Best TV Show of 2012

The best TV show of 2012 is HBO's Boardwalk Empire. Season 3 was absolutely wonderful and hit on all cylinders with 100 percent power. The acting, the writing, and directing were all impeccable this year and each week was like watching a mini film to be quite honest.

Steve Buscemi continues to be one of the most underrated actors of our time. Bobby Cannavale's Gyp Rosetti was truly one of the most frightening characters to every grace the small screen. And, like the previous two seasons, the historical context stayed true to the times. Prohibition was a horribly violent time and showed the folly of trying to outlaw alcohol.

Here's one of the trailers for Season 3.

Best Film of 2012

It's that time of year again for Best Ofs and first up is Best Film. This year, it wasn't even contest.

Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom is the best coming of age story put on celluloid since Rob Reiner's Stand By Me. It tells the story of two young teenagers in the mid 1960s who decide to run away and have an adventure. Their parents, his scout troop, social services, and the law (in the form of the completely hilarious Bruce Willis) pursue them.

Anderson's perception of life has always resonated with me. All of his films are gems, in my opinion, but this one seems a level above that. If you've never seen any of his films, I recommend picking them all up and checking them out. Start with this one.

Happily Going Over The Cliff

It's been amusing in a sort of horrifying way to watch Congress try to come up with some sort of plan to avert the tax rate rise and spending cuts that are going to occur on January 1, 2013. I don't think I've ever seen a Republican leader admit that he was powerless as Speaker Boehner did last week. "It's now up to the president and Harry Reid," he said. Unbelievable.

But that's what happens when you have a caucus that is comprised of juveniles who are eternally stomping down the hallway and slamming their doors at what they perceive to be their dad. They're perfectly happy to crash the car in order to sate their adolescent power fantasies. They'd rather cut of their nose despite their faces.

And that's just what is going to happen. If no deal is reached by Tuesday (and it looks doubtful), January 2nd is going to be a barn burner at the New York Stock Exchange. At that point, the GOP will be fucked. If they deal now, they are going to get something for those upper income folks. If they wait, however, the only bill they are going to see is one that makes the tax cuts permanent for those making under 250K and they will have no choice but to sign it as the market drops 500-1000 points.

They're also going to get bloody ears (and possibly more) in terms of the spending cuts and will likely have to give in on those as well. Much of their constituency is old people who love Medicare and Social Security. Any sort of cuts will be viewed with much animosity. This doesn't even take into account the defense cuts which, in my view, if they happen, will basically mean the end of the Tea Party. Democrats learned a long time ago that you don't fuck with defense contractors.

So, this begs the question, do the Republicans want to be the Whigs of the 21st century? Given their intransigent stance on immigration (along with the rest of all of this), I think they do. Bottom line: they need to change. If they don't, Texas will turn blue in 2016 or 2020 and that will be it for them.

A Real-Life Test of the NRA School Proposal

Three police officers were shot in a New Jersey police station by a domestic abuse suspect who somehow got a gun. The suspect was killed. One officer suffered abdominal wounds below his bullet proof vest, while the other two were grazed. All are expected to recover.

Yes, another senseless tragedy caused by a nutjob combined with a tragic screw-up.

But this incident shows how flawed the NRA's "more guns" idea is. A police station is the best-case scenario for the "protective" nature of guns. Everyone there is a trained professional. They know exactly who the bad guy is. Yet somehow he got a gun and shot three cops.

This is not the first time this has happened: it happened in Michigan in 2011, again in Michigan this November, in Virginia in 2006, and so on. Then there are the accidental shootings at police stations (Huntington Beach this July). And then there are the "freak accidents," like the woman was accidentally killed in Detroit when she hugged an off-duty cop.
 We know with certainty that more guns in schools will result in some number of additional deaths each year due to accidental shootings and guns being wrested away from guards. The question is: will the deaths caused by the presence of armed guards outnumber the deaths that might be saved from mass shootings?

The NRA would like us to just write those accidental deaths and injuries off as collateral damage, the same way we write off Afghan children killed by drones. Considering how rare school shootings actually are, starting a big program of volunteer armed guards would likely increase the number of deaths in schools.

But the fact is, even in the best-case scenario, an armed guard can't prevent anyone from ever being shot: the hope is that the guard will cut the carnage short by taking the shooter out after he's opened fire. It's the same rationale for banning large-capacity magazines and "assault" rifles: you can't completely stop the killing, but you can minimize it. The problem with the armed guard solution is the bad guys always get a preemptive first strike on the guard, and if it's successful you've just provided the shooter with additional firepower.


Putting real cops in schools isn't necessarily a bad idea, but it's very expensive and it's not a foolproof deterrent, as we saw in Columbine. If even a station full of armed cops can't protect themselves with guns, how can one retired NRA volunteer with a gun protect a whole school filled with kids? Especially if the shooter takes a first-grader hostage and uses her as a human shield while blasting away at the armed guard with a Bushmaster and a 100-round magazine?
The problem is not stopping crazy guys from shooting up schools. It's stopping crazy guys from getting guns in the first place.

Still With The Deafness of Tone

It's been almost two week since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut and the Right is continuing merrily along with their complete deafness of tone. They just don't get it. This one is different and, like the last election, they're are going to learn yet another hard lesson. Even Frank Luntz thinks so.

“The public wants guns out of the schools, not in the schools,” Luntz said on CBS’s “This Morning.” “And they are not asking for a security official or someone else. I don’t think the NRA is listening. I don’t think they understand most Americans would protect the Second Amendment rights and yet agree with the idea that not every human being should own a gun, not every gun should be available at anytime, anywhere, for anyone. At gun shows, you should not be able to buy something there without any kind of check whatsoever.” 

That's right. There are plenty of people that should not own guns. I think this incident (as well as the rest of them this year) illustrate that if you increase the number of people carrying weapons, you are going to increase the chances of irresponsible gun ownership. It shouldn't simply be that people who have criminal records should not own guns. Many people with mental illness or people who live folks who have mental disabilities should not own guns either.

I don't think the gun rights folks (and many others on the Right) realize how Orwellian they sound. The irony is hilarious when you consider how much they rip the left for doublespeak. The answer to gun violence is...MORE GUNS, damnit!!

War is Peace...

What the Right really wants is to (ahem) do it again only harder. They are using this as an opportunity to see if they can gain any ground on what they view as "Slaughter Zones" (AKA Gun Free Zones). They want to be able to carry their guns wherever they want, including schools. It's a chest thumping, juvenile maneuver which serves to further their "fuck you, dad/stomp down the hallway/bedroom door slam" agenda of being pissed off at rules they don't like. Never mind the rest of us.

The only guns I want in schools are the ones carried by police officers (yet another group the Right sneer at as not "having any real training" which is basically code for insecurity and envy). Schools are public property which means that the public gets to decide what goes on in our schools. With private property, gun owners can kindly go fuck themselves if they want to beef about gun free zones. The health club I go to, for example, has a few malcontents who bitch about not being able to bring their guns in when they lift weights (how would that work, exactly?). Perhaps they should choose another place to go rather than gripe.

Doubling down is what they do lately, though, and it continues to cost them elections. This won't be any different. They underestimate the president and worse, the public, who has a growing distaste for some guns, as Mr. Luntz notices above. He's a right wing pollster so if he's saying it, they are in big fucking trouble. And it won't be because (cue high pitched shrieking) Barack Obama is going to be a "gun grabber." Actually, they're not really in "trouble" either...only the way they see it...the world (gasp!) changing and that simply won't do.

In fact, I pretty much guarantee that three things are going to come out of all of this. First, people will get to keep the guns they own (if they choose not to sell them back to the federal government, that is, for a very good price:)). Second, plenty of guns will be available for people to use to defend themselves.

And third, the Right is going to be a mouth foaming pile of apoplexis.

Gun Privacy vs. Neighbor's Right to Know

The Journal News, a newspaper in White Plains, New York, published a map of people licensed to own guns in surrounding counties. This has raised a firestorm of protest from conservatives, claiming variously that these people's privacy had been violated (these licenses are a matter of public record), that it would encourage criminals to target gun owners, or alternately to encourage thieves to target homes that are "unprotected" by guns.

The article accompanying the map begins:

In May, Richard V. Wilson approached a female neighbor on the street and shot her in the back of the head, a crime that stunned their quiet Katonah neighborhood.

