Planned Parenthood Feeling the Bern

When Rachel Maddow asked Bernie Sanders how he felt about Planned Parenthood endorsing Hillary Clinton he responded:



“So, I have friends and supporters in the Human Rights Fund and Planned Parenthood. But, you know what? Hillary Clinton has been around there for a very, very long time. Some of these groups are, in fact, part of the establishment.”
--Bernie Sanders on Planned Parenthood


Of course, Planned Parenthood is a lightning rod for the ultra right, so no progressive wants to become bedfellows with those who hate Planned Parenthood. The enemy of your enemy is your friend, or something. 

But when Planned Parenthood, its CEO or it's board of directors enters the political fray with an endorsement, when it says it would prefer to see Hillary Clinton President, then it has taken the same step the Catholic Church takes when it gets involved in secular policy disputes, when it entertains a social agenda.  The Church can denounce abortion from a theological point of view, but when it endorses a candidate who opposes abortion, it opens itself to criticism as another other political actor can expect. Likewise, Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood is a wonderful organization which has done good works for decades, which has helped prevent unwanted pregnancies and unwanted children from entering an unwelcoming world. Some authors, namely those of Freakeconmics have gone so far to suggest the fall in the murder rate coincides with the legalization of abortion, suggesting preventing unwanted children from growing up in a world which rejects them was a stabilizing social instrument. 

I'm not sure I buy this, but it's an interesting idea.

The fact is, if Planned Parenthood never did another abortion, it would be abandoning only a small fraction of what it does every day--and it would still prevent millions of unwanted pregnancies every year. It continues to do abortions despite the hate. No corporate board would ever tolerate a practice which contributes so little to profit and which creates such problems for the organization. But Planned Parenthood is not about the money. There are precious few organizations in the world about which you can say that. 

Whenever I see Ceclile. Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood testify, I cannot help but think about  "House of Cards" and Claire Underwood, who found her non governmental organization could swing political power and presented with that power, she wielded it. 

I love Planned Parenthood, but when it goes all political, it reaps what it sows.

Making of a Murderer

Lawyers Dean Strang and Jerry Buting

My mother loved murder mysteries. She read one a day. Just plowed through Agatha Chrisite and Perry Mason.  She usually guessed who the murderer was 1/3 of the way through.

Having watched half of "The Making of a Murderer" I cannot guess who killed Teresa Halbach. Steve Avery was accused, but it is far from clear who the murderer is.

But as one of his lawyers said:

"In my view, the people who claim certainty about his guilt are wrong to claim certainty, and the people who claim certainty about his innocence are wrong to claim certainty — and they’re missing the point, which is, what do we do when we’re left with uncertainty? "



 What do we do,  when we're left with uncertainty?  If Steven Avery is a homicidal maniac, then releasing him will almost certainly mean he'll kill again. 

On the other hand, the behavior of the Manitowoc, Wisconsin police was so appalling it is difficult to believe anyone would have voted for conviction. If nothing else, watching them manipulate the simple minded cousin of Steve Avery into saying he participated in a rape and murder was so horrific it is hard to believe any evidence they produced.  I never really believed police could coerce a confession until I saw the episodes shown here. Now, it is completely understandable.  At one point, the nephew confesses and then asks when he can go home because he has homework to finish. 

Even the discovery of the murder victim's car on Steve Avery's  junk yard lot, positioned so it was found within 20 minutes of the search is so incredible, you have to ask: Who would believe this? The guy owns a lot with a thousand cars and he kills a woman and places her car right near the road where it would be found within 20 minutes? And he has a car crusher which could have obliterated it. And inside, the police find a smear of his blood! And, lo and behold. The police had a vile of his blood back at the station.

It makes you think maybe the jury in the O.J. Simpson was not so crazy to simply disbelieve the evidence provided by the police. 

The most uplifting thing about this series is the portrait of the defense lawyers, who are both smart and ethical, something I don't often find myself saying about lawyers. 

One thing they focus on is patterns. In most murders, the lawyers tell you,  it is somebody close to the victim, an enraged spouse, a boyfriend, co worker, especially if they have access to guns or other murder weapons.  I wouldn't have thought that. Apparently, neither did the Manitowoc police. 

