Will the children’s crusade against gun violence triumph where others have failed?

The original Children's Crusade was a disaster.

This time, things may be different.

 In the 13th Century, the children of Europe set out on a crusade. Or perhaps on two crusades, depending on your historical sources and perspective.

Their intention was to go to the Muslim world and convert all those Muslims to Christianity.

The crusade, or crusades, were a disaster that many of the children paid for with their lives. The entire notion was naive, ill-conceived, and evidently terribly planned (if it was logistically planned at all.) I’m always a bit wary of Wikipedia, but you can get a general outline of how things went here.

Now another “children’s crusade” — this time against gun violence — is brewing in a furiously boiling pot. But this time, perhaps just because the leaders of this crusade are children, they not only can get noticed, but also will have the energy, and more importantly the righteous rage, to get something done.

Already the kids are having an impact. They're scaring the people whose pockets are bulging with gun money. When legislative aides start making up stories and job titles that paint victims as "crisis actors," whatever that means, you know they're terrified. And the fact that the aide, one reprehensible liar in Florida named Benjamin Kelly, got fired for his libel doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of others like him, quaking in their boots at the notion of kids speaking the truth.

But make no mistake. While minor concessions, such as raising the age of gun ownership, may actually get some semi-serious discussion within the next year or two, the kids are in for a very long fight if they intend to get semi-automatic weapons off the streets. Even so, perhaps they really can do it. And in the course of so doing, they can bring down the arrogant hypocrites like Marco Rubio who, deep down, evidently don't really mind very much if large numbers of kids get shot and killed in school, so long as the obscenely huge contributions they receive from the National Rifle Association keep gushing into their pockets.

In a meeting the other day with President Trump, a few of the kids were respectful, even a trifle obsequious. But one or two — and one of the parents — spoke loudly and clearly about what the problem is. 

It’s not mental derangement. Mental derangement has been with us since the dawn of time.

It’s not the lack of teachers who aren’t packing firearms. Putting a holster on a teacher delivers precisely the wrong message about what school is and how kids should feel when they go there.

The problem, plain and simple, like or not, is that any insignificant nobody who decides to go and kill someone, or a whole bunch of someones, can  purchase a rapid-fire assault weapon, and armor-piercing bullets, with almost the ease that he can buy a six pack of beer. In fact, when the killer is younger than 21, he can buy the tools of mass destruction in some states with greater ease than he can buy a six pack of beer.

What the kids, and their parents, and all of us need to do is demand a cessation of the sale and private ownership of semi-automatic weapons, armor piercing bullets, rapid-fire enhancers like bump stocks, and other accessories that make these assault weapons a menace to civilized society. America needs to institute a buy-back program, with a time limit. After that, mere possession of any of the aforementioned tools of mass murder ought to be at least as serious a crime as possession of Class A narcotics, and the sale of any of these murder machines as serious as large scale drug dealing.

But how to go about doing this? Laws against semi-automatic weapons can be passed if support of the sale and possession  of these weapons becomes as fatal to a political career as a bullet to the chest or head is to a six year old at Sandy Hook, or a fifteen-year-old in Florida.

And finally, we’re off to a good start.

Marco Rubio was met with contempt and jeers the other day when he refused so support a ban on assault weapons, or to renounce the support of the NRA. Cowardly Governor Rick Scott of Florida, and President Trump, didn't even have the guts to come to the meeting.

But let's focus on Rubio for the moment. He has chosen his rope. Now let’s hang his political future with it.

I hope the kids will have the strength and resources to build crowds of followers who jeer Rubio wherever he goes. 

By refusing to take weapons out of the hands of murderers, Rubio has become a knowing party to the murders they have committed. He ought to be greeted, wherever he appears in public, with a two word chant: Rubio, murderer!

Say it aloud. Get used to it. Repeat it. Teach it to others. Rubio, murderer! Rubio, murderer! Rubio, murderer!

Then let the chant spread to any of top ten recipients of NRA money when he or she seeks re-election. You can see the names of the current top recipients, and the obscene amounts of money the NRA has given them to support the murder of children in schools, here.

You needn’t go after everyone at once. Start with those in whose states gun murders with rapid fire weapons or armor-piercing bullets have been committed, plus a few of the other top dollar recipients. Pick them off politically. Then go on to the next few. After a while, many of the others will get the idea and either quit supporting the murder of children,  or quit running for public office.

If it's the latter, good riddance to these vultures.