What was equally shocking for some was the revelation that the mentally disturbed 77-year-old man had amassed a cache of weapons — including two unregistered handguns and a large amount of ammunition — without any neighbors knowing.

On Christmas Eve William Spengler set fire to his house, killed his sister, set fire to the rest of the neighborhood, then ambushed the firemen who came to douse the blaze, killing two and wounding two others. Spengler was an ex-con who killed his grandmother in 1980. He used a Bushmaster rifle to kill the firemen, like the one Adam Lanza used. It's not yet known how he got the weapon: did he get it at a gun show? From a friend? Through a straw buyer? Or by breaking into a nearby house?

I understand why gun owners don't want their names published in the paper. Neither do pedophiles. But guns in the home represent a real risk to society, both from the gun owners themselves or as a form of attractive nuisance for thieves and children

It's not unreasonable for parents to want to know if their children are playing with kids who might have guns at home, or if neighbors like Richard Wilson represent a potential risk to their children.

Hundreds of kids die each year from accidental shootings. Hundreds of kids also die in swimming pool and trampoline accidents. Parents should know if their kids' friends have pools and trampolines. Why not guns?

That newspaper didn't tell potential burglars anything they didn't already know. Thieves casing a neighborhood can read the "gang signs" that mark gun owners: American flags, large dogs of breeds used for hunting, No Trespassing and No Solicitation signs, political bumper stickers and signs for Tea Party and conservative causes, "Protected by Smith & Wesson" bumper stickers and signs (yeah, some people are that dumb), four-door pickup trucks and Hummers, gun racks in the pickups, etc.


Some gun owners envision themselves as defending the Alamo, and think they will be able to fend off the criminals storming their house in a blaze of gunfire. This is misguided: burglars want to break in while you're gone and your cash, jewelry and guns are just waiting there to be stolen.

Therefore, most burglaries are committed when victims are at work, and nearly all occur when the burglars think you're away. Most thieves are unarmed and avoid conflict. More than 50% of burglaries occur within two miles of the burglar's home. Most are smash and grabs, in and out in 12 minutes or less. Many burglars have already been in your house for some other purpose (that may be why Nancy Lanza didn't let people in).

The NRA recommends people use concealed lock boxes or gun safes, as well as trigger locks or cable locks and that guns be stored unloaded. They should demand these recommendations be given the force of law.

Just as importantly, gun owners should have home security systems or a dog. These are better deterrents than a gun. Burglars are much less likely to rob houses without security systems and barking dogs. And even if you do have a gun for "protection," you still need the dog or the alarm to wake you up. The gun is worse than useless if you're asleep when the intruder takes it from your nightstand.

Gun rights advocates should want to be seen as the people who stop crazy old coots from shooting their neighbors in the head, not the wackos who make it possible.

Happy Christmas!!

I've always looked at the celebration of Christmas Day with inquisitive fascination. Why do we honor the birth of Jesus Christ when it's likely he was born in March? In fact, the reason why we celebrate the nativity on December 25th stems from an effort by 4th Century Christians to make their religion more prominent.

These early believers saw the pagan festivities associated with Mithraism as a threat to their fledgling movement and so they switched the birthday of Christ to be on the same day as the birthday of the Invincible Sun God, Natalis Solis Invincti. The Christians of this time were already emboldened by the Roman Emperor Constantine's edict of 313 CE which allowed them to practice their faith so plans were made to supplant Mithraism with Christianity.

They did this by focusing on the festive nature of the sun god cult worship and essentially making it their own. A Christian mass was developed complete with prayers and ceremony-all in the hopes of luring Mithraists away from their religion to Christianity. In short, it was a PR campaign and it worked.

The irony here (for all your scriptural literalists out there) is that the celebration of Jesus' birthday isn't "pure." It's based on pagan ritual and, in the centuries since that time, is a day that has gone through many other twists and turns. Puritans here in America had outlawed any celebration of Christmas until finally losing out on June 26, 1870 when Christmas became a national holiday. Christmas trees were considered pagan and also forbidden  until the late 17th century. Santa himself began as an amalgamation (partially pagan) of St. Nicholas, the Bishop of Myra (modern-day Turkey), the Norse god, Woden, and the Celtic Holly King and ended up being the creation of a modern day cartoonist (Thomas Nash) for Harper's Weekly in 1860.

