in the amount pass through businesses can deduct from their taxes, a pet project of his, he voted for a bill that will add more than a trillion dollars to the budget.  By the way, the increase in the deductibility of pass through businesses, his "must have" in order to vote for this bill, will add even more to the deficit.

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted against the repeal of Obamacare.  She was leaning against voting for this monstrosity, when suddenly in the bill appeared a provision opening the Alaska Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration, something that has nothing whatsoever to do with taxes or tax relief, but does have a whole lot to do with a pet project of hers to make those poor oil and gas companies a little less poor.  So she voted for the tax bill, and has now practically ensured the destruction off one of the last pristine wildlife preserves in the country or on the planet for that matter.

And the newly sainted Senator John McCain, who has been on a crusade railing against legislation being rushed through the senate without hearings, without public comment, without scoring from the congressional budget office and without proper time for the senators to read what they were voting on voted for this bill.  By the way, he announced that he was satisfied that the bill had been properly drafted, presented, debated and scored more than a day before the more than five hundred page tax bill was actually published and distributed to the senators.

Do not ever let any of these lily livered gutless excuses for human beings tell you again that they are fighting for you, fighting for the middle class and fighting for jobs.

Ever.

Not when the corporate executives who will lead the creation of these so called great paying jobs have already told the head of the idiot in chief's national economic council to his face that they will not use their tax windfall to create jobs, but will do what they always do when they get windfalls -- pocket the money.

For obvious reasons, I have not had the chance to read the bill.  I only know what I have seen in the news and on various on line sources discussing the bill.  At this point, I figure my taxes will go up about two thousand dollars this year mostly because I live in New York and my property taxes are above the limit for the deduction imposed under this bill.  The only way I benefit under this bill is if I sell my house and move before I have to do my taxes next year.  Selling my house in New York is going to be a little more difficult now, as the senate has managed for the first time in the history of this country to pass legislation that will have the effect of discouraging people from buying a house, at least in states like New York where we have high taxes.

And don't tell me the solution is lowering taxes on the state and local level.  I want the children of this state to be able to go to properly staffed and supplied schools, protected by the police and fire departments.  I want my libraries.  I want the public water systems to be properly maintained.  

And I want the trash to continue to be collected, which at this point may include the politicians.

With the passage of this legislation, I still have health insurance.  With the repeal of the mandate, more people will choose not to get insurance, mostly the young and healthy who think they do not need it.  That means my insurance premiums will go up.  The estimates I have seen have the premium increases pegged at anywhere from ten to twenty-five percent -- annually -- above what the increases would have been without the repeal.

And on top of everything else, my tax decrease, which I figure will cost me somewhere between two and three thousand dollars a year, is temporary, so in ten years my taxes will be even higher.  Maybe if I stand on my head and look at my taxes, they will actually at least look like a real decrease.

While I am certainly much more well off than most, I believe my situation is fairly typical.  I have read that the vast majority of people polled opposed this tax bill, many vehemently.  Yet in the face of overwhelming opposition, the bill passed.

Why?

Congressman Chris Collins of New York explained all of this a month or so ago when he candidly told the public that his big donors, you know, the guys who actually do get tax cuts -- huge ones -- from this bill, had told him that if he doesn't get tax "reform" passed, not to bother calling them again.  Nobody has denied that they are voting for the bill for this reason.

So now we truly know, as if we did not already know, where the allegiance of congress stands.

It ain't with us.

for the teachers

A shout out to all the public school teachers out there.

Every year for the past fifteen years or so, i have done our tax returns myself. I am a self-employed attorney. in other words, other than keeping my clients from themselves, what i do for living is completely useless. My wife is a public school teacher. I bet if you made yourself a list of the five most influential people in your lives, at least one, probably more than one, would be one of the teachers you had while you went through school.

