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This Week in Gun Safety
On Friday night, after TWiA's deadline, Republican presidential candidate said this about Hillary Clinton: "She goes around with armed bodyguards like you have never seen before. I think that her bodyguards should drop all weapons. They should disarm. Right? Right? I think they should disarm immediately. What do you think? Yes? Yes. Yeah. Take their guns away. She doesn't want guns. ... Let's see what happens to her. Take their guns away, okay? It would be very dangerous."
For a change, Trump said something that's true--it would be very dangerous. Of course, the reason it would be dangerous is that Trump keeps suggesting, in ways subtle and not-so-subtle, that Clinton should be killed. Some of his supporters have been very up-front about this, saying she should go before a firing squad or hanged for treason. Trump isn't quite so direct, but he comes close. Dana Milbank at the Washington Post lines up some examples here.
That's abhorrent behavior for any human being, much less a presidential candidate. That any ethical Republicans continue to support him is awful. That some of his supporters would probably be willing to make his dream of a murdered Clinton reality is far more so.
Trump's latest call for assassination is disguised as a shot at her support for gun safety laws. Others have made similar points in the past, as has Trump. No matter who says it, it's ridiculously stupid. Clinton is in favor of expanded background checks. She has never said she wants to get rid of all guns; she thinks we should know that people who buy guns have been checked out to make sure they're not criminals, terrorists, or domestic abusers. She has never said that regular, law-abiding people shouldn't be able to legally buy guns if they feel they need them to protect themselves and their families. Here are her gun violence proposals.
The Secret Service agents protecting Clinton have undergone extensive background checks and intensive training. If Trump wants to make that the point of comparison, then he should argue that people who want to own guns should undergo similar background checks and take the same training. But to compare armed Secret Service agents to someone who's just had a restraining order imposed by an ex and wants a handgun to threaten her with is absurd and the height of intellectual dishonesty.
Intellectual honesty and simple human decency are too much to ask of Donald Trump, we've learned. We'd like to think that the Republican Party establishment still values those things, but sadly, we know that it doesn't. Over the weekend, the party's chair warned that people like Jeb Bush and John Kasich might not be allowed to run as Republicans in future races--or that at least, the party will "penalize" them in some way--if they don't express their support for the party's nominee*.
Conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin writes that "The GOP died this weekend." Her conclusion: "Priebus inadvertently suggested the right approach — although he got the solution backwards. Anyone who refused to embrace Trump, who stood up to his lies, who refused to put party ahead of country should be at the vanguard of the future center-right party. That may include people with exceptionally different ideological views (e.g., former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and Sen. Ted Cruz [Tex.]). But it will not include apologists or enablers of Trump. The #NeverTrump vanguard will be responsible for creating a home for those who can no longer carry the banner of a Republican Party that repudiated its ideological origins as the Party of Lincoln."
Other political candidates through the ages have called for violence against their opponents. Sometimes they get it. The Brookings Institution's Robert Kagan calls it what it is--fascism--in the Washington Post:
In such an environment, every political figure confronts a stark choice: Get right with the leader and his mass following or get run over. The human race in such circumstances breaks down into predictable categories — and democratic politicians are the most predictable. There are those whose ambition leads them to jump on the bandwagon. They praise the leader’s incoherent speeches as the beginning of wisdom, hoping he will reward them with a plum post in the new order. There are those who merely hope to survive. Their consciences won’t let them curry favor so shamelessly, so they mumble their pledges of support, like the victims in Stalin’s show trials, perhaps not realizing that the leader and his followers will get them in the end anyway.
A great number will simply kid themselves, refusing to admit that something very different from the usual politics is afoot. Let the storm pass, they insist, and then we can pick up the pieces, rebuild and get back to normal. Meanwhile, don’t alienate the leader’s mass following. After all, they are voters and will need to be brought back into the fold. As for Trump himself, let’s shape him, advise him, steer him in the right direction and, not incidentally, save our political skins.
