David Hogg: Call You By Their Name

I predict, and keep in mind my predictions tend to suck, that when the trauma of fully realizing he was a sitting duck amidst the mayhem at a Florida high school diminishes, teenager David Hogg may turn out by default to be the luckiest boy in the country. 

As much as I questioned his persona in the previous blog entry, I will confess that after viewing his interview with George Stephanopoulis on Sunday's This Week (ABC-TV) my cage was rattled.  Even before Hogg spoke, one sensed on his facial expression the hint of smoldering emotion, a quiet rage patiently waiting for an opportunity to emerge as words from an otherwise thin, sensitive and wistful-appearing young man.  And what a speaker!  As if presenting himself as the anchor on a TV news show, he wasted precious little time in condemning politicians, big money NRA contributors and NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch.  How rare to find somebody of this age piercing, not melting hearts with a camera-captured glare and a word.

Now, I think the kid's wrong about almost everything he said, but his composure and soft-spoken approach was superb, shaking my current attitude about some millennials to the core.  If and when he tones down some of that inner rage after some healing time, his presence will only be enhanced, and our wish list would hope for activism aware of consequences to our basic rights.  Okay, our enemies are many, but counting the NRA and Dana Loesch among them is a misjudgment reserved for the young and the uninformed -- just like the furor over those much-publicized 18 "school shootings," which aren't actually what the media portrays as the total is added up.

Will Hogg and his outspoken schoolmates someday help lead the charge in disinfecting both the Republican and Democrat parties, perhaps as Independents or Libertarians, or by embracing something different altogether?  Please, no socialism.  Not looking forward to becoming Venezuela orchestrated by millennials. 

That millions of dollars are already pouring in to funding pages to "do something" about guns does not give us encouragement about gun freedoms in the future.

Oh, there were moments when I rolled my eyes as Hogg spoke, but after all he is a teenager, and it isn't strictly his fault that he's regurgitating the leftist pap he was probably raised with in school. 

For instance, he tends often to begin his sentences with the word, Honestly. . ., and when people do that to excess I sometimes ponder whether they're truly true at all.  No big deal here, I guess -- but I did shake my head when young Mr. Hogg referenced our "democracy," instead of classifying the U.S. as a democratic republic.  The difference is kinda important, but maybe they'll teach that part before he graduates.

What we're seeing here is a seduction, the seduction of David Hogg by the leftist social media, and unless one considers the press a gender in itself, the conquest and electronic media deflowering of the photogenic Hogg is strictly business with benefits.  The TV networks and print journos have discovered and used a fresh-faced youth -- star power, baby -- anxious to help them sell their wares because he shares what they share, and as time goes by I see the consummation of a marriage involving privilege and worldly pleasures between Mr. Hogg and wedding partners composed of the media, Hollywood and maybe academia.  Education, entertainment, travel -- we suspect the sky is not the limit for David Hogg and, agree or disagree with him, we are today confounded, seemingly too old to know better.

But getting back to the gun issue, I also harbor a temporary in-the-bag love for ABC-TV because on multiple occasions they aired a dramatic video of a mother and daughter at a convenience store in Oklahoma, perhaps saving their lives when they engaged in a gunfight with an armed robber.  If anything shouts love your guns, this surveillance video is the poster child.

Meanwhile, yep, here it comes, proposed firearm restrictions emanating from every frightened place in the country:  Ban bump stocks (the Internet easily tells you how to make your own using belts and other easily utilized items), nobody should get a gun until reaching age 21 (why -- are all young folk aged 18, 19 and 20 convicted criminals devoid of Second Amendment rights, declared dangerous en masse via psychic revelations or something?) and people with mental illness must be deprived of owning a firearm.  The last is interesting, because just who is mentally ill and to what degree will this blanket effort succeed?  Should individuals (love that police word) with epilepsy and other neurological disorders be banned, too?  Should migraines rule out potential owners -- and how about ocular migraines, which I experienced myself a few years ago, when a miniature "TV screen" flashing colors appeared in my line of sight and kept me spellbound for about two minutes?  Does that make me unqualified to even look at a gun?

I don't mean to keep pushing this little tidbit, but increasingly popular 3-D printers are making and will continue to make firearms as I type this, and they shoot just fine and are untraceable for anybody considering doing the deed, if you know what I mean.

A final word on guns today:  NRA, I'm not a member, yet I respect it.  The list of corporations pulling out and refusing to offer member benefits anymore is an American disgrace unworthy of a free country, but certainly characteristic of wussie companies that are OH so good at bending with the wind.