So, as we begin to drift off today from an overdose of tryptophan, let's remember that this is not a rigid holiday and is, as it has always been, free loose, and open to interpretation:)

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.... 

(from "A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas)

Did You Survive the Most Recent Apocalypse?

Did you get your "I Survived the Apocalypse!" T-shirt yet? December 21st was supposed to be the end of the world, according to a dim-witted interpretation of the Mayan calendar. The reality is that the end of the previous baktun of the Mayan calender was no different from the end of December on our calendar, or the end of the fiscal year, or the end of the 20th century, or the end of the second millennium.

We saw plenty of crazies predicting doom on December 31, 1999 (though, technically, the third millennium didn't start until Jan. 1, 2001). There were the typical fire-and-brimstone second-coming loonies, but there were also plenty of technological Y2K doomsayers. And more recently there was Harold Camping, who took two swings at the Apocalypse piñata in 2011, spending more than $100 million promoting his end-of-the-world predictions. And we're all still here.

What is it about a calendar rolling over like an odometer that turns out the crazies?

Historically prophets have cast catastrophic events like hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, wars, plagues and droughts as presentiments of the end times, or punishments for our wickedness. Pat Robertson predicted a Gay Days weekend at Disney World would bring a hurricane down on Orlando. Instead Hurricane Bonnie hit Virginia Beach, where Robertson's 700 club originates. James Dobson blamed the Newtown shooting on gay marriage. Did I miss the story about Adam Lanza's girlfriend dumping him and marrying a lesbian?

Climate scientists have long predicted that stronger hurricanes, prolonged drought punctuated by huge deluges, the spread of tropical diseases like West Nile virus and dengue fever — events that we're experiencing right now — would be the result of global warming caused by human-generated carbon dioxide emissions. Many on the Christian Right reject these data-driven observations and computer-modeled predictions out of hand. Yet at exactly the same time they cite these events as evidence of our moral failings, portraying them as God's retribution for our disobedience.

Climate scientists are missing the boat. To gain broader acceptance they need to recast their climate forecasts as apocalyptic prophecies of doom caused by God's ire over the seven deadly sins we are committing:

• Greed: skyrocketing oil-company profits
• Pride: Americans who proudly drive gas-wasting Hummers to flaunt their wealth
• Sloth: people who are too lazy to walk to the corner store contribute to global warming
• Wrath: the refusal of irate Republican members of the House to renew wind power tax credits
• Lust: the rape of the earth by oil wells and coal mines
• Envy: the consumer culture that causes us to compete with the Joneses by buying ever-greater quantities of immediately disposable things that require oil, gas and coal to produce and transport
• Gluttony: the epidemic of diabetes and other obesity-related diseases resulting from our consumption of high-fructose corn syrup produced on gigantic monoculture corporate farms that use billions of gallons of oil for fuel and fertilizer, as well as damage the environment and our own genetic code with pesticides and herbicides

There's a far better case for divine wrath over excessive oil consumption for the overtopping of seawalls that caused the flooding of New York and New Jersey during Hurricane Sandy than there is for God expressing his anger over gay marriage by having Adam Lanza murder 20 first-graders in Newtown. Higher ocean temperatures raise sea levels, causing more flooding. But those kids were not members of the Connecticut Supreme Court who upgraded civil unions (passed in 2005) to full marriage in Connecticut four years ago.

In the case of Sandy there's an obvious cause and effect, and in Newtown there's an "I told you so." God might move in mysterious ways, but if he wants us to get the message, he should be a little more direct, rather than relying on preachers in expensive suits asking for handouts on TV. What's even more incredible is that there are people who would willingly worship a god who wrought a terrifying bloody death upon innocent children who had absolutely nothing to do with the perceived violation of his laws. I just don't remember hearing that any of those kids were gay or married.

Climate change deniers insist scientists are just saying this stuff to get grant money. Just as skeptics insist Harold Camping predicted the end of the world just to get donations from frightened old ladies. Maybe the religious right doesn't believe climate scientists' predictions because they're suffering from a nasty case of psychological projection.

Hmm. What is that odd, rodent-like odor?

Son of the Gun

The New Yorker ran a story in April of this year about guns in America (Maureen Dowd sent me that way). It contained the following revelation about David Michael Keene, the son of NRA president David Keene:

In 2002, Keene’s son David Michael Keene was driving on the George Washington Memorial Parkway when, in a road-rage incident, he fired a handgun at another motorist. He was sentenced to ten years in prison for “using, brandishing, and discharging a firearm in a crime of violence.” I asked Keene if this private tragedy had left him uncertain about what the N.R.A. had wrought. He said no: “You break the law, you pay the price.”

Keene used to run the American Conservative Union (which organizes CPAC), where his 21-year-old son worked as the online communications director at the time of the shooting. Keene was featured in another news story two years ago when $400,000 was embezzled from the ACU. The culprit? His ex-wife, Diana Hubbard Carr. She pleaded guilty to mail fraud in 2011.

It seems the people closest to David Keene lack a certain self control.

Did David Keene commit these crimes? No. Is he guilty by association? No. But fathers have to wonder if they bear some responsibility for their sons' actions. Was Keene a bad parent, as many think Nancy Lanza was? Might he have imparted to his son a self-entitled attitude about not taking crap from anyone, backed up by a belligerent arrogance that comes from packing heat?

The NRA president is a Daily Show punchline. If there had been no gun in the younger Keene's BMW his life would not have been ruined. Keene's own son was sent to jail for exactly the kind of senseless crime gun control advocates say easy access to guns promotes. The NRA's president's son is Exhibit A against everything they stand for.

What's astounding is that Keene can experience this and so utterly miss the point. It's not just his kid who would have paid the price had his aim been truer: the guy he almost shot would have paid a much higher price.

Twenty-six victims paid the ultimate price for Adam Lanza's crimes, and hundreds of parents, relatives and friends who paid a price in grief that David Keene seems incapable of feeling.

The Police State

The NRA press conference yesterday was a perfect example of how out of touch the Right is these days. "Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun."

Really?

I'll set the aside the Jack Bauer fantasy here that the gun rights folks seem to think can be replicated in reality and focus on the word mentioned twice in this quote: gun. Why does it have to be a gun? There are plenty of other ways to disable intruders that school, mall and movie theater staff could use. Using a taser is one option although that could prove difficult. A more obvious solution is to stash some tear gas or something similar and simply throw it down the hallway and knockout the intruder. You might end up knocking out some staff or students but the intruder would be disabled.

Think of that would have worked in this situation. The principal would hear the commotion and grab the gas canister that they have stored in the room they were in. She throws it out in the hallway and Lanza passes out. At least then, we would have known why he was going on a rampage.

Honestly, this is a more realistic solution. I don't think the Right realizes how juvenile they sound when they start talking about arming everyone. More importantly, it strikes me as odd that they want armed security personnel everywhere. Isn't that the same thing as a police state (something they are vehemently opposed to)?

But this is what I mean when I say they are closet fascists. In so many ways, that's what the NRA and their supporters are all about. Do they even realize it?

Boehner's Boner

John Boehner thought he would pull a fast one on President Obama and proposed a bill that would raise taxes only on people who make more than a million bucks a year. He thought its passage in the House would ensure that he would get his way, by forcing the president and the Senate to take it or leave it.

Unfortunately, the Brutuses in the Republican House caucus stabbed Boehner in the back. They refused to back his play and Boehner was forced to withdraw his own bill.

One interesting aspect of this is the reaction of certain pundits. I don't read a lot of conservatives because they generally spend all their time ignoring reality, circling the wagons, repeating talking points cooked up at the Wednesday meeting, and finding lame excuses for whatever nonsense the Republican Party spews out.

But recently some conservatives have started to wake up. Joe Scarborough did so by calling for gun control in the wake of Newtown. And Jennifer Rubin called Republicans in the House to account in the Washington Post. She ended her most recent piece with these paragraphs:

The world of Heritage Action Network, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and the other all-or-nothing hard-liners in the conservative media have encouraged and will delight in this sort of fiasco. That said, the fault lies with the spineless members who think they’ll escape blame if they don’t vote for any measure. That is folly, not to mention political cowardice. To govern is to choose, and they apparently can do neither.

This sort of display suggests Republicans are not capable of governing. What was an argument by Democrats (They are unreasonable! They only care for the rich!) is now a political reality.

