MAKE IT STOP!

The usually peaceful town of Duncan, Oklahoma, where I've lived for 15 years, today has become part of the growing list of places where lack of sufficient gun control has taken its toll. According to reports, 3 people were fatally shot this morning at the Walmart store here.

Senator Chris Murphy, in 2012, wrote important words, quoted in full in my post HERE - including:

"None of this is inevitable. I know this because no other country endures this pace of mass carnage like America. It is uniquely and tragically American. As long as our nation chooses to flood the county with dangerous weapons and consciously let those weapons fall into the hands of dangerous people, these killings will not abate.

"As my colleagues go to sleep tonight, they need to think about whether the political support of the gun industry is worth the blood that flows endlessly onto the floors of American churches, elementary schools, movie theaters, and city streets. Ask yourself – how can you claim that you respect human life while choosing fealty to weapons-makers over support for measures favored by the vast majority of your constituents.

"My heart breaks for Sutherland Springs. Just like it still does for Las Vegas. And Orlando. And Charleston. And Aurora. And Blacksburg. And Newtown. Just like it does every night for Chicago. And New Orleans. And Baltimore. And Bridgeport. The terrifying fact is that no one is safe so long as Congress chooses to do absolutely nothing in the face of this epidemic. The time is now for Congress to shed its cowardly cover and do something."

Senator Murphy's Important Words

A Senator saying all the right things, following Sunday's mass murder in Sutherland Springs, Texas :
Sen. Chris Murphy (Democrat-Connecticut.)

"The paralysis you feel right now – the impotent helplessness that washes over you as news of another mass slaughter scrolls across the television screen – isn’t real. It's a fiction created and methodically cultivated by the gun lobby, designed to assure that no laws are passed to make America safer, because those laws would cut into their profits. My heart sunk to the pit of my stomach, once again, when I heard of today's shooting in Texas. My heart dropped further when I thought about the growing macabre club of families in Las Vegas and Orlando and Charleston and Newtown, who have to relive their own day of horror every time another mass killing occurs.

"None of this is inevitable. I know this because no other country endures this pace of mass carnage like America. It is uniquely and tragically American. As long as our nation chooses to flood the county with dangerous weapons and consciously let those weapons fall into the hands of dangerous people, these killings will not abate.

"As my colleagues go to sleep tonight, they need to think about whether the political support of the gun industry is worth the blood that flows endlessly onto the floors of American churches, elementary schools, movie theaters, and city streets. Ask yourself – how can you claim that you respect human life while choosing fealty to weapons-makers over support for measures favored by the vast majority of your constituents.

"My heart breaks for Sutherland Springs. Just like it still does for Las Vegas. And Orlando. And Charleston. And Aurora. And Blacksburg. And Newtown. Just like it does every night for Chicago. And New Orleans. And Baltimore. And Bridgeport. The terrifying fact is that no one is safe so long as Congress chooses to do absolutely nothing in the face of this epidemic. The time is now for Congress to shed its cowardly cover and do something."

IT's TIME !

At least 20 people have been killed and some 42 injured in a shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, police say.

Updated: A mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that police are calling a “domestic terror incident” has left approximately 50 people dead and at least 53 injured.

And only around 24 hours earlier, also in Orlando was the shooting to death of Christina Grimmie, the 22-year-old singer who made her name on NBC's "The Voice" as she was signing autographs after a performance.

It's something...maybe...

Better late than never, President Obama !

The president, yesterday, reviewed his proposed executive actions, which include:

Background checks for all gun sellers, overturning current exemptions to some online and gun show sellers.

States providing information on people disqualified from buying guns due to mental illness or domestic violence.

Increased workforce for the FBI to process background checks, hiring more than 230 new examiners.

Congress being asked to invest $500m (£339m) to improve access to mental healthcare in the US.

The departments of defence, justice and homeland security exploring "smart gun technology" to improve gun safety.

(From BBC website yesterday)

It's not much but it's something. Now...we'll see how much hue and cry ensues from the NRA et al.

A good read on this topic from the Rude Pundit.

(Other posts on gun control are accessible via the Label Cloud in my sidebar).

Abominable Events Took Place Last Week, Not 1 But 3.