You figure, in the case of a single woman, it would be some random, disturbed person who did not know her as a person, someone like the guy in Searching for Mr. Goodbar who does not know his victim beyond a one night stand and he can see her not as a human being but as a representative or a "type."

But the victim here was getting phone calls from someone who a coworker offered to try to get off her back.  There may have been someone stalking her.

Clearly, anyone who watches "Luther" or any number of British police procedurals would believe most women are killed by Hannibal the Cannibal types. If you watch "The Wire" you'd think most women are killed because of their connection to the drug trade and the men with guns who inhabit it. 

Murder is hard to comprehend, in real life. As a conflict resolver, you have to ask: Why not simply walk away?  But the men who murder, and it is usually men, have something else going on, rage or psychopathology or simple drunkenness.

The window into the life of people who live in lower socioeconomic stratum is another eye opener.  In my new practice among the blue collar folks of small New England towns, I see some of the problems you can see on screen here, but listening to the Avery family is a revelation. 

There is probably a clue here about  where our politics come from, about  how and from whom a Sarah Palin can find support. 

Alan Greenspan and the Guru Class: What We Can Learn from The Big Short

Required reading for all citizens should be the letter to the editor of the New York Times by Michael Burry, April 3, 2000. 


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/opinion/04burry.html?_r=0

Dr. Burry is depicted in the movie version of The Big Short and he saw the impending collapse of the mortgage backed security market which did not just ripple through the rest of the American economy but hit it like a tsunami and only by extraordinary measures did we avoid roaring off the cliff into the next Great Depression. 

Dr. Burry

Burry begins by quoting Alan Greenspan about the crisis. You remember Mr. Greenspan, that guru whose every opaque uttering, each sounding more recondite and insightful than the last, could send markets soaring or plunging as if God had spoken from the mountain top. 

There are way too many people who think we can hear God's voice from a mountain top coming through the vocal cords of a man.  This is true not just for economics but for religion, but religion is a topic for another time.  Macro economists like Mr. Greenspan have been given oracle status and each capitalizes on this irrational belief by demanding huge speaker's fees.

Mr. Greenspan testified:  "Everybody missed it: academia, the Federal Reserve, all regulators."  But, as Dr. Burry said, "That is not how I remember it."  Greenspan was, as he was so often, wrong while others saw what Greenspan missed. Dr.  Burry tried to tell anyone who would listen, and a few people did listen, shorted the market and, along with Dr. Burry,  made billions. 

What interests me is the how.  What Dr. Burry did is what we were all taught to do in medical school--he went to the bedside. 

One of the things professors of medicine did with interns, residents and medical students when they were presented a patient's case is they refused to accept the formulation of the folks below them on the chain, but they took the thundering herd with them to the bedside and examined the patient themselves, elicited a history from the patient themselves. Not every time, but frequently, the case as presented by the intern fell apart under the more expert questioning and examination by the professor.  

I certainly saw that in private practice, years later. Whatever the nurses, the medical students, even the emergency room doctor told me over the phone, I could be sure of only one thing--when I went to see the patient, I would find something different.

The most extreme case was the call from an ER doctor who said he had a patient in ketoacidosis and would I call in some orders for the patient so they could get treatment started. But I haven't examined the patient or even seen the patient, I objected. Oh, that's okay, he assured me. I refused. Then I got a call from the patient's primary care doctor. Why wasn't I calling in orders? Because I don't call in orders for a patient I've not personally seen.  I need to evaluate the patient myself. Well, said the indignant PCP, what next? Was I going to insist on being present in the laboratory to be sure the lab tech did the blood glucose correctly? 

As it turned out, when I arrived to examine the patient, she did not look at all like a patient in DKA, no Kussmal (rapid, deep) breathing, no signs of dehydration.  She in fact did not have DKA or diabetes at all, but hypercalcemia. Had I called in the orders, I would have given insulin to a patient with high blood calcium, which might have put her into hypoglycemic coma.

