This Country wasn’t founded on Christian beliefs, scriptures, morality, or religion, nor are the Ten Commandments the basis of all of our laws, so stop saying it. I’m sick and tired of having every speech followed with “…and God Bless the United States”. God’s not blessing anything.Just look around. Do we LOOK like we’ve been blessed? And I don’t want to hear how our kids are failing academically because we don’t let them pray out loud in mandatory prayer before math class.

What I want is a President who says what he will do to keep the government, the economy and the nation, moving in  a positive direction, and in a secular way, without a prayer before every event and session of Congress. I want a secular President, like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. I want what the constitution says, freedom from religion, and no religious test for the office. This whole campaign so far has been one big religious conversation equating to a religious test, with the one who passes getting the job. Bullshit!

So if Franklin Graham says Obama is not all that Christian, but all the others are, then that clinches it for me. I’m voting for the one who is the least Christian of them all, as declared by the most obnoxious, dyed-in-the-wool Christian. I’m sure Pat Robertson, Bryan Fisher and James Dobson all agree.

And I’ll do so even though Franklin Graham speaks out of both sides of his mouth, as you can see from the video. This is why Christians are known for their hypocrisy. It’s the sine qua non of their beliefs. Without hypocrisy, they couldn’t reconcile all the contradictions in their belief system. Watch Graham try it and fail.

H/T The Ebony Mom

.

If you’re seriously thinking that Santorum is a viable candidate, you need to have your chucklehead examined. This guy is a major financial backer of the candidate, yet his ideas about women are from the 1950s. Birth control consisted of women keeping they legs pressed tight against a Bayer aspirin? How enlightened of him! Of course, the Pill had not been invented and commercially produced by then, so I guess that was the only pill available for birth control when Mr. Chucklehead was playing hide the salami.

But good golly, gosh, there are millions of jobs at stake, and terrorists setting up camps in South America! And everybody is talking about sex!

So why does his candidate premise a substantial part of his campaign on sex? He’s against contraception; gay marriage; gay sex for that matter – he thought Lawrence v. Texas was decided wrongly; abortion; and if someone asked him, I suspect he’d have a negative position on masturbation. He is an outspoken opponent of abortion, even to save the life of the mother,  yet he had no problem when his wife’s life was in danger during a problem pregnancy, and chose to prematurely end the pregnancy, knowing the child would quickly die (which it did) in order to save her life. In other words, a de facto abortion is OK for him, but no one else!

And he has no problem with chuckleheads like Mr. Friess giving Andrea Mitchell whiplash reacting to his ignorance.

Well, at least there is a video out there where Santorum makes some sense. Hope it provides a chuckle.

So I share this one tree for those that missed it. Let me set it up for you before I cut and paste the quote. JT Eberhard mentioned a debate he had with a physicist from Kansas on the topic of the irreconcilability of science and religion, complimenting his opponent’s humility in the debate, and the fact that he honestly admired him, despite the fact they were on opposite sides in the culture war. A hazard of the trade, so to speak. One commenter took issue with his metaphorical contention that “religions must die” and pointed out that even Stalin with all his resources and power, was unable to accomplish that, and failed in the end. Another commenter then posted this:

Because there was no possible reason anyone could have wanted them overthrown apart from atheism, right?

Or maybe their regimes self destructed because they were murderous lunatics. That happens to murderous theocratic regimes too. Atheism isn’t the deciding factor you seem to wish it to be.

But you’re right, trying to stamp out religion with a jackboot doesn’t work. Guess what? There are christians in Saudi Arabia, despite it being a crime. So if a fanatical theocracy can’t stamp out religions, what can?

Time, education, and patience will do it.

Religions can die. Where are the worshipers of mighty Zeus? Where is the temple of Mithras? Who calls upon the legendary wisdom of old one-eyed Odin? History is littered with the insubstantial corpses of gods.

Why did these religions die? Their followers stopped believing. Sometimes they found a “better” god, sometimes they were converted by the point of a sword (relgions are rarely happy to coexist). But lately, over the last few centuries, there has been an alternative. Atheism, and simple rationality are an alternative.

We don’t need Thor to explain lightning. We don’t sacrifice an animal to ensure the sun rises after the solstice. The role of gods has gone from movers and shakers of the world, responsible for everything around us, to touchy-feely things you have “other ways of knowing about” and as a catch all explanation of things unknown. Religion may not be dying just yet, but it’s sure getting feeble in this age of reason.

