Bye bye, Miss American Pie

Indications are that the Mayans were right and that 2012 is indeed the end of an era, not because of  some change in politics or religion and not because of anything cosmic or tectonic, but because a piece of America as we knew it has died. An America, exuberant in itself, proud, forward looking, confident.  Hostess bakeries died this week and not because of mismanagement but because of what America has become: timorous, ashamed of what it loves and afraid of being provincial.  Our sweet land of phony authenticity.  Of thee I sing.

The Twinkie, the Ho-Ho, the Snowball are gone now, along with the Oldsmobile and the Mercury; with Buddy Holly and the independent hamburger stand. You can't buy a Hostess cupcake any more for much the same reason you can't find anything like Hopper's Nighthawks any more. Your cupcakes have to be 'artisinal,' gluten free, in season, free range and come from a 'cupcakery' just as that cup of Joe is now an 'Americano' and served (artisinally) by a 'Barista.'  You're not à la mode enough though, unless you order something that sounds like Mississippi camp-meeting glossolalia and costs forty bucks for a "venti."  Good God, don't ask for a "large." America's rites of self detestation and the industries that thrive on it the way a tapeworm thrives on weakening it's host have us all scrambling for the plastic, made in Taiwan, European panache that we attribute to lands  that we otherwise pretend to loathe because, of course, they're 'authentic' and we're not. American means fake and we flee from it toward an imported synthetic authenticity.

The Authenticity industry with it's vast smoking factories churning out the local and seasonal and artisinal synthetic-reality products we crave and the flim-flam pseudo-scientist diet doctors selling us low 'carb' gluten free and without fructose and for heaven's sake, not 'processed' foods: we zumba and carb-count our way to South Beach to be fleeced.  In an age most noteworthy for the triumph of scientific method over superstition and fallacious conjecture, we have come more to trust 'alternative' information that comes from movie actors, comedians and people who get rich by insisting, contrary to all evidence, that gluten is poison, that miracle berries and magic beans will let you live forever, that cooking your food is bad and the fructose you get from corn is full of bad and fattening juju unlike the identical Furanose Sugars found in (organically grown, artisinally picked, local and seasonal ) strawberries.

Studies show. . .  I cringe when I see that and nearly always it means that tendentious conjecture based on selected facts might fool you into thinking. . . It nearly always means that there was no real study.  Large scale, double blind and randomized scientific studies that are repeatable and published in peer-reviewed journals don't have a chance against diet doctors, Oprah-backed pundits or miracle food and fake science purveyors, not in a country trained to favor faith over fact, trained to celebrate the notions of celebrities and mistrust scientists; trained to patronize diet doctors who tell us that studies show.

Twinkies have anti-oxidant  "preservatives" which everyone knows are bad because studies show. They contain things like gluten and fructose that everyone knows are bad because studies show.  Twinkies may be authentic, but they're authentic American and that doesn't count. We long for something Tuscan, even if we're not sure where that is -- something from Tuscany where it's all artisinal.  Hostess Snowballs -- they didn't stand a snowball's chance in the new America. Maybe if you called them gluten free Palle di Neve or Boules de Neige and opened chic little sidewalk places in Boca Raton and Park Slope and South Beach and had them served by Ballistas for ten bucks each. . .
Ah well, one can only dream now of  temps perdue.  Where? When? O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.

Oh please!

Here we go again. Some group called the Violence Policy Center has released statistics showing that in a 23 month period 44 US residents were killed by people legally carrying concealed weapons and therefore the "violence" is too much to bear and we must ban the practice. Perhaps my math is faulty but I think that translates to a 0.0000075% chance of being shot and killed in any given year.

No figures were given with regard to the number of lives saved by legally owned guns, but in my small county of 130,000 people several have been this year so far and of course shooting deaths in Florida have declined steadily since the State started issuing licenses and instituted the "castle doctrine."

I don't feel like doing all the work, but I'd like to see how many people die in ER waiting rooms every year because they can't get insurance. I'd like to see how many people are shot by drug gangs and more than anything I'd like to see how many innocent people are shot by the police. I'm willing to bet that more people are killed by MADD members driving SUVs while talking on the phone.

Of course the Flu claims about 36,000 lives every year and cars even more. Cigarettes and alcohol? Well, you know. More people are killed every year by lightening in Florida alone and we're not closing the golf courses in a hysterical panic.

At the risk of being called a "nut" I take a vastly higher risk of dying and of killing someone else every time I take the boat out -- or the car for that matter and I have to conclude that our friends at the Violence Policy Center are proceeding from the conclusion that guns are so frightening that the right to self defense against violent criminals is washed away by their phobia and so they must grasp at these meaningless arguments and fallacious conclusions like a drowning man at straws.

Yes, yes, the NRA. Everything including the Constitutional right is the fault of "the gun lobby." Forget not that that worn out straw/bogey man only exists because people are tired of being forced to accede to other people's phobias and it has such clout because it has so many individual, dues paying members. Much more of this twaddle and they'll have one more member.

A plan to ban.

Banning things in the hope that they will go away is a process that shares a lot with prayer. Mostly because neither works. Drugs, alcohol, pornography and dancing on Sunday have always outrun or outlasted the censors but the censors never stop of their own free will despite the evidence that what they try to stop won't bring on God's wrath, won't destroy the fabric of civilization or bring on chaos. That their ideas don't work never convinces the zealot and we are and always have been a country where zealots rule.

I thought it was inevitable that there would be shootings and stories of shootings, now that more people are out of work, out of hope and feel cheated by circumstances. Of course others think the same and still others see it as an opportunity to beat on the Gun Ban gong again and so when random acts of violence occur, they will be played up to be more significant than they are. We've always had random acts of violence, we probably always will, despite the cycles of calls for ever more irrelevant, ineffective and perhaps fraudulent gun control laws. I've been listening to this all my life and so far, they haven't "grabbed our guns" and violent crime rates don't seem to be much affected by gun control laws, stringent or relaxed. Indeed allowing people to carry concealed weapons in Florida and making it legal to use deadly force against an attacker seems to have coincided with a substantial reduction in robberies and home invasions and still, crimes perpetrated by licensed people are virtually non-existent.

The renewed hysterics at the NRA and in other groups have convinced many that the Obama administration is determined to pursue the reinstatement of the "assault weapon" ban and so sales of semi-automatic weapons designed to look like real assault weapons have soared. and continue to remain high. According to the Wall Street Journal, a record 1,529,635 background checks were performed on firearms sales -- for the month of November. I'm not great at arithmetic, but I think that rate translates to 18 million gun purchases a year and that doesn't include private sales or gun show sales that don't require background checks. There is fear on both sides and both sides are doing all they can to promote as much of it as possible.

Tuesday's Alabama shooting is seen in two ways by people in two camps. Neither will see the situation as arguing against their persuasion. Some point out that the victims were all unarmed and so were perfect and perfectly defenseless victims. Others will argue that if semi automatic rifles with stocks made to look like military weapons were again banned, such things would not happen. Both sides could do with a bit more honesty.

Alabama of course allows concealed weapons to be carried by permit holders, and though it's possible that the shooter might not have done what he did if he thought some of them might be "packing" this example makes it pretty hard to substantiate the principle and impossible to say for sure. Easier to illustrate is the pretense that the AK, or SKS or Mini-22 I can buy down the street and off the shelf is an "assault weapon" No military in the world uses them. They fire the same kind of ammunition at the same rate of fire as any semi automatic hunting rifle. Just like Grandpa's semi-auto shotgun, one round is fired for every pull of the trigger, yet over and over and over, college journalism graduates with no knowledge, pump out commentaries like the WSJ article that tells us:

"Gun sales have soared in the months since the presidential election, due in part to fears among gun owners that President Barack Obama intends to ban assault weapons, or guns that can fire rounds more quickly than standard weapons." [italics mine]

No they can't, unless standard means bolt action, like the antique used to shoot JFK. The items formerly banned as "assault weapons" weren't. They may be able to hold more ammunition, but it's the same ammunition and they are not automatic weapons or machine guns at all. Again Reuters assures us they were Military Assault Weapons and implied that since he was a quiet person, any quiet person is a danger if he's allowed to have a rifle stock with a pistol grip.

