Election Woes

Nov. 12, 2014

Well,  The election is over. What can I say?  Only that the younger generation talks a great game, but leaves it all in the locker room.  The voter turnout was disgracefully small, especially among the under-thirty crowd.  Whatever happened to all the outrage against the gridlock in Washington, the war against women, the religious right's attempt to eliminate the First Amendment separation of church and state, the exponentially-increasing acts of violence throughout our society, and income inequality?

Seems like there's a lot of talk, but no do.  All these problems won't go away just by talking about it.  Get out there and vote, or march, or rally, or whatever it takes.  In the 1960s, we marched, rallied, demonstrated, protested, and did what was needed to achieve our goals:  civil rights, ending a war that we never should have been in, or whatever.  And yeah, some people died, but that made our resolve even stronger.  Our military goes out and sometimes dies to protect our nation and what it stands for.  Can't the civilians join the battle on the home front? As one of our Founding Fathers put it, "The Tree of Liberty must be watered periodically by the blood of Patriots."  Freedom isn't free and there's no such thing as a free lunch, folks.   Tanstaafl.

You have to make your voices heard, and sometimes it hurts, but you do it because it is the right thing to do.  Americans used to be known as a courageous people who stood up for what was right.  Nowadays, not so much.

Police Violence

Nov. 8, 2014:

I've just read a "diary" on the Daily KOS (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/06/1342660/-Two-drastically-different-ways-police-can-subdue-a-man-armed-with-a-knife?detail=email) that I found profoundly disturbing.  I urge the reader to go there and read this article and view the videos.   ...
OK - now that you've read this and played the videos do you still wonder why this nation is viewed in the world as violent and savagely uncivilized?  What part of "serve and protect" don't these officers understand?  And regarding the cops in Saginaw, MI:  have any of them received basic firearms training?  I mean, 1 out of 3 hits on an unarmed man 20 feet away who didn't even run or dodge? Really? I was a better shot than any of them when I was 12 years old and had never fired a gun before!  (True - I out-shot my Dad, who was an expert ex-Army WWII vet.)  And I don't own anything more powerful than a pellet gun (for chasing squirrels off the bird feeder), now.

Here's my solution to this problem :  Make it a federal crime for a police officer to use a firearm on any person not pointing or threatening with a firearm.  Hey, that's why the Taser was invented, after all, folks.