Your god can feed thousands of people with some loaves and fishes according to an unsubstantiated claim. Agriculture and irrigation can feed thousands of people for years – in the right circumstances, indefinitely. Your messiah can walk on water. Aerospace engineers can build machines that fly through the sky. Your god looks down on the earth and sees it all laid out before him. Satellites can do the same – and pick out signs of planets in orbit around other stars. Your god cast out demons. Polio and smallpox have been eradicated by vaccination.

Your god is so feeble even the “amazing tales” told in his holy book are exceeded so often we don’t even think about it. Religion might never die, but one day we might look back at your god and laugh that anyone was impressed by little party tricks.

JT also pointed out that this was “gold“. I agree.

More to the point, religion will “die” when people don’t need it anymore. That won’t come when the world is perfect, because a perfect world is somewhat impossible. And it won’t come when people find something better than their religion, like drugs, or sex, or even an alternative religion. It will come when people become educated to the nonsense, the fairy tales, the wishful thinking that comprises the essence of all religion. Education is the key, and it’s partly why most religions fear the educated congregation. It’s why we even have debates about the conflict between science and religion, because religion fears science and its clear explanatory power. Once people are educated in science, and understand that it has a track record of near 100% in explaining those mysteries of nature it has set its sight on, while religion has a 0% track record, religion will simply die away.

There is a correlation between relatively uneducated, third world countries and the propensity for religion, in such places as the Muslim world, South America and Africa. Conversely, the first world countries are less dependent on religion. This can be partly explained by education. The relative education levels in these countries means that people are more exposed to rationality, reason and science, and find that their religious beliefs don’t cut it any more. A clear exception to this rule appears to be the United States. I say “appears” because I think religion is working very hard to generate a false appearance of religiosity in America. It’s why the churches generate fake controversies (intelligent design v. evolution, gay marriage, etc) to keep the passions stirred up, when most people are secular in their day to day lives, while paying lip service to their religious affiliation. What we are seeing is not really a resurgence of religious belief, but the death rattle of a stagnate belief system. Knowledge trumps superstition and magic every time, and it’s only a matter of time before it supersedes the delusions of religion in this country.

So says my optimistic self.

H/T J T

___

[EDIT] And since it’s Valentines Day, I figured this would be appropriate:

We all know that the “official” position of the Catholic Church is against any form of birth control, other than the rhythm method. And surely we’re aware of the current controversy (and when I say “controversy” I mean bullshit created by the Republican party to stir up trouble for Obama) involving the health insurance requirement being imposed on Catholic employers mandating coverage of Birth Control, even for the Catholic Church. Yes, the Catholic Church will be required to provide medical insurance for its employees, except in certain circumstances, primarily involving employees of the religious edifice itself, as opposed to incidental employes not providing religious functions, such as hospitals, clerks, secretarial etc. Oh, the horror. It’s been the law, however, since 2000, all during the Bush years, with nary a peep from conservatives – until now.

If you listen to the people talking about this on the morning news shows, you have to ask yourself “Why are the only people complaining about this wearing black robes and funny hats with rosaries around their neck? THEY surely don’t use birth control, do they?” (If you hear of any pedophile priests using condoms when they rape little boys, be sure to let me know.)

Polls show that Catholics as a whole are in favor of the Catholic Church being required to include contraception in its health insurance plans provided to employees. More so than even the general population at large.

Some of them even recognize that more contraception access and affordability means a potential drop in abortions. You’d think the Pope would be happy with that. Yet Republicans are claiming that this is not acceptable, and that they will reverse this requirement. John Boehner calls it an “attack on religious freedom” that “will not stand”. Sean Vanity of Faux News says it’s part of a “war on religion”. However, many religious groups are in favor of the rule.

So what does this Health and Human Services rule actually do? It allows all employees to be treated equally when it comes to health insurance, instead of allowing employers that happen to be affiliated with the Catholic Church from treating their employees as second class citizens. It allows employees of Catholic institutions to be covered for what most of them use, have used in the past, would like their children to use when they become sexually active, and what responsible human beings actually use.

Face it. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church, (members of which, to a man, do not need or use contraception – at least officially) are afraid they are losing control of their flock. Dictating to the congregation what they can and cannot do in the privacy of their bedrooms has been the Church’s stock-in-trade, the sine qua non of Catholic dogma, and a sure means to control the general population of Catholics, not to mention ensure a continuous source of new Catholics. When the government takes that away from them, of course the boy-rapist papists will squeal. But has it really been taken away? Can one take something away from someone that which someone doesn’t have?