When I posed the question “What next?” to several senior Republicans, the answer came back, ” I really don’t know” or “Good question.” What we do know is that House Republicans may have confirmed the good judgment of the American people in keeping divided government. Goodness knows none of these people can be trusted.

The reaction from right-wingers in the reader comments was immediate and irate. Once an ever-reliable pillar of Republican dogma, Rubin had now been branded as a RINO. She is a heretic, a leper, an outcast unclean. The conservative tribe must eject her and anyone who dares break with the orthodoxy dictated by the moneyed overlords.

Thus the Republican Party continues to hack itself to pieces, alienating everyone who has an ounce of integrity and honesty. At this rate it will only be a few years until it joins the Whigs and the Federalist Party, and consists solely of Jim DeMint, Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, Grover Norquist, the Koch Brothers and Wayne LaPierre. And their piles and piles of money.

The NRA's Cynical Ploy

Wayne LaPierre, the president of the NRA, made his long-awaited proposal to reduce gun violence in schools: more guns and more guards. It's a cynical ploy the NRA knows will never happen, simply because it would cost schools hundreds of billions of dollars they don't have.

But even though it's a non-starter, it's useful to point out the practical flaws.

First off, a guard will just be the first victim. If you've ever watched Star Trek or Alias or any other TV show where the heroes infiltrate a secure facility, the first one to die is the red-shirt at the front door.

Second, how many guards are enough? If there's just one, the shooter will pretty much take him out automatically by surprise. So you need at least two guards on each door. But since someone with an AR-15 could easily take out two guards in a couple of seconds, you really need a third guard in a bullet-proof control booth just down the hall. And since guards can't always be on duty, you're going to need at least one more guy who can relieve the guards when they're on break. In a big school with three or four entrances, you'll need a ten-man security team.

Third, who are these guards going to be? Your typical mall security guard is not going to hack it. These people need to be highly competent since they're going to armed around little kids. They're going to require ongoing training to ensure accuracy and quick reflexes. But highly competent, highly aware and highly perceptive individuals are not going to want this job, because it will involve sitting around doing absolutely nothing all the time. Because, while dozens of kids die in school shootings every year, the probability of a shooting at any particular school is basically zero. These guard jobs are therefore going to be difficult to staff. There's going to be a lot of bored, inattentive guards who will make mistakes. And, by the way, like prison guards and cops they're going to want to be unionized.

Unless you use a dedicated guard, they'll constantly be distracted by other duties. The bad guy will only have to wait a minute or two until the guard is occupied with something else, and then shoot him in the back.

Fourth, what kind of equipment are these glorified babysitters going to have? Will they have Glock 17s, or will they carry AR-15s? And what if the crazed shooter has Kevlar body armor and a ballistic helmet? (Which is apparently what the Aurora shooter had.) So should the guards be armed with M16s with armor piercing rounds? And will the guards wear Kevlar body armor, or full ballistic SWAT gear?

Fifth, most schools are open 16 to 18 hours a day. Sports teams practice after school, there are PTA meetings, detention, etc. Schools have plays and host sports events against other schools, which the general public attends. Schools are used by adults for community events like precinct caucuses, open gyms, etc. Guards would have to be on duty all the time and would have to search every person to make sure they aren't bringing weapons in after-hours to cache for an attack planned the next day.

Sixth, because there will be hundreds of thousands of guns knocking around schools, there will be dozens of accidental shooting each year when guards drop or clean their guns. Guards will make mistakes and shoot kids who bring gun-shaped cigarette lighters to school. Kids will get hold of the guard's guns and shoot each other accidentally, as well as on purpose. Mistakes and accidents are a simple fact of life, and the more guns there are the more such incidents will occur. It's an intractable fact of life.

Seventh, many suburban schools are sprawling single-story buildings with windows in every classroom. Could Adam Lanza have come through a window, or simply shot those 20 kids from outside the building? I guess we need to brick up all the windows, or put bullet-proof class and bars on them all.

Finally, and this is the big question: what's this all going to cost? These guards need to be as competent as your average cop, and must be paid accordingly. They're going to need health insurance, vacation time, a supervisor and all the other overhead employees entail. Then they're going to need all that equipment and ongoing training. Then there's the cost of construction for modifying school entrances to accommodate a new security regime.