School safety will be addressed and necessary changes made, but those hysterically striking out at the Second Amendment, the NRA and President Trump instead of confronting issues rationally are helping neither solutions nor the memory of Florida school students gone forever.  In a society gone bonkers in so many ways, even assessing the scope of massive tragedies becomes a dizzying chore for authorities who once thought they had all the answers.  No, they did not.

Exigent Youth Born of Instant Electronic Gratification

No, of course we are not surprised at the rage demonstrated in Florida among parents and students, nor were we amazed that CNN's "town hall" about gun violence was a firearm and NRA-hating mob exercise from the start, bringing in everything but the pitchforks and blazing torches.

We've been particularly tuned in to the teenage furor expressed since the latest school shootings occurred -- they're angrier and more passionate this time, helped along no doubt by a bevy of Democrats and others with a stake in the hate game.  Watching some of the same student faces showing up on TV show after TV show does, however, raise certain questions -- for instance, some observers of a questioning mind have focused on young student David Hogg -- and no, I won't submit to low humor by asking if his friends call him "Boss Hogg" in homage to "The Dukes of Hazzard."  Nevertheless, accounts allege that he maintains a deep interest in journalism and actually works as a "stringer" for a news service, and perhaps the thought is that he appears too willing to stand before the cameras to discuss the tragedy at his high school, as TV networks host him more because they consider him their guy who can do the desired talking for them.  What are his politics?  What are those of his friends, wounded or not?  We have heard there are conservative voices among the school folk, but news services certainly aren't playing their lives up for the TV cameras.

So I've been watching all the TV reports and all the reaction, yet at first I was sincerely puzzled over why so many of the young people have slipped into such a heightened, stormy world of outrage seldom witnessed in past years.

But the answer wasn't all that elusive, for these, the 15 and 16-year-old kids in particular grew up in a world gone nuts, a world where fear of strangers and anything lacking electronics is common.

Worst of all, these young adults were raised with electronic devices promising instant gratification -- if they wanted something to happen, it only required tapping on a few keys and it was accomplished.  They always get their way.  They've always been special.

But not this time.

This time, it appears that a good many student protestors really thought that by attending a meeting or two and setting verbal traps for the NRA, Marco Rubio and other Republicans they would gain an instant win and all the guns which they personally detest would go away in one wide swipe of the hand.  Instant gratification.  I suspect they have a problem reconciling instant gratification with functions of the legal system, and when you're young and hysterical and you want something now, but you can't get it now, the shouts and literal tantrums grow.  Where does grief hang out while public displays are orchestrated?

If government leaders took quick action to accommodate the fragmented "hope and change" desires of every group of protesting young people, imagine where the country would be.

Another issue peculiar to the current generation of high school as well as college students is a refusal to even listen to points of view contrary to their own, and "their" opinions are quite often implanted in their brains by progressive teachers and professors -- essentially wrecking opportunities for many young folk to perform any critical or balanced thinking at all.  We've all witnessed the shout-down chaos initiated by the political left on college campuses when guests holding opposing views attempt to speak, and this approach was certainly obvious during CNN's free-range verbal massacre regarding gun violence.

The usual leftist component ranks supreme in this issue, the goal being to (1) rid the country of ALL firearms, no matter how long it takes and (2) win elections in November.  But for now, using heartbroken students as dupes to chomp away at hard-fought rights the kids will likely never see again if poor decisions ultimately prevail, the progressive bunch will ply its trade either in front or behind the scenes, and we only hope the real leaders among students will come to realize how they may condemn their rights to oblivion when wrapped up in misguided efforts engulfed in panic and sadness.

Yet -- imagine if somehow all the major civilian firearm hardware was confiscated and destroyed over a period of years.  Then, say an EMP or some electrical grid-demolishing process infiltrated the United States, perhaps initiated by an enemy with capabilities unknown.  Suddenly, we're back to the 1800s, devoid of modern conveniences and the protection afforded by, truly, "big guns," a situation which goes not unnoticed by said enemy.

Sure, we're fully aware that survivalist or militia members secured in a bunker, expecting during normal times to hold off the entire U.S. military with a cache of weaponry, would be dog food in thirty seconds or less.  But we're talking about a country in the future, devoid of major civilian firepower, and should we get to that point, what if well-armed enemy soldiers invaded the U.S. in numerous areas, many of which may be immediately inaccessible to or unknown to our own military?  Suddenly, people would wish they still maintained the lost tools and era of self-defense, when at least they would have a chance to fend off an enemy attack.

Of course this sounds crazy, but so will the nutty gun legislation ideas poised to inundate us as election season approaches. 

