Gun Free in Colorado; Thought Free in America

Thank heavens for the Internet. In all the confusion over the Colorado theater shooting, all I need to do is come here and the truth shall be revealed to me.  That One Correct and Moral Answer to violence in society will be laid before my wondering eyes.
I wonder why the answers are all so different.

And so, the curtain rises for that grand Kabuki theater we have every time a criminal nut goes on a shooting spree and makes page 1 of USA Today.

We can round up the usual suspects expressing horror. Hizzoner the Mayor of New York is venting his pious anger and “I told you so’s.”. The NRA stays on message but others who identify themselves with the NRA are wandering all over the communications map.

The funeral homes are busy. Trauma doctors have a few extra patients. Bomb experts are moving very slowly and deliberately, which is a wise thing to do. The paramedics probably have their rigs cleaned up by now.

All is not right with the world.

When has it ever been?

I favor the responsible carrying and use of firearms by civilians willing to do so.  Always have. I have no reason to believe that I’ll change my mind.  That’s not to say that I’ll quit listening to competing opinions - only a moron does that.

Everybody has an opinion.

The first people we really need to hear from about firearms and violence are those who’ve experienced combat in some form.  What do the medics who have both seen combat and treated immediate firearms wounds have to say about Colorado?  I really want to know.

I’m fairly far down on the whole totem pole in terms of experience here. Oh, I’ve seen several gunshot wounds and provided field-level treatment, but there are a whole lot of people with a much wider experience base. I really would like to know what they’re thinking.

A couple of things do strike me.

A “gun free zone”? You have to be shitting me. 

Fundamentally law-abiding citizens will respect a gun free zone. That will have some effect on crimes of passion, although those usually are in private settings. The armed guy who sees his wife’s boyfriend in a gun free zone may have left his pistol back home or in the car.  He'll beat him black and blue but won't shoot him.

For those law-abiding citizens who are also incredibly stupid, a gun free zone could have some effect on reducing firearm accidents. There was a news item a few months ago about a gentleman who took a pistol to church.  He pulled it out to show it to someone.  An accidental discharge killed a bystander.  That was a criminally negligent departure from the great responsibility of handling a firearm.
So to say that gun free zones will have no beneficial effect whatsoever just is not so.

One incident does not prove much at all, by the way.  It is a data point.  Ignoring it is also a bad idea.

Gun free zones are still a dumb idea.  An occasional topic in state legislatures is whether the state will have the ability for people to carry concealed firearms. That is really a stupid discussion.

There are concealed firearms everywhere. Criminals have been carrying firearms since the first pistol was invented. It’s the honest citizen who obeys the law.

The theater in Colorado was in a gun free zone. The “Joker” had weapons.  The patrons didn’t.  Had this occurred where I live, of the perhaps 50 people who would’ve had line of sight to the shooter, two or three of them would have been armed. This does not guarantee a good result. Most civilians do not practice or train sufficiently to maintain a really good skill level. Shooting among a crowd is really, really dangerous.  Add a dark room and confusion?  Wow.  It may be justified to take down the rare random killer, but it’s still dangerous and the thought should scare the living hell out of any responsible armed person.  The few people I know who have fired a weapon at another person lawfully all say that it was necessary but was still a memorably bad experience.

Some people in the blogosphere remind us that taking on criminals and running around armed is the job of law enforcement. Part of our Kabuki dance is to say once again, accurately, that a bullet travels a helluva lot faster than a police car.

At the end of the dance, we still have several dead people and injured people.  And lots of self-righteous loudmouths are weighing in with their “it’s so simple” solutions. 

It’s not so simple.  Because [fill in the blank], the willingness of some in our society to do unprovoked violence is increasing steadily.  Because [fill in the blank - I think the general “wussification” of America, but you fill it in as you please], our willingness or ability or effectiveness as a society to deal with violent offenses is slipping. 

I do wish that a responsible armed person had taken a shot at the Joker.

Oh - carrying a firearm openly is still a bad idea.  It’s impolite and it tells the criminal, “Hey, I’m dangerous, so shoot me first!”

If you want simple answers, go somewhere else.  Try FairyLand.

Burn the Olympic Uniforms! And Maybe Kick a Few Hypocritical Asses While We’re At It; A Tale of Corrupt, Lying Dirtbags

For all I know, there is an official supplier of Olympic toilet paper.  It’s the usual merchandising tie-in silly season.

