Automatic Weapons Again

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A statistic from Vox:  More Americans have been killed with guns since 1968 than have died in all of our wars going back to 1776. 

Now, we all know that the purpose of “automatic” weapons is to disable or kill many people very quickly. Rational Americans understand that no private citizen should legally possess powerful weapons of this kind or the ammunition that goes with them. The Constitution doesn’t give us the right to bear any kind of “arms” no matter how dangerous. Making these weapons illegal does not require going down the slippery slope to banning all firearms. The United States isn’t going to invade Texas and even Texas isn’t the Wild West. More guns and more powerful guns means more innocent people being maimed and killed.  

But if law-abiding citizens don’t own such weapons, only criminals will! That’s exactly right. Police and the armed forces will have access to these weapons in case they’re needed. Anybody else who has an automatic weapon will be and should be a criminal.

From New York Times op-ed writer Timothy Egan’s article about our latest massacre:

A day after the California carnage, the Senate decided to do nothing, again, voting down a measure that would have made it more difficult for people on the terror watch list, felons and the mentally ill to buy guns.

Well, it wasn’t as if the whole Senate made that decision:

YEAs (Do Something) — 45
Baldwin (D-WI)
Bennet (D-CO)
Blumenthal (D-CT)
Booker (D-NJ)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Coons (D-DE)
Donnelly (D-IN)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Franken (D-MN)		 Gillibrand (D-NY)
Heinrich (D-NM)
Hirono (D-HI)
Kaine (D-VA)
King (I-ME)
Kirk (R-IL)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Leahy (D-VT)
Manchin (D-WV)
Markey (D-MA)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Merkley (D-OR)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murphy (D-CT)		 Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Peters (D-MI)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schatz (D-HI)
Schumer (D-NY)
Shaheen (D-NH)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Tester (D-MT)
Udall (D-NM)
Warren (D-MA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)
NAYs (Do Nothing) — 54
Alexander (R-TN)
Ayotte (R-NH)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Blunt (R-MO)
Boozman (R-AR)
Burr (R-NC)
Capito (R-WV)
Cassidy (R-LA)
Coats (R-IN)
Cochran (R-MS)
Collins (R-ME)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Cotton (R-AR)
Crapo (R-ID)
Cruz (R-TX)
Daines (R-MT)
Enzi (R-WY)		 Ernst (R-IA)
Fischer (R-NE)
Flake (R-AZ)
Gardner (R-CO)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hatch (R-UT)
Heitkamp (D-ND)
Heller (R-NV)
Hoeven (R-ND)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johnson (R-WI)
Lankford (R-OK)
Lee (R-UT)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Moran (R-KS)		 Murkowski (R-AK)
Paul (R-KY)
Perdue (R-GA)
Portman (R-OH)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rounds (R-SD)
Rubio (R-FL)
Sasse (R-NE)
Scott (R-SC)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Sullivan (R-AK)
Thune (R-SD)
Tillis (R-NC)
Toomey (R-PA)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

So, I have two recommendations. The first is for Democrats (D) and Independents (I): 

Support rational gun control, do what you can to make your position known and always vote, but never, ever vote for a Republican. 

The second is for Republicans (R):

