So are guns REALLY for self-defense?

Take a look at this excerpt from a CNN article called "More than half firearm deaths are suicides":

The Supreme Court's landmark ruling on gun ownership last week focused on citizens' ability to defend themselves from intruders in their homes. But research shows that surprisingly often, gun owners use the weapons on themselves.

Suicides accounted for 55 percent of the nation's nearly 31,000 firearm deaths in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There was nothing unique about that year -- gun-related suicides have outnumbered firearm homicides and accidents for 20 of the last 25 years.

Goodness. I had no idea that was the case. How very disturbing.

The Common Good

I just came across an article called "Who Stole the Common Good?: The Shadow of Ayn Rand" by Julian Edney. It ends like this:

So, do you want to find out if your friends, coworkers or spouse understand the common good? Some do, some don't. Try a simple game you can play called the Nuts Game -- with things you find around the house.

Three people sit around a kitchen bowl. You, the fourth person, with a timer, start off placing ten small items in the bowl -- quarters, dollar bills, or nuts. Tell the three players the goal is that each of them get as many items as possible. Tell them one other thing before they start: every ten seconds (you have your watch ready) you will look in the bowl and double the number of items remaining there by replenishing from an outside source (a separate pile of quarters on the side).

I used to run this game with college students. You would think the players would have figured out that if they had all waited, not taking anything out of the bowl for a while, the contents of the bowl would soon have grown very big, automatically doubling every ten seconds. Eventually they could each have divided up a pot that had grown large. But in fact, sixty percent of these groups never made it to the first 10-second replenishment cycle. Group members grabbed all they could as soon as they could, leaving nothing in the bowl to be doubled (destroying the common good), and each player wound up with none or a few items. I saw the bowl knocked to the floor in the greedy melee. And even if allowed to try again, not all groups cooperatively worked out a patient, conserve-as-you-go playing style, necessary for eventual big scores. They didn't trust each other.

This is really so, so sad. I wonder if this is true in all cultures or only in capitalist societies.

Christians in Iraq

I'm watching "60 Minutes" right now. The report on at the moment is about the persecution of Christians in Iraq. Christians were safe under Saddam. It's that old "law of unintended consequences." You can read the transcript or watch the segment right here.

Iran and Israel

This is very unnerving. It's from the Times Online:

Iran has moved ballistic missiles into launch positions, with Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant among the possible targets, defence sources said last week.

The movement of Shahab-3B missiles, which have an estimated range of more than 1,250 miles, followed a large-scale exercise earlier this month in which the Israeli air force flew en masse over the Mediterranean in an apparent rehearsal for a threatened attack on Iran’s nuclear installations. Israel believes Iran’s nuclear programme is aimed at acquiring nuclear weapons.

The sources said Iran was preparing to retaliate for any onslaught by firing missiles at Dimona, where Israel’s own nuclear weapons are believed to be made.

Major-General Mohammad Jafari, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, told a Tehran daily: “This country [Israel] is completely within the range of the Islamic Republic’s missiles. Our missile power and capability are such that the Zionist regime – despite all its abilities – cannot confront it.”

An editorial in a government newspaper, Jomhouri Eslami, said: “Our response will hit right at their temple.”

Oh my. What's going to happen next?

Friday cat blogging!

Tabby Queen

(Photo by Joaquim Alves Gaspar from Wikimedia Commons)

Conservatism

I found this over on Daily Kos:

It must be really scary to be a conservative. To be one, you must live in constant fear of terrorists nuking the United States, of gay people on the verge of convincing you that you really enjoy sodomy, of Spanish becoming the official language of the United States next week, of every African-American voting seven or eight times in the next election, of radical Islam suddenly becoming the latest hip thing among kids across the country, of perpetual lesbian orgies in girls bathrooms in high schools across America, of liberals forcing everyone to become a vegan, of Christians being rounded up into concentration camps, and of Democrats outlawing private property if they were to ever take power again.

So it's all about fear. Sad.

Irony (or something like that...)

Actually all you really have to do is look at the headline: Pastor Who Officiated at Jenna Bush Wedding Launches Pro-Obama Website.

But I'll give you an excerpt anyway:

The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, leader of the largest Methodist congregation in the country, launched a website yesterday titled "James Dobson Does Not Speak For Me." The site is a jab at Dobson, a stalwart of the religious right who this week called Sen. Barack Obama's interpretation of the Bible in a 2006 speech distorted "to fit [Obama's] own world view, his own confused theology."

Caldwell's site launched a day after Dobson's Focus on the Family radio program aired a harsh assessment of Obama's speech on faith and public policy and encourages readers to sign a statement declaring that Dobson does not represent them.

"I think it's a crime and a shame that Senator Obama has had to explain the fact that he's a Christian," Caldwell said in a recent interview. "Criticize his politics. Criticize his stance on whatever, but don't question his faith. Never in the history of American politics has someone said that he is a Christian and someone came back to say, 'No you're not.'"

