I don’t applaud it. Violence doesn’t resolve anything. It generally incites more and greater violence. How is that helpful?
But I understand it. I understand the person’s frustration, even though I don’t know their particulars. The murdered man, Brian Thompson, led a healthcare corporation. Tales of despair and frustration circulate about the sick and injured lamenting how they’re treated by those corporations. Brian Thompson’s company had installed AI to help them deny benefits. For those companies, denying claims is how they protect their bottom line, decrease costs, increase profits, push up stock prices, and gain greater wealth. The killer inscribed on a found round, “Deny, defend, depose,” words well known to too many people dealing with the healthcare industry.
My bottom line is, I’m sorry he was murdered. But also, he reaped what he sowed. And, I’m not surprised. I’ve read and heard multiple people vent anger, despair, and frustration with those companies. As a recent example, Anthem BCBS announced in November a controversial decision about paying for anesthesia. It angered anesthesiologists enough that they issued statements decrying what they perceived as a money grab. Last week, in the wake of the shooting. Anthem BCBS announced they’d reversed the new policy.
The shooting wasn’t a complete surprise. In America, where a gun culture prevails and disagreements come to a head with people deciding to shoot others to resolve matters, it was simply a matter of time before something like this happened.
As usual, deaf and oblivious to his own words, Trump blamed the Democrats, especially President Biden and Vice President Harris, using the same words that they used on him, “a threat to Democracy”…again.
It seems shortsighted for the entire nation to be surprised that political violence is taking place, that presidential nominees are being targeted.
This is a nation that frequently turns to violence when things go awry. Authorities often respond to violence with violence. Police showed up in military hardware. It’s not rare for them to kill after issuing a brief warning with no time left for anyone to react to their orders. Check out the newspaper articles and cop cam footage that exists. Citizens have armed themselves to ‘defend their homes’ and stand their ground, shooting innocents along the way, ending disagreements by killing someone.
8 AM. My wife has left for her exercise class, Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) is talking to me about breakfast, sunshine is streaming in through the windows, and I need to pee. Time to rise and stalk coffee, I decide.
I step onto the back patio with the cats. Papi is chatting up a storm. Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) is more reserved. Sunshine baths us but smoke lingers in the air. Not as bad as yesterday. The air worsened yesterday as the sun arced over the sky. The air quality plummeted, skating through 190. Forests and mountains disappeared behind the smoky curtain. Fortunately, the curtain rose lost night for a while and we had a night of relatively fresh air. Looks like it’s getting pulled down again.
This is Monday, September 9, 2024.
It’s just under 60 F right now. We expect a high of about 92 F.
BTW, the MAGA answer to wildfires and its smoke pollution is to cut down all the forests. Short-sighted as hell, but that’s them: intellectually bankrupt.
I have “Good Thing” from Fine Young Cannibals ringing in the morning mental music stream (Trademark hazy). It’s because I was singing to that 1989 melody with a word substitution. “Good air, where have you gone,” was my lament.
I shifted from good air to good things as the song played. Good things like the efficient post office and delivery systems we knew for a while. Good things like safe schools.
Which triggered reflections on Vance’s comments about school shootings being a way of life because schools are soft targets, which are attractive to a ‘psycho’, as he delicately phrased it.
“And again, as a parent, do I want my school to have additional security? No, of course I don’t,” he concluded. “I don’t want my kids to go to school in a place where they feel like they’ve got to have additional security. But that is increasingly the reality that we live in.”
Vance’s memory is not impressive. People have been killed in churches. Most people passing a church will note the lack of security. And a Pittsburgh syngagogue was found to be a soft target. Malls and shopping centers are soft targets. Grocery stores. Paint stores, hardware stores.
What about the college campuses? They’ve been shown to be soft targets.
Police officers being ambushed are not soft targets, yet we read about that numerous times a year.
I remember that several work places, post offices, and a McDonald’s restaurant have been a soft target through the years.
Beyond them, we had vigilante types like Kyle Rittenhouser out looking for targets, or Trayvon Martin’s killer, who thought the kid going for skittles was a threat.
And let’s not overlooked the people shooting others knocking on their door because they’re afraid, a fear the GOP actively stokes to harvest votes. Or the man who shot a woman because he thought she was part of a scam.
As long as you dance around the obvious and pretend it’s something else, nothing will get done and the problem won’t be fixed. And the problem is America’s worsening gun culture.
Congress sort of addressed it for themselves: they’re made themselves a hard target, surrounded by security forces, a place where guns are not permitted.
Funny how that works.
Stay positive, be strong, and vote blue in 2024. Coffee has broached my system. Here’s the music video. Cheers
It was the best of rains. Falling lightly and fitfully, it wet the land and added a little rise to the streams but caused no issues. That’s the best of rains.
Today is Tuesday, June 18, 2024. Spring continues holding on. Low temps last night dipped into the bottom forties. Now it’s fifty. Sunshine and blue skies reign. A high of 80 F is expected. The wind is whispering, “It’ll be 90 tomorrow.”
My wife was over at the coffee pot, leaning over and whispering to it as the coffee dribble out. Looked like she might’ve been pleading with it. I don’t know. What goes on between a person and their coffee stays between them and their coffee.
