Our xenophobic side

Perhaps Ned's friends will allow him to exhibit a bit of his xenophobic side for a brief, shining moment. We wonder, with the greatest respect, what is wrong with so many of our "Korean American" associates? First we hear of their adherence to the "Rev" Moon's "church," which for pure unadulterated silliness makes the Mormons look like a collection of St Thomas Aquinas knockoffs. Then we turn to a darker side: the killer of more than 30 innocent people at Virginia Tech--remember that?-- was carried out by a, you guessed it, Korean American, with a "troubled history." Now we find yet another maniac has been able to legally obtain a semi-autmatic sidearm and, claiming to be "really mad" at his fellow students because they mocked his poor English, he set out to kill as many as he could. He, too, is described in press reports as "having a troubled history."
We once again pine for the days of the Guardia Civil in Spain, when persons with a "troubled history,"of an antisocial bent, upon having been been clearly and repeatedly exhibited, simply disappeared into confinement before they could kill or maim any of their fellows. How many of our innocent friends, acquaintances and relatives, dead now through the actions of sociopaths with a repeated history of such behavior, would be alive today? We of course can never know. Barring a revival of the Guardia Civil, we would be happy if every handgun in the country were to be confiscated, and their lunatic owners, if complaining, could be sent to the middle of the Utah desert, to be surrounded by their fellow psychopaths.
But of course we value "freedom" far too much for such a sane outcome.
We wish our surviving friends a very good day.

Pathologica americana MMXI

Ned wonders what kind of a pathological societal association finds it logical to conduct body searches of 80-year-old frail travelers, lifted out of wheel chairs for that purpose on the specious pretext of "preventing terrorism," that places speed humps on little-travelled city byways to slow virtually non-existing traffic from 30 to 25 mph to "protect children," that prohibits fences around one's front yard more than two feet high to "protect children from drivers backing out of their driveways," but that happily allows psychopathic individuals to purchase semiautomatic weapons and then slaughter men, women and those same children in broad daylight at a shopping center in Tucson Arizona.
Just askin.'

Gun crazy

Ned's friends have, perhaps, been waiting for Ned's thunderbolt, like Zeus, on the subject of the latest firearm outrage, in this case a sociopathic cretin opening fire at a political gathering, killing a 9-year-old child in the process, among several others. Ned will have little to add to a post he did in October, when he decried the latest (then) gun-related outrage. Here's what he said:
"Ned cannot, for the life of him, understand the "mentality" of the gun crazy fraction of the adult population of this benighted country. We have crazies waving firearms at political rallies, where the President is portrayed as a Nazi and worse. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. The situation seems to Ned to have gotten worse, if that is imaginable, over the past twenty years, perhaps beginning with the demonization of Bill Clinton by the Republican slime machine, which of course was picked up by media outlets more interested in fomenting controversy than any real analysis of events. Then Fox "News" entered the picture and all the 24/7 Cable Channels, with their "all hysteria, all the time" mentality.
What worries Ned is that the average person in this country is not very smart, and to Ned's way of thinking, only slightly removed from a severe form of mental illness--paranoia, psychosis, or what-have-you. In fact, this is not as hyperbolic as it may seem, since "experts" attest that around 20% of adults have some sort of mental problem at some time in their lives.
Combine this nascent paranoia/psychosis with the hysterical presentation of events by cable along with the ready availability of guns and ammo, and you have a conflagration ready to happen. Ned only wonders why it hasn't happened sooner, and then he remembers Oklahoma City, Columbine, VPI, ad nauseam, and wonders how many more of those we will have to endure before we achieve some sort of gun sanity in the US.
He is not hopeful."
Now we have perhaps the most outrageous example of a society gone mad. But Ned doesn't wish to hear any tripe from gun apologists bleating to the extent that "guns don't kill people, people kill people."
Any idiot who uses this phrase should be invited, as calmly as possible, to crawl back into his/her slime-filled hole. For Ned wonders if there is anyone that wouldn't rather face a sociopath armed with a brick than one armed with a semiautomatic Glock, legally purchased in Arizona, a state that shall join a long and growing iist of shame.
Ned further hopes that he will not have to hear any more demented Yahoos spew any more drivel about 'the greatest country in the world.'