What???? I've Been Busy

My parents have decided to sell and I am going to land in......Hull.  Is it the greatest?  Is it the biggest?  Was it the cheapest?  No, but it is on the water, and I mean, building; one lane road; dune.  I am on the ocean side of the building and it has hardwood floors and a reasonable closet.  For my birthday I might be asking for those hurricane shutters......lol.

So I've been sorting and packing and discovering the joy of "Air Bags" and throwing things away.  Today I threw away a feather pillow that I bought in 1982.  It was beat to hell and it was in a box of other bedding.  What was I going to do with it?  Is there a "feather pillow reviving" place?  Anyway.

Frank and I made a quick New York trip.  Didn't get much done but we ate off of street carts and lived to tell the tale.  I asked William Shatner to handle the hotel for me and we got.....Andaz on Wall Street, it's on the Conde Nast Gold list.  Just lovely.  It was good recon for when I go back in a few months.

I've been holding my tongue on a lot of the Newtown/gun control/mental health debate because some people's ignorance is so appalling.  If I started, it would end with the Secret Service on my doorstep.

Let me just say that I am surprised at how many act like this is the epitome of evil.  Newtown was awful and I grieve with my fellow Americans, but it was not so long ago that Islamic Chechnyan terrorists killed 185 children in Beslan.  One of the things people rightfully point out about Americans is that we are rather self-centered.  WBCN used to have a DJ who joked about a chart that measured American lives against foreign lives.  This is a perfect example.

Lots of people point to European models when talking healthcare or social services.  Well, let's look there now. People who advocate for gun control categorize Russian gun laws as "Restrictive" but as I said guns killed 380 people there including 185 children.  How about Norway?  Another "restrictive" country, yet Anders Breivik managed to kill 77 people there, 50 of whom were 18 & younger.  So my question is, where will more gun control get you?

So you're upset that children are dead?  Well then you must have backed US action in Afghanistan where we were helping to educate people and rebuild the infrastructure.  After all, what better way to make inroads against the nearly 20% child mortality rate there.  Lot's of children waiting to be saved in Afghanistan.

Oh, no?  It's American children you care about?  Well then, you must be out there advocating better car seats & safer driving because the leading cause of death in American children 5 to 14 is motor vehicle accidents.

More children in gun owning households die from gun accidents.  Yeah and more children in two story house die of falls than in one story houses.  More children in homes with pools drown than those without.  More children on farms die in machinery accidents than city kids.  What's your point?

But really, that's not what this is all about is it?  It's just an opportunity to attack the 2nd Amendment.  Like Rahm Emmanuel said, "Never let a crisis go to waste.".  If you bought Obama's tears at that press conference then I don't know what to say to you.  If you don't understand that the 2nd Amendment is an important check in our system of checks and balances, then I don't know what to say to you.  If you don't understand that Newtown is more of an indictment of our mental health system than the 2nd Amendment, then I don't know what to say to you.

Newtown, like Beslan and Norway, was an evil thing.  It's not a lesson or an opportunity.  It's just evil and evil exists and will never be stopped.