Positive bloggage fallout: a cousin I haven’t seen since the late 1950s discovered this site and established contact. Nice. Along the way my blog has helped me reconnect with former co-workers and school friends. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it’s always a pleasant surprise.
There are other kinds of fallout. I blogged about an F-15 accident and was contacted a few months later by a relative of one of the men who died in the crash. He was looking for the inside scoop on who or what was really to blame, information I couldn’t legally provide. More recently, I reviewed a true crime book which contained a reference to two local men with whom I’d crossed paths. Now I’ve been contacted by the daughter of a man who was murdered — and the daughter thinks one of the men I know might be connected to the murder. Yikes.
Over on my hashing blog I’ve alienated friends by bucking the hash party line (hashers are invariably good and never drink too much, get DUI’d, or let fellow hashers die on trail). Of course whenever I opine about politics and morality here at Paul’s Thing, I run the same risk.
Let’s expose ourselves to some fallout, shall we?
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When I blogged about the recent Tucson shootings I considered saying more about Arizona’s gun culture. I was aware of ongoing efforts by Republican state congressmen to lift the few remaining restrictions on where citizens could carry guns, but didn’t have the details at hand. Yesterday a friend sent me a link to an article titled “New Arizona legislation aims to loosen gun laws.”
The proposed “Firearms Omnibus” bill would require universities and communities to allow guns on campus and permit guns inside public government buildings, including the state Capitol.
The legislation would also “allow people to sue if they feel they were illegally stopped from carrying a firearm into a government facility or event. If a person wins the lawsuit and the government agency doesn’t pay within 72 hours, the person has the right to seize as payment ‘any municipal vehicles used or operated for the benefit of any elected office holder’ in the relevant government agency.”
Savor the sovereign citizen wackiness of that last bit. “Stand aside, officer, I’m taking your patrol car because you wouldn’t allow me to carry my pistol into the governor’s office.” Uh, sure.
The Arizona gun lobby is going after government facilities and offices where guns are currently banned, not private businesses or institutions. But that’s next. When states around the country started loosening gun carry restrictions, the new laws all carried statements to the effect that private businesses and institutions (restaurants, churches, country clubs, etc) could individually ban guns from their premises. But what happened — and it started happening almost immediately — was that gun advocates, usually under the rubric of the NRA, began putting pressure on private businesses and institutions that chose to ban guns. Here’s one example: a group in Georgia appealing a judge’s ruling that churches have the right to ban guns.
So pretty soon (because this absolutely wacko piece of legislation will pass and become law) students and teachers will be carrying guns on campus, and the NRA will shift its focus to churches and shopping malls that currently ban guns. Other states are following in Arizona’s footsteps, and some are even trying to out-Arizona Arizona. A state legislator in South Dakota wants to require all adults to buy & carry guns. Another state legislator in Utah wants the state to adopt an “official handgun.”
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I’m not at all upset by the federal judge’s ruling that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. First, the judge is clearly a right-wing activist and his ruling is meant to pave the way for a Supreme Court decision against the Affordable Care Act. That’s going to happen anyway; might as well get it over with. Second, the judge has a point about the individual mandate to buy insurance. That was never going to work. The only answer is single-payer health care — Medicare for all — and the quicker we make that happen the better. Obama made a fatal compromise with the health care insurance industry, and the result is an unworkable law.
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Bloggers who’ve been following the news from Egypt are extolling Al Jazeera’s live around-the-clock coverage. People who are nostalgic for the glory days of CNN are beginning to ask why US cable networks don’t offer Al Jazeera. Are you kidding me? Because the right would have a shit fit, that’s why, and they’d organize boycotts of Comcast and Cox. You allow Al Jazeera on American television, next thing you know we’ll all be living under Sharia law! Well, if you miss CNN and would like to see some genuine news coverage from Egypt, you can watch Al Jazeera’s live stream here.
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I’m reading Michael Lewis’ The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, the story of how bankers and Wall Street traders drove our economy off the cliff, destroyed the equity we had in our homes, and stole our 401Ks. Seriously, folks? We need to kill the rich. Drive them from their gated compounds, burn their houses and yachts, load them onto tumbrils, and take them to the guillotine.
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Friends gave me a cowboy cookbook, and the first recipe I’m going to try is chicken-fried steak. The results will soon appear on the one blog that doesn’t subject me to regular doses of fallout, my cooking blog. Of course, one day soon some vegan will discover that blog, and the Geiger counter will start clicking again. . . .