Kids, you’re off to a great start. If I may make a polite suggestion, please don’t be quit so polite. And don’t be put off by politicians who say they’ll “think about it,” and who hand you the hypocritical lie that their thoughts and feelings and prayers are with you. If they had any more humanity than a pit viper, their thoughts and feelings would move them to ban assault weapons.

Either they support banning rapid fire weapons or they don’t. Ask them which of the two it is. Demand an answer.

And one more thing.My hat is off to the kids of America for having the guts and the gumption my own generation seems to have lost. 

P.S. Just as I was about to post this, I noticed a story in the New York Times that indicates that Wayne LaPierre, head of the National Rifle Association, has begun trying to work up his membership into a mouth-frothing frenzy. “History proves it. Every time in every nation in which this political disease rises to power, its citizens are repressed, their freedoms are destroyed and their firearms are banned and confiscated,” he said. 

Yeah, Wayne. Like, umm, Australia. And England. And France. And the rest of the civilized world.

LaPierre blamed the problem on "socialists" trying to "politicize" the deaths of the last 17 victims of somebody with a semi-automatic weapon. So that's what he thinks of the 14, and 15, and 16, and 17-year-olds who went through the shattering experience of being fired upon by a gunman. Pay no attention, folks, they're nothing but a bunch of socialists.

Hey, hey, NRA

How many kids did you kill today?

Where, where is Wayne LaPierre

He belongs in the electric chair.

Here's something for gun owners to hate about NSA evesdropping. But hey, hey! Listen up! Don’t feel too smug if you’re a liberal.

They may just be looking for terrorists with bombs, but they can’t help but sweep up nuts with guns. Or just plain gun owners everywhere.

I’m talking about the National Security Agency's electronic vacuum cleaner, the one that reaches deep into the crevices of the Internet and the telephone companies and sweeps up anything lying there, sleeping there, crawling through, or flying around like a crazed bat.

Are they making a list

and checking it twice?

If you paid your dues to a gun club over the Internet, or by check, or by credit or debit card, they’ve got you, Dude.

If you receive notifications via e-mail of when the gun club meets, or when it holds it competitive matches, they’ve got you, Dude. Ditto if you just go to the club’s website and check things out there.

If you’ve been corresponding with other gun owners, they know about it, Dude.

If you went window shopping on the Internet for a really mean mother of an automatic rifle, woo hoo! They see you!

If you phoned your buddy to come out at night with you and go shoot homeless people from the car for sport because deer aren’t in season, they know about it, Dude. And they're coming for you real soon.

Left six, right 12,

left past 12 to 23

Yeah, I’m talking to you, with the gun safe and the six shotguns locked in the closet. They know when you are sleeping. They know when you’re awake. They probably also know exactly where your gun safe is. And what the combination is.

If you correspond with a dude who corresponds with other dudes about guns, they know you correspond with him. And that he corresponds with them.

If you sent someone an e-mail saying, “They may have tanks and missiles, but I’m going to take a few of them out with my AR15 and my 100 round clip if they come for my guns,” they know about it.

And when they come for your guns they’ll have you by the short hairs of your cell phone, your computer, your I-Phone, and for that matter, your pet poodle. (Remember when you bought a GPS tracking device for your dog, so that if he ever got lost or ran away, you could find him? Now they can find him, too.)

If you like to save money by reloading ammo, they know about you, and where you bought the gunpowder, and how much you bought, and what you paid for it. Not to mention that truckload of nitrate-based fertilizer you’re thinking of buying. Yup, they can probably hear you thinking, too.

Your second amendment’s useless

Without my fourth ammendment

See, you gun fanatics were so crazed about defending the Second Amendment against all interpretations except the most absolutist one possible, you forgot to do the same for the Fourth Amendment, which states:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized…”

Now, the Fourth was written before people wrote and stored records on computers and tablets instead writing things on “papers.” By the definition of the founders, your computer and tablet and cell phone are “papers” and They have no right to access this stuff not even from cyberspace.

Besides, electronic devices are “effects,” which are also presumably protected. Meanwhile, the government is crawling through your computer, tablet and cell phone like maggots on rotten meat without any “oath of affirmation” that describes the place to be searched and the persons and things to be seized.

When you lose the Fourth, you also lose the Second, dude. Big Brother is watching you. And he doesn’t need to see any gun registrations to find you and your piece and your ammo. He doesn’t even need to send in a drone to shoot pictures through your window. Big Brother analyzes the patterns of your purchases and associations, and he knows.