There were three monstrous events in the USA last week, one of them took up most media space and time, the others remained largely buried beneath what were seen as more screen-worthy dramas.
Pierre Tristam pinpointed one of the other two abominations; here's the last paragraph of his piece Gun Worship’s Perversion: Just Don’t Call 10,000 Murders a Year “Terrorism”,

Last week’s enduring moral isn’t authorities’ swift and commendable ability to hunt down two amateur terrorists. It’s the shame of a nation that has perverted the meaning of violence. There is the unacceptable kind. That’s “terrorism.” And there is the acceptable kind. That’s the 30 daily murders by gun. The kind the Senate said there’s no need to do anything about. The kind we cannot allow to interfere with gun worship and the NRA’s five-times-a-day call to prayer.

Gary Younge's piece at Common Dreams echoed the same feelings:
snip:

On Wednesday the Senate declined to pass even the most anaemic gun control measures in response to the Newtown shootings. Twenty children, aged between six and seven, are slaughtered in school and the American polity takes five months to decide do nothing. Unable to break the filibuster limit, it didn't even come to a vote. Hiding behind the National Rifle Association's (NRA) talking points, gun rights senators cloaked themselves in the constitution, insisting support for gun control would violate the second amendment "right to bear arms".
The greatest threat to US citizens is not one-off terror attacks, but the menace that comes with mass gun-ownership.

Hat tip to http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/tag/u-s-senate/ for illustration

We could not do even "the least we could do", could we? Why? Because our representatives no longer represent us.


The third tragedy was highlighted by Dave Lindorff: The Real Terrorists are the Corporate Execs Who’ve Bought the Regulators.
Excerpt:

The way I see it, we had two acts of terrorism in the US this week. The first took place at the end of the historic Boston Marathon, when two bombs went off near the finish line, killing three and seriously injuring dozens of runners and spectators. The second happened a couple days later in the town of West, Texas, where a fertilizer plant blew up, incinerating or otherwise killing at least 15, and injuring at least 150 people, and probably more as the search for the dead and the injured continues. The villains in the West Fertilizer Co. explosion can be much more easily identified: the managers and owners of the plant.

West Fertilizer was built starting back in 1962 in the middle of the small town of West, TX, a community founded in the 19th century and named after the first local postmaster, T.M. West. It makes no sense, of course, to locate such a facility that uses highly toxic anhydrous ammonia as a primary feed stock (a compound that burns the lungs and kills on contact, and that, because it must be stored under pressure, is highly prone to leaks and explosive releases), and one that makes as its main product ammonium nitrate fertilizer, around lots of people. Ammonium nitrate, recall, is the highly explosive compound favored by truck bombers like the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. It was the fertilizer, vast quantities of which were stored at the West Fertilizer plant site, which caused the colossal explosion that leveled much of the town of West.

Building such a dangerous facility in the midst of a residential and business area, and allowing homes, nursing homes, hospitals, schools and playgrounds to be built alongside it, is the result of a corrupt process that is commonplace in towns and cities across America, where business leaders routinely have their way with local planning and zoning commissions, safety inspectors and city councils. Businesses small and large also have their way with state and federal safety and health inspectors too.

I gleaned from comments at a blog called Lawyers Guns and Money where the issue was being discussed a few days ago, that the owner of the plant is a man in his 80s, he bought it a decade ago. He is a well respected member of the community and owns other businesses in the area. Obviously the plant owner, unlike the terrorists in Boston, had no intention of killing people - and yet, and yet - he, or his managers, did not appear to have the safety of people in their community high on their list of essentials.

What happened in West, bad as it was, now known to have killed 14 first responders, voluntary firefighters and medics, could have been very, very much worse had local people not received early warning of a disaster about to happen. On another occasion in another place, in a similar situation a warning might not be possible. Terrorists of the known kind are a known danger - this is an equally dangerous but largely hidden situation which would benefit from a similar amount of attention and force of authority as was seen in Watertown last week.

Concerning Issues: Gun Control, Social Security.

Two important issues are in the air now: gun control and Social Security - modification of the latter being a part of President Obama's budget proposals.

