Year: 2019

Sensible solutions seem so simple:

1. A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, anyone should be allowed to join the National Guard.
2. Each free state’s National Guard should be well regulated.
3. As a practical matter, even those who don’t join their state’s National Guard should be allowed to own shotguns and sporting rifles.
4. But anyone who wants to own a weapon capable of avoiding airport security detection would have to apply for a permit explaining why — with said permit issued only if there were a good reason.  (Can there be a good reason?)
5. And anyone who wants to buy — or sell — cop-killing bullets would have to apply for a permit explaining why — with said permit issued only if there were a good reason.
6. And anyone who wants to own a weapon capable of firing more than six rounds, or that can be reloaded with a magazine, would have to apply for a permit explaining why — with said permit issued only if there were a good reason.  Likewise, hand grenades, bazookas, anti-aircraft missiles, tanks, or any other weapons of war.
7. For a year, anyone turning in banned weapons or ammo for which they don’t have a permit would face no penalty and be reimbursed at fair market value.
8. Thereafter, anyone voluntarily turning in weapons or ammo would face no penalty and get a thank-you note . . .
9. . . . but anyone found to have unpermitted weapons or ammo, unless they could persuade a judge of extenuating circumstances (“we didn’t even know there was a floor safe under the rug when we bought the house!”), would be subject to a range of civil and criminal penalties proportionate to the circumstances.

Hand guns and concealed carry would require licenses.  Listen: if I can’t even install new windows without government inspection . . . well, you get the idea.

Gloria Steinem apparently did not pen these words — but she likely agrees with them:

---

How about we treat every young man who wants to buy a gun like every woman who wants to get an abortion — mandatory 48-hr waiting period, parental permission, a note from his doctor proving he understands what he’s about to do, a video he has to watch about the effects of gun violence, an ultrasound wand up the ass (just because). Let’s close down all but one gun shop in every state and make him travel hundreds of miles, take time off work, and stay overnight in a strange town to get a gun. Make him walk through a gauntlet of people holding photos of loved ones who were shot to death, people who call him a murderer and beg him not to buy a gun.

It makes more sense to do this with young men and guns than with women and health care, right? I mean, no woman getting an abortion has killed a room full of people in seconds, right?

---

Jim Burt: “More than one mass shooting per day since the beginning of 2019 (251 shootings in what is now 220 days of the year). This compares with an average of one every 200 days between 1982 and 2011. The availability of rapid fire, rapidly reloaded firearms is the sine qua non of these mass shootings — weapons that have no legitimate self-defense or sporting purpose.  Indeed, Scalia’s opinion in Heller, which underpins the previously unrecognized personal right of self-defense firearm ownership, points to military style weapons as subject to legitimate exclusion.  The only obstacle to a dramatic reduction in these incidents is the political refusal to ban and confiscate these weapons.”

→ See #1-#10, supra.

But first . . .

Tamara Hendrickson: “This CNN quiz on combatting climate change is harder than it seems and I learned a few things.”

→ Me, too!  Here I’ve spent half the summer plotting against the bamboo that’s overtaken my yard (imagining its skinny little leaves do little to eat CO2) and now it turns out this is exactly what I should not be doing.

Also . . .

I hope you’ve read Michael Lewis’s The Fifth Risk and Andrew Yang’s The War On Normal People, among other really important things this summer (the Mueller report!).  But for pure end of summer fun and wonderful writing — even better listened to than read, because the reader does such a good job — I commend Eric Poole’s Excuse Me While I Slip Into Someone More Comfortable.

And now . . .

Why didn’t I know about this sooner?  If you have an iPhone, open its NOTES app (likely in your Utilities folder; or search for “notes” and it will show up).  Then touch the plus sign at the bottom of the screen.  Select scan documents.  Lay the document out on the table and take a picture of each page, as prompted.  It scans them just the way your giant printer/scanner would and, when done, email or text the file to yourself or anyone else.  Because it’s sent as a scan rather than a photo, it will be easier to read . . . and because you probably have a PDF reader on your computer, you can convert it to a Word document, in case (say) your goal were to insert excerpts from it into your next newsletter without having to retype it. (Thanks again, Brian.)

