Under the Hammer

We have always had dangerous mentally ill people in this country. We used to lock them up, and far too often treated them cruelly. It was wrong for the dangerous mentally ill to be mistreated, but it was not wrong to lock them up.

We stopped locking up dangerous mentally ill people because society decided that it was not necessary. Today the mentally ill who are a danger to themselves and society get hospitalized for a relatively short time and then, far too often, fully drugged up, they are deemed to no longer be a threat to society and are released.

One of the huge problems with this scenario is the obvious fact that they are no longer a threat to society when they are drugged to the gills, but if they are released there is frequently no one to administer the drugs that make them not a threat. So they quit taking the drugs, take the wrong combination, take too many, don't take the drugs at the proper intervals or any combination of that and end up back in the psych ward of a hospital for a couple of weeks until they are drugged up again and deemed ready to go back out in the world.

Look at the complete and utter chaos the Democrats have made of the mental health system in North Carolina. In and of itself, the current system is a crime. The mental health department for Guilford County used to be on the corner of Friendly Avenue and Eugene Street in downtown Greensboro. It is now on the outskirts of West End, which is in Moore County – famous for peaches and golf courses – but an absurd place to headquarter Guilford County's mental health operation. West End is also about 70 miles down the road – not very convenient for someone with mental health problems.

I have only dabbled around the outside of the current system, and it is such a convoluted mess that it is impossible to figure out who is in charge of some aspects of care. Those caught up in the current system can only pray that the Republicans now in charge of state government will be more compassionate than the Democrats and something will be done to actually provide help for people who need it.

The liberals are saying that the problem of mass killings will be solved with gun control. The problem is not guns. The problem is mentally ill people with guns. Everyone should be able to agree that mentally ill people prone to violence should not have guns. But couldn't there be some agreement that society should be protected from mentally ill people prone to violence, period? Shouldn't the mentally ill prone to violence be protected from themselves?

It appears that the pendulum has swung too far. People should not be treated cruelly if they are mentally ill, but it seems that we should all be able to agree that society should have been protected from Adam Lanza, and that he should have been protected from himself.

Keeping guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens isn't going to protect society from dangerous mentally ill people. Keeping dangerous mentally ill people away from weapons of any kind is a much more sensible solution.

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President Barack Hussein Obama seems to think that because he says something, it is true. In his press conference on Monday, Jan. 14, Obama said, "Interest rates would spike for anybody who borrows money – every homeowner with a mortgage, every student with a college loan, every small business owner who wants to grow and hire."

That is demonstrably false. If you borrow money but have a fixed-rate mortgage then your rate won't spike. If you have a business that you want to grow and hire more people, you can use your savings, or family money, or simply manage the business well so you don't have to borrow money, and then your rate won't spike. It won't spike for students who have fixed-rate loans.

So, no, the rate won't affect every homeowner with a mortgage. Now what Obama said could have been stated a little differently and it would be more true, but truth doesn't seem to be something that Obama has any interest in.

Obama's stance on the debt ceiling isn't even internally consistent. He has offered the ultimatum that he won't negotiate because the Republicans have offered an ultimatum. So in his mind it is perfectly obvious that it is acceptable for him to offer an ultimatum but odious for the Republicans to offer an ultimatum. No doubt to Obama and his minions it makes perfect sense.

So far Obama is winning these standoffs with Republicans, and if the Republicans fold this time they might as well hang it up. Obama has convinced the Republicans that he doesn't give a hoot about the economy and will take this country into recession to win a political battle.

The Republicans have convinced Obama that they will fold, every time. But the Republicans have a stronger hand in the debt ceiling issue.

In this case, what Obama is complaining about is once again simply having to negotiate. He says the Republicans say they have to get everything they are asking for or they won't raise the debt ceiling. Of course they are; that is how you negotiate. You don't say, "I'd like to get $150,000 for my house but I'll take $75,000," unless you want to sell it for $75,000, because once you say $75,000 your chance of getting any more is gone.

But Obama says that the debt ceiling should not be negotiated, and he has tried to rewrite history to say that he is being picked on. It simply isn't true. Raising the debt ceiling has been used as a bargaining chip in Washington for decades. In fact – something that cannot be pointed out enough – when Obama was in the Senate and George Walker Bush was president, Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling. It was, of course, perfectly reasonable for Obama to vote against raising the debt ceiling and, according to Obama, just as unreasonable for Republicans to vote against raising the debt ceiling.

Even the White House press corps, which is full of Obama worshippers, has felt the need to point out some of the inconsistencies in Obama's position on the debt ceiling, like the fact that he voted against raising it.

As usual Obama really didn't address that issue and as usual they didn't hold his feet to the fire.

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Even the mainstream media have been giving Obama a hard time about the lack of diversity in his appointments. A photo of his senior White House staff has one minority, Valerie Jarrett, and what makes it even better is you can't see her. You have to accept the fact that she is behind someone.

But imagine if Bush had hired and appointed white men to fill just about all the important positions. The feminists and the NAACP would be in an uproar. However, it's not a problem for Obama. He says that he hires the best person for the job.

It's pretty amazing that no minorities were the best person for any of the Cabinet positions he just filled.

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The mainstream media have presented Republicans as heartless ghouls who have refused to vote for relief funding for the people suffering from the Hurricane Sandy. What they fail to mention is the pork in the bills.

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Originally, the bill was loaded down with pork, and even the version that passed had millions of dollars for Amtrak upgrades, FBI salaries and road projects in states other than those hit by the storm.

It's typical Washington to put a bunch of pork in a bill that it looks really bad to vote against and then chastise those who voted against helping the destitute.

Another reason the majority of Republicans voted against the relief bill is that there were not spending cuts to offset the increased spending. Congress is not going to reduce the deficit if every time someone wants money Congress approves it and sends it along. If Congress wants to send money to the people who were harmed by Sandy then Congress needs to cut spending somewhere else, like other organizations would have to do.

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The mainstream media are so knee jerk that they should be embarrassed. One person says: OK, if you can't ban guns because of the Constitution, ban bullets. Why does anyone need more than a handful of bullets?

It's like saying that golfers need only one golf ball, tennis players only need one tennis ball or a baseball team only needs one baseball and one bat.

In other words, it's absurd. If you want the people who own guns to know how to use them then they have to practice. Guns, as even the mainstream media should know, are extremely dangerous pieces of equipment. Those who are interested in gun safety would be wiser to require that everyone who owns a gun shoot a minