Tag: Fail

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Whew, I tried to take a break

There is just no getting away from the insanity.

My 4th of July peace & quiet was shattered, as was the nation’s by the Highland shooting. The other half got a BBC notification on their phone.

WTF? Of course the media jumped on it, gleefully rubbing their hands, “If it Bleeds it Leads,” and they were all practically salivating that the shooter was white and used a rifle.

I imagine the newsrooms all over the country were spinning up their white supremacist tropes. That fell apart pretty fast as more came out about the shooter. But the media still got their licks in about guns being a problem in this country.

Then someone remembered that Illinois has very restrictive gun laws. RED Flag Laws, State issued licensing to purchase a gun, certain weapons banned, etc. You know, kind of like the law Biden just signed…

As more information poured in, it turns out that the shooter wasn’t listed as a RED FLAG, even though he should have been. The shooter had threatened to kill his family and the police had removed his collection of knives from his home.

That didn’t stop him from getting his Illinois issued FOID permit which allowed him to purchase guns legally. It appears that he’d even purchased his guns in the state of Illinois. OOOPs there goes the gun show, and the out of state or straw purchase narrative.

As the week progressed, we heard that his mental health was questionable. That was kinda of a “Duh,” right from the start. Now folks are asking some of the right questions. “Why wasn’t he RED FLAGGED?”, “Why wasn’t he getting some kind of help?”, “What made his so very angry?”

These are all good questions and there are no easy answers. But it’s good that the questions are being asked.

President Doofus wasted no time telling America that this is the reason that we need stricter gun control. Again he shot his mouth off without having all the information. If I’m recalling it correctly he opened his pie hole before the police had even brought Robert E. Crimo III, age 21 to heel.

But this is what we’ve come to expect from this President.

Remember the Border patrol officers accused of whipping Haitian migrants illegally crossing the border?

U.S. Customs and Border Protection mounted officers attempt to contain migrants as they cross the Rio Grande from Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, into Del Rio, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Biden said, “To see people treated like they did, horses barely running over, people being strapped — it’s outrageous,” Biden told reporters, making a whipping motion with his hand. “I promise you, those people will pay. There will be an investigation underway now and there will be consequences. There will be consequences.“

At the time I wrote a blog post saying what the CBP jackasses have now also said in their copious report about the incident. The Head of CBP has said, “no evidence” that Border Patrol struck Haitian migrants with their reins or used whips in Del Rio, Texas, last year”

I’m not much of a horseman, I’ve been astride horses many times in my life, I like horses and would enjoy having enough space and money to own one, implicit in that would be getting to be a better horseman.

I’ve enjoyed rodeos, and seen a variety of reins and saddles. Mostly, I have experience with mucking out stalls that horses occupy when they’re not being ridden or wandering around a corral.

That being said, as inexperienced as I am, I knew looking at the pictures that CBP agents weren’t whipping migrants.

The thing is, CBP is still going to punish the officers, for other infractions. One of which is using harsh language. Harsh Language? Get the fuck out of town!

The entire article is here. It’s from Fox News it popped up in my Apple News Feed.

One thing that struck me as I read the article was that the agents appear to be at fault for having insufficient training for the situation. To which I say, “WHAT THE FUCK?”

Our government placed these agents in the situation. Then is holding them responsible because they didn’t have the right training to deal with the untenable situation the government placed them in?

The agents wouldn’t have been in the situation if President dipshit hadn’t opened the damn border in the first place.

Talk about a no win situation. That kind of thinking isn’t going to have the Border patrol’s recruiting office overflowing now is it?

“Sure you’re going to have this job but you’ll be constantly under scrutiny from assholes who have no idea what the job entails and they’ll throw you under the bus at a moment’s notice for their own political gain. Oh, and by the way, if one of these politicians demands punishment you’re totally fucked. Even if you did everything by the book.”

“Welcome to CBP. Have a great career.”

People wonder why we’re losing Law Enforcement personnel at unheard of rates? Why the military isn’t going to meet its recruitment goals? Why Border patrol is woefully understaffed?

None of these factors are making any of us more safe. Our politicians don’t see the problems they’re causing…

But it is driving record gun sales.

Long ago folks realized that if they could rely upon police to be present, to arrive in a timely fashion, and take care of crime, that it was better to allow the police to deal with problems.

It was easier that having to explain, and dispose of, the body of a criminal from your living room, or on your lawn, or why you dropped a piece of shit in the middle of town.