Being self-employed, I get to write off just about every conceivable expense on my tax return. Every paper clip. Every piece of paper. Every folder. Since my office is in the house, I even get to write off what I would have thought were common household expenses. A portion of the utilities, a portion of the mortgage and even when the guy comes to cut the grass. It is my understanding that if I really wanted to, I could buy myself a small coffee machine, deduct that from my taxes, and then deduct all the coffee, filters and cups I wanted, as long as I drank the coffee during business hours in my office. I can get away with it. Come to think of it, I do not have to get away with it. It's legal. Besides, I have the coffee stains on the floor proving I at least spilled the coffee in the office. Come to think of it, I guess that means I can hire somebody to clean the carpet in the office and deduct that as an expense also.

My wife is a public school teacher. Each year, she spends thousands -- THOUSANDS -- of dollars on supplies for her classroom. Educating our children, Betsy DeVos' thoughts notwithstanding, is not a business. IT IS A PUBLIC OBLIGATION.

We as a society have a sacred duty to educate our children so that they may go on in life as contributing members of our society. There is nothing more important we do as a society -- nothing -- than properly educating our children. As a corollary to this, you would think that ensuring that our public school classrooms are properly supplied with all the pens, paper, notebooks, folders and equipment needed to ensure the children get a proper education is of paramount importance. This does not even get close to talking about ensuring all the best textbooks are available.

Well...

We do not fund our schools adequately, or at least properly. One of the first places the politicians look to cut every year is funding for public schools. If you want a microcosm of what is wrong with the way our schools prioritize what funding they get, all you need to know is the fact that in the district my wife teaches in, the classrooms are not air conditioned, but the offices of the administration and their staff are. Now, over the years I have come to know many of these people. They are very fine folks, who in the vast majority of the cases have appeared to have the interests of the kids at heart.

But think about what is more important on a day to day basis in early September and mid June. Should we be more concerned with the comfort of a bean counter who has no day to day contact with the children, or the fact that the classrooms are so hot it is impossible for the children to learn, regardless of how good the teacher may be. I know of some teachers who have brought portable air conditioners into their classrooms just so they, or more importantly, the children could have a fighting chance.

If I did that for my office, I could deduct the cost of the unit. I could then deduct the cost of installing the unit if I needed to hire somebody to do it. I could then deduct the cost of the electricity needed to run the unit. If the unit broke down a few months later, I could deduct the cost of having somebody come to repair it, and if that was not possible, I could buy a new unit and start the deduction process all over again.

If my wife bought an air conditioner for her classroom, she could do none of this. Well, she could buy the unit herself, bring it to her classroom, hope there was somebody at the school who would help her lug it from the parking lot to the classroom, and then hope it worked once it got there -- all of this provided for simply by the hope that the school administration, while sitting in their comfortable offices, would allow her to do this in the first place.

Every year, teachers all over America buy supplies for their classrooms, never mind air conditioners, because the politicians, aided by some sort of perverse anti-education, anti-teacher culture, slash budgets to the point where the districts have to make choices.

And those choices inevitably come down to adequately staffing and supplying the classrooms or installing new air conditioners in the administrative offices.

And each year, the districts make the wrong choice.

So the teachers go to Staples, to Office Max, to Costco. To the Dollar Store. They search for economical supplies and equipment for their classrooms. The stores, knowing this, give the teachers discounts, which is nice of them, but begs the question of why the teachers have to go out and spend their own money to ensure their public school classrooms are adequately supplied in the first place.

As I said, my wife typically spends a couple of thousand dollars a year to supply her own classroom. She does not submit an invoice, bill or voucher to be reimbursed, nor would she be reimbursed or expect to be so if she did.

And when I do our tax returns, while I get to deduct the cost of bottled water I could sip while leaning back in the chair I bought in front of the newly installed air conditioner, while staring at the screen of my new computer and regaling in the newly installed sound system -- all of which are deductible -- my wife, as a teacher, is limited to a $250 educator's deduction for supplies purchased for use in her classroom. Typically, that deduction ends up reimbursing us a grand total of something in the neighborhood of eighty-five dollars.

