Shut-down

What's so special about this partial government shut-down?  After all, it's the third one this year, and most of us can remember many others. There have been 30 others since Congress authorized the president to shut down parts of the government in 1971. What makes this one so unique?

Well, for starters, this is only the second time in history that a shut-down occurred due to a president's rejection of a duly passed, Congressional budget. The first one happened when President Gerald Ford vetoed a budget he thought was too extravagant. All the others occurred due to Congressional failure to pass a budget. So, President Trump is in rare company in rejecting the budget extension Congress passed just before adjourning for their Christmas break. But that doesn't make this shut-down unique.

What makes this one unique is President Trump's reason for his pocket veto of a duly passed spending bill. He has stated that he will not sign any budget unless it includes funding for a border wall between the United States and Mexico. That makes this the first time a President has shut down his own government in order to coerce Congress into authorizing a specific expense.

Under the Constitution, only the House of Representatives can originate a spending bill. This stems from the Founders' concern with taxation without representation, and the tyranny of an all-powerful monarch. Until now, it has never been challenged.

Perhaps President Trump sees this as a bit of routine Congressional arm-twisting, practiced by nearly every president. It's more than that. By threatening to close down the entire United States Government and keep it closed until he gets his way, President Trump is holding the entire United States of America hostage to his wishes, an act of tyranny unprecedented as long as we have been an independent nation.

Only one other president in history has engaged in similar actions against the Constitution-- Abraham Lincoln. With the Civil War raging, and Confederate troops in sight of the capital, President Lincoln instituted the first draft in US history, abolished the rule of habias corpus, and took other actions that got him branded a tyrant at the time. And it was this that compelled his assassination, not the war, nor the issue of slavery. We know this, because, as he was making his escape through Ford's Theater, where he had just shot Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth jumped to the stage and shouted to the shocked audience, "Sic semper tyrannis"-- Latin for, "Thus always to tyrants."

This is also the motto of  the Commonwealth of Virginia. Some have suggested that Booth therefore was acting as a Confederate patriot. This is unlikely, as he was not a Virginian. He was, however, a Shakespearean actor, and would have been familiar with the line from "Julius Caesar", in which Brutus utters the phrase after murdering Caesar.

It is my sincere hope that President Trump's attempts to fund his pet project do not occasion the same sort of response.

A Christmas Story from last year-- so good it bears repeating

A Christmas Story

The Christmas carol, “Silent Night”, was first performed on Christmas Day, 1814. The song became very popular around the world, and by 1914, a hundred years later, it had been translated into many languages.  On Christmas Eve of that year, the First World War was raging in France.  English and French soldiers in their trenches faced their German enemies across a “No Man’s Land” filled with barbed wire and flying bullets.

No one knows who started it, but some of the soldiers began singing “Silent Night”, and their enemies, also young, lonely and miserable, joined in, each in his own language.  Before long, soldiers all along the front were singing this simple Christmas carol together.  They threw down their guns, and joined each other, sharing comradeship, and even their precious goodies from home, with men they had recently been trying to kill.  The whole war came to a halt for hundreds of miles.

The “Christmas Truce” of 1914 was unplanned and unofficial, but it really happened, and it lasted several days, the only time in history when a song stopped a World War. Common soldiers, responding to the spirit of Christmas, defied their officers’ orders and risked their lives for a song. Can’t our elected officials defy their party leaders and risk the next election, to work “across the aisle” for the good of their constituents?

We call on all elected officials to respond to the spirit of Christmas. Quit your fighting and come together for the good of all! If you won’t, our response must be, to
      Send No One Back!

Driving Courtesy

Ages ago, when the wheel had just been invented, I learned to drive, and was taught that, "Courtesy is the Golden Rule of the road." Doesn't seem to be any more:

There's currently a raging debate about the new, LED headlights, which many oncoming drivers find too bright in the first place. There are movements in several states to ban them. Worse are the aftermarket Halogen and LID headlights, which are even brighter than LEDs. This is often exacerbated by truck drivers who haul heavy loads or pull heavy trailers without adjusting their headlights, but that's not the worst of it.

Worst are the stupid, discourteous, evil idiots who refuse to dim for oncoming traffic, or even deliberately flash their high beams in your eyes just as you pass, ON PURPOSE to blind you. Of course, you can't report them to the cops. By the time your eyes recover enough to see any details, they are long gone.

Last week, on a seventy mile trip on a rural, two-lane highway, half of the drivers I encountered fell into this category. Half a dozen dimmed for me, but only after I dimmed for them, then flashed my high beams at them at least once more. Only ONE actually dimmed for me when he was supposed to.  Many of the worst offenders were semis, presumably driven by professional drivers. I suppose they don't care if you blunder blindly into their lane. You'll die, and they'll have some paperwork to fill out.

