The Gun Lobby Remains Silent on Accidental Shootings

Americans frequently shoot themselves and others accidentally - often fatally. You would have thought that the NRA – an organization purportedly representing the interests of gun owners – would work to reduce this senseless violence. Perhaps the old NRA would have, but this current lot cannot afford to highlight this problematic side of gun ownership.

Should you mention that the NRA never publicly addresses accidental shootings, the gun absolutists will indignantly – and misleadingly – point to “Eddie Eagle’, the NRA’s gun safety character. Superficially this cartoonish figure has some safety cred – but it is only skin deepHe comes with two strikes. One, as critics maintain, is that he is a Trojan Horse. That he is to guns what Joe the Camel was to cigarettes. That is to say, he is a cynical promotional tool, foisted on impressionable kids, by an organization that has morphed from a gun-owner advocacy group t0 a marketing arm of the gun manufacturers.

These critics claim that Eddie’s role is to lure new customers to the gun industry. Certainly there is a Ronald McDonald cast to the smiling bird. But is the characterization fair?

To get at that truth let’s consider the second strike. The NRA is very vocal about gun ownership rights. Even going so far as to fret that a law banning the sale of ivory might make criminals out of the owners of ivory embellished guns. But as noisy as they are about the rights of gun owners they are silent on gun responsibility. Just try and find an NRA public service announcement addressing gun safety.

In addition to Eddie Eagle, the NRA trumpets its training. Indeed, the NRA was founded as an organization to teach marksmanship after  the disastrous performance of union riflemen in the Civil War. But safety and training are buried on their website. You can easily find its lobbying arm – and its store – but safety requires navigation.

It’s simple really. If reducing accidental shootings were a priority for the NRA they would talk about them publicly and feature solutions to them on their website. It doesn’t – because they aren’t.

To put the NRA’s approach to gun safety in perspective, imagine if the AMA had reacted to the dangers of smoking by staying silent. Then, when their passivity was challenged, they had reacted by huffily pointing to their website, with its cigarette warnings three clicks from its home page.

A reasonable person would question their commitment to reducing tobacco-caused illness. Especially if they had also lobbied to give the tobacco industry legal protection from product liability suits. And cowed the GOP into demanding that the CDC cease to research the connection between smoking and disease.

The truth is that the NRA – and its acolytes – will never pursue an aggressive path to reducing accidental shootings as long as their priority is to pursue a promiscuous view of the 2nd amendment.

Really? 7.23.14 – Texas hates on women; Politicians with ADHD; Ignoring evidence; Cruel, but not so unusual; ACA games.

Really? 7.23.14 – Texas hates on women; Politicians with ADHD; Ignoring evidence; Cruel, but not so unusual; ACA games.

Nineteen Eighty-Four’s “Newspeak” in 2014.

Part of George Orwell’s genius was his understanding of how language shapes ideas. Words and phrases are not neutral. Consider the difference in meaning between the glass half-full and the glass half-empty.

In ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ Big Brother’s authority stemmed in part from “newspeak” – a language designed to simplify English – and remove negative words -in order to enhance the ability of the state to control thought. In addition the state promoted “doublethink” – the ability to think two contrary thoughts and believe in both. If the state said “white = black”, or “2+2 = 5″ then it must be so.

And there were the state slogans “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

This perverse use of language is not restricted to Orwell’s novel. Who will forget the GOPs “death panel” characterization of  an end-of-life counseling session or “death tax” for estate tax. Current newspeak reduces complex economic solutions to “job-killing” measures. And promotes heterosexual unions as “traditional marriage”.

States that have eviscerated unions proudly label themselves as “right to work”. Fox News calls itself“fair and balanced”. Homosexuals demanding equal marriage rights are promoting the “gay agenda”. A law allowing more pollution is called the “Clear Skies Act.” Another one expanding spying on Americans is called the “USA PATRIOT ACT.”

Not to mention “creation science”, “job creator”, “family values”, “class warfare” and “welfare queen”.One of the rationales for restrictions on women’s health clinics is that they “protect women”. Ted Cruzcharacterizes a Senate bill to restore access to these clinics as a “manifestation of a war on women.”

Everyone has an opinion on what should happen to the unaccompanied Central American kids crossing the border. But they leave right-wing evangelical Christians with a problem – how do you appear to care about the plight of parentless children, while at the same time enforcing restrictive immigration laws? The answer is to claim that measures to keep the kids out of the country are in fact for the kids’ benefit.

