Sick, Sick, Sick

The two leading candidates for president of the these United States in 2024 is Joe Biden and Donald Trump. One is physically decrepit, the other is morally bankrupt. Seventy percent of the country does not want Biden to run again; sixty percent does not want Trump. Nonetheless, this nation, because of its twisted and antiquated electoral system, is able, and willing, to force these two done men down America's throat. Sick.  

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The nation that prides itself on law and order has distributed, (by hook or by crook), 400 million guns to its 330 million citizens. And, these citizens are not bashful about using their guns-shooting one another at a clip that leaves all other nations on Earth appalled. Sick.  

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The richest nation on Earth is witnessing homeless encampments spring up in every city in America. The phenomena is fueled by mental illness, illegal drugs, illegal immigration, and a general lack of dignity - people who refuse to care, refuse to work, refuse to respect the rights and space of others. 

This is 2023. There is no war. There are no Dust Bowls. The stock market is sky-high; unemployment is at an all-time low. This is not 1929, before FDR's New Deal, when shanty-towns sprung up because that is what good people had been reduced to in bad times. This is purposeful decay, and sloth. It is a portrait of a great nation protected by two oceans on either shore, and two friendly nations on its northern and southern borders. No other nation on Earth is so ideally situated. So, what do we do? We attack ourselves. And, we will lose. Sick. 

The Bell Tolls ... For Us

 "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

- Hamlet, Act I, Scene V

Just thinking: Perhaps for every man, woman, and child killed by an American-made weapon oversees, a man, woman, and child is killed by an American-made weapon on the streets of America. 

Without much thought, we seem to take an unseemly pride in the number of Islamists we kill by drone in the Middle East; in how we tacitly approve the 10:1 ratio of Palestinians killed by American-backed Israelis; and celebrate Russians killed by American-made Heimers and howitzers, and soon, our own cluster bombs in Ukraine. 

But, what of the karma, balance? Death is demanding; life is on call. A notch in our belt in Bakhmut may be answered by a corresponding notch from the southside of Chicago.

I wondered about this, even as the news flashed of a man in Queens, New York who randomly shot people - apparently for fun - from the seat of his scooter. Where does such wantonness come from? How is it reckoned?

President Clinton, toward the end of his second term, ordered a missile strike on a large pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan. (He had erroneously believed that terrorist activities were being planned there.) Fortunately, he did not kill 3,000 people, which would have equalled the number of Americans killed a year later on 9/11. He did, however, destroy an economic sector that, to the Sudanese, may very well have been equal to America losing the Twin Towers. Though they determined that no terrorist activity was transpiring at that Sudanese plant, I doubt that "Big Bill" said so much as a "sorry."

Think of it this way: East calamity we foster will reverberate back upon us with an equal force, kind of like Newton's Third Law of Motion: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." So, a death there could mean a death here? Sounds weird; even far-fetched. But, impossible? I think not. Shakespeare said, "There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." That opens us up to endless possibilities.

In 2022, there were 647 mass shootings in the United States; there are 369 (as of July 10) this year. That is thousands of deaths, and tens of thousands of wounded each year in America, or likely, about the same as the number of mean, women, and children killed and wounded each year in our interventions overseas. Coincidence? Or, is something metaphysical at work? Just thinking. There are more things in Heaven and Earth...

The "Justice Putsch"

Crediting Trump for putting three conservative judges on the Supreme Court, is like giving Neil Armstrong the credit for putting a man on the moon,.

Wernher von Braun, the German engineer who designed Hitler's V-1 rockets, came to the U.S. at the end of World War II and built the Saturn V rocket that put America on the moon. Likewise, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell engineered the "Justice Putsch" by stealing a judge from President Obama, and another from Biden, and giving them both to Trump. The middle justice happened to be ripe for the picking, and President Trump filled the three vacancies like any other good Republican would have done given the same bounty.  

McConnell had dared to refuse Obama's pick, Merrick Garland, a judicial hearing, claiming it was too close to the 2016 presidential election, despite that election being over a year away. Five years later, he reversed his shady reasoning, and quickly hand over to Trump the seat left vacant by the death of /Ruth Bader Ginsburg only months before Trump's term ended in 2020.  It was political hardball, and Mitch had executed a once-in-a-lifetime triple play.

That is how Roe v. Wade was overturned, and Affirmative Action, and Student Loan Forgiveness, etc., etc. President Trump ran the bell, but plaudits, such as they are, go to Mitch McConnell's evil genius.  

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Puck Up! 

Tennessee State University, a Historically Black College (HBCU), will be the first of its kind to start a hockey program. Good. African-American men cannot sing, cannot fight, and cannot play baseball anymore. Why not try hockey. 

If women can go to-to-toe in the octagon, pole vault in the Olympics, and throw hammers, the brothers ought to be able to strap on skates, and take it to the ice. Puck up! 

Joe, and Me

Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 left Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, in a state of shock. Yevgeny Prigozhin's invasion this past week did the same for Russian president, Vladimir Putin. 

