After Assault Weapons...What Then?

To borrow lyrics from the venerable Christmas song, it's beginning to look a lot like hysteria, everywhere you go.

From the attention-grabbing Madea Benjamin of "Code Pink" screaming about "NRA bullies" as she was dragged from the NRA's news conference this week, to New York Governor Mario Cuomo acknowledging that "confiscation" (his word) of legally purchased firearms is part of his state's stricter approach to gun violence, to CNN's Piers Morgan and the media terrorizers harping every other minute of every newscast about assault weapons, our commercialized Christmas has been regularly interrupted by rantings about how to solve the violence crisis.

Sure, we can, and probably will, ban assault weapons. It's the chest-thumping, cheap, reaction typical after enough children have been killed. It's also a little like putting thousands of dollars worth of window dressing on a slum building and calling it rehabilitation.

The meaty approaches aren't easy or cheap. Politicians will give them lip service but balk at the cost.

One simple and immediate change? Instead of handing Coach/Prinicpal/Custodian/Teacher Jones a .45 to strap to his hip, bring back school counselors, at all levels and give them authority within the school hierarchy. Let teachers assign math problems. Leave the job of diagnosing emotional problems to professionals trained to tell if little Billy is a quiet child or just quietly planning to hose down his third grade class with Daddy's favorite war-relic flamethrower.

But sweeping changes are required in the way we approach mental health treatment on all levels.

Parents shouldn't have to file criminal charges to get help for their kids with violent tendencies. Instead of boxes and blankets in alleys and homeless shelters, those suffering from severe emotional illness should be hospitalized in psychiatric facilities just as up-to-date as their medical counterparts. And the federal government must twist the arms of state bureaucrats in demanding they stay up to date adding the names of those adjudicated with mental problems to the gun background check system or NICS.

Don't get me started about violent video games. They're the way many troubled kids acquire the eye-hand co-ordination and killing lust that sends them in search of human targets. Just read Lt. Col (Ret) David Grossman's comments from an interview in Executive Intelligence Review:

     "If you truly dwell on the magnitude of what you are doing when you kill another human being; if you truly dwell on the reality of another living, vital person, who is loved, and thinks and feels; that's a very difficult thing to do. You've got to separate yourself from the humanity of the person you are killing—turn them into just a target. And the best mechanism we ever found for doing that, was this killing simulator, in which, instead of using bullseye targets, as we did in World War II, we transitioned to a man-made silhouette, and we made killing a conditioned reflex. The same phenomena that the military and law enforcement uses to enable killing—which is done with the safeguard of discipline—is being done indiscriminately to our children with violent video games."

Will the President, Congress and the hyenas of the media take the really tough approach and along with guns, deal with mental health issues and video games?

Sure.

Right after we fall off the fiscal cliff.

For Once, I'm Not Taking Sides

Perhaps you've noticed how I get pretty mouthy on subjects I'm passionate about.

Regarding the Trayvon Martin case, I'm not taking sides.

I don't have the facts. None of us does.

What we have is the media's reporting of what appears, essentially, to be a "he said/the 9-1-1 tapes said/the-girlfriend-who-wasn't-there said situation.

It seems the police have earwitnesses, at least one of whom has been all over television turning what she heard into conjecture. Removing that, her facts, if I interpret them correctly, are: she heard screaming and then a gunshot.

Some media outlets have reported Trayvon was an innocent. Some others have reported he was the subject of a police search at his high school and found in possession of a possible "burglary tool" along with some jewelry that couldn't be accounted for.

I have several different kinds of that particular "burglary tool"(a screwdriver) in my basement.

Some folks offer that Zimmerman overstepped the bounds of his Neighborhood Watch duties. His brother says he wasn't even "on duty" that night, but rather headed to a store. Some point out that he acted contrary to what a police dispatcher told him to do. His lawyer calls the dispatcher's words, "a request, not an order."

It goes on and on, back and forth.

Let me say this.

In my early twenties, there were times when I foolishly acted outside the scope of my authority, both as a civilian witness and as a law-enforcement officer. I'm fortunate that my mouth, and my good intentions, did not result in physical harm to anyone, least of all me.

Sometimes reasoned thinking is impossible during an adrenaline rush.

I've also been in situations where I drew a gun too quickly and then had to defend myself against individuals trying to take it away from me. Shooting them was not an option. That happens to cops, time to time. I imagine it happens occasionally to civilians who carry guns for self-defense, too.

I have no idea what Zimmerman did or didn't do. I have no idea what young Trayvon Martin did, or didn't do.

All I know is that people are expressing opinions on an incredibly volatile subject based on what the lawyers call, "facts not in evidence."

