2nd Amendment Terrorists

I recently learned of a GAO report stating that over 1,000 people on the Terrorist Watch List have attempted to buy guns or explosives over the past 5 years, with a 90% success rate. Yes, being on the list will stop you from being able to board a plane or get a visa, but it won't keep you from buying a gun.

This is an appalling policy and it must be ended.

Don't get ahead of me here - it's not what you might think. True, I am generally anti-gun - or at least, pro-sane gun control. Generally. But my problem here isn't that people on the TWL can buy guns.

It is that the TWL exists at all. To refresh your memory, this is a secret list compiled by some secretive organization in our government that denies certain basic liberties to citizens who are suspected of having some relationship with terrorists. That the list is not well compiled is well known - the most publicized example was when Senator Ted Kennedy was not allowed to board a commercial airline because he was mistakenly on the list. There have been many other examples of "innocent" people who happened to have similar names to "suspected terrorists" or who had some tenuous relationship to such people.

But even if the list were perfect - even if it adhered to whatever standard it supposedly meets, even if every name on the list was someone who was suspected of engaging in terrorist activities, the whole concept of such a list is abhorrent in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. It is also, I am almost certain, unconstitutional.

If a citizen of the United States is suspected of a crime, evidence should be gathered and he should be charged and tried. If he is suspected of planning a crime, the FBI or CIA or other appropriate agencies should watch him, monitor him, do what is necessary within the limits placed on them by the constitution to respect his rights. But under no circumstances should a completely unaccountable government agency be allowed to decide that a free citizen is a "suspect" and preemptively limit his civil rights to travel - or for that matter, to legally purchase a firearm. The right to be treated as innocent til proven guilty, to face ones accusers openly, to be secure in ones privacy, to be free of government interference in normal daily life - these rights are ultimately more important than the threat of some rogue terrorist. For if we lose them, we've already lost what we are supposed to be defending. Not cars or McMansions or planes or even individual lives.

When the principles and ideals on which this once great nation were founded - even if they were imperfectly followed - are tossed aside out of fear and cowardice and lust for power, we have failed. We should instead be striving to build on the strength of the idealistic foundation that has carried us so far.

Musical Talent

It runs in the family, but away from me. Here my 1-yo grandson demonstrates how it is done.

Faux News Special Report

Transcript:

Ladies and gentlemen, today is the day that every newsman looks forward to with a chill in his bowels. Two score and twice two years ago, our nation defeated both fascism and an evil imperial empire with the most devastatingly awesome weapon ever created. Over the next decades, as two opposing ideologies built great stores of these terrible weapons, giants among men - men like Murrow, Reasoner, Cronkite, Doocey - lived with the fear and pride of knowing that the solemn duty might fall someday to them: to announce the end of civilization as we know it.

And then, having emerged unscathed from that dark and cold war, we found ourselves confonted with an even more profound threat; and now it falls to me, Stephen B Hamilton, a man whose giant shoes no clown could fill, to make the terrible pronouncement to all Americans that have basic cable:

Healthcare Reform has passed.
America, I urge you to remain calm. Panic will only result in higher blood pressure and occasional bumps and bruises, leading to the possibility of dreaded waiting rooms.

All over this once great nation, people from all walks of life - but mostly the poor, the suffering, the unemployed - previously free from the o'erhanging threat of socialized - or any other - medical care, are phoning doctors for appointments, and in some cases being told that they might have to wait days - even weeks - for the privilege of being stripped, weighed, measured, tested, questioned about their most private bodily functions. Some will be poked with needles, others connected to machines; many will be drugged. Ampecillan, Ativan, Levatol, Lipator, the list goes on and on. Sources say that children - CHILDREN - sick, weak, coughing children will be forced to the front of the lines and ... taken first. Oh the humanity.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. This is very unprofessional.  

Even now, the Death Panels are being formed. Teams of jackbooted psychologists, social workers, clergy, medical and legal experts, and family counselors; just waiting to dole out free advice and explain the options to any American who choses to take advantage of the program. If that isn't fascism, well I don't know what is.

All over this great land, insurance company executives are being forced to list their private jets on EBay; and we know how effective that is. Shoe prices are poised to sore as excessive street dancing tears apart our very soles. And our beloved congressmen and women, those selfless men and women whom we always return to Washington because although everyone else's representatives are greedy theiving weasels our own are actually pretty good and funnel a lot of federal dollars our way, these poor abused creatures are now forced to deal with the same medical services which they have imposed upon the rest of us.

It is a sad day for America. And yet, this dark cloud has a silver lining. For you have been blessed with me, Stephen B Hamilton, to deliver the horrible news.

This has been Stephen B Hamilton, good night and stay well.

Dawning Realization

Another voice has joined in proclaiming the inevitable and only possible solution to the health care crisis. No public option, no compromise, no finagling trying to get opposition who are going to oppose anything to agree to a watered-down half-assed compromise to which they will never agree anyway. 

HR-676, aka Medicare For All, is the closest thing to a real bill there is out there right now. Instead of begging to be allowed to compete with the private insurance companies, instead of hoping that "affordable" means that we'll be able to afford it, instead of being happy with the tablescraps of almost universal coverage, this is what we should all be pushing for. Let it come to an up and down vote. A recorded vote. So we know who needs to be out on their ass next term.

So Welcome Aboard, Libby. who writes this at The Impolitic:

Screw working for the politically possible. Screw the watered down public option. I'm sick of the noise in the health care debate. I'm sick of the disinfo. I'm sick of pushing back against the crazytrain. Sick of exposing astroturfers. Sick of the sellouts on all sides. It's all a distraction.

I couldn't have said it better myself. 

Why Do You Hate America?

I personally am sick and tired of the Blame America First crowd who think that the greatest government in the world is totally incompetent and unable to run something as complex as a National Healthcare system better than a board of directors picked from a pool of ... well, the kind of people who become directors. Why do you hate America? What do you think makes it different from every other country on earth? It is that we ARE the government. If it doesn't work, it is our own fault. Personally, I would rather trust my health to an organization that only exists BY the people, FOR the people and OF the people, and in which I have SOME form of redress, than an insurance company that exists to make money from me, makes more by NOT providing care, and which only answers to its board members. Which, BTW, is why I prefer the Marines to Blackwater and the Army Corps of Engineers to Halliburton. 

Sure, you can take the view that you personally have the greatest healthcare in the world, that you EARNED it and DESERVE it and those great unwashed masses ought to find their own way and keep their grubby little hands off of your stuff. But that is not only amoral and selfish, it is stupid and will ultimately lead to your downfall. They won't eat cake. Ask Marie. But if you have any semblence of humanity and agree that NO ONE in the richest nation in the history of the world should die because their parents couldn't afford an MRI, what POSSIBLE organization has more resources, ability, power and accountability than the United States Government?