Toddlers and Guns

Christopher Ingram wrote a news report in the San Diego Union Tribune on 15 Oct 2015 that said that on an average of one time per week a toddler shoots someone. See this article   I didn't find any information about any punishment for the gun owners when a child got their hands on a gun.  Apparently there are no laws requiring people to keep guns out of children's hands?

There were several other commentaries about this situation -- all were interesting. See below:

http://gawker.com/report-american-toddlers-responsible-for-one-shooting-1736636148

http://wonkette.com/594880/good-toddlers-with-guns-protecting-america-from-tyranny-on-weekly-basis-now

https://www.rt.com/usa/318713-toddler-shooting-every-week/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/19/guns-in-america-for-every-criminal-killed-in-self-defense-34-innocent-people-die/

It seems to me that the gun lobby should consider reasonable laws to protect people and children from such situations.  They always talk about "responsible gun owners" -- but apparently all gun owners are not, necessarily responsible!

Update on October 18 2015 -- a six year old boy shot his 3 yr old brother: http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/19/us/chicago-boy-accidentally-shoots-brother/

Pair Beaten in Church to Confess

The October 15 Union Tribune had a report written by John Kekis about a New Hartford, NY family who beat their teenage sons at church until one died to supposedly extract some sort of confession out of them.  See this article   The members of the Word of Life Christian Church read the bible regularly and supposedly believed in the teachings of Christ.  This is clearly an example of one of the reasons we need to make sure religion and government are totally separated.  Throughout history, many religions have practiced different forms of torture including Catholics in many countries.  Most recently the Bush/Cheney regime promoted torture and rendition to different countries in the futile hope of getting useful information.  Of course, these same "pro-lifers" promoted the death penalty and liberalization of gun laws.  

Anti Abortion clinics file suit against abortion info law

The governor signed AB775 that goes into effect in California on January 1, 2016 which requires anti-abortion clinics to also provide patients information about abortions.  This article in the 15 October 2015 Union Tribune by Christopher Ingram says that the anti-abortion groups have filed a lawsuit complaining that it infringes on their religious freedom to have to tell pregnant women about abortion options.  Those same groups all over the US have worked hard to force pro-choice organizations to provide counseling to patients concerning carrying their baby to term.  Now that the law has tried to make it fair for both sides, they are claiming "religious freedom infringement" by being forced to explain the abortion option.
Maybe the pro-choice group needs to form a religion that advocates for abortion.  That way they also can claim 'religious freedom" when the anti-abortionists try to force them to provide counseling.

The right-wingers claim their anti-abortion and anti-birth control position is based upon teachings of Christ.  That connection is very weak.  Most of the "theology" was created by monks who were most interested in increasing the population of Catholics to help spread the religion.  At the time, people were an asset to the family, the community and the church.  Now the rapidly increasing population of the world is a threat and liability to everyone.  Of course, the "In God We Trust" group are probably trusting God to solve the problem with a dramatic "act of god" such as a worldwide cataclysm, a severe global plague, or maybe a nuclear holocaust?   If not, meanwhile we are on our own.  God has given us brains and ability to work together to solve problems.  We should do it!
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Jeb Bush and "Slashing the Regulation Tax"

Jeb Bush had an Opinion article published in September 23rd Wall Street Journal entitled"  How I'll Slash the Regulation Tax."  His premise is that Federal Government regulations cost too much and destroy initiative to start new businesses.  He states that he wants to help small businesses.  Then later on in the article he says" As president, I'll repeal the coal ash rule, the clean water rule, net neutrality and much more."  It isn't clear to me how any of those "repeals" will help small business.  Repealing the coal ash rule, will certainly help "big coal" companies such as that of the Koch Brothers.  Repealing the clean water rule, will probably kill off a lot of small businesses who sell and install equipment to clean water before it goes into the environment, it will also help big mines who have huge settling ponds of harmful chemicals.  How does that help small businesses?  He also wants to kill the "net neutrality rule" of the FCC which was designed to help small business start up on equal footing with the large telecoms.  How can that possibly help small businesses.