I've only been able to think up three possible solutions:
1.  Shoot their headlights out--difficult if you're not left-handed, and probably illegal everywhere.
2.  Install a rotating beacon and imitate a cop, which is also illegal.
3. Install a set of halogen or LID headlights on my old pickup truck, and flash them with my own high beams as they pass.

Come to think of it, maybe a laser would be even better...

Congressional Update

Last January, I pointed out that, after the previous government shut-down, caused by intransigent Republicans, the Republican Party GAINED Congressional seats and won the subsequent Presidential election. Last January's shut-down was caused by intransigent Democrats, and I predicted that the Democratic Party would GAIN Congressional seats, and perhaps win the next Presidential election, because the American electorate will forgive anything and remember nothing.

So far, we've had one mid-term election, in which the Democratic Party did, in fact, GAIN Congressional seats, just as I predicted. Our politicians are all corrupt, incompetent, or both. SEND NO ONE BACK!

Heroic Air Crew Saves the Lives of 133 Stupid Passengers

Every time there is any sort of in-flight emergency, the passengers all panic and think they're going to die, according to every news report. While even-handed journalism seems to have disappeared from the media, and they seem to be publishing only the most sensational reports, I suspect that there are not many calm, reasonable passengers to interview. Here's what happened in the latest in-flight emergency.

For some reason, there was an uncontrolled failure of the pressurization. The oxygen masks automatically deployed, just as they are supposed to do, and as the passengers were all warned they would do in the pre-take-off security announcements given by every airline. Which hardly anyone listens to. The pilots then did exactly what they are supposed to do, namely descend to a low altitude, where the air is breathable and pressurization is not needed. Even ABC, which is not known for hyperbole, referred to this as "a plunge of nearly 30,000 feet." Sounds like the plane is falling, out of control, but in fact, only such a rapid descent could reduce the dangers inherent in flying at 33,000 feet without pressurization.

At high altitudes like that, the air pressure is not sufficient to force oxygen into the blood. Even breathing pure oxygen, the passengers would lose consciousness within minutes, and brain damage would begin. In "plunging" rapidly to a lower altitude, the pilots were doing the only thing they could to save the passengers' lives, while coping with the very same dangers themselves.

Some (many?) of the passengers complained that they received no instructions or warnings from the pilots or flight crew. There was an automatic, recorded announcement playing, telling them what they needed to do, but that wasn't good enough. What were the flight crew supposed to do? Leave their own oxygen masks to reassure the passengers that the "plunging" airplane was not in danger? What were the pilots supposed to do? Stop their emergency procedures and communications to talk to the passengers? Warn them about the pressurization failure before it happened?

Many passengers complained that their ears hurt, or even bled. As well they might. The cabin had just experienced a pressure drop equivalent to being zipped from sea level to the top of Mount Everest in a few seconds. No wonder their ears hurt. So did the ears of the pilots and cabin crew, who experienced the same pressure drop, but stuck to their stations and did their jobs. The headlines SHOULD HAVE read, "Heroic Air Crew Saves the Lives of 133 Stupid Passengers."

Just between us, in an emergency like that, I'd want the pilots to FLY THE DAMN PLANE and not worry about reassuring passengers too dumb to listen to recorded announcements.

The Bell -shaped Curve, the L-shaped Curve, and Gun Control

Shortly after the Rodney King debacle, the City of Los Angeles knew they had an excessive force police problem. So they launched an investigation to determine how bad it was. The expectation was that the distribution of problem officers would follow a “bell-shaped curve”, with a few incorrigible jerks at one end of the curve, a few angels at the other, and most of the officers in the middle, needing some training to get better.

That’s not what they found. Of the 8500 LAPD officers, it turns out that 99 percent of the reports of excessive force were made against fewer than 100 officers, with 90 percent of them having only one or two accusations, while only 18 officers accounted for many accusations each. So the curve of bad vs good cops was extremely lop-sided, with all the bad ones at one end, and everybody else off the scale to the good. This statistical distribution is called a “power curve”, and it looks more like a letter L than like a bell.

This distinction is very important, because more training will not turn the really bad cops into good ones, and the good cops don’t need more training. The real solution is to get rid of the bad cops, and let the good ones do their job.

We have a similar situation today with gun control. The overwhelming majority of gun owners are the good ones. They don’t shoot up schools; they don’t leave their guns where kids can get at them, they obey the gun laws in their state. THEY don’t NEED more laws, or more restrictions.