So apparently, our politicians and our local newspaper who has led the charge in bashing just about everything about public school teachers you can possibly think of, have believed until now that it is a good and fair trade off to have our public school teachers spend about two thousand dollars out of their pockets annually in the hope that they will be reimbursed eighty-five dollars when they do their taxes.

Until now.

Now they want to take away the educator's deduction entirely.

Now they want our public school teachers to go out and spend thousands of dollars every year of their own money to supply their classrooms adequately, and get NOTHING back for it.

Think of that for a moment. Is there another profession out there where the employee is forced to go out and spend thousands of dollars of their own money each year just to have the supplies at hand to do the job, and then either not get reimbursed for the purchases or have the ability to deduct the cost on their tax returns? Would you take that job? On top of that, would you take a job in which you were forced to spend thousands of dollars out of your own pocket every year just to have the supplies on hand to do the job, knowing you were not going to be either reimbursed or be able to deduct the cost on your taxes, all the while putting up with the daily abuse from the public, led by those very same politicians and newspapers that would deny you proper funding?

That's what I thought.

What I do for a living is nice. Mom gets to tell her friends i am her son, the lawyer. Well, somebody has to do it. I get to deduct everything.

My wife, who has a career that is more important than anything I or any of my clients will ever do will now get to deduct nothing.

All this in the face of laws that require classrooms to be adequately funded. Laws that for some unknown reason have to be fought for regularly in court and in the court of public opinion.

All this in the face of union contracts that require the classrooms to be adequately supplied, and do not require the teachers to spend their own money to do so.

So here is a suggestion for our public school teachers.

STOP BUYING THE SUPPLIES.

You are not required by any law or contract to buy the supplies yourself. Force the school district to buy everything -- just like they are supposed to in the first place.

If the parents complain, give them a list of supplies that you believe will be needed so that their children will be able to learn, and let them pay for it. It sounds cruel, but I would be willing to bet that if all the teachers stopped buying supplies, parents would start going to school board meetings, like they don't but should, in order to complain. The school boards would then start going to the politicians to agitate for proper funding. Maybe they would prioritize pencils in the classrooms over lattes in the administrative offices.

And ultimately maybe....

Expenses fronted by teachers for their classrooms would be just as reimbursable and deductible as the purchase of a cell phone made by an attorney for his practice so he can yammer away with his clients while in his car, also deductible, while driving to and from court, parking, tolls and mileage also deductible.

And then I woke up.

tuesday night cannot come quick enough

The election is tomorrow.  The polls close by mid-evening in just about all states.  

I cannot wait.

By about nine o'clock tomorrow, it may possibly be safe to turn on my television again, as long as I do not accidentally turn the dial to the fox cheerleading network.

I was watching the evening news last night. In the middle of reporting the mayhem of the day, they took a commercial break and went to the other mayhem. Five commercials came on. Each was a political ad, one of them repeated within the sequence. Each blasted the adversary, claiming in no particular order that he/she was in favor of higher taxes, illegal immigrants coming to the good old USA for no other reason than to kill us all, killing jobs to the point of eliminating any hope of working again, and causing traffic jams. None of the ads, if one thought about it, had any ring of truth to them at all.

None. Well maybe the one about traffic jams did.

None of the ads made a single mention of why we should vote for that candidate on the candidate's merits, rather than why we should not vote for his/her opponent.

None. Not a single one.

Throughout the evening, as commercial breaks arrived at the various stations we watched, the process repeated itself. Not a single political ad came on touting the merits of the candidate and what the candidate stood for rather than why we should not vote for the other guy, usually aired in hysterical fashion, with ominous music playing in the background and a photo of the adversary in the most unflattering light, facial expression or pose they could possibly have found short of a photo of the candidate naked with barnyard animals.