Jeb also didn't mention the fact that the reason we had the huge downturn in the economy in 2008 was because we had no regulations concerning Credit Default Swap Derivatives.  These securities "fell through a crack" in the regulation environment among the various agencies:  SEC, HUD, etc, so when the large "too big to fail" banks got stuck with immense loses, it caused the whole economy to stall, and required the Government to bail them all out.  We needed better, smarter regulation, but CEOs of some of the large institutions, such as Jamie Dimon of J.P.Morgan lobbied hard to keep it deregulated, and the Bush administration agreed.  Now, Jeb Bush is complaining of the over regulation, just at the time that a former owner of a peanut farm went to prison for knowingly shipping peanuts contaminated with salmonella, and VW admitted that they had cheated on the tests of their diesel powered cars.  Darrell Delamaide of USA Today also notes in an October 1st editorial that Bush picked a bad time to take this position, and it doesn't seem to be a position that most of the voters would understand or rally around

Regulations are a necessary evil.  I like to think of regulations as "rules of the game."  If the game of monopoly had no rules, everyone playing the game could dip into the money in the bank and buy as many hotels they wanted and collect from anyone.  The game would no longer be fun, or fair!  On the other hand, it is the Governments task to make sure the rules they pass are necessary, easy to follow, not conflicting, enforceable, and not impose burdensome costs.  Regulations should not impact schedules too much either.  It is ridiculous to have to wait 8 to 10 years for approval of a project.  When a regulation is put in place, funding should be allocated to ensure that the regulators will be able to approve projects within reasonable time.  In fact, the law should establish timelines under which the agency in charge of the regulation must meet or face some sort of sanction.  I do agree with Jeb, that it is time to streamline some of the regulations, and it might be useful to form a commission to work through some of them.  One of the biggest "regulations" is our tax law which does involve many conflicting regulations, immense amounts of written laws and instructions, and huge amounts of paperwork required by individuals and corporations.  Streamlining our individual and corporate income taxes would be one of the best first steps of any administration interested in reducing the "regulation tax."    

Abortion and the Bible

Interesting article on Huffington Post by Dr. Joel Hoffman that explains that the bible really doesn't say anything about abortion.  I had never seen, read,  heard of any direct references against abortion in the bible, and always wondered where the right-wingers came up with their arguments that the bible (or Christ) advocated against abortion.  Apparently it doesn't exist!  I think it comes down to the "Thou Shalt not Kill" argument, and the belief that a fetus is a person.  That argument is not presented anywhere in the bible.  However, early theologians in the year 138 began to make the interpretation that abortion is killing. (see this link).  The Church continued to evolve that theology throughout the years, and then later St. Thomas Aquinas took that a step further with his interpretation that birth control was also "killing" a baby, and thus a mortal sin.   All of that theology, of course, was made with the thought that the church wanted their followers to have as many babies as possible to help spread their religion.  More children represented more wealth for families at the time, so these theologies fit right in with the desires of the Pope and the church leaders to expand.

I don't have anything against people who believe that abortion is murder, and then not getting an abortion because of it.  However I do object to people who want to force their beliefs on everyone else.  If a Moslem woman believes she should cover her body with a chador, that is fine.  However if her husband forces her to do it, that should be illegal.  If a Muslim majority in a city, state, or country believe women should wear chadors, and forces all women, Muslim or not,to do so, it violates a woman's individual right.  Similarly, if someone wants an abortion, they should be able to get one, and not be stopped by a minority or majority of people professing their religion, and forcing their beliefs on everyone else.

