It's hard to figure out whether to laugh or cry about the "scandal" news these days. A little of both is probably in order. For sure, everybody but the politicians and the media are sick beyond belief of the constant sniping and fault finding.
I've been reading my way through several historical records about presidents and their families. From After Camelot by J. Randy Taraborrelli, as well as The Passage of Power by Robert A. Caro, one gets the sense that both the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations faced constant stone-walling by Congress. President Johnson, who cut his teeth in Congress, warned President Kennedy that he needed to carefully select the order in which he presented bills for consideration. President Johnson said President Kennedy's most crucial and important work could be held up indefinitely if he introduced the most controversial work first. With the typical disdain with which elitists hold ordinary people, they ignored his warning. At the time of his death, much of President Kennedy's work was, indeed, bogged down as predicted.
President Johnson turned out not to be so ordinary, either. His wheeling and dealing days before the Vice Presidency gave him a savvy, as well as power enough, to wheedle and ram through much of President Kennedy's and his own agendas. Like many Americans, I've stood in awe of the Kennedy legend since it's beginning. I also sold President Johnson's skills way too short.
In The White House Diary of President Jimmy Carter, notes on his work indicate his own struggle with the legislative branch. In one note, he says that colleagues told him that Congress respected him, just not the office of President. (Too bad, Congress. Do we have to send you back to school to study the reasons for our balance of power)?
I know I've had my favorite president's. I've also had my dislikes. But favorite or nemesis, a President's role is an important one. The Constitution was designed so there would be this balance of power mentioned above. We, the people, sometimes forget this. It is inexcusable for any branch of the government to devalue or ignore the importance of the other. With the power balance, no one individual or interest group can take control away from the people. We have a President, a Congress and the Courts to keep everyone in line.
But, Congress is not the only culprit in our interchanges. As to the phone and internet data collection, all three branches were supposedly involved in the "threat" to our personal freedom. As to the IRS scandal, appropriate heads should roll. As for administration staffers deciding what to and not to tell the President, other heads should also roll.
As to the airhead geeks who keep downloading classified documents, you are traitors to your country, not heroes. However much conservatives and liberals alike think we should know every time the President has to blow his nose or Congress makes a decision to improve our protection, we just don't need to know. The fact that you could do such a juvenile thing is indicative of your inability to make rational and intelligent decisions. Our Civil Liberties and our freedom are threatened by what you know? So, our very lives can be threatened by what you did, to say nothing of the damage your actions do to diplomatic matters and our country.
You enemies of this President or you Congressmen looking for fodder to win elections, know this. You are all standing in the way of important decision making and actions that could get America back on track and our people back to work at the helm in this world. Calm down. Stop to think. Please find out what you can do to help instead of impede. And for goodness sake, geeks and politicos alike, stop showing your ASSES to the whole world. You are giving us a bad name and making us more vulnerable to our enemies.
And to all my government branches and your agencies, please feel free to collect information on my blog page views (louhough.blogspot.com), e-mail addresses and phone information. In fact, statistics about my political blog show the following page views from other countries. Please track these reads to find out if any of them happen to be from terrorists. I would be delighted for you to use them to save innocent lives. Besides at least 671 views from the United States, there have been 41 from Russia, 27 from Germany, 11 from Sweden, three each from the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, Two from both France and South Korea with one each from Columbia, Hungary and Israel.
You might also want to figure out who keeps hacking my Facebook page. Hard for me to tell if it is friend or foe.
Bottom line, if collecting information on my personal information can save even one life, please feel free to use it. I may be an irritant to many political figures, but I am committing no crimes. I'm proud to be an American whose information can serve my fellow man, even if it is merely letting you collect my private data. I don't think my trust is misplaced.
