Last evening The Rachel Maddow Show had an absolutely brilliant piece detailing the extents to which two of the biggest death merchants in the history of this country will go to avoid answering for their actions.
For decades the tobacco industry produced a product specifically designed to create an addiction in their users for that product. Nicotine levels were purposefully manipulated to guarantee that the vast majority of their users would be unable to stop. The industry was less than subtle when it came to advertising their product to children, knowing full well that the younger you can get a smoker hooked, the more likely you will have a customer for life, even a life that will be significantly shortened by use of the product.
With the full cooperation of the popular media, especially Hollywood, the tobacco industry made sure their product was portrayed as an essential part of American life, a birth right to which everyone was entitled. It was turned into a symbol of class, glamour and sophistication.
But when medical and scientific evidence began to mount concerning the link between smoking and many of the most severe health issues affecting the population, Big Tobacco began to get nervous. Through the courageous actions of pioneers like former Surgeon General C. Everett Coop (recently deceased), the harsh spotlight of public attention was being shone on the cigarette makers, and not in a flattering way.
It was starting to get hot, so the tobacco industry decided they needed a "heat shield" to protect themselves from this increasingly aggressive scrutiny, so they created and funded a bogus organization which they called the National Smokers' Alliance.
Ostensibly cast as a spontaneous, "grass roots" organization of fine, upstanding Americans who were seeking nothing more than the freedom to exercise their god-given right to get cancer, the NSA received millions of tobacco dollars to act as national apologists for the tobacco industry. They came up with completely preposterous pronouncements such as "Accommodation and common courtesy would solve this problem," meaning that the answer to all the health concerns is for everyone to mind their own business and pretend nothing bad is happening.
But it was hard to ignore the huge costs of tobacco addiction, and a number of high-profile, big-dollar lawsuits against the tobacco makers were beginning to get a lot of attention. And some of that attention came from a Senate investigating committee, which at one famous session summoned a number of top tobacco executives to answer for many years of lying to the American public. The gig was up for the phony National Smokers' Alliance, and it quickly disappeared from the national scene.
This was an example of a "heat shield" that did not work. Now, an example of a heat shield that DOES work:
The corporations that make and sell guns found themselves in a similar situation to the tobacco industry. Their product is produced solely for the purpose of murdering people. Guns can't be used for anything else than that. Knives kill people too, but knives have other legitimate uses. You can kill someone with a baseball bat, but bats can be used for their intended purpose, in a baseball game. Guns have one and only one use.
The gun industry did not want to have to deal with the messy business of gun violence and the carnage it wreaks on American society. The daily slaughter of innocent people of all ages was something they did not want to rationalize. They needed something to take the heat for them and deflect the public anger away from them, to provide cover for the continued sale of their product and rake in many millions of dollars of profit. Enter the National Rifle Association.
The NRA would like you to believe they are comprised of four million stalwart American citizens who seek nothing but the ability to defend their family and property from vast legions of vicious, bloodthirsty criminals, undocumented immigrants and an increasingly Fascist government that wants to invalidate the Constitution. The NRA just wants to make sure the Second Amendment stays firmly in place and every obese, ignorant hillbilly who wants to have a half-dozen automatic rifles in their filthy double-wide should be afforded that opportunity.
The Second Amendment to the Constitution contains exactly 27 words and was written at a time when the newborn country was just getting on its feet. Those 27 words have been mangled and stretched beyond recognition, and I am certain the Founding Fathers could not dream that it would someday cover mass-produced, insanely powerful weapons like the AR-15 or the AK-47.
The truth is, the NRA receives an enormous amount of funding from their "corporate partners," a veritable who's-who of gun manufacturers. Their decrepit zombie of a CEO, Wayne LaPierre - purposefully as repellent and obnoxious as humanly possible - acts as a very effective lightning rod for the all the criticism coming at the gun makers. The NRA has one of the most powerful lobbying machines in Washington to make sure that cowardly members of Congress remain firmly in their back pocket and resist any sort of gun control legislation.
The NRA also relies on the ignorance of their own members, who have been duped into thinking that the NRA is really interested in defending their Second Amendment rights from all the socialist Muslims who want to do heinous, vile and un-American things like ban high-capacity magazine clips or close ridiculous loopholes in gun sales. In reality, the NRA could not care less about gun rights, beyond the extent that gun rights can be used to maintain and increase their sales margins, and it exists only to make sure there will be an insatiable market for more and more guns in this country.
But, NRA members seem to be perfectly happy and content with being stooges, dupes and idiots, blatantly manipulated by gun industry proxies and being played like cheap violins. No doubt they are laughing insanely in the NRA board room at how easy it is to make really stupid people do exactly what you want them to.
No doubt the National Rifle Association has learned well from the example of the National Smokers' Alliance on how to be an effective heat shield. Whether or not it is going to save them from the same fate as the Smokers' Alliance remains to be seen. We are starting to see little cracks in the NRA heat shield today. We can only hope that these cracks will grow and eventually, the NRA will be seen as the cruel, cynical scam that it has always been.
Friday, March 8, 2013
Monday, February 25, 2013
Financial Frankenstein
Here we go again: We find ourselves on the brink of an economic catastrophe and once again, it's of our own making. How is this even remotely possible?
The clock is ticking on the Sequestration Bomb, a breathtaking little bit of insanity that was created not by some vengeful, pissed-off god, nor by some diabolical cabal of fundamentalist Islamists, nor by a gaggle of Chinese cyber-terrorists, but by our very own Congress. Back in 2011 when Congress was bickering over the debt-ceiling crisis, our very rational, courageous and forward-thinking representatives decided it would be a good idea to force themselves into taking some action on deficit reduction by coming up with a poison pill so onerous that enacting it would be unthinkable.
Congress has become so good at deferring action on critical issues. Their philosophy seems to be, let's kick the can down the road and worry about it some other day. Out of sight - out of mind, they think, but their short-sightedness cannot comprehend the fact that someday the piper will have to be paid and they will have to face the issue again, after it's had a chance to fester and grow and metastasize into something truly scary.
On Friday, March 1st, some $85 billion in budget cuts will be imposed across the board. Everything is going to be hit, even the sacred cow of defense spending. There are many dire, horrific, sky-is-falling predictions of all the teachers who will be laid off and the hours-long lines at airport security when TSA agents are sent packing. $85 billion is quite a chunk of change, but it's less than 3% of the national budget. How so much pain and disruption could happen at such a relatively small bump in the budget is hard to understand.
The Democrats and the Obama administration have been fanning the flames and doing whatever they can to put pressure on Republicans to get a grip and compromise on a debt reduction deal. Republicans are refusing to consider any increased tax revenues, thinking instead that the President has gotten all the new taxes he's going to get, and are holding out for big-time spending cuts. Both sides have dug in their heels and the rest of us have to sit on our hands and slide helplessly into Friday when the Frankenstein monster Congress created comes to life, goes on a rampage and eats the economy for lunch.
It's astonishing how myopic Congress can be, and how it can separate itself from the monster it created and disavow any responsibility for it. They're acting like they had nothing to do with the impending apocalypse, and throw up their hands as if they are completely powerless to do anything to solve the problem THEY created.