We did not even get the standard candidate's spouse stands in front of the camera and tells us what a wonderful guy/gal he/she is married to, and how he will be just as wonderful for you, ending with the family, including their parents, grandparents and 2.4 children, posing in front of the ancestral palace that has housed eighteen generations of Smiths, all of whom were mayor of Padookatown, Nowhere, USA going back to the Mayflower.

Don't you long for the day, if it ever really existed, when candidates told us what they actually stood for and what they actually intended to do in office? And not simply in generic, meaningless terms?

So the question is now posed:

Of the candidates who are running for office this time whom you plan to vote for, can you say why you are voting for that candidate, as opposed to why you are not voting for the other guy? I bet most of you, aside from the usual drivel we hear from Washington, or our state and local capitals, cannot really and truly say why you are voting for any one particular candidate instead of why you are not voting for the other guy.

And that is what is wrong with us.

guns. the next chapter

"I do not want your thoughts and prayers.

"Thoughts and prayers will not bring back the dead or unwound the wounded.

"Thoughts and prayers will not prevent the next attack, and we all know the next attack is coming.  The only questions are when and where".

-- from "guns" an essay published here on October 4, 2017 in response to the Las Vegas shootings.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, now we know the when and the where.

And we also know the how many.

Add to the 59 in Las Vegas the 27 in Sutherland, Texas.

While we're at it, add to that total all of the gun victims since Las Vegas.  According to www.gunviolencearchive.org, since Las Vegas, there have been twenty-eight incidents of mass shootings resulting in twenty-seven deaths and ninety-seven injuries.  See, http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting.

So in 36 days, there have been at least 30 mass shooting incidents in this country, resulting in at least 113 deaths and somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 injuries.

And this does not even count the casualties from single, discrete shootings.  That, Mr. President, is the real "American Carnage", and nothing is being done about it.  There has been some noise about outlawing the use of butt stocks, those wonderful doohickeys that can turn a semi-automatic weapon into an illegal fully automatic weapon, but nothing has been done about this yet.  Don't expect it to happen.  The NRA has been in all out mode in congress telling those morons that guns don't kill.  People do.  The idiots are now debating criminalizing people so that the guns are kept safe from them.

But they will not debate criminalizing the actual weapons of mass destruction among us.

Instead, we once again get their empty thoughts and prayers, and the usual platitudes of how in an open society, there is nothing you can do about this.  They gnash their teeth and wave their arms, pausing long enough to make sure the cash stuffed in their pockets from the gun lobby doesn't fall out.

But they will not do or even admit the obvious.

They will not admit that if you outlaw guns, then the guns disappear in the vast majority of incidents such as occurred today in Sutherland Springs, and the casualty count goes way down.

They will not admit that if you are too loony to drive a car, you are too loony to own a gun.

They will not admit that if you have already been convicted of a violent felony, you should not be allowed to own a gun.  You cannot vote, which last time I looked did not kill anyone, unless you count the last presidential election, but you can walk into a church with an AR-15, one you all but advertised you were going to use, and blow away the congregation.

They will not admit that ownership of a weapon carries with it certain responsibilities that should carry consequences if not lived up to.

They will not admit that manufacture and sales of certain weapons also entail a certain level of responsibility that should also have consequences if not met.

In each and every instance of gun violence, of shootings, there is one single factor present each and every time.

The Gun.

Eliminate the gun, and there is no shooting.

How difficult is this to understand?

So we get to see thoughts and prayers again, and we are now Texas Strong, just as we have been Las Vegas Strong and San Bernadino Strong, and Charlotte Strong and Orlando Strong and.. well, you get the point.

And tonight our hearts are in Texas.  Of course they are.  How could they not be?

But, once again, our thoughts and prayers, our hearts and minds, and our utter bewilderment will not bring back the dead.

Only our spineless politicians can do anything to at least prevent the next empty thoughts and prayers moment, but you can just about guarantee that the NRA and their rest of the gun lobby buddies are already hard at work.

So once again, until the rest of us wake up, the only questions left are when, where and how many.

Get ready to be Some Town, USA Strong soon.