What these people do not or will not see is that, once in power, Trump will owe them and their party nothing. He will have ridden to power despite the party, catapulted into the White House by a mass following devoted only to him. By then that following will have grown dramatically. Today, less than 5 percent of eligible voters have voted for Trump. But if he wins the election, his legions will likely comprise a majority of the nation. Imagine the power he would wield then. In addition to all that comes from being the leader of a mass following, he would also have the immense powers of the American presidency at his command: the Justice Department, the FBI, the intelligence services, the military. Who would dare to oppose him then? Certainly not a Republican Party that lay down before him even when he was comparatively weak. And is a man like Trump, with infinitely greater power in his hands, likely to become more humble, more judicious, more generous, less vengeful than he is today, than he has been his whole life? Does vast power un-corrupt?
This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac “tapping into” popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party — out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear — falling into line behind him.
Trump may or may not be literally calling for the assassination of Hillary Clinton. If he's not, he should say so, explicitly. He should, for the first time, apologize for sending such a vile message in the first place. Since he refuses personal responsibility for any error, he could couch it in his usual fashion, by saying something like, "I'm sorry that any of my supporters might have taken my words as a call for violence against Secretary Clinton, and of course, I never meant them that way."
If he doesn't, he's responsible for anything that happens.
*One prominent Republican appears to have caved to Priebus's pressure. On Friday, Ted Cruz--who earlier called Trump "A pathological liar," "utterly amoral," "a serial philanderer," "a sniveling coward," and "a narcissist at a level I don't think this country has ever seen"--endorsed Trump. Trump also attacked Cruz's wife, and suggested that his father was complicit in the assassination of JFK. So much for any supposed principles.
***
The results of a massive new study by Harvard and Northeastern universities--the "most authoritative since 1994"--describes an America living in fear. The Trace reports:
Even though homicides and other forms of violent crime have dramatically decreased, a rise in the number of high-profile rampage shootings has heightened perceptions of danger, and helped fuel the handgun-buying boom. At the same time, the gun lobby has aggressively campaigned to lift restrictions against carrying firearms in public and stoked fears of government gun seizures. The firearms industry and retailers have also amped up their marketing of handguns for self-defense purposes.
“When I look at our survey, what I see is a population that is living in fear,” says Deb Azrael, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health and one of the lead authors of the study. “They are buying handguns to protect themselves against bad guys, they store their guns ready-to-use because of bad guys, and they believe that their guns make them safer.”
They're wrong. Also from The Trace:
Studies have found that people who live in homes with handguns are twice as likely to take their life compared to those who live in homes with other types of firearms, such as shotguns and rifles. (Seniors are the population at the highest risk of using a handgun in a fatal suicide attempt.)
Domestic violence victims are five times more likely to be killed if their abuser has access to a gun, research shows.
The Harvard/Northeastern survey shows a slight increase in the number of gun-owning women — a group that now makes up 12 percent of all gun owners. But while nearly 70 percent of women cited self protection as one of the primary motivations for owning a gun, past studies show that a gun in the home is statistically more likely to be used to harm a woman than to help one.
“Our survey suggests that many more people believe guns in their home make them safer, when in fact, epidemiological research suggests precisely the opposite,” Azrael says.
One consequence of more small and portable guns, taken to more public places, is an increased threat of theft. The new survey estimates that hundreds of thousands of guns are stolen in the U.S. each year. Many flood the illegal market.
In other words, we're living in a country with lower rates of violent crime than ever, and therefore, less reason to live in fear. But enough people have bought into irrational fears that we're awash in guns. The easy availability of guns makes mass shootings more common and more deadly, which stokes fear, which precipitates more gun ownership. That also increases the effectiveness of suicide attempts and makes it more likely that domestic disputes will end in gunfire and death.
When we talk about pro-gun death organizations like the NRA, this is what we mean--they're deliberately fomenting fear among Americans, because it serves their financial interests and boosts the profit of the arms and ammunition manufacturers that provide most of their funding. Americans are killing themselves and each other and making their homes and communities less safe--despite the fact that violent crime isn't much of a genuine threat--in order to put more dollars into the pockets of a few executives at gun companies and gun advocacy groups. It might sound harsh to call the NRA pro-gun death, but it's literal truth. They profit from Americans shooting themselves and each other, so they encourage it.