Click to view the mother's vagina

Catholics are individuals, not necessarily a monolithic entity. In matters of contraception, historically, Catholics have violated the ban on birth control with impunity. 98 percent of Catholics use birth control, according to surveys. With some exceptions, Catholic families, while stereotypically large, have shrunk. That mantle has been taken up by the evangelicals and fundamentalist Protestants. So exactly who are the Catholic leaders and Republican politicians fighting for? Catholics, one would expect, would welcome mandatory insurance coverage, if they use contraception. Who wouldn’t? And if any individual Catholic who in good conscience refused to use contraception, he/she is not using the mandatory aspect of the health insurance anyway. So, no harm, no foul.

As you can see from this link, as usual, the Republicans are being hypocritical (though I’m beginning to think they really don’t understand the concept of hypocrisy). It’s just another convenient political football to kick around in the hopes that it lands close to a Republican goal line – the goal being a single term Obama Presidency. In an age where the population explosion is one of the most pressing public concerns, now or in the future, this planet faces, it’s irresponsible to make an issue of this simply because it’s an election year and the Republicans want to use it to regain the Oval Office.

Filed under: 2012 Elections, Abortion, AIDS, Beliefs, Catholicism, Children, Christianity, Church and State, Current events, First Amendment, Fox News, Health, Health Care, Law, Legal, Medicine, Political/Topical, Politics, Pregnancy, Religion, Republicans, Science, sex, STDs Tagged: Barack Obama, Beliefs, Birth Control, Catholic, Catholic Church, Christian, Christianity, contraception, First Amendment, Fox News, Health, hypocrisy, John Boehner, morality, Obama, Politics, Pope, Religion, Republican, Republicans, sex ]]> http://spaninquis.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/catholics-and-contraception/feed/ 13 Spanish Inquisitor http://spaninquis.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/have-a-cup-of-coffee/ http://spaninquis.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/have-a-cup-of-coffee/#comments Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:07:32 +0000 Spanish Inquisitor http://spaninquis.wordpress.com/?p=8135 Continue reading →]]>

One of my addictions is coffee, and Starbucks is what I usually drink. My wife hates it, can’t stand the taste, prefers something …lighter…but taste is subjective, so I can’t fault her on that. But I like it. I even have the app on my iPhone, tagged to my bank account, so I don’t even need to have any cash on me to buy a cup of coffee. Yeah, I’m a sorry fellow. The only downside for me is that it’s a major corporation, and sometimes I feel I should be giving my business to local coffee shops. Actually, occasionally I do, but I still frequent Starbucks the most. Shoot me.

Fortunately, Starbucks is one of those companies with a social conscience. Or at least their PR department does a good job of convincing me (I’m not so naive as to believe that everything they stand for or do is in the public interest – they do have shareholders after all). They had recently, in response to the faltering economy and the high unemployment rate, started a campaign to increase jobs in the country, by arranging to work with localities to help finance community level small businesses. It is also very environmentally friendly.

In the political arena it’s a David against Goliath (the rest of monolithic corporate America), when it takes on positions that would seem to be counter to its economic interests (any polarizing position is counter to one’s economic interests). Recently it supported the Washington state initiative to legalize gay marriage. And, as you might expect, this drew the ire of the bigots.

A Christian (what else?) group, citing their favorite book of hate, called for a boycott of Starbucks.

“Christians are upset with Starbucks for turning against God…Starbucks can follow Satan if they want to,” Steven Andrew, and evangelical pastor and president of the USA Christian Ministries in California, said in a statement. “However, pastors are to help Christians. Are you on the Lord’s side? Will you help the USA be blessed by God?”

Sigh. I get such a headache when I read these types of blatherings. Follow Satan? C’mon. Are there really still people in 21st century that believe Satan is something more than a metaphor? Of course, they certainly have a right in this country to think and say what they want about it, just as Starbucks (now declared to be a person by no less an authority than the Supreme Court) has the same right.