There is a tiny fraction of a percent of gun owners on the “power curve” end of the curve who DO shoot up schools, or terrorize shopping malls, etc. They are ALREADY BREAKING the existing gun laws. More laws won’t help them be better gun owners, because they won’t obey them, either. The solution, as with the LAPD, is to get rid of the bad ones, without disarming everyone else.

This is easier said than done.

In the case of bad cops vs good cops, getting rid of the bad ones just involves firing them. And you know who they are, because they’ve already singled themselves out by their performance records. Gun owners are a lot harder, because the bad ones are mostly not repeat offenders. Very few have records of any kind, much less records of violence, armed crime, terrorism, or even of mental instability.

But some do. Instead of spending huge amounts of money to pass extreme and possibly unconstitutional gun laws, which will only be obeyed by the good gun owners anyway, spend the same amount of money to locate and treat, or even incarcerate, those with known mental health problems that may manifest as gun violence and killing.

That sounds good, but the problem is, it is essentially unfair to place the burden of America’s epidemic of murder on a small fraction of the population, most of whom are not part of the problem. Especially when they haven’t done anything yet. In other words, it’s profiling, an unsatisfactory solution, but the only one that fits the facts.

Or is it?  Both the Profiling solution and the Training solution are based on a “top down” model: Those on top, the government, impose preventive measures from above, either on the whole population, or on a part of it. But there’s another way, the grass roots solution. Arm everybody. The 99+ percent who follow the rules will be no more dangerous armed than disarmed. The dangerous fraction of a percent will quickly announce themselves. I believe this was part of the rationale of our Founding Fathers, when they wrote the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

Has this solution ever been tried? YES! In both Israel and Switzerland, everyone is required to serve in the military, where they receive training in the proper use of fully automatic assault rifles. In Switzerland, all citizens are required to keep a loaded assault rifle in their homes, ready for immediate use. In Israel, the country is flooded with fully armed, active duty soldiers of both sexes, everywhere and at all times. Both countries have remarkably low incidences of armed crime. Israel is surrounded by sworn enemies, yet the incidence of armed terrorism is amazingly small. Why? Because everyone makes it their business to be watchful, all the time, and there are always armed protectors around.

President Trump’s idea of arming teachers is a good one, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. If terrorists, or even homicidal maniacs, can’t attack schools, they’ll go somewhere else. To truly prevent mass shootings, only a universal, armed citizenry will do.

Illegal War!

At the beginning of World War Two, US President Roosevelt wanted to enter the war on the side of Great Britain and France, but could not, until Japan attacked us, and Germany declared war on us. Why not? Because Congress refused to declare war until that had happened.

Last Friday, the United States participated in an act of war against Syria, a sovereign nation that had not attacked us or declared war against us, without the consent of Congress. This was not a defensive move, but an act of outright aggression.

I personally believe Syria richly deserved what they got. But that is not the issue. Article I of the U.S. Constitution specifically grants the power to make war ONLY TO THE CONGRESS. Period. Congress has authorized the president to act on his own, when defense requires a response too quick for Congressional debate. But that was not the case this time. We committed an illegal act of war.

In the past, presidents have also acted without Congressional approval when authorized by the United Nations, or when an enemy was plainly preparing to attack. This time none of the above applied. We were not in danger, and nobody authorized the attack. Except President Trump. This was a naked power grab by a Chief Executive who set aside the Constitution because it was inconvenient. And he did it at the risk of provoking war with Russia.

Our Founding Fathers recognized that the biggest danger to our freedom would come from one our own leaders becoming a tyrant. That is why we have separation of powers, and checks and balances.  The only difference between what President Trump did last Friday, and outright tyranny, is location. He hasn't done it here. Yet. If he can get away with illegal attacks on a foreign country with no authorization at all, what can stop him from attacking his political enemies at home?

Only the Congress. If they don't protest this outright assault on their Constitutional powers, they have forfeited their right to serve. At that point, the people must act to preserve democracy. If we do not, democracy is dead. We have a chance to act this November. Send No One Back.

Will the REAL Holocaust Please Stand UP!

After decades of combating revisionists who want to minimize, or even deny the Holocaust of the Jews during World War Two and the Nazi occupation of Europe, the government of Israel has finally bowed to pressure from within and offered their own, "politically correct" (but false to the facts) version. Here's what happened.

The government and the people of Poland, having grown tired of taking all the blame for collaborating with the Nazis, decided to fight back with a law making it illegal to FALSELY state that the Poles were responsible for Holocaust atrocities. The law was quite exact. It did not criminalize TRUE statements, only false ones. Nevertheless, the State of Israel over-reacted, accusing the State of Poland of Holocaust denial.