There are now more guns in America than there are cars (though half of civilian-owned guns are concentrated in 3% of households). The rates of death from guns and cars are pretty similar, but the difference is that cars provide mobility, transportation, hauling capacity--in other words, they're meant to do other things, and automobile deaths are a tragic consequence of their being misused (often, though not always, with substance abuse being another part of the problem). Guns, on the other hand, are made to kill. Their other uses--target shooting and, umm...well, target shooting) are secondary to that, and are actually part of the process of learning to kill more effectively. But there is no practical use for a gun other than to kill someone or something.
Trump lies about Hillary Clinton's proposed gun laws--he continually claims she wants to repeal the Second Amendment, a policy she does not advocate--because he wants the votes of the fearful. Many of those people fear the government (or more accurately, their nightmarish imaginings of what government is), and they believe that only owning guns will keep them safe from government tyranny.
By stoking the impression that Clinton is a gun-grabbing tyrant-in-waiting, Trump increases the odds that one of those misguided Americans will actually turn his gun on her--removing the threat before it can fully manifest. His status as the Republican Party's standard-bearer legitimizes his claims, in many eyes.
Donald Trump and the NRA and its ilk are pro-gun death, and there's no getting around that fact. Gun deaths and the fear of gun deaths go hand-in-hand. Not many Americans profit from that, and we should call out those who do.
More below the fold, including terror, voting, charity, Canada (?), and of course, bears.
This Week in Terror
Bombs rocked Manhattan and New Jersey over the weekend, even when they didn't go off. Solid police work quickly identified a suspect, and he was arrested on Monday, after a shootout. The suspect was born in Afghanistan but grew up in the US. Of the 4 bombs he planted, only one exploded as planned; another was accidentally set off by the robot trying to disarm it. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, a Somali-American who's been in the US since he was a toddler--described by ISIS as one of their "soldiers" (possibly because he was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer, so therefore can't be asked about the allegation)--attacked multiple people in a shopping mall, with a knife.
The NY/NJ suspect used a gun in a shootout with police, so he apparently had access to at least one. Had either or both of those terrorists used guns in their terror attacks, the death toll might have been horrific. As it is, although around 40 people were injured, it appears that they'll all survive. The lesson shouldn't be that none of us are safe; it should be that terrorists have a very hard time staging effective attacks in the US. But if given easy access to guns (as in San Bernardino and Orlando), they can still rack up body counts. Guns have been used to kill 95% of the people killed in post-9/11 terror attacks in the US.
The Brookings Institution took a look this week at one of Donald Trump's most common refrains on the campaign trail: "Take the oil!" If that really became an American policy, what would the effect be? "But Trump never says what 'taking the oil' of Iraq really means: an endless occupation army in the Persian Gulf surrounded by enemies, without allies, and isolated hopelessly from the Islamic world. It would have to be an open-ended occupation, which would polarize America more than ever. It would reinvigorate the global jihad, and it would disgrace our fundamental values as a nation."
The piece goes into some detail about how difficult-to-impossible it would be, and tries to find where the policy's limits might fall. Realistically, it argues, Trump's proposal would vastly increase the terror threat, making it easier than ever for radical jihadists to recruit Muslims in the western world to carry out terrorist attacks. As is so often the case, Trump's ill-considered ideas would result in an America that's less safe.
In the New York Times, Timothy Egan tackles the same question:
As with everything in Trump’s world, his solution is simple: loot and pilfer. “Take the oil,” said Trump. He was referring to Iraq, post-invasion. And how would he do this? There would be an open-ended occupation, as a sovereign nation’s oil was stolen from it. Of course, “you’d leave a certain group behind,” he said, to protect the petro thieves.
A certain group. Let’s be clear what he’s talking about: Under Trump’s plan, American men and women would die for oil, victims of endless rounds of lethal sabotage and terror strikes. That’s your certain group. He thinks we could get in, get the oil, and get out. Just like the cakewalk of occupying Iraq. And if such a seizure violates international law, what’s the rest of the world going to do about it? “Anything is legal” in war, as the deranged Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani explained.
For this kind of plunder, there is in fact a precedent for Trump’s plan: Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. The United States fought the first gulf war because the Iraqi dictator tried to seize Kuwait’s oil. We were the good guys, fighting an invading military force that was trying to steal a small country’s most precious natural resource.
As much as any Trump policy belief can be summarized in coherent fashion, he seems to have supported the first Gulf War. So at that time, he was opposed to one nation stealing another nation's resources, despite having a military advantage. In this case, he supports it, despite the damage it would do to America.