Spoke with Dad’s wife last night. We discussed his situation and DNR and Advanced Directives. He has a kidney issue and congestive heart failure. Dialysis is on the table for him but can he survive the procedure is the question. We shall see.
I spoke with him on the phone this morning after putting it off because his wife said he didn’t want to talk. He’s as spirited and congenial as ever. Sounds just as he did twenty year ago.
For fun, I watched Jon Stewart addressing GOP fears about crime. In a coink-dink, I’d checked out FoxNews.com with my morning reading yesterday. I’d already checked out a bunch of ‘liberal’ sites like the NYTimes, WaPo, the HoustonChronicle and others, so I wanted to see what was being presented in the fair and balanced realm called FoxNews.
Well, holy macaroni, that is one dark space. Everything is crashing, burning, flooding, or dying in their world. Actually, that’s pretty much happening in our existence, too, but we don’t see everything and paint it as black as possible and hyper-sensationalized it. Mind boggling.
Anyway, Stewart’s take on the GOP’s take on crime was humorous. Despite what the FBI says about crime being down, the right ‘feels’ like it’s unsafe. As Stewart points out, could it be because rightwing news outlets, pundits, and politicians keep screaming about how dangerous the cities are, despite the statistics? But the most irritating point that Stewarts latches onto, just as most Democrats do, is that the Republicans are screaming about the gun violence even though their inaction against gun controls is what allows guns to flood our cities. Like teasing a cougar and then crying because it mauled you.
For music, The Neurons rolled “Clementine”, also known by some as “Oh My Darling Clementine”, into the morning mental music stream (Trademark edgy). Wikipedia credits the song with being around in 1884, well before my birth. But I’ve heard it in movies and cartoons, and even sang it myself, so I am familiar with it. I challenged The Neurons’ thinking on this song choice. but they stayed mute as a baby’s bottom. Sometime later, they changed the song to “Gimme Some Lovin'” by the Spencer Davis Group from 1966, though again, without revealing why that song was chosen. But I’ll stay with it ‘cuz I like its energy and that organ and the whole song’s upbeat vibe.
Off to the grower’s market. Happens every Tuesday from May to September in Ashlandia, where the produce is fresh and organic. Be strong, stay positive, lean forward, and Vote Blue in 2024. Here’s the music. Oh my darlin’, cheers
Winting continues to ride Ashlandia, where the children are above average. Snow is melted in the valley’s bosom but look east and snow royally caps the mountainsides. It’s up to 27 F on the way to a 47 degrees F high. Sunshine, vaulting over the horizon like an arriving hero at 7:06 this morning, bullets a blue sky. 5:43 PM will be seen on the clock as the sun does it slow roll exit. It’s February 15, 2023.
My cats are happy with the sunshine but they’re not fond of those low temps. Tucker acted like he was going out but feeling that air on his heavy fur, did and an about face and floofered off. Papi, of course, galloped out per his secret identity, “The Galloping Ginger”, and then banged the door windows for re-admittance sharpish minutes later.
Plans are being planned for house painting, carpet cleaning, and those sort of matters, along with vacation. Yardwork is being given a gimlet eye. Our evening streaming rotates among Hacks, The Last of Us, Frayed, Shrinking, Lockwood and co, Station Eleven, CB Strike, and Astrid. Documentaries and comedy shows are sprinkled in as they become available. No puzzles are being assembled, with no plans to do any. K continues on her diet, pleased with her results. Makes the kitchen an interesting evening experience as we prepare our individual meals. Burners, oven, microwave going, timers ping, buzz, and chime. We dance around each other, plates, foods, and utensils in hand.
Today’s theme music is “Bullet the Blue Sky” by U2 out of 1987. Th Neurons delivered as I read a summary of gun violence in America, 2023. Can’t say it hasn’t changed this year as the rate of shootings increases. Fortunately, naught will be done because needless death is not as important as other matters.
Got coffee, and released Papi back into the sun-soaked rear yard. Stay pos, and own Wednesday. Here’s the tune. Cheers
I’m sorry. Shootday! Ha, ha. What a slip of the head. It’s not Shootday, it’s Tuesday. That whole Shootday slip came from reading news of the many shootings. How many dead, where, when? Hard to track them all. Of course, if we did have a day of the week for shootings, our challenge would be deciding which day. It’s always Shootday in America, folks. Clearly, what is needed are more guns. As the old adage goes, speed kills, so give us more speed. Same logic for increasing the number of guns, isn’t it?
Why, no, gun advocates say. Our idea is that a good guy with a gun will stop a bad guy with a gun. Everyone in a dance club should be armed; that would stop someone from walking in and shooting anyone else. Also, everyone in school. And everyone in the family should be strapped, because family members shoot and kill one another. Toddlers should be armed because you never know when Daddy is gonna snap and shoot you. And that four-year-old killed by the two-year-old sibling in the gas station parking lot should have pulled and shot their little brother first.
Yep. Solid logic.
Okay, that snark front has moved through. On to normal muttering.
