Speaking Truth to Power
I cannot fathom this story about Elizabeth Warren who seeks to break up Apple, Facebook, Google, and Amazon. They have "too much power." Which sounds to me a lot like, "And I want it." The plan here seems to be boldly, "I'm opposed to any corporation with big money and signficant influence and I want to make sure we in the government get both." Is no one else hearing, "We're staunchly opposed to the Free Market"? Look, maybe they are. Certainly the Socialist Democrats are; maybe it's just a Democrat thing ... with a lot of backing from today's younger generation. Maybe. Just say so. That's fine. Don't hide behind "patriotism" while you aim to dismantle the underpinnings of the nation.
Identity Crisis
I'm sure she didn't mean this, but I'm not clear on what she meant. Alyssa Milano tweeted she was transgender, a "person of color," an immigrant, lesbian and gay man, and disabled. She says she just wanted to provide empathy. She said she was identifying with and not as. Ummm, okay ... but ... "I am" is an identity term, not an "identify with" term. And clearly, no matter what you think, you don't get to be who you think you are unless you are in those very specific categories now deemed "real". Like some in Islam, they say they want peace while they continue their aggression and wonder why peace isn't accepted.
99.99% Voter Turnout
North Korea had an election this week. A 99.99% turnout, they said. Wow! Didn't know it was a democracy, did you? Of course, you'd have to put "vote" in quotes since a North Korean election has no choice of candidates and voter turnout is mandatory and anything less than complete devotion to the Kim family is outlawed. You show up to "vote" and your ballot is a piece of paper with one name on it for each office. You place that paper in the ballot box and go home. Oh, and, surprise, surprise, guess who won? Hopefully not a system coming soon to a country near you.
Taking Its Cue from the Religion of Peace
Islam is known as "the religion of peace" while many adherents seek to kill as many infidels as they can. Following their example, it seems, Russia is complaining about the demise of the treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership with the Ukraine. Apparently after Russia backed a civil war within Ukraine and annexed the Crimean peninsula and seized three Ukrainian naval ships (they still hold the crews), Ukraine isn't interested in renewing the treaty. Imagine that! Ol' meanies. Or maybe Russia was just so impressed when the Nazis did the same thing to them that they thought the Ukraine would like to give it a go, too. "We'll completely violate the treaty and then whine about how you aren't interested in peace." Makes sense in today's world.
Ecclesiastes Illustrated
Solomon wrote, "Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil" (Ecc 8:11). In 1972 a group of soldiers shot protestors in an event that came to be known as Bloody Sunday. This week one of them will face charges for that shooting ... 47 years later. Sixteen other soldiers involved are not being prosecuted. Justice deferred is justice denied.
Bad Will Hunting
Connecticut's top court has ruled that the maker of the AR-15 used in the Sandy Hook shooting can be liable for the actions of the nutjob that killed his mother and stole it from her to do the deed. It seems to me there are all sorts of problems with that. "If you market your car as 'the car that makes the man' and someone kills you and steals it and kills people with it, you can be held liable." Really?
But it's worse than that. According to the FBI, between 2010 and 2014 there were roughly 63,000 murders in America. Of those over two-thirds (68%) were done with firearms. And, as we all know, the leading firearm for these murders is the AR-15 or its cousins. Except that's not true. According to the FBI, the leading firearm is the handgun (70%) with rifles at 3.5% and shotguns at 3.7%. Now, to be fair, "other guns" and "type not stated" collectively make up nearly 23%, but clearly the winner (rather, loser) in this discussion is not the rifle or assault rifle, but the handgun. Of the total number of murders, knives make up nearly 13%, much more than the 2.4% that are rifles. 30% of all murders are done with knives, blunt objects, personal weapons (hands, feet, etc.), poison, explosives, fire, narcotics, drowning, strangulation, and other weapons. So why are we focusing on the 2.4%? Clearly murder is a bad thing and clearly we want to try to curtail it, so why are we pointing to such a small number? I get that we're trying to hunt down the killers and put an end to it, but it seems like we're looking in the worst possible places. (Note that New Zealand has drastically stricter gun laws than the U.S. and they have the same problems, so maybe gun laws are not the "fix all" that many seem to think they are.)
DOS
A New York court ruled that a former contestant on The Apprentice can proceed with her law suit against the president. She accuses him of sexual harassment in 2007 followed by defamation in 2016. The court ruled that a sitting president can be sued. The president, they said, is not above the law.
First, given the animosity of the entire state of New York against this president, I don't know who would have expected a different ruling. Second, I don't understand how "You can sue him when he's out of office" equates with "above the law." Finally, I can foresee a withering firestorm of lawsuits levied against this president that would so cripple him (in computers we call it "DOS" -- Denial of Service -- where the attack is so intense that nothing else can be done regardless of the effectiveness of the attacks) that he could leave office without doing another presidential thing. Any president-hater can use this new option to cause havoc without any real merit. Let's see if we can cripple America by suing its leadership.
Speaking of Universal Healthcare
Okay, the Green New Deal has been nagging at the back of our news cycles for a few weeks now. It includes government-managed healthcare. So it seems appropriate to run this story on a guy who took advantage of a 3-hour wait at the DMV to write an argument for government-managed healthcare.
Must be true; I read it on the Internet.
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