Sandy Hook - A Tipping Point?

The tragedy at Sandy Hook is unbearable to even think about.

As a parent, I was in tears much of the day. Like everyone else, our television has been set to the news channel coverage, and Facebook and Twitter have been blowing up with nothing but talk of the horrific events of this sad day.

This is not the first mass shooting we've had this year - in fact, it's the sixth. And over the past five years there have been at least 19.

But the heartbreaking deaths today seem to me to have had an effect on Americans that I have not seen from the earlier shootings  - not the shopping mall in Oregon three days ago, not Aurora, Colorado and the movie theater shootings, not Tucson, Arizona with Gabby Giffords, not the Sikh temple in Wisconsin, not Fort Hood, not Virginia Tech, not the Unitarian Universalist Church shooting in Knoxville.

I get a feeling that we are finally tired of 'not talking about gun control.'

For years we have been intimidated and shut down by the NRA and the howls of 'Second Amendment' that have come from those who equate any kind of gun regulation with Big Bad Government taking away every American's gun. And every time there was yet another massacre, Democrats as well as Republicans somberly intoned that "this is not the day to talk about gun control."

My friend Bobby Pickett says, "This is not the day to talk about gun control. Yesterday was."

Well, I think today is fnally that day.

There is still a huge swath of people who insist that the only way to prevent gun violence is - yep, you guessed it - more guns! Guns for everyone. Guns for teachers. Armed guards in every classroom, store, business, church, home.

A commenter on my Facebook page was insistent that the more guns we had the safer we would be and that the reason the attack at Sandy Hook happened was that the teacher was not armed.

As if somehow, a sweet little kindergarten teacher would have morphed into Sharpie McGreenBeret, whipped out her AK in the middle of the Alphabet Song and picked off the bad guy before he had a chance to shoot any little children - killing or incapacitating the shooter without hitting any of the 30 crying, running, screaming little children in the room.

Wait - the shooter had four guns. So maybe each teacher should have four guns too.

And the commenter claimed that it was people like me who lived in a "fairytale world."

He truly believes in the 'vigilante' civilian who jumps to the rescue to save the day with his own gun.

In an analysis of mass shootings, one fact stands out:

Not one of them was stopped by an armed citizen.

Not a few. Not several. Not ONE. Ever.

We are the most heavily-armed society in the world.

We have more guns per capita than any other nation on earth. Yemen comes in second.

So, by that logic, if more guns made us safer we would have the lowest number of gun deaths in the world. Except, of course, for Yemen. We do not have the highest level of gun deaths in the world - but the only ones higher are mostly low income Latin American and Caribbean nations:

According to the U.N., the U.S. had 3.0 firearm homicides per 100,000 in population in 2009. But there were 14 other nations that had higher rates in 2009, primarily in Latin America and the Caribbean: Honduras (57.6), Jamaica (47.2), St. Kitts and Nevis (44.4), Venezuela (39.0), Guatemala (38.5), Colombia (28.1), Trinidad & Tobago (27.3), Panama (19.3), Dominican Republic (16.9), Bahamas (15.4), Belize (15.4), Mexico (7.9), Paraguay (7.3) and Nicaragua (5.9). Three other nations had higher rates in 2008: El Salvador (39.9), Brazil (18.1) and Ecuador (12.7). But among countries like ourselves - so-called 'First World' affluent nations - we are far and away ahead of them interms of gun deaths. One study published in 2011 confirms this finding. The study, published in the Journal of Trauma -- Injury Infection & Critical Care, found that firearm homicide rates were 19.5 times higher in the U.S. than in 23 other "high income" countries studied, using 2003 data. Rates for other types of gun deaths were also higher in the U.S., but by somewhat smaller margins: 5.8 times higher for firearm suicides (even though overall suicide rates were 30 percent lower in the U.S.) and 5.2 times higher for unintentional firearm deaths.

And, no, this isn't a 'liberal study' - it's Politifact, which does not side one way or the other. My point is - if we have the most guns, why aren't we at the very bottom of the list?

But I do sense a difference today.

I think today just might be the day that we talk about it.

And force our politicians to pay attention. That's the only way to get it done.

The will of the people cannot be ignored - if they stand up and make it known. So far we have been intimidated into keeping quiet.

For these precious children - not today.

We will not be silent today.

Wile E. Coyote Must Be A Republican

One thing you can say for Republicans - they stick to their guns, even when those guns blow up in their face.

Now they're blathering on about the "Fiscal Cliff".

Child please.

We don't have a spending problem. We don't have a debt problem. We have a revenue problem. We had a surplus in 2000 until it was burnt up by tax cuts for the wealthy and two un-paid-for wars. Never in the history of our country have we cut taxes in time of war. It's fiscally irresponsible. We have had a redistribution of wealth, all right - but it has been from the bottom to the top.

Let's call these tax cuts what they really are: spending.