The school victims and the shooter?  Oh, right, almost forgot about them. . .

Don't do it, Florida:  The Florida governor wants to raise the age for purchasing any guns from 18 to 21.  As a Republican, he should be a little more tuned in to the fact that not all 18-20 year old people are potential criminals.  We realize he's trying to DO SOMETHING, but taking part in the chipping away of a basic right to please the grief-stricken in the short term is not the way to go, and he should stand up and say so.  Alas, politics gets in the way and leftists in waiting will probably get their way, as they so often do.

Holster the Leftist Hysteria

"It's not a mental health issue!" the Florida high school student screamed into the microphone, herself sounding like a candidate for the funny farm wagon, and right then and there with those words I knew these kids were likely so immersed in leftist classroom poop since they shed diapers that there was no way for them to swim out of it.

DO SOMETHING! MAKE IT STOP! they demand.  How lucky for these teenagers that, yes, there are people nearby who can make it stop -- but the price is their freedom, and they're too damned young and mind-manipulated to know the importance of  delayed consequences.  What goes up must come down, and what goes away usually cannot be brought back, particularly freedoms that others died for long before school shootings materialized.

Now the Hollywood crowd begins to sprout like fungi on TV talk shows, condemning everybody with a gun except for the characters they brutally portray on the silver screen, perhaps explaining, well, THAT's just fiction.  And big money for the backers, of course.

So what do you do?  Well, if you're Florida students stumbling through a blind panic you announce a student march on Washington and other cities scheduled for March 24.

March or don't march, we don't care, but it requires no brains whatsoever to realize that unsuspecting school children headed for the streets will he "helped," "supported" and encouraged by the most devious and conveniently established leftist America-hating rats who ever walked the earth, and those will be the voices most loudly expressed, no matter from whose lips they lovingly flow.  By late March, the tragic shootings won't matter nearly as much as the progeny of leftist dogma, and not even honor roll students will recognize how easily they can be enlisted to jeopardize their own rights by endorsing poison.

Already inexplicably, yet predictably, shouting at and blaming Donald Trump for the Florida carnage, we can bet that students attending these proposed marches will include a mandatory we-hate-Trump speech or demonstration as icing on the cake.  Don't forget to denounce the NRA.  The customary itinerary must be followed.

Want to depend upon the mental health industry to determine fitness for firearm ownership?  Wow -- that worked out well for young shooter N. Cruz, didn't it?  Dare I suggest that a fair portion of the mind-checker bunch hosts its own share of crazies who protect one another in the spirit of camaraderie?

Meanwhile, as everybody moans, cries, stomps and shakes their fists at either skies or at President Trump and every Republican in sight, may I almost absent-mindedly remind one and all that, even as we all occupy ourselves with something motivational, one or more potential school or otherwise mass murderers are out there right now as the clock ticks, preparing in earnest to beat the system -- any system -- according to their own timetable.  At least to some degree they'll succeed, too.  They will not be terminated until the deed is done.

Gun "control?"  Really?

You deserve a break today.  You deserve to avoid controversy.  You deserve to not get the flu.  You deserve to be safe.

We do not "deserve" a damned thing, unfortunately.

Looking for a foolproof solution to school shootings?  Here it is, lick it up:

First, let's close all public schools and insist upon home schooling for the masses.  Yes, this requires a crash program delegating enormous resources, but if we can send kids about your age off to war, surely we can patch something together for education without risk.

Of course, no public schools also means no more football, basketball, golf, bowling, baseball, track or rock-watching teams, and no more cheerleaders.  No dangerous bus journeys.  No more field trips, either.  Bonus:  Nobody will laugh at naked people in the gym showers anymore and there will be no towels to snap.  No bullying, either.

The motto is, stay home and stay safe.

We make this suggestion for your own good, kids, because here's the thing:  You can take every careful step to curtail the possibility of mass killings.  However, you know far better than I what's coming:  3-D printers, for instance, with which folks can and already have produced guns -- fully operational with the addition of a little metal here and there, and voila!  Untraceable, deadly, simple to modify and just the sweetest little darling of death one can imagine.

And the fun doesn't stop there, because high-energy weapons using microwaves, ultrasound, infrasound -- and whatever screwed up U.S. diplomats  in Cuba -- are on the horizon, and as we all know, whenever the military improves upon a weapon some kid sitting in his basement eventually wants to play copycat.

What did you have for lunch today?  How about yesterday's dinner?  Did something living need to die so you could have nutrition?  Maybe serial killers and the rest of us aren't so far apart. 

March your butts off next month, kids, but anticipate no cure for the dark things lurking inside us.  We all choose our weapons and eventually murder something, in our own way.