All this is eerily reminiscent of another faux-crisis we all endured, the so-called "fiscal cliff" back on December 31st of last year. This also was a manufactured event, created not by economic forces but by design, by intention. I suppose we could glean some comfort in the fact that we survived the fiscal cliff, and we will survive the upcoming sequestration. Leading economists, such as the always erudite Robert Reich, say that most people probably won't directly feel the results of sequestration for weeks or months or maybe never.
But the economy always seems to be teetering on the brink of "another recession." The recovery from the financial collapse of 2009-2010 has been anemic at best, and even though the stock market has been flirting with record high levels, there's the very real feeling that it's all a house of cards that can come crashing down any minute. It wasn't that long ago that the Dow Jones Industrial Average was in the 6,000 range, instead of occasionally peeking over the 14,000 mark as it does these days.
Congress seems to have effectively isolated itself from the effects of these cliffs and crises, and somehow deflects the blame away from itself. More ominiously, there's the chance that this has become the new "normal" - already the next two "crises" are being teed up: another possible government shutdown coming on March 27th and more debt-ceiling churn in April. Instead of governing for the long term, it appears Congress has chosen to merely jump from crisis to manufactured crisis, like a flat rock skipping over the surface of the water, accomplishing very little, and pushing as much as they can down the road, over and over again.
The clock is ticking on the Sequestration Bomb, a breathtaking little bit of insanity that was created not by some vengeful, pissed-off god, nor by some diabolical cabal of fundamentalist Islamists, nor by a gaggle of Chinese cyber-terrorists, but by our very own Congress. Back in 2011 when Congress was bickering over the debt-ceiling crisis, our very rational, courageous and forward-thinking representatives decided it would be a good idea to force themselves into taking some action on deficit reduction by coming up with a poison pill so onerous that enacting it would be unthinkable.
Congress has become so good at deferring action on critical issues. Their philosophy seems to be, let's kick the can down the road and worry about it some other day. Out of sight - out of mind, they think, but their short-sightedness cannot comprehend the fact that someday the piper will have to be paid and they will have to face the issue again, after it's had a chance to fester and grow and metastasize into something truly scary.
On Friday, March 1st, some $85 billion in budget cuts will be imposed across the board. Everything is going to be hit, even the sacred cow of defense spending. There are many dire, horrific, sky-is-falling predictions of all the teachers who will be laid off and the hours-long lines at airport security when TSA agents are sent packing. $85 billion is quite a chunk of change, but it's less than 3% of the national budget. How so much pain and disruption could happen at such a relatively small bump in the budget is hard to understand.
The Democrats and the Obama administration have been fanning the flames and doing whatever they can to put pressure on Republicans to get a grip and compromise on a debt reduction deal. Republicans are refusing to consider any increased tax revenues, thinking instead that the President has gotten all the new taxes he's going to get, and are holding out for big-time spending cuts. Both sides have dug in their heels and the rest of us have to sit on our hands and slide helplessly into Friday when the Frankenstein monster Congress created comes to life, goes on a rampage and eats the economy for lunch.
It's astonishing how myopic Congress can be, and how it can separate itself from the monster it created and disavow any responsibility for it. They're acting like they had nothing to do with the impending apocalypse, and throw up their hands as if they are completely powerless to do anything to solve the problem THEY created.
All this is eerily reminiscent of another faux-crisis we all endured, the so-called "fiscal cliff" back on December 31st of last year. This also was a manufactured event, created not by economic forces but by design, by intention. I suppose we could glean some comfort in the fact that we survived the fiscal cliff, and we will survive the upcoming sequestration. Leading economists, such as the always erudite Robert Reich, say that most people probably won't directly feel the results of sequestration for weeks or months or maybe never.
But the economy always seems to be teetering on the brink of "another recession." The recovery from the financial collapse of 2009-2010 has been anemic at best, and even though the stock market has been flirting with record high levels, there's the very real feeling that it's all a house of cards that can come crashing down any minute. It wasn't that long ago that the Dow Jones Industrial Average was in the 6,000 range, instead of occasionally peeking over the 14,000 mark as it does these days.
Congress seems to have effectively isolated itself from the effects of these cliffs and crises, and somehow deflects the blame away from itself. More ominiously, there's the chance that this has become the new "normal" - already the next two "crises" are being teed up: another possible government shutdown coming on March 27th and more debt-ceiling churn in April. Instead of governing for the long term, it appears Congress has chosen to merely jump from crisis to manufactured crisis, like a flat rock skipping over the surface of the water, accomplishing very little, and pushing as much as they can down the road, over and over again.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Digital Melting-Pot
Digital technology has sped up the reaction time of everyone, and nowadays it's very common for something to happen in the world and almost instantaneously, reactions and comments pop up on Facebook.
Twenty years ago, none of this was even imagined, let alone remotely possible. And back in the day, when I was young, news came from either the newspaper, the radio or national televised news shows. We got our news basically twice a day, when the newspaper was thrown on the front porch, or when the evening news programs came on.
Today, we are immersed in news from the second we awake to when the nights go out at night. Instead of a couple of places to get news, we have many dozens. The internet has brought an astonishing, incomprehensible amount of information to our fingertips, pretty much for free, day and night. But so much of this information comes not from independent, credible news sources, but from thinly-disguised echo chambers of political entities for whom journalistic truth is the enemy, not an ideal to which to aspire.
In the vast, global, digital melting-pot that is Facebook, there is always something cooking. The media stew it serves up can be a smorgasbord of interesting, funny and enlightening photos and comments from my Facebook friends - whom I genuinely appreciate and enjoy reading - to a witches' brew of insanity, paranoia and batshit-craziness from the darkest gutters and cesspools of the American psyche.
Politically-inclined FB pages are public pages, and that opens up the floodgates for all the virulent strains of craziness that seem to be running rampant in this country. In particular, conservative trolls are ever-ready to inflict their narrow-minded, pointless slander and undisguised racism into any and all discussions, even if they are not even slightly political. No insult is too cheap, no snide remark too juvenile to make when it comes to denigrating our President.
Disclaimer: I have certainly put in my time as a liberal troll, and I spent a fun-filled two weeks after the elections last November carpet-bombing political pages and websites with all the eat-shit-and-die liberal gloating I could muster. I gleefully and mercilessly rubbed as many conservatives noses as I could into the messy bowel movement that was the Romney campaign, with completely predictable results. Heads exploded everywhere, and the bile and hatred I elicited was quite impressive. I felt that if I could raise conservative blood pressures to stroke-inducing levels and ruin as many of their days as possible, I was doing my job and life indeed was wonderful. It was almost too easy, like shooting fish in a barrel, but eventually it ran its course and I don't do it anymore. At least not as much.
The Sandy Hook elementary school shootings in mid-December brought a whole new array of crazy conservatives to the forefront, and these were the extra-paranoid, gun-nut variety. It really is something when you find out how many of our fellow citizens spend their lives gripped by an intense, irrational fear that someday, vast armies of criminals, armed to the tits with AK-47s, are going to march down every street in every town and city in this country and storm the doorway of their home in a enormous Armageddon-type apocalypse, and the only way they can hope to survive is to make sure everyone in their family, from little two-year-old Nutley to ninety-year old Grandma, has a couple of automatic rifles at their disposal to dispatch all these bloodthirsty felons to the lower depths of hell where they belong.