Yes, I have heard the argument that anti-abortionists give that they don't want "their money" to pay for someone else's abortion.  They argue that if "their money" were used, it would be the same thing as performing the abortion themselves. The anti-abortionists then say that if any taxpayer money is involved, it ends up being some of "their money" being used, so no taxpayer money should be used.  Having money "used" is a very "gray area" --if the taxpayer money pays the doctor who performs the abortion?  Or if taxpayer money paid for the facility where the abortion is performed?  Or if taxpayer money developed medications used for the abortion procedure?  I may not want "my money" provided to churches that I don't believe in through tax exemptions and deductions.  Is that "my money?"

200 Retired Generals Write President and Congress urging NO vote on treaty with Iran

I saw in the news that 200 retired generals are urging congress to vote NO on the treaty with Iran: -- see this link   Here is a link to the content of their letter.  This sounds like "Big News" -- but there are now about 4700 retired generals (see this link) so that only represents a little more than 4% of  the retired US generals, so, from that standpoint, it isn't all that significant.  It is interesting that the Iranians aren't advertising "in favor" of the agreement.  Does our "free press" inhibit those advertisements from appearing?  I'd also like to hear the opinions of the other 4500 retired generals, wouldn't you?
The letter sounded like the Israeli propaganda and paid advertising that Israel and various associated organizations have been pushing, so it is likely that the actual text of the letter was written by a few "pro-Israeli" organizations, or a retired general or two, and then they "arm twisted" the others to become signatories to the letter.
The Los Angeles Times editors this morning had a more reasonable, and well thought out argument in favor of the treaty: See this link  I think I agree with their position, in this case.
I believe the Iran treaty could have put even more constraints on Iran, if we had insisted that Israel undergo the same sort of inspection and controls on their Nuclear and other WMD.  Israel has threatened attacks on Iran many times, and has assassinated Iran's citizens and scientists when out of the country.  Israel has shown aggressive and "first strike" military maneuvers many times throughout their history, so Iran has good reason to feel threatened.  I think if I were an Iranian citizen, that I would certainly want my country to be armed to defend, in some way, against Israel.  If I were in Iran's government, I believe I would try to make sure that my citizens were fully aware of the threats. I remember the "duck and cover" exercises we did in school during the 1950's and 60s in case of a nuclear attack.  Do Iranian citizens do that now?  In hindsight, I doubt if that exercise would have done much to save the lives of children in schools.  However, I'm sure it did a lot to help form public opinion against the Soviet Union, and help justify expenditures of immense amounts of resources in defense.

What Happens if Senate Rejects the Iran Nuclear Treaty?

I saw this Op-Ed by Joseph Cirincione in today's LA Times, and I think I agree with his convincing arguments. What do you think?   I believe the world needs this treaty.  My feeling is reinforced when I see that the "big money" right-wingers are spending millions of dollars on paid advertising against the treaty and distorting the facts. (see this link or this one).  I suspect that Israel or their supporters are behind the paid advertising, using, in some way, some of the billions of dollars that US taxpayers have "donated" to their country.  Meanwhile, Israel maintains their own WMD including nuclear, chemical and possibly biological weapons, and is the only Middle East country who has attacked US naval ships (see this link) and routinely spies on the US (John Pollard, for example). Israel likes to say they are our friend and ally, but never provided any serious support when we needed help in Vietnam, Bosnia, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Why should the US demand inspection of Iran's nuclear processing and weapons, when we don't do the same for Israel's?
Of course Iran should be angry with the US, we have severly mistreated Iran throughout history.  Of course Iran should want nuclear weapons.  All of their neighbors (Pakistan, India, Russia) as well as Israel have them.  Also Israel has assassinated Iranian scientists and their family when traveling outside of Iran (I don't know of any case when Iran has done the same to any Israeli scientists), and Israel launched an unprovoked cyber attack against Iran's nuclear processing industry.  I don't know of any case where Iran has launched any attack of any sort against Israel.  Those were clearly terrorist acts done by Israel, but Israel claims that Iran sponsors "state terrorism"...