Social and Economic Comments

Social
If your goal is to comfort, it is probably a good idea to keep your mouth closed, instead of saying stuff that makes things worse:

Friendly Atheist makes the point:

I don’t know if I’m more disturbed by the comment or the fact that 41 people “liked” it… (Thank you to John Meredith for his sane response.)
[...] I know there are Christians out there who are responding to the shootings in a truly helpful way. No one doubts that. But let’s put to rest this notion that being a Christian makes you a better, kinder, more decent human being. It doesn’t and it never has.

My guess: the people who said this probably had good intentions; they are merely clueless. And you know what the Road To Hell is paved with…

Re: gun control. Note: “gun control” should be “better regulation”. That doesn’t mean “take away people’s guns”. So what should our political leaders do? Of course I agree that they should push for policies that are backed up by data…and not merely rely on intuition.

But one thing that shouldn’t happen: they should not be held hostage by the NRA or other such groups. Now it is clear that Democrats are more hospitable to gun regulations than Republicans, and Paul Krugman says that Democrats ought to just blow off the gun lobby:

So Nate Cohn argues that this same logic applies to gun control: the voters who care passionately about their semi-automatic weapons are rural whites who ain’t gonna vote Democratic in any case — and the new Democratic coalition doesn’t need them. David Atkins takes it further, saying the awful truth: the pro-gun fanatics are basically the kind of people who think that Obama is a Kenyan socialist atheistic Islamist, and the urban hordes are coming for their property any day now. People, in other words, who already vote 100 percent Republican — and lose elections.

As Cohn says, it’s not clear whether Democrats realize how things have changed. But maybe yesterday’s horror will provoke some fresh thought, and they’ll realize that this does not have to go on.

One HUGE caveat: beware of using the term “Democrats” too loosely. Remember the 2010 mid term election, in which the Republicans picked up 63 House seats? A minimum of 34 of those seats came from Congressional districts that Senator McCain won in 2008, and a few more came from districts in which turned blue in the 2008 election. I haven’t checked the elections of the districts that were still undecided at the time I made that 2010 post.

Economy
Where does the ONE TRILLION dollar deficit come from? Mostly: expected effects of the sluggish economy.

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