But at least Starbucks is doing it for the right reasons:

…embracing diversity and treating one another with respect and dignity, and … providing an inclusive, supportive and safe work environment for all of our partners ["partners" is its quaint corporate euphemism for "employees"]…

whereas this so-called USA Christian Ministry is doing it for the wrong reasons:

Starbucks overlooked the health concerns for homosexuals. CDC reports that one in five homosexuals have HIV, with many unaware they are sick. The average homosexual dies at 42 years and has a higher depression rate,

as if not allowing gays to marry will end homosexuality, and therefor HIV, early death and depression. Clearly, such a position is based on a bigoted attitude towards homosexuality, using idiotic, irrelevant statistics and their holy book to rationalize their non-Jesus like intolerance and hypocrisy.

They think that if all Christians boycotted Starbucks, the company would lose 80% of it’s business, probably on the assumption that the country is roughly 80% Christian. Frankly, a better boycott would be if all Christians boycotted their churches, stopped contributing those tax free funds that keep them in business, and stop attending Sunday (and Monday though Saturday) services. That would show these bigots exactly what hatred, intolerance and bigotry means.

For me, this boycott simply gives me a better reason to feed my jones with a clear conscience.

Here’s the kicker.

Other companies taking a similar position [on gay marriage] include Nike, Google and Microsoft, Half Moon Bay Patch notes.

It’s easy to say “buy your coffee from someone else, like say, the local Halleluiah Blessed-Be-Jesus Coffee Shop” . It’s another to delete Windows and start using Linux on your computer, search the internet using Yahoo, and jog in your P.F. Flyers. You know these hypocrites won’t do that. I’ll bet they wrote their Press Release in Microsoft Word.

So lift a cup of Starbucks™ coffee to Satan, and have a nice day.

And of course, most theists believe that life began when their particular god created them. Christians believe the story in the Bible about Adam and Eve, either literally or figuratively. In either case, it’s a supernatural being that consciously and affirmatively decided to create that which we call life. Other religions have their own creation myths, but they all share a beginning story that attempts to explain how we got here.

Science actively seeks the answer to the question, while religion doesn’t bother looking, confident in the belief that it already has the answer. There are a few scientific theories about how life  began, and of course the theory of evolution pretty much explains to most thinking adults how human life began. But given the fact (and it is a fact) that the first bits of life began billions of years ago on this planet (unless you ascribe to panspermia theories), it’s difficult to ascertain with any degree of certainty exactly how life began. We can’t go back that far in time and hope to find even a small part of the evidence for those first signs of life. Time has a way of destroying evidence, and evidence is the rock upon which science rests. But that doesn’t stop scientists from trying.

60 years ago the Miller-Urey experiment was able to substantiate one possibility, one hypothesis, by simulating the environment, the so-called “primordial soup”, that may have existed on primitive earth, in the process creating organic matter by adding a little energy.

And recently scientists at the University of York have shown how simple sugars, which are some of the building blocks of life, could have been originally created. In the cited article, the quote from one of the scientists struck me:

“There are a lot of fundamental questions about the origins of life and many people think they are questions about biology. But for life to have evolved, you have to have a moment when non-living things become living — everything up to that point is chemistry.

This strikes to the heart of the issues that divide Christians and non-Christians, theists and non-theists – the point where non-living matter becomes living, organic matter. The accepted understanding of the evidence is that the earth consisted of completely inorganic material up to a point when life began. – chemicals, essentially. “…Everything up to that point is chemistry.” After that, biology comes into existence, along with organic material, that which we call living things. Single cell organisms, RNA, multiple cell organisms, simple creatures,eventually plants and animals as we know them today, but evolved over a long period of time. All of them that originally arose from the primordial soup.

Perhaps our difficulty in coming to terms with the origins is life is that we have defined a bright line in time between life and non-life, and designated two scientific disciplines to study the two sides separately. Chemistry on one side, biology on the other. Perhaps that line is not so bright, that both chemistry and biology simply describe different aspects of the study of matter on what is essentially the same, single continuum. After all, all life is made up of chemicals. Are we not now discovering more and more of the chemical bases for all human functions, from mental disorders, to diseases? The entire pharmaceutical industry depends on the chemical assumptions for life.

More to the point, perhaps there is no single juncture where chemistry stops and biology begins. Maybe it’s all chemistry, and that what we call biology is simply the study of more complex areas of chemistry and chemical interactions. Perhaps our inability to come to grips with the origin of life is because we have defined ourselves into a box. We like to have holes to put our pegs into. In this case, life is a biological peg, and needs a biological hole, when perhaps it’s not. Perhaps it’s still a chemical peg, and we simply don’t fully understand the chemical processes that combine to provided the phenomenon we call life.  These processes are so complex, and occur at such microscopic levels, that we may not have advanced enough in learning and knowledge to properly understand it. Instead of continuing to look for something that causes life, what we should be doing is attempting to understand why and how chemistry evolves in such a complex matter.