And that is what Dr. Burry did: He refused to accept the analysis from other people but examined the raw data himself. You can see him scrolling through the data on each home mortgage and seeing large numbers of debtors way behind on their payments.  Later, another group following the same hunch, visited mortgage delinquents in Florida and found strippers in go go bars who had mortgages on five homes, and they interviewed the men who made NINJA loans to these debtors--no income, no job application--you still get the loan. These bonehead frat boys were lending to the worst credit risks they could find because they made more money on sub prime loans.  They didn't care what happened to these borrowers or the banks; they were getting big commissions. 

All the while, Mr. Greenspan is eating lunch in fashionable restaurants in New York, blissfully unaware, having accepted the word of those lower down the chain, that everything is doing just fine in the mortgage backed security market. The regulators and the academics all said things were fine. 

It's not that Mr. Greenspan is stupid, just lazy; not that he is incapable of analysis, just that he does not do the really hard work of going to the bedside.

And that is the problem with the American style of management and analysis. You don't see the CEO, who makes 600 times what the average worker makes, actually walking the floor of the factory, looking at the individual mortgage holder, hanging out on the ward or in the Emergency Room to see what is happening there. They are too busy luxuriating in the board rooms, too far removed.

The Navy has a rule that went the ship is at sea, the captain cannot leave the bridge--he sleeps on a bed in a small alcove there and whenever a ship is picked up on radar, he is awakened.  When he is in port, he might be found below decks in the engine room, or elsewhere. This is hands on management. 

This is not Alan Greenspan. This is not what we have in the financial sector, far as I can see. This is not what we had a General Motors or even Volkswagon and it is surely nowhere to be seen in hospital or health care management. 

Joseph Heller came closest to depicting this sort of asinine management in Catch-22. Colonel Cathcart keeps raises the number of missions a crew must fly to finally qualify to be sent home. Eventually, the crews simply drop their bombs in the ocean and turn around and return back to base. The Colonel never flies with the crews to be sure they are actually effective. 

It's the great American way.

Downton: Who is Good Enough for Mary?

All right, all right, I admit it, after laughing at women for years who follow their soap operas as if these fictional stories were a part of their real worlds, I have been unable to give up my guilty pleasure of Downton Abbey. 

There is so much not to like: story lines which drag on and on and once resolved seem to have reached a conclusion from utter exhaustion rather than consummation--in particular the trials (multiple trials) of Anna and her husband, Bates. They just cannot catch a break. Both are finally cleared of all legal charges and set to live happily ever after in a warm, loving home, filled with children, but no. She has an incompetent cervix and keeps losing the pregnancies. This is fixable, but one wonders if Julian Fellowes will allow her to survive childbirth, to give birth to a normal child who does not get run over by a truck.

Then there is the stray comment from the Earl about his "indigestion." Whenever some one notices a physical symptom, even when it's the dog, ISIS, you know that is going to come back to a major event. The Earl, I fear, is headed for a major coronary. 

Why Fellowes chose the Earl, rather than Cora, one can only speculate. Cora has been the emotional, ethical center of decency in Downton from Day One. When she considers a fling with that weasel who winds up in his evening gown in her bedroom, only to be interdicted by the furious Earl, Cora has the mettle to face down the Earl saying, "If you have never let a flirtation get out of hand, then fine, go sleep in the other room!"  And of course, we know the Earl has stolen a kiss from a maid and felt so guilty about it, he fired her the next day, twit that he is.

But it's Mary, who we are focused on, and have always been because it is Mary who always remains unfinished, unattainable, unpredictable and aloof. 

We also know that nary an aristocrat has the capacity for love and appreciation of her real values. But Tom, the chauffeur does.

Tom is impossible, for two reasons: 1. He's a commoner. 2. He's her brother in law an the Earl might accept him marrying one daughter, but not two. Enough to cause a coronary, for sure.

But why do I care about Mary?  Really, I liked Sybil so much better. She had a feeling for the underdog and she managed her conflicting feelings for her class and her parents while following her inner star toward Tom.  Mary, on the other hand, is cruel to Edith and barely cognizant of her own child. 