Wipe that smug smile off

your supercilious puss

P.S. Everybody else needn’t feel particularly smug, either. If you’re playing with yourself while watching porn on the Internet, they know about it. And they know whether you prefer girls, boys, groups, little kids, or nasty ladies wearing vinyl bustiers and snapping rawhide whips.

If you gamble, they’ve got your winnings and losses. If you’re planning to demonstrate with One-Legged Grandmas for Peace, they know preciselty where to meet you with tear gas and high pressure fire hoses. If you’re having an affair, both of you should know that Big Brother really is watching, listening and analyzing for “patterns.”

But the clearest pattern that emerges is the pattern of an eroding Bill of Rights.

These two kooks are each holding a violent and lethal weapon, capable of mowing down school children and teachers. (Just ask Baltimore school officials)

Look, I’m about as in favor of gun control as anybody can get. I think there are too many nuts supporting the free flow of weapons intended to kill – and often used that way against innocent people, by accident or deliberately.

But sometimes I worry more about the nuts on my own team that I do about the people armed to the teeth because they expect imminent invasion by The Forces Of Evil.

A case in point: In Baltimore, school officials expelled a seven year old kid because he had a breakfast pastry. Not only that, but he had chewed it into the shape of a gun!

Well, sort of a gun. Evidently he was trying to chew it into a mountain, but his toothy pastry sculpture skills aren’t quite up to Leonardo da Vinci. Or even Lenny the sculpture chewer. You can’t make this stuff up.

I mean, holy crap! Is that terrifying or not? Remember, inside these pastries is a tasty goo. It might be or cherry, or apple, or strawberroo. Uh, I mean strawberry. By pointing a breakfast pastry at, say, a teacher and repeating the words “bang bang” you might blow a hole the size of a strawberry through her heart with the sticky jam.

The reason I believe the NRA exhortation to stop banning guns and just arrest the nuts is crazy is, the nuts are so plentiful we’d have to arrest every third American. Most especially everybody running our nation’s school systems. In the Mount Carmel Area School District of Northumberland, PA,  they’ve even expelled a sweet little girl for "terrorism" when she talked about shooting herself and a classmate with bubbles from a pink “bubble gun.” 

A royal razz to officials of the Park Elementary School in Baltimore, who now seem to have reduced the charges against their seven-year-old pastry-chewing terrorist to "using food to make an inappropriate gesture." A grave juvenile crime if ever there was one.

And a double royal razz to school officials in the Mount Carmel Area School District in Pennsylvania. They're evidently so terrified by bubbles, they not only socked a girl who’s nearly a baby with a violence charge that can go on her lifetime record – and threatened her with prison (speak of terrorism!) – but also, once their bullying of a little child was disclosed, they hid like cowards behind the skirts of their own version of an official secrets act by declaring they are not permitted to discuss “disciplinary actions.”

Photograph by Bruce Silverman, circa 1970-something.

Five gun, religious and political conspiracy theories that the far right wing needs to worry about right now

1. They’re not really coming for your guns. It’s worse. They’re coming for your baseball bats and kitchen knives. The whole gun thing is just a ruse to throw you off guard. While you’re down in the shelter or safe room with your AR15 and your Glock loaded (and not locked), the bad guys will be breaking into your kitchen and making off with anything that has either a blade or a point (yes, that includes corkscrews and apple corers), and then taking off with all the baseball bats from the kids’ rooms. Now pay close attention, because this gets complicated: 

The knife-and-bat lobby has been fighting for attention so they can expand their knife and bat sales.  To gain a bigger share of bad publicity (so that they can rally their troops like the unpopular NRA does), they’re trying to make it look like more people are getting killed by knives and baseball bats than by guns, a total falsehood. 

But a bunch of knife grabbers and bat snatchers also want the focus on guns so they can go about their dirty work. The big scandal is that secret organizations like the NBBA (National Baseball Bat Association) and AFSK (Americans For Sharp Knives) are bribing lawmakers to confuse the press. So if you’re confused, you’re not alone. And if they’ve already got your baseball bat, grab a butterfly net.

2. Donald Trump has a secret reason for insisting that Barack Obama is a Kenyan Muslim extremist from Indonesia whose secret agents  infiltrated a Honolulu birth records office. 

