calimary
calimary's JournalTotally. Except for the other guys!
I'm all for their splintering off into a teabagger party and a bible-thumper party and a neo-klan party. That'll make it far more likely that we'll be keeping the White House for quite awhile!!! We need to. There's SO MUCH to be fixed. And a Supreme Court to secure.
Fair enough. There are just a few people I've observed through my life - over whom I'm having
a serious struggle.
WANT to be forgiving.
WANT to try to understand.
WANT to find some way to excuse the heinous behavior or the damage done to so many others.
WANT to be compassionate.
And yet, I stumble on reagan. I'll have the same trouble when bush and cheney kick the bucket. Some things are just hard to forgive, and there is indeed a part of me that hopes those causing others to suffer will finally taste some of that suffering for themselves. With some of them, they can only know compassion after they meet pain and suffering face-to-face.
Like rob portman - who's only come around to accept marriage equality after he learned his own son is gay. They only find their way to tolerance when it punches them personally in the nose, or the gut.
And yes, it's not for me to judge. Self-comforting maybe. But it just galls me. Another one of those situations in which we tried to warn people. And nobody listened - too busy being enthralled by that darling, avuncular "uncle ronnie" and his head-shaking, eyebrow flirting, crooked-smiling "aw shucks" demeanor that lulled everyone to sleep like a cup of warm sweet milk before bedtime. And then when everybody figured he was just this darling, harmless, gentle, loving, warm, and approachable man, he came around with his fiends who he made sure were well-positioned to start tearing down the social safety net, the understanding about the social contract we've had between the governed and the government, and just ripped it to shred. And people all across the country, and the world, suffered for it. Worse still, never was heard a discouraging word around uncle ronnie. And it never cost him anything - until the end.
I don't celebrate it. I know what a cross it is, to bear, when a loved one has Alzheimer's. My husband's mother deteriorated like that in her last years. We watched her slowly slip away, helpless. But she had never hurt and betrayed so many on such a grand scale so that so few could have so much more.
As I said, I struggle every day of my life with forgiveness - and how it sometimes eludes me.
Sister Joan Chittister, and Sister Simone Campbell both.
I love these women! They speak the total truth. I remember Sister Joan writing at length against the Iraq War - a true moral calamity. Both these good women really get it, and really nail it.
Now why can't they be ordained into the priesthood? Towering and inspired talents, both of them. They're doing more of the work of Our Lord than any of those self-anointed holier-than-thou's out there who pray to Supply-Side Jesus!
+1,000,000!
What happened in 2010 when Dems yawned and went back to sleep? We got the fucking teabaggers on the ascendent, and it's been like unleashing the hyenas and baboons at the zoo and letting them run rampant - oh, but it's not gonna be that bad, what could possibly go wrong?
Happy now?
I would ask - "how'd that couldn't-be-bothered in 2010 work out for you?"
Well, I for one would NOT shed tears if the gun manufacturing industry lost some income.
I like the whole approach of wallstreetforchange.com
OR http://advocate.nyc.gov/guns/home
They seem to be the same thing.
This is one beast I wouldn't mind starving.
Yep, you're absolutely correct. And that does NOT mean we should EVER back down.
Don't care. I. DO. NOT. CARE. I don't care what the NRA says. Irrelevant. WE should proceed with OUR agenda. And meet every push from them with a VERY strong collective push-back. Let's not be afraid of, or intimidated by, the NRA. They seem to be more of a paper tiger than anything else. They don't have that much clout. And they've been allowed to thrive in a virtual vacuum. WHEN have we had this kind of pushback against them before now? They've never faced a unified majority opposition before, and they've been able to spin this fantasy tapestry about how invincible they supposedly are. But their record last November was a big fat LOSER. A strong decisive majority of their own members favor all the things we do: background checks that actually mean something, banning mow-down machines, banning the big 30-round clips, and more. Even their own are on OUR side.
I wouldn't let ANYTHING they said deter me. And I won't be intimidated by those louts who misread and misinterpret and pervert the Constitution and the Second Amendment - which is NOT some untouchable, inviolable, unmodifiable sacrament, okay? I will NOT be imtimidated OR have my safety held hostage by a small and shrinking minority of cowardly bullies and paranoiacs.
They're an empty barrel that just makes a lot of noise. And the momentum is on OUR side. As are the ghosts of those 20 children. AND their surviving, still-grieving parents. Those parents certainly aren't giving up, or allowing themselves to be silenced or shouted down. And we shouldn't either!!!!! The NRA's problem is that it's never faced an ongoing opposition like this. Usually everybody forgets and life returns to normal and no one cares that much. NOT THIS TIME. They're not used to having to play defense. Let's make sure to keep them there.
Remember all the warmongers who started coming out of the woodwork - saying "9/11 changes everything!!!!" WELL - SO BE IT. WE have one of those now, too. We'd be fools not to use it.