Now, with the police stretched so thin, and neutered by conflicting laws, people are coming to the conclusion that their only option is to be armed. Where I live, the sheriffs are 30 minutes away on a good day.

That’s provided they don’t have some jurisdictional conflict about whether the sheriff, or the Highway patrol is supposed to deal with an issue. For that layer of confusion I thank politicians, and lawyers. The officers, even though they want to help, are constrained by those jackasses.

Why does it take years to deal with a drug house, or a house of prostitution operating in a neighborhood? What about a person that routinely assaults their neighbors for no apparent reason?

The reason is that average “normal” folks are expected to put up with the shit. Not just expected, but constrained by rules, regulations, jurisdictional rivalries, lawyers, politicians, boards of supervisors, interpretations, and all the bullshit that gets in the way of a simple question.

Was a crime committed?

If the answer is “Yes”, then the perpetrator is hauled off.

If the answer is “No” then folks will have to deal with it.

Then there were the shrieking harridan protesters who thought it was their right to make everyone uncomfortable at a Mortons Steakhouse because Justice Kavanaugh decided to have a meal there.

This was another What the Fuck moment for me.

I walked out of a StarBucks once when some protestors walked in raising hell. (I forget what the hell nonsense they were protesting about,) all I remember is that one of two things was going to happen. Either I left without my damn coffee, or I was going to incite a riot by saying something.

I also knew that none of the morons in the Starbucks were going to have my back but they’d film me getting my ass kicked.

I haven’t been to that Starbucks since. It was near a college. We all know how the college crowd is about whatever the liberal bullshit of the day is.

Shortly after, Starbucks in California started saying cops couldn’t come in if they had their guns. That was the beginning of the end of my relationship with Starbucks.

Anyhow, Mortons released a statement that made me want to go spend money with them.

They said, “Honorable Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh and all of our other patrons at the restaurant were unduly harassed by unruly protesters while eating dinner at our Morton’s restaurant,”

I get that the protesters were outside, on the sidewalk. The police couldn’t do anything about it since they weren’t trespassing. Okay. They’re exercising their first amendment right.

But, in these situations I always ask what about all the other people’s rights that these protestors trample on? The right to peace and quiet? The right to a nice dinner with family or friends?

There are reports that the protestors were calling the restaurant demanding that Justice Kavanaugh not be served.

What about the months of protests outside Kavanaugh’s home? The protestors are raising a ruckus in front of his house, but the whole fucking neighborhood has to suffer, what about their rights to privacy, to peace & quiet, to live their lives without fear or inability to get into or out of their homes?

The White House was taken to task by Peter Doocy and got a completely bullshit answer from Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. The article is linked here.

There was another article that mentioned a twitter account offering to pay cash for information about the conservative Justices movements within D.C.

Rebooted my brain…

That’s beyond the definition of stalking. The Folks in D.C. don’t seem to have a problem with it. BUT THEY WOULD, if a similar account was set up. That followed Pelosi, or AOC, or Harris, or Schiff. Then it would be 24/7 OMG how is this allowed?

Imagine what the response would be if any of the people I mentioned above couldn’t go into a restaurant without being hounded by angry conservatives standing outside on a sidewalk screaming at them for running the country into the ground.

What if their neighborhoods were turned into protest zones 24/7?

We’d never hear the end of it.

The LA Times reported that the LA County Supervisors want the ability to remove the LA County Sheriff (In case Villaragosa wins his election). They’re not interested in any of the other eight elected positions, only the Sheriff.

Hmmm that sounds vaguely familiar. Wasn’t there something similar in Washington D.C. on January 6th 2021? I can’t quite recall…

The thing is, if the erosion of law, and indeed human decency and respect continues we’ll have anarchy.

I’ve thought for years that our country is a powder keg and the polarization,” us against them” mentality espoused from the highest levels in our government isn’t helping.

What happens when average, “normal” people decide they’ve had enough and decide to take matters into their own hands?

What happens when the people say they no longer agree with the first paragraphs of The Declaration of Independence, saying, “NO! We The People withdraw our consent to be governed.”

Where will we be then?

Starts to look a lot like Mad Max, doesn’t it?

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And FedEx drops the ball!

Big surprise! FedEx used to be so good about deliveries. These days, not so much.

I guess the universe may not hate me, but it sure does enjoy kicking me! I guess I twitch really good or something.

The saga so far.

