Day: December 14, 2012

Sandy Hook Elementary School Another In A Long Line Of Tragedies That Will Never End Unless There Is Effective Gun Control Legislation!

The tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut is just the latest in a long line of gun tragedies, while the gun industry and the National Rifle Association, in the mad dash for capitalistic profit, resist ANY regulation of those who are able to obtain weapons, including assault rifles that no one needs!

If it is not elementary school children in Connecticut; or patrons in a movie theater in Colorado; or worshipers in a church in Wisconsin; or shoppers in a mall in Oregon; or constituents of a Congresswoman in Arizona, it may very well be a President of the United States, or a United States Senator, or a rock musician, or an actor, or an athlete who in some way triggers mental illness in some crackpot who wants fame, and makes for new gun victims!

Of course, no gun legislation will prevent all murders, but with 11,000 murders per year because of gun violence, more than any nation in the world, we cannot sit by and just “tsk tsk”, and do nothing!

We need effective gun regulation, and background checks of people before they can purchase weapons legally, and banning of all assault weapons. We can also decide that people cannot carry guns into bars, onto college campuses, into public schools, into hospitals, into government buildings, and prosecute anyone who endangers others by his or her recklessness!

We have to teach our children that guns are not fun, or not just to be used for target practice, and to stop glorifying hunting of birds and animals, as that is worshiping and glorifying death!

We must promote protection, but not think that everyone being strapped with a gun is going to promote safety in all public places, as just the opposite is true!

And this has nothing to do with God, as in the name of God, we have seen loads of bloodshed and death and warfare in human history, and religion has done more to promote hate and division, because of those fanatics believing their religious beliefs justify such crimes!

We are on the road to civil war, if we do not control the level of violence that we claim cannot be controlled, throw up our hands, and just keep on counting corpses!

For some gun nuts, only when they lose their own loved ones will they finally “get it”, and we need our government leaders to stop fighting politically, and look at gun violence as just as needy of a response as when we were attacked at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001!

The Susan Rice Controversy: The Final Disgrace Of John McCain And Lindsey Graham!

The announcement by Susan Rice, the United Nations Ambassador, that she is withdrawing her candidacy to be Secretary of State, due to the controversy over the Libyan terrorist attack in Benghazi, which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others on September 11, is a great tragedy.

It is the character assassination of a woman who has devoted her career to public service, and was only stating what was known on September 16, five days after the attack.

If anything, the CIA head, David Petraeus, now disgraced by an affair with his biographer, should be held accountable for this mess, but of course, he is so much idolized by many that he is given a free pass by politicians, and just allowed to resign, when he should be investigated for the danger he represented as our chief spy, allowing himself to be compromised!

It is not a question of whether Susan Rice is the best qualified person to be Secretary of State, as this author truly believes that Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, is the best person available.

But to trash the reputation of Susan Rice over something she was not responsible for is a human tragedy, and shows how far Republicans are willing to go to destroy others in their desire to damage President Obama, even after his second term victory!

Senator John McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham both had reasonable reputations before now, but what they have done is enough to destroy their historical image and their effectiveness for the rest of the time they might serve in the upper chamber!

They are two bitter men who have become negative forces, and are part of the problem of the Republican Party for the future!

If these two men have become destructive forces, that is a sign that the Republican Party is dying, and will soon be replaced by a new, moderate centrist party!

Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight D. Eisenhower are all in deep mourning in the afterlife, wondering how their beloved party became so self destructive and hateful, and the dirty deeds of McCain and Graham will, likely, be two of the final nails in the coffin of the “Grand Old Party”!

And the best thing Barack Obama could do now is select Susan Rice to be National Security Adviser, a position not subject to the whims of the US Senate for confirmation! Prove that John McCain and Lindsey Graham have been upended by putting Rice in a position on an equal footing with the Secretary of State, and make the Republicans scream and yell in protest! It would be just desserts!