I think the rationale is a bit unclear...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/13/us/code-on-shell-casings-sparks-a-gun-debate.html?ref=us

This just proves that the gun industry and the gun lobby care nothing about law and order, but only care about profits. Not that it was ever assumed before, I guess, but individual advocates of the second amendment and supporters of gun rights often use the argument that upstanding citizens should have no fetters on their rights to own and carry a gun. Okay, so let’s assume that gun owners keep them for going to ranges and shooting targets and/or for self-defense. I guess I’m not really sure how this law “would unfairly focus on legal gun owners when most crimes are committed with illegally obtained guns.” A rational person would say that this is the precise reason why this microstamping would be necessary, because it gives police detectives a starting place to look for the weapon used in a crime. Just because police come to your door asking about a weapon used in a crime does not mean they’re implicating you in the crime, it simply means that a gun that you once owned (or still do, but has been stolen) was used in a crime. This could be very helpful in tracing the gun to the last legal (or illegal) owner, and eventually help to solve the crime.

So why are the major gun companies and gun lobby against this legislation? Hard to say… Some say that it is a money issue; the gun industry says that it would add as much as $200 to each gun, but the State of New York – who is trying to pass a law requiring microstamping – not only says the price would be much lower, the law they’re attempting to pass would actually mandate that the increased cost would be no more than $12 per gun. I guess another reason why they’re opposed to it could be because the gun manufacturers are away that their products are purchased by criminals and/or stolen and used for nefarious means, but they would rather make massive amounts of money than actually protect the lives of the citizens of this country – or at least make it easier for police to find the guilty party when a crime has been committed.

FYI - The US gun and ammunition manufacturing industry includes about 300 companies with combined annual revenue of about $6 billion.

Busy times...

A lot has occurred over the last couple of weeks.
The Republican primary is over…thank god. Well, at least it’s realistically over, if not technically over. I think Mitt Romney’s victory in the Republican primary has cemented Barack Obama as a two-term president. Mitt is boring, stiff, and totally uncharismatic. He’s out of touch with most people, and it’s palpable. While Republicans will fall in line for the most part, Romney does not excite the base, and independents are not fooled by the back and forth (etch-a-sketch) stances on every issue; they see Romney as being hollow, and blowing with the political winds of popularity. While the election will probably be close – all modern day presidential elections are – President Obama will reinvigorate Democrats (and the nation as a whole) with a charismatic campaign (even while he’s been unable to excite us as president).

George Zimmerman has FINALLY been arrested and charged with a crime. The prosecutor has charged Mr. Zimmerman with 2nd degree murder. It’s possible that this is an overcharge, because manslaughter would probably be easier to convict, but I have to assume that the prosecutor knows what she is doing. Regardless of the charge; and really, regardless of whether Mr. Zimmerman is ultimately found guilty or not guilty, the important thing is that the facts of the case will be presented in a court of law so that guilt or innocence can be determined based not on one person’s opinion, or the bias of the police, but instead based upon the facts. George Zimmerman needs to answer some questions about what was suspicious about Trayvon Martin. About why he thought Trayvon Martin was on drugs. These are questions that are important, not only in this case, but also on the national conscience about race.

This brings me to the next big update, which is that a piece of legislation has been presented in the Senate that would ban racial profiling. This piece of legislation is still in utero, but I think it’s important that this issue is being brought back into the national discourse. It’s sad that it takes the death of young black man, at the hands of white (he has also identified as Hispanic at different times) man, when there are countless examples every day of racial profiling, which, while they don’t end in death, still end in distrust and humiliation.