The President's original gun control proposals have already been diluted to eliminate any ban on sale of assault weapons. Now the concentration is on background checks. Even that proposal is causing consternation among certain strains of gun owners. Having read around to discover why, I found that the main objection is that they suspect that the registration of gun ownership, the holding of, and access to such registers by government would be unacceptable. It is surmised that, if ever a tyrannical government were to take over the nation, first thing they'd do would be to use any register of gun owners to rapidly confiscate all weapons. I'll try not to scoff, which was my immediate reaction. It could happen, though.... I guess. One day. Maybe. Couldn't it? The objection I see to the current proposal is that background checks are already part of the law - and that law is not being properly adhered to by all, including the authorities. Why would we expect that an encore would be treated any differently?

Is this really the best that can be done: the least we can do? If the NRA and its members are blocking every avenue, why not take an alternative route for now, consider that violence in general is being fueled by more than just the easy availability of guns? How about some restraints on depiction of violence in movies and video games? I know the arguments against this, but the fact remains that in this technological age more people do have far greater access to depictions of violence in fantasy situations than they've ever had before. Even when not seeking it we can all stumble upon heavy doses of violence in movies and TV drama. It draws the crowds, gets attention, encourages retailers to buy advertising time. Violence and sex, twin ensnarers of the human psyche, twin cash cows. Sex - well, okay that's a bit different, but treating violence as entertainment has to be wrong, measured by any yardstick.


Re: Social Security, and that peculiarly named "chained CPI" - sounds like something bikers might pin to their leather jackets. The President is allegedly trying to get Republicans to agree to fairly mild tax increases on the wealthy by offering up benefit reductions on incomes of senior citizens who, by the way, have contributed to their retirement benefit throughout their working lives. Nice, eh? If the Republicans go for it, which isn't at all certain (thank goodness) the measures won't affect seniors much immediately, but over time they would reduce Social Security retirement benefits by a significant sum, no longer linked as they'd be to cost of living increases (Consumer Price Index - CPI). It's the fact that Social Security should be "on the table" at all that's most concerning, and placed there by a "Democratic" President too! FDR must be rolling. If this measure is voted in, it'll be opening the door for further and deeper incursions in future years.

In the News ~ Alex Jones, John Brennan.

From videos available online it appears that Piers Morgan allowed Alex Jones to make himself look even loopier than usual in a TV interview this week ranting about the need to retain the gun culture in the USA. See HERE for a clip or the full segment.

I don't follow Alex Jones, but occasionally come across stuff quoting him. I'm not sure exactly what to make of him, other than that his obvious ability to attract attention is well-honed! There's a kind of oblique sense to some of his beliefs - can't quite agree, can't quite disagree. I can agree with this comment by "ceti" at Common Dreams:

Alex finally got on mainstream news and he blew it by trying to fit years of conspiracy theorizing into one single rant.

But he emblemizes a lot of what's wrong with America's paranoid fringe. Because they reject anything to do with communism outright, they are left with very few tools to understand the world systematically, even if their instinct on what's wrong is genuinely pointed in the right direction.

So we have End the Fed, without understanding its role in finance capitalism, or the New World Order without US Imperialism. The focus on gun rights is also misdirected, given that not a single American assault rifle has ever toppled a domestic tyrant. Instead, American guns have brought a lot of death and destruction around the world.

In many ways, Alex and a few others on the internet serve as another system of control to disappear thoughtful people down the rabbit hole, when really, the actual conspiracies are pretty obvious and all encompassing. What allows him to flourish is the utter marginalizing of the real Left that actually does challenge the system as it is, not as it is imagined to be.

If anyone wonders about Alex Jones' astrology, he's a Sun Aquarius type, and one who I consider is letting the side down - or is it that he's really showing up the Water Bearer's true colours? (See also Sara Palin, Dick Cheney, Glenn Beck). This rogue Sun Aquarian type shows up, mainly, in the USA, doesn't it? There's a stronger dose of Aquarius's modern ruler eccentric Uranus involved in their natures.

For a detailed rundown of Alex Jones' natal chart see a piece by astrologer Francis D. Grabau at Starpath Visions.

The president nominated John Brennan to head the CIA in place of David Petraeus whose zipper problems led him astray, far enough to result in his resignation (we've been told). John Brennan looks a deal scarier than ol' Dave ever did! I've yet to see a photograph of him smiling, checked Google Image - there are a couple of forced smirky smiles, which seem the best he can manage. After preparing this post I went back to reading Les Miserables, and just by chance, on page 100 which marked the extent of my progress through the huge tome, read a description which exactly fits Mr. Brennan: "The sight of him suggested that he was continually absorbed in the contemplation of something terrible", though in the novel it refers, of course, to ex-convict Jean Valjean's appearance, early in the story.

