Alec Baldwin Arrest

        Arresting Alec Baldwin for the death of Halyna Hutchins is ridiculous. The person who was responsible for her death is the armorer and she was the armorer. She was the only person who was supposed to be putting bullets in the revolver so she actually shot herself.

            Saying Baldwin and others are responsible for Hutchins’ screw up is a waste of taxpayers’ money and court’s time. The actor and others had no reason to believe she had put real bullets and blanks in the same box and then in the revolver.  The District Attorney says lots of people should have checked. Using that idea, then every actor should check if the horse is gentled, the saddle is tight, and doesn’t have a rattlesnake in the saddlebags. Should the actors check if the logs in the fireplace are secure before it is lit?

            The only person to do this is striving for publicity and looking to try for a higher office. She probably wants to be Arizona’s Attorney General or even governor. What a waste of time and money!

Israel to Upset Peace

        Israel’s new Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had to make many bargains with the Ultra nationist Far Right religious parties to get their votes. Israel has a parliamentary system which means the people don’t vote directly for the prime minister but the majority of the Knesset members do. The majority of the people don’t like Netanyahu and he has legal problems with bribery. With all of that baggage, Netanyahu had to make bargains with parties that have been kept on the fringes of the Knesset. The leaders of some have or had their own legal problems.

            These parties believe Palestinians have no right to any of the land the Palestinians are on or any of the land Israel currently sits on. The goals of these parties are kill or push all the Palestinians out of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. They hope to do this by creating incidents causing a military response to ultimately eliminate them.

            Their plan has already started by provoking a response after they stated they were going to kick a few thousand West Bank Palestinians out of their homes and off their land. This is the same land Israel had stated in many legal documents is to be Palestinian. The plan will cause an escalation of incidents until another major military response causes a war with Hamas and some Arab countries.

            These Ultra nationalists are trying to con Americans into funding their destructive activities. Don’t do it! 

Food for Serious Thought

        The modern hypothesis is based on life destroying itself by its own actions. Over two billion years ago the second great extinction of life occurred. Before that time life was bacteria eating and giving off gases that would be poisonous to most life today. Along came bacteria that changed its exhaust gases from the toxins to oxygen. As oxygen levels increased 99 per cent of life died. That oxygen allowed for multi-celled life to evolve. Several extinctions afterward nearly wiped out life but the Great Oxidation Event was the first where life nearly made the Earth barren of life again.

            If one species was able to wipe out 99 percent of life two billion years ago is our heating up the Earth going to do the same thing? We know Venus didn’t always have the lead melting high temperature cloud blanket it has today. We are about to have a runaway climate change here that humans are causing. Could it be that we will continue to cause hundreds of species to go extinct each year until almost all are gone?

            Is each of us participating in making that extinction event possible? That possibility should be lots of food for thought.

What If…

        I don’t know how old I was when I first heard someone ask why didn’t France or England stop Hitler when his little army marched into the Sudetenland or when a little bigger army marched into Bohemia and Moravia then pieces of Czechoslovakia. Why did they talk and talk to him instead of stopping him? When he invaded Poland and war was declared he only had a few units west of Berlin. They could have ended it in a day or two. Look what happened because of talking and inaction.

            Today we have watched Russia destroy Chechnya’s cities and towns. Vladimir Putin has chopped off a piece of Georgia, stationed troops on part of Moldavia, put “volunteers” into two Eastern Provinces of Ukraine, and annexed the Crimea. Putin has been threatening the Baltic States and Finland before attacking Ukraine. Look at all he did before the major fighting in Ukraine. Why didn’t Western NATO start sanctions years ago? Why didn’t we put equipment into Ukraine when Putin first started to threatened it? Why are we and NATO piecemealing supplies and equipment to Ukraine?

            We must swamp the Ukraine with everything they want before the spring offensives. If Putin isn’t stopped here this year, where will he go next? If he is defeated will he be purged from power by those people he has befriended by making them and himself rich and all-powerful?

Commonsense Gun Laws

        Many states are looking for a way and reason to ban many weapons which are used primarily to kill people. I would suggest they first limit hunting with a rifle to a .22 and for small animals only. Continuing the three-shot magazine and barrel length of shotguns is necessary to lessen its use to kill humans.

            All firearms magazines should be limited to nine bullets and only loose shells may be carried on the person over the nine in the magazine. Bullet kinds would to be limited to standard hunting types.

            No 3-D ghost gun can be manufactured or owned by anyone. No parts can be added to a weapon to make it shoot faster than originally designed. No gun can be allowed to shoot without a finger pulling the trigger for each shot. Fines and imprisonment would be imposed for violations.

            To prohibit unauthorized use of a gun, every gun must be kept in a secured location or in a secured bag. In both locations a keyed gun trigger must be used. No gun that violates these rules may be kept outside a licensed facility for recreational use.

            Purchase, sale, or transfer of any guy shall be registered by the state. Failure to do so shall be a second degree misdemeanor punishable by a fine and confinement for six months in a low security facility. Allowing an unregistered person to use a gun outside of a recreational facility is subject to the above punishment. Checking time for legal registration shall be no less than one month.

            The Second Amendment does not prohibit the kind of gun or its size of magazine as the ban on Thompson Sub-machine was allowed. The safety of its citizens must be the highest priority and not the finances of the gun industry or the campaign funds of our elected officials.