Certainly, there is an official supplier of the Olympic dress uniforms, the ones that the athletes wear in the ceremonies.

I will refrain from commenting upon the effete continental styling. No one in their right mind would take fashion advice from me.  They do look terribly French, though.

But, oh, the sin which has been committed by the official uniform supplier, Ralph Lauren!  He/they/whatever the company really is had the uniforms tailored in China! And, boy oh boy, are we in a tizzy.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid held a serious and indignant news conference. His features were dark, his brow furrowed. His voice was a little squeaky, but he can’t help that. Behind him were other equally serious solons, looking somber, serious and like they had swallowed a mosquito at this shocking insult to American labor and American honor. Burn the uniforms, says Harry! Americans cannot sit back and accept this grave insult.

In addition to Senator Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Rep. Steve Israel, and Sen. Sherrod Brown, among others, are joining in the snit.

Vishnu on a rotisserie, what a load of horseshit. 

Not that I am in favor of Chinese anything except for the Chinese people. Let their sewing machines go crazy and put three Mao jackets in every closet, that’s prosperity.

I just hope we are not stupid enough to think that these senators and representatives and the rest of their hooker colleagues who sold America to the Chinese in the first place are worthy of belief or respect.

Government policy assisted manufacturing jobs in fleeing the United States. Many of them went to Mexico. Then, not only did China screw the remaining manufacturing workers in the United States, they went ahead and screwed the Mexicans, too.  With the money we have been sending the China via “loyal” American companies who turfed out their manufacturing, the government of China has been buying up the American government.

Here I’m not talking about political contributions, those are washed through the loyal American companies who sucked up to China.  No, we are talking a direct sale:  Our of our $14.3 trillion debt, $4.5 trillion is held by foreign government. The government of China holds one fourth of that foreign debt. Japan holds another  20%. You’ll be happy to know that the oil exporting countries  hold more than 5%.

Let’s see, that’s 50% of our country owned by people who despise us.  Real, real, bright, aye? 

What do we get in return? No jobs and shitty plastic toys covered with lead paint.

Oh, we also get the benefit of 1 GW (that’s ONE BILLION WATTS) of coal-fired generating capacity put online in China each and every week at the same time the EPA just crippled the American coal industry.

And these people want to talk about Olympic uniforms?

On the other hand, they have to. They cannot afford to piss off the Chinese investors, lest their legal and immoral campaign largess from the financial and other industries vanishes. 

Just take a look at the great liberal, Sen. Reid. In the 2012 campaign cycle alone, he has accepted campaign contributions from Credit Suisse Securities, Goldman Sachs (returning bailout money?) and directors of investment giant KKR.  He is not alone. Virtually every politician has his and her nose in the trough.

These are the hypocritical bastards who ARE the problem.  I’m doubting that they have a tip nor clue about a solution, nor the desire to look for one.

I've been asleep.  Didn't we used to have two NATIONAL political parties?  Where did they both go?

How the President Saved the Coal Miners; or, A Child's Garden of Versed

I Am SOOOOO Embarassed

Then-candidate Obama said in November 2008:

“If somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can.  It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

And in 2012, the EPA followed through with regulations (that never touched Congress) which made it impossible to build any more coal-fired power plants.

And here I thought that was going to be bad news for the coal industry and bad news for West Virginia miners. Thank goodness someone smarter than I has set me straight.

The West Virginia Center for Budget and Policy is spreading around vigorously its study showing that under Pres. Obama, mining jobs in West Virginia increased  nearly 8%! Mind you, this is The Center for Budget and Policy.   And this growth in the coal industry occurred during the Obama administration.  This whole idea of banning new installations for the primary use of coal in America must be good for coal and good for employment in West Virginia.

I have applied the same strict standards of research and logic to other good things which have happened in West Virginia in the last four years.  I find so much else for which we need to be pathetically grateful to the national administration.

And, by the way, shame on you Sen. Manchin and Gov. Tomblin for not backing the Pres. Obama coal ban!  Can’t you see that banning coal power plants is GOOD for coal miners?

The population of Canadian geese in Marion County has increased by 47% between 2009 and 2012.   I’ve counted them personally on the golf course. I love Canadian geese. Under Pres. Obama, we have 47% more of them.  Only conservative zealots and ecological pirates dislike the little “presents” they leave on the putting greens.  Evil cretins.

