Portsmouth Anti Gun Rally: Movement or Group Hug?

There were some worthwhile speeches at Market Square in Portsmouth, yesterday.
Renny Cushing spoke, as always, with calm authority, about the absurdity of the New Hampshire law which requires police departments to sell rather than destroy guns which are turned in or confiscated. As if to destroy them would be to destroy some sentient being, which needs to be protected.  That deer hunters in New Hampshire are limited to 5 bullets in their chambers but men can buy 38 round clips for their assault rifles which are designed with people in mind, was telling. 
In New Hampshire we try to protect deer; people, not so much.

A nurse practitioner simply read off a list of mass shootings in which she listed the number of minutes the gun man fired and the number of deaths and injuries he managed to visit upon his prey and it was stunning: In Las Vegas, if memory serves me well, it was something on the order of 55 dead 155 injured in about 5 minutes. 

A teacher described the predicament of being an armed teacher inside a classroom with twenty pupils, seven year old children, who she would try to wall off by closing windows and shades and overturning desks to barricade them and then she would open the door to the hallway, to go seek out the killer with her gun, turning to her children to say, "Mrs. Curtin will be right back."  And she mentioned the study of New York City policemen, who hit their target only 18% of the time in real gun fights.

Some allusions were made to the law which had banned assault rifles which expired in 1994 and all the mass shootings which happened after it expired.

Of course, nobody got to considering the arguments:  That laws meant to stop mass shootings focusing on gun sales to minors, sales of assault weapons, sales of high capacity magazines would address, but likely not completely solve, the issue of mass shootings in schools or public places, but such laws would do nothing for accidental shootings at home, domestic dispute shootings, bar room fight shootings, suicide by gun shootings. 

Little comparative sociology was mentioned, except on some of the signs held around the square: Why is it other countries with the same percentage of mentally ill people have so many fewer gun deaths? 

Then there is the problem of France, where fundamentalist Islamic "soldiers" do mass shootings, when they are not driving trucks into crowds. 

The most fundamental question is: Who are we trying to convince? The folks on that stage were in the most real imaginable way "preaching to the choir."

A student described the "active shooter" drills they do at her school, where "they are teaching us to become victims." 
Of course, the Second Amendment freaks would agree with her: None of us should train to become victims. We should train to kill shooters.

Actually, we do active shooter drills at our work site and one of the things the training videos mentioned is that thinking about hiding and cowering in place have changed and the new idea is it may be better to try to assault the shooter, especially if you can organize a force of numerical superiority, because the greatest number of deaths occur in the first few minutes before any police can arrive.

The most discouraging news of all is the news that since taking a stand on selling assault rifles to kids under 21--hardly a radical position one would think--Dick's Sporting Goods has seen a precipitate and unexpected decline in all sales at its stores. Not just in guns but in all sales, bats, balls, shoes, jerseys. This may or may not be related to the new gun policy. Other business factors may be operating, including greater competition from Amazon and Nike, but if this loss of revenue is in fact, ultimately, tied to the gun policy, that would mean consumers have voted against gun control.  
What is hard for me to understand in this is whenever I'm in Dicks, I see people buying Patriots jerseys, shoes, baseball gloves, and I would be surprised to learn there is much overlap between these customers and the guys buying assault rifles, or even hunting rifles. But maybe this just shows how little I know that part of our society, that 40% subculture.

We must all know by now, we will never convince the Donald Trump crowd of anything. They are beyond reason, for the most part, beyond salvation. 

The question is, if they are beyond reason on guns or on abortion, is there any other way to peel them away from Mr. Trump? Or should we simply focus on agitating and motivating the rest of the electorate? 

Personally, I think it's likely there is a portion of the nation which while no fans of Trump, are unable to bring themselves to vote for Democrats, who they perceive as being weak, wailing and too soft for governing. They are looking for a strong man to rally behind, but not Trump. Joe Biden appeals to this group. You can be a man and be against Trump and for Biden. 
"Debate him?" Biden asks. "Hell, I'd take him out behind the gym and beat the shit out of him. That's what he is, one of those fat, ugly kids in high school who bullied the smaller kids." 

For my money, Biden would be trading a stupid conservative for a stupid liberal, but that's a deal I'd take.