I ordered a computer. I got the computer. The computer was defective. I make arrangements to return the computer. I drop the computer off at a FedEx location and have the human being scan the label.

I’m told that a receipt will be texted to me, even though I specifically ask for a printed receipt… The text never came, (Big Surprise!) and the person said they didn’t print receipts. Uh Huh…

I saw the person scan the package so Fine! I’m not going to fight about it. It’s been so long since I dealt with FedEx For all I know they’ve changed their rules.

Subsequently, I cancelled the Apple order entirely.

I check on the package via the FedEx website on Wednesday. Its status is unchanged. Hmm…

This is not unusual, FedEx has on more than one occasion in the past 5 years actually delivered something to my door but their site says it’s across the country.

That’s what I mean by FedEx isn’t what it once was.

Thursday I check again. The FedEx web site says that the package is estimated to arrive at its destination by 4PM. But the movement status still hasn’t changed.

I call FedEx to ask them what’s going on. They have no idea… They can’t locate the package.

Great! So I start an escalation. I get a call back from a nice FedEx lady who really does go the extra mile to figure out what is going on. She comes up empty. The package appears to have been scanned, but doesn’t appear in the system.

Wonderful!

SO NOW I have billing for a computer that was defective and that I no longer have possession of, I have no receipt showing that I gave the package to the designated carrier, and no-one seems to know where the package is.

I’m told by FedEx that the package may mysteriously appear at some random time in the future.

Yeah… I believe that, uh huh.

This morning I call Apple.

I explain what’s going on, and tell Apple that FedEx isn’t going to give a crap about me. But FedEx will listen to Apple.

I give the Apple rep all the information. The Tracking Number, The Escalation Number, and the Serial Number of the computer. I suggest that they list that serial number as stolen and should it pop up on the internet or at one of their stores perhaps they can arrest the person in possession of the machine.

I’m beyond pissed off at FedEx!

Apple has created an investigation case as well. I don’t know what’s going to happen from here, but I can say I’ve done due diligence.

A company I worked for stopped using FedEx precisely because of this kind of thing. They got tired of having $4K shipments of medical equipment disappear randomly all over the country. They also got tired of having to make 2 or 3 replacement shipments for those same random orders.

In some of the cases I worked on, FedEx told me that the shipment had been delivered and then I’d get a call from some completely different individual, sometimes in another town, asking my company to stop delivering stuff to their door.

FedEx investigations rarely located the lost packages. In the case of Medical supplies, even if FedEx found the package a couple of weeks later and returned it to my company. By law, we had to destroy it.

I’m hoping that Apple sees the light and pulls their contracts from FedEx soon. I’m sure I’m not the only one experiencing this kind of thing.

Come to think of it, I haven’t been seeing FedEx deliveries here in town nearly as much as I used to. But the UPS guy is in the neighborhood every single day.

FedEx may end up going the way of DHL… I can’t remember the last time I saw one of those trucks!

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Bummer! That didn’t last long

The new machine is going back to Apple.

Bummer!

On the plus side I was able to basically build out an M1 system and I’ve got a complete backup of that system.

Because the decision to return and replace the machine was made in less than a day, I still have my original MacBook to fall back on. So it’s an inconvenience and a delay but not the freaking end of the world. I’ve got a computer.

So here’s the deal.

As I mentioned yesterday, the new machine smelled funny. It was an acrid smell, (which is how I described it to the Apple Folks,) unfortunately “acrid” is one of those words that’s become buried in dictionaries but is rarely used these days.

I had to use the sentence, “The smell is reminiscent of a smell commonly associated with burnt out IC chips in old computers or printers.”

That registered with the Tech Support people….

Sigh.

English is such a rich, complex language. It’s a pity so many people, myself included, have poor command of it.

I digress.

The first symptom I noticed was that the Start Up chime had no bass. I wrote that off to the machine having a down level version of the OS, and I’d seen some articles suggesting that there was some kind of sound issue on M1 systems which had been corrected via software.

The second symptom was the acrid smell that increased the longer the machine was running and decreased if the machine was sleeping or turned off. This smell was not the usual smell of a wave soldered circuit board warming up for the first time. That smell is the smell of rosin which is almost sweet smelling. This smell was bitter, and irritating to sinuses, and mucus membranes.

The third symptom was that any and all audio played through the internal speakers had about half of the bass missing.

I don’t listen to music through the internal speakers of my computer very often. One thing that can be said about Apple machines is that their onboard sound systems are quite good.