I was surprised to find out that a lot of people take seriously the notion that their individual liberty and freedom are in constant, grave peril, either from armed, highly-organized criminals or from our own government. Paranoia and conspiracy theories go hand-in-hand, and these people can see heinous, nefarious plots in every single thing that happens. Evil socialist Muslim Kenyans are behind everything, and they are well on their way to converting every Starbucks in this nation into Islamic indoctrination centers, and Walmart will start selling burkas any minute. Actually, it would really be a good idea if some of Walmart's customers wore burkas.
These pathetic, disturbed individuals have a doomsday scenario playing in an endless loop in their heads, that they will someday have to engage in mortal combat with a mysterious Fascist movement which will suddenly rise to power and all the U.S. military forces will fight blindly for the prophet Mohammed, despite nearly 250 years of Judeo-Christian culture and government influence. How little faith these people have in their fellow citizens, and in the form of government which has produced the wealthiest and most powerful nation the world has ever seen, and has gotten us through a bloody Civil War and two World Wars as well as numerous other skirmishes. To these hopeless paranoids, it's just a tiny step to go from an established, representative democracy to Sharia law.
The Republican party, along with their mangy, yappy little attack dog the NRA, is expert at cultivating and empowering such mindless paranoid fantasies, and there seems to be no limit to the number of gullible dupes and stooges out there who are ever-so-eager to swallow this claptrap. Personally I feel it's indicative of the extreme intellectual laziness that has taken hold in his country. Why make the effort to learn about the world and the things that are happening in our culture, when you can sit comfortably on your couch with your TV and a giant bag of Doritos, and let blowhards like Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck or the dimwitted hacks of Fox News fill your head with whatever garbage they choose, because somehow it sounds like they might be right, or at the very least their drivel seems to fit into your personal delusions and biases? They are the professionals when it comes to providing very simple-minded, ineffective, populist solutions to complex problems. Why bother thinking about stuff on your own when you can let someone else do the thinking for you?
There is a herd-mentality aspect in people that makes them want to be a part of something bigger, which seems counter to the famed American "independence of spirit." People want to align themselves with other like-minded people, because there is safety in numbers and comfort in shared attitudes. Going out on a limb and actually deconstructing problems in order to understand them is scary and way too much work, and many people just do not have the mental capacity, experience or inclination for critical analysis, thanks to our failing educational system. They instead opt for the demagogues who speak in terms that sound familiar, or at least non-threatening, and engender an us-and-them separation that puts their followers clearly on the "us" side, and anyone who doesn't agree with them or maybe challenges their long-established biases and prejudices are the "them" that they have to be afraid of.
What people don't understand they fear, and that's been true throughout history. Overcoming fear requires courage, fortitude and persistence. Sadly, sometimes it seems all too clear that people are not being enlightened by reason and understanding, but instead are turning their backs and marching into the darkness.
Twenty years ago, none of this was even imagined, let alone remotely possible. And back in the day, when I was young, news came from either the newspaper, the radio or national televised news shows. We got our news basically twice a day, when the newspaper was thrown on the front porch, or when the evening news programs came on.
Today, we are immersed in news from the second we awake to when the nights go out at night. Instead of a couple of places to get news, we have many dozens. The internet has brought an astonishing, incomprehensible amount of information to our fingertips, pretty much for free, day and night. But so much of this information comes not from independent, credible news sources, but from thinly-disguised echo chambers of political entities for whom journalistic truth is the enemy, not an ideal to which to aspire.
In the vast, global, digital melting-pot that is Facebook, there is always something cooking. The media stew it serves up can be a smorgasbord of interesting, funny and enlightening photos and comments from my Facebook friends - whom I genuinely appreciate and enjoy reading - to a witches' brew of insanity, paranoia and batshit-craziness from the darkest gutters and cesspools of the American psyche.
Politically-inclined FB pages are public pages, and that opens up the floodgates for all the virulent strains of craziness that seem to be running rampant in this country. In particular, conservative trolls are ever-ready to inflict their narrow-minded, pointless slander and undisguised racism into any and all discussions, even if they are not even slightly political. No insult is too cheap, no snide remark too juvenile to make when it comes to denigrating our President.
Disclaimer: I have certainly put in my time as a liberal troll, and I spent a fun-filled two weeks after the elections last November carpet-bombing political pages and websites with all the eat-shit-and-die liberal gloating I could muster. I gleefully and mercilessly rubbed as many conservatives noses as I could into the messy bowel movement that was the Romney campaign, with completely predictable results. Heads exploded everywhere, and the bile and hatred I elicited was quite impressive. I felt that if I could raise conservative blood pressures to stroke-inducing levels and ruin as many of their days as possible, I was doing my job and life indeed was wonderful. It was almost too easy, like shooting fish in a barrel, but eventually it ran its course and I don't do it anymore. At least not as much.
The Sandy Hook elementary school shootings in mid-December brought a whole new array of crazy conservatives to the forefront, and these were the extra-paranoid, gun-nut variety. It really is something when you find out how many of our fellow citizens spend their lives gripped by an intense, irrational fear that someday, vast armies of criminals, armed to the tits with AK-47s, are going to march down every street in every town and city in this country and storm the doorway of their home in a enormous Armageddon-type apocalypse, and the only way they can hope to survive is to make sure everyone in their family, from little two-year-old Nutley to ninety-year old Grandma, has a couple of automatic rifles at their disposal to dispatch all these bloodthirsty felons to the lower depths of hell where they belong.
I was surprised to find out that a lot of people take seriously the notion that their individual liberty and freedom are in constant, grave peril, either from armed, highly-organized criminals or from our own government. Paranoia and conspiracy theories go hand-in-hand, and these people can see heinous, nefarious plots in every single thing that happens. Evil socialist Muslim Kenyans are behind everything, and they are well on their way to converting every Starbucks in this nation into Islamic indoctrination centers, and Walmart will start selling burkas any minute. Actually, it would really be a good idea if some of Walmart's customers wore burkas.
These pathetic, disturbed individuals have a doomsday scenario playing in an endless loop in their heads, that they will someday have to engage in mortal combat with a mysterious Fascist movement which will suddenly rise to power and all the U.S. military forces will fight blindly for the prophet Mohammed, despite nearly 250 years of Judeo-Christian culture and government influence. How little faith these people have in their fellow citizens, and in the form of government which has produced the wealthiest and most powerful nation the world has ever seen, and has gotten us through a bloody Civil War and two World Wars as well as numerous other skirmishes. To these hopeless paranoids, it's just a tiny step to go from an established, representative democracy to Sharia law.
