Saturday, October 03, 2015

5016 Is it the weather?

Saturday, October 3, 2015

Holding resentment is like drinking poison
and expecting the other person to die.
It doesn't work.

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Well, it's beginning to look like Joaquin isn't going to hit us.  But right now, and for the past few days and probably a few days more, we are experiencing a Nor'easter.  I gather that's what's pushing the hurricane out to sea, so I guess we can't complain much.  We're getting lots of rain and lots of wind.  I can't hear the wind in the house, but when I go out I can hear roaring.  There was a flock some kind of wide-winged soaring bird flying high this afternoon, and they were flying backward!  Facing east, but moving west.  Weird.

I noticed that sometimes the wind dropped, no movement in the trees, but the roaring went on.  I suspect some of the sound isn't wind in the trees at all.  I suspect it's surf.  Wind kicking the water around.  I'm not going to walk to the end of the street to find out for sure.

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The recent shooting at that college in Oregon.  Apparently the guy did it because he wanted to be famous.  Get his name known.  So, yeah, let's not mention his name.  The media says after every instance that they shouldn't make these guys famous, and then they do.  Shrug.

I found a very good comment on the Field Negro's blog (I'm not going to link because his commenters past maybe the first five are ... assholes), but this early comment says some of what I'd like to say, so, here it is:


Anonymous said...

    Well, if it's already been decided we're not going to do anything about access to guns (the NRA appears to have decided this for us), then we're left attacking the motive for using them.


    But then, we run up against other complaints from some of the same wingnuts who resist gun control.


    If we want to do something about street crime, we've got to create a fairer economic climate so that everyone can earn a legitimate living. That means greater funding of education, industrial policy to develop poor urban and rural areas, better transportation to jobs, labor laws that boost the average worker's wages, etc. It also means reversing "tough-on-crime" [justice system] policy: ending the Drug War, less-punitive sentences for non-violent crime, incentivizing employers to look past ex-cons' records in hiring, etc.


    Inevitably, all of that stuff requires higher taxes and lower incomes for rich people and/or being "nice" to criminals, so that's a "no" from conservatives.


    On the other hand, if we want to reduce mass shootings, the main avenue is addressing mental illness. Yet, mental health care costs rich people money, so that's out, too.


    Thus so we're back to the usual completely ineffective conservative remedies: scold black people, recommend everyone get some more Jesus in their lives, bash immigrants. Lather, rinse, repeat.


    Same shit, different day.

I love the way people  like Jeb Bush say "nobody" knows how to fix it, so we can't.  Um, Jeb, there are several other developed countries who HAVE fixed it.  Listen to Obama's speech and you'll hear about them.  Nobody?

I figure one of the first things to do is to get special interest money out of the election process, so maybe our representatives can represent the people instead of _______________ (fill in the blank with the NRA, the Koch brothers, whatever you like, or don't like).  Other countries have been able to figure this out.  Don't know why we can't --- oh, yeah, look who we're asking to do the reforming....  ne'mind.  Hopeless.

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The green quote at the top is random, but today I read it and think, "Yeah, well, what else can you do?"  The whole damn country is drinking poison.
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