Obama Proves Himself To Be a (CL)ASS Act

Obama found a way to take the CL out of CLASS.

He wants to sound sincere.  I have no doubt he is.  Yet, he gets his jabs in anyway, in that loquacious and insincere way of his.  It takes him hundreds of words to express a simple thought.  He should have stopped after the first sentence.  But he didn't.  Everything that follows is pure politics.  Just pay attention:

Michelle and I grieve with all the families in El Paso and Dayton who endured these latest mass shooting.  Even if the details are still emerging, there are a few things we already know to be true.

First, no other nation in Earth comes close to experiencing the frequency of mass shootings that we see in the United States.  No other developed nation tolerates the levels of gun violence that we do.  Every time this happens, we're told that tougher fun laws won't stop all murders; that they won't stop every deranged individual from getting a weapon and shooting innocent people in public places.  But the evidence shows that they can stop some killings.  They can save some families from heartbreak.  We are not helpless here.  And until all of us stand up and insist on holding public officials accountable for changing our gun laws, these tragedies will keep happening.

Second, while the motivations behind these shootings may not yet be fully know, there are indications that the El Paso shooting follows a dangerous trend: troubled individuals who embrace racist ideologies and see themselves obligated to act violently to preserve white supremacy.  Like the followers of ISIS and other foreign terrorist organizations, these individuals may act alone, but they've been radicalized by white nationalist websites that proliferate on the internet.  That means that both law law enforcement agencies and internet platforms need to come up with better strategies to reduce the influence of these hate groups.

But just as important, all of us have to send a clarion call and behave with the values of tolerance and diversity that should be the hallmark of our democracy.  We should soundly reject the language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments; leaders who demonize those who don't look like us, or suggest that other people, including immigrants, threaten our way of life, or refer to other people as sub-human, or imply that America belongs to just one certain type of people.  Such language isn't new -- it's been at the root of most human tragedy throughout history, here in America and around the world.  It is at the root of slavery and Jim Crow, the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.  It has no place in our politics or our public life.  And it's time for the overwhelming majority of Americans of goodwill, of every race and faith and political party, to say as much -- clearly and unequivocally.

Oy, veh.  What a self-righteous windbag.  I almost forgot.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, is a businessman, not a politician.  He has little interest in BS and even less in verbal flatulence.  He cuts straight through the subterfuge.  His response is direct, terse and unambiguous:

Did George Bush ever condemn President Obama after Sandy Hook?  President Obama had 32 mass shootings during his reign.  Not many people said Obama is out of control.  Mass shootings were happening before the President (i.e. Donald Trump) even thought about running for Pres." @kilmeade. @foxand friends.

Ouch!  Now that will leave a mark.

Obama had best stick to public grieving and steer clear of political bloviations.  Otherwise, a la Trump, he gets his head handed to him on a platter.  It's a New York kind of thing.  Obama is out of his league.

We now have a President who speaks truth to BS.  It's been a long time coming.  Maybe not since Andrew Jackson -- a couple hundred years.

Monday Madness

Name just one law that prevented the next shooting?

1968 – Gun Control Act
1981 – Brady Act
1994 – Assault Weapons Ban
2008 – NICS Improvement Act
2018 – Ban on Bump Stocks?

51 YEARS and never once did these efforts prevent the next shooting.

“If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.”     – Dalai Lama, 2001

Tragedies should not be dramatized with an aim to disarm the general public.  Knee-jerk reactions rarely help.  Such reactions at best are virtue-signals and at worst are terrible public policy.  The tragedy itself cannot help but generate empathy for the victims.  That's automatic.  Such a horror.  A bottomless pit.  And it creates a genuine public thirst for justice and prevention.  We all understand.  It could have been my child, my family member or friend.  Our hearts are broken at the evil in our midst.

The MSM doesn't need to remind us of how badly to feel.  They are so ignorant.  So misguided by their desire for face time.  If caught in a madman's rampage, most of us prefer to have a fighting chance.  We want some means of security and defense against tyranny.  Police?  Well, if you need them in seconds, they will be there in minutes, if not longer, unless they happen to be standing nearby.  It's not their fault.  They can't be everywhere at once.  So what to do in the meantime?  Eat bullets?

If you think it's all about AK-47s, just look at Chicago's gun violence this past weekend.  Seven dead and twenty-nine injured.  Those deaths aren't the result of AK-47s.  I'm open to a better solution than currently exists, providing it doesn't require us to be offered as sheep to the slaughter.  Why would anyone volunteer for that?

If someone has a solution, they should argue that their solution will make a verifiable and quantifiable difference in regard to gun violence.  Put up or shut up.  Einstein predicted an eclipse of the sun and was proven right, to the exact hour and minute.  Can disarmament folks claim the same?  How many less deaths in the next week or month?   Gimme something, please, what with London and all its knife attacks.  Otherwise, talk is cheap, and their theory is not much different from my theory that more love would lead to less violence.  I also have a theory that if everyone acted legally, we would have much less illegal behavior.  What say you?  Neither of my theories has caught on well, except among Judeo-Christians in the west.  Among politicians, not so much.  Along with the MSM, their knees still tend to jerk.  Jews and Christians are beginning to catch on to the game.  It's the two-world theory of St. Augustine and Martin Luther.   We have no choice but to be in the world, though not of the world.  A Catch-22 of theological proportions.

Wild Bill Hickock had his own theory.

*****

Here's a clip from this week's Democrat Socialist Party's National Convention.  Aside from wanting to defeat capitalism, these scythe-and-sickle comrades are all about decorum and self-identity.  They just can't help themselves...an anal-retentive kind of thing.  It's a mental proclivity, determined by one's genetic inheritance, I suspect, much like flies are drawn to cow manure:

Oy, veh,  Venezuela notwithstanding, you just can't fix stupid.

*****

Okay, it was my annual "Boy's Week Out" trip last week, and here's how we spent it:

Okay, maybe not exactly.  There were no boys with me.  Or anyone else, for that matter.  And I wasn't on a boat.  Rather, I was on a sales trip in Florida.  But I was near water.  Actually, I played golf at a beachfront course you've never heard of but still allows jeans and tank tops:

That's how they advertised it.  Okay, big deal, so it was only a putt-putt course with fake grass.  Who cares?  The price was right.  And as you can see in the photo, I'd already missed my first putt.

Okay, maybe I exaggerated a little.  It was a cheap green carpet rather than fake grass.  And she wasn't wearing cut-off jeans.

She asked to play through.  I let her.