Like all conspiracies, Trump’s angry declarations about Obama are a plot to keep you from knowing the truth. Once you wonder why Trump won’t stop, it won’t take you long to figure out that Donald Trump is spreading these rumors because he’s actually a half-Latvian Russian Communist secret agent who’s trying to throw you off the trail, so he can build extra-tall buildings to serve as targets for future Al Qaeda attacks. 

Trump is hiding something under his comb-over and loyal citizens ought to demand that Trump show us what it is. I mean, is it really just a bald spot, or is it actually the secret takeover plans written on scalp-colored parchment?

3.  The Democrats are going to use a platinum coin ruse to raise the debt ceiling. Truth is, they simply can’t use a single trillion dollar platinum coin to extend the debt limit because that coin is lost. Like the doofy Susan B. Anthony dollar, which is so close to the size of a quarter that it confuses the hell out of everybody, the trillion dollar coin was about the size of a one Euro coin. Some mixed up Treasury official, while on vacation, accidentally deposited the coin in a gumball machine in Paris. By the time he discovered his mistake it was too late.  Now nobody knows what happened to it and any day there could be a run on French chewing gum. (Hint: buy French bubblegum stock.) 

4. Secularists are gloating about The War On Christmas. Sorry to be tardy with this one, but I was sleeping in over the holidays. Actually, there is no war on Christmas because the war is over. Capitalism won. Here's what happened:

Unhampered by an unregulated market, gaudy Christmas displays went up earlier every year. In New York, for example, they began before Thanksgiving last year. In 2013, a secret  plot by unregulated capitalist merchants calls for commercializing Christmas at the end of October, combining it with Halloween for a big celebration called Hollowmass Weeny. 

Yes, Santa will still be invited, but he has to wear an Ayatollah Khomeni mask and a black turban with his red suit. Secularists will be reduced to holding demonstrations during which they will chant, “Death to Midnight Sales!”

5. They’re going to outlaw the teaching of intelligent design.  Actually, it’s a lot worse than that. They’re going to combine the teaching of intelligent design with mandatory classes on interior design, graphic design, industrial design and clothing design – with a concentration in lingerie design. 

This is part of their plan to force you to worship Giselle Bundchen, Heidi Klum, and Alessandria Ambrosio, and they will not stop until you pray to them every night. 

“They,” in case you haven’t already figured it out, is the Socialist Feminist Secularist Goddess Worship Movement. Be afraid, be very afraid – especially if you shop in Victoria’s Secret.

It's time to repeal the Second Amendment. That's right. Repeal it.

It’s time to end all the pussyfooting around gun “rights.”  What we're really talking about is murder weapon rights, and they ought to be taken away.

The Roberts Supreme Court mis-read the Second Amendment, which makes it as plain as a bullet between the eyes that the purpose of the amendment was to support a “well regulated militia.”

It’s the only item in the Bill of Rights that included the founding fathers’ reasoning for it, so there would be no mistake of the law's intent. And I quote:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. (Italics my    own.)

 At the peril of sounding repetitious, nowhere did the authors of the Bill of Rights feel it necessary to explain the First Amendment. Or the Third. Or the Fourth or the Fifth. They only spelled out the reasoning behind the Second.

The purpose of the Second Amendment was only to enable citizens to band together in a well-regulated organization for mutual defense. We still have those organizations today. They're  called your state's National Guard. I encourage every gun-lover to enlist, and to indulge their perverse love of murder weapons that way.

No more kowtowing

Sadly, legislators and opinion makers in this country have gone off the deep end by kowtowing to gun “enthusiasts.”

And as we’ve seen, an “enthusiast” will enthusiastically blow you to kingdom come, kill a pregnant mother, steal his own mother’s guns and murder her, bludgeon his own grandmother, or blast away a schoolroom full of kids. And none of that has anything to do with a well regulated militia or freedom from oppression.

When the current Supreme Court misread or deliberately misinterpreted the Second Amendment, it in effect handed a license to every shunned lover, aggrieved employee, angry loser, nut job, road-raged driver, sexual pervert and nincompoop in the nation to go murder as many people as they could.

It’s time sane citizens stopped 

negotiating with themselves

Apologetically mumbling, “Well, we don’t want to interfere with hunters,” or, “we only want to eliminate high-capacity magazines,” is a perfect example of people opposed to gun murder negotiating with themselves.

We need to repeal the Second Amendment, and then, state-by-state, or better yet locality-by-locality, allow certain people such as hunters and those under direct threat of violence, (backed by a court order of protection) to obtain a gun license. 