Stalin, who had signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler tow years earlier, hid out at his dacha for eight days while German troops overran Russian defenses. Member of the Soviet Politburo left to run the government in Stalin's absence, found him at his home looking haggard, and confused.  Initially, Stalin though they had come to arrest him, ostensibly for the dereliction of duty. Rather, his foreign minister, Molotov, simply said to him, "Get up. We need you." only than did Stalin rouse himself, and go toe-to-toe with Hitler for the next four years. 

Putin's ally, Prigozhin, left the Ukrainian battlefield on June 22, 2023, crossed over into Russia, took Rostov-on-Don, and then Marched on Moscow. Putin, who fancies himself a latter-day Joe Stalin, went dark for two and a half days. Certainly, he knows about the stain of Stalin's abdication. Funny that he would repeat it, nonetheless. And, he still seems unable to shake it. Three days after finally making an appearance, he still looks "dear-in-the-headlights" scared. 

In the end, Hitler killed over 20 million Russians in the fight on the Eastern Front, yet Stalin prevailed. Despite being nearly as cruel a human as Hitler, himself, Joe Stalin will go down as the man who brought Hitler's unmatched reign of horror to an end. Putin will not end nearly as well as Joe. 

Tell It Like It Is

You ever referee a ballgame? Doesn't matter what kind - baseball, football, basketball. Something comes over many people when placed in those positions - call it a "strong sense of obligation." I've done it. And, once there, I immediately lose all sense of personal attachments. All that matters is getting the calls right. 

Being a news person should be like that: Once charged with such an office, that powerful sense of obligation should take over. Yet, CNN, FOX, and MSNBC, among others, seem perfectly comfortable with shading the truth in directions most palatable to their viewers. That is not news; it is entertainment. 

On Monday, June 5, Anne Navarro, co-host of "The View," in an apparent effort to please her audience, purposefully served up a misleading version of Biden's Saturday fall while exiting the stage at a graduation ceremony. "He fell," she said, "and then got right back up..." No, Anna, he did not. Biden fell. When he braced his hands against the stage in an effort to push himself back up, he faltered again. Biden's handlers had to bodily lift him up from off the floor. It would have been better had Anna told us the truth, especially since most people had already seen the same footage, which had been repeatedly aired on a number of stations throughout the weekend.

There was no shame in Biden's fall, nor any shame in his struggles to regain his fee. It was simply a human moment. The shame occurred when a person entrusted with informing the public re-orders events with a version that would not likely suit her viewership. If you cannot relate fundamental truths that we commoners have already witnessed, how can you be trusted to inform upon more complicated matters that we have had no access to? 

Detaching myself from people and their emotions while working a game, made me a better referee, a better umpire. The failure to detach themselves from people who expect their biases to be satisfied, render many in the media unfit to call balls and strikes. Therein lies the gulf that exists between the media and the people who depend upon them.  

Sickenings

Sickening. Every day, 120 Americans lose their lives to gun violence: another 200 are wound... every day. Sickening. So far this year, there has been 15,000 gun-related deaths in the U.S.  During this same five-month period, only 31 British citizens have died from guns. 

although the United States modeled its constitution after Britain's own constitution, when it comes to guns, the two countries, recently, have taken divergent paths. After two mass shootings in Britain - one in 1987, the other in 1996 - Britain's Conservative government instituted a near total ban of automatic and semi-automatic weapons. 

People in the U.S. will be quick to cry: "We have a constitutional right to carry guns., The Brits don't." that Second Amendment right to carry guns that Americans so vociferously defend was written in 1787. It gave American citizens the right to own a musket. That is all. Our brilliant "fore"fathers should have had the "fore"sight to realize that just as weapons technology advanced from the bow and arrow to musket, one day it would advance from muskets to AR-15s. They did not look ahead. I wound, when AR-15 technology advances to "phasers", will we boast of our right to carry them, as well? Sickening. 

To the Precipice: Are We There Yet?

The other day, while riding a subway train, Jordan Neely, a homeless man, cried out, "I'm tired of being hungry... I have nothing to live for." Daniel Penny, an ex-Marine riding on that same New York City train, took it upon himself to put Neely in a choke-hold, and end his life, even as the train hurtled on to its next stop. It was a microcosm of the American experience imploding. Are we there yet? 

Shooting upon shootings, public chokings: We are headed for the cliff. In a civilized society, average American citizens have been given the green light to kill other citizens if they feel threatened by them. In a country so reckless, how long before our children expect the right, themselves, to "stand their ground," and shoot? they live under the threat of physical violence as much, if not more, than adults. Must they continue to ball up their little fists and settle things the old-fashioned way? 

We humans are at the top of the food chain.,. by far! Yet, we feel we need 400 million guns - the estimated number of guns circulating amongst the American populace - to cement our standing. If we were cows chewing our cuds, perhaps a sidearm would help. But, compared to all other earthlings, we are already super-beings. And, it is not guns that make us so; it is our minds. Guns only dumb us down - convince us to settle for for being bestial by flashing our teeth and our claws instead of our intelligence, and our humanity. 

Guns are so dumb. And, we are approaching the cliff... or, are we there yet?