Since 2009, the food tax West Virginia has plunged from 3% to 1%. Here again, Pres. Obama has been at the helm.  Oh, right, you think that Gov. Manchin, Gov. Tomblin and the entire Legislature did it?  They would not have DARED without the go ahead from the top.

Since 2009, no terrorists have hijacked a commercial aircraft flying over West Virginia. None. Zero. That’s a 100% success rate. Who was in charge?  You know who.  Results don’t lie.

Since 2009, the Boy Scouts have established a huge national base in Fayette County.  Oh, wait, the President doesn’t like the Boy Scouts.  Well, it was mighty nice of him to put that aside and bless us anyway.

The rivers continue to flow. The leaves turn their lush reds and yellows in the autumn.  We’ve had a leap year.  Lady Gaga hit the charts.  Chicago is still windy.  The common thread - Obama has been our pilot.

You want more proof?   When the President took a vacation, what happened?  A huge storm, a “derecho,”  took out the power grid all over the State.  Coincidence?  I think not!

My new think tank, the West Virginia Center for Really Wise Stuff shortly will publish a full color report with all of this scientific proof and more.  By Jiminy, it’s a GREAT time to be alive in a progressive and optimistic West Virginia!

You Didn’t Know Them - But They Knew You; My Brothers and Sisters Who Answered The Last Alarm

For the last few months, I have spent a bit of time planning a reunion for the members, past and present, of the Marion County Rescue Squad.  This is the ambulance and rescue company which serves Marion County, West Virginia, and a population of about 60,000.

We celebrated the 40th Reunion Saturday night.  160 of my very closest friends were there.

MCRS was founded in 1972. That story will be told at a different time and in a different forum.  Since 1972, MCRS rigs have responded to 150,000 emergency calls. For the first 15 years, it was staffed 100%, 24/7 by volunteers. Until a year ago, MCRS remained a mixed company, both career and volunteer staff. Now, it has become a career department with 70 full and part-time members.

I doubt if I have the skill adequately to explain the commitment in the Fellowship which exists in all of the emergency services. When you work with people in times of stress and in dangerous environments, they are your brothers and your sisters. That is neither exaggeration nor oversimplification.

A part of our reunions is and has been remembering those of the Fellowship who have answered the Last Alarm.

That is a time of remembrance and reflection. It is a time of sadness. Most of all, to me, it is a time of reassurance and hope.

Within every beginning lives the ending. Everyone there had the experience of answering a first alarm. I doubt if anyone ever forgets pulling out of the station on their first emergency call.  When they did so, they dedicated a part of their lives and in many instances the whole of their lives to service. And when one answers that first alarm in the service of others, necessarily one eventually will answer the Last Alarm.

Draw what conclusion you will from the service of the Last Alarm.

Presiding always is the member with greatest seniority, active or retired. In our case, we had two members far ahead of everyone else in seniority, Bill Stanley (39 years) and Paul Phillips (37 years).

Right, 39 years and 37 years doing volunteer work the United States Department of Labor classifies as skilled and very heavy.

Also by tradition, the roll was read by the member present with the least seniority. This is not to pass off some onerous task, but carries with it important symbolism. This Fellowship is One. No one is more of a brother and sister than another.

And as the roll was read, since those who have answered that Last Alarm are not present, the brothers and sisters who knew them, who worked with them and who loved them may answer for them.

Make of it what you will.

These people rode anonymously. When the public needed them, it was in time of great need and great stress. Civilians didn’t see them as Joe or Mary or Bob or Heather, they saw flashing lights and uniforms and bags and boxes of equipment and professionals quickly doing unfamiliar things.

Usually, the EMTs and medics, the firefighters/first responders, the police who came because they happened to be in the neighborhood are all wearing some sort of nametags, but nobody ever looked at those. They were just “the medics,” or “the firemen,” or “the police officers.” After they delivered the patient to the hospital, they didn’t hang around. They grabbed new supplies to replace what they had used so that they could hurry out and notify the dispatcher that they were available for another call.

You never got to know them.

But they knew you.

They knew the 60-year-old couple in the suburbs where mom called at 3 AM because dad was feeling bad and suddenly couldn’t move one side and could not speak. They knew the sudden terror which struck that house. They knew the bleary-eyed children or grandchildren who stumbled in because they heard the commotion. They knew the occasional well-meaning neighbor who came over to offer sincere but really dumb advice. And they knew that they have no time for explanations, they had to get on the road now.