The Republican party, along with their mangy, yappy little attack dog the NRA, is expert at cultivating and empowering such mindless paranoid fantasies, and there seems to be no limit to the number of gullible dupes and stooges out there who are ever-so-eager to swallow this claptrap. Personally I feel it's indicative of the extreme intellectual laziness that has taken hold in his country. Why make the effort to learn about the world and the things that are happening in our culture, when you can sit comfortably on your couch with your TV and a giant bag of Doritos, and let blowhards like Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck or the dimwitted hacks of Fox News fill your head with whatever garbage they choose, because somehow it sounds like they might be right, or at the very least their drivel seems to fit into your personal delusions and biases? They are the professionals when it comes to providing very simple-minded, ineffective, populist solutions to complex problems. Why bother thinking about stuff on your own when you can let someone else do the thinking for you?
There is a herd-mentality aspect in people that makes them want to be a part of something bigger, which seems counter to the famed American "independence of spirit." People want to align themselves with other like-minded people, because there is safety in numbers and comfort in shared attitudes. Going out on a limb and actually deconstructing problems in order to understand them is scary and way too much work, and many people just do not have the mental capacity, experience or inclination for critical analysis, thanks to our failing educational system. They instead opt for the demagogues who speak in terms that sound familiar, or at least non-threatening, and engender an us-and-them separation that puts their followers clearly on the "us" side, and anyone who doesn't agree with them or maybe challenges their long-established biases and prejudices are the "them" that they have to be afraid of.
What people don't understand they fear, and that's been true throughout history. Overcoming fear requires courage, fortitude and persistence. Sadly, sometimes it seems all too clear that people are not being enlightened by reason and understanding, but instead are turning their backs and marching into the darkness.
Monday, February 11, 2013
My Excellent Lobbying Adventure
Last Wednesday I went to the AZ state capitol here in Phoenix to participate in the AZ Humane Lobby Day, sponsored by the ASPCA and the Humane Society of the US.
Despite living in Phoenix for nearly 20 years, it was my first trip to the state capitol, actually located only about 10 miles from where I live. It was an interesting, eye-opening experience and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
There were about 120 people attending, representing 23 of the 30 state legislative districts. We met in the Old Senate chambers and discussed the three bills we were there to lobby. They are:
1) Animal Fighting as Racketeering - would classify any kind of animal fighting as a racketeering activity, opening the door to easier prosecution and stiffer penalties.
2) Prohibiting the Roadside Sale of animals - Already banned in Maricopa and Pinal counties, this law would prohibit animals being sold on the side of the road statewide
3) Prohibiting Live Animals being given away as prizes - this law would prohibit statewide the heinous, loathsome activity of giving away live baby bunnies and other animals as prizes at carnivals, events, etc. to idiots who have no clue or desire to care for them properly.
All 3 bills are working their way through committees, and we are hopeful they all will be passed through. Then of course they have to be voted on by both legislative bodies and signed by the Governor, and there are many ways the measures can be derailed and killed, but we are hopeful they will become law.
All us lobbyists were scheduled to meet with our three legislators, 2 representatives and 1 senator. Our two representatives were busy running all over the place doing other things, but we did meet with our state senator, Ms. Katie Hobbs, and she was extremely nice and supportive of our efforts and the causes we were advocating.
Needless to say, I took each and every opportunity to mention the plight of rabbits in the context of all three bills, especially the carnival prize one, because it's so easy just to focus on dogs and cats. While that is indeed worthy and necessary, I was not about to let bunnies get pushed into the background and given the short shrift.
There was a lot of legwork, running between the state House and Senate buildings, and a little bit of chaos as we tried valiantly to meet with our representatives, but in the end we met with one rep's staffer, and for the other one we only dropped off materials for them to review, but I believe we got our message to them.
While lobbying, I got a chance to visit the Arizona Capitol Museum in the Capitol building, with its graceful, colorful dome:
Also, there was a model of a very interesting design by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright for a new capitol area, created in the 1950's but never built:
I had a really good time at my first try at political lobbying, and I think I may have somewhat of a knack for it. I would love to do more and I'm sure I'll be participating in the next Humane Lobby Day. I will use each and every opportunity to bring awareness and raise consciousness of the treatment of rabbits in this state. I consider it an honor to raise my voice for those who can't speak.
Despite living in Phoenix for nearly 20 years, it was my first trip to the state capitol, actually located only about 10 miles from where I live. It was an interesting, eye-opening experience and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The Arizona State Capitol building
(Click on the pictures to view them full size)
There were about 120 people attending, representing 23 of the 30 state legislative districts. We met in the Old Senate chambers and discussed the three bills we were there to lobby. They are:
1) Animal Fighting as Racketeering - would classify any kind of animal fighting as a racketeering activity, opening the door to easier prosecution and stiffer penalties.
2) Prohibiting the Roadside Sale of animals - Already banned in Maricopa and Pinal counties, this law would prohibit animals being sold on the side of the road statewide
3) Prohibiting Live Animals being given away as prizes - this law would prohibit statewide the heinous, loathsome activity of giving away live baby bunnies and other animals as prizes at carnivals, events, etc. to idiots who have no clue or desire to care for them properly.
All 3 bills are working their way through committees, and we are hopeful they all will be passed through. Then of course they have to be voted on by both legislative bodies and signed by the Governor, and there are many ways the measures can be derailed and killed, but we are hopeful they will become law.
Arizona House of Representatives, meeting in session
All us lobbyists were scheduled to meet with our three legislators, 2 representatives and 1 senator. Our two representatives were busy running all over the place doing other things, but we did meet with our state senator, Ms. Katie Hobbs, and she was extremely nice and supportive of our efforts and the causes we were advocating.
Needless to say, I took each and every opportunity to mention the plight of rabbits in the context of all three bills, especially the carnival prize one, because it's so easy just to focus on dogs and cats. While that is indeed worthy and necessary, I was not about to let bunnies get pushed into the background and given the short shrift.
There was a lot of legwork, running between the state House and Senate buildings, and a little bit of chaos as we tried valiantly to meet with our representatives, but in the end we met with one rep's staffer, and for the other one we only dropped off materials for them to review, but I believe we got our message to them.
While lobbying, I got a chance to visit the Arizona Capitol Museum in the Capitol building, with its graceful, colorful dome:
Also, there was a model of a very interesting design by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright for a new capitol area, created in the 1950's but never built:
I had a really good time at my first try at political lobbying, and I think I may have somewhat of a knack for it. I would love to do more and I'm sure I'll be participating in the next Humane Lobby Day. I will use each and every opportunity to bring awareness and raise consciousness of the treatment of rabbits in this state. I consider it an honor to raise my voice for those who can't speak.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Peaches at the Bridge
Last Monday I had to say goodbye to my beautiful Flemish Giant girl Peaches. She didn't want to go, and I didn't want her to leave me, but her body said it was time. Reluctantly, she crossed over to the Rainbow Bridge. I was holding her in my arms and am confident she knew I was there, helping her make the transition to the next world.
Peaches came into my life in 2005, after a hoarding situation in the Show Low area of Arizona sent a number of Flemish Giant rabbits to our shelter. She got her name from the bright orange-tan color of her fur. Flemish Giants, or "Flemmies" as they are affectionately called, are one of the largest breeds of rabbits. The purebred males can sometimes get to be 20 or 22 pounds in size, and can measure nearly three feet in length when stretched out. Peaches wasn't a purebred, but in her prime she tipped the scales at 15 pounds, a very respectable weight for a bunny. By the way, the internet stories you sometimes come across where someone claims to have a 50-lb. rabbit are most likely bogus. A rabbit's skeleton and physiology could not support that kind of weight, and the rabbit would be unable to move around.