Hogs at the Trough

        Ever notice those who protest the most about Federal expenditures are the first in line to get as much as they can. Those Republican Representatives and Senators from Texas have been very critical of the infrastructure bill’s costs. They managed to get funding for their fancy storm surge and sea rise control system. The initial cost is 23 billion but we know it is going to be much higher and paid by the rest of us. These are the same legislators that claim global warming isn’t real!

            About a decade ago North Carolina passed a law making it illegal to talk about global warming and its effects on shore line real estate. With the beaches being destroyed and the beach front houses being damaged or destroyed, tens of millions are being spent to repair the beaches and build levees to protect the houses. Guess which state’s legislators deny global warming and criticize the Federal climate change expenditures but are deep in the trough to protect the beach front.

            Don’t forget all those two-faced hogs in Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. Begging for funding to repair storm damage and poorly maintained infrastructure like Birmingham’s water system. Texas keeps their taxes low because the price of oil is high but when it is low they beg for Federal aid to keep the doors open. Texas is for deregulation but look at what happened to their power plants and lines during cold snaps.

            These legislators demand all the Federal money they can get to buy votes while telling voters they are being taxed too much and they aren’t getting their fair share. The bigger the hog, the longer they are in office.

Limit This Amendment, Too.

        This Supreme Court has said it can overturn any established law its five members is told to do. I believe they have yet to consider abolishing the bans for yelling “fire” in a theater or possessing a Thompson submachine gun without a permit.

            Illinois just passed a law banning sales and getting a permit for existing ownership of assault rifles and limiting the size of magazines. Gun dealers and the NRA are suing to overturn the law. If the Thompson is still illegal then these new assault guns should be illegal, too.

            Have people changed their minds? Most polls indicate about three-quarters of Americans believe in limiting the type of gun and magazine size. Dealers, manufactures, organizations, and some conned people believe there should not be any ban. With that interpretation of the second amendments t I could have a M-60 machine gun and an M-80 grenade launcher for self-defense!

            All rights are limited. The first amendment has many limits to those listed rights. When the Constitution was approved 234 years ago, civilization, culture, and technology was different. This was a time of muzzle loaders and local militias as stated in the amendment.

            It is time for the courts to look at questions with common sense and an eye on the fact that times have changed since the constitution and the Bill of Rights was signed. We no longer need a gun to fight the Redman or the British while being in the militia.

Is Today Any Different?

        About twenty years ago I had a discussion with a retired couple from Cornwall, England. They lived in a tiny village owned by Prince Charles (now King Charles III) Somehow we got into students having to know the long list of Kings and Queens. We don’t teach the line of 47 Presidents in schools and we should.

            Perhaps some history classes in some schools may teach an unsanitized history of the United States with all the warts and abscesses. My classes in high school and college (29 semester hours of history) in the 1960s skipped or whitewashed the terrible things we have done to people in what will become the most powerful country in the world.

            Outside studies have shown me we killed at least eighteen of the twenty million people that lived here when the first Europeans arrived. We locked up all the people with Japanese ancestry in concentration camps in the northern plains states. They lost their homes, businesses, and some their bank accounts. Confederate Irregular General Nathan Bedford Forrest is credited with starting the Ku Klux Klan. Like minded Southerners killed thousands of non-white people.

            We are responsible for the deaths of over one hundred thousand Indian children from across the country in schools. The schools were to make them into white people by destroying their culture, their language, cutting their hair and teaching them the Christian Religion.

            Students need to learn those people who started our quest for independence were not always the pinnacle of honesty and morality. Only about twenty percent of us supported independence, about the same number wanted to stay English with the rest not caring.

            Today’s situation would seem less of a problem if students understood we are getting better than we were. Ignorance is not a blessing.

Ukraine’s Independence

        I remember reading or seeing an interview with someone about Joseph Stalin’s demands for the Soviet Union’s representation in the United Nations. Stalin compared the Soviet Union to Europe with many individual countries in a group so each of the countries in the Soviet Union should have a seat in the United Nations. The final decision was to give him three. The three were Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. Many of the others joined after the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics broke up.

      Vladimir Putin says Ukraine is a part of Russia but Stalin said it was separate. Therefore history indicates Putin is wrong and Russia is invading a free and independent country. The United States and most of the rest of the World’s countries agree that Russia is an invader of an independent country. About fifty are supposed to be giving Ukraine some kind of support. The NATO countries are giving money, weapons, and training to Ukraine. NATO has sanctioned Russia and many of its citizens for committing internationally illegal criminal activities.

            We must continue to support Ukraine in their fight to remain an independent and free country. Any American who wants to reduce the effort should be considered a Fascist supporter and a friend of Putin.

What Family Values

        Today we now have a national political party that proclaims from every media outlet and highest mountain tops that they are the party of “Family Values”. How could a party say they are staunchly for “Family Values” when they have set aside those values so they can try to overthrow the government, violate their oaths of allegiance, tell lies upon lies, support crooks and fraudsters, and support those who are engaged in criminal activities. They openly cater to insurrectionists, neo-nazis, and white supremacists.

            How can the Republican Party claim the high ground when they don’t seem to have any morals? They claim to be religious but I don’t know of any religion with the tenets they practice. So what are their family values? Is our country in such a divided mess because of their actions and lies and not their phony family values? Which of those values are they really wanting us to follow? The Republicans have a Florida Congressman being investigated for supplying teenagers for sex parties. Some are being investigated for fraud and supporting insurrection among other crimes. Should the Republican Party’s motto now be “Do as we say and not as we do.”? Oops, we must look around the lies and those standing with them.