Stop calling it life, as if it’s something distinct from non-life. It’s not. Before the first single cell organisms came into existence, it was simple chemistry. Life is just complex chemistry.

If you accept the fact that chemistry explains simple chemical processes, then why doesn’t complex chemistry explain complex chemical processes? And if you accept the latter, then you don’t need a little bit of supernatural magic to create what we call life. No puff of divine breath, no wave of the magic wand, no removal of ribs from sleeping males. Just a whole lot of chemicals doing what chemicals do in accordance with the rules of chemistry.

I know this won’t sit well with people who want to believe they are somehow special, more special than a rock or a starfish or a monkey. They won’t abide the thought that we are explained by chemistry (as they pop their Prozac and Aspirin and Viagra and Vicodin), because they need to believe there is some purpose for their existence, that some conscious being made a conscious choice to create them, especially since they were not consulted in the decision making process. They can’t accept a possibility that life simply created itself, through predicable, albeit difficult to understand chemical processes.

Occam’s Razor says this is a far simpler explanation than the creation myths of religion(s). We know that chemical interactions can produce amazing processes, all naturally and predictably. We are learning every day how the chemical imbalances in our physical make up, in our brain, can affect our day-to-day existence. Why not this, rather than creation ex nihilo? At least chemical processes use existing materials and come from somewhere.

You can’t say that about magic religion.

What politician does snail sex remind you of?

Sex. We all know what it is, we all partake of the pleasure and the comfort and the results. It is the leading human motivational force, second to none, though possibly equal to money, and not far ahead of guilt. It’s the engine that turns the human wheel. Look behind many of the human foibles, scandals and mistakes of most politicians, businessmen, blue collar workers, ….hell, everybody… and you’ll find either money or sex. It’s a biological imperative that we have neither the ability nor the will to control, yet we strive mightily to do so, always losing. The sex drive is the strongest drive on earth, turning gigantic intellects into quivering gelatin at the drop of a bra strap.

And of course, the survival of our species depends on it.

Victorian sensibilities shoved it into the background in national politics, where we winked and we nodded, and occasionally were forced to acknowledge it because we had no choice, but it was the so-called sexual revolution of the 60s that allowed us to confront it and speak about it and finally allow it into the forefront of the social consciousness of the nation.

It was, and still is, a topic that is not discussed in polite company (along with politics and religion). Innuendo and euphemisms are the language of normal discourse when the subject is brought up. We have pet names for body parts, and we are often ashamed to speak out loud the words penis, breast, vagina, fellatio, cunnilingus and sexual intercourse. Instead we speak of dicks and boobs, and pussies and fucking. But it is something we do, and have to do, and is as natural as breathing, eating and defecating. Yet it is always an embarrassing topic, except in like company. I blame the religious mores passed down to us, but that’s another topic for another day.

This never made much sense to me, but I was brought up in the same cultural milieu as everyone else, and found myself conforming to the same cultural restrictions. Instead of frank, sexual informational talks with my children, we discussed the “birds and bees”. If we talked about it at all. These puritanical notions of embarrassment at the very thought of sex seems to me to be antithetical to a healthy sexual environment, and in the back of my head, over most of my life, I knew that, but I was psychologically hampered from being more open.  I always admired those that were able to speak about sex in a frank, normal, conversational manner without making others feel embarrassed. Dr. Ruth was one of these, and while her lilliputian physique and German accent seemed sometimes like a caricature, she opened up avenues of sexual discourse that were previously blocked to many. There are a lot of other examples, but they are irrelevant to this post.

My point is that I think it’s healthy for the population to be discussing the sex lives of not only their politicians, but the rest of the country, including ourselves. It’s part of who we are. We should be able to not only recognize, but celebrate the diversity of thought and practice that comes with a healthy individual sex life. It should not, in a psychologically flourishing population, engender feelings of embarrassment, or moral outrage, or disgust, any more than talking about someone’s cancer, or mental illness, or baldness, or hemorrhoids would do so.

When a politician uses sexual activity, or orientation, or history as a plank on a political platform, then that’s a good thing, as long as what’s good for the goose is also good for the gander. Sex is something we all have in common, so a national dialogue is natural. The fact that Newt Gingrich is running on a so-called “family values” platform, which is really a dog whistle for anti-abortion and anti-homosexual, is not objectionable per se. It always was fair game, no more than if he was against man-boy love, NAMBLA style. That’s all part of what should be healthy dialogue about human sexuality. Maybe you disagree that it shouldn’t be part of a political discourse, that perhaps the place to discuss it is elsewhere, but it’s not outside the scope of normal and important human communication. If it sparks a multi-sided debate, then what could possibly be the problem?

What’s really objectionable is the hypocrisy associated with the judgmental position he takes, along with his fellow Republican Presidential aspirants. It’s one thing to tell others how they should conduct themselves in their sexual affairs. It’s another to tell them how they should conduct themselves while specifically violating those same judgmental imperatives at the same time. That is pure hypocrisy, and for Newt to find outrage in a question posed to him in a debate that specifically points out his hypocrisy is, in itself, hypocritical, not to mention ironic. It calls into question the very nature and character of Newt himself, and his fitness for being President.

Gingrich was one of the leading instigators and proponents of the Whitewater Investigation, which was turned into a witch hunt of Bill Clinton, and eventually resulted in the discovery of an anti-climatic (no pun intended) semen-stained dress and the impeachment of the President.  Gingrich was extremely judgmental of this short affair with Monica Lewinsky (a blow job in the oval office that did not terminate his marriage), at the same time that he was carrying on a much more involved affair with the woman who would later become his current wife. He was an outspoken advocate for Clinton’s impeachment and hoped-for removal from office (which backfired on him), primarily based on his denouncements of Clinton’s non-family based morality, while he was secretly carrying on a very non-family based relationship with a woman 23 years his junior.

Can you spell H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-S-Y? And is his hypocrisy relevant to this election process?

You bet your boobies.

The fact that we went through the sexual revolution, which allows us to be more open about the subject of sex, has had a positive effect on society. We can talk about the consequences of sex, be they STDs, unwanted pregnancies, and children, without the guilt all churches used to impose on the discussion. We don’t look the other way when someone happens to mention that Father O’Reilly touched little Billy in a way Billy wasn’t used to, or which confused him. We now do something about it, and quickly, because Billy knows what a bad touch is.

And when a politician thinks he can sit on his high horse and tell us how we are to conduct our sexual affairs, we can tell him to go to hell fuck himself.

This one is just as good.

Enjoy!!

I see today a story about a young mother who shot and killed a home invader, protecting her child, with a shotgun, who seems to be ruled in the clear for doing so. To add sympathy to the story, her husband conveniently died of cancer on Christmas Day. And, to make it even better, she called the police and asked for permission before she shot the guy. Permission was not granted explicitly, but it was granted implicitly. (No responsible police authority would say “Sure, go ahead and shoot the bastard”. At least not when the 911 call is being recorded.)

However, while I sympathize with that woman (really a teenager, scared and certainly within her rights) the last line of the article bothers me.

According to the latest FBI data, firearms were used in 215 cases of “justifiable homicide” in 2009 in the United States, where every year guns figure in around 30,000 deaths ranging from murder to suicide and accidents.

My calculator says that of all the deaths caused by guns in 2009, less that 1% of them were justifiable. The other 99.3% are from murder, suicide or accidents and the like.

To me, home protection may be a good reason to oppose gun bans, but it certainly has no place in a discussion about gun control. Gun control contemplates some supervisory and regulatory process meant soley to lower the statistics of gun deaths and violence as a result of murders, suicides and accidents, while leaving protection of one’s home intact. Law abiding home owners, one would think, would a) have no problems securing guns to protect themselves, and b) have no problem with minimally intrusive controls placed on their acquisitions.

But the NRA thinks otherwise, and the NRA is a powerful lobby. And we all know how well the Republicans and Democrats love that lobby money.

And while I’m at it, I hate, hate, hate the analogy that gun control opponents use concerning the licensing of automobiles. Yes, automobiles do result in many deaths, and yes, we don’t ban them. But automobiles are not designed nor manufactured for one purpose and one purpose only, as guns are, to kill. Death from automobiles is incidental to their use; it is not their primary purpose.

So I frankly don’t understand the complacency in the country about doing something about guns. It makes no rational sense to me.