Friday, July 5, 2013
Damned Whatever You Do
Over and over, This Week returns to the usual topics with some of the usual suspects pontificating as if they (and I) actually know what's going on at the White House. The airwaves and the Internet have inundated us for a couple of years now with outcomes of the Arab Spring, especially the ongoing Syrian Civil war. In fact, for a couple of months, my conservative Republican cousin had been sharing posts bad-mouthing the Administration for providing arms to Al-Qaeda rebels involved in that war. I laughed a weekend or so ago when said posts began reading "might be going to provide" instead of had already done so. But then, it became a done deal. The Administration is now sending a small supply of small arms to the "right" rebels in the country.
In a rare move for him, my most oft quoted conservative columnist, George Will, affirmed that he had said all along that Obama was right not to have gotten involved in that war. Don't faint from shock at this particular conservative offering support to any liberal, especially a Democrat. Predictably, the decision to provide arms, he now says is WRONG -- just that loudly -- despite the fact a previous Republican presidential candidate says we should be involved (McCain).
The general consensus of the Roundtable the weekend we jumped into the fray was that this step was too little, too late. Maybe, but let's not be too hard on him for this part of the decision. He had to make at least a token move now. His real mistake was in stating some time ago that if Assad used chemical or biological warfare on his own people, we would have to intervene.
In an earlier blog article ("The Folly of Lines Drawn in the Sand"), I certainly warned everyone that if you threaten, you must follow through when they call your bluff. Anyone want to introduce this Administration to my blog? Oh yes, who am I, an obscure author, to hold an opinion that might be of interest to political powers?
But even if they won't read me or resort to consulting experts, won't they at least look at the most recent president's example? You tell a country's leader you will go to war if he doesn't show his weapons and you have to go to war if he doesn't -- even if he has no weapons to show and you wind up with egg on your face.
So, don't be too upset with our President over this. He said he would act and he is. He is sending a token supply of token-size weapons meant to reach "real" people conducting a civil rebellion. But should the weapons fall into Al-Qaeda or other enemy hands, they won't have received the big guns they might prefer.
As we have all observed for the President's entire stay in office, it hasn't mattered what he has done. His enemies have almost slammed shoes on tables to get him to move in a certain direction only to stone verbally once he did their bidding. There's no question they will damn whatever he does.
May God see that all these people lose their hold on power as soon as possible. The country needs reasonable people with cooperative, intelligent positions.
In a rare move for him, my most oft quoted conservative columnist, George Will, affirmed that he had said all along that Obama was right not to have gotten involved in that war. Don't faint from shock at this particular conservative offering support to any liberal, especially a Democrat. Predictably, the decision to provide arms, he now says is WRONG -- just that loudly -- despite the fact a previous Republican presidential candidate says we should be involved (McCain).
The general consensus of the Roundtable the weekend we jumped into the fray was that this step was too little, too late. Maybe, but let's not be too hard on him for this part of the decision. He had to make at least a token move now. His real mistake was in stating some time ago that if Assad used chemical or biological warfare on his own people, we would have to intervene.
In an earlier blog article ("The Folly of Lines Drawn in the Sand"), I certainly warned everyone that if you threaten, you must follow through when they call your bluff. Anyone want to introduce this Administration to my blog? Oh yes, who am I, an obscure author, to hold an opinion that might be of interest to political powers?
But even if they won't read me or resort to consulting experts, won't they at least look at the most recent president's example? You tell a country's leader you will go to war if he doesn't show his weapons and you have to go to war if he doesn't -- even if he has no weapons to show and you wind up with egg on your face.
So, don't be too upset with our President over this. He said he would act and he is. He is sending a token supply of token-size weapons meant to reach "real" people conducting a civil rebellion. But should the weapons fall into Al-Qaeda or other enemy hands, they won't have received the big guns they might prefer.
As we have all observed for the President's entire stay in office, it hasn't mattered what he has done. His enemies have almost slammed shoes on tables to get him to move in a certain direction only to stone verbally once he did their bidding. There's no question they will damn whatever he does.
