Left Ahead

In one city after another, police who kill unarmed citizens testify they feared for their lives. In stand-your-ground states, ordinary folk with guns kill other citizens by the same alibi. Nearly always there are no charges or penalties for murder.

We see acted-upon fear on many levels. It's only increased since 9/11 and other terroriat attacks. In Boston, after the Marathon bombings, a ring of over 10 miles around quivered in cowardice under shelter-in-place orders because there might have been two bombers still around. One still was but he wasn't caught until the hide, hide order was lifted.

Likewise, the LA schools chief kept 7 million students home because of an incredible threat that other cities like New York took in stride. It was like yers before when Boston and Massachusetts cops and attorney general overreacted to electronic advertising toy displays, again while other cities yawned and took those down.

Have the terrorists won? Have they reduced us to chickens running in panic at the slightest hint of danger? Are we willing to cede our all-American, historic guts? We seem eager to cow to the TSA and let various policing agencies spy on what used to be private. Cowering indoors is surely better than slaying neighbors and strangers, then claiming we feared for our lives because they looked at us.

Can we find our courage as individuals and collectively?

Despite my many years of marriage-equality support and blogging,  have never ceased my amazement at the pretend persecution of anti-gay types. I'll deal with a case or two where those who hate and would harm, hamper, hurt and hinder homosexuals feign they are the victims.

The big ploy is referring to legislation, civil suit, or criminal charges in another country. The gay bashers would love to be able to reference another U.S. state or a federal action. Alas for them, there aren't any. That's not relevant for dragging the red herring.

Assert that some charge just might be possible. That should be good fo fund-raising appeals and press releases. If some wrong is possible, well, isn't that as good as fact?

Well, boys and girls, no.

Spoiled for two centuries, we have long viewed attacks on our nation as over there, as out there. San Bernadino's butchery suddenly manifests that fantasy. Of course, we've deluded ourselves and continue to.

We imagine against all evidence that the other are coming for us. Decades ago, it was the Chinese, Italians, Germans, Japanese and on and on. As Congress, Presidents, and the larger nation, we have reacted badly — isolationism, anti-miscegeny laws, concentration camps, lynch mobs and more. 

Well, expect more terrorism right here in the U.S.A. Have no doubt that foreign terrorists will be emboldened by attacks that cause panic, damage and death. 

Alas, if we could stop all foreigners from visiting, much less settling here, we would not prevent the terror. The vast majority have been native citizens here, and self-identified as Christians. 

Let us consider the implications of our delusion that we are an island nation, immune from attacks on our soil.

With a mass shooting literally daily in the U.S., surely we've had enough. I wanted to avoid the subject, which has been pretty well covered. Yet, the several recent mass murders won't let me. I think they won't let most Americans, not any more.

Sure, gun-rights absolutists (a.k.a. those financed by gun and ammo makers) have had decades of success with the slippery slope scare tactic. That is, if you further regulate guns in even the smallest way, you really are coming for everyone's guns. We jsut can't allow that, so they say.

Meanwhile, we have a very conservative Supreme Court that has gone with the broadest possible support for Second Amendment individual gun ownership rights. An Australian-style combo buyback and confiscation of military-grade weapons is out of the question here. 

And yet, let us keep some perspective. Some guns are outlawed. Think full-automatic machine guns, bazookas, rocket launchers and such. We have managed to do such banning without sliding down any slopes at all. I propose moderately annoying rules, annoying at least to those who feel they need a dozen or two dozen high-powered weapons and the right to display and carry them everywhere they go.

For absolutism, we absolutely need to halt private, undocumented sales. We absolutely need to have a background check for every gun sold. We absolutely need to register every gun to its purchaser. We absolutely need to require insurance or bonds for every gun sold, along the model of automobiles. 

The incessant multiple murders should speak louder to us than the gun lobbyists do to lawmakers at the federal and state levels. Gun crazies, political, religious or just unhinged, give us no choice.

As nasty, dishonorable and dishonest as the ads and speeches have been, anti-gay and right-wing (huge overlap) types have been successful in stymying access to public facilities with clever framing. When the issue is simply whether transgender students and adults can use public buildings, and facilities, the red herring and strawman often rule the roost.

While some states and cities have managed to pass equal access laws and rules, may others languish in hysterical bathroom-bill hell. The ads from wingers like here and here, paint lurid scenes of child predators sneaking into loos with innocent little girls to molest them. Maybe those who produce these dreadful scams think of the kids, but more likely they are just hate mongers.