Right after Reuters tells us that the shooting was the result of " easy" gun access in America, they report that in Germany on Wednesday, a 17-year-old gunman went on a shooting spree at his former school, killing up to 15 people before dying in a shootout with police. Germany has very strict gun control laws. Perhaps Reuters controls irony as well.

Elsewhere in the world, knife murders are occurring more frequently - at least being reported more frequently. There are a lot of statistics that seem to link times and places where people are forced to be defenseless with increased crimes of armed aggression, but the statistics are either flaunted or ignored depending on which side you're on and that side seems to me to have little to do with reality. Again Reuters mentions that "some people" defend the right to self defense as though the abridgement of that right were not clearly forbidden in the constitution and without mentioning that the "Some people" seem to be a majority.

It doesn't take a genius to realize that the news is being used and being distorted to create a greater sense of outrage and sell more papers. The very word "assault" conjures up pathological aggression and is chosen to create just as much irrational and hysterical opinion as are the polemics of the "pro-gun" people.

Is there a sane middle ground between the NRA hysterics and the anti-second amendment hysterics? Of course, but sometimes I think we're the only ones there -- and I'm not too sure about you.

Buy 'em while you can!

So I leave the dim coolness of the ophthalmologist's office and emerge into the Florida Noonday blaze and gain an immediate appreciation of how a vampire feels when he can't make it back to his coffin before the sun rises. Even with my darkest sunglasses on, my dilated pupils won't allow me to drive so I decide to get a haircut at Bob's, where you can look at his massive collection of old guns, antique ammunition signs and cowboy paraphernalia while you and the good old boys get your hair length reduced.

Even after an hour, I still can't see well enough to drive, so I go across the street to the gun shop looking to chat with the proprietor who, up to now, has been almost as lonely as the Maytag repairman would be if the claims were true, and willing to pass the time talking about outdoorsy things. Of course since Obama the Antichrist was elected, things are different at gun shops and the place was full of people and almost devoid of those non-automatic, civilian versions of military weapons that the more hysterical of us like to call "assault weapons."

The conversation was lively and as gun shop conversations have been of late, all about "that man" and the certainty of his rabid opposition to all forms of weaponry in private hands.

"I don't know" said the creepy guy, using a magnifying glass to inspect a nickel plated double barrel derringer chambered for .45 long colt and 410 shotgun shells.

"I just change channels when that guy comes on" says he. " I can't stand to listen to him."

"Well it's all on his web site." says the Deputy Sheriff, lovingly examining a monstrous, long barelled Smith &Wesson .460 SVR Magnum revolver with green laser sight and bipod. "Jesus, there's nothing in Africa you couldn't take down with this one."

"You've read it?" asks the store owner. "No, but his whole gun policy is on his web site. I just can't stand to read it, but I'm telling you if we're supposed to knock on doors looking for everyone's guns, it ain't gonna happen. I mean he's talking about making lists of all registered guns and there is no gun registration in Florida in the first place. You just know the crime rate's gonna skyrocket."

"I guess the ATF has the authority to come in here and look at my books though" says the owner, let's call him Joe.

"Yeah, but I'll just tell them I sold them all privately or at a gun show and I don't have any guns any more" says creepy guy with a creepy, conspiratorial grin.

"Well it's all on his web site" says the Deppity. "He's going to bring back the Brady bill and the assault rifle ban and all the rest. It's on the web site."

It's not, actually. I looked and what it does say is that Obama believes the second amendment conveys an individual right, that he is concerned with the impediments to hunting and fishing and is determined to increase access and provide incentives to open more land to those uses and that he will protect the rights of law abiding citizens to own, transport and use guns. Of course that's not enough for the NRA and a lot of other people, but it's not wholesale confiscation and it's not the rabid, hysterical and diabolical plan to disarm the general public that the Deppity says it is.