I didn't adopt Peaches right away. For a while she was up for adoption, along with the other Flemmies she came with. Flemish Giants are very popular rabbits, due to their large size and sweet, loving, gentle personalities. We don't get them very often at the shelter and when we do, they usually get adopted quickly. I was fostering Peaches for a while and took notice of her sweet disposition and excellent litterbox habits, a winning combination in the eyes of any prospective bunny adopter.
It wasn't long before a woman came forward to adopt Peaches, and Peaches went to live in her new home. Not long thereafter, the woman contacted me and reported that Peaches is acting very strangely - urinating all over the place except her litter box, hiding behind a stairwell whenever she was let out of her pen for playtime, and generally behaving badly. The woman had a male roommate and Peaches loved him, but she would have nothing to do with the woman who adopted her. I tried to give her advice on how to counteract Peaches' recalcitrant behavior, and even went over to the woman's house to work with them, but Peaches just dug in her bunny heels and would not change her antisocial behavior for anything. Eventually the woman could not deal with the constant urination and reluctantly returned Peaches to the rescue. I went to her home, picked up Peaches and brought her back to foster care in my house. The minute Peaches got to my house, the bad behavior vanished, her perfect litter box habits returned, and I realized that Peaches was finally back to where she really wanted to be. I officially adopted her soon after, and she had not left my care since.
Peaches loved to go out in the back yard for playtime when the weather permitted. I have memories of her joyfully bounding across the back yard, kicking up her heels and leaping into the air in what bunny people call the Rabbit Dance of Joy, otherwise known as a "binky." She would launch her 15-pound bulk straight up and catch some really good air, kicking up a cloud of dust as she did. Once she was outside, she never wanted to go back inside the house, and not even the darkening skies of evening would change her mind. She quickly learned that if she hid under some shrubbery in the yard, it was hard for me to force her back inside. In particular, a large bougainvillea bush next to the cement block wall was her favorite hangout, because she could observe the whole yard without being seen, and the hundreds of sharp thorns would make it a difficult and painful proposition for me to drag her out of her very comfortable spot to go back indoors.
In the 8 years I had her, Peaches was never anything other than extremely sweet, docile and affectionate. Her health was really good throughout her life, although once she had a case of urine sludge that was very severe. Her urine got really thick with excess calcium and minerals in her diet, and came out of her body with the consistency of toothpaste. She was very sick and at times her body was completely limp, but luckily I pulled her through that and made changes to her diet, and she was fine from then on. About 6 months ago she had trouble walking around, and was losing the use of her back legs. Eventually her back legs did go out on her and I had to move her from the exercise pen where she had lived her whole life to a cage lined with soft, fleece padding.
I could tell she got really depressed when this happened, because she had always been so active and vital. She was sad that she couldn't move on her own, and I helped as much as I could by keeping her clean, holding her over her water dish so she could drink and changing her position several times a day. She still loved to eat her vegetables and treats, and she would yank a treat out of your hand with as much gusto as she always did (ask my friend Julia). Last weekend things started to get really bad for her, and she began losing her appetite, a sure sign of her decline. By Monday morning, she was virtually paralyzed, her food left untouched. I knew the end was near for my dear girl.
I was able to spend a lot of time with her on Monday - holding her, brushing her beautiful fur, and letting her know I was nearby. Monday evening she started crying and moaning, and I knew the end was imminent. She did not want to go, and fought very hard to stay with me, even though I told her over and over it was okay if she needed to move on. Tears started to form in her eyes, and in mine, too. Eventually she realized it was time and when she surrendered her spirit, a palpable wave of relief crossed over her face. She relaxed a final time, and she was gone.
I am still dealing with the loss of my dear girl, and I don't think it's fully hit me yet. I keep walking by the bunny room expecting to see her there, her big, dark eyes sparkling under her long, long eyelashes and her huge ears pointed directly at me in anticipation of a treat I might have for her. I will think of her every time I'm sitting on the back patio, gazing out into the back yard at her favorite bougainvillea bush on the side, expecting to see her stretched out underneath it like Cleopatra on her barge.
When an animal touches your life and your heart as much as she had, she never really leaves you. One of the amazing things about having animals in your life is that they change you. They bring such goodness of spirit into your life, that you can't help but be a different (read: better) person from the experience. I've always maintained that animals make us better human beings, and show us by example how to live our lives. Animals can teach us so much, if we only open our hearts and minds to them, and I know my life was made immeasurably richer by the presence of a big, beautiful tan-colored Flemmie named Peaches.
----------------------------------
The day after Peaches passed, I got a call from the local humane society. They had received a young, injured bunny and needed to know if our shelter could take it from them. Of course I immediately went down there to pick the bunny up.
I was not quite prepared to find a tiny, incredibly soft ball of the purest, whitest fur imaginable, barely weighing a pound and probably no more than 5 weeks of age, with an eye injury. The doctors there said the eye itself was intact, just the conjunctive tissues surrounding it were damaged. Her thin, fragile body was covered with numerous scabs, indicating that her life had been a difficult one so far. That was bad enough, but unfortunately I came to realize that the poor little soul had suffered some critical internal trauma, because she was passing blood out her anus. I gave her as much supportive care as I could, but knew that only time would tell if she was going to survive her injuries. I keep telling myself that having hope in situations like this is important for both me and the bunny being treated.
The next morning she was even more listless and lethargic, refusing food and water, and I became increasingly pessimistic about her chances. Sadly her injuries overwhelmed her and she passed away quietly in the afternoon, less than 24 hours after I brought her to my home.
She was not going to die alone and unnamed, an anonymous victim of the ignorance and cruelty for which the human race is so infamous. Droplet was a tiny, sweet angel who deserved so much better than the extremely short, brutal, pain-filled life she had to endure. I like to think that for the last day of her life, Droplet knew she was safe and maybe for the first time, experienced the caring touch of a human who held her close and whispered into her ear that she was loved, she was valued, and her life indeed meant something.
Peaches came into my life in 2005, after a hoarding situation in the Show Low area of Arizona sent a number of Flemish Giant rabbits to our shelter. She got her name from the bright orange-tan color of her fur. Flemish Giants, or "Flemmies" as they are affectionately called, are one of the largest breeds of rabbits. The purebred males can sometimes get to be 20 or 22 pounds in size, and can measure nearly three feet in length when stretched out. Peaches wasn't a purebred, but in her prime she tipped the scales at 15 pounds, a very respectable weight for a bunny. By the way, the internet stories you sometimes come across where someone claims to have a 50-lb. rabbit are most likely bogus. A rabbit's skeleton and physiology could not support that kind of weight, and the rabbit would be unable to move around.