They knew the driver who never saw the other driver coming, and who passed from tooling along to waking up under a collapsed steering column.  They knew how loud the rescue tools are which dismantle the car around the patient, and that’s why they crawled inside with her and covered her with their own coat and offered reassurance and sometimes even little jokes.

They knew the parents of the sudden infant death syndrome baby.

They knew knew the family of the cancer patient who had just breathed her last and who could not face it alone - so the family called the ambulance.

They sang to little children on the long transports to children’s hospitals or burn centers. They talked to older patients about their families and their work even when both patient and medic knew that the end was very near.

And they knew more than most that they would be answering their Last Alarm in the Fullness of Time.   They even looked forward to their opportunity to serve the Lord.

These were my brothers and sisters.  These are my brothers and sisters.

If they can say, “He was one of us,” I will ask for no other epitaph.

Roger

A Message of Encouragement for Mr. Jerry Sandusky

Alpha Mike Foxtrot.

There's no such thing as "Mind Candy."

I had a short conversation this week with my good friend Pastor Josh Patty. He was making some sort of comment that he had been reading serious things for a while but was going to turn to some “mind candy,” meaning some sort of less serious fiction.

I replied that there is no such thing as mind candy, and we agreed to disagree.

I’ve been ruminating on it for several days.

I have to take a somewhat circuitous route. I think it’s a mistake to “rank” what is “most important” about just about anything. Not everything in life has to be a competition. In the development of and human society, I can’t say what is most important, but I can certainly say that the development of language is really significant.

Jean Auel postulates in her Earth’s Children series (mind candy?) that Neanderthal man (homo neanderthalensis) communicated as much with gestures as with words.  That would require exchange of information and communication to occur primarily in person and would greatly diminish the amount of information that could be stored in any way.

And so the conversion of communication to primarily verbal was necessary to permit the development of anything other than real-time exchange. That was kindling which awaited the spark of writing.

Over some millennia, various standard protocols were developed where information and even complex ideas could be stored and therefore transmitted over time and distance.

Those were the fundamental innovations. Others certainly improved concept. Writing media became more convenient.  Man passed from stone to clay to animal skins to sheets of vegetable fibers which were refined into various kinds of paper. Stone tools gave way to metal tools, feathers gave way to pencils and pens, and crushed berries and minerals yielded to inks and dyes.

With printing came the ability to reproduce many copies of the same writing which vastly increased availability and reduced cost.

With the computer and net came open access publishing. (To be sure, that is a mixed bag.)

So with all that technology over all those millennia, who actually reads?

We have lots of different lists of the 100 greatest books. You want recommendations? You can get them all over the place. You can even look to the writings of this poor scribe for the year-end canon of what I found interesting the previous year.

With all of the distractions, with television, with those damnable video games, reading anything is better than not reading. I resist casting any reading in less than an admirable light, even privately.
So what if children are reading about sports or entertainment figures? We not may not admire their choices – but they are reading.

Self-improvement author Anthony Robbins is the first one I heard say that if you get one good idea from a book, it was worth reading. I’ve heard lots of people repeat that over the years. Let me add that if you get one bit of good language from what you read, that also makes it worthwhile.

I keep a file called “Good Words and Phrases.” This is where I put memorable little things I run across, phrases, words, whatever. I present the following to you excerpted from that file.  Everything offered comes from a source that would be considered “mind candy:”:

• 100% Substance Free
• 1000 Year Reich of Mediocrity
• Gene pool needs chlorine
• get sideways with [someone]
• You are remembered for the rules you break.  MacArthur
• Ideologically constipated
• [treat something like] Kryptonite -
• We can deny reality, but we cannot deny the consequences of denying reality
• “Paranoia is one of the leading signs of having secret, all-powerful enemies.”  John Barnes, Directive 51
• repeal the Plan of Salvation
• Slit your wrist music
• Sunlight bottled up in the wood  - Seton
• Vujà dé - The feeling that nothing like this has ever happened before - En Route: A Paramedic’s Stories, by Steven “Kelly” Grayson
• Failed the Turing test
• he can Hide his own Easter eggs
• Washed the Shroud of Turin with a red sock
• Spherical bastard - A bastard any way you look at them.  Zwicky
• Worship Satan or just admire his no-nonsense approach to [       ]?  - Dilbert
• So rough he wears his clothes out from the inside - L’Amour
• We’ve traded our country for shitty plastic toys.    (Griffin, When the Shit Goes Down ...)
• Rare as a white raven
• For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: "It might have been.”  John Greenleaf Whittier, “Maud Miller”

Mind candy?

