2015, More or Less

English: Kim Kardashian at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival for the premiere of Wonderful World. Photographer's blog post about these photos. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This was the year of More or Less, though it seems that way every year.  Only more so.  And our options for doing anything about them are less.  In 2015 alone, there was . . .

• More war in the Middle East, which leads to more terrorism, more refugees (or migrants, if you prefer), more bombing strikes which makes the enemy stronger, and fewer answers.
• More attacks on civilians, whether it's of the terrorist kind (Paris--twice--and San Bernardino), the lone-wolf type (Charleston, Colorado Springs and Lafayette, Louisiana), or any other random act (anywhere in America).  Less willingness to control guns or improve mental health screening, more security theater.
• More protests against white police officers who kill African American suspects.  Less willingness to convict those officers, video evidence or not.
• More evidence that climate change is going to be worse than imagined. Meanwhile, we're reading that even though people are paying less money for gas, the American economy's alleged recovery isn't happening.
• More rights for same-sex couples, as even the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to let them marry.  Which leads to more people like Kim Davis who want to send LGBTs back into the closet.
• More Catholic (and other) priests are being reined in for sexual abuse charges several decades in the making.  Which is part of the reason why less people consider themselves Christians, and why more of them have given up on religion altogether.
• More candidates stepped up to campaign for President Barack Obama's job, which becomes available in 2017.  More campaign money than ever before has been coming from big political donors.  Unless your name is Donald Trump.  Less of a chance that Republicans can successfully counter Trump's outrageousness and in curbing their zeal for turning back the clock on Obama's accomplishments, or for Democrats to take anyone but Hillary Clinton seriously.
• More women have come out of the shadows (some after several decades) to accuse Bill Cosby of allegedly drugging, then raping them.  Unless Cosby and his lawyers can prove otherwise, his accomplishments as a groundbreaking entertainer become less and less reputable.
• More publicity for the Kardashians.  Bruce Jenner is now Caitlyn, and is being hailed as a role model of sorts.  Lamar Odom, the former basketball star married to Khloe, has a near-death experience at a brothel in Nevada.  Kim poses nude for an obscure magazine, then gives birth to a boy.  Husband Kanye West wants to run for President in 2020.  Less chance that we've heard the last of The Family K in 2016.
• More movie blockbusters like the "Star Wars", "Hunger Games" and "Jurassic Park" spiking the box office totals.  Less reason to bother watching films intended for comic book geeks, requiring a working knowledge of the chapters that came before, at prices that rival a night at the ballpark.
• More shows and personalities leaving TV:  "Mad Men", "Parks and Recreation", "Two-and-a-Half Men", "How I Met Your Mother", "CSI:  Crime Scene Investigation", David Letterman and Jon Stewart.  Less exposure for former "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams, whose "misremembering" of events he may or may not have been a part of got him demoted to MSNBC.
• Taylor Swift and Adele are seeing more and more sales for their albums and their concert tours.  Miley Cyrus, Iggy Azalea and Justin Bieber are seeing less and less people care about them.
• More use of hashtags on social media, meaning less use of the words "of", "and", "the" to drive English teachers nuts.
• More people bought copies of Harper Lee's "Go Set a Watchman", her first published novel in more than 50 years.  After seeing what became of Atticus Finch, however, "To Kill a Mockingbird" is less of a classic than it used to be.
• Playboy magazine, which helped start the sexual revolution in the 1950s, is giving up its nude centerfolds because more and more people are getting their naked female fix on the Internet, which translates into less and less subscribers.  Obviously, Hugh Hefner's creation is hoping that more and more people will be reading the articles.

There are more notable people who died this year than this list provides.  That doesn't mean we think anything less of them.

Mario Cuomo, Stuart Scott, Rod Taylor, Bob Simon, David Carr, Lesley Gore, Leonard Nimoy, B.B. King, Omar Sharif, E.L. Doctorow, Bobbi Kristina Brown, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, Julian Bond, Paul Prudhomme, Maureen O'Hara, Fred Thompson, Allen Toussaint, David Canary, Scott Weiland, Donna Douglas, Dean Jones, Ben E. King, Cynthia Lennon, Colleen McCullough, Rod McKuen, Jayne Meadows, Anne Meara, John Nash, Al Molinaro, Dick Van Patten, Bud Kraehling, Dick Chapman, Stan Freberg, Meadowlark Lemon, Theodore Bikel, Yvonne Craig, Richard Dysart, Anita Ekberg, Marty Ingels, Louis Jourdan, Kirk Kerkorian, Christopher Lee, Robert Loggia, Marjorie Lord, Patrick Macnee, Gary Owens, Betsy Palmer, Jerry Weintraub, Natalie Cole and Wayne Rogers.

That was 2015.  Here comes 2016 . . . more or less.