Peaches in 2005
I didn't adopt Peaches right away. For a while she was up for adoption, along with the other Flemmies she came with. Flemish Giants are very popular rabbits, due to their large size and sweet, loving, gentle personalities. We don't get them very often at the shelter and when we do, they usually get adopted quickly. I was fostering Peaches for a while and took notice of her sweet disposition and excellent litterbox habits, a winning combination in the eyes of any prospective bunny adopter.
It wasn't long before a woman came forward to adopt Peaches, and Peaches went to live in her new home. Not long thereafter, the woman contacted me and reported that Peaches is acting very strangely - urinating all over the place except her litter box, hiding behind a stairwell whenever she was let out of her pen for playtime, and generally behaving badly. The woman had a male roommate and Peaches loved him, but she would have nothing to do with the woman who adopted her. I tried to give her advice on how to counteract Peaches' recalcitrant behavior, and even went over to the woman's house to work with them, but Peaches just dug in her bunny heels and would not change her antisocial behavior for anything. Eventually the woman could not deal with the constant urination and reluctantly returned Peaches to the rescue. I went to her home, picked up Peaches and brought her back to foster care in my house. The minute Peaches got to my house, the bad behavior vanished, her perfect litter box habits returned, and I realized that Peaches was finally back to where she really wanted to be. I officially adopted her soon after, and she had not left my care since.
Peaches snuggling with mini-Rex Marty in 2011
Peaches loved to go out in the back yard for playtime when the weather permitted. I have memories of her joyfully bounding across the back yard, kicking up her heels and leaping into the air in what bunny people call the Rabbit Dance of Joy, otherwise known as a "binky." She would launch her 15-pound bulk straight up and catch some really good air, kicking up a cloud of dust as she did. Once she was outside, she never wanted to go back inside the house, and not even the darkening skies of evening would change her mind. She quickly learned that if she hid under some shrubbery in the yard, it was hard for me to force her back inside. In particular, a large bougainvillea bush next to the cement block wall was her favorite hangout, because she could observe the whole yard without being seen, and the hundreds of sharp thorns would make it a difficult and painful proposition for me to drag her out of her very comfortable spot to go back indoors.
In the 8 years I had her, Peaches was never anything other than extremely sweet, docile and affectionate. Her health was really good throughout her life, although once she had a case of urine sludge that was very severe. Her urine got really thick with excess calcium and minerals in her diet, and came out of her body with the consistency of toothpaste. She was very sick and at times her body was completely limp, but luckily I pulled her through that and made changes to her diet, and she was fine from then on. About 6 months ago she had trouble walking around, and was losing the use of her back legs. Eventually her back legs did go out on her and I had to move her from the exercise pen where she had lived her whole life to a cage lined with soft, fleece padding.
I could tell she got really depressed when this happened, because she had always been so active and vital. She was sad that she couldn't move on her own, and I helped as much as I could by keeping her clean, holding her over her water dish so she could drink and changing her position several times a day. She still loved to eat her vegetables and treats, and she would yank a treat out of your hand with as much gusto as she always did (ask my friend Julia). Last weekend things started to get really bad for her, and she began losing her appetite, a sure sign of her decline. By Monday morning, she was virtually paralyzed, her food left untouched. I knew the end was near for my dear girl.
I was able to spend a lot of time with her on Monday - holding her, brushing her beautiful fur, and letting her know I was nearby. Monday evening she started crying and moaning, and I knew the end was imminent. She did not want to go, and fought very hard to stay with me, even though I told her over and over it was okay if she needed to move on. Tears started to form in her eyes, and in mine, too. Eventually she realized it was time and when she surrendered her spirit, a palpable wave of relief crossed over her face. She relaxed a final time, and she was gone.
I am still dealing with the loss of my dear girl, and I don't think it's fully hit me yet. I keep walking by the bunny room expecting to see her there, her big, dark eyes sparkling under her long, long eyelashes and her huge ears pointed directly at me in anticipation of a treat I might have for her. I will think of her every time I'm sitting on the back patio, gazing out into the back yard at her favorite bougainvillea bush on the side, expecting to see her stretched out underneath it like Cleopatra on her barge.
When an animal touches your life and your heart as much as she had, she never really leaves you. One of the amazing things about having animals in your life is that they change you. They bring such goodness of spirit into your life, that you can't help but be a different (read: better) person from the experience. I've always maintained that animals make us better human beings, and show us by example how to live our lives. Animals can teach us so much, if we only open our hearts and minds to them, and I know my life was made immeasurably richer by the presence of a big, beautiful tan-colored Flemmie named Peaches.
----------------------------------
The day after Peaches passed, I got a call from the local humane society. They had received a young, injured bunny and needed to know if our shelter could take it from them. Of course I immediately went down there to pick the bunny up.
I was not quite prepared to find a tiny, incredibly soft ball of the purest, whitest fur imaginable, barely weighing a pound and probably no more than 5 weeks of age, with an eye injury. The doctors there said the eye itself was intact, just the conjunctive tissues surrounding it were damaged. Her thin, fragile body was covered with numerous scabs, indicating that her life had been a difficult one so far. That was bad enough, but unfortunately I came to realize that the poor little soul had suffered some critical internal trauma, because she was passing blood out her anus. I gave her as much supportive care as I could, but knew that only time would tell if she was going to survive her injuries. I keep telling myself that having hope in situations like this is important for both me and the bunny being treated.
The next morning she was even more listless and lethargic, refusing food and water, and I became increasingly pessimistic about her chances. Sadly her injuries overwhelmed her and she passed away quietly in the afternoon, less than 24 hours after I brought her to my home.
She was not going to die alone and unnamed, an anonymous victim of the ignorance and cruelty for which the human race is so infamous. Droplet was a tiny, sweet angel who deserved so much better than the extremely short, brutal, pain-filled life she had to endure. I like to think that for the last day of her life, Droplet knew she was safe and maybe for the first time, experienced the caring touch of a human who held her close and whispered into her ear that she was loved, she was valued, and her life indeed meant something.
Friday, January 11, 2013
I Am OZ, the Great and Powerful
There are some movies which are called "classic" and really deserve that title; one of them is the 1939 film, "The Wizard of Oz." Starring Judy Garland in her timeless role as Dorothy Gale, the flick is an absolute feast for the eyes and the imagination of people of every age.
There is amazing stuff from start to finish. Initially the film is in black and white, and it shows the quintessentially American life of Dorothy and her Auntie Em and a couple of hangers-on living on an idyllic farm in Kansas. Then wealthy, elitist Bitch-From-Hell Ann Romney, I mean Elvira Gulch, shows up with an order from the sheriff to confiscate vicious hell-hound Toto. Dorothy finds herself having the Worst Day Ever, and just when she thinks things can't get any worse, a tornado blows in and really screws everything up. This is the part that used to completely terrify me as a child; I remember being unable to breathe, paralyzed in fear, watching the thrashing, writhing tornado funnel bearing down on the Kansas farm like some huge dinosaur marching across the flat Kansas plains under a black sky.