This particular computer sounded like a Dell from 1990.

These combined issues caused me to seek guidance from AppleCare.

They, as always were nice, polite, and helpful. Tech support made the suggestion that the machine should be swapped out. I was fine with that except that the machine’s configuration is somewhat unusual and the unit has to be built special in China.

The Tech support people went Oh, that could be a problem.

They transferred me to a super nice man named Josh who walked me through all the necessary steps to wipe the machine, remove it from my Find My, and iCloud account.

Then he carefully explained the exchange process. When he quoted me the lead time, I’m sure that he had his earpiece well away from his ear.

In this case he needn’t have worried. The lead time, is late June or early July. He asked if this was alright.

I told him it had to be alright because the machine would have to be built in China, then shipped, and production schedules are what they are. Yeah it’s an inconvenience, but there’s nothing either of us can do about that.

He said, “Thank you for being so understanding about it, most of the time this is the point in the conversation when people start yelling and cursing me out.”

I told him that I had a long career in the industry. I got it. I mentioned that Apple could perhaps mitigate this kind of thing by maintaining a small supply of “Esoteric” builds of products in Cupertino.

Then I followed on explaining that might not work too well because there was no way for Apple to anticipate failures and it would represent dead stock racking up inventory tax just sitting in a warehouse.

The problem with this machine may just be infant mortality. It happens sometimes with complex circuits. Or it could be a manufacturing process issue.

If the problem is a manufacturing issue, Apple better move fast to nip it in the bud. This is the kind of thing that gives companies big shiners when it comes to public opinion.

Reliability gets you customers DOA equipment does not.

We know from experience that China gets sloppy with their manufacturing process from time to time.

Anyone remember tainted dog food? How about tainted Heparin (The blood thinner). Or blood pressure meds tainted with carcinogenic chemicals and in some cases metal filings? Oh, remember the tainted drywall, that was a good one, carcinogenic chemicals vaporizing in enclosed spaces like people’s homes? Then there was the defective lithium ion batteries in Samsung phones (How about a fire in your pants scarecrow?)

Good Job China! Great freaking quality controls you’ve got.

In fairness, given the number of products produced in China that work just fine perhaps I’m being a touch unfair. The problem is that with so much being produced in China, when they screw up, they really screw up on a massive scale.

This is why I’ve always questioned our reliance on goods manufactured in China. This isn’t to say that there aren’t manufacturing problems elsewhere in the world, but It seems to be China where executives are routinely murdered, only when their carelessness embarrasses the CCP. Otherwise everything is, “A-OK top notch…” even when it’s not.

You’ll note I didn’t mention anything about sloppy laboratory practices. We’re not supposed to say anything about a disease causing a panic that crippled the global economy are we? Sloppy laboratory processes, particularly in research labs, can have dire consequences. Just Sayin…

Honestly, I’d be much happier if all Apple products were manufactured here. For that matter I’d be happy if all our products were manufactured locally.

It’s a lot easier to fly a process engineer to Texas, or Oklahoma on a Sunday than to fly that same engineer to freakin China, to figure out whatever step, or steps, a Chinese executive decided to omit to speed up production.

Perhaps an executive forgot to whip the Uyghurs enough on a particular day???

I know, I know, I’m being hypocritical. I have no high ground to bash China when I’m feeding the beast like everyone else, purchasing goods produced for mass consumption under ethically or morally challenged circumstances.

Again, I digress.

Apple has indicated they’re going to be very good about the exchange. I’ve already packed the New Machine up in all of it’s original packing materials. I’ve printed the return label, and I’ll drop it off at a FedEx facility on Monday.

Then I’ll wait for a new, new machine to arrive sometime between June 25th and July 6th.

Although, if it’s a manufacturing issue… It could be longer.

On the one hand I’d like the notoriety of being “The Guy” that caught a problem with Apple’s production lines.

On the other hand, I’m not sure that would be a good thing if thousands of Apple customers have to wait another month for their machines, and know my name.

What would be nice is if Apple responded to my job applications, or better yet sent me the machine for free.

HA! I’m not holding my breath…

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Wow, I’m kind of Offended!

Where’s my safe space? Where’s my bottle? Where’s my reparations? Okay, a bit sarcastic…

I am offended though. After the horror of Elementary School kids being shot in their own classroom, Elementary School Kids? The politicians, the media, and everyone else jumped in with both feet to start pushing gun control again.