I still think we can do better. We just need to find some tough guy Democrats. 

The Only Issue: It's Come To This

So, as we all knew, it was always about the personality, and about the people who vote, called "the electorate."

“People who tell me, who are out on trail, say, look, people don’t ask about issues anymore. They don’t care about issues. They want to know if you’re with Trump or not,” Corker added.

Everyone, each in his own way, has said Trump is the symptom, not the disease.

And the disease is the people, sad to say.
Talk to your neighbors who support him, and you can hear it.
"Hold me in your arms; you can feel my disease."
Yup. 
Just look around. 

We've seen this before, in other countries.

Now we have der Fuhrer of our very own.

The Young Lions and the Lamb

Maybe, just maybe, if Conor Lamb does manage to win in the Pennsylvania 18th, he may be the heralding instance of a new, young Democrat, tested by war, looking forward, ready to wrest the government from the Republicans who would destroy it, who would sacrifice labor unions, who would help scuttle hard won pensions, Republicans  who always have been intent on killing Social Security and Medicare, not to mention Obamacare.

The Republicans ran away from Lamb, tried to pretend the race was about Nancy Pelosi, whom they've tried to vilify, did everything but chant, "Lock her up!" But it didn't work this time. This guy is a former Marine Corps captain, and he is a prosecutor. Sound like anyone you know? Do we not have someone like this vying for the seat in the New Hampshire First?

Even so, and even if he wins, he will have to run again in 7 months.
But it could be a start.  He does not apologize for his stances, does not speak politicospeak.


If we could send these two, and more like them, we might have Democrats tough enough to face down the Republican scourge. We need guys like this. You do not defeat the White Walkers and Prince Joffrey with pussycats. You need John Snow. You need guys with hot blood flowing.

Imagine sending Conor Lamb to Congress with Terence O'Rourke. Finally, instead of the lambs to slaughter, instead of the Silence of the Lambs, we might have the Young Lions carrying the Democratic banner in Washington, D.C.  Guys who will roar, not whimper.

We can dream on it, but it hasn't happened yet.

Congressional Russia Investigation: Not with a Bang But with a Whimper

John Yang from the News Hour interviewed Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee which investigated the connection between the Russians and the Trump campaign last night. Schiff made some noises about how there were many witnesses and avenues of investigation the Republicans on the committee simply refused the Democrats to pursue, and as a result the committee found nothing to say about the collusion question.

Schiff, who is a former prosecutor, mumbled something about not being sure whether anything Trump did "rises to the level of a crime" and then faded into the background, which was much more interesting than he, the Capitol rotunda, and various tourists, Congressmen and vagrants drifted by, which distracted mightily from the interview.


Had Schiff been of the Republican persuasion, he would have thundered about the "massive, deliberate cover up by the opposition party, who would rather sell out their country than risk damaging the head of their political party," or words to that effect.

But, being a pussycat Democrat, he wimped out.

Let's have a bonding moment and then move on

All he lacked was the pink knit hat with the ears.

Does the 1st Amendment Protect Willful Untruth?

Alex Jones on the Sandy Hook children's massacre:

In March 2014, Jones said, “I’ve looked at it and undoubtedly there’s a cover-up, there’s actors, they’re manipulating, they’ve been caught lying, and they were pre-planning before it and rolled out with it.”

In December 2014, Jones said on his radio program, “The whole thing is a giant hoax.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Supreme Court justice set the limits on the American right to free speech, when he declared. "You cannot shout 'Fire!' in a crowded theater, when there is no fire."

Nobody has successfully rebutted that simple statement, although the American Civil Liberties Union disagrees. The ACLU is absolutist about the 1st Amendment, and as absolutist positions frequently do, this has led them to some absurd positions; they sacrifice everything, even credibility, to remain consistent.

The same is true, of course, of the NRA and it's "defense" of the 2nd Amendment, although in that case, they are not defending the original text, but simply ignoring half the amendment and seeing only what they want to see.

Alex Jones has denied Sandy Hook ever happened and apparently he promulgated the story that the Washington, DC pizza parlor was the front for Hillary Clinton's child sex ring, before Edgar Maddison Welch drove up from Salisbury North Carolina,  brandished his weapon at the stunned folks eating pizza, but somehow was dissuaded from shooting the customers and staff.