The NRA did propose that volunteers could be used to ameliorate costs. This is unrealistic: who besides retired old men, little old ladies and stay-at-home moms would be available to guard a school during the day? And then there's the quality of volunteers. Nancy Lanza apparently did volunteer work at the school. I imagine she would have encouraged her son Adam to volunteer for the security detail.

The NRA also suggested we use cops to guard schools. But that'll mean they aren't doing the things they're normally doing. Which means that cities and counties have to hire more cops with money they don't have, or other crimes go undeterred, uninvestigated and unsolved.

These costs could easily add up to hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year per school, and schools are already laying teachers off. Unless the NRA is proposing to pay for school security with new taxes on guns and ammo and steep licensing fees for gun owners, their proposals are utterly worthless.

And all this security won't be foolproof. Someone inside the building could open a window and hoist guns up from a confederate outside. Someone wearing the right uniform will inspire trust and could easily infiltrate close enough to take out the guards. Guards will go mad from boredom and the incessant whining of over-privileged brats and open fire on them.

Under the NRA plan, schools will cease to be schools and will become prisons or concentration camps, replete with armed guards, metal detectors, X-ray scanners, security checkpoints, and so on.

And the crazy thing is, all this security still wouldn't stop a determined madman. The worst school massacre occurred in Bath Township, Michigan, in 1927, when a man, crazed by the death of his wife, property taxes and the threatened foreclosure of his farm, blew up a school and killed dozens of kids, school officials, his wife and himself. These days it would be a truck loaded with AMFO instead of dynamite and pyrotol.

The NRA proposal is a completely cynical ploy. They offer this as a distraction they know it will never happen, because of the expense and the fact that it would solve absolutely nothing.

Instead of blowing hot air, the NRA should get in front of this problem by demanding improved gun safety technology and requiring all gun owners be competent: fully trained, certified and licensed. In other words, a well-regulated militia. They should be the first to demand that people with questionable backgrounds be banned from their ranks. They should want to be seen as dedicated conservationist-hunters, ranchers who need weapons for their everyday work, and serious target shooters who value skill and accuracy, and not phallically challenged twits who think guns are toys and just like to shoot stuff and blow shit up.

One or two more Sandy Hooks will convince the American public that the only way to reduce the number of gun deaths is to drastically reduce the number of guns, Australian style. That will doom the NRA to oblivion by eliminating the stranglehold they have on legislators, and they will have no say in what sorts of regulations will be imposed on gun ownership.

Did He Go There?

Police are working on reconstructing Adam Lanza's hard drive after he smashed it with a hammer just prior to going on his killing spree. Thus far, they are publicly saying that they aren't having much success. I have to wonder...why did he smash it? What was on it? What sites did he visit and why?

One possible answer comes from this post over at CNN.

And if you're anxious about your masculinity, if you aren't quite sure whether those around you find you sufficiently strong and potent, the Bushmaster corporation has an answer for you. If you buy one of their semi-automatic rifles -- like the kind Adam Lanza used to murder 20 children and six adults last week -- you may "Consider your Man Card reissued." 

Bushmaster took down this section of their site but you can still see what it looked like here. This is only speculation at this point but did Nancy Lanza think that getting her son into guns would make him less awkward and more of a man? Did he visit this site or others like it?

This is especially disturbing when you consider that he likely had various mental and emotional issues. Being that way naturally coupled with the nurturing of a sub culture that isn't known for empathy and sensitivity anyway is a recipe for disaster. In fact, if you put together some of the words used to describe the Lanza's...doomsday prepper, economic collapse, home schooling, gun collector...the image becomes clearer as to what precipitated this shooting spree.

Of course, it could just be as simple as bad parenting. I've certainly seen my share of moonbat parents and Ms. Lanza seems like one of them. Even though there was a horrible end to her life, we still have to question her wisdom. How could she allow her son access to these guns given what he was like? I can't help but think that this horrible event stands as a testament to why people don't actually know what's in their best interests and, sometimes, make very, very poor choices that affect other people's lives. Or, in this case, take them away.

We don't live on islands, folks.  The things we do affect other people. That's why we have laws. The nature of man is not good. Often, it is confused or downright despicable.

More Government Waste Courtesy of Mitt Romney

Talk about government waste. Mitt Romney spent almost $9 million of taxpayer money on the presidential transition. "What transition?" you ask. "He lost!"