Like a driver’s license, a gun license should have an expiration date. Moreover a license to bear arms outside of a legitimate well regulated militia should be only for the purpose specified in the license, whether that purpose is licensed hunting, target shooting on a licensed gun range, or self-protection against a substantiated threat of violence. 

Moreover, no high capacity ammunition magazine ownership should be permitted, except for members of a legitimate armed force such as the U.S. Army National Guard in the course of performing their official duties.

Throw gun-owning violators

in the slammer

Next, the Federal government, along with many state and local governments, should go after gun-owners who aren’t licensed, or whose guns are unregistered, and clap the bastards in prison. For a good long time.

You say that legislation to do any of this doesn’t stand a chance? Not today maybe. But nobody has been pushing for this kind of law – or legislating, or educating, or advertising on behalf of it. 

This won’t be an easy campaign, and it won't be a quick campaign. But it can eventually prevail, and the time to start is now. The Second Amendment can be repealed  – and it should be repealed.

Don’t blame video games

From what I’ve seen, some of those violent video games on the market are horrid. But they’re available any place there’s an Internet, while only in the United States and other Third World nations with lax gun laws is there an epidemic of gun deaths. And yes, given our lax attitude toward lethal weaponry and lethal people owning that weaponry, I'm listing the United States as a Third World nation.

In advanced western nations with strong gun laws, gun violence rarely occurs. If  hardly anybody has a gun, shoot-em-up video games aren't a national problem. They're merely obnoxious artifacts, like filthy public bathrooms, or gun shows.

Don’t blame the mental health situation

We do a lousy job of helping people with mental health problems in this country. Inevitably, the problem is that the same Republican legislators who whine about gun rights vanish when it comes to financing adequate mental health problems, and legislating insurance coverage for mental health.

We need to do something about finding better medical care for the mentally ill in this country, but that’s a separate issue from getting guns off our streets, our schools, our shopping centers and our movie theaters – and out of hotel and convention hall “gun shows.”

Knowing whether certain kinds of individuals are mentally unstable people with a tendency to violence is at best subject to matters of opinion. Knowing whether someone has a gun or doesn't have a gun is a much simpler proposition to judge.

The cure for gun deaths

The only reliable antidote to a bad guy with a gun is not a "good guy with a gun". The cure for our outrageous rate of gun murders is making sure nobody has a gun, except for a few qualified individuals.

No guns. No gun murders. You can't shoot somebody by pointing your index finger and saying "bang." It's that simple.

A modest proposal to help protect our school kids, and reduce the budget imbalance, with the patriotic help of America’s kindly gun owners.

Good for Wayne LaPierre, the head honcho of the National Rifle Association!

After a godawful silence concerning the Sandy Hook gun massacre of innocent children and their teachers by a gun maniac (who killed his own mother with her licensed guns), although before the massacre of firemen by yet another unhinged nut in upstate New York, LaPierre finally had something to say that we can wrap our minds around – not to mention our teeth.

We should have more guns in schools, he said. In fact, he insisted, we should have an armed guard at every school. He made no estimate that I’m aware of the cost of doing this, although others estimate that it would be a bare minimum of $5,500,000,000 (that’s five billion, five hundred million dollars) a year.

Who’s supposed to pay for it? Why, you and me, of course.

“Waiter! This is not my check!

Please send it over to Mr. LaPierre's table.”

But why should any taxpayer who doesn’t want to own a gun, or who is horrified by the proliferation of guns, pay for protection against the misuse of an arsenal of guns owned by his cranky neighbor with the slightly off-kilter son, the one who lives in the attic and really hasn’t held a steady job since he got fired from a fast food joint for general insubordination and surliness?

Hold that thought while I mention this:

So, uh, I own the home I live in. And whaddya know – surprise, surprise! – I pay taxes on it.

It’s called a property tax because

governments can tax your property

Not only do I pay annual real estate taxes. If I sell my home at a profit  I’ll have to pay capital gains taxes. People complain about taxes on their homes, of course. Doesn’t matter. There’s an old principle of law that says, “If you own property, you owe the government.” Goes back to the founding of the Republic in this country. And to the English Crown under the legal system on which our legal system is based.

In fact, some states, like Connecticut, have a general property tax. You pay tax not only on the assessed value of your home, but also on your car. And of your snowmobile or your horse if you happen to own any of those, as some Connecticut citizens do. [Connecticut taxation statutes, chapter 203 - Sec. 12-71)]

Which brings me back around to, uh, guns. And to bullets. And to high capacity magazines. They’re personal property. And they’re personal property designed to kill people, and sometimes to kill large numbers of people in a very short amount of time, which they are doing with increasing regularity.