That, my friends, could get someone hurt.

Blago's Last Hurrah (If We're Lucky)

The Blago coverage this week neatly sums up the idiocy of the media, local and national. As if we needed another reminder after this political season. Not one Chicago station had the guts to give it a two minute hit and move on. It was newsgasm to the end.

Our former governor is a sociopath at best, a psychopath at worst. A flaccid charmer without the ability to feel anything except for himself. Blogger Rob Feder's use of the word "pathological" just scrapes the surface. We seldom give the correct definition to Evil but Blago surely comes close. He may care for his kids, but in the way some people do about their relatives' pets.

Goudie's question to Blago's wife ("Do you plan to stay with him?")outraged many but probably reveals insider knowledge and illustrates a given about Blago's future. Patty will stick with him about as long as a cowboy with a hobbled horse.

It's tough on the kids, yes. For awhile. Best they're away from him.

What makes me the most ill about the whole disgusting affair, however, are the people who still worship and support this bastard.

More than anything else, Blago's backers illustrate why Illinois government is in such a shambles: we are a state and nation of mindless sheep who believe only what we hear in the latest and best served soundbite.

What's terrifying is that there are others . . . many, many, others . . . holding, or aspiring to, public office whose rapacious lust for power overwhelms that of our former Governor.

They don't have goofy hairjobs. They don't dance for the cameras. And you won't see them coming until they have you by the throat.

The Christian Right's Rush to Judgement

I sure don't like Rush Limbaugh.

I used to listen because I met him a couple of times when I worked in Kansas City radio and he seemed like an interesting and funny guy. That was before he created the persona we all see and hear today. Worlds of difference.

A couple of my former colleagues who knew him well back then tell me he tried out many different "acts," trying to find one that would win him celebrity status. I've always believed this is the one that stuck. It works for him. It may well have radically changed his personality. So be it.

Some say he's "just an entertainer." Makes no difference. People rely on him to tell them how to vote and then they follow through.

It really disturbs me how his agenda, which is mostly interchangeable with that of the so-called Christian Right, regularly rips on women, minorities, and those whose beliefs don't fit their mold.

It's fine for a church to tell its members how to behave in matters of theology. It's wrong to believe government should have the power to do so as well.

Those who believe birth control is wrong should not practice it(they are frequently called "parents" by the way). Those who believe sexual activity, other than for procreation, is wrong should not fornicate. Those who believe abortion and homosexuality are sins are absolutely entitled to those views.

As philosophies, as religious tenets, that's fine.

Just don't enact laws that force me to embrace those views.

Political Boobs Cut off Breast Exams for Planned Parenthood Women

Susan G. Komen for the Cure has shown this week it's more concerned about bowing to pressure from Republican money-sources than preventing disease.

Helmed now by a staunch abortion foe, Komen this week announced it is cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood, a pro-choice group that performs abortions in some of its clinics: just one of the many health services it offers to women wjo might not otherwise be able to afford them.

Komen claims it's because Congress has launched an investigation of how Planned Parenthood spends its money. Planned Parenthood and other organizations call the probe a "sham."

Also this week, an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker was kicked out of an environmental committee hearing in Washington and arrested. The Republican chair of the committee cited a seldom-used credentialing rule to instigate the arrest by Capitol police.

And, finally, the American Family Association has launched a campaign against J.C. Penney. The department store chain just hired Ellen Degeneres as a spokesperson. The American Family Association says she is not representative of the women who shop there.

I'm not a declared Republican or Democrat but power plays offend me, especially when a political party uses its clout in a way that could seriously endanger lives. Or manipulates the law to silence those who disagree with its principles and proposed laws. Or tries to silence a popular TV host because of her sexual orientation.

We can expect much more of this if we elect one of them as our President.

Animals

Bullying. Not a fond memory from childhood but brought back viscerally by the internet video of a Chicago teenager being beaten that was captured on video this week and posted to YouTube.

The victim was treated for minor injuries and released from the hospital. His attackers have been arrested. One of them, who evidently aspires to a Hollywood career, allowed the camera to capture his face and is 17. He has been charged as an adult. I suspect that may have come as a surprise to his young self. I hope he got an inside view of Cook County jail, if only for a fleeting moment.

Prediction: The parents of these animals will hire good lawyers, the criminal justice system will slap their hands, and they will be allowed to continue in school with merely a reprimand of some kind on their records. That reprimand will not follow them into college, if any of these brainiacs actually make it there.

My suggestion of punishment: mandatory military service for all of them as soon as they are of age, with a posting to the most dangerous war zone available at that time. Fortunately, we'll likely have a few to choose from in the next few years.

End of story.