A continuing tradition of being boring since 1998
Bring on the hordes, I have “announced” the site on facebook, Sosbees from near and far will register by the thousands, we will have the highest concentration of Sosbee ( and affiliated surnames ) on the Internet, it will be awesome, just like facebook, but ALL SOSBEEs!!!!! I posted 3 plus years of dads letters to the editor in the Howard Sosbee’s Posts category, So it only looks like the site has been here since 2014.
Every president since Nixon has kept us out of a war with North Korea. Now, the talk of war seems to creep into every political conversation, and that should scare the daylights out of every thinking American. We do not need, and cannot abide, another shooting war! Our military must, absolutely, be held in total and complete readiness, with practice runs to verify its capability, but readiness must never be used as a justification for preemption. Remember how George W Bush responded to the question of why he would invade Iraq? His response: ”Because I can!” That was insanity then and would be insanity now. Trump knows two things: 1, His presidency is on shaky ground, and 2, A president is less likely to be changed (impeached) during wartime. What can be done now to prevent the unthinkable?
Trump and Pence just do not get it. They are completely wrong about kneeling. It is neither disrespectful of the national anthem nor the US flag. It has one and only one purpose, and that is and has always been to call attention of the public to a matter being largely ignored: the widespread institutional oppression by police of black men. It is a tactic that deserves the attention of all right-thinking Americans, but has drawn only scorn from our right-leaning government. There is too darn much of it to ignore, and we owe it to those athletes who have shown the courage to do something that people will notice, even if it draws the obligatory show of righteous indignation from Trump and Pence and other attention-seeking politicians.
Some would say your “Mission Impossible” op-ed of Sunday, October 8, 2017, was “bordering on blasphemy”. There are, indeed, people to whom owning firearms is more important to them, by far, than their religion. Actually, it is their religion. It would not be a surprise if there were people, some in your own personal acquaintance, who would take up arms against their neighbors to protect their arsenals. But when you think about it, no meaningful or effective firearm regulation will ever happen as long as the Second Amendment is in place. It is the single, controlling, roadblock to any action of any kind by elected representatives in the United States Congress or state legislatures; or any effective enforcement of the multitude of gun laws already on the books. We do not know how many murder weapons would be floating around in America if there had never been a Second Amendment, but most likely, the number would be far fewer than the millions now out there.
It could be anything; a mental case, someone with a massive grudge, or just some jerk looking for attention. Reasons for mass murder are as varied as the people who commit them. There is no “typical” mass murderer, but there most certainly is a common denominator, and that is the murder weapon or weapons. There are millions of handguns and assault rifles floating around America, not one of which has any purpose except to kill human beings. You do not need an AK15 to hunt deer, or bear, or quail. You don’t need a handgun for any purpose, and if there is one in the house, it is more likely to kill a member of the family than anyone else. These murder weapons can be outlawed by an act of Congress (which we are not likely ever to see). But even if they are outlawed throughout the United States, we will not be safe until they are all turned in or confiscated. Enforcement of gun laws is crucial, especially on the mean streets. You have heard conservative politicians issue the warning that liberals are “coming to get your guns”. You can beat them to it by turning in your assault rifles and handguns at the nearest law enforcement station. If you do this, your home will be free of the risk of the most tragic kind of accident imaginable, that of a family member being killed by an accidental gunshot.
All Trump knows about Puerto Rico’s disastrous situation is what his underlings tell him. And everyone by now has learned that Trump is unable to handle bad news. So, everything is, of course, going swimmingly on that poor beleaguered island. But when someone reports from ground zero that inefficient bureaucracy is hampering distribution of relief supplies, Trump takes it as an attack on his administration, and thus, an attack on him, personally, and, of course, he must “punch back”. The thought of the President of the United States attacking the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, somehow doesn’t have the appearance of a fair fight, especially since the mayor was pleading for more help, not criticizing any one person. And if any one person deserves a critical postmortem, even at this early date, it would, indeed, be the Donald himself. Has he made any attempt to get volunteer truck drivers to the island to speed distribution of relief supplies that are stacking up on the dock? How long did it take to get the hospital ship going? Punching back may give Trump some satisfaction, but it doesn’t help the Puerto Rico victims one little bit.
After watching the PBS documentary on Vietnam, one could be forgiven for asking: did we learn anything? Then, after counting the cost in lives and treasure in Iraq and Afghanistan, we come to the painful realization: obviously not!
So far, we have seen numerous, specific, characteristics displayed by Donald Trump which are not necessarily the most desirable for President of the United States. For example; egotism, everything is always and only about him. Other specific traits were either displayed or hinted at during the campaign which should have presaged various degrees of trouble. Trump has shown himself to be, among other things: mendacious, indifferent, insensitive, selfish, class conscious, mean-spirited, autocratic, divisive, and if these faults were not scary enough, the Trump situation is now demonstrating incompetence to a degree that threatens to make a terrible situation in Puerto Rico much worse than it needs to be. Trump obviously has no idea what to do next or how to do it.