Anyway I asked if he had sold all the AK's he had on the racks last Summer and he said he had, and I asked if was getting any more and he said yes, but he wouldn't say when because it would be a mob scene if word got out, but it should be soon and they would all be gone within hours.

Pasted on the glass counter where bowie knives and ear muffs and safety glasses were displayed was a cartoon of a car plastered with Obama stickers. The driver was saying to a questioner: "No, I don't, but I own a gun shop."

For some people, business has never been better.

Hide the guns!

It sure doesn't take long. My mailbox has begun to collect hysterical warnings about how the second Amendment is in grave danger and we're in for an era of bigger more intrusive government. No, I don't think any of it comes from Mars or from troglodytes raised underground. It's hard to understand though, how any Earthling is able to associate Democrats with big, free spending government in light of the history of the last decades and it's as hard to understand Obama's statements about the second amendment as advocacy for "gun grabbing," as it is to understand how the idea of income taxes is Marxist.

But Americans are as irrational about guns as we are about politics in general. As far as I can tell, Obama supports the current court's interpretation, which affirms the individual citizen's right to keep and bear arms, but insists that communities can pass gun safety laws such as to require background checks. This is hardly "gun-grabbing" in my opinion and although I do question the wisdom of requiring traceable serial numbers on bullets (in fact I think it's a supreme act of sanguine ignorance) it's not "gun-grabbing." It's just an unworkable day-dream only possible to someone who knows nothing about firearms and how they work.

Still, this kind of anti Democratic fanaticism is promoted passionately by organizations from the NRA to Jews For the Preservation of Firearm Ownership. Democrats raise taxes and grab guns - even if they don't. So it is written.

Obama did indicate support for Washington DC's handgun ban and I strongly disagree with him. Of course so did the Supreme Court and there's the catch. Obama can't write laws and although congress can write laws and presidents can sign them, the courts can override them and the courts have indicated that the second amendment, "shall not be infringed" clause and all, means what it says. As a constitutional scholar, Obama knows it.

Obama also knows, at least I think he does, that he was elected to restore fiscal discipline, to restore sensible regulation to financial markets and stop the hemorrhaging of our economy. It remains to be seen, but I think the pet projects of Nanny State Democrats aren't going to be on the agenda for quite a while. Who worries about needing a haircut when their femoral artery is severed? It's way too soon to think about burying your AK in the back yard.

Year without China

One of the least charming things about Americans is the dog-like way we respond to the signals of our trainers. A word or gesture or toot on the dog whistle and we go after the designated enemy with all the eager bravado our little brains are capable of. Of a sudden we have an urgent desire to fetch that stick or rip that throat and rarely stop to ask whose needs we are responding to.

Of a sudden we have cartoons everywhere portraying Chinese food as poison and Chinese goods as dangerous. Some street vendor out of millions of street vendors in a place we couldn't find on a map add chopped cardboard to his dumpling filling and we know and care about that while ignoring the diner in Arkansas that puts sawdust in the sausage. The FDA finds things in farmed fish that might, after many years of eating it, possibly be detrimental, but we're not sure and we panic more then we do when we read several times a year about millions of pounds of tainted hamburger. Some toys are found that have some unspecified amount of lead in the paint and no incidents of harm and we panic. Some crook in china looked the other way when someone sold anti-freeze as glycerin and let melamine into some dog food. He was shot for it the other day, but China is now an enemy - the enemy of our economy and out health - although it accounts for about 15% of our imports.