"Homeland"  has a plot line which creates the crowded theater, in which an Alex Jones look alike, called "Brett O'Keefe" on the show, is cornered in a farm house, where he is defended by local fans with guns from the FBI which has surrounded the place in a Waco redux stand-off. While negotiations are stalled, the son realizes his dog has escaped and is charging across a field at a line of FBI and SWAT team along the tree line. The son, in an act of verisimilitude is so stupid he carries his rifle as he runs after the dog, does not hear or respond to the order to halt and is shot by the FBI. When an agent goes to his aide, staunching the wound, he is captured by the militants and becomes a captive. An Alex Jones type alt right guy manages to get a photo in the hospital of the son lying on a gurney after he has been stabilized in the Emergency Room, looking dead, unattended. (He is later saved and taken to the recovery room.) But the damage is done, the photo goes up on some alt right website, is seen by the boy's father, who stomps over to the FBI agent, and shoots him point blank in the head, executes him. 

The photographer, the website manager cannot know the photo would result in the shooting of the FBI agent any more than Alex Jones could know that gunman from North Carolina would would drive up with his AR-15 and come within a few neural synapses from killing everyone in the pizza parlor.

But does the 1st Amendment protect, does it confer the freedom to be wrong, even willfully wrong, in the face of today's internet and the armed Confederacy of Dunces with guns?  

And how does "incitement to riot" fit in with this discussion. Is there an incitement to murder? Is there an incitement to commit armed mayhem? If a man in a Ku Klux Klan outfit, standing on a stage before a crowd of his brother robed imbeciles points to a Black child walking across the street and shouts, "Lynch him!" Is he simply exercising his First Amendment rights?

Donald Trump has been vexed by the First Amendment because it means he cannot sic his lawyers on his critics for stuff they write or say about him, and he has complained bitterly that in America it is almost impossible to prevail in a defamation of character lawsuit, especially if you are a "public figure," unlike in England, where all you have to do is prove your feelings have been hurt.

But here, in the now great again America, we have the 1st Amendment and Alex Jones and the alt right are protected, much as those banderilleros who hide behind wooden gates, then run out and stick their spears in the bull, to get him fighting mad. 

Are these guys not shouting "Fire?" Are they not goading on the action?

Psalm 109.8

Here's a bumper stick you can buy for $3.75 on the internet.

Not a scholar of the Psalms.
Not actually even a Bible reader.
In fact, I'm a troglodyte, when it comes to the Bible. 
But Professor Google tells me Psalm 109.8, variously translated, usually reads something like this:  "May his days be few. May he be replaced."

Personally, I'm still looking for the "Trump Chump" bumper sticker. 
But this will do until I find that.

Why Trump Will Win a Second Term

The short answer is: Because the Democrats still haven't figured out what hit them.

The longer answer is, because the Democrats are stuck with their own deficiencies, nominating conciliatory, reasonable, bland traditional politicians for office while the Republicans, led by Trump have moved past all that to reality TV star candidates.

Look at Trump from last night in Pennsylvania taking the stage and telling the audience, "They want me to be 'Presidential!' Well, here's how I would sound if I were 'Presidential.' And he goes on a little mocking the typical political pablum. Then he says, 'If I were like that none of you would be here to tonight to listen to me.' And he is correct. 
The Democrat he's running against is a Marine veteran, a solid citizen (sort of like Terence O'Rourke, here in New Hampshire.) 

But Trump turns the race into a Republican running against Nancy Pelosi, who, last I heard, is not interested in running for any seat in a Pennsylvania district.

That's how they do, these Trumpholes.

The last Republican President who was as good at reading the American public as Trump was Reagan and they named the National Airport after him and every Republican today wants to be a "Reagan Republican."   A B list movie actor and a reality TV star. 

That's democracy in the US of A.

Reagan served two terms; or some would say two terms served Reagan.

But here in New Hampshire, we are still preparing to send Chris Pappas into battle with Ray Buckley in his corner.  When they go low, we go high. 

You saw how well that worked for us last November 8, 2016. 

Someone different, for a change

Think about that night because you're cruising for a repeat episode.