A nut is Connecticut shot to death twenty young school children and six adults yesterday, and that is a tragedy.  There is no doubt of that.  But now all the other nuts are coming out of the woodwork again to demand more gun control.  The fact is that no amount of gun control will ever prevent tragedies like the one the happened yesterday.  We would have to collect and destroy all the guns in the entire world to have any chance of that happening.

And even that level of gun control would not prevent violence!  Did you know that just yesterday, two men in Chicago walked up to a stranger's house and sprayed the owners with a flammable insecticide and then light them on fire before fleeing.

Nor would the absence of guns eliminate the mass aspect of this most recent school murder.  Just yesterday, while the shooting in Connecticut had us outraged, another incident was being reported out of Beijing; a 36-year-old man identified as villager Min Yingjun, unhappy with the fact that he was unable to keep up with the social and economic change that China is experiencing, walked into elementry school and slashed twenty-two students with a knife.  This is only the latest of a series of attacks on schools and children in china by people who have lost their jobs or felt left out of the country's economic boom.

Let''s face it -- gun control isn't the answer.  At best it is only a bandaid for a much more complex problem that no one really wants to admit exists.  That is that the family of Man is a violent species that has been killing its own kind ever since Cain slew Able, which by the way was not done using a gun.  So stop already with the bickering about gun control being the answer to our problems.  It isn't!   

The aftermath of hurricane Sandy seem to have hit the residents of Staten Island and New Jersey the hardest.  People are without gasoline and without electric power in widely diverse places.  Many are elderly and have no way to get fresh food, water, and clothing.  Some have lost their homes entirely and have no where to go.  Not a good situation under any circumstances, but made especially worse because we are going into the winter months and it's getting cold.  I can not say how much I feel for these people.

That said, I'm LMAO at the Obama administration right now, because I have very vivid memories of how he and the Democratic party in general vilified the prior Republican administration for its failure to quickly get a grip on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, as if then President Bush was personally responsible for creating Katrina in the first place.  Well Obama is now having his own Katrina.  He's finding out once again that things don't just happen because you want them to, and while he's off campaigning in Nevada, people are suffering on the east coast.

He just doesn't seem to learn.  He doesn't get it.  But not to worry -- he can always blame former President Bush for creating another storm problem just to get even.

Not much to say except Obama, operating without advanced knowledge of the questions or topics and unable to prepare a canned presentation, finally proved that he can't function without a teleprompter.  Romney whooped Obama's ass, and next week on the 11th, I think that Ryan will wipe up the street with Biden in the VP debate.  Nuff said about that.

My concern is the follow-on presidential debate.  It's unlikely that Obama's staff will let the same thing happen then as happened last night.  I just hate the idea that Obama may have an opportunity to finish strong in these debates.

As for the format of last night's debate, I think I rather liked it better than any format I've seen in previous debates.  At least the candidates were not restricted to one 2-minute response to each other.  They had ample time to fully explore each other's comments and thoughts regarding the issues dealt with.  I hope the next time they meet to debate they will use the same format.

During his Democratic Convention speech  last night, Bill Clinton asked if we thought we were better off today than we were four years ago.  He was clearly looking for an affirmative answer, but for me and most people I know the answer is a resounding no.  Let me say that again: NO!! Why?  Because in order to get support for his health care reform bill he met in the White House with the operating managers and CEOs of both the insurance firms and the pharmaceutical companies.  During those meetings, Obama agreed to allow those companies to raise their prices, presumably in order to bank some money to help cover their extra costs when the bill took effect.  Since then my insurance costs and out of pocket drug costs have risen more than $1000 a year.  That's a lot of money for low income families.  For those of us whose sole source of income is our monthly social security check,  it's almost a diaster.

Want an example?  I have emphysema, and I take albuterol to help with my breathing.  Before Obama, I used to buy a generic version of drug for $4.50 each month.  After Obama's meeting with the Big Phams, the generic version was with drawn from the market, and the same active ingredient was repackaged and given a new name.  That renamed product costs $45 a month, 10X what I was paying.  And that's just one prescription 

Am I better off that I was four years ago?  No! No!! No!!!

So! It's time for another election. This time Obama doesn't seem to be able to get by on his charisma, and he can't run on his record, so he's reduced to having Bill Clinton do his campaign commercials. I wonder if the deal is to let Hillary replace Bidden as the VP candidate to give his lackluster campaign a boost. That would be something: running on the backs of a former president and his wife, neither of whom like him.

(UPDATE): Well, that didn't happen. Maybe there's a deal to support Clinton's daughter in her effort to enter politics. We'll see.

Five or six times now the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) founded in 2000 has tried to convict Lance Armstrong of taking illegal, performance enhancing drugs, and Lance has been acquitted every time.  He has taken more than 500 drug tests and passed everyone of them - before and after each race and in some cases between legs of lengthy races.  Now the USADA wants to do it again.  Why?

