Another School Shooting

Slaughter on St. Valentine’s Day—————-

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

When I was a schoolboy and subsequently a grade school teacher many decades ago, I encountered the usual number of bullies and disruptive students. As a student, I was sometimes, like many other kids, their target and later, as one of the relatively few male grade school teachers in those days, the one chosen to deal with some of the more disruptive ones. Back then, teachers actually used seating plans and the seats and desks were securely anchored to the floor. Students didn’t move around without permission. Today, that sounds rather quaint.

 

There were lots of guns around but they were toy guns. Boys played with them often, sometimes during recess. They were mostly fairly accurate replicas of the real thing but no one seemed particularly troubled by them because carrying a real gun would be unthinkable. Guns were for the exclusive use of cops, criminals and soldiers  Bullies used threats and sometimes their fists as weapons and their targets either stood up to them or suffered in silence. They didn’t get a gun and shoot up the school. Fear of having a child shot in school was not even on the list of parental worries.

 

A lot, obviously, has changed since those days of innocence. It’s purely coincidental, I’m sure, but things started to change, and not for the better, when they began to unscrew the desks and chairs from the floor. That’s when authorities started to lose control. Our society has changed and we have become much more permissive and tolerant of aberrant behavior. In fact, nothing seems to outrage us much anymore except politics. These days, fear of having their children shot while at school ranks rather high on the list of parental worries.

 

With each mass shooting comes a now-familiar sequence of events. The shocking headlines keep the story alive for a week or two. The images of sobbing parents and schoolmates dominate evening TV. The makeshift memorials with flowers, balloons and teddy bears are followed by candlelight vigils. Then comes the search for answers followed by demands for stricter guns laws. Marches and demonstrations are scheduled. Nearly everyone takes to social media with a solution. Meanwhile, somewhere out there, the next mass shooter is also thinking about getting even with society and achieving national recognition and perhaps a new record.

 

The sexual revolution of the 1960s was accompanied by a startling increase in the number of divorces and out-of-wedlock births. Whereas divorce once carried a stigma in our society it has become the norm. A majority of marriages now end in divorce, often leaving broken families raised by a single working parent, usually the mother, with little time for parenting. Far too many boys grow up without a resident father to model acceptable male behavior.

 

We blame school shootings on many things including the glorification of violence in movies, video games, rap lyrics and other forms of entertainment. They tend to make us insensitive to violence and the value of human life. We permit late-term abortions, disposing of unwanted babies like trash. This is what America has become and we permitted it to happen. We reflexively blame the shootings on mental illness and easy access to guns. Perhaps we should pay more attention to the breakdown of the family unit and the decline in parenting skills in our society. We are quite good at bringing babies into the world and surrounding them with love when they are cute and adorable. But then they grow up and become rebellious and difficult so we give up on them. We can only do so much, we rationalize. But conceiving a child must carry with it responsibility and commitment until the child becomes an adult.

 

Most mass shootings are carefully planned and not all mass shooters suffer from mental illness. Some may just be criminals, perhaps because their parents, if they were even around, failed to instill in them moral values, respect for life and discipline.

 

So what can we do to prevent more massacres? We are not going to correct America’s social problems overnight, or perhaps ever. They were years in the making and they are ingrained. By all means, let’s try to pass laws banning assault-style, fully automatic, military-style weapons. No civilians, other than gangsters, need them for self-defense. But more restrictions on gun ownership will be a tough sell because enough Americans simply are not confident enough in the ability of police to protect them, especially in remote areas and gang-infested inner city areas. Schools that declare themselves to be gun-free zones are tempting venues for mass shooters since they will be the only ones armed until the police arrive. Our best bet, for now at least, will be using armed, trained security guards on school grounds and permitting some trained faculty and staff members to carry concealed weapons. This can lessen the risk and may at least reduce the carnage if a shooting does occur.

February 22, 2018

Liberals Love to HateTrump

Why Liberals Hate Trump———————-

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

Liberals hate President Donald Trump and nowhere was it more on display than at the state of the union address. Some democrats boycotted the event. Many who did attend wore black, I presume because they were still in mourning over his election. Many did not stand as he was announced, an act of disrespect to the office of the president and a childish gesture, comparable to NFL athletes taking a knee during the playing of our national anthem.

 

Democrats mostly sat on their hands, grim-faced, throughout the speech while GOP members over-reacted somewhat by leaping to their feet in thunderous applause after nearly every sentence. The cameras zoomed in often on a smirking Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, whose facial contortions suggested someone suffering from acute gastrointestinal distress.  Mr. Trump’s speech covered all the bases and was well-delivered, demonstrating that he can actually speak in complete sentences and even sound presidential when he sticks to a prepared script. Here’s hoping that he does more of it and less impromptu tweeting, but don’t count on it.

 

So here we are, one year into Mr. Trump’s term and the economy is booming but liberals don’t seem to care much. GDP growth was over 3% during the last two quarters, something eight years of Obama economic policies failed to produce. Unemployment, including the unemployment rates for blacks and Hispanics, is at an all-time low. Average hourly earnings of private sector employees is up nearly 3% since he took office, driven by increased competition for workers as companies expand in apparent response to the GOP tax reform and the removal of hundreds of Obama-era restrictions on businesses. The stock market surged to record highs before the expected correction hit, reflecting the optimism of investors with regard to the future.  As Trump said, America is now open for business. Have liberals noticed?