Our moronic halfwit in chief had to shoot his mouth off again with his “Deer in Kevlar,” and “People couldn’t buy cannons,” bullshit. So Joe, you’re saying that back at the founding of this country we could go and buy Human Beings, but not a Cannon?

You do realize Joe, that early cannons could be produced by a decent blacksmith with a large enough quantity of iron and a knowledge of casting large metal objects. Those cannons, had no moving parts! If you get down to it, an early cannon is nothing more than a large pipe with one end blocked and a small hole for a fuse. I swear, the moron in chief would do so much better if he just kept his mouth shut.

I digress…

I’m offended that these people couldn’t let the nation take a breath. They couldn’t allow us a freakin moment to process the enormity of what happened.

Instead, these animals had to try to capitalize politically on the tragedy.

Shame on them! Shame on them all!

It’s since come out that the killer wasn’t a deranged white supremacist. (Apparently an LA Times reporter was disappointed about that.) Although the shooter was certainly deranged!

He’d purchased the weapons legally, submitting to the required background checks. He had a number of red flags that were completely ignored. He shot his grandmother after saying he was going to do it on FaceBook, then he went back to Facebook to say he’d shot his grandmother.

He posted on Facebook his intention to shoot a school. He sent via a social media platform, unsolicited photos of guns to a female who was a complete stranger.

He had, according to two different acquaintances from his High School, cut his own face, (for the fun of it…) Others who attended High School with him said that he’d always been a bit off, scary, overly aggressive, or easily enraged.

He is reported to have been shooting at the school, after crashing his vehicle and making his way over a fence onto school grounds.

It took police 10 minutes to respond to the reports of shots fired. There was no School Resource Officer at the school, (in other words, there was no-one present to mount any kind of defensive action.) Some reports are saying that this killer had time to barricade himself in the classroom, and that he may have entered through an unlocked exterior door.

There are many questions to be answered where it comes to the police response.

One for example is that an off duty Border control agent received a message from his wife about an active shooter incident, while he was in a barber’s chair. This Agent has a child in that particular school and armed himself with a shotgun he borrowed from his barber. Then he went to the school and entered the wing where his child’s classroom was located. He helped get students from that wing, including his child out of the school and to safety.

The question here is, how does an unarmed off duty boarder agent have the time to arm up, get to the school, make entry, and start getting children out of the school with help from a few deputies, while the main force of police is still standing around in front of the school?

I think the hearings and testimony will be most interesting to read through.

To be sure, this is a tragedy. It is not however the fault of the gun, the gun manufacturers, the NRA, or gun lobbyists (as Chief Moron in charge would have us believe).

This tragedy is 100% the fault of a single deranged individual. It was his hand that loaded the gun, his hand that pulled the trigger, and his insanity that drove his actions.

The failure here is not that he could legally pass a background check and purchase a weapon.

The failure is that no-one paid any attention to the insanity the person before them presented. Even if they did pay attention, there was nobody to call, and no method to get this person the help they needed or the hospitalization they deserved.

Some of his coworkers have spoken about how easily he became agitated or angry while at work. It’s not like nobody noticed, “This child ain’t right.”

If someone reported him to the police, the police had no actionable violations, even if they had arrested him he’d be out in 8 hours or less. If someone reported him to social services, they had nothing more than a 72 hour hold they could put him in and probably no hospital with an open bed.

That’s the situation I live with in my neighborhood. There’s a female human, (I use that term loosely,) up on the next block who routinely screams she’s going to shoot, stab, castrate, bludgeon, or otherwise kill the man she lives with. Her behavior is no longer limited to just her house or property. Now her physical violence is being inflicted on the neighborhood. Her verbal violence has become commonplace over the past 20 years and no-one pays much attention to her ranting and raving.

The police can’t touch her, social services can’t touch her, and it’s my belief that she’s a ticking time bomb. Her saga will only end when she’s harmed someone and shattered and unknown number of lives.

Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

It sounds a lot like the Texas shooter, or the Brooklyn grocery store guy, or, or, or…

The problem to address is not the guns. The problem that needs to be addressed is a fundamental one.

Where does my right to be safe and secure in my person and property begin, and where do a deranged person’s rights end?

If lawmakers want to make laws and spend money, why don’t they start by working on mental health legislation?