While we’re at it (and in case you forgot) . . . if your iPhone ever suddenly goes black and won’t turn back on, even though you had battery life remaining, just briefly press the UP volume and then the DOWN volume buttons, then press and hold the on/off button for 10 or 15 seconds until the apple logo appears and you know you’re back in business.

More iPhone tips if you missed them the first time.  And don’t forget Mark Jansen’s hold-down-the-space-bar-to-turn-the-keyboard-into-a-trackpad tip.

Did you know Lincoln wanted to send freed slaves back to Africa?  Or that the first man to die fighting for our freedom was a black man who was himself not free?  Or how much of America’s success and prosperity rests on slavery?

There is so much more to this story from today’s New York Times Magazine.

No, I’m not for reparations — cutting checks to the descendants of slaves.  But I’m sure for restoring voting protections, gutted by the Republican-dominated Supreme Court.  And for a slew of other programs and policies that will help level the still-tilted playing field.  (Criminal justice reform!)

No, I’m not for involuntary bussing.  But I’m sure for public schools like Success Academy that break the cycle of poverty, and for debt-free community college (and medical school).  And lots of other solutions that will lean against inequality (higher estate tax rates for the mega rich with fewer loopholes; a freedom dividend that, though equal for everyone, will disproportionately benefit those at the bottom).

But start with this story.  It’s our story.  We should re-read it every couple of years as we strive to attain a more perfect union.

Following up on Wednesday’s going abroad for medical care . . .  this Mississippi woman got paid $5,000 to have her knee replaced.  By a Mayo-trained Milwaukee surgeon.  Both flown all expenses paid to Cancun because the hospital is so much cheaper there.  Her employer saved more than half what it would have cost to do in the U.S.  (Thanks, Brian!)

This really sensible sounding woman — you will relate to her — lost $400,000 over a long period of time, fully knowing that she was gambling WITH NO CHANCE TO WIN, yet unable to stop.  It’s quite a story and begins about 17:26 minutes into the podcast.

Have a great weekend.

Devastating:

---

The Return Of America’s Cruelest Passion
By Michael Gerson

I had fully intended to ignore President Trump’s latest round of racially charged taunts against an African American elected official, and an African American activist, and an African American journalist and a whole city with a lot of African Americans in it. I had every intention of walking past Trump’s latest outrages and writing about the self-destructive squabbling of the Democratic presidential field, which has chosen to shame former vice president Joe Biden for the sin of being an electable, moderate liberal.

But I made the mistake of pulling James Cone’s ‘The Cross and the Lynching Tree‘ off my shelf — a book designed to shatter convenient complacency. Cone recounts the case of a white mob in Valdosta, Ga., in 1918 that lynched an innocent man named Haynes Turner.

Turner’s enraged wife, Mary, promised justice for the killers. The sheriff responded by arresting her and then turning her over to the mob, which included women and children. According to one source, Mary was ‘stripped, hung upside down by the ankles, soaked with gasoline, and roasted to death. In the midst of this torment, a white man opened her swollen belly with a hunting knife and her infant fell to the ground and was stomped to death.’

God help us. It is hard to write the words. This evil — the evil of white supremacy, resulting in dehumanization, inhumanity and murder — is the worst stain, the greatest crime, of U.S. history. It is the thing that nearly broke the nation. It is the thing that proved generations of Christians to be vicious hypocrites. It is the thing that turned normal people into moral monsters, capable of burning a grieving widow to death and killing her child.

When the president of the United States plays with that fire or takes that beast out for a walk, it is not just another political event, not just a normal day in campaign 2020.

It is a cause for shame. It is the violation of martyrs’ graves. It is obscene graffiti on the Lincoln Memorial. It is, in the eyes of history, the betrayal — the re-betrayal — of Haynes and Mary Turner and their child. And all of this is being done by an ignorant and arrogant narcissist reviving racist tropes for political gain, indifferent to the wreckage he is leaving, the wounds he is ripping open.