 

Trump has proposed protecting up to 1.8 million dreamers from deportation, including many who are eligible for DACA protection but did not apply, and providing them a path to citizenship in spite of opposition from his base supporters who are opposed to what they consider amnesty. In return he wants some funding for portions of the wall he promised his voters and an end to chain migration and the immigration lottery. Mr. Schumer rejected the proposal out of hand, dismissing it as a wish list. It seems that anything Trump proposes will be rejected simply because he proposes it.

 

The Mueller investigation drags on with no apparent evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the election. There is, on the other hand, plenty of evidence that the Clinton campaign did by funding the assembling of an anti-Trump dossier containing information from unverified Russian sources, since discredited. Why is that not the subject of a special investigation? While the media remain focused on the Russian-Trump collusion theme, Trump has demonstrated little actual fondness for Russia during his first year in office. Under Trump, the U.S. has increased military spending, will provide arms to Ukraine and has also become a net exporter of energy. It now threatens Russia’s monopoly on supplying energy to Europe, a major source of their income. At this point, Vladimir Putin probably wishes that the predictable Mrs. Clinton had won the election rather than the unpredictable Mr. Trump with his tougher America first policies.

 

So with all the positive developments in his first year in office, what is the basis for all the hatred? Clearly, Trump is unpopular with a majority of women because of his crude remarks regarding women. But why were these female detractors who are old enough to remember Bill Clinton’s sexual scandals silent about it? Immigrants may dislike Trump because of his tough stand on illegal immigration. But his predecessor was referred to as the deporter-in-chief whereas Trump wants to legalize 1.8 million dreamers and offer them a path to citizenship.  In return, he wants an end to illegal immigration so that we don’t keep producing new generations of dreamers brought here illegally as children.

 

Here, in a nutshell, is the real reason for the hatred. Trump won the election against all odds because enough voters were dissatisfied with big government as usual. The Democratic Party has been the party of big government as usual and their candidate promised a continuation of Barack Obama’s big government policies.  She was deeply flawed by a security scandal and a less than distinguished record as secretary of state which included the Benghazi fiasco. She ran a terrible campaign and lost to a TV celebrity and businessman who was not even remotely qualified to serve as president. It seems to me that liberals should be angry with her instead of Trump.

February 15, 2018

 

 

Shutting Down the Government Over an Offensive Remark

Congress Needs to Do Its Job————————

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

The debate over the fate of the so-called Dreamers, whose protection from deportation under DACA was scheduled to end until a San Francisco-based judge intervened, is yet another example of why things can’t seem to get done in Washington. Judge William Adsop used a local case, a lawsuit brought by California’s liberal attorney-general, to stop the president of the United States from ending an Obama-era program of questionable legality. This tactic is becoming a habit which gives entirely too much power to unelected lower court judges to thwart the actions of an elected president executing his legal authority. Mr. Trump, who favors legalization of the Dreamers, urged Congress to legislate a solution.

 

But that proved too much to ask of a congress so bitterly divided. Mr. Trump wants some funding for part of the border wall he promised, an end to “chain” migration and increased funding for defense in exchange for the DACA deal. But the liberals want every increased dollar for defense matched by comparable increased domestic spending and they also demanded a “clean” DACA bill.  Here’s a news flash for the minority party: Trump won the election and the GOP controls the executive and legislative branches. How about a “clean” defense spending bill for a change? Proper funding and support for our underfunded armed forces should not be tied to more money for entitlements which have turned our country into a debtor nation or to keep people here who are in the country illegally, having been brought here as children by people who themselves broke the law by entering illegally.

 

Negotiations seemed to collapse when Democrats flew into a major tizzy over Trump’s colorful and ill-considered language in asking why we needed more immigrants from countries like Haiti rather than, say, Norway (which is lily-white). I can comment on that, Mr. President. Why would anyone from oil-rich Norway, pop. about 5 million, with virtually no crime, with cradle-to-grave government benefits and probably the happiest place on earth after Disneyland, even consider leaving? On the other hand, anyone who’s spent any time in Haiti, as I have, knows pretty much why they mostly all want to leave. And anyone with a brain knows that Trump was really talking about relatives of recent immigrants having an unfair advantage in migrating to the U.S. As an excuse for walking away from the negotiations and shutting down the government, it was a poor one. Basically, you shut down the government for the sake of people here illegally.

 

By now, everyone, including members of congress, knows that Trump is not a skilled communicator. That’s not going to change. But he is the president of all of us and that’s not going to change, either, until he is voted out of office, declines to run again or is impeached by congress. Democrats would be well advised not to try the latter or they will likely unleash the mother of all backlashes, so please, finally get over the election and do your job as legislators. To get the DACA deal done will require some concessions, mostly by the minority party. That means some money for some of the wall that Trump promised the people who elected him, whether you like the idea of more wall or not.  By the way, we already have quite a bit of wall and, in the San Diego sector, it’s actually working quite well. It also means changes to chain migration and an end to the lottery system in favor of a one based more on merit and the nation’s needs than on diversity.

 

The shutdown, although mercifully brief, demonstrates the inability of congress to do the job its members were elected to do. When it came to funding the government, they kicked the can down the road again. We can’t keep doing this, folks. Sequestration and the lack of a defense spending plan are seriously impairing military planning and acquisition. Either we fund our military properly or we will soon be following in the footsteps of the once-great colonial powers of Europe like the United Kingdom, France and other second tier military powers. It can happen sooner than you think and you won’t be at all pleased with being number two. Brush up on your Chinese.

January 31, 2018