To this end. they have latched on to the idea that if we fortify the border, and get that message out, these kids won’t take the journey that offers nothing but rape, violence and possibly death. Of course they elide the fact that these kids are making the journey to escape rape, violence and possible death in their home countries.

A Dallas Pastor, Robert Jeffress, promoted this inhumanity with an analogy. “If you’re a homeowner with a swimming pool that doesn’t have a fence around it, and a neighborhood child wanders in and drowns, you’re liable because you have enticed that child into a dangerous situation. The remedy is to build a fence.” And this sadist calls himself a Christian?

The lesson learned, is that politicians will use words that often cast the object of their description in a very different light than the truth.

Microsoft CEO Explains At Great Length That The Company Must Be Leaner.

Microsoft is a mature business. Which gives it the same advantages and disadvantages that mature people have. They know a lot. But they become stodgy and set in their ways. Mature people, who want to shed weight, exercise and experiment with diets. Mature businesses cut payroll and experiment with business strategies. Some people succeed, some corporations fail.Because there is no fountain of corporate youth.

Some companies – General Electric springs to mind – seem to retain a vibrancy as they age. Most companies die. Will Microsoft? I don’t know. But to this layman, it seems they are invested in an LP business, while living in a digital world.

A clue to the direction of Microsoft’s future lies in a “State of the Company” memo written by its current CEO, Satya Nadella. In it, he says that everyone at Microsoft must find ways to simplify, work faster and more efficiently. But the memo itself belies the message. It is 3,100 words long. And includes such gems as:

“We will create more natural human-computing interfaces that empower all individuals.” - (In English) “We’ll make it easier to use our products.”

“We will increase the fluidity of information and ideas by taking actions to flatten the organization and develop leaner business processes. Culture change means we will do things differently.” - “We’ll fire half the administration”.

“We think about productivity for people, teams and the business processes of entire organizations as one interconnected digital substrate. We also think about interconnected platforms for individuals, IT and developers. This comprehensive view enables us to solve the more complex, nuanced and real-world day-to-day challenges in an increasingly digital world.” - “We’ll think of everything.”

My suggestion to Mr. Nadella is to try again. To help him out I have written a new draft.

“Dear fellow Microsofters,

Things are so-so with the company. To do better we need a leaner company, building better products. If you have game, you’ll keep your job.

We must remember that we can only be successful if we put the customer first. And give him products that he can understand; that work with the other stuff she owns; and that work well at work and home.

We want the big stuff to work with the little stuff and still be secure. We must make stuff that generates profits for business and an income for the individual.

And don’t forget the gaming – Xbox is huge.

We’ll make production quicker. And educate the staff.

To all of you that remain after the purge, I look forward to a better year. Or we’ll have to do this again.

Best, Satya

PS. I was going to use, “Think Different” - but I was told me that someone already had.

(146 words)

McThinking.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it. – Henry Ford

Conservatives enjoy Ann Coulter, in much the same way a child enjoys fireworks.They are colorful, make a lot of noise, are easy to understand and don’t take up a lot of time. Children – and some adults – can see the same firework show time and time again and it remains fascinating – just like cat videos.

This isn’t to say that Coulter isn’t wicked smart. She is. She has all sorts of important degrees, and even clerked for a Federal Appeals Court Judge. It isn’t her fault that her fanciful expeditions through the supposed frou frou foibles of liberal intellectualism have attracted a loyal following of dull knives.

Coulter understands brilliantly that bumper sticker wisdom is about the most the true believer can absorb. It’s like reading the last page of an Agatha Christie book – you get the point, but miss out on the slog (although Christie, unlike Dorothy Sayers, is not a slog). And it is that effort which brings the greater reward. After all, how can you decide for yourself the quality of the book if you don’t read it.

But not reading things – instead having them “explained” – is a long suit for Americans. Take the right’s most revered texts: The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bible. I venture to say that not many have read all three. I’ll grant you the Bible is often tedious. But the other two are not. And even if they were, they are mercifully short. A reader with 6th grade abilities could plow through both in an hour.

It is this distance from original sources that allows many to believe that the America was founded as a Christian nation; that the Bible uniquely condemns gays; or that the original motto of the US was “In God we trust”.