Romney took advantage of an act passed in 2010 to make presidential transitions easier. He spent $2.5 million on office space. Three quarters of a million on office furniture that would be used for a few months. And $5.6 million on computers and communications equipment (some of this will be "recycled" to other government departments).

I eagerly anticipate the passage of a bill from the Republican-controlled House to repeal the act and recover this money from Romney's campaign committee during the lame duck session, right after they get done cutting Social Security benefits for the elderly and making sure millionaires keep their tax cuts.

A Lighter Topic

When I was a delegate to the Minnesota Fourth District Republican convention in 1980, delegates discussed resolutions submitted by precinct caucuses. I've forgotten all but one of these resolutions, though I'm sure the majority of them were about taxes and abortion. The only one I remember advocated the government take steps to prevent the helium that occurred in natural gas deposits from simply being wasted.

"This is a joke, right?" everyone said, laughing. Well, 32 years later, it's not a joke. We're now experiencing a helium shortage.

Helium might be the second most common element in the universe, but it's the second lightest, and that's the problem. Earth's original supply long ago left for space: as a noble gas it doesn't form compounds. When it hits the atmosphere it goes straight up, and the heat of the sun imparts enough velocity to helium atoms to make them escape earth's grasp. Hydrogen and heavier gases such as nitrogen and oxygen escape much more slowly, as they generally form heavy compounds like water, O2, O3, CO2, and NO2. UV  dissociates water vapor high in the atmosphere and sizable quantities of hydrogen also escape — but we've got lots of it. Atmospheric escape is why earth and Venus have thick atmospheres and Mars has a very thin one.

The problem is, helium isn't just for recreational purposes such party balloons, talking like Donald Duck and the Goodyear blimp. It has many uses that save lives, most of which involve cooling. Liquid helium is used in the giant magnets found in MRI machines. It's used in physics research. It's used in processes for making semiconductors for smart phones. It's used in submarine detectors employed by the Navy. Gaseous helium is used for weather sounding balloons, critical for hurricane tracking and climate research.

Helium is found with natural gas, and that's partly responsible for the helium shortage. With fracking the price of methane has dropped through the floor, and that means there's less natural gas production in helium rich deposits, which depresses helium production. New helium is "made" deep underground by the radioactive decay of elements like uranium, thorium, actinium and radium. The decay releases an alpha particle, which is a helium ion (an atom with no electrons). The helium eventually makes its way into natural gas reserves which we extract. That's a very slow and indirect process.

The other reason there's a helium shortage is a Republican privatization effort launched in 1996. The Helium Privatization Act was basically a give-away of America's helium reserves to private industry. Instead of being auctioned, the Republican bill required that all helium in the reserve be sold by 2015, priced with a formula set "in consultation" with the helium industry. That caused artificially low prices, which encouraged over-consumption of helium and discouraged new production.

Republicans will be sure to blame government for the problem in the first place, but the reason Calvin Coolidge approved the National Helium Reserve in 1925 was for national defense, to ensure we had enough for airships (used for aerial observation). Helium was also important for cooling during the Cold War and the Space Race, as liquid-fueled ballistic missiles use helium as a pressurant because it's inert.

The Republican Party of Theodore Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, and even Calvin Coolidge believed that we should protect and conserve our natural resources. Somewhere in the 1980s the Republicans lost their way and began to equate wastefulness and ostentatious displays of profligacy to freedom and prosperity.

The attitude became "someone could be getting rich today, we shouldn't save this oil — this forest — this helium — for a rainy day." The so-called conservatives decided that conserving things was for suckers and sold out to wastrels and get-rich-quick con men.

Unbridled consumption may enrich the few, but it beggars the nation's future.

Crisis Mode?

Politico has an interesting story up about how the NRA is basically in crisis mode. They weren't prepared for this at all and so far all they have released, statement wise, is an announcement stating that on Friday they are going to issue a plan that "to make sure this never happens again." It will be interesting to see what they present.

It will have to be something very substantive otherwise they risk souring an already steadily eroding view of the gun industry. I think they see the economic writing on the wall and if they do their usual dance this Friday, they're going to lose money. It's just that simple.

People have had it and it really won't matter what the government does or doesn't do.