Let's talk about what's at stake, what's the real issue, and what we can do to stop this madness.

Note that this show is an hour later than the usual timie, at 3:30PM on Tuesday, November 10. As long as you don't block your home number, you're welcome to call in and speak up to 718-664-6966.

A Pew study, centered on millennials and their hyperconnectivity, holds truth even a couple of years later. The always-connected, instant-gratification types have their hubris here. 

They pride themselves in being worthy, so worthy they disdain waiting even three seconds for a page load or phone connection. Moreover, they deride those who act otherwise as non-multitasking Luddites. They don't consider whether their phones and tablets work for them or the other way round.

As I ranted a few weeks ago on this show, nearly none of us is really a multitasker, that's a delusion from boomers to middle-schoolers. Don't try to convince many of that, even as they fail to walk and use their phones at the same time. They run into each other (or shop fronts) while braying trivial chatter in the name of connectivity. Fantasy and pretense trump the obvious.

I'll dig down a bit into what is likely gained or lost by impatient types who imagine they are too important to wait for...well, anything. I'll also forecast that there will be a bifurcation (think Wells' Eloi and Morlocks). In this coming world, those who insist on having every whim immediately delivered will train themselves into extreme-short-attention incompetents. Those with balanced brains and analytic skills will lap them many times.

Boston District 5 Cty Councilor Tim McCarthy is all about the number-one selling point for local pols — constituent services. He's been at it for a long time working with and for Mayor Tom Menino. He was head of Neighborhood Services and high ranking in Public Works.

We'll delve into what he sees as his accomplishments in his first term in what was Menino's seat, then Rob Consalvo's. He's been in the scrum with the rest of his body on budgets, contract negotiations, a casino, an Olympics bid and more. Yet for his neighborhoods, his vision is separate and less politicized.

Decidedly a bring-home-the-bacon guy, he wants a better local business climate as well as fair shares from city and state departments and agencies. Of course, we'll also hit on how his contested campaign is faring.

We as a culture from middle school through gray heads allow our vanity to slay us. We bought into the pretense that we are all brilliant, innate multitaskers. Jive!

Fact is, that is not the normal human state...not mine, nor yours. We are like Pooh, bears of very little brain.

I'll go on about that I learned as a corporate tool, a writer for business magazines and books, and an observer. Bill Gates grew up, as much as he did in fact grow up, as a lackey to his father's WWII and post-Great Depression business imaginings. Employees, from shop floor through management, are untrustworthy. If you slack off on them for a moment, they'll suck the value right from your company. They need to work long hours, very hard, forgo vacations and breaks. They beyond all else can do multiple tasks simultaneously, efficiently. Otherwise, they are stealing from you.

Come back wth me to the days of VisiCalc, that first spreadsheet. You should expect all employees to have many applications open simultaneously. They should flit from one to the next like honeybees.

Bluster and jive!

We see it now beyond MicroSoft Office. We see bozos failing to use their cells and walk, to drive and talk into a "hands-free" phone, and on and on. Cut the crap, ladies and gentlemen.

Not a huge surprise — another mass slaying in the United States. Not at all a surprise — gun apologists and winger media try to cut off any debate of what to do.

Unfortunately, I've been compelled to do this before. I'll hit on it again. NRA and gun loonies aside, (would that we could instantly marginalize them), to everyone else, we have a violence problem in this country. We have an overlapping and causal gun problem. We have a culture-of-violence problem.

I'll dismiss those who would say this is not the time (too soon, they whinge) to discuss guns. Many of the same say that if only we had:

everyone armed (the good-guy-with-a-gun fallacy)proactive, ubiquitous mental health programs and facilities (the common-as-convenience-stores fallacy)

there'd be no mass mrurders.

I'll reach into my bag of progressive thought to offer a few difficult and slow solutions.  Let's start on the journey.

OK, boys and girls, haven't we all had enough of the awkward dance for both Republican and Democratic 2016 candidates for prez? Now it looks like no more GOP'ers stomping in and a better than even chance VP Joe Biden will mull the Dem drink.

I'll leave the Pope alone and stick with the race. I have, as the expression goes, my opinions.

I'll talk about Biden's likely entry and how it would mash up that pot. Let' deal with Clinton's whole picture. Then there are three who's that guys, whom I figure are posturing for VP on the ticket.

And oh the quiver of GOP POTUS pretenders. A fletcher would not construct a straight arrow from all their material. I'll run through who's likely to last, likely to lag and likely to lick wounds forever.