May God see that all these people lose their hold on power as soon as possible. The country needs reasonable people with cooperative, intelligent positions.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Why They Keep Coming
Immigration reform is one of those issues the media is beating to death right now. We are hearing the pros, the cons, the dreams, the realities and the logistics for solving the "problems". We get educated on how important the immigrants -- our own ancestors -- have been to the country, how much we need more as migrant workers, as well as how expensive it would be to pack them all up and send them home. We are inundated with news about how expensive they are to our educational system and medical care. We must not forget how much is said about building better fences and defenses to keep them out. We are told we should not worry because our poor economy has stopped the influx, but video cams from border states show veritable parades crossing into American farm and ranch lands. We are asked for empathy for their children who have known no other home. In other words, sifting through all the verbiage to find the facts, could become a full-time job.
Let's fence them out, but keep them in once the fences haven't worked. Let's turn our heads from the "problem" for years and then offer them amnesty periodically, or, okay, yes, offer them amnesty that isn't really amnesty.
So, why do so many unwanted, fenced out people keep slinking into our territory? Because our illogical, unthinking policies reinforce them for doing so, and also because the message that even natural-born Americans are currently unable to achieve the American dream has not reached them. They haven't heard or read the opinions of investment experts who have quit telling us how to invest in real estate. They now try to assure us it is smarter just to rent. And, also, because reinforcement theory is always in effect whether or not we choose to control it.
So what does this mean? A reinforcer is defined loosely as any stimulus or event that follows a behavior that increases the probability the behavior will occur again. In other words, if you want something to keep happening, keep reinforcing it. You want illegals to keep coming, keep giving them and/or their foreign born children amnesty and citizenship.
Better still, use an intermittent reinforcement schedule -- the strongest, most effective schedule. This means keep them guessing all the time as to whether they will or won't get forgiven for breaking our laws and coming here outside our legal immigration system. Don't just tell them they might get to become citizens every five years if they are here anyway, but let them believe coverantly it might happen in ten, or maybe in two, or it might never happen again. Operant conditioning research -- research that has discovered what causes animals and people to behave as they do -- has proven that intermittent reinforcers keep us doing desirable and/or undesirable things longer and stronger than a regular schedule does.
Furthermore, reinforcers, punishers and reinforcement schedules are always in effect -- always at work -- even when people don't know they exist. We can either ignore them and let them control us without our knowledge or we can take charge of them and get our environment under our control.
A lot of the verbiage today is about needing more aliens to plant and harvest our fields or to bring technological skills to our shores. After all, some say, our own people don't want to work in the fields, so we need the illegals to work the farms. Really? So how come we see article after article saying that farmers have nobody to bring in the crops? Where are those illegals working? The fields? Or, are they doing roofing and foundation repair cheaper than Americans can afford to do them, thus causing more native sons to be on unemployment? Are they working in our factories and retail stores? Are they running their own businesses and sending home for more illegals to come work for them? Or, are they providing new jobs for America's existing work force?
What we need is not our typical Band-Aid approach where we make a temporary fix of letting the current lawbreakers stay, but securing our doors so we don't get more lawbreakers. We need a long-term measure that says this is the last, the final time that illegal aliens or their foreign-born children will ever be granted amnesty or amnesty by any other name. From a specific arbitrary date on, every illegal not on our soils by the stated date, will be summarily returned to their homelands with no exceptions allowed. And, yes, that will probably require profiling. We need to prosecute any business owners that hire them. We need to make temporary agencies that cater to them illegal, and we should prosecute them as well.
Or, we could just open our doors to one and all and forget the whole sorry subject. It's a cinch the current approach is causing the problem, not solving it -- that is if it is a problem at all. Just get a policy and make it work.
I wonder if open borders might actually be effective? If people can come anytime they want, perhaps coming might not have so much appeal. We are a rather defiant species. My daughter, at age one, would have climbed Mt. Everest if she had thought I had put it there to keep her out of something.
Let's fence them out, but keep them in once the fences haven't worked. Let's turn our heads from the "problem" for years and then offer them amnesty periodically, or, okay, yes, offer them amnesty that isn't really amnesty.
So, why do so many unwanted, fenced out people keep slinking into our territory? Because our illogical, unthinking policies reinforce them for doing so, and also because the message that even natural-born Americans are currently unable to achieve the American dream has not reached them. They haven't heard or read the opinions of investment experts who have quit telling us how to invest in real estate. They now try to assure us it is smarter just to rent. And, also, because reinforcement theory is always in effect whether or not we choose to control it.
So what does this mean? A reinforcer is defined loosely as any stimulus or event that follows a behavior that increases the probability the behavior will occur again. In other words, if you want something to keep happening, keep reinforcing it. You want illegals to keep coming, keep giving them and/or their foreign born children amnesty and citizenship.
Better still, use an intermittent reinforcement schedule -- the strongest, most effective schedule. This means keep them guessing all the time as to whether they will or won't get forgiven for breaking our laws and coming here outside our legal immigration system. Don't just tell them they might get to become citizens every five years if they are here anyway, but let them believe coverantly it might happen in ten, or maybe in two, or it might never happen again. Operant conditioning research -- research that has discovered what causes animals and people to behave as they do -- has proven that intermittent reinforcers keep us doing desirable and/or undesirable things longer and stronger than a regular schedule does.
Furthermore, reinforcers, punishers and reinforcement schedules are always in effect -- always at work -- even when people don't know they exist. We can either ignore them and let them control us without our knowledge or we can take charge of them and get our environment under our control.
A lot of the verbiage today is about needing more aliens to plant and harvest our fields or to bring technological skills to our shores. After all, some say, our own people don't want to work in the fields, so we need the illegals to work the farms. Really? So how come we see article after article saying that farmers have nobody to bring in the crops? Where are those illegals working? The fields? Or, are they doing roofing and foundation repair cheaper than Americans can afford to do them, thus causing more native sons to be on unemployment? Are they working in our factories and retail stores? Are they running their own businesses and sending home for more illegals to come work for them? Or, are they providing new jobs for America's existing work force?
What we need is not our typical Band-Aid approach where we make a temporary fix of letting the current lawbreakers stay, but securing our doors so we don't get more lawbreakers. We need a long-term measure that says this is the last, the final time that illegal aliens or their foreign-born children will ever be granted amnesty or amnesty by any other name. From a specific arbitrary date on, every illegal not on our soils by the stated date, will be summarily returned to their homelands with no exceptions allowed. And, yes, that will probably require profiling. We need to prosecute any business owners that hire them. We need to make temporary agencies that cater to them illegal, and we should prosecute them as well.
Or, we could just open our doors to one and all and forget the whole sorry subject. It's a cinch the current approach is causing the problem, not solving it -- that is if it is a problem at all. Just get a policy and make it work.
I wonder if open borders might actually be effective? If people can come anytime they want, perhaps coming might not have so much appeal. We are a rather defiant species. My daughter, at age one, would have climbed Mt. Everest if she had thought I had put it there to keep her out of something.
Questions for the Tea Partiers
According to the June 3, 2013 Time, the 1952 corporate tax portion was 32 per cent. In 2012, it was 8.9 per cent. So, where's the beef? Is it your intention to reduce the taxes on the corporations and wealthy until they are nonexistent?
When you voted for your Tea Party/conservative politicians, did you mean for the following to happen?
...Head Start Programs to be cut
...Entire schools to be closed
...Teachers to be laid off, contributing to unemployment, Medicaid and food stamp rolls
...Less social workers and psychologists in the schools diagnosing mental illnesses
...Less supplies for our school children
...College students, including your children and grandchildren, to have less access to loans and grants
...Federal programs to be dismantled, sending even more people to unemployment, Medicaid and food stamp rolls
...Other government employees to be laid off putting even more people on
unemployment
Medicaid
and food stamp rolls
...Children and old people to go hungry
...Medicaid to be cut just when middle class Americans need it
...HUD Housing programs to be reduced
...Mental Health programs for the public to be reduced
...Drug and alcohol programs to be cut
...Roads to be swallowed by holes
...Bridges to fall into water
...For us, one satellite at a time, to lose our ability to predict storms
Did you think about how tax dollars are used or just that you don't like them?
Did you think ...?
When you voted for your Tea Party/conservative politicians, did you mean for the following to happen?
...Head Start Programs to be cut
...Entire schools to be closed
...Teachers to be laid off, contributing to unemployment, Medicaid and food stamp rolls
...Less social workers and psychologists in the schools diagnosing mental illnesses
...Less supplies for our school children
...College students, including your children and grandchildren, to have less access to loans and grants
...Federal programs to be dismantled, sending even more people to unemployment, Medicaid and food stamp rolls
...Other government employees to be laid off putting even more people on
unemployment
Medicaid
and food stamp rolls
...Children and old people to go hungry
...Medicaid to be cut just when middle class Americans need it
...HUD Housing programs to be reduced
...Mental Health programs for the public to be reduced
...Drug and alcohol programs to be cut
...Roads to be swallowed by holes
...Bridges to fall into water
...For us, one satellite at a time, to lose our ability to predict storms
Did you think about how tax dollars are used or just that you don't like them?
Did you think ...?
Sunday, May 12, 2013
OMG, Get Over It
A lot of Americans --- those with two left feet -- have never understood the male need to fine tune everything into a team sports model. As the saying goes, it is what it is. We must be team players with grand slam ideas for which we choose a leader to coach us all to victory. But, then the very times when we need a sports model, the teams are sadly lacking. They forget to be good sports when they lose.
Oh my goodness, get over your losses with at least a modicum of good grace. Mitt Romney, this message is for you. C'mon now, you don't really believe "they" voted President Obama into office because he promised them everything free? Whom do you identify as "they"? Are you talking about poor black people? Seems like a lot of poor whites, middle class black and whites and even a few rich people must have voted for him, too. From this author's perspective, you didn't win because you wouldn't tell the truth. You presented yourself as highly conservative to get the nomination, but then tried to pull a turn around to win the election. Contrary to elitist opinion, the American people are not stupid. It didn't help your case that you wrote off 47 per cent of us either. Even the poor get to vote (even the black, the Hispanic, the women.) We are no longer a chauvinistic nation.
This means you, Senator McCain. What exactly do you think you are doing? Thank God you did not win the election! If you had, we would have been in war with every Tom, Dick, and Harry around. Have you listened to yourself? You're so busy trying to make the American people think you would have been a better President, that you're becoming a chronic dissident. If we liked your stand on issues we would have elected you when you ran.
This means you, disappointed Republicans in Congress -- well, everywhere. You lost the election; two of them. In America, the majority vote rules. You were the minority this time. You lost.
And if all this chest beating, rationalization and contrary behavior is to discredit Mrs. Clinton (check out This Week on May 12, 2013) could you give us all a few months break from election era politics? At least wait until she decides to run. She may decide she's too old and wants to bake cookies LOL.
OMG, get over it.
Oh my goodness, get over your losses with at least a modicum of good grace. Mitt Romney, this message is for you. C'mon now, you don't really believe "they" voted President Obama into office because he promised them everything free? Whom do you identify as "they"? Are you talking about poor black people? Seems like a lot of poor whites, middle class black and whites and even a few rich people must have voted for him, too. From this author's perspective, you didn't win because you wouldn't tell the truth. You presented yourself as highly conservative to get the nomination, but then tried to pull a turn around to win the election. Contrary to elitist opinion, the American people are not stupid. It didn't help your case that you wrote off 47 per cent of us either. Even the poor get to vote (even the black, the Hispanic, the women.) We are no longer a chauvinistic nation.
This means you, Senator McCain. What exactly do you think you are doing? Thank God you did not win the election! If you had, we would have been in war with every Tom, Dick, and Harry around. Have you listened to yourself? You're so busy trying to make the American people think you would have been a better President, that you're becoming a chronic dissident. If we liked your stand on issues we would have elected you when you ran.
This means you, disappointed Republicans in Congress -- well, everywhere. You lost the election; two of them. In America, the majority vote rules. You were the minority this time. You lost.
And if all this chest beating, rationalization and contrary behavior is to discredit Mrs. Clinton (check out This Week on May 12, 2013) could you give us all a few months break from election era politics? At least wait until she decides to run. She may decide she's too old and wants to bake cookies LOL.
OMG, get over it.
Monday, April 29, 2013
Explanation of Absence
It was my original intention to publish a couple of further politically based articles in January and February and then say farewell to this blog. I was going to begin a blog of religious devotions as well as a blog of general opinion pieces.
I began following the procedures I had used to open the political blog on blogspot. I keyed in lousissues@blogspot.com and was told immediately that it was unavailable. It has been a hard day and I signed off the spot in frustration. A few days later, I tried again only to find that another service had taken possession of my potential blog and named it lousissues at their service. In the meantime I had checked and found that there was already a louissues online and wanted to change the name of my blog. I could not get the offending service to permit me to change anything and they held my entire blog capacity under their house arrest for several months. Suddenly, one day they set me free.
I'm trying again. I have posted a new article to my original blog spot. It is entitled Overcorrections. I hope you will read it. It directly follows this explanation.
I began following the procedures I had used to open the political blog on blogspot. I keyed in lousissues@blogspot.com and was told immediately that it was unavailable. It has been a hard day and I signed off the spot in frustration. A few days later, I tried again only to find that another service had taken possession of my potential blog and named it lousissues at their service. In the meantime I had checked and found that there was already a louissues online and wanted to change the name of my blog. I could not get the offending service to permit me to change anything and they held my entire blog capacity under their house arrest for several months. Suddenly, one day they set me free.
I'm trying again. I have posted a new article to my original blog spot. It is entitled Overcorrections. I hope you will read it. It directly follows this explanation.
Overcorrection
I've written several drafts of this article, but am finally settling on this version because it evolved from my personal experience as much as from news events.
In the early eighties, I purchased and rehabed a nine room house in the northeast section of Kansas City, MO. It was in a section north of St. John Avenue and was supposed to be safer than areas south of that line. Although we came home two or three times to find our door open and a trail of match sticks littering the floor, the thefts had been inconsequential and we made the best of things. For the most part, I felt safe there.
There was a three-room mother-in-law's suite in the house. I turned this area into my private get away. I used the kitchen as my office where I did my writing. I quilted and did other crafts while watching television in the living room. Of necessity, I placed two bookcases, loaded with books, in front of the kitchen door. The living room door had a safety lock. Nights when my teenage boys were at their father's, I pulled the headboard of the bed in front of the bedroom door, thus blocking entry. As you can tell already, I am your basic coward. Thank God for that.
One night I heard someone slam against an entry over and over again. I told myself I was being paranoid until I heard someone running up the stairs and trying to enter my bedroom. There were at least two of them, because one said to the other, "this is where she is." I rushed to the phone, but could get no dial tone, because they had taken the receiver off the phone downstairs. I screamed out the window calling my neighbors over and over until one of them hesitantly stepped out on the porch. He called the police for me and then began checking the perimeter. The intruders had entered by removing a wooden cover of a basement window. The body slams had been them breaking through the locked trap door to the basement. They exited through the front door, leaving it wide open. By the time the police arrived, they were long gone. I gave my statement, but they left little hope of finding who had done it. I still don't know.
A couple of weeks later a third officer stopped by to discuss a potential suspect. While there, he encouraged me to buy a gun for protection. He said his wife would still be shaking if this had happened to her. I told him I couldn't use a gun, because I would be afraid I would mistakenly shoot one of my sons if they let themselves in during the night.
I'd like to be able to tell you this was my only close call, but I can't. I've been stalked. Two individuals have tried to strangle me and another held a gun in my face, demanding my purse. Such is the way of city life, at least city life on a budget. I'm in smaller, less appealing digs now, and the old neighborhood has been taken over by Hispanic gangs. My home here also has a revolving door with people -- including staff members -- helping themselves to my food, trinkets and especially my books. So far they haven't walked off with the mother-lode, but they have taken a place setting of silverplate, a wedding gift long ago as well as other sentimental items. If ever a citizen needed to be licensed to carry concealed-- now possible in both Missouri and Kansas -- I know I am the one. What I saw as overcorrection in the beginning, I now know to be basic common sense.
Despite this knowledge, when news about the Sandy Hook tragedy began to hit the airwaves, I was so sure a single mother did not need automatic weapons, that I assumed the son had used her credit card and name to purchase them through the mail. By the time the truth was known, I experienced the same knee-jerk reaction as the parents and many other Americans did -- "let's get gun ownership under control." But I was wrong and so are they. Here are reasons why.
Most "bad guys" don't buy their guns legally. They prefer street and under the table purchases of untraceable weapons. This slows the possibility of being caught. Since they do not purchase legal weapons, criminal background checks are unworkable.
Most serial killers are not deranged in a manner that causes them to use their mother's guns. Supposedly, the mentally ill who are considered a danger to themselves or others are the only behavior disordered people in mental institutions. If they are locked up, they cannot purchase guns anyway. So, what good are mental health background checks if the illnesses have not been diagnosed?
Most of us are not paranoid enough to believe our federal government is out to get us, causing us to need an arsenal of weapons to protect ourselves from them. It was my first thought to dismiss such militants as disturbed fringe. Then I remembered the This Week town hall meeting some months back where an extremely radical Muslim from the Middle East said he was looking forward to the day when the Muslim flag would fly above the White House. Now that would be a lunatic with arms and that would be government to fear. But by then it would be too late to arm ourselves for protection against the government.
It is an admirable characteristic Americans have that they want to turn unbelievable tragedy into learning experiences and ways to jumpstart good for others. Trying to squeeze a drop of meaning from utterly meaningless disaster is their way to cope. How much better it would be if they focused their efforts toward getting better mental health treatment for the disturbed -- for training individuals in self defense methods -- for fighting drugs and crime -- and for making contributions to research. These funds could be used to research methods to control or cure alcoholism, drug addiction and to heal mental health issues. We could attempt from Kindergarten on to make our citizens all feel accepted and to train and encourage them to be contributing members of society. At this point, we are failing massively in these endeavors.
Let's not continue to let our knee-jerk reactions be overcorrections. As parents we know that moving back and forth from too much negligence to overcorrection is ineffective. We need to find ways to eliminate the issues that cause the dysfunction rather than controling guns and making it easier for the bad guys to eliminate the good.
In the early eighties, I purchased and rehabed a nine room house in the northeast section of Kansas City, MO. It was in a section north of St. John Avenue and was supposed to be safer than areas south of that line. Although we came home two or three times to find our door open and a trail of match sticks littering the floor, the thefts had been inconsequential and we made the best of things. For the most part, I felt safe there.
There was a three-room mother-in-law's suite in the house. I turned this area into my private get away. I used the kitchen as my office where I did my writing. I quilted and did other crafts while watching television in the living room. Of necessity, I placed two bookcases, loaded with books, in front of the kitchen door. The living room door had a safety lock. Nights when my teenage boys were at their father's, I pulled the headboard of the bed in front of the bedroom door, thus blocking entry. As you can tell already, I am your basic coward. Thank God for that.
One night I heard someone slam against an entry over and over again. I told myself I was being paranoid until I heard someone running up the stairs and trying to enter my bedroom. There were at least two of them, because one said to the other, "this is where she is." I rushed to the phone, but could get no dial tone, because they had taken the receiver off the phone downstairs. I screamed out the window calling my neighbors over and over until one of them hesitantly stepped out on the porch. He called the police for me and then began checking the perimeter. The intruders had entered by removing a wooden cover of a basement window. The body slams had been them breaking through the locked trap door to the basement. They exited through the front door, leaving it wide open. By the time the police arrived, they were long gone. I gave my statement, but they left little hope of finding who had done it. I still don't know.
A couple of weeks later a third officer stopped by to discuss a potential suspect. While there, he encouraged me to buy a gun for protection. He said his wife would still be shaking if this had happened to her. I told him I couldn't use a gun, because I would be afraid I would mistakenly shoot one of my sons if they let themselves in during the night.
I'd like to be able to tell you this was my only close call, but I can't. I've been stalked. Two individuals have tried to strangle me and another held a gun in my face, demanding my purse. Such is the way of city life, at least city life on a budget. I'm in smaller, less appealing digs now, and the old neighborhood has been taken over by Hispanic gangs. My home here also has a revolving door with people -- including staff members -- helping themselves to my food, trinkets and especially my books. So far they haven't walked off with the mother-lode, but they have taken a place setting of silverplate, a wedding gift long ago as well as other sentimental items. If ever a citizen needed to be licensed to carry concealed-- now possible in both Missouri and Kansas -- I know I am the one. What I saw as overcorrection in the beginning, I now know to be basic common sense.
Despite this knowledge, when news about the Sandy Hook tragedy began to hit the airwaves, I was so sure a single mother did not need automatic weapons, that I assumed the son had used her credit card and name to purchase them through the mail. By the time the truth was known, I experienced the same knee-jerk reaction as the parents and many other Americans did -- "let's get gun ownership under control." But I was wrong and so are they. Here are reasons why.
Most "bad guys" don't buy their guns legally. They prefer street and under the table purchases of untraceable weapons. This slows the possibility of being caught. Since they do not purchase legal weapons, criminal background checks are unworkable.
Most serial killers are not deranged in a manner that causes them to use their mother's guns. Supposedly, the mentally ill who are considered a danger to themselves or others are the only behavior disordered people in mental institutions. If they are locked up, they cannot purchase guns anyway. So, what good are mental health background checks if the illnesses have not been diagnosed?
Most of us are not paranoid enough to believe our federal government is out to get us, causing us to need an arsenal of weapons to protect ourselves from them. It was my first thought to dismiss such militants as disturbed fringe. Then I remembered the This Week town hall meeting some months back where an extremely radical Muslim from the Middle East said he was looking forward to the day when the Muslim flag would fly above the White House. Now that would be a lunatic with arms and that would be government to fear. But by then it would be too late to arm ourselves for protection against the government.
It is an admirable characteristic Americans have that they want to turn unbelievable tragedy into learning experiences and ways to jumpstart good for others. Trying to squeeze a drop of meaning from utterly meaningless disaster is their way to cope. How much better it would be if they focused their efforts toward getting better mental health treatment for the disturbed -- for training individuals in self defense methods -- for fighting drugs and crime -- and for making contributions to research. These funds could be used to research methods to control or cure alcoholism, drug addiction and to heal mental health issues. We could attempt from Kindergarten on to make our citizens all feel accepted and to train and encourage them to be contributing members of society. At this point, we are failing massively in these endeavors.
Let's not continue to let our knee-jerk reactions be overcorrections. As parents we know that moving back and forth from too much negligence to overcorrection is ineffective. We need to find ways to eliminate the issues that cause the dysfunction rather than controling guns and making it easier for the bad guys to eliminate the good.
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