President Obama's eulogy

I was heartened by President Obama's question to the people of Newtown, and to the rest of us:

Are we really prepared to say that we're powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?  Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?

That would be the exact question, almost to the word, that I would put before those who fear that the loss of their guns would mean the end of freedom.  There comes a tipping point, when you have to understand that following your beliefs to the letter can do more harm than good.

In any case, I am not advocating the rounding up of guns from people who hunt, or who want to protect themselves in their own homes.  But there have to be limits in what we allow people to own.  Let's get together and define those limits.

President Obama finds himself in a difficult situation again, because of the people who believe, without any reason a sane person can see, that the government will be coming after everybody's guns during his second term.  But we really can't reach the delusional.  Reasonable people must work this problem out.

President Obama has become, or is trying to become, a symbol of government that protects citizens from harm, not of a government that is the enemy of the people.  I truly hope that more people begin to work to build, or rebuild, such a government.

Twenty schoolchildren

Regarding the twenty children and six adults killed in the Connecticut elementary school today, I am warning any gun nut or second amendment absolutist to SHUT THE FUCK UP in my presence, and to grow up about the second amendment and responsible gun control.

I have heard everything you have to say countless times whenever there is a mass shooting in this country.  I do not want to hear what you have to say, ever again.  You second amendment absolutists may take the second amendment and your first amendment rights and shove them up your ass.  Or you can expect a punch in the face.

A little frivolity

OK, some guy over on Slate recently did a series on "prog," which refers to the old bloated, pretentious, but sometimes good, genre of rock that punk rose up and slew in the late 1970s.  He mentioned a lot of the usual suspects, like Yes and Jethro Tull, whose ambitions ended up being disparaged as just too much.

I got to wondering how, through it all, Pink Floyd escaped that fate.  I thought about this as I listened to Atom Heart Mother, which is about as overblown as rock gets.  Don't get me wrong, I like Pink Floyd, and I recognize that they may have been saved in part by their sense of humor, although works like The Wall made me think that Pink Floyd's popularity might better be explained by the great well of depression that was there for the tapping in the general public.

But it's just one of those things I sometimes wonder about.  How did such a weird band become, and remain, so popular among people who ordinarily like stuff that's a little safer?