"SANDY HOOK CHANGES EVERYTHING!!!!"
GAME ON.
Well, if calimary was king, I'd say yes.
But calimary likes to be rawther draconian sometimes. And, for sure, much of that is unrealistic and unworkable. Hell, if calimary was king, you'd have a certain despicable extended dubya/cheney cabal already in LEG IRONS and solitary confinement for the rest of their detestable days!!!!!! Following GUARANTEED GUILTY VERDICTS in their war crimes tribunals.
OBVIOUSLY, ideas like these are, realistically speaking, probably not doable. Those are pipe dreams only. And believe me, I am VERY grateful that calimary has enough skeletons in her closet and a big-enough mouth that she'd make one HORRIBLY lousy candidate for anything!!!!
What we need are practical applications that can be put to use in actual reality. Stuff that's doable. Baby steps. But not just one.
What can we do - if we indeed CANNOT have it the way someone like calimary would like? What is actually possible and doable? How an we whittle away at the problem, if we can't make them all gone? It is completely understood that making something illegal won't stop it. But at least it's a start. It might slow things down. It's a small step. And it might be a deterrent, or more of a deterrent. It might have made it harder for the mother of the Sandy Hook shooter to get her bushmaster. Which, mind you, WAS used BY him, ON her, FIRST. I think that mom, with an emotionally unstable family member living at home, had NO BUSINESS WHATSOEVER having guns like that in her house. With all those clips, big and small - and he only took the big ones with him to mow down all those kids at Sandy Hook. Background checks should include - "is there someone with emotional/mental/psychological issues or instability living with you in your home?" Such a person would summarily be ruled out as far as ANY firearms possession. I don't care whether she liked target practice and sport shooting and other supposedly "innocent" gun-related activity. Doesn't matter. How'd having all those guns in her home work out for her, anyway? Did they make her any safer? And she was a law abiding citizen. Did she get a happily-ever-after with those guns, and all her problems and insecurities and fears assuaged? How'd that work out for her?
I don't like the speeding on my street. I lobbied, called my councilwoman, even buttonholed her face-to-face when I spotted her walking in the neighborhood on her way to getting her hair done. I called traffic control downtown. Left multiple messages and emails EVERYWHERE. I did everything I could think of. Nothing worked. I started complaining to the neighbors. Turns out ONE of the neighbors had a way in. And she finally got us that stop sign. And no, the speeders don't stop. BUT THEY DO SLOW DOWN. And even if by only a measly one or two miles per hour, that is STILL time to give some little old lady or nanny pushing a stroller or woman walking her dog or dad with his kids on their hard-to-control scooters and roller skates (who often dart out suddenly and unexpectedly into the street) an extra second or two to get safely out of the way.
Or should we just throw up your hands and take out all the stop signs in every neighborhood - because absolutely every single neighbor or visitor is not willing even to come to one of those slow, slide-on-through "California stops," at one? What's the other option? Well, so then we do nothing? NO. That "option" is NO option AT ALL.
TOTALLY!!!! They are critically important, and considering the nature of them,
it is no exaggeration or hysterical hyperbole to say that it's a matter of life and death. 'Cause it IS.
Heck, I'd go so far as to offer further inducements NOT to sell a gun across the backyard fence or something - to a friend, neighbor, somebody you presumably know. Or even to lend it to them. If THEY turn around and do something murderous with it - it should trace back to YOU, and YOU should share in the liability and the criminality.
I like deterrents. I like 'em a LOT. It's part of a multi-pronged approach that we do need to get something effective done about this problem. This is a START. There should be forbiddings - and there should be motivationals. Imagine: how many FEWER straw sales or gun exchanges might there be if the unsuspecting neighbor thinks nothing of selling or lending a gun to one of the dudes from elsewhere in the neighborhood - and then finds himself/herself facing some pretty severe penalties? There would be a dampening effect. Absolutely.
And, again, it might be mild or even temporary. But just imagine - maybe instead of 20 kids getting mowed down by a young nutcase who stole his mom's mass-murder machine and accessories - it might be 12 kids. Or ten. Or, hell, even three to five. THAT MANY FEWER parents left with gaping holes in their hearts for the rest of their lives. THAT MANY FEWER burials of those little coffins. THAT MANY FEWER families in the worst imaginable anguish - FOR LIFE.
Isn't it worth it? Isn't it a worthwhile quest - to try to slow the madness down or put obstacles in its path, so there will be fewer victims and less collateral damage?
Hey, let's make it a right-to-life issue, 'eh?