Corporate taxes and taxes on the wealthiest are the lowest they've been in 40 years - and yet that did not magically lead to jobs and prosperity; in fact, the result was the exact opposite. Regulations did not 'strangle growth' - instead it was the lack of regulation that led to the banks and Wall Street's horrific gambling with Other People's Money which led to the tanking of the American economy - and the price has been paid by the taxpayers who did NOT cause the problem.

"Privatize the Profits and Socialize the Losses" is the modus operandi that led to this debacle. So more of the same is going to fix it? Cut taxes and regulation and "Happy Days Are Here Again"? Really? If that was so magical, why didn't it work before?

We got out of the Great Depression by A. shared sacrifice during a time of war - which we did not do; instead, we got tax cuts (which means spending) and B. government investment in jobs which put money in people's hands (for working) which they were able to then spend to stimulate the economy.

Austerity is not gonna cut it, I'm afraid. We need to invest in America and Americans if we want to have a snowball's chance in hell to get a middle class again. This is a time of crisis when borrowing is necessary. It's triage - stem the bleeding first. When we're back on our feet we can talk about deficit reduction and the like.

Four More Years - Welcome to the Backlash!

If Lovin' The Big Dawg Is Wrong, I Don't Wanna Be Right!

Yes. I admit it. With all his failings and foibles, I love him still.

Bill Clinton was not a perfect President. And I'm not talking about Lewinsky - I could not care less about that. But NAFTA, the dismantling of Glass-Steagall and other financial deregulation, telecom deregulation, 'welfare reform' - those things I was not crazy about.

Imperfect as he is, nobody can communicate and lay out the fundamentals of what we believe as Democrats like the Big Dawg.

Day before yesterday, my husband David and I had the honor to sing the underscore for a great new GOTV video about Barack Obama (and about all Americans!) called "Yes, We Will." Actually, it's officially called "WATCH THIS. THEN VOTE." - an excellent and descriptive title. It is by Joel Silberman & Laura Napoli, who did the awesome Funny or Die video "Legitimate Rape Pharmaceutical Ad".

It's out today, and I hope everyone gets a chance to see it and be inspired in these last few days before the election. It clearly lays out President Obama's many accomplishments over the last four years - accomplishments made even more difficult because of the decimated economy he inherited from eight years of George W. Bush and by the stubborn opposition he met at every turn by Republicans determined to block anything that Obama tried to do, without regard to the best interests of the American people. The same Republicans who threatened Democrats with the 'nuclear option' and called them 'obstructionist' if they dared to consider filbustering anything Dubya asked for have happily filibustered their asses off to keep President Obama from

WATCH THIS. THEN VOTE. Inspirational New GOTV Video!

Day before yesterday, my husband David and I had the honor of singing the underscore to a great new GOTV video, "Yes, We Will", by Joel Silberman and Laura Napoli, who also did the hilarious Funny or Die video "Legitimate Rape Pharmaceutical Ad". It's actually officially called "WATCH THIS. THEN VOTE." which seems like a very useful and descriptive title.

It is out today. I hope everyone gets a chance to see this inspirational video in these last few days before the election, which highlights President Obama's many hard-won accomplishments - accomplishments even more amazing when you consider that he had inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression, thanks to eight years of George W. Bush and the conservative myth of "tax cuts for the wealthy + war + deregulation = prosperity". Not only that, at every turn he was faced with a Congress full of Republicans who were determined to block any and all Democratic legislation by the use of the filibuster (which they bitterly decried, threatening the 'nuclear option' when Democrats tried to use it when Bush was President), which required a super-majority of 60 votes to overcome, rendering the 51/49 Democratic Senate majority useless - and then paint Obama as ineffective.

President Obama has still made significant progress in the face of these overwhelming obstacles. Don't go backwards to a return of the failed policies that got us into this mess to begin with, and the rescinding of so many basic human rights that we thought had already been fought for and won that the extreme right wing is determined to take away from us - and in a good position to do so.

Fight back. Watch this video and then - get your ass to the polls and take your friends with you.

You may see me there - I'm a pollworker and, for the first time, so is my son! I am so grateful to be able to actively participate in my democracy by helping other Americans to vote.

Mitt Romney In His Own Words - Entitled Victim And Wannabe Mexican?

The question this election season has been, "Who is Mitt Romney?"

Now we know.

He just told us.

Well, not really told us - after all, we're not "his kind of people, dear." 99.9% of us are not the kind of people with whom Mitt associates. The rest of us have been wondering what makes Romney tick; he comes off as somewhat of a mystery. There's something about his public persona that just hasn't 'rung true' so far, and his changes of

Back Up On The Soapbox!

Okay.

It's time.

Time to climb back up on the ol' soap box. It's been almost a year since my last post (and I'll talk about that in another post), but we're looking November in the eye, and it's time to get talking again.

I know that when I get that feeling in the pit of my stomach that tells me that I have to say something, it's time to say it.

I thought they were bat-crap bonkers before, but between the last time I blogged and now, the Republican Party has ratcheted up the level of crazy to dizzying heights.

So - here we go!