Like, I suspect, many others, I am finding it hard to look at resurgent racism as just one in a series of presidential offenses or another in a series of Republican errors. Racism is not just another wrong. The Antietam battlefield is not just another plot of ground. The Edmund Pettus Bridge is not just another bridge. The balcony outside Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel is not just another balcony. As U.S. history hallows some causes, it magnifies some crimes.

What does all this mean politically? It means that Trump’s divisiveness is getting worse, not better. He makes racist comments, appeals to racist sentiments and inflames racist passions. The rationalization that he is not, deep down in his heart, really a racist is meaningless. Trump’s continued offenses mean that a large portion of his political base is energized by racist tropes and the language of white grievance. And it means — whatever their intent — that those who play down, or excuse, or try to walk past these offenses are enablers.

Some political choices are not just stupid or crude. They represent the return of our country’s cruelest, most dangerous passion. Such racism indicts Trump. Treating racism as a typical or minor matter indicts us.

---

I sent this to a Trump-supporting friend — Princeton, class of long ago — who basically just sloughed it off.

Consequential times.

Help.

This seven-minute PBS report will save you a fortune.

And smart U.S. insurers should be giving its patients incentives for getting top quality care 90 minutes off-shore.

Or look at THIS example (thanks, Brian): a Mississippi woman gets paid $5,000 to have her knee replaced by a highly trained Milwaukee orthopedic surgeon, both of whom are flown to Mexico because the hospital is so much cheaper there that her employer saved more than half what it would have cost in the U.S.

And while we’re worried about your health — and the high cost of maintaining it — here’s more on the organic food controversy I stumbled into.  First, Gloria explained why she doesn’t spend the extra money for organics.  Then, a couple of days later, I posted a powerful two-minute video explaining why, well, maybe she should. 

But guess what?  Turns out, Gloria may be right.  The maker of that video is being sued for allegedly misleading the public. First off, the levels of pesticides exposed in the video are judged to pose no risk.  And by the way?  Here’s a list of pesticides used in organic farming.  (Thanks, Matt Ball.)

Doubtless, some organic food may be healthier than its non-organic alternative — and perhaps even vice versa.  I don’t know.  To me, a good tomato is a good tomato, and for now I’ll take my chances.  The main thing is to eat more fruit and vegetables and nuts and seeds — and less meat.  Better for your health, better for the cow, and, as noted yesterday, way, way, way better for the planet.

(Remember the Tony Seba video I posted a few months ago, that starts asking folks if they can spot the one car in a sea of horse-drawn carriages in Times Square?  And then shows the same scene ten years later and asks people if they can spot the one horse amongst all the cars and trucks?  I like to think this is how it will be with four-legged meat.)

You know what?  Ten hungry guys recently did a taste test on our Webber grill, and the consensus was that Beyond Burgers and sausages taste as good as or better than the four-legged competition.

This is a big, big deal.  Because as Newsweek reports:

---

. . . Global meat production causes more climate change than emissions from every single plane, train, and automobile in the world. The problem is that feeding crops to animals and then eating part of the animal is inherently inefficient. According to the World Resource Institute, it takes nine calories of crops to get one calorie of chicken meat. A review in the journal Nature found that per calorie of protein, poultry causes 40 times more global warming than legumes. . . .

[Yet] per-capita meat consumption in the U.S. is currently as high as ever. Global per-capita meat consumption is also at an all-time high and expected to go up for as long as anyone can project. . . .

Luckily, there is a solution that directly reduces impact without consumer coercion. We can produce the meat people want in resource-efficient ways: directly from plants or from cells.

Producing meat directly from plants—as is being done by the wildly successful companies Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods—is inherently more efficient and thus vastly more sustainable. As a bonus, plant-based meat isn’t subject to fecal contamination or heavy-metal buildup. It also doesn’t drive antibiotic resistance. . . .

By shifting meat production to these more efficient methods, we free up most of the land currently used to grow feed crops. Some of this land can be used for growing more food, along with a greater diversity of crops, for the world’s growing population. But much of this land can and should be allowed to return to carbon-storing forests.

---

You still eat meat more than once a month, or on special occasions?  I hope five years from now, almost none of us will.

Meanwhile, it turns out that, while he has publicly denied “collusion” 400 times, when under oath Trump simply “can’t recall.”