A Russian Baker's Dozen

Vladimir Putin riding a horse shirtless is nothing.  Now, if that horse would ride Putin -- with or
without a horse blanket -- that would really be something to brag about.

Vlad, Vlad, Vlad -- WTF?  So far, 13 Russians have been indicted for information tampering/feeding/altering/etc. crimes leading up to the U.S. elections.  I know this is serious stuff -- but didn't Obama send folks to Israel to screw with their elections, too?  Don't we have the oh-so-helpful-and-high-techie Facebook, Google and everybody else (TV networks, hint, hint) who kinda projected, shall we say, a leftward lean around election time and, hmm, before and after, into the future?

Everybody's doing everybody, nothing new there, as it turns out, but we'll sit comfortably on the sofa, waiting for Putin to send all those Russians to the United States for trial, as we simultaneously anticipate monkey-piloted drones to fall out of the sky and land on the White House lawn.

By the way, you devious Russians, I'm rather in doubt on this, but if you folks had anything in the slightest to do with Hillary Clinton losing the election, may I humbly say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.  However, to our defense here in the USA, I must say she WAS a horrible, horrible presidential candidate, and fortunately what remains of common sense and intelligence in this country prevailed.

Why was Mueller's indictment blasted to the country on a Friday, typically the day when important stuff the government wants forgotten or diminished gets swept under the weekend time rug?  Some, such as conservative talk show host Michael Savage, believe it was done to override the FBI's gigantic screw-up in failing to apprehend the Florida school shooter before he could act.  Maybe, but we are inclined to consider another component -- that, at least to date, Trump's name couldn't be associated with Russian "collusion" and therefore this was one bit of news which should be buried because it served no anti-Trump purposes AND the media would have nothing upon which to dwell.

Indeed, Saturday morning's ABC-TV news program, generally dedicated to leading with stories putting the administration in as bad a light as possible, instead began with the school shooting.  Of course, this was also an opportunity to show protestors demonstrating in front of the National Rifle Association, when, frankly, all cameras should really be focused upon the alleged 19 year old shooter.

What about the shooter?  Did at least one friend not admit he had been taking some kind of drugs, prescribed (and perhaps otherwise)?  He was also adopted -- from where, some wonder?  We have long known that the country of origin often sends along psycho-baggage of which adoptive parents are unaware until things go toward the dark side.

Recording artist George Watsky had the school shooting thing down some time ago, as you can see in his unusual but effective video, Stick to Your Guns:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uN8DM7TyYvw

We recognize Florida students and parents are in a frenzy over the latest school mayhem, but screaming at Trump and everybody BUT the shooter really isn't the way to go.  Determining who's potentially gun-violent crazy is the better direction to take -- but, unfortunately, that's nowhere near as simple as yelling at government officials to quench one's grief.  And anybody who thinks the Democrat Party caregivers, who quickly showed up on cue and made fancy speeches barely before the chaos lightened up, weren't there to garnish votes ("never let a crisis go to waste") is living in a fantasy.

Today I Abuse Women

Maybe my abusive feelings were enhanced by the appearance of Lady Dracula Jong-Un -- that is, Kim Jong-Un's evil sister (I forget her given swine name) -- at the Olympics in South Korea.  Maybe it was just too much, watching the international press fawn over this femi-monster who, like her brother, is responsible in her own way for countless deaths, torture and yet-untold agonies in North Korea.  Not to forget the murder of their own brother, uncle and who knows how many more close relatives?  Charming.  Thanks, media.

As if that weren't enough, then I stumbled upon a "Sixty Minutes" interview with Democrat NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, leftist champion of all women and everything women have ever done.  During her years in the Senate, I'm not sure she has actually performed any services which benefit boys or men, she probably has, but then again I stopped caring about her activities long ago.  All I know is, she has "progressively" criticized the gun rights she used to support enthusiastically, and seems to have been absorbed by all the human-eating mold qualities of the modern Democrat Party.  One hopes, at times like this, that "blue dog" and other more down-to-earth Democrats really are trying to make a comeback so that government officials such as Sen. Gillibrand and (yikes!) her senatorial paisano Chuck Schumer can go peddle their ware someplace else.

Thing is, I've spoken this week with women who detest the current womens' "movement," composed as it appears with more of a political agenda than anything else.  When it comes down to donning knitted pink vagina hats during a mass protest, maybe that's a bit much, too, but I'm not woman enough to understand some things.

Anyway, after I was womened-up and femmed-up with all the self-womanizing displayed in the media, I was hardly ready for the latest news bulletin about two cops killed when they rushed to a "domestic situation."

Domestic trouble calls, as most any police officer will admit, are the ones they dread most, for these constitute the most irrationally violent incidents out there, other than terrorism itself.

These tragedies involving police officer murders by, primarily, husbands and boyfriends of abused women seem to be increasing way out of expectation, and we cringe every time TV news shows put up photos of dead officers and reports of spouses and children left behind, all due to the work, generally, of society's worst and most notable pieces of human crap.

Well, I'm sick and tired of these stories, and I've come around to taking a closer look at the women involved in these events -- the ones who usually call 9-1-1 and scream for police help.  Oh yes, they need help and they need it right away -- but how did all of this come to be?

We all -- ALL -- live in a day and age when TV, radio and print media blast our minds constantly with places and phone numbers abused women can access to get help once it has become pretty clear that their married or live-in lives are going to hell via beatings, restraints or battering of their own children.  Yet.. .

Yet, what?  Again and again, ladies who now know what they should do and have acquired ample experience to understand things won't improve in the home continue to wait until the very last minute when danger and possibly death come-a-calling for them, their children -- and law enforcement personnel who are put in a hellish position because of neglect, ignorance and/or self-sustaining stupidity on the part of the abused.  Tip of the day:  Orders of Protection are about as useful as spaghetti roofs in a rainstorm.

First it was a "love tap" or slap, then it was a harsh squeeze of the arm, leaving bruises.  Then it was an abrasion, and next a bloody wound, followed by a push down the stairs.  But that was YOUR fault, you know that, and he'll get over it and things will be just fine, wait and see.  Besides, you have to keep it all together for the kids.  .  .

In 2018 there shouldn't be an abused or battered woman out there who doesn't realize that they should have called for help long, long before those final moments when he, she or they will place not only the victim on the death menu, but also anybody who tries to help, and that help is most generally the police.

So here's my nasty little hope for the abused as 2018's informative and cop-deadly days roll forward:  If you call 9-1-1, I hope cops respond first with tear gas, drones, robots or minor explosives -- anything preventing them from first rushing the house to save your crying, pathetic, stupid, couldn't-be-bothered-to-do-something-to-prevent-this ass, and chances are you've even subjected a kid or two to your lack of decisive action as the magic moment of decision approaches.  I don't want good cops to sacrifice themselves in this exceptionally angry era to feigned imbecility of the abused, covered up by useless tears falling to the floor after everything goes down, causing blue uniforms to repose horizontal forever.

In today's society, the mere dialing of 9-1-1 may sign a death warrant for one's local cops.  Most of the time, so much could have been accomplished before that terrible, irretrievably tragic moment arrives -- and so no, I'm not letting abused women aware of multiple options off the hook, particularly when their lack of action really does make them somewhat complicit when cops die while attempting to rescue they and their children from a hell they themselves helped create and sustain.

Let's go to the moon again:  NASA's on track to return, and we really should before China gets there and claims all the Helium-3 as Property of the State.  China couldn't do a damned thing without having stolen American technology, and I think we should just bill them far in excess of all the funds they believe we owe 'em.  For my part, I'm proud to have written letters to newspaper editors years back where I stated without any scientific tools or geologic training whatsoever that there's water on the moon.  NASA should'a just asked me, I wouldn't have charged a penny.  You're welcome.

Peter Rabbit in the crossfire:  There's a scene in the new Peter Rabbit movie where rabbits throw blackberries in a man's face and he sustains an allergic reaction necessitating use of an Epi-Pen?  Apparently, allergy sufferers of the world are up in arms, demanding and getting an apology.  Really?  Must every shred of humor be banned and called out by world denizens who, frankly, have little more going on in their lives than a need  to pick stuff like this apart?

The Official President and Mrs. Obama portraits unveiled:  Good grief, cover them back up.  Amateurish, hollow -- but frankly quite reflective of O's entire term in Office.  So maybe leave 'em be.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions mutters the AA word:  Sessions dared say Anglo-American, thereby overpowering the very essence of the absurdly contrived term, African-American.  Clearly, Sessions was being racist, as everybody knows "AA" can only be used by a particular race AND by Alcoholics Anonymous (maybe there's a licensing fee to use "A" twice).  The fact that Anglo-American is an old term whose longevity far exceeds that of African-American is, of course, of no consequence.  At any rate, we're sure glad that Democrats have yet one more vacant issue to scream about, because absolutely anything putting white Europeans in a favorable (or even noticeable) light is bad, bad, bad.  We shall be in touch with members of our Congressional White Caucus immediately regarding this matter!