As so few true believers read, charlatans and other political or religious opportunists can use these texts as a tabula rasa to promote whatever bigotry warms their heart, safe in the knowledge that the vast unwashed lack the knowledge to call them out. And they lack knowledge, because knowledge, like fitness, is earned. The people who think they have learned something because they listen to Ann Coulter, are the same people who think they can lose weight by swallowing pills.

Or that McDonalds is food.

Can You Be Good Without God?

Do you need God to be good? People around the world were asked that. The results varied by country. But three trends emerged – belief that God is needed for morality is (1) greater in the poor, (2) in the old, and (3) in the ill-educated. Two countries buck the trends. In relatively poor China, God is given short shrift as the seat of morality. In wealthy America we still cleave to the divine underpinning of goodness.

It isn’t a surprise. Chinese religion is grounded more in family, philosophy, and tradition than it is in a godhead. On the other hand, the US is an outlier in the industrial world for its religiosity. But even within the US, regional differences are stark. In the relatively religion-free North-East, God is not considered necessary for morality. Whereas, in the deeply religious South His role is viewed as critical.

Let’s take a run at the question ourselves. Is God, in fact, necessary for morality? As might be expected – and as polls confirm – the more religious a country, the more likely the population is to believe that is so. And those religious folk take a dim view of atheists. In their thinking, if you do not believe in God you have no reason to be good.

Superficially it may sound reasonable, but it is a specious argument. Built into most religions is the idea of forgiveness and atonement. Do what ever the hell you want – it doesn’t matter, God will forgive you. The Catholic Church is rooted in sin, confession and absolution. The Jews have Yom Kippur. And how many philandering pastors and politicians insist that it will all be good, as soon as they will make it right with the Lord.

Atheists, on the other hand, do not have a “get out of jail free” card. There is no easy salve for their consciences. And if the religious claim that non-believers have no conscience, they confuse atheists with sociopaths.

The religious hypothesis that God is needed for good is easily testable. And in the test, it fails. States with lower rates of church attendance generally have lower crime rates, lower rates of divorce, and lower rates of teenage pregnancy. They even have lower rates of obesity.

And prison populations are notably religious.

Religious people may like to think they occupy the moral high ground. They don’t. And not all atheists are angels. It is obvious that morality is not a gift from God but comes from within. The real question is whether morality is innate or learned  - or is it, as seems likely – a blend of the two?

Are the Terrorists a Few Steps Closer to the Destruction of the US?

ISIS has got its hands on radioactive material. Authorities reassure us that we should only be “minimally concerned”. I expect that the President’s political foes will inflate the theft to an existential crisis for the US. And the punditocracy will ignore the facts to promote their pet point of view.

Should we be concerned about ISIS’s new possessions? In short – no.

I do not base that answer on any knowledge of exactly what ISIS has, or what scientists they have in their ranks, or what their capabilities are. I base that answer on the history of hyperbolic threats full sound and fury resulting in nothing.

Not only do Cassandras issue threats with no substance, but more tragically they ignore threats for which there is evidence. Experience suggests that we may safely ignore  all that we are warned of, and worry about that which no one talks about. Look no further than the empty warnings of Saddam’s WMDs (“…we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”) and the total surprise of 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombing.

And remember how we had to defend South Vietnam, lest a unified communist Vietnam presaged a Red tide sweeping over Southeast Asia. Even the end of the cold war revealed the old Soviet Union to be a paper tiger.

American politics lurches from bogeyman to bogeyman; the list of threats seemingly endless. Everything is a crisis. We are teetering on the brink – an inch from extinction.

And yet we are still here.

Political Tomfoolery on the Border.

Conservatives think that the Liberal solution to all problems is government throwing money around. Liberals think that the Conservative solution is to send troops or let the free market sort it out. The arrival of 1,000s of unaccompanied Central American kids at the Southern border illustrates these stereotypes well. The President has requested $3.7 billion to address the issue. The GOP has balked because the President’s plan lacks a deployment of the National Guard.

The solution to illegal immigration is simple. But more on that later. Let’s first look at the current solution – the Border Wall.

The Berlin Wall gives perspective. It was remarkably effective. But it illustrates a grievous fault of the US Wall – a fault fiscal conservatives should find appalling – it costs a fortune.

The Berlin Wall worked because it had eyes along its entire length, a lot of eyes. At its peak 47,000 Grenztruppen der DDR (border troops) watched the 124 mile long barrier – which amounts to 379 of them per mile. It would take 740,000 US troops to ensure the same ratio for the 1,951 mile-long Southern Wall. That’s 5 times as many as invaded Iraq.