Somehow when hundreds die from bad hamburger or spinach or peanut butter, when a restaurant chain sells a burger that's nearly 100% filler, when hundreds of thousands of cars and tires are recalled for safety concerns, when thousands of toys are pulled off the market because some kid could stick it in his ear we don't think about war with Germany or Japan or Korea whence we import huge amounts of stuff or with California or Kansas. Domestic fish, farmed and wild, contain industrial pollutants. Tap water in some places is unsafe. Domestic Chicken, beef and milk contain residues from hormones and pesticides and perhaps antibiotics. As a nation we don't care that much or feel terribly unsafe, even though people die from domestic products.

many people have died from defective Fords - we don't boycott Michigan products. Firestone built a tire that failed too often when abused - we didn't declare war on them or on Japan nor did we write books about a year without "made in Japan" much less any of the other countries we import food and manufactured goods from.

In fact we prefer imported good and we have for a long time. Whether it's California wine or Detroit automobiles, we will spend more for the imports even when they are demonstrably inferior or more dangerous. In my local grocery store, Mediterranean sea salt sells for more than Caribbean sea salt, even though the salt is identical. We will pay more for coffee with some fake foreign sounding name and a paninni is much more desirable than a toasted ham and cheese sandwich. Nearly all our decisions and most that we defend the most strenuously are based on pure prejudice and our prejudices often are plug and play items furnished us by others for their gain.

If someone now wants us to be really upset with China, but not upset with the countries we import more from, shouldn't someone ask why? Isn't it time we asked some questions of ourselves when we hear the dog whistle blow?

Save the bees please

I spent most of this torrid morning up on the roof of my County Emergency Operations Center installing antennas and thinking about bees. No, I didn't see any, but I did see a forest of 800 MHz band and microwave antennas the police, fire, paramedics and other county services use to communicate. These radios put out substantial power in the same band a cell phone uses but at thousands of times the output. It's not a good idea to stand too close to one of those antennas.

Remember those old sci-fi and horror movies where some bearded guy would turn to you and whimper some line about how there were things mankind should not seek to know or dabble in? Americans are a still superstitious lot and even after many years of rapid technological advance that has changed our lives for the better, we're not comfortable with it. We're still afraid that our discoveries are something we steal from an angry god and that we may still be chained to a rock like Prometheus for our effrontery.

Whoever it is that makes up scary stories about everything requiring more intelligence than a Conch fritter to understand must be older than me, since I've seen his work all my life. I remember when you couldn't watch TV unless the lights were on or you'd go blind and you had to sit at the other end of the room so you wouldn't get cancer and the same thing continues: microwaves poison your food, electric blankets give you cancer and on and on.

Cellular phones were a bonanza for hysterical Luddites. They were supposed to give you brain cancer although the evidence is still otherwise and now they're supposed to be killing the bees. Of course the main evidence is that a mysterious disease causing hives to sicken and die has begun some decades after the advent of pocket phones. It's also after the advent of digital cameras, iPods, GPS navigation, satellite radio and hybrid cars, but the target du jour is cell phones and they're going to find something wrong with them if it takes forever. And of course there's a study - there's always a study - and the study says "cell phone frequencies" without telling us which ones, confuse bees. That seems to be enough for the apocalyptophiles and technophobic twits to form unalterable and passionate opinions.

Bill Maher, who likes to tell us, contrary to evidence, that we're all sick because we're eating corn sweetener was amongst the first to swoon over the decadence of cell phone using America causing the end of days and the end of bees. It's us, the sinners who stole UHF from the gods who are being punished and we deserve it. Of course Bill knows nothing about the effects of electromagnetic radiation and absorption rates much less about how cell phones work. Blaming dead bees on your pocket phone is like blaming your suntan on a candle.

You know where this is going. Scientific investigations of dead bees reveals that whatever it is that is killing bees in the US is likely to be a contagious infection or parasite, not confusing signals from Brittney's pink cell phone. Sterilizing the boxes used for hives seems to reduce infection in the next swarm of bees to inhabit it. The exact pathogen has not been found nor has the effects of pesticides been entirely ruled out, but it's not cell phones and it's not the NYFD or your local police either. It may be a virus doing in the busy bee and it certainly is a virus of another sort causing this latest piece of sponsored hysteria about cell phones.