There are a shit ton of Americans who have one or more guns in their homes who have never gone on a shooting spree. On the other hand, there are a lot of Americans who are, (or were,) in real need of mental health services and can’t access them. Those folks are the folks that have a propensity to go on shooting sprees and kill innocents.

Just for clarity’s sake. AR-15 does not stand for Assault Rifle 15. It stands for Armalite Rifle model 15.

Many gun manufacturers make AR-15 rifles, each with their own flourish and manufacturer label. At its heart, an AR-15 is an AR-15, and all of them work the same way. The legal ones are semi-automatic, (one round per trigger pull,) all are based on the original modular design of the Armalite Rifle company.

One can be purchased legally in most states for anywhere from $800 to $3000, depending on options.

Our politicians are quick to seize on the AR-15 as something that must be controlled. Okay, so they want to ban assault rifles. What exactly is an assault rifle? If politicians succeed in banning AR-15s. They’ll only remove a portion of available guns. What about the other guns? The rifles and handguns that aren’t banned? A lever action rifle, or a pump action shotgun, a revolver, or a semi-automatic pistol, all fling a wad (or wads) of lead at high velocities. All can inflict injury and all can cause death.

When lawmakers are talking about gun legislation what are they trying to legislate? The number of rounds that can be fired before reloading? The speed at which rounds can be fired? The caliber of the rounds being fired? What exactly are they trying to control?

Because the lawmakers are so imprecise about what they’re legislating, it leads me to believe that they’re trying to take away all guns. Regardless of the constitutional violation of doing so, if lawmakers were to succeed in removing all guns. (An impossible task) I’m sure that people would simply migrate to Compound or Recurve Bows. Or as in the case of the UK, knives.

The point is, some people will always seek to kill other people. In the case of deranged individuals, the weapon is far less important than the motivation. I think it was in Japan, one knife wielding crazy person wounded 20 people on a subway platform. I don’t recall how many died. This guy was walking through the crowd stabbing people and a lot of the people on the platform didn’t realize there was a threat at first.

Which leads back to addressing the real source of the problem. Mental health. Lawmakers need to enact legislation that provides the services to address mental health issues and where necessary remove individuals from society at large that are obviously a threat.

People who, for instance fantasize about killing, people who consistently state they’re going to kill someone specific or people at large, people who post threats on social media, etc.

When a neighborhood calls the police repeatedly about a disturbance where someone is screaming, “I’ll shoot you, I’ll stab you, I’ll kill you,” perhaps the police should send the person somewhere that they can get help. What should not happen is that the neighborhood stops reporting the issue because nothing is ever done.

School teachers are taught to look for signs of abuse in children. Perhaps they should also be taught to look for signs of mental health issues, and report them. Early intervention is much better than having to stop an active shooter.

So many of our politicians, pundits, and wags, jump up on their soapboxes after a tragedy like the Texas shooting. They demand, “Commonsense gun control”. I say they’re screaming to fix a symptom, not the disease.

New York and California have some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation. I think both state have “Red Flag” laws where the guns of an individual can be seized and held in police custody until the owner is proven fit and competent.

I ask how is it possible that you can have a grocery store in New York become a killing ground? How is it that you can have a San Bernardino Shooting at a county office? If gun laws worked, these shooters wouldn’t have had the guns in the first place.

How about we take the elephant in the room outside? Let’s rise to the challenge of addressing that mental illness isn’t being treated, but it should be.

To our politicians, pundits, and wags. At least have the decency to let the bodies cool before making your political grandstand moment.

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Beware the echo chamber…

After two years of more of less isolation, perhaps we’ve all fallen into our own personal echo chambers.

It’s not intentional. It’s simply what happens in isolation. There will be those who say we’ve not been isolated because we have the internet and the news, etc. But we have been isolated from people and friends who challenge our beliefs.

It’s the personal interactions, it’s the people we care about, our friends, family, etc. who add balance to our thoughts and opinions. Without those people challenging us, we fall into patterns where it’s far too easy to self validate what we think and as humans do, we assume that we’re right.

COVID has provided a perfect storm in this regard.

No matter how egalitarian we try to be in our news absorption we inevitably develop biases and preferred news sources. It could happen because those sources have pretty people, or entertaining pieces, or that they simply validate what we’re already thinking. Eventually we choose those sources that we’re comfortable with. Then we narrow our focus to only the comfortable.

Without discussion and interaction. Without people we respect and care about pushing back and saying, “Well this report here says thus and such,” it’s easy to create an echo chamber and not notice it.