Or how 'bout - WHY do your Second Amendment rights trump MY First Amendment right - to life and all else? WHY do your Second Amendment rights to own mow-down machines and massacre machines and weapons of mass destruction outweigh MY right to life and safety and the freedom from being mowed down by some civilian with access to his/her own hand-held WMDs and all the ammo clips they can eat? Why does their Second Amendment right to suppress any discussion, any research on gun violence, any studies on statistics of violent crime and gun usage override MY First Amendment right to free speech? We can't even TALK about this in the Senate because of your Second Amendment right to silence us??? EXCUSE ME?????
I think we ought to start putting it that way. And we ought to get creative about it. This is a multi-pronged problem that demands a multi-pronged approach. It needs to be confronted in MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY different ways. Both pushing in the direction we want, and pulling in the direction we want. We MUST start doing that. The opposition has done that, for years, going after protecting their rights to their "Second Amendment remedies" in legions of ways and strategies and approaches. They come at it from all angles. Inside and outside. Left and right. Up and down. Upside down, backwards, inside-out, sideways, and zig-zagged. Top and bottom, and all angles in between. We have to do that, too. We haven't been. We've been kind of monotone and monolithic. Going after only one thing. One single campaign at a time. We have to think of ALL THINGS. ALL WAYS. ALL APPROACHES! And at the same time!
My sparring teacher at the local karate school encouraged us all to "keep 'em busy." He liked the constant barrage of jabbing. Jab! Jab! Jab! Just keep jabbing. Keep coming at 'em. Keep 'em busy. He told of one tournament in which one of the two sparring opponents had a broken arm. All he could do was just keep jabbing and jabbing and jabbing with the one good arm. And he wound up winning. NEVER let up, NEVER let the opponent get a break, NEVER let 'em catch their breath. Jabs kept coming from all sides, all directions, overhead, underneath, hooks, upper cuts, you name it. He wore the opponent down. The opponent couldn't keep up, and couldn't anticipate what was coming next - or from where. And it worked. Keep 'em busy!
Look what the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has done - there are laws in states that are coming from ALL directions, against voting rights, immigrants rights, women's rights, workplace rights, reproductive rights, and they're keeping us busy fighting on a thousand fronts - so many it's hard to keep track and once you think you've got it on one issue, you have but to turn around and there are 13 or 14 other cancers metastasizing all around you, in areas where it never even occurred to you to be on guard.
WE NEED TO DO THAT!!!!! Keep THEM busy for a change, with all these confrontations coming at them from every direction at all times. Keep 'em busy. Never EVER let up. Never give up. Keep 'em busy.
Bingo. They may not care about what we want, per se.
BUT THEY DO CARE ABOUT DONATIONS!!!!!! They sure want our money. How 'bout we tie our contributions to what we want the recipients to do for us - IN EXCHANGE FOR those contributions?
One person calling up Heidi Heitkamp and reading her staffer the riot act for her cavalier dismissal of any restrictions to wanton access to guns, as she did on that one Sunday show several weeks ago, won't have any impact. Negligible. Carries no weight.
But how 'bout if 20 or 30 people call in? How 'bout if it's 20 or 30 people AN HOUR? How 'bout if it's 200 or 300? If they keep hearing this, they're going to be FORCED to pay attention.
Just look at what's happening in Washington. How the momentum has switched, the easy talking point flipped yesterday from "it's a lost cause" to "GOP filibuster threat falling part." That did not happen without a huge public outcry.
They operate on the presumption that "if they think YOU don't care, THEY WON'T, EITHER!!!" If they're suddenly confronted with an avalanche of people who damn well DO care, that changes their tune, pretty quickly.
Once Saturday mail delivery was on death row. Now, there's a reprieve. Do you think that happened out of thin air? Or some magic somewhere? NO! There were commercial campaigns, email and phone call campaigns, public lobbying, a public outcry. Suddenly the cutback is gone. If Congress hadn't heard enough complaints, NOTHING would have gotten done.
As I said in an earlier thread - I called Heidi Heitcamp's office (using one of the TOLL FREE Capitol Hill switchboard numbers like you can find in my sig line below) and told them of my disapproval after she went on some Sunday show and cavalierly dismissed the whole idea of restricting wanton access to any damn gun you feel like you have some right to own. So I called. And I stated that - YEAH I know she represents North Dakota and I'm a Californian. Understood. But she sure as hell didn't mine taking my California money when she was running for office. I HELPED HER GET IN THERE. I PAID SO SHE COULD WIN. MY CALIFORNIA CONTRIBUTION helped her win!!! And now, whether she likes it or not, SHE OWES ME. Or else, I WON'T be back. And she can get her campaign contributions from somebody else - because it won't be coming from me anymore.
It's not perfect. For those who always insist that somebody will always get around it,
the alternative is "so we do nothing, then, 'eh?"
I posted this in GD and Politics 2013:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022647873
and
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251298659
Profile Information
Gender: FemaleHome country: USA
Current location: Oregon
Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 81,238