And yet, there is a quality about her, a capacity to love. She loves Carson, and she knows on some level, she loves Tom. The one person she has ever actually missed in her life is Tom. 

The capacity to miss someone is the necessary, if not sufficient, condition to love. What Fellowes has done is really pretty nifty: He shows us what is going on in Mary before she realizes what is going on. Now, that is a neat trick.

If love is blind, well then, we all can be blind to love within ourselves. Scarlet O'Hara is blind to her own blooming love for Rhett Butler; Constance MacKenzie  does not see love coming; even Lady Chatterly cannot understand what she feels stirring inside her. 

This may be a gender difference. Men, typically, know full well when they feel that magnetic pull. Women, I would guess may not always.

It's Fellowes art that he can depict this difference. 

Understanding Cologne

Tahrir Square

"One of the hallmarks of revolutionary victory in Tahrir Square has always been rape and sexual harassment. Mobs of men routinely set upon women, isolating, stripping and groping. No one is ever arrested or held accountable, and elected officials shrug their shoulders and blame the victims."
--Wikipedia, Rape in Tahrir Square




Tonight, in New York City, the family gathered for a cocktail party. Both sons, with wives and two nephews, one from each side of the family .

Conversation drifted to the rapes and molestation of women New Year's eve in Cologne, Germany.

Immigrant men from Syria, Turkey and other Middle Eastern countries, some with refugee status, apparently molested German women, stole purses from some, and others were publicly raped. 

"What were they thinking?" I asked. "They know Merckel has gone out on a limb for them."


"It's Tahrir Square, all over again," said my older son.

"Oh, well, you know they were young men, and not thinking and besides there is such racism in Germany," said his  quasi wife,  EMC.  

"They have been treated like dirt for years. They're not feeling real grateful," said  my 20 something nephew from New Mexico, via Boston U and now living in New York. He  works for an international NGO and has been to Germany many times. 

EMC had visited  Berlin recently, to visit friends who were Asian and other varieties of non white and she said all her friends were eager to leave Germany because of racial hostility.

I expressed astonishment. I watch the PBS News Hour, read the New York Times and the New Yorker,  and had no idea about any of this.
"Oh, sure. They're treated worse than Mexicans in the US," my nephew said.

My older son knew all about this.  "Well, the Germans are all about rejecting racism, dealing with the guilt by being correct on this issue, but the racism never went away, not really.  It doesn't make the news because every public statement is scrubbed clean, but you see something else if you actually live there."

Certainly, you could see the official efforts to scrub the story clean, as local police, up the line to the office of the President tried to present the story as something less than outrageous:  the facts were vague; it wasn't clear how many women were actually groped; there may have been misunderstandings and exaggerations.

There may well be pervasive racism in Germany, among people who are not officials in the government.  But I'm not sure it is racism which resulted in the outcry against the behavior by Middle Eastern men  described in Cologne.

 If we decry Middle Eastern men It is bias, I understand, in that we are generalizing about a group based on an identification,  rather than on what we know about individuals. 

On the other hand, is it racist to say that men from a whole variety of countries in the Middle East, from Egypt, to Saudi Arabia to Syria to Iran to Turkey, share a view of women which is abhorrent to Westerners from Europe and the United States? Whether they are Sunni or Shia, Iraqi or Iranian, whether they are religious Muslims or secular, there is one strain which appears to run through all these cultures from Libya to Iran, and that is that women do not belong in public unless they are chaperoned by men, and if they are out alone, they ought to be taught a lesson by being raped. 

You can argue about whether it is fair or reasonable to extrapolate from the actions of a few men in Tahrir Square or in Cologne to all Middle Eastern Men. You can say there is nothing in Islam which condones the molestation of  unchaperoned women in public.  You can say that Egyptian authorities did not condone the rape of the Dutch journalist in Tahrir Square, that they did not condone the rape of the American journalist in the same place.  

But you can also ask: where the outrage against these acts expressed?  There was outrage from American and Dutch men visible enough, but where was the million man march supporting the women among Egyptian men? 