Democrats Debate: The Campaign Awakens

Hillary Clinton in Hampton, NH (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The last Democratic debate of 2015 in New Hampshire ended Saturday night with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telling her audience "May the force be with you", in acknowledgement of a certain movie that premiered this weekend.  That's appropriate, since Clinton, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley might soon be doing battle against the dark forces of the Republican Party.

The evening began with Sanders apologizing to Clinton for a campaign worker who allegedly stole voter data from her camp, which caused the Democratic National Committee to bar Sanders' campaign from using any data. Sanders filed suit, claiming the DNC was doing all it can to make it easier for Clinton to win the party's nomination.  With that out of the way, the debate could begin.

Clinton, Sanders and O'Malley then spent the rest of the evening talking (sometimes over each other) issues such as national security, gun control, the economy, health care, student debt, taxes, race and police relations, heroin abuse and Hillary Clinton herself.  In other words, it's nothing you haven't heard before if you've been following their campaigns.

We didn't hear much about what to do about immigration or climate change.  Nor did we hear any mention of the GOP candidates besides Donald Trump, who might as well be Darth Vader to the Democrats.

This was a civil and substantial debate compared to the Republicans' display of fear and loathing in Las Vegas (apologies to Hunter S. Thompson) earlier in the week.  That one was mostly about national security, the candidates having not met since the terrorist attacks on Paris and San Bernardino, California.  It prompted conservative moderator Hugh Hewitt to ask the candidates what happened to the sunny optimism GOP icon Ronald Reagan had used during his presidency.  They didn't really answer that question.  But you could say that Reagan never had to deal with 9/11 and its consequences, among other things.

We mentioned before that Sanders has a beef with the DNC about their alleged favoritism toward Clinton, which includes the limited number of debates compared to the GOP's, then get scheduled when people are least likely to see them.  This Democratic debate was put on ABC on a Saturday night in December, opposite a New York Jets-Dallas Cowboys football game on NFL Network.  Not to let the DNC off the hook, but it could also be argued that ABC didn't want to pre-empt "Dancing With The Stars", "Modern Family", or any of the Shondaland dramas to broadcast a low-rated debate.  So they stick it on the least-watched night of the week, hoping that those who really cared took the time to program their recording devices.

A few weeks before primary and caucus season begins, Hillary Clinton still holds a commanding lead in the polls over her rivals.  If form holds true, she might be the one who has the task of keeping America from going over to the dark side.  Light sabers not required.

GOP Debate: Talking Tough and Saying Little

Trump hotel (Las Vegas) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A lot has changed since Donald Trump and the other Republican presidential candidates last took the stage to debate the issues.  The terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino happened.  National security became Topic A.  And Trump's lead in the polls just keeps getting bigger in spite of his desire to keep Muslims and Mexicans out of the country.  He is overshadowing every other candidate (even the Democrats) in media coverage.

The last GOP debate of the year was held Tuesday in Las Vegas.  It was broadcast on CNN, where 18 million of you chose to forsake "NCIS" and "The Voice" to watch nine people discuss national security and foreign policy.

Amid all the babble that was worthy of a Robert Altman film, we heard Trump defend his controversial plans while making faces at the cameras when others were speaking.  Former HP executive Carly Fiorina was implying that the use of technology since 9/11/01 has evolved past government's ability to keep up with it in fighting terrorism.  New Jersey Governor Chris Christie sounded like he was saber-rattling with Russian president Vladimir Putin.  Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz mixed it up over modernizing the military and bombing the hell out of Islamic State.  Governor John Kasich continued to use his state of Ohio as a reference point.  Jeb Bush is still making strides in trying to convince folks that he really is a contender, despite having a familiar name and a really big campaign war chest.  Senator Rand Paul is still hanging in there despite reports that he might soon drop out.  And Dr. Ben Carson is probably still wondering what he's doing here.

Add to that the number of times we heard the candidates use the phrase "radical Islamic terrorists", blaming President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the ills of the world, and denouncing political correctness.  It's as if these guys want to be the next one to start a war, instead of finishing the ones we already have.

There are a few weeks remaining before the primary and caucus seasons begin.  Trump has again promised not to run as an independent if the GOP doesn't nominate him.  But that doesn't mean the party is any more comfortable with the lack of candidates that are mainstream enough to compete with Hillary Clinton.  Their new motto ought to be:  We might not win many votes, but we sure know how to scare the hell out of people.

Days of Infamy

speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on February 10, 2011. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On December 7, 1941, Japanese planes destroyed the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.  The next day, as President Franklin Roosevelt asks Congress to declare war, he said the attack was "a day which will live in infamy".

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was gunned down by an assassin's bullet on the streets of Dallas, Texas.

On December 8, 1980, singer-activist John Lennon was also killed by an assassin's bullet just outside his New York City apartment.