Side Note 1: Donald Trump's America isn't our America.
Side Note 2: Trump wants to bring back stop-and-frisk, and expand it to cities across the nation. He said, “I would do stop-and-frisk. I think you have to. We did it in New York, it worked incredibly well and you have to be proactive and, you know, you really help people sort of change their mind automatically.” Trouble is, when it was practiced in NYC, it didn't work, and was found to be discriminatory and unconstitutional. Sounds like a great plan, Donald.
Later in the week, he tried to walk his remarks back a little. That didn't go well, either. He said, "But stop and frisk worked...They're [police officers are] proactive, and if they see a person possibly with a gun or they think they have a gun, they will see the person and they'll look and they'll take the gun away. They'll stop, they'll frisk and they'll take the gun away, and they won't have anything to shoot with."
We can't wait to see how the NRA likes spending $15 million on ads supporting the only candidate in the race who says cops should take guns away from anyone they meet, with no due process.
This Week in Authoritarianism
E.J. Dionne is the ethical and moral conscience of the Washington Post's editorial page, and as a columnist and commentator, he's a national treasure. He's a devout Catholic who's profoundly committed to social justice and everything that entails. This week, he lays out the stakes in our coming presidential election, in no uncertain terms:
Like it or not, the decision we make in this November’s election will be a choice on behalf of the entire world. How we vote will determine whether the forces of democracy, openness and religious tolerance remain strong, or whether our country throws in its lot with tribalism, prejudice and authoritarianism.
This sounds like melodrama. It isn’t. And while it may ring familiar — citizens of other countries always tell us how important our electoral verdicts are to them — Donald Trump requires us to make a judgment more monumental than any we have faced in our lifetimes.
He concludes,"I know it asks a great deal of my conservative friends not only to oppose Trump but also to support Clinton. But she is the only person standing between us and a United States that abandons our shared commitment to the ideals of inclusion, toleration and, yes, democracy itself."
He's right. This is the most important contest of our time, and we need to make the right choice. The wrong one would be catastrophic.
Side Note: Omarosa Manigault, whose apparently not-meant-to-be-ironic title in the Trump campaign is Director of African-American Outreach, seems to confirm Trump's authoritarian impulse. This week, she said, "Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump. It’s everyone who’s ever doubted Donald, who ever disagreed, who ever challenged him. It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe."
This Week in Conspiracies
The Daily Show sent a reporter to Trump rallies to find out what wacky theories Trump supporters subscribe to. Did you know that President Obama was suspiciously absent from the Oval Office on 9/11/2001? More here:
This Week in Voting
In a democracy--or even a democratic republic--no right is more important than the right to vote. That's why the Republican obsession with restricting access of certain groups of voters to the polls is so infuriating. This week, the New York Times took a deep dig into the various voter ID laws proposed and passed throughout the states, and found multiple instances of Republican officials accidentally telling the truth--that those laws aren't mean to defend against "voter fraud," which barely exists--but to prevent minorities from voting, in order to increase Republican chances at the polls. In other words, they're using "voter fraud" as an electoral tool, instead of coming up with policy ideas that the American people might vote in favor of. A more shameful assault on democracy is hard to imagine.
To emphasize the importance of voting in the upcoming presidential election, these Jewish grandparents have an important message for their grandchildren--vote for Trump and I'll haunt you.
This Week in Charity
Charity begins at home, they say. Somehow, Donald Trump has reversed the meaning of that aphorism, and seems to think that other people's charity is meant to benefit his home. The Washington Post's David Fahrenthold has been doing invaluable work, researching the ins and outs of the Trump Foundation. His latest revelation? Trump has used his charity--which spends money donated by others, not by himself--to settle $285,000 in fines owed by himself and his businesses.
Using charity money for personal/business purposes is illegal. It's called "self-dealing." And as an added twist, taxpayers support charitable causes, because those who give money to charity can deduct them from their taxes. Trump's spending money that other people put into his foundation--and for which those people enjoyed tax deductions--to settle his own legal problems. Now that Fahrenthold has brought attention to the issue, hopefully the authorities will take action.