These, you may say are cultural differences, not racial, and I would agree. But we can still generalize from the specific to the general:  Middle Eastern men do not value the sanctity of women who wish to walk independently in the world.  Maybe not all Middle Eastern men believe unaccompanied women are little better than whores, but if enough Middle Eastern men believe this and if other tolerate this, then it is fair to generalize. Until Middle Eastern men put themselves publicly in front of this issue, then we can assume they are in the same position as white Southern Americans who did not march with Blacks in the civil rights movement. Unless you are publicly with us, we can assume you are against us. Qui tacit, constentit. 

And if you accept that proposition: Can we allow Middle Eastern men to immigrate to our societies  if they embrace rape and molestation as a means of disciplining women?

I am not saying we should forbid all Middle Eastern Men to seek refuge in Europe or the USA. I'm not calling for banning Muslim refugees because they are Muslim. 

 But I am saying any refugee and any immigrant to who is allowed in has to be explicitly instructed in the rules we play by and must understand if he violates certain really important rules, like those against rape and sexual molestation then he can expect to be swiftly deported back to from wherever he acquired those attitudes.

We may have to say, "Look we understand you may not condone rape, but we have reason to believe this may be a cultural value and if it is, well you better get over it or suffer the consequences."

Some will say this is like branding every pit bull a threat to the community when so many pit bulls are gentle and wonderful pets.  I would think there is a better analogy: If we see an orthodox Jew, wearing his yarmulke at a pig roast, we may not expect him to eat  the ribs, but we expect him to refrain from attacking the guests.

Obama In Omaha: Doldrums vs Hope

Okay, I admit it. Depression can tough. It's easy to be gloomy, on occasion, for any number of reasons. I am certainly there currently. But even in the depths of a dark month, Mr. Obama can rouse me to smile.  

If anything should lift the spirits, it should be seeing President Obama at his best, which he clearly was at the University of Nebraska yesterday.  It was the Obama so many of us came to love: Utterly reasonable, charming, persuasive and passionate, cutting through the muck coming from the Donald et al.

And funny. Commenting on Mr. Trump's assertion that America is in decline and ISIS is winning, Mr. Obama said, "You know there's a word for that and it begins with a 'B.'" Everyone laughs. And without missing a beat, he adds:  "Baloney."

Everyone laughed, except that coed standing just off Mr. Obama's right shoulder.  

She's the one in the gray. The one in the plaid smiled later. 

They array a whole panoply of faces, people standing in the bleachers behind the President, carefully chosen, no doubt, to have as many different types of faces, Black, White, Asian, in determinant, male, female.  So they have two White girls, one in front of the other. And one of them in particular, does not smile. She looks like she just broke up with her sweetheart.  Two rows behind her a White girl, and the Black girl next to her are laughing at all the right times, as are all the boys to Mr. Obama's left. 

But this one girl is unmoved. 

And Mr. Obama is in rare form.  He repeats the remarks he made at the State of the Union about what happened in 1956 when the Russians launched the Sputnik, pointing upward, skyward, and saying,  "We did not deny the Sputnik was up there. We did not say, oh, that's just something that'll pass." General laughter.

The girl behind him remains unmoved. Not even a glimmer of a smile.

Don't they screen these people?

Mr. Obama observes that when he said the United States was still the strongest nation on earth and had the best military at the SOTU, most people, no matter which party, could agree with that, but when he looked around the room some people refrained from applauding.  "Now, what could they have been thinking? How controversial was that?"  Of course, we all know why the Republicans didn't applaud--it contradicts their contention that we are weaker under Obama. But the crowed at the field house at U. Nebraska laughs and cheers.

Except for the dispirited waif off his right shoulder.

Get that girl some Prozac. Or maybe, slap her. Wake her up:  there are good things in life still, no matter what her problems. Obama is still President.

He mentions that next year at this time, the world will still have problems and we'll still have to move forward and there will be solutions, and we'll need people to solve those problems and someone calls out, "Run again!" And he laughs and everyone (except you know who) laughs. And he says, even if the Constitution did not forbid that, Michelle would kill him. More laughter.

Not from the somber one.