If Rev. Caldwell's name sounds familiar, it may be because he is the same Rev. Caldwell who introduced President Bush at the 2000 Republican National Convention and last month officiated at Jenna Bush's wedding ceremony at the presidential ranch in Crawford. This election Caldwell is firmly in the Obama camp and doggedly trying to help the campaign bring other pastors and parishioners along.

And here's a comment to this article that hurts my heart but I certainly understand it:

Like thousands of other Americans, I left the USA (I was born in Iowa, the son of fourth generation Americans whose sons and daughters have fought in every war since the turn of the twentieth century) because of the lies, deceits, hypocrisy of George W Bush and his cronies. While I do not support Obama, I could never support McCain who is a harsher version of Bush and Dobson. I have lived abroad 5 years now and know the USA is definitely among the most hated nations on earth: despised for the butchery in Iraq, the extortion of the oil countries that have inflated oil prices, the arrogance of American tourists who believe their dwindling dollar value is god, and more. I had hoped to return to my native land, but race baiting and sexism is still alive and fluid. Dobson makes me ashamed that I was ever a Christian.

-- Posted by: Dr Arthur Frederick Ide

Breaking news on hand guns

Oh my. Look at this from CNN:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a sweeping ban on handguns in the nation's capital violated the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

The justices struck down the ban in a 5-4 decision, with Justice Antonin Scalia writing the opinion for the majority.

Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty said he was disappointed in the ruling...
...
The Second Amendment says, "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The wording repeatedly has raised the question of whether gun ownership is an individual right, or a collective one pertaining to state militias and therefore subject to regulation.
...
Breyer expressed concern in his dissent that the majority's ruling could jeopardize the "constitutionality of gun laws throughout the nation."

Okay, folks. Just watch the murder rate go up in the District of Columbia.

And all you gun freaks out there: please go look up the word "militia" and, while you're at it, look up the meaning of "dependent clause." If the Second Ammendment were really about the individual right to bear arms, that clause about the militia would have been unnecessary, not to mention irrelevant.

McCain's mental health

A question I found over on All Hat No Cattle:

The question no one asks about McCain is, "Should a psychiatric test be given to a man who was held prisoner and tortured for five years, in order to be president?"

Now, why isn't this question being asked?

An American Radical

Here's something George Carlin said as quoted in George Carlin: American Radical by John Nichols:

Let’s suppose we all just materialized on Earth and there was a bunch of potatoes on the ground, okay? There’s just six of us. Only six humans. We come into a clearing and there’s potatoes on the ground. Now, my instinct would be, let’s everybody get some potatoes.

"Everybody got a potato? Joey didn’t get a potato! He’s small, he can’t hold as many potatoes. Give Joey some of your potatoes.” “No, these are my potatoes!” That’s the Republicans. “I collected more of them, I got a bigger pile of potatoes, they’re mine. If you want some of them, you’re going to have to give me something.” “But look at Joey, he’s only got a couple, they won’t last two days.” That’s the fuckin’ difference! And I’m more inclined to want to share and even out,” he explained in an interview several years ago with The Onion.

I understand the marketplace, but government is supposed to be here to redress the inequities of the marketplace,” Carlin continued. “That’s one of its functions. Not just to protect the nation, secure our security and all that shit. And not just to take care of great problems that are trans-state problems, that are national, but also to make sure that the inequalities of the marketplace are redressed by the acts of government. That’s what welfare was about. There are people who really just don’t have the tools, for whatever reason. Yes, there are lazy people. Yes, there are slackers. Yes, there’s all of that. But there are also people who can’t cut it, for any given reason, whether it’s racism, or an educational opportunity, or poverty, or a fuckin’ horrible home life, or a history of a horrible family life going back three generations, or whatever it is. They’re crippled and they can’t make it, and they deserve to rest at the commonweal.

And here's another quote from that article:

Carlin did not want Americans to get involved with the system.

He wanted citizens to get angry enough to remake the system.

I think it's an important distinction. And I so agree.

R.I.P George Carlin

One way of recognizing tyranny

We need to think about this, folks:

When a person goes to a country and finds their newspapers filled with nothing but good news, he can bet there are good men in jail.

--Daniel Patrick Moynihan

An imperative regarding peace

This is a very important point:

Those who love peace must learn to organize as well as those who love war.

- Dr. Martin Luther King

Prayer for the Earth

"Prayer for the Earth"

The earth is at the same time mother,
She is mother of all that is natural,
mother of all that is human.
She is the mother of all,
for contained in her are the seeds of all.
The earth of humankind contains all moistness, all verdancy, all germinating power.
It is in so many ways fruitful.
All creation comes from it.
Yet it forms not only the basic raw material for humankind, but also the substance of the incarnation of God's son.

— Hildegard of Bingen

Yes, I know Earth Day is long past. But we continue to destroy the earth minute by minute. And somehow, somehow we need to see what we're doing. Please God, let us see.

"More and better Democrats"

Oh, my. I agree. I hope this woman is elected: