Peace and Light

 

For 2000 years, Christians have been celebrating the birth of Jesus. Born in a stable, surrounded by shepherds and farm animals, He was not recognized by many on that first Christmas Day.

Coming near the Winter Solstice, Christmas is also a celebration that the Light is returning to the World, the days are lengthening. It is a time of hope and a time of peace. It is a time for family and friends. It is a time to recognize anew the Christ Child in our fellow man and treat all accordingly.

The world is not yet at peace. A recent tally at the Wars in the World website shows 60 nations plus 368 separate armed groups, militia, or guerrillas involved in conflict of some kind or other. And we are not yet at peace with ourselves. The twenty first century finds us inundated daily with anxiety producing events and with incredibly ignorant comments on those events. 

No we are not there yet. But each of us can commit to a less violent, more supportive world and hope that soon all will do likewise – that the arms dealers and war mongers, the haters and the dividers finally recognize the true meaning of the Christmas message. Each of us can look to our families and friends and communities and understand what is truly important in our lives.

Here's are two great videos of the Christmas song "O Holy Night!":

 

A beautiful video with Pavarotti, Charlotte Church and Celine Dion singing separate verses in the background.

Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo at a 1999 concert in Vienna


Have a Happy, Peace-filled and Hopeful Christmas!

Picture Credit, Silent Night

 

 

 

Gun Madness

Sportscaster Bob Costas ignited a firestorm when he referenced a piece by former NFL player Jason Whitlock on the murder-suicide by a Kansas City Chief linebacker.  Whitlock's primary point was that the Chiefs' game should not have been played the day after the tragedy.  His secondary point was that our gun culture is out out of control.  Costas, paraphrasing Whitlock, said during his halftime editorial: "“If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”  The response from the right-wing echo chamber and Second Amenment rights nuts was as expected.  Outrage.  Costas knows nothing. He should be fired.  Etc. Etc. Etc.

Actually Costas was just stating a fact.  It's easier to kill someone and yourself with a gun than almost any other weapon.  Domestic disputes, arguments - these can escalate easily.  That the ready availability of guns increases the murder rates is uncontestable.  A 2003 study of gun violence in 23 populous high- income countries found the following:

• The United States has more firearms per capita than the other countries, more handguns per capita, and has the most permissive gun control laws of all the countries.
• Among the 23 countries studied, 80% of all firearm deaths occurred in the United States; 86 % of women killed by firearms were U.S. women, and 87% of all children aged 0 to 14 killed by firearms were U.S. children.
• U.S. homicide rates were 6.9 times higher than rates in the other high-income countries, despite similar non-lethal crime and violence rates. The firearm homicide rate in the U.S. was 19.5 times higher. 
• For 15-year olds to 24-year olds, firearm homicide rates in the United States were 42.7 times higher than in the other countries.
• For U.S. males, firearm homicide rates were 22.0 times higher, and for U.S. females, firearm homicide rates were 11.4 times higher.
• U.S. suicide rates overall were 30 percent lower than the other countries, but the U.S. firearm suicide rate was 5.8 times higher.
• The U.S. unintentional firearm death rate was 5.2 times higher than that of the other high-income countries combined.

Need a gun for protection?  Think again.  A family member is twelve times more likely to die than for you to use it on a violent intruder. 

Somewhere in the ballpark of 10,000 murders per year in the US are caused by guns, NRA money bankrolls elections, and gun nuts control the national conversation on this deadly issue.  There was hardly a whisper about the inadequacy of our gun control laws during the Presidential campaign.  Senator Frank Lautenberg's bill to reinstate the assault weapons ban didn't even make it to the floor of the Senate. 

December 8 marks the 32 nd anniversary of John Lennon's murder by a crazed gunman in New York.  By my count, that makes more than 300,000 gun murders committed since then.  It's time to stop the madness.

Links

Useful organizations
Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
Mayors Against Illegal Guns

What the Rest of the Civilized World Thinks and How It Acts
A Land Without Guns: How Japan Has Virtually Eliminated Shooting Deaths
The Rest of the First World Is Astounded by America's Enduring Gun Culture



  

  

Looking for 26 Republicans with Balls

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi intends to force a tax cut vote for people earning less than $250k/year by filing a discharge petition.  This measure extending the Bush tax cuts to 98% of the country was passed by the Senate this summer.  A discharge petition is a parliamentary maneuver to allow a vote on legislation when the House Speaker will not permit it to get to the floor for a vote.  As the Washington Post reports , though, this is "rarely used successfully".  It requires 218 votes to pass and the House Democrats number 192.  So they need 26 Republicans to break ranks.  Do you think there are 26 such creatures on the GOP side of the aisle? 

I'm not going to hold my breath.   We are talking about a political party that is funded by corporate and business interests and is the happy home to folks with some of the most bizarre positions and beliefs on the planet.  Birthers, climate change and evolution deniers, gun nuts, self-proclaimed "patriots", and on and on - we've seen it for years.  And it doesn't look like things are getting any better as far as rationality goes.  In a recent poll of GOP members:

• 49% believe ACORN, a grass roots community organization that was disbanded in 2010, helped President Obama steal the 2012 election.  (This from the party that tried to suppress Democratic votes with a fervor not seen since the days of Jim Crow and poll taxes.)
• 25% want to secede because Obama was re-elected.  (As of now seven states - Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas - have reached the 25,000 mark which will require a response from the President.  I don't know, maybe we should let Texas secede and take its 38 electoral votes with it.  This would guarantee that Republicans would never win a national election again.)

As for our self-imposed, so-called "fiscal cliff", if anything is more disturbing than the Republicans' desperate attempts to maintain tax breaks for the wealthiest in the country, it is the attention being given to maintaining that most bloated part of our budget - military expenditures.  A co-chair of the supercommittee created by the Budget Control Act, Washington Senator Democrat Patty Murray expressed concerns that "the most vulnerable groups depending on domestic programs may get lost in the shuffle” during the deficit negotiations...It’s very concerning to me that so much of the focus in D.C. and across the country has been on the other half of sequestration -- the defense cuts.” 

I'll close with more pathetic news from the Right.  Today 38 Republican Senators blocked the US signing of the UN Disability Treaty - a treaty based on our own Americans with Disabilities Act and already ratified by 126 countries.   As the Boston Globe reports "supporters fell five votes short of the 66 needed for ratification of the international pact known as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities — hailed by advocates as a human rights effort to transform how nations across the world treat those with long-term physical, mental, and intellectual impairments, particularly children who face a future of bleakness because of their disabilities."

Another Link
The Nation "A Wake Up Call on Housing and Homelessness" - on possible impacts of the debt negotiations