This Week in Expectations
The first presidential debate is Monday night. When you watch--if you watch--keep in mind that thanks to Trump's image and the way his campaign has worked the refs, expectations for him are incredibly low. The bar he has to get over is essentially the grout in a tile floor (that's right, his is a negative bar). If he comports himself with as much dignity as a Pokemon Go Mankey, he'll be considered the winner in many quarters. Don't buy into the low expectations game. He demolished 17 opponents in the Republican primaries, largely in debates. And he wants to be president of the United States. Hold him to the same standards as Hillary Clinton.
This Week in Good News Redux
Last week we wrote about the good economic news generated by a new Census Bureau report, but with the caveat that the income growth enjoyed by most Americans hadn't reached rural residents. Turns out, that conclusion was based on a flawed analysis. People in rural areas are also earning more than they have in years. The income growth is widespread, and concentrated where it does the most good--with the working poor and middle class. Good news, indeed.
This Week in Bad News
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R/WI), who doesn't understand simple economics, has released a tax-cut plan. To the surprise of no one who's watched Paul Ryan, it benefits the very, very rich, and no one else. Specifically, by 2025, 99.6% of the benefits--the cake--would go to the top 1% of earners. Everybody else would split the remaining 0.4%--the crumbs. Ryan might want to put down The Fountainhead and read about the French Revolution instead.
This Week in Libertarians
Speaking of people who don't understand simple economics, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson has two big economic ideas he'd like to advance from the White House. The first is the worst idea in politics--a "balanced budget." This sounds appealing in the abstract, but in reality his plan would destroy jobs and probably push us immediately back into recession.
The second is almost as bad. He wants to "end the Fed," or at least "audit the Fed." But the Fed is regularly audited, anyway. What Johnson and others like him mean when they say that is "make the Fed vulnerable to partisan political interference." Either one would make it more difficult for the Fed to act to ease the recession his "balanced budget" caused (or any other recession, from any source). Each idea on its own is terrible for the American economy; both together would be calamitous.
He also wants to cut the corporate tax rate to zero, and to get rid of income, payroll, and estate taxes and replace them with a "consumption tax," a popular idea among people who think the rich pay too much in taxes but the working poor and middle classes don't pay enough. That's a huge tax cut for the wealthy, and a huge increase for the rest of us.
He also doesn't think we should do anything about climate change, because in billions of years, the sun is going to fry the Earth. Note to Gov. Johnson--we can't wait that long to deal with it, because we have to live here in the meantime. In other words, he has no chance to win the presidency. Which is good, because as president he'd be an unqualified disaster.
Side Note: His record as governor of New Mexico is abysmal, too, unless you're in favor of private prisons and private schools, and opposed to children's cancer treatment, evaluations for kids who've been abused, and help for AIDS patients, domestic violence victims, and home-care services.
This Week in Comedy
Only Mel Brooks can get away with pretending to pants the president without being tackled by the Secret Service.
This Week in Arizona
America's Most Corrupt SheriffTM still insists that President Obama's birth certificate is a fake and that he wasn't born in the United States. He says this because he's a racist and a fool. He has no evidence to back up his statement; if he did, he'd have shown it long ago. All he has is his hatred of our first African-American president, precisely because he's an African-American president. Despite costing his constituents tens of millions of dollars through his racism and corruption, the taxpayers of Maricopa County are still paying his salary. It's time to put him out to pasture--or better yet, in prison for the rest of his pathetic life.
This Week in Canada
For some purposes--usually bear stories--TWiA is willing to consider Canada part of "America," in the greater sense. This story from the Ottawa Citizen is one of them.
An employee of the Royal Canadian Mint allegedly smuggled about $180,000 in gold from the fortress-like facility, possibly evading multiple levels of detection with a time-honoured prison trick.
Hiding the precious metal up his bum.
The case against Leston Lawrence, 35, of Barrhaven concluded in an Ottawa courtroom Tuesday. Justice Peter Doody reserved decision until Nov. 9 on a number of smuggling-for-cash charges, including theft, laundering the proceeds of crime, possession of stolen property and breach of trust.
We wouldn't have bothered if the judge's name hadn't been Peter Doody. To us, that makes the whole story.
This Week in Bears
A black bear leads police on a wild chase through the streets of Anchorage, AL.
How many watermelons can a bear eat? At least six.
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