Seek treatment from a qualified mental health professional. 

~~~~~

Times columnist Gail Collins describes some of the rationalizations offered by Republican politicians in support of doing nothing.

What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of Ameria, 1815 -1848 by Daniel Walker Howe

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What Hath God Wrought is an 850-page entry in a well-written series of books called “The Oxford History of the United States”. It covers the period between the War of 1812 and the Mexican War, part of our national history that is overshadowed by what came before and what came after.

In roughly thirty years, America became much more recognizably modern. Improved transportation (railroads) and communications (the telegraph) had widespread effects. Modern political parties were created and the population became more diverse as immigration increased. The population soared. The women’s rights movement began.

In fact, Howe points out that President James Polk, an obscure figure today, added more territory to the United States than any other President, even more than Jefferson added with the Louisiana Purchase. By the end of Polk’s four-year term, everything from the Pacific Ocean to the Rocky Mountains, as well as Texas, was American territory.

The principal lesson I took from this long book, however, was that the same political divisions we find today were already in evidence before the Civil War. The Whigs, as exemplified by John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, were the progressive political party. They wanted slavery eliminated and federal money spent on infrastructure. Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress as a Whig.

The Democrats, as exemplified by Andrew Jackson and Polk, were basically white supremacists. They preferred a weak federal government that wouldn’t interfere with slavery. Yet they supported territorial expansion by any means, including the extermination of the Indians and armed aggression against Mexico. 

In other words, the early Democrats (especially Jackson) were real bastards. The Whigs weren’t. But now we have the Republicans, the progressive successor to the Whigs, as the war-mongering, white-supremacist party, and the Democrats as the modern-day Whigs. The Republicans are now the real Party of Jackson, while the Democrats are the real Party of Lincoln.

If You Have To Ask (World Travel Edition)

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If someone in your house subscribes to the National Geographic Society’s magazine and your zip code implies relative affluence, you probably received a very nice booklet in the mail entitled “National Geographic 2016/2017 Private Jet Expeditions”.

Ours came yesterday. It’s the kind of mail that has “recycling bin” all over it, but my curiosity was piqued. What the hell is a “private jet expedition”?

It turns out that National Geographic offers four such tours, each lasting about three weeks. One of them takes you around the world. You leave Orlando, Florida, and then visit places like Machu Picchu, Easter Island, Angkor Wat, the Serengeti and Marrakesh, before returning to Orlando. (They do let you off the plane to walk around and sleep in a nice bed – you’re not seeing everything from 20,000 feet.)

Another trip is advertised as “around the world”, but doesn’t quite make it. You board your private jet in Seattle, take a northern route, mostly across Asia, and are then deposited in Boston, 3,000 miles from where you started.

The other two trips are even more geographically limited. One begins and ends in London, with stops in places like Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia and Israel. The other starts in Orlando and includes South America, the South Pacific, China and Japan, before inexplicably dropping you off in Seattle.

But how private is this jet anyway? I figured it must be one of those Gulfstream jobs that movie stars and titans of industry enjoy. They probably carry 10 or 20 people at most. 

Unfortunately, the National Geographic’s plane isn’t that private. You ride in “two-by-two VIP-style seats” that look really comfortable, but your “specially outfitted Boeing 757” has room for 75 other passengers.  

Thinking about this, I suppose I could handle the lack of exclusivity, but being on a tour with 75 other world travelers, plus the flight crew, plus the various guides and lecturers, plus the staff photographer, plus the on-call-24-hours-a-day physician, doesn’t seem exactly “private” to me.

Being familiar with that old expression “if you have to ask …”, I went ahead and asked (myself) anyway. The bad news is that the most expensive trip (the one that goes around the world and thoughtfully brings you back to where you started) costs $79,950. With sales tax, let’s call it $80,000. The cheapest trip goes for $67,950. But seriously, who would want to experience a bunch of exotic locations with a down-market group like that?

By the way, those prices are per person with double occupancy. If you don’t want company at night, it’s another $8,000 or so.

To sum up, if you and your significant other select one of these expeditions, your total bill will be around $150,000, maybe more, maybe less (hotel minibar and laundry, among other things, not included).

I don’t know why, but the booklet indicates that this is “sustainable travel”. Sadly, it doesn’t look like anything I’ll be sustaining any time soon. If you’re in the market, however, and you inadvertently recycled your booklet, you can get more information at National Geographic Expeditions. But if you’re as unimpressed by their definition of “travel by private jet” as I am, you might want to visit here instead.

So have a wonderful time, take lots of pictures, vaya con dios and don’t forget your yellow fever shot! Proof of inoculation is required.

At Least the Cop Wasn’t Thinking At the Time

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A high school student in South Carolina disrupted a class by talking on her phone. The teacher and a school administrator demanded that she leave the room. She refused. A police officer assigned to the school was summoned. He told her again to get out of her chair and leave the room. She was now sitting quietly and no longer using her phone. She said she had done nothing wrong and wanted to stay.

He reacted by flipping her and her chair upside down and dragging her across the floor. The white police officer, who is also one of the school’s assistant football coaches, did not break the black girl’s neck.

From the New York Times article, which includes a link to the video:

Witnesses to Monday’s incident said that in an Algebra 1 class, the girl, a sophomore, was on her phone, and the teacher told her to put it away. The teacher summoned an administrator, who brought in the deputy. The adults repeatedly asked the student to get up and leave the class, but she refused.

When the altercation occurred, students stood up, confused about what was happening, but the deputy told them, “Sit down, or you all will be next,” said one student, Charles Scarborough, 16. Adding to the surprise and confusion, several students said the girl was usually quiet and not a troublemaker.

The deputy also detained a second student, Niya Kenny, 18, who told a local television station that her only offense was objecting to his treatment of the other girl.

“I was crying, like literally screaming, crying like a baby,” Ms. Kenny told WLTX. “I’d never seen nothing like that in my life, a man use that much force on a little girl.”

As she protested, she said, “he said, ‘Since you’ve got so much to say, you’re coming, too.’ ”

I can almost understand the cop’s reaction. He got frustrated and gave in to his worst impulses. He didn’t de-escalate the situation. He treated the girl as if she were a dangerous criminal. He treated her worse than he’d treat a dog. But I presume he wasn’t using all his mental faculties at the time. His lizard brain, his adrenaline and his racism took over.

What I can’t understand at all is that people read the article and watched the video and then composed a comment to the Times suggesting that the girl was responsible in any way whatsoever for what happened to her. She disrupted the class. She refused to get out of her chair. She wasn’t respectful of authority. Maybe she provoked the cop’s reaction. We should wait for all the facts before passing judgment.

What total bullshit. Let’s face it. Many of our fellow citizens here in the United States would make good Nazis and there doesn’t seem to be much the rest of us can do about it. (All right, I do understand it.)

There’s more here, including how a police officer using more of his brain could have handled the situation.

New Jersey, Visually Speaking

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Some of New Jersey looks like English countryside – or what I imagine English countryside looks like:

IMG_20151027_141047

But some of New Jersey looks like one of my fingers:

IMG_20151027_135231

This sums up New Jersey pretty well.