Honor and Dishonor: How We Deal With Molesters

We are going to a dark place. Why? Because, children, the dark places are there.

Certainly one of the most heinous crimes is child molestation. No descriptions here – if you need them, get out and ask the people in your community who deal with them.

Certainly the first reaction I see among “civilians” when child molestation is mentioned is that it is a terribly “weird and ‘icky’” sort of crime.  That’s quite subjective but generally accepted as true.

There are other aspects of molestation which give us more objective reasons to react strongly:

• The power disparity between offender and victim is anywhere from large to unimaginable. The offenders pick out the most vulnerable victims.  If a society does not protect those persons, it is not a society, it’s a bunch of dirt bags wearing clothes.

• One of the little hush-hush secrets is that molestation frequently is permanently physically damaging.

• That it is psychologically damaging is a no-brainer.

• That molestation isolates and socially damages the victims commonly is denied. Which, of course, is about 50% crap, owing to the endless supply of idiots in our society.

• The offense is irrational in that there is no logical gain.  Recidivism is through the roof because the preference for children is as strong as the normal preference for one gender or another. That’s rather difficult to alter.

The case going on right now in the headlines is that of Jerry Sandusky, a former coach at Penn State.

I’m not going to comment on what the verdict should be or anything of the sort. I’m not on the jury, it’s not my job, and I’m only reading accounts of the evidence, not hearing the evidence itself. The possibility exists that is all a lie. I have my opinion about the improbability of that, but the jury and only the jury has the right to make the call.

The title of this post includes the words “honor and dishonor.” Two other stories are in the news which lead me there.

The first comes from the Sandusky trial. One witness for the prosecution was a former assistant coach, one McQueary.  His testimony was that he heard the “slapping of flesh” consistent with sexual activity coming from the showers.  He testified that he looked in and saw Sandusky sodomizing a 10 to 12-year-old boy.  McQueary went back to his locker and slammed the door loudly so that Sandusky would know that he was there. He left.  The next day told supervisors.

Perhaps it’s good that McQueary came forward and is testifying now. But his actions covered him in dishonor.  If he were a member of either of two different organizations with which I am affiliated (the Boy Scouts and the Masons), he would be expelled permanently. I have shopped this one around and have yet to find any guy who is other than appalled that this adult did not intervene while a child was being molested. Shocked? Sure. Shocked to the point of turning his back? What the hell was he thinking? 

Would intervention have included physical violence? Quite possibly. That would have been the offender’s choice.

McQueary made himself a comtemptible character.

The other news came out of Texas.  A family was having a well attended barbecue. Dad went into the house where he discovered an acquaintance beginning to molest his four-year-old daughter. He attacked the acquaintance bare-handed and beat him to death. Later, he said that he did not specifically intended to kill the man.

The usual call-the-police-blog-nation is expressing the usual concerns that dad should be prosecuted.

Dad defended his child. The offender voluntarily put himself in a position of risk of great harm or death. If dad’s account is true, dad did not have sufficient time to reflect upon or plan an effective yet guaranteed non-lethal response. The offender denied dad that time.  You play, you pay.

This one, too, I have shopped around, including with current and past prosecutors. Uniformly, the opinion is to check out dad’s story and unless it appears that the whole thing was some sort of set up to a planned murder, close the case.  The police in Texas said they are referring the case to the grand jury. That really means they are referring it to the prosecuting attorney who will have the choice of closing the case or sending it to a grand jury.

Occasionally, prosecutors use a grand jury as the excuse to terminate a prosecution. If the prosecutor does not want an indictment (they want the grand jury to return a “not true bill”) they present the case in such a way that the grand jurors will have no doubt of the prosecutor’s opinion. The prosecutor with guts, however, will not go through that rigmarole. In the case of clear justifiable homicide, they will simply close the case.

When presented with an intolerable event requiring action, this Texas dad did the necessary and honorable thing. Had he not intervened, he would be unworthy to be in the company of honest citizens.

I continue to agree with my friend Justice Richard Neely that Americans have gotten too lazy and too scared to do anything about crime and criminals other than call the police. As long as the criminals are not that lazy and that scared, they are going to keep winning.

Someone must be willing to go into the dark places.  There are nowhere near enough police and besides, they are not our mommies and daddies.