The expense would be absurd. The expense to just build the wall is absurd. The wall, without the manpower to make it count, is a paper barrier to a mudslide. Which raises the question – what is worse, politicians who are to stupid to know a boondoggle when they see it, or politicians who would knowingly waste billions to prove they are tough on ‘illegals’?

So what is the simple solution? The answer lies in reducing the demand for illegal aliens. To reduce the demand, throw anyone who employs undocumented aliens in jail. Include the CEOs and human resource directors of public companies, the owners of private companies, and even the homeowners with housekeepers or who pick up day laborers to mow the lawn.

No jobs for illegals, no illegals,  And it doesn’t cost much. Seems like a slam-dunk – right? Hardly. I guarantee that no politician will suggest it.

George Orwell Analyzes Neocons and the Iraqi Imbroglio.

In the 1940s, during WWII, George Orwell wrote a series of columns he wrote for the journal, Tribune, under the rubric “As I Please”. The forum gave Orwell carte blanche to report his observations of the state of affairs in Britain and abroad.

On December 17, 1943, he wrote the following,

“Yet I was not so wrong as the Military Experts. Experts of various schools were telling us that the Maginot Line was impregnable, and that the Russo-German pact had put an end to Hitler’s eastwards expansion; in early 1940 they were telling us that the days of tank warfare were over; in mid-1940 they were telling us that the would invade Britain forthwith; in mid-1941 that the Red Army would fold up in six weeks; in December 1941, that Japan would collapse after ninety days; in July 1942, that Egypt was lost – and so on , more or less indefinitely.

Where now are the men who told us those things? Still on the job, drawing fat salaries. Instead of the unsinkable battleship, we have the unsinkable Military Expert.”

Right Dick?

It’s Time for a New Declaration of Independence.

“Our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves” – Thomas Jefferson

In 1776 the English in America told the English in England to bugger off. Their compliant? Laws were enacted in London that governed the English in America, without the governed having a say. This frustration was most famously expressed in that most iconic of political protests: “No taxation without representation”.

But arbitrary taxes were hardly their only grievance.

The Declaration of Independence enumerated the colonists’ objections. The Constitution later established a framework for the new government. Both are notable in that they acknowledged that society needed rules, but that the rules were to be created and consented to by the citizen – excluding women, the unpropertied, slaves and Indians. Nowhere are authority or rights granted to corporations.

“THE PEOPLE”

And you would have thought that was clear to everybody – it certainly used to be.

Now the Supreme Court makes some flim flam argument that, at their root, corporations are just groups of people and that in promoting the rights of corporations you promote the rights of individuals. That’s nonsense. Whosoever you allow to vote in a democracy has one vote. Let him cast that vote for whomever he choses – and let him have the same degree of political expression as any other voter.

If you give corporations rights, you give the owners extra rights denied to employees. In effect the Court gives license for owners to foist their religion on their employees – consigning the worker to compulsory worship.

Owners have the right to profit from their capital. And owners already have a say in the economic circumstances of the worker. Now the Court gives them a say in their workers’ reproductive outcomes.

So why aren’t politicians of every stripe incensed? Why aren’t they true to the nation’s founding philosophy? The answer lies in the Supreme Court’s poodle-like eagerness to please. And presto, corporations are people with free speech rights and permission to bribe politicians.

Which means that Americans have lost their representation again. But instead of an arbitrary, capricious and distant king pulling the strings, today’s autocrat is corporate America. In 1776 the American English declared independence from an English King. Now American individuals have to throw off “a long train of abuses and usurpations” perpetrated by American corporations

The country would do well to find another group of revolutionaries, as talented as the first lot, to wrest power away from the “factions” so anathema to the founders.

Ironically, returning power to the people is a goal liberals and conservatives can agree on – even if they are at odds with what they would do with that power.

______________________________________________________________________

“The greatest good we can do our country is to heal it’s party divisions & make them one people. I do not speak of their leaders who are incurable, but of the honest and well-intentioned body of the people.” – Thomas Jefferson

The GOP Scrambles to Deal With the Political Fallout of an Improving Recovery.

“If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: ‘President Can’t Swim’.” - LBJ

Doomsayers (aka Republicans) warned that Obamacare was going to be a job-killing catastrophe for the economy and death knell for many small businesses. These Cassandras are wrong. After delaying the recovery for years with their obdurate behavior, the GOP is now faced with (for them) the unpleasant truth that the President is not cratering the economy and his policies are not dimming a brightening jobs picture.