It’s 34 F now. We expect to hit 44 F. Sunrise came, lighting up the snow, at 6:35 AM. And the sun will move out of my sky area — skyrea? — at 7:49.
Yeah, we got some snow yesterday. Though we’re below two thousand feet and the warnings were for the snow level to be above 2500, snow pummeled us throughout the afternoon. The snow lacked solid temperature support at that point, with the thermometer indicating it was 33, leaving us with a sketchy snow offering today, an inch plus in some places, nothing in others. Yes, it was more spectacle than result for us. Hopefully, enough snow struck and stuck on the snowpacks to give us more water this summer.
The cats quickly sized up the weather situation and seized on the strategy of staying in, staying warm, and sleeping. Smart felines
An STP song — that’s Stone Temple Pilots and not the racer’s edge — is circulating around the morning mental music stream. “Unglued” came out in 1906. Hah! I kid. It wasn’t that long ago, but in 1994, which is only (mumble mumble) years ago. It’s directly related to my writing efforts yesterday. I was struggling with focus and concentration, a struggle abetted by interruptions from others in the household. That prompted the line, “I got a feeling coming over me,” to, um, come over me. The line is used in “Unglued”. The neurons recognized that and uploaded the song into the mental stream.
Stay positive…and so on. You know it, right? Here comes the song. Now I’m up for coffee. Cheers
I don’t belong to a political party. I support those who will speak truth, and support freedom, justice, and equality for every person. Neither the G.O.P. nor Democratic Party does that well in America in recent years. The Green Party and Libertarian Party try, and they have some good ideas, but lack the political will.
I like what America’s founders set out to do. The Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights are fine documents, with great aspirations for what we as a nation can be. It is not a perfect document. Neither were the people who wrote and ratified it. As the Preamble says, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
They were forming a more perfect union. It wasn’t perfect, and it isn’t perfect. It was not meant to be never changed, for the founders recognized they weren’t creating a perfect union, and built several mechanisms for change into it. They recognized that not many ideas or plans begin as perfect. You do the best you can to give yourself a place to start. If you want for the perfect plan, you’ll probably never begin.
I support the idea of a more perfect union. I want to secure the blessing of liberty for ourselves and posterity. To achieve this, we can’t support or give in to lies, fear, or oppression. To continue the pursuit of a more perfect union began over two hundred years ago, we must continue to address wrongs and injustice, and change and adjust without abandoning the basic premise that everyone is equal, and have certain rights that others cannot abridge nor abrogate. Until that level, we continue to seek a more perfect union.
Meditating and calming is hard today. My heart is with Dallas. My heart is with the people the police killed. My heart is with the officers and family killed by snipers.
I can’t digest the reasons a traffic stop ends in death. “I have a gun. I’m permitted to carry it.” Four shots later, dead. Some witnesses say the shots were fired before the officer finished saying. It’s contested. John Scalzi writes what I think. I can’t imagine, I can imagine, I can remember moments when an officer confronted me, but I never thought about being shot and killed. I’m white and male. It’s a different world for me.
Police are called to a convenience store. A black man is outside. Police arrive, confront him, taser him, wrestle him to the crowd. They see a gun. Bang. The narrative is contested. No one is agreeing about what happened, about what videos showed, about who remembers what.
Black people are being killed for broken tail lights. Shot in the back eight times while running away. Because they’re a threat.
Protests break out. Trials, investigations, inquiries are conducted and almost every time, from small black child with a toy gun to people tasered and on the ground, the results return, “It was justified.” The officer feared…. The officer followed proper procedures….
So, who is surprised? Someone else says, “I’m fucking tired of this. I’m fighting back. I’m taking it to them. See how they like it when they’re shot and killed without provocation, because they’re not the ones who did anything, but the system is rigged and has provoked me to this response.” And they get up there and start shooting at officers.
How many trigger words are in those sentences I wrote that people would contest? Many, many. We ‘know’ more violence isn’t the answer but we ‘know’ that nothing has been changed to protect people from being shot and killed by a good guy, bad guy, or police officer, with a gun. We know fear is rising. Imagine being a police officer right now. Imagine being a black person. Imagine being in Dallas when the shots are fired. Imagine being in a car and reaching for your wallet when shots are fired.
There will be responses. There will be posts like this. There will be prayers and pious statements that our hearts are with the victims, whether they’re officers or citizens, of this rising streak of violent death by guns, as I wrote in my first paragraph, as I, weary of these dire headlines and violence, struggle to understand. The NRA will remain silent. They’ve learned not to speak out at these moments. Bad PR. Others will make foolish statements. Some will challenge and mock, “See, those fucking police officers were good guys with guns.”
Yeah.
Reading the officers’ accounts of going into Orlando after that mass shooting – how many days ago? – they tell of the darkness and uncertainty in the club, of going through carefully to find the shooter. Add some good guys with guns shooting at what they think is the bad gun with a gun into that charged environment of darkness and uncertainty.
But we know the future. There will be protests. Marches. Calls for change. Petitions. Blog posts. Prayers. Statements. Maybe sit-ins. Gun sales will rise again.
We know the future. Just look to the past. You don’t need to travel far.
Michael Seidel, writer 