Putin is winning.  Trump backers like Moscow Mitch don’t care.

And then there’s Amy Klobuchar.  (“Are Democrats Overlooking Their Most Electable Candidate?”)  We have so many solid, sane candidates, any one of whom could restore decency to the White House and lead the country to a better place.

Will we one day elect a digital president?  And even know she or he IS digital?  Start with these Calvin Klein and KFC ads.  To paraphrase Huxley, quoting Shakespeare: “O, brave new world that hath such possibly fake people in’t.”

Updating last Thursday’s post . . . thanks to those of you who sent this clip from Sicko, wherein Michael Moore interviews a young British doctor.  I hadn’t seen it before, but it makes the same powerful point: doctors do just fine under universal health care.

Here is Lawrence O’Donnell Thursday night on Trump’s El Paso propaganda video and his actions in Mississippi that same day.

Surely, the reign of this fascist sociopath will not be well regarded, years from now, by people who value honesty, dignity, empathy, and democracy.  And at the end of the day — if not in the heat of the moment — doesn’t that include most Republicans and evangelicals?

Watch Lawrence O’Donnell.

This story of naked racist white power should be from the 1870s.  That it’s from the current governor of Georgia shows how sick today’s G.O.P. leadership (not you, dear moderate Republican reader) has become.

Executive summary, from Fair Fight:

---

The story of the Quitman 10+2 seems almost a caricature in revealing America’s battle with deep structural racism, voter intimidation, the legacy of racial violence, abuses of power, and the myth of voter fraud. None of the details in this tragic narrative are exaggerated.

In December 2010, twelve Black residents of Quitman, Georgia — eleven of them women — were arrested and charged with 120 separate felony counts of criminality involving election integrity. Among them were local candidates for school board, community organizers, campaign staff, and local leaders.

Their alleged crime? Running an effective absentee ballot campaign to elect a black-majority school board.

Situated near Georgia’s southern border, Quitman is the seat of Brooks County, named for South Carolina’s Congressman Preston Brooks who infamously assaulted Senator Charles Sumner on the U.S. Senate floor for his speech against slavery. In the century that followed the county’s founding, Brooks County saw more lynchings than all but two counties in the state.

The investigation that led to these felony charges represented Governor Brian Kemp’s first major act of voter intimidation as Secretary of State, aimed at voters of color. Yet, Kemp’s assault on democracy was not limited to its targets.

The investigation and subsequent criminal proceedings that dragged on for years offered further proof that efforts to suppress the vote were never meant to simply block voters from the ballot, but to create a culture of fear for voters of color — a culture in which exercising your right to vote could cost you your job or your freedom.

Kemp’s intimidation and harassment in Quitman began a disturbing pattern of behavior: abusing the powers of his office to target Georgia groups who register, engage, and mobilize voters of color. In 2012, he raided the offices of the Asian American Legal Advocacy Center. In 2014, he subpoenaed the New Georgia Project. And just this year, Kemp’s ethics chief announced he would subpoena bank records of the Abrams for Governor campaign.

But just as the Quitman 10+2 never gave up their fight for justice, we won’t be deterred. We need a Fair Fight in Georgia in 2020 and beyond. Please share this story with your network today.

---

Read the whole story?

Michael T. Martin:  “In the recent Democrat debate, Buttigieg said Republicans would call Democrats ‘socialists’ regardless of what policies they advocated. It reminded me what the conservative pundit David Frum wrote in New York Magazine eight years ago (When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?): ‘Some of the smartest and most sophisticated people I know—canny investors, erudite authors—sincerely and passionately believe that President Barack Obama has gone far beyond conventional American liberalism and is willfully and relentlessly driving the United States down the road to socialism. No counterevidence will dissuade them from this belief: not record-high corporate profits, not almost 500,000 job losses in the public sector, not the lowest tax rates since the Truman administration. It is not easy to fit this belief alongside the equally strongly held belief that the president is a pitiful, bumbling amateur, dazed and overwhelmed by a job too big for him—and yet that is done too.’  The reality of the Republican Party is that there is no reality and hasn’t been for years.”

Have a great weekend.