On December 2, 2015, fourteen people in a San Bernardino, California banquet hall died in what is now considered to be a terrorist attack, the worst in the United States since September 11, 2001.

All of the above involved weapons, political agendas, allegedly demented individuals, airplanes, or any kind of combination.

So how do you react to something like this?  Do you take up arms?  Do you demonize the enemy?  Or do you sit back and hope "this too shall pass"?

If you're President Barack Obama, you spend 15 minutes on a Sunday night between football games reassuring a frightened country that the U.S. is on the case in helping rid the world of the scourge called ISIL, but without providing specifics about how they're going to do that.  Given the President's failure to convince a gridlocked Congress to go along with his plans to get guns off the streets in the past, his chances are not good.

If you're Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, you call for all Muslims to be temporarily banned from entering the United States, even though it is realistically and constitutionally impractical.  Trump wants to hearken back to the days when, following Pearl Harbor, FDR ordered Americans of Japanese descent to be rounded up and sent to internment camps.  Just like Hitler sent six million Jewish people to their deaths in places like Auschwitz for no good reason other than he didn't like them.

Others might denounce Trump for suggesting something so drastic in the wake of a major tragedy, but he doesn't care.  Not as long as he leads every other GOP candidate by a wide margin in the polls, and could take those numbers into an independent campaign if he chooses to turn his back on a promise not to do so.  And that's what has the Republicans running scared.

If you're an ordinary citizen, you might be seriously contemplating buying a gun to protect you and your family. Even though the odds of getting killed in a terrorist attack or a mass shooting are rather small, and the crime rate is supposed to be down.  But if you watch enough TV news, listen to conservative talk radio and read questionable reports on the Internet, you'll believe that even a trip to the grocery store is fraught with danger unless you're packing heat.  And who pays any attention to those "guns are prohibited in this building" signs, anyway?

This is the American mentality we are living with as 2015 comes to a close.  The Wild West is alive and well because of determined assassins, hysterical politicians, sensationalized media, and a public that either doesn't know what to believe or is preparing for a real or imagined invasion.  If something doesn't change, it won't be long before there's another day of infamy.

Open Season

English: Downtown San Bernardino (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So here we are again.  At the start of the holiday season, people are shopping at the mall or online and celebrating with friends and loved ones.  This year, the one thing people would dearly love to have that doesn't have a "Star Wars" tie-in is this:  Relief from getting caught in the crossfire from those with guns and agendas, or having to watch it every time they turn on the TV.

• Fourteen killed at a center for developmentally-challenged adults in San Bernardino, California.
• Three are killed when a lone gunman opens fire on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
• One hundred thirty died in attacks on several different Paris venues.  The finger is pointed at Islamic State.
• Four are charged with the shooting of five Black Lives Matter demonstrators (none seriously) outside a Minneapolis police station, where they have been protesting the death of a young African American man allegedly at the hands of a white police officer.

You know where all this leads, don't you?  Hysteria, panic, calls to close the borders, extra groping at the airport, etc.  And that just comes from the Republican presidential candidates.  The rest of us take to social media expressing our anger and sorrow, which makes reading the comments in Facebook and Twitter such a pleasant experience if you're a masochist.

The massacre in Paris hasn't helped the plight of those Syrians who are fleeing their country's ruinous civil war.  At least ten thousand of them are slated to enter the United States in the next couple of years, but only after they've gone through rigorous background checks.

Some governors, in a show of bravado, have pledged not to let the migrants into their states out of concern for public safety.  Though they can't legally do that, the (mostly GOP) governors do have a point.  Even though the vast majority of Syrians might pass through the stringent checks with flying colors, there's always the possibility that one or two of them might game the system and sneak in to commit jihad on American soil.  Is that really worth punishing the 99 percent of Syrians who aren't card-carrying members of the Islamic State, and who simply want a better chance at life?

Besides, foreigners with terrorist connections weren't responsible for the Thanksgiving-weekend carnage in Colorado.  What is clear is that, in the more than four decades since the Supreme Court decided on Roe v. Wade, we're still arguing over abortion rights.  Only now, it has gotten deadlier with restrictions on those rights in some states and doctors getting death threats for doing their jobs.

Racist, trigger-happy cops deserve our scorn for the mistrust African Americans have for police departments these days.  But when the victim allegedly had a history of domestic abuse, interfered with paramedics who tried to help his girlfriend, and a dispute rises over whether or not he was handcuffed at the time he was shot, you really have to wonder.

President Barack Obama, in the final year or so of his White House residency, can only shrug his shoulders and offer condolences after events like these.  Nothing the President has said or done has caused Congress to pass meaningful legislation on immigration reform, climate change, gun control or civil rights.  Instead, he will likely make another sobering speech about the events in San Bernardino while reassuring Americans that there are no credible terrorist threats during the holiday season.

Meanwhile, Open Season continues.  Happy Holidays, America.