After several days, nay, weeks of highest-level negotiations, it looked like things were finally calming down, with Israeli Jews being reassured that only lies were being criminalized, not true historical references. A well-known Jewish scholar, whose family were betrayed to the Nazis by Polish neighbors, asked in an Israeli periodical if saying so would get him arrested in Poland. The Polish Prime Minister himself chose to answer him. Part of his reassurance went awry.

As part of his statement, he mentioned that TRUE statements about those who cooperated with the Nazis would always be legal in Poland. And he listed them by nationality: Polish perpetrators, Jewish perpetrators, Lithuanian perpetrators, Russian perpetrators, etc. At the mention of the phrase, "Jewish perpetrators," the Israeli press, public, government, and worldwide supporters went wild! It seemed to them that the Polish Prime Minister was blaming the Holocaust on the Jews, a favorite tactic of Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites around the world.

In fact, he was doing no such thing. He was merely pointing out that ALL nations had weak individuals who succumbed to the Nazi tactics of torture, kidnapping, and deliberate starvation, and ended up collaborating in the Holocaust, including some Jews.  As a descendant of Polish Jews, I am neither proud nor ashamed of this fact. It happened.

To be sure, there were many more heroes than villains in every group. The Russians lost HALF THE MEN in their country, fighting the Nazis. The Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were the first people in Europe to rebel. With homemade weapons, no food, and no outside help, they threw the Wehrmacht out of the Ghetto and kept them out for a MONTH. It took dive-bombers, tanks, and firestorm bombing for the Germans to reconquer the Ghetto, and they only did it by razing the Jewish part of Warsaw to the ground.

The Poles were not far behind. The citizens of Warsaw, seeing what the Jews had done, heroically rose against the Germans themselves, becoming the only conquered national capital in all of Europe to rise in open rebellion and throw the Germans out. I am proud that one of those Polish fighters was my family member. She was a teenage girl at the time, and one of the very few Jews to escape from the Ghetto alive. These things all happened, the good and the bad.

The government of Poland is correct to say that it's time to stop throwing mud at each other and tell the truth. There were Jewish heroes. There were Polish heroes. There were Russian, French, and German heroes, too. Alas, there were also collaborators and even villains in every group as well. Saying otherwise is not historically accurate, even if it is politically correct. The Holocaust was terrible enough without muddying it up with propaganda, however well-intended.

New slogan

Seen the statistics on traffic fatalities caused by distracted drivers?  My new slogan:

GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE.  SMART PHONES KILL PEOPLE.  SHOOT A SMART PHONE TODAY!

Shut down again!

Once again, the Congress have proven themselves incapable of running the country. If this drags on as long as the last shutdown did, we can soon expect the government to go into sequester-- again. Even that may not be enough, this time around, because we have never recovered completely from the last sequester. Here is a six step plan for getting the Congress to drop their bickering and do their job.

1. First, fire ALL employees of the Congress: their secretaries, housekeepers, janitors, and the guys who clear snow from their parking lot. ALL.  Permanently.
2. Cancel the Senators' and Representatives' pay for the duration of the shutdown.
3. Stop funding for the Secret Service agents who protect the Congressmen when they are not physically within the halls of Congress, doing their job.
4. Close all departments of the US Government except for the military, the border patrol, the federal courts, and the prisons.

Interstate transportation will pretty much cease within a week. Store shelves will be empty within two weeks. Within three weeks, there will be millions of very hungry and very angry citizens.

THEN,

5. Reopen roads and flights, but only those going to and from Washington, DC.
6. Hold new elections to replace all the dead or missing Congressmen.

Don't like this scenario? There are two other possibilities:
-- let the country continue to "run on empty" for the indefinite future.
-- vote the current Congress out, and SEND NO ONE BACK!

Shut down?

Remember the last time that Congress couldn't agree on a budget bill and allowed the government to be shut down?  It was only four years ago. That time it was the Republicans who dug in their heels over one relatively minor issue, and shut down the government when they couldn't get their way. Now it's the Democrats. Didn't the Democrats learn anything from that?

Well, yes, they did! They learned that, far from losing the following mid-term elections, the Republicans gained seats in Congress, and won the next Presidential election. They learned that a politician can thumb his nose at the American voters, refuse to do the job they elected him to do, and we will forget it before the next election. That actions do NOT speak louder than words. And that they can get away with ANYTHING.

THE SAME PEOPLE are still in Congress! NOTHING will change unless we vote them out. Both parties are responsible. VOTE THEM ALL OUT! 

There are plenty of smart, talented people in both parties. Let's get rid of all the bad apples, and give someone else a chance. Send No One Back!