In fairness, there is debate over exactly how much a President’s policies impact the economy. But as the GOP was blaming Obama for the anemic recovery, they must also give him credit when things take a turn for the better.

But you know they won’t. So how will the Republicans spin this?

In the short term, Hurricane Arthur will be a boon – because images of trees whipping around are compelling video. And it will give conservative news sources the rationale to bury the story. (Fox News has it so deep-sixed it isn’t even the lead story in its business section – which itself is on the bottom of its homepage.)

If they have to face it in the long term, they will likely hang their hat on the economy’s contraction during the 1st quarter 2014. But A. the weather was lousy and B. much of the 2.9% decline in GDP was a result of lower health care spending. And that’s an irony. The GOP could beat the President up for the negative GDP, but that would acknowledge he was right about the ACA. The GOP will no doubt deal with this unfavorable (for them) news by not mentioning it. The number is bad, why analyze the cause?

The GOP may take credit for the good news. They will claim that their obstructionism allowed the economy to be shielded from the depredations of the tyrant Obama’s ministrations. But if they want to own today’s better recovery, they must also own the anemic recovery. And they won’t.

They might argue that the latest good news is a result of the Federal Reserve flooding the market with cheap money and that it is unsustainable. To which Obama should reply, that’s why we have the Fed – and they won’t be doing it indefinitely.

Republicans might imply that an improving recovery is being fueled on out-of-control government spending and skyrocketing federal employment. Except the spending is not out of control and federal employment is declining.

In all likelihood the GOP will just ignore the recovery and keep their fingers crossed that it won’t last.

Really? – 2.2.14 – A mixed week for the religious; A GOPer sneers at science; and the Supreme Court takes a beating.

It’s been a mixed week for the religious. Obviously the Hobby Lobby is great news for those who think arbitrary religious beliefs take precedence over national law. On the other hand, there were events less favorable to those who think that religion has some higher claim to moral or legal authority.

More hypocrisy in the Catholic Church.

Archbishop John Nienstedt hates the sin, loves the sinner (repeatedly).

In ‘Angels in America’ a power-loving lawyer denies his true nature (in the third person), “Roy Cohn is not a homosexual. Roy Cohn is heterosexual man, Henry, who fucks around with guys.” Perhaps a similar rational goes through Archbishop John Nienstedt’s mind.

This Minnesota Church official is a noted homophobe, who spent$650,000 of the Church’s money to fight for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. His signature issue is condemnation of the LGBT community.

Now he is being investigated for having sex with other men in robes.

Gay marriage rights.

Gay marriage proponents haven’t lost a single marriage case since DOMA was overturned by the Supreme Court. Quite simply because there is no legal reason to deny gays the right to same sex marriage. As the latest judge to overturn a gay marriage ban (this time in Kentucky) put it,

“In America even sincere and long-held religious views do not trump the constitutional rights of those who happen to have been out-voted.”  

And he added, there is an “utter lack of logical relation” between excluding same-sex couples from marriage and any legitimate state interest.

The GOP and women’s issues.

Mitchell McConnell spent the weekend assuring the National Right to Life Convention that he would take second place to none in his war against abortion.

There is nothing wrong in being against abortion – many women are. But when you combine it with a war against contraception, a sniggering puerility, an attitude that women are sluts, and denial of men’s responsibility, it comes across as misogynistic.

When science is an opinion.

LA state Rep. Lenar Whitney – Is her slogan a hat tip to the storied criminal history of Louisiana politicos?

LA state Rep. Lenar Whitney is a GOP candidate for Congress. To burnish her anti-science cred she told the climatology community to shove their science. She went so far as to call Global Warming, “perhaps the greatest deception in the history of mankind”. Worse than evolution?

She knows that the science is false because she doesn’t need the fancy scientific tools and complex computer modeling that actual scientists use. Instead she knows that, “any 10-year-old can invalidate their thesis with one of the simplest scientific devices known to man: a thermometer”.

The Supreme Court takes a beating.

Chief Justice John Roberts probably came to the Supreme Court with an idea of going down in history as an admired leader of a well-regarded Court. He can kiss that good-bye.

The Supreme Court is the least well-regarded Court since Gallup started polling the issue in 1973.

Roberts can take comfort in the fact that hardly any Americans know who he is. And if Gallup had polled companies I am sure that the results would have been much more in his favor.