I hope everybody
survived the end of the world OK. The
Griffith Park observatory was going to stay open till 12:01 tomorrow morning
when they usually close at ten, just to prove that we successfully got through
today. It's funny that NASA would actually produce a video laying out a careful explanation as to why the world isn't going to end today. I guess one guy’s sales of
emergency shelter rooms has skyrocketed this month. The funny thing is - that it it were "an ending of Time itself" or even some Supernatural Intervention in the affairs of man on planet Earth, mortal men would be Powerless to combat it. (Selah) The last three nights have really been
cold. The previous night it got down to
thirteen degrees in the Antelope Valley, which isn’t that far away. I think that was a record. I think this cold virus I have now was
definitely cold weather caused. In terms
of the impending fiscal cliff it looks like we aren’t going to solve anything
before Christmas. John Boehner had his
scheduled vote in the house on “Plan B” yesterday, but he canceled it and the
house members went home for the holidays, because he didn’t have the
votes. This tax bill would have
increased taxes on the middle class, but reduced what the wealthy would pay in
contrast to the President’s plan. The
President proposed that the demarcation line be moved from $250.000 to $400,000
and also that Medicare coverage not start till age 67 and that we virtually
eliminate the cost of living increase for security, which is less than three
percent now, when the actual inflation rate is seven. But John Boehner thinks even less than three
percent is too much. At any rate that
plan failed, too. As far as I am
concerned, much as I’ve proposed all along, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if
we just “went over the fiscal cliff”.
Who knows? It could turn out the
thing was a lot less scareyer than we all thought. After all some had doubts
about Clinton’s tax hike in 1993 but that worked out all right. We haven’t heard that much about College Bowl
games lately. Personally I haven’t
thought about a lot of stuff lately, and I pretty much “phoned in” the last two
blog postings, the one Tuesday and the one on Saturday I just haven’t allowed myself to even think
at all in “creative” terms or organizing ideas.
When I think of all the pre Christmas periods there have been over the
past few years, I conjure up a whole lot more negative events and feelings from
this year than I do positive ones. That’s
for sure.
Finally the NRA has
weighed on on this whole New Town shooting crisis. Their solution is that we need to screen
better for mental illness and scale back the extremity of the violent video
games and enforce age restriction laws to match the manufacturer’s
ratings. But the elephant in the room is
obviously the guns. This NRA spokesman
was downright brash and irritating with his remarks. He says “The cure for bed men with guns is
good men with guns”. Yeah, but what if
the bad guy is armed with fifty calabre solid body “cop killer” bullets? What then.
Clearly other countries have video games and violent movies, but have
only a small fraction of our murder rate.
The clear malidy in our society is this “gun culture” we have. People used to think of the National Rifle
Association as an organization to help people who own guns use them
safely. But clearly the organization is
out of touch with its own rank and file membership. Many people said, “Just wait till after the
election and the President will move to take away our guns”. I guess that’s what you’d call a self
fulfilling prophecy. But who would have
guessed there would be at least four major shootings in the past five
months? What are these gun nuts really
expecting the President to do about our “present distress”. Nothing?
But as it was pointed out- - if the total goal of the NRA is to jack up
gun sales, they have succeeded. But the
NRA has to ask itself, “Just as what point do our own goals conflict with the
interests of American society, at large?”
Yeah.
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