For some background on John Brennan see Alex Kane's article 5 Terrifying Facts about John Brennan. Also Obama’s CIA Pick Stinks of Torture, Targeted Killings by Peter Z. Scheer at truthdig.com:

Rather than use his electoral victory to shove a dove down the throat of the national security establishment, President Obama seems to be sticking it to the left, by nominating the intelligence veteran to head the CIA. Brennan was prevented from becoming CIA director in Obama’s last term because the former chief of staff to Bush’s CIA director George Tenet had the stink of torture about him. Now, he is the man most credited with an assassination program that features, among other things, a secret presidential kill list.

I haven't found any astrologer's thoughts on his natal chart yet. Let's have a gander at a 12 noon version, as his birth time isn't known:

His chart is nowhere near as scary as his photograph. This chart could easily belong to a writer, painter, photographer or poet: Mercury conjunct Neptune, Sun conjunct Venus. Saturn in Scorpio sextile Mars in Virgo might be the least benign factor here, or perhaps Pluto conjunct Jupiter. If a deathly Pluto conjunct expansive Jupiter were on or close to his ascendant - that could fit.

Moon would be in Sagittarius whatever his time of birth. Sun in precise perfectionist Virgo, Moon in expansive free-rolling Sagittarius are two very different facets of his nature.

Perhaps any passing astrologically-literate reader might add their thoughts on Brennan's chart - Mike? Help!

Bravo, Lawrence O'Donnell! & A Quirky Christmas Card

I wasn't going to mention guns, the NRA, the horror of last weekend again until after Christmas, but I came upon a video of an MSNBC segment showing Lawrence O'Donnell condemning NRA president Wayne LaPierre for his press conference about the Newtown massacre in a special edition of his show. Please watch it, from that link, or below - and pass it on wherever you can. O'Donnell's style is exactly on point for such a commentary - quietly determined, clearly reasoned, deeply angered but avoiding passionate outburst. We need more like this!

"We have the best armed mass murders in the world, thanks to Wayne LaPierre.............Is there really something to quibble about in how powerful a bullet is when it is heading toward a six-year-old at the speed of 3200 feet per second? What kind of desperate, cornered rat would dare to mention that the Sandy Hook shooter could have used a more powerful bullet? Could have what? Done more damage? Made the bodies of six-year-olds even more difficult to identify?" - Lawrence O'Donnell

Not yer usual Christmas card - but always good for laugh, and we could use a few of those!

A seasonal cut-out animation made by Terry Gilliam in 1968 for British TV show Do Not Adjust Your Set. That was the show featuring other cast members who would later become Monty Python's Flying Circus.

A BIT OF A RANT

Another tragedy, this time involving the deaths of many very young children as well as adults. My heartfelt condolences to anyone directly or indirectly involved in the shootings in Connecticut, who might, accidentally, stumble upon this page.

Rant :
Too many beloved "celebrities", actors, musicians, writers or speakers with a popular public voice, loyal listeners and fans, who could do a great deal of awareness raising and encouraging the holding of feet to fires remain silent or continue to ass-kiss the President and his party. They effetely cling to their precious Democrat label and loyalties, will avoid speaking up about the more than obvious shortcomings of their party and their President. There are numerous issues outstanding crying out for the "feet to fire" treatment - not least this latest tragedy when yet again a deranged person found easy access to powerful weapons, resulting in the cold-blooded murder of 20 small children and 6 adults, including, allegedly, the victim's mother. Tragic as these murders are, no less tragic are the continuing murders of children and innocents by US drones abroad....let us never forget that point!

I find those "limousine Democrats" who fail to speak out, who fail to criticise and fail to do what the President has, more than once, told citizens to do i.e. "make him do it" (whatever the "it"), to be thoroughly reprehensible. The need for raised voices increases almost by the hour on: gun control, against indiscriminate drone use, the serious measures needed to address climate change, all of these are far more important than gay marriage laws and abortion laws, even more important than that darned fiscal cliff - they really are; these are issues of life and death.