There is something about depression which can be infectious. I turned on CNN feeling as bleak and down and dreary as I have in very long time, but Mr. Obama lifted me up, until I noticed the glum one behind him, and then I couldn't stop watching her. 

Oh, well. It's just January. There should be time.

Belief

Someone you can believe in

Anderson Cooper told President Obama many people in this country believe the President wants to and is laying plans to seize their guns. The President reacted by saying that was absurd and there is plenty of evidence to the contrary, not the least of which is after 7 years, he has not done it, or attempted it or even shown the slightly indication of laying plans. 

To which Cooper replied, well, but people think you are thinking it. How do you prove what you are not thinking? Some people want to believe this, for, as Mr. Obama suggested, political reasons (it plays well to the crazies) or financial reasons (it spikes gun sales.)

People also believe:
1/ The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has been a "disaster." 
2/ The Holocaust never happened.
3/ President Obama plans to send in the black helicopters and seize control of the nation, declaring marshal law.
4/ President Obama was born in Kenya.

I'm now watching "The World At War."  What strikes me is the capacity of people to believe in things, large numbers of people, despite evidence to the contrary, despite significant evidence which a reasonable person should find convincing. 

We believe in the flag, the Fatherland and the Furher

So Germans were told by public broadcasts, even as Russian troops were on the outskirts of Berlin, the war was still winnable, that a wonder weapon was being held in reserve to save them, that they could throw back the hordes. When films of concentration camps liberated by the allies were shown, people believed they were hoaxes. American soldiers felt they had to bring Germans to the camps in person to convince them. 

Of course, Germans also believed the Jews were the major source of Germany's economic problems before Hitler came to power that Germans were a "Nordic race"  and as "Aryans"  they were the master race, destined by God to have dominion over the lesser races. 

Japanese believed the Emperor was a god. 

Hitler sold Germans on a lot of belief in no small part because things improved when he came to power for so many of them:  Farmers found they could thrive financially; work camps were organized where rich merchants worked and ate side by side with peasants and, for a weekend or a week, a  sense of community welled up; Hitler youth marched through the woods singing happy songs; infrastructure was built, providing work for the previously unemployed and a huge highway system was built; low cost automobiles (the Volkswagen--the "people's wagon" ) were built and sold on the installment plan. Hitler actually drew sketches of the Volkswagen beetle and claimed authorship of this boon to the middle classes. 

After the first World War, which left Germany in economic ruin, Germans wanted to believe, as the song in "Caberet" said, "The Future Belongs to Me." 

With all this positive stuff going on, why not believe everything Hitler and Goebbels  said?

But here in 21st century America, we have large portions of the population who believe the worst, even in the face of good news. "Obamacare is a disaster" is a battle cry from Republicans despite all evidence to the contrar: millions who now have insurance, pre existing condition exclusions vanquished, costs plummeting. 

How can this be?

In part, it's our public media system: Ted Cruz or Mitch McConnell are shown decrying the failures of Obamacare on the floor of the Senate without a picture of Elizabeth Warren decrying the lie.  Our media are good at presenting the accusation but they dreadful  at presenting the reply. The accusation if the story; the refutation is just not sexy. And we are trying to sell our stories, in commercial journalism. 

The only news program which regularly presents both sides of any argument is the PBS New Hour, which I have to watch alone because it's "boring" according to my family.

The New York Times described a study in which Republicans were asked if they thought the economy was doing well during the tenure of a Democratic President and they said "No" in high percentages despite all indicators of robust economic indicators, whereas they said "Yes" in the face of poor indicators when the President was a Republican. Democrats did the same--evidence be damned, I don't want to believe it.

The trouble with evidence is there is always other evidence or something about the evidence you suspect. The jury in the O.J. Simpson murder case didn't believe the evidence. They were Black and they didn't want to believe the police.

"The Serial" presented a series about a murder in Baltimore which left you wondering. There was no clear message to believe. It was frustrating and felt incomplete. 

Belief, for whatever else it may be, is comfortable. It makes you feel in control. Doubt is uncomfortable.  

I believe in the flag. 