I’m guilty… Are you?

That’s not about laying blame. None of us should feel threatened by this realization. It’s just a sign post that says, “Hey there, we need to do better.” None of us are perfect, but we all should at least aspire to keep walking that path and get as close as possible.

The problem with echo chambers is they feed division. Everyone walks around with their own entrenched beliefs and they defend them.

How many people have said, or been heard to say, “You are wrong and I don’t want to be friends anymore,”? Isn’t that the same as a dating profile saying “Republicans don’t contact me,”

That’s not healing, that’s not being open minded. It’s in the discussion of even closely held beliefs that validation, or error is uncovered. Sometimes neither validation or error is uncovered but the discussion provides enlightenment.

The enlightenment I’m talking about is understanding what drives the core belief. For example. Just because someone was tried for a crime and there was nothing uncovered in a trial that was legally actionable. It doesn’t mean there was nothing there in the first place. It may mean that someone was skating along the boundaries of the law and they were clever enough or lucky enough to stay just out of reach.

Al Capone is a good example. For years the FBI and other law enforcement knew Capone was in charge of a massive criminal organization. They could never actually pin anything on him directly. They didn’t have sufficient evidence and no matter how many times they arrested Capone, the case always fell apart. Until the IRS got involved. Then it was a whole new ball game.

Maybe, a way forward for all of us, is to have those uncomfortable discussions. But both parties really need to listen.

That’s the hard part, listening and divorcing yourself from your beliefs for a time. That way, you can get into the head of the other person thereby understanding the factual or not so factual underpinning of why they believe a certain way about something.

It doesn’t matter if you agree or not with their belief. What matters is that we all acknowledge that no-one is an idiot for thinking in a way we don’t agree with. It’s just that we each put “facts” together in some kind of order that makes it possible to cope with the world around us.

I’ve written in these pages that I personally think something was amiss in the most recent election. For that matter I could make a case that something has been amiss in elections going back decades.

When I’ve said that I thought the most recent election should be investigated. It wasn’t to depose Biden and install Trump. I honestly don’t care about which of the two is president.

I’m not even sure if constitutionally Biden could be removed at this point. I don’t even want to consider the chaos that removing a Biden Administration and installing a Trump Administration would cause. I guess I’m more of a, “Well, we’re here now, we just have to muddle through,” we have to do better next time. I don’t like Biden. I personally think he’s incompetent, but Harris is no better.

I as a voter, don’t like being placed in a situation where I feel that I have to choose the devil or the deep blue sea.

That doesn’t mean that I’m pro Trump. I personally think that he did some things that were beneficial for the country in the near term but I don’t have enough knowledge of politics to be able to project how those near term benefits play out over time. I’m willing to acknowledge that perhaps the folks who were screaming about his policies know, or knew something I missed.

When I say I think we should look at the elections, I’m saying that from a perspective of fixing what’s broken.

How do we change the system to make sure that the next election, everyone feels confident enough in the system that they believe the results represent the will of the electorate? I’d like for everyone to be able to comfortably say, “I didn’t like the result but that’s okay, because the system was fair and it works.“

I’d be willing to bet that average folks on both sides of the political gulf could get behind that. The politicians might not like it all that much, but the people they’re supposed to represent might like it a lot.

It hit me, that folks might not understand the nuance I’m talking about. I’d like to see a disassembly of the voting process to find the bugs and plug them. That would be a big task, and it would take representation from all parties, not just the big two. That’s also why I’m in the near term pro voter ID.

I’m not about preventing someone from casting their vote. I am about preventing someone from casting 20 votes. Yes, it would be inconvenient to have to present ID to obtain a ballot. but the benefit outweighs the inconvenience. God knows, I remember how slow it was to write a check and present ID in the grocery store line.

I’d like to see the next election, be clean. I’d like for there to be no margin for a candidate to do what Trump did this last election. We should remember that before Trump, there was Al Gore claiming the election irregularities.

Folks call it “The Big Lie”. I call it a warning sign. How about we figure out a way to eliminate the possibility of “The Big Lie” altogether? That seems like a worth while enterprise doesn’t it?

I’m amazed how many people have Trump living in their heads rent free. I’d prefer to push him into history and deal with what is in front of us. Yes, I acknowledge that Trump is living in my head rent free too. I try very hard to only let him have a cheap studio apartment with a leaky toilet. It’s hard to do because there’s so much media attention still focused on him.