Dorothy is not amused when she finds herself locked out of the storm cellar and runs inside the house for shelter. She gets knocked on her butt by a flying window frame and hallucinates this extremely intricate dream about the whole farmhouse getting sucked up into the tornado vortex and transported to a place called Oz. Still in black-and-white, there is a neat cinematic trick after she crash-lands La Maison Gale on top of an innocent pedestrian who turns out to the Wicked Witch of the East: when Dorothy opens the door onto Oz the screen explodes into mind-blowing Technicolor, an effect which is considerably muted when you only have a black-and-white television.
After being flash-mobbed by weirdly-dressed midgets called the Munchkins and getting her marching orders - not to mention a fabulous pair of red-sequined Espadrilles - from Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, Dorothy starts out for the fabled Emerald City to find the all-powerful Wizard of Oz, who reportedly has an awesome GPS system and can get her back to her bland, boring, black-and-white life as a hopeless farm slave in Kansas. She picks up some friends along the way, all with their own issues, including another wicked witch with anger-management problems and a whole squadron of flying monkeys. If you think pigeons are messy, you should try to clean up after a bunch of airborne chimpanzees.
Eventually they do find themselves in the stunning art-deco audience hall of the Wizard of Oz, who proceeds to scare the bejeezus out of them with a lot of hollering and bellowing, and special-effects like blasts of flame and clouds of acrid smoke. Dorothy and her crew completely buy into the all-powerful-wizard scam, but not Toto, who pulls a back curtain open to show a dumpy old man working all the bells and whistles that make the Wizard so gawd-awful scary and Wizard-y. It turns out the Wizard relies a lot on reputation and overblown bluster and is not nearly as powerful as he would like you to believe.
What's the point of all this, you probably asked yourself three paragraphs ago? Anyone who reads Careless Whispers knows that "making a valid point" in any blog post is entirely optional and when it does happen, should be considered unexpected good fortune, like finding a $20 bill on the street. But oddly enough this post does have a point, which is we are seeing a variation of this Wizard story playing out in the raging gun control debate following the tragic shootings in Newtown, Connecticut.
Playing the role of Dorothy we have the American public, thoroughly traumatized by gun violence, and seeking a way back to a world where 20 grade-school kids are not mowed down by a psycho with an assault weapon. Obama is the Good Witch of the North, pointing the way to a sensible, middle-road solution like banning those weapons and high-capacity ammo clips. Congress is there too, playing the role of the Munchkins, a role they play so very well - a bunch of annoying, helium-voiced douchebags that you just want to slap the crap out of.
The choice role of Wizard is played by the National Rifle Association, which for many years has relied on its reputation as the most powerful lobbying machine ever, and who uses gross intimidation, threats and blatant coercion to maintain its iron-clad stranglehold on members of Congress. The NRA would have us believe they are all-powerful and anyone who dares to speak up to them and challenge their authority will surely get slapped down and ground into dust like some disgusting bothersome insect. You mess with the Great and Powerful at your own risk, and punishment will be sure and swift: you will find yourself thrown out of office faster than you can say, "There's no place like home."
All the cross-dressing midgets in Congress tremble and cower in fear of the Wizard/NRA and consider it a privilege to grovel in the Wizard's presence and do whatever they're told. But the Wizard just might have finally met his match in the shock, anger and disgust that have swept the nation as it awakens to the horrific, awful things that gun violence causes in the life of this country. People are beginning to feel that this problem is getting progressively worse, and that the answer is not what the Wizard wants - which is more guns everywhere in the United States, especially in the schools themselves. The answer, which will by no means eliminate all gun violence, seems to be to take these automated weapons of mass killing and huge ammo clips and make them much more difficult to fall into the hands of the mentally deranged, while leaving responsible gun owners access to the firearms which make sense for level-headed people to own.
Bottom line is, what we have been doing up to this point when it comes to guns in this, the most heavily-armed nation in the world, is not working. The answer, in spite of the horrendous screaming and yelling of the Wizard, is not more guns for everyone. The public seems to be figuring out that the Wizard is all bluster and bombast, and there has never been a better opportunity to pull the curtain away from the Wizard, and see that his power is just an overblown illusion.
There is amazing stuff from start to finish. Initially the film is in black and white, and it shows the quintessentially American life of Dorothy and her Auntie Em and a couple of hangers-on living on an idyllic farm in Kansas. Then wealthy, elitist Bitch-From-Hell Ann Romney, I mean Elvira Gulch, shows up with an order from the sheriff to confiscate vicious hell-hound Toto. Dorothy finds herself having the Worst Day Ever, and just when she thinks things can't get any worse, a tornado blows in and really screws everything up. This is the part that used to completely terrify me as a child; I remember being unable to breathe, paralyzed in fear, watching the thrashing, writhing tornado funnel bearing down on the Kansas farm like some huge dinosaur marching across the flat Kansas plains under a black sky.
Dorothy is not amused when she finds herself locked out of the storm cellar and runs inside the house for shelter. She gets knocked on her butt by a flying window frame and hallucinates this extremely intricate dream about the whole farmhouse getting sucked up into the tornado vortex and transported to a place called Oz. Still in black-and-white, there is a neat cinematic trick after she crash-lands La Maison Gale on top of an innocent pedestrian who turns out to the Wicked Witch of the East: when Dorothy opens the door onto Oz the screen explodes into mind-blowing Technicolor, an effect which is considerably muted when you only have a black-and-white television.
After being flash-mobbed by weirdly-dressed midgets called the Munchkins and getting her marching orders - not to mention a fabulous pair of red-sequined Espadrilles - from Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, Dorothy starts out for the fabled Emerald City to find the all-powerful Wizard of Oz, who reportedly has an awesome GPS system and can get her back to her bland, boring, black-and-white life as a hopeless farm slave in Kansas. She picks up some friends along the way, all with their own issues, including another wicked witch with anger-management problems and a whole squadron of flying monkeys. If you think pigeons are messy, you should try to clean up after a bunch of airborne chimpanzees.
Eventually they do find themselves in the stunning art-deco audience hall of the Wizard of Oz, who proceeds to scare the bejeezus out of them with a lot of hollering and bellowing, and special-effects like blasts of flame and clouds of acrid smoke. Dorothy and her crew completely buy into the all-powerful-wizard scam, but not Toto, who pulls a back curtain open to show a dumpy old man working all the bells and whistles that make the Wizard so gawd-awful scary and Wizard-y. It turns out the Wizard relies a lot on reputation and overblown bluster and is not nearly as powerful as he would like you to believe.
What's the point of all this, you probably asked yourself three paragraphs ago? Anyone who reads Careless Whispers knows that "making a valid point" in any blog post is entirely optional and when it does happen, should be considered unexpected good fortune, like finding a $20 bill on the street. But oddly enough this post does have a point, which is we are seeing a variation of this Wizard story playing out in the raging gun control debate following the tragic shootings in Newtown, Connecticut.
Playing the role of Dorothy we have the American public, thoroughly traumatized by gun violence, and seeking a way back to a world where 20 grade-school kids are not mowed down by a psycho with an assault weapon. Obama is the Good Witch of the North, pointing the way to a sensible, middle-road solution like banning those weapons and high-capacity ammo clips. Congress is there too, playing the role of the Munchkins, a role they play so very well - a bunch of annoying, helium-voiced douchebags that you just want to slap the crap out of.