President Obama's Town Hall on Guns

As if in answer to the Phantom's question: Yes, it is possible to have a civil, reasoned discussion about guns in this country. Anderson Cooper hosting the President on CNN in a town hall setting with members of the audience asking questions took a step in that direction tonight.

A Republican sheriff running for Congress asked why Mr. Obama thought trying to take action would reduce gun deaths when no background check would have stopped the Newtown shooting or the San Bernadino shooting or any other mass shooting. President Obama said, "That's the same as saying since we could not prevent those crimes, why bother to try to stop any crime?"

When the widow of the hero soldier who was killed by his deranged friend at a gun range asked why the President thought she should not have a gun to protect herself, he said he had no objection to her having a gun; he objects to deranged people shooting innocents.

When a rape victim said she wanted a gun in her house to be sure she was never raped again and to protect her two infant sons, the President said he had no objection to her having a gun but he wasn't sure that gun would protect her if she were taken by surprised and he wondered whether her children were safer having that gun in the house. 
And when the husband of Gabbie Gifford said he had testified at a Senate hearing where Senators (Republican Senators) suggested President Obama was planning to take away everyone's guns, all 350 million guns in 62 million households from Key West to Alaska. President Obama laughed and said, he had been President 7 years, when do these conspiracy theorists think he is planning to spring this massive round up on the nation? Do they think he can snap his fingers and collect all the guns in a few months? 

Once again, I feel grateful to have Mr. Obama as President. I do continue to worry that so rational and benign a figure is simply too good to survive in a country filled with the likes of the crazies who call themselves Republicans.

Is There A Middle Ground On Guns?

This morning, on CNN, Donald Trump told Wolf Blitzer the whole problem with guns is President Obama. President Obama has failed to negotiate, failed to find a middle ground.

For Republicans there is always a simple answer, the same answer: it's Obama's fault.

Driving to work, , listening to  NPR who organizes gun shows across the West, I heard a man who, for the first time in a long time, struck me as a reasonable person who likes guns. He said the basic problem is  people react to highly visible shootings and they  want to make all guns go away; on the other side are people who say, the government can't protect me, so I want to protect myself: Give me guns. "I don't see where there is any middle ground in this discussion," he said.

Actually, I do think there is a middle ground. The problem is, not a single Republican wants to stand on that ground because screaming about the 2nd Amendment "energizes the base" of the right wing group now called the Republican party. 

It doesn't help that President Obama and Democrats approach the debate as if they had the answers, when, in fact, the solutions offered thus far--more criminal background checks, better technology to restrict use of guns to a single owner with a fingerprint ID, waiting periods to purchase guns--would not  prevent determined mass shooters like the San Bernadino, the Sandy Hook, the Aurora movie theater lunatics, from executing their plans. 

There is also the problem of seeing all gun violence as the same--the kid who shoots another kid on a Baltimore street corner for insulting his sneakers is not the same problem as the San Bernadino shooter or as the Planned Parenthood shooter. 

There are gun deaths and there are gun deaths and not all are the same problem.

Just as  there can be  no middle ground on the abortion debate if you draw your line at a fertilized egg as the beginning of human life, there is no  room for discussion once you have already staked out an absolutist position on guns:  You cannot pass a law about guns or you cannot have guns. 

But with respect to approaches meant to reduce specific types of gun deaths, there could be middle ground, if there were Republicans who were willing to step beyond the absolutist boundaries.  

Anyone who has ever read George V. Higgins's wonderful novel "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" will know illegal trafficking in guns has been around for decades and will never die.  But, if you draw your lines more carefully, then you might be able to inhibit some bad outcomes.  
Focusing on bullets has not been given enough attention.

Were Bernie Sanders President, there might be some hope of negotiating some action to reduce high octane shootings: He is one Democrat who  cannot be accused of wanting to take away your guns.

But two things would have to happen:  Every Republican who claims to be defending the Second Amendment  would have to be asked, every time, "Would you please recite that one sentence amendment?"

"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 abridged."

Once you've said that, it will be apparent the Constitution does not guarantee individual ownership of guns, and in fact it wasn't until Heller v District of the Columbia that the current reactionary element of the Supreme Court was able to make individual ownership the law of the land. For two hundred years prior to this Court, the Court had clearly said, "No, you don't have a right to own your own gun. That's a privilege."

Once we agree, the government has the right to restrict your access to guns, has the right, if it desires, to come seize all your guns, we can begin the discussion. 

Everyone at the table, however, should understand, we have to be humble. It is also true no law, no government policy anyone has proposed or dreamed up will stop gun violence in a nation with 300 million guns. Trying to stop gun deaths by eliminating guns would be about as likely to work as trying to reduce auto deaths by outlawing automobiles. 

I know my neighbor who hunts, who has the heads of wild boar, antelopes and deer on the walls of his house is no more likely to shoot down school children than I am. We can begin by saying that. Yes, he has the means of wrecking havoc, but he will not, no more than I would drive my SUV through a school yard filled with children trying to kill them. We all have means of murder and mayhem available to us, but we do not do murder and mayhem, and not because laws prevent us.

Where should this discussion take place? Well, it would be nice if we could have it in the halls of Congress, but until the place is swept clean of Tea Party Republicans, of Ted Cruz, of Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and their ilk, it is not likely to happen.

Home on the Bizarre Range

In 1965, at the height of his substance abuse, Johnny Cash was called in to make a deposition, but not about possessing drugs. Instead, the singer was in trouble for leaving a burning truck at the side of a road in Los Padres National Forest in California. The flames had started a forest fire that jeopardized not only the refuge itself, but the lives of nearly 50 critically endangered California condors, which at that time made up a sizable portion of the global population. Facing the prospect of a lawsuit, and filled with “amphetamines and arrogance,” as his autobiography put it, Cash defiantly told his government questioners, “I don’t give a damn about your yellow buzzards.”

--Peter Cashwell, New York Times




When men seek to do something really outrageous, first they try to change the past, or our perception of it, and then they claim their enemies of the present have defiled what once was a veritable Garden of Eden by valuing yellow buzzards over freedom.

As Nancy Langston details in her wonderful Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, about the history of the American prairie, the men under the command of Ammon Bundy at a bird sanctuary  in Oregon are facing the cameras, spinning a myth about how wonderful everything was in the West until those muddle headed liberals in Washington got it into their heads to control every blade of grass on the Great Plains and to save some birds and frogs nobody should care about and to save wolves and coyotes which were ravaging the herds honest ranchers and farmers were struggling to keep alive.

Their lips dripping with derision, loggers have inveighed against restrictions on denuding hills of old growth forest for the ridiculous purpose of saving the spotted owl when loggers' families are starving; condors, nothing more than "yellow buzzards" are nothing compared to the rugged Marlboro men who ride the range herding cattle and earning a tough living only a man could earn. There you have dream spinning in an American way.

The truth, as Professor Langston documents so well, is the great outdoors west of the Mississippi was dominated by land barons who would make today's Wall Street tycoons look like Mr. Rodgers in cardigan sweater, singing to your kids. They ruthlessly monopolized water and land and there was no freedom but the freedom of the few oligarchs to control vast swaths of the Western landscape.

This is the same sort of fable spinning we hear from gun advocates, who yammer about how free we were in the days when every hearth had a musket hanging above the mantle, in the 18th century, which is why the founding fathers wrote the Second Amendment, because they knew to keep this paradise of liberty called America, every man needed a gun. (Of course the founding fathers wrote no such thing--they were talking about a "well regulated militia" not some unregulated neurotics running around brandishing AK-15 assault rifles in shopping malls, or some  lunatic with Glock 9 hand guns shooting at the driver who cut him off on the freeway.)

For Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, today's present is a living apocalypse and the past was a serene oasis of liberty and self fulfillment. 

Of course, Mr. Bundy is a Mormon, and as anyone who has seen the Broadway show, "The Book of Mormon" will know, you have to be able to believe in a pretty bizarre back story to be a believing Mormon--and we do not know Mr. Bundy is that. 

But belief continues to be a wondrous thing.