Which means any government in whose jurisdiction you reside, or in whose jurisdiction you keep your weapon, has the right to tax you even if you don’t personally ever shoot your weapon – just as you might not ride your snowmobile or your horse.

Introducing the Guns, Bullets,

and High Capacity Magazine Tax

Could these be budget balancers?

So why not charge gun and ammunition owners with a federal, and state, and local “Guns, Bullets, and High Capacity Magazine Ownership Tax?” That would put the cost of all those armed guards in schools right where it belongs – in the tax bills of those who are the source of the problem.

Hey, I cross a bridge, I pay a toll. I go through a tunnel, I pay a toll. I use the Pennsylvania Turnpike or the Garden State Parkway, or the New York State Thruway, I pay a toll. It’s a user tax.

What’s that? You say you never use your weapon? Listen, even if you keep it locked in a safe and only want it to ward off a violent home invasion, or you hang your automatic rifle on the wall in your den as a decoration, you’re using it for that purpose. So you’re a gun user. If you live in Connecticut, you can't escape the tax on your horse and snowmobile by demonstrating you never ride either the vehicle or the animal. If you own it, that's enough. Pay up, dude.

Or don’t pay and go to the pokey

How would we enforce a guns, bullets, and high capacity magazine tax? The same way we enforce income and other taxes. Willful failure to pay taxes – say, by not registering and reporting your guns, bullets and high capacity magazines – is a felony, punishable by fine and imprisonment.

With other taxes, we don’t catch every tax cheat, but we catch and punish enough of them to keep most citizens honest. If we can have honest business owners, doctors, and ribbon clerks, there’s no reason we can’t have honest gun, bullet and high capacity magazine owners.

Ultimately, the only thing that will reduce the amount of gun-and-bullet violence in this country is to get rid of, or largely get rid of the guns and bullets. But until we can have that, let’s at least make the people who manufacture, distribute, sell, keep, and play with lethal weapons pay to keep all the rest of us safe from their....oh, call it a pastime.

It’s perfectly legal. And it will lay the cost of protecting our kids – with a plan the representatives of the gun owners themselves are calling for – right at the feet of the cost creators.

Cross-posted at the No More Mister Nice Blog

Obama makes a U-turn on Social Security while he fudges on gun control. A slap in the face to every senior citizen and parent of young children who voted for him.

It didn’t take long for Barack Obama to revert to character – the waffling, bargain-with-himself, give-in-to-Republicans, screw-his-own-base equivocator that he was during his first term.

The irony is, hanging tough with Republicans had started to work. They were in a panic. They agreed to at least some revenue enhancements. They were freaked out. They were caving in.

Whereupon the President said, in effect, “nevermind.”

"Chainsaw Barack" takes

an axe to Social Security.

Take Social Security. The president has agreed to take a chainsaw to the incomes of older Americans by offering to give the Republicans something called “Chained CPI.” You can find an explanation for it here, if you want it.

But what it boils down to is, it reduces the maximum Social Security by a small percentage one year, and then reduces that percentage by a small percentage the next year, and so on. All the while, medical costs will keep rising. So in the end, maximum benefits will be half of what they are today, and the very first to suffer will be the oldest and weakest of Social Security recipients.

But that will free up money to hand over to the very-well-off in the form of fewer tax cuts. Money that has already been earmarked for Social Security.

Shame on you, Mr. Obama. Shame!

They're shooting little kids in school?

Hey, let's form a committee!

Then there’s the matter of gun control. The nation is ready to rise up and slap significant controls tomorrow morning on an industry that makes a buck by selling rapid fire assault weapons that are used in this country mainly to murder people on colleger campuses, movie theaters, shopping malls, and kindergarten classes.

And what has the President proposed?

He has organized a “panel” to study the matter and make proposals for him to consider. In other words, he has formed a committee, the classic ploy of politicians who want to run out the clock. 

He’s asked for “proposals” by January. But by January, the worst of the shock will be over. The movement to take assault weapons off the streets will have lost some of its momentum. And the Republican supporters of the NRA will have likely gotten their watered down budget and tax bill that will slowly strangle seniors to make live cushier for people who make up to $999,999.99 a year.

Double shame, Mr. Obama. Double shame!

Oh, and while I've got your attention, you might want to read this letter I received from Firedog Lake and act accordingly:

Call the House and Senate: "Cut Benefits and I won't support you"

Dear Crank,

President Obama and Speaker Boehner may be close to reaching a deal to avert the "fiscal cliff" - and the details are not good.

The president is reportedly willing to cut Social Security benefits for current and future retirees by reducing the cost of living adjustment (COLA) and make $400 billion in unspecified cuts to Medicare in exchange for a modest increase in tax rates on the wealthy, $50 billion in infrastructure spending and an extension of unemployment benefits.¹

Calculating COLA payments with a "Chained-CPI" would essentially reduce seniors income over time as their medical costs skyrocket.²We must let our elected officials know that even benefit cuts hidden behind statistical manipulations like the Chained-CPI are unacceptable and that we will not support anyone who facilitates cuts to Social Security, Medicare of Medicaid.

Can you please call your representatives in the House and Senate and let them know Chained-CPIU is unacceptable and that you have pledged not to support anyone who facilitates cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Meicaid benefits?

Predictably, Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi have already started falling in line behind this awful proposal.³ But recent polls indicate 60% of Americans oppose the Chained-CPI benefit cut, and even the AARP has come out strongly against it.⁴

That's because most people understand that, at a time when 15.1% of seniors are living in poverty, cutting Social Security benefits — which represent the primary source of income for many retirees — would only increase their suffering. If anything, our nation's strongest anti-poverty program needs to be expanded, not contracted. The reality is that seniors have a larger share of income devoted to medical expenses, and therefore are subject to higher rates of inflation than the general population.⁵

By using a chained CPI, Social Security benefits will become increasingly insufficient as an individual ages⁶ — forcing severe austerity upon retirees as 401ks, pensions and home equity continue to dry up.Using this method is both cruel and manipulative and does little to strengthen Social Security or address the so-called deficit crisis.

Obama and Boehner need to hear our opposition to this now while they are still negotiating the bargain, and our representatives in the House and Senate must know that if they vote for any plan that include benefit cuts they will forfeit our support.

Call your representative in the House and Senate and let them know you have pledged not to support anyone who facilitates cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits.

Thanks for your support.

In solidarity,

Brian Sonenstein
Campaign Director,
Firedoglake.com

Sources:
1. Obama’s Latest Fiscal Slope Offer: I’m Missing the Part Where Republicans Give Up Something, David Dayen, FDL News, 12/18/12.
2. Obama Considering Chained CPI Deal, and Why That’s a Bad Idea , Dean Baker, MyFDL, 12/17/12.
3. Though Liberals Carp at Chained CPI, Pelosi Says She Could Live With It, David Dayen, FDL News, 12/18/12.
4. Americans Overwhelmingly Oppose Obama’s Plan to Cut Social Security, Jon Walker, FDL Action, 12/18/12.
5. More on Chained CPI, the Benefit Cut for Social Security on the Table in Fiscal Slope Discussions, David Dayen, FDL News, 12/18/12.
6. Annual Cut in Social Security Benefits, Chief Actuary, Social Security Administration, June 2011.

Gun “rights” advocate tells point-blank lies to panic his constituents. The loser? United States security. Is this subversive?

The gun lobbies really ought to be more careful whom they put on their mailing lists. It would lessen the likelihood that responsible citizens like me would call them out.

Case in point: I very recently received an e-mail from Dudley Brown, Executive Director of the National Association for Gun Rights. That's his picture at right.

Gun-crazy organzation unwittingly

sends the crank an e-letter

“Dear NAGR supporter,” Dudley Brown’s e-letter began.

Me an NAGR supporter? If he believed that, he had to be smoking something highly illegal. But I read on.

“Please forgive my bluntness, but the United States Government thinks you’re a terrorist,” he informed me.

Well, now I knew he was pulling my chain. But I figured I’d read along with the gag.

Dudley’s next statement was, “And now they’re trying to pass a bill allowing gun-grabbing Attorney General Eric Holder to revoke all your Second Amendment rights at will if he has ‘a reasonable belief’ you could pose a threat.’”

Personally, I think that if the AG really did had a reasonable belief that I’m a threat, he ought to make sure I don’t have a gun. Hey, you wouldn’t want me to shoot up a subway car full of innocent commuters, or blow away anybody’s kids at some high school. So what’s Dudley complaining about?

Goons, gun owners and

“little old church ladies”

Dudley goes on to tell me that the “goons” at the Department of Homeland Security has targeted “gun owners, honorably discharged veterans and little old church ladies as threats to the security and stability of the United States of America.”

Really? Well, not only that, says Dudley, but…

“Even a gesture as simple as placing a pro-gun bumper sticker on your car, or supporting a pro-gun candidate makes you a potential “domestic terrorist” in the eyes of the thugs running our government.”

Holy cow! Wow! Yeow! That really does sound scary. It’s even scarier than that when Dudley declares, “and to add insult to injury, Barack Obama’s Surveillance Czar Janet Napolitano sees no difference between law-abiding gun owners like you and violent racists who murder and vandalize.”

What in the world is

Dudley talking about?

That’s absolutely nightmare-making—all those loaded words like “murder” and “violent racists” until you find out what the hell it is that Dudley is talking about:

“I’m talking about H.R. 2159,the shockingly misnamed ’Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2009.’” Dudley’s walk on the wild side of the Big Lie even applies to Republicans like Peter King who generally supports a pretty wide open interpretation of the Second Amendment.

“These anti-gun Republicans-in-Name-Only want to disarm you because they fear your pro-liberty views,” says Dudley, and in addition…

“In fact, your love of freedom frightens them so much that they’re now going to great lengths to label you a domestic terrorist.”

Boy, that had me so scared that I went and looked up the actual bill, “The Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2009.”

The truth about HR 2159

And guess what?

Not a word in the bill about bumper stickers, little old ladies, or honorably discharged veterans. It’s all about people who are “known (or appropriately suspected) to be or have been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism, or providing material support thereof, and the Attorney General has a reasonable belief that the prospective transferee may use a firearm in connection with terrorism.”

It also applies to people who “may use explosives in connection with terrorism.”

Nowhere does the bill single out you, me, the little old lady next door or war vets—unless you happen to be planning to blow up an airplane full of innocent passengers, or a government building full of American citizens, or you happen to be planning to shoot up a U.S. Army base. Acts of terrorism or treason, all.

Telling lies for fun

(and your money)

So either Dudley is lying through his teeth to freak out people who simply happen to own guns so they’ll send him money, or he has a constituency of traitors and enemy agents—which of course would imply his National Association for Gun Rights is a subversive organization.

Problem is, if Dudley and the National Association for Gun Rights get their way, it’ll be all that much easier for a terrorist to launch the next 9/11 or Oklahoma City. Or simply to walk into a crowded room full of innocent people somewhere and open fire with his personal AK47, bought and paid for at some gun show somewhere.

Can any patriotic citizen seriously be for that?

Blow away the neighborhood for Christmas (and bayonet a few babies.) This handsome AK47 and Bayonet Set is yours free from Frontsight.com

If you scroll down a smidge, or go here, you’ll find a post discussing Dr. Ignatius Piazza, a chiropractor turned, umm, weapons enabler who recently offered me a handgun.

Evidently anxious for me to take a course at his reportedly resort-like school, he recently sent me an e-mail offering the AK47-with-bayonet-and-scabbard-set that you see above, to people who would sign up fast.

He's now using the tragic Fort Hood shootings to claim he’s mad as hell that our soldiers aren’t all armed on base. (I know from personal experience that as far back as 1962, soldiers on American bases had to turn in and lock up their weapons when finished with them on training exercises. I wouldn’t be surprised if that wise custom goes back at least as far as WWI. Not a bad idea idea, considering what might have grown out of some of the fistfights that occurred in the barracks.)

But never mind all that. If the Swiss government can arm its citizens (all of whom are military reservists) Dr. Piazza will arm you, too, without the onerous requirement that, like the Swiss, you join your Army Reserve or state national guard and face a call up to, oh, I dunno, Afghanistan or Iraq, maybe.

As for the AK47, it’s for your self-defense, says the good chiropractor. Defense against what? If a burglar sticks his head in through your window, one good hard whack with a frying pan ought to take care of it, without busting up the window panes and fillings the walls full of holes. And what’s the bayonet for?

On his website, Dr. Piazza shows a film in which a Swiss gun owner seems to imply we need to ward off invading Nazi forces.

Uh, doc? What invading Nazi forces? And come to think of it, hasn't Switzerland been neutral — and sent its troops nowhere, nowhere, nowhere — during WWI, WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan?

But that AK47 is a great toy for shooting up the neighborhood, blowing away the bickering couple down the block that's so annoying, and bayoneting their kids. Maybe their barking dog, too.

This guy is the best argument for gun control I’ve ever come across.