The choice role of Wizard is played by the National Rifle Association, which for many years has relied on its reputation as the most powerful lobbying machine ever, and who uses gross intimidation, threats and blatant coercion to maintain its iron-clad stranglehold on members of Congress. The NRA would have us believe they are all-powerful and anyone who dares to speak up to them and challenge their authority will surely get slapped down and ground into dust like some disgusting bothersome insect. You mess with the Great and Powerful at your own risk, and punishment will be sure and swift: you will find yourself thrown out of office faster than you can say, "There's no place like home."
All the cross-dressing midgets in Congress tremble and cower in fear of the Wizard/NRA and consider it a privilege to grovel in the Wizard's presence and do whatever they're told. But the Wizard just might have finally met his match in the shock, anger and disgust that have swept the nation as it awakens to the horrific, awful things that gun violence causes in the life of this country. People are beginning to feel that this problem is getting progressively worse, and that the answer is not what the Wizard wants - which is more guns everywhere in the United States, especially in the schools themselves. The answer, which will by no means eliminate all gun violence, seems to be to take these automated weapons of mass killing and huge ammo clips and make them much more difficult to fall into the hands of the mentally deranged, while leaving responsible gun owners access to the firearms which make sense for level-headed people to own.
Bottom line is, what we have been doing up to this point when it comes to guns in this, the most heavily-armed nation in the world, is not working. The answer, in spite of the horrendous screaming and yelling of the Wizard, is not more guns for everyone. The public seems to be figuring out that the Wizard is all bluster and bombast, and there has never been a better opportunity to pull the curtain away from the Wizard, and see that his power is just an overblown illusion.
The Power of Nine
As far back as I can remember, my favorite number has always been the number 9. There's something about it that is so complete, self-contained and satisfying. The number nine always looks like it's smiling - you can't be in a bad mood when you're looking at a number nine.
1's were always so plain and uninteresting. 2's resembled a question mark and looked confused. 3's looked like they were running away from something. 4's seemed dour and humorless. 5's were always smiling, but more like the crazy people on the bus who talk to themselves and laugh at their own jokes. 6's looked apprehensive and fearful. 7's looked stern and unforgiving. 8's appeared smug and self-satisfied. But with 9's, the best was saved for last, and it was always a great way to end a counting lesson.
But wait, there's a lot more to nines. Nine is ten minus one-tenth of ten:
9 = 10 - (0.1 x 10) = 10 - 1 = 9
This little numeric twist gives nine all sorts of mathematical powers. For instance,
One ninth = 1 / 9 = 0.111111....
Two ninths = 2 / 9 = 0.222222...
Three ninths = 3 / 9 = 1 / 3 = 0.3333333....
Four ninths = 4 / 9 = 0.4444444....
and so on. Also, if you add the digits of multiples of 9, they will add up to nine. As in:
9 x 1 = 09 ... 0 + 9 = 9
9 x 2 = 18 ... 1 + 8 = 9
9 x 3 = 27 ... 2 + 7 = 9
9 x 4 = 36 ... 3 + 6 = 9
9 x 5 = 45 ... 4 + 5 = 9
From this point, the digits in the product reverse themselves:
9 x 6 = 54 ... 5 + 4 = 9
9 x 7 = 63 ... 6 + 3 = 9
9 x 8 = 72 ... 7 + 2 = 9
9 x 9 = 81 ... 8 + 1 = 9
9 x 10 = 90 ... 9 + 0 = 9
The cautious reader will note that the left digits count up from 0 to 9, while the right digits count down from 9 to 0.
Things even go further, if you skip the strange anomaly of eleven:
9 x 11 = 99 ... 9 + 9 = 18 (wtf?)
9 x 12 = 108 ... 1 + 0 + 8 = 9
9 x 13 = 117 ... 1 + 1 + 7 = 9
9 x 14 = 126 ... 1 + 2 + 6 = 9 ....
Eleven is kind of a mirror-image, bizarro-world version of nine. It's like the antimatter version of nine. All manner of ungodliness ensues when you divide by 11:
1 / 11 = 0.09090909...
2 / 11 = 0.18181818...
3 / 11 = 0.27272727...
4 / 11 = 0.36363636...
All the way up to:
10 / 11 = 0.90909090...
If that stuff doesn't give you a headache, nothing will.
Right after the start of the new year, another indication of how awesome nine is came to the rabbit rescue in a litter of NINE baby bunnies! Just feast your eyes on these pictures, and tell me nine is not an amazing, awesome number!
1's were always so plain and uninteresting. 2's resembled a question mark and looked confused. 3's looked like they were running away from something. 4's seemed dour and humorless. 5's were always smiling, but more like the crazy people on the bus who talk to themselves and laugh at their own jokes. 6's looked apprehensive and fearful. 7's looked stern and unforgiving. 8's appeared smug and self-satisfied. But with 9's, the best was saved for last, and it was always a great way to end a counting lesson.
But wait, there's a lot more to nines. Nine is ten minus one-tenth of ten:
9 = 10 - (0.1 x 10) = 10 - 1 = 9
This little numeric twist gives nine all sorts of mathematical powers. For instance,
One ninth = 1 / 9 = 0.111111....
Two ninths = 2 / 9 = 0.222222...
Three ninths = 3 / 9 = 1 / 3 = 0.3333333....
Four ninths = 4 / 9 = 0.4444444....
and so on. Also, if you add the digits of multiples of 9, they will add up to nine. As in:
9 x 1 = 09 ... 0 + 9 = 9
9 x 2 = 18 ... 1 + 8 = 9
9 x 3 = 27 ... 2 + 7 = 9
9 x 4 = 36 ... 3 + 6 = 9
9 x 5 = 45 ... 4 + 5 = 9
From this point, the digits in the product reverse themselves:
9 x 6 = 54 ... 5 + 4 = 9
9 x 7 = 63 ... 6 + 3 = 9
9 x 8 = 72 ... 7 + 2 = 9
9 x 9 = 81 ... 8 + 1 = 9
9 x 10 = 90 ... 9 + 0 = 9
The cautious reader will note that the left digits count up from 0 to 9, while the right digits count down from 9 to 0.
Things even go further, if you skip the strange anomaly of eleven:
9 x 11 = 99 ... 9 + 9 = 18 (wtf?)
9 x 12 = 108 ... 1 + 0 + 8 = 9
9 x 13 = 117 ... 1 + 1 + 7 = 9
9 x 14 = 126 ... 1 + 2 + 6 = 9 ....
Eleven is kind of a mirror-image, bizarro-world version of nine. It's like the antimatter version of nine. All manner of ungodliness ensues when you divide by 11:
1 / 11 = 0.09090909...
2 / 11 = 0.18181818...
3 / 11 = 0.27272727...
4 / 11 = 0.36363636...
All the way up to:
10 / 11 = 0.90909090...
If that stuff doesn't give you a headache, nothing will.
Right after the start of the new year, another indication of how awesome nine is came to the rabbit rescue in a litter of NINE baby bunnies! Just feast your eyes on these pictures, and tell me nine is not an amazing, awesome number!
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