I think Lance is right.  This is a "witch hunt" by an agency that is only 12 years old.  They are going after Lance Armstrong despite a lack of evidence that even the International Cycling Union (ICU) says doesn't exist.  Essentially what's happening is that the USADA thinks he "must" be doping because nobody could possibly be as good as he is without doping.  That's all there is to it.

The USADA is looking for a high profile win to justify its continued existence. They want power, and they're willing to wreck a man's career to get and keep it.  Fortunately, they don't have the final say in this matter. 

They say it has less than half the calories of regular Pepsi. I think they accomplished that by cutting the amount of cola in half and making up the volume with extra water. At least that's what the taste of the stuff says to me. I think most people that do Pepsi will like Pepsi Max better than the new Pepsi Next.

On this memorial day weekend, I offer the following list, in no particular order, of what I think are the best war movies ever made. Of course the word "best" is a relative term, and there are other equally find movies that should be on this list.  Perhaps you would care to add a few of them in your comments.

*  The Guns of Navarone
*  Where Eagles Dare
*  Midway
*  The Great Escape
*  The Bridge At Remagen
*  The Enemy Below
*  Gettysburg
*  Das Boot
*  Anzio
*  A Bridge to Far

The Canadian born beauty Jenna Talackova was entered into the Miss Universe Pageant after winning the right through competition in Canada, but the U.S. pageant organization disqualified her the other day because she was born a male. 

That's right, Miss Talackova is a transgendered woman.  Pageant officials will no doubt say that she was not disqualified because she is transgendered, but because she lied on her application form when asked if she is transgendered.  Okay, she shouldn't have lied about it, but let's be honest. The question itself is not a legal question.  Employers are not allowed to ask such a question on job applications.  No academy is allowed to consider such an issue on an admissions application.  The question is there solely as a way to identify and filter out (discriminate against) individuals based on there sexual identity. That is illegal in Canada, and Canadian officials had no problem submitting her entry to the organizers.  It's also illegal in many areas of the United States.

Now I'll grant that that the founders of the Pageant never envisioned a scenario whereby a transgendered person would enter the pageant, let alone actually be attractive enough to have a good shot at winning the competition on her looks alone, but it has happened and I have to ask,

"How much plastic is too much?"

Many of the contestants, if not most of them in recent years, have breast implants, nose jobs, a little botox here and there, and even hip and butt augmentation surgery, and they are not disqualified.  So why is surgery "down there" an exception?  If an individual has successfully undergone sexual reassignment surgery, what's the problem?  If she looks like a woman, sounds like a woman, acts like a woman, and presents herself as a woman in her daily life, i.e. not just on a stage, what makes her so different that she cannot compete, especially since the major purpose of the pageant is for designers and manufacturers to have an opportunity to show off their gowns and swimsuits and for the promoters to make money on television advertising deals? 

Could it be that some people are just uncomfortable in their own skins and don't want to have to face up to that question?  Or perhaps the organizers are too concerned with what other people might think if they openly supported common decency and basic human rights. 

[UPDATE:] The pageant has reversed its ruling to allow Ms. Talackova to compete.  The rules have also been changed to allow such coemption in the future when the contestant's gender is recognized by the country that she represents.

UPDATE:She ultimately placed in the top twelve finalists.

The media is having a field-day with the tragic death of a teen in Florida, so why shouldn't I offer my 2-cents worth?  Afterall, I know as much, or as little, about what happened as the media does.  So here is what I would speculate as to what happened:

You got a 16 year old, and as we all know, 16 year olds can be obnoxious and love to challenge authority; and we have a want-a-be cop who didn't make the grade.  Perhaps he couldn't get past the psych examiners who felt he had an attitude problem not condusive to smooth dealing with the public.  Who knows. 

So the kid wanders through the area minding his own business.  He is challenged by the neighborhood watch captain, who is being a little over zealous in performance of "watching" the neighborhood.  The want-a-be assumes a 'tough-guy' attitude and an air of authority that he really doesn't have.  (It's funny how packin' heat can help do that to a guy.) The teen reacts as we all know teens can react, by arguing and even challenging the want-a-be.  He may use abusive language; he may even get in the what-a-be's face and demand to know what the guy is gonna do about it.  The want-a-be starts to feel insecure because the kid is ignoring his challenge.  That leads to fear setting in and he loses it, finally shooting without first assessing the situation to determine if a true threat existed.   That is why he's just a want-a-be and not a real police officer.

Did it happen that way? I don't know, but I feel confident in saying that I don't think the Florida law makers had this kind of scenario in mind when they wrote the "I felt threatened" law.  There was never an intent to allow someone to respond to an unarmed threat with deadly force.  This guy, at the very least, is guilty of criminally negligent homicide and wrongful death or perhaps even manslaughter.  Whether or not it was a murder remains to be determined by the investigators.