Finally, I have to say that I’ve been surprised (though I guess I shouldn’t be) by political television. Every time I watch political shows (it’s an indulgence that I wish I didn’t want), there are always some middle-of-the-road, independent journalists that are commenting on some particular issue, and the host is typically fairly moderate, but then there is always some wealthly, smug-looking white man or woman who completely rejects any idea that our country has issues with race, human rights, equality, or jingoism. Their (ridiculous) perspective is that the United States is God’s (big G important) gift to the planet, and it’s our manifest destiny to the “beacon of freedom” in the world, and that whatever we do, wherever we do it is completely just and right. And the idea that there is anything wrong is this country is completely absurd, because we have the Declaration of Independence which states that all men are created equal, and the post civil rights/post women’s rights era has been a society that has reached near complete equality. It’s just race/gender/etc.-bating to say otherwise. Ugh…

A Bad Rap

There is a fairly common narrative going around the country today within Democratic and liberal political circles, that President Obama’s first term has been a failure. Not in terms of getting things done, per se, but in terms of living up to the hype of hope and end of partisanship that he so eloquently stated he would bring to Washington, DC and the country at large. I disagree.
I don’t disagree that there was a tremendous amount of hype surrounding the then first-term Senator, or that the Obama campaign took advantage of that hype to propel Mr. Obama into the White House. However, my disagreement stems from the idea that President Obama has failed to live up to this hype, or that he has failed to move beyond partisanship. You blanch?
The hope surrounding candidate Obama was that he was going to “change Washington”. While the specific understanding of this concept is rather muddled and ambiguous, and understood differently by almost every person in the country, the general idea was that the cronyism, corruption and extreme partisanship needed to end. So Mr. Obama swoops into Washington with a Democratically-controlled Congress, both House and Senate, and people start saying that what they always say when either chamber of Congress changes from one party to the other, that the President has a mandate. Just as a small digression, I will say that I hate this term mandate, as it undeservedly gives whoever is using an almost carte blanche authority to do whatever they want in the name of it. Tangent aside, Democrats eagerly got busy on their plan for overturning many of the more unpopular and unproductive policies of the Bush administration. President Obama welcomed Republicans, even though a large minority, to bring ideas to the table for shaping policy moving forward. The president tried to create transparency in government, and figure out what were some major policy matters that both sides wanted to deal with.
It was just about this time that the idea of reforming the healthcare system came to the forefront. For the next several months congress fought this issue back and forth, with the Republicans adding little to no actual policy suggestions, but instead repeating the message that the whole bill should be scrapped and the process started anew (euphemism for “kill the bill”). Republicans did not want healthcare reform; both because they thought jobs and the economy should be the number one focus of congress, and also because they – like Democrats in congress – had insurance and prescription drug lobbyists breathing down their necks, and stuffing money in their drawers. So the president did what he could to remain above the fray, while reasserting to both Democrats and Republicans alike, that this was going to be the most comprehensive healthcare reform in the last 50 years, and that they needed to figure out how to bolster care, provide options, and reduce costs. Republicans wanted nothing to do with this, so Democrats were left to fight this battle out themselves and suffered devastating scars from the battle.
Democrats not only got a bad healthcare reform bill, but suffered devastating losses in the 2010 midterm elections. The Republicans gained a few seats in the Senate, and won a huge number of seats in the House, thereby taking back one of the chambers. The president, though crestfallen over the demoralizing losses Democrats suffered in the elections, was nonetheless prepared to remain above the fray and work with Republicans on creating sound policy. What the president didn’t see coming was the influx of hard-lined tea party freshman that were not willing to work with moderate Republicans, Democrats, or especially the president on anything. Their view of government was that it was too big, and they saw their wins a sort of directive to begin the long, slow process of killing it from the inside.
Republicans, in typical “do anything to win” fashion, decided that they had to pander to the extreme tea party wing of their party, and as a result, the whole party shifted further to the right – both with regard to fiscal and social policy.
President Obama responded in his typical conciliatory fashion, welcoming the new members to congress and telling them that he was excited to work together. The new members were less than excited, however, to work with the president, or anyone else for that matter, and were hell bent on cutting government spending, taxes and any form of social “welfare” (i.e. any and all government programs) that they could. Their goal had nothing to do with creating jobs, but instead was simply pandering to their dogmatic ideology and the loud extremists that supported it.
Obama has since spent from then until now grinding out weak legislation after weak legislation, all in an effort to get something – anything – done, but continuously getting a stick in the eye from Republicans; both on the weak legislation itself, but also on his failure to lead. It’s a bizarre world. The president has made an effort to not only include Republicans in the discussion, but have given them more than ample representation in the bills he’s helped produce, even to the detriment of his own ideological principles. While some may see that as weakness, it’s actually showing a lot of strength and leadership, and the president is now taking flak from all sides for his neutrality.
I think the bottom line is that the fact that both Democrats and Republicans are unhappy with the president is a testament to what a good job he’s doing. Neither party really cares what party the president is a part of, as long as he’s willing to do whatever they want him to do. This president isn’t doing anything ideological for either party, and therefore neither of them can stand him for it. Although the American people might be frustrated by how ineffective government seems to be these days, it’s not the president that should take the blame, because he actually is doing what he said he was going to do, and he has brought change to Washington, it’s just that congress hasn’t yet received the memo.
To quote the Alfred from The Dark Knight, speaking of how Batman must be the bad guy for a while to do the right thing, “Endure, Master Wayne. Take it. They'll hate you for it, but that's the point of Batman, he can be the outcast. He can make the choice that no one else can make, the right choice.” This is what Obama is doing, and this is what he will continue to do. It might cost him the 2012 election (although I’m not really sure who to, as the Republicans have a very weak field), but he will continue to do what he has to do, and sign weak legislation, because that’s what he knows he has to do to get Republicans and Democrats to work together.

The long, slow decline

So Congress finally passed a bill, and the president signed it into law (at the very last moment - our heroes), raising the debt ceiling and taking aim at deficit reduction. The only problem with this bill is that it's completely absurd and useless. Okay, fine, if Congress and the president want to give themselves slaps on the back for averting a downgrading of the nation's credit rating, setting a pretty low bar, then I guess they did succeed (or at least they tell us they succeeded) in doing so.
However, the fact that it seems like every single important bill that gets passed a) at the last minute, and b) after contentious partisan debate that essentially guts the bill of anything substantial, tells me a couple of things. The first is that the Republican party has made a huge mistake caving into their far-right tea party element, and due to the fact that they're scared about losing elections, they're allowing a small, vocal minority run their show. The second is that our government, and I used government mostly as a euphemism for Congress and the president, are incredibly myopic in their legislation, and are pushing the United States further and further over the brink toward become another former empire.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the United States is going to disappear, or become a third world country; I'm simply saying that the days of the United States as the sole global economic, social and military superpower are waning. Not only are there other countries that are on the fast-track to superpower status (e.g. China), but our legislators are passing laws (or not passing laws) that are not only not taking care of the problems that they are intended to take care of, but in many - and probably most circumstances - are actually making them worse.
Okay, so where does that put us. Well, we could sit around and lament the slow decline of our once great (or at least said to be once great) empire, or we could embrace the fact that our government is the reason for the decline, and use that as an impetus for changing not only the people in government, but the actual structure itself - I'd say it's aptly proven to be a failure. This could have two different effects; the first potential effect is that this could turn around our decline, and we could actual recover, and remain one among many superpowers, and have respect for the rest of the world, and not always be throwing our weight around.
Or, we could continue on the downward trajectory toward the middle, but end up being much happier for it. I was having a discussion the other day about the decline of the United States, and a friend of mine brought up a great point - countries that were former empires are actually happier in the middle of the global power structure rather than at the top. At the top you have to think about how to stay on top; you have to constantly worry about how your economy is going to effect the rest of the world, you have to get involved in skirmishes throughout the world so that you can "spread democracy" and "freedom", you have to make sure to continue to put out great music, movies, television and other media (like Jersey Shore, Dancing with the Stars, Lady Gaga, Transformers 3 and the New York Post). It's all such a big chore. I think that with a country like ours, which according to Sarah Palin is represented best by those in the middle of the country (although they only account for less than 30 percent of the total population), we would be happy to settle into the middle of the global hierarchy. Let's ease the pressure that has been building in this country, and not only face our fate, but embrace it. Let's continue to pass senseless laws that have no chance of success, and blame one another for all of the ails of society. It's worked up to this point in bringing us down, and I think that if we continue with the same veracity, or even ramp it up a bit, we could fall dramatically in the next couple of decades.

To quote one of my favorite movies (although not on my favorite movie list), Almost Famous.
Lester Bangs: What, are you like the star of your school?
William Miller: They hate me.
Lester Bangs: You'll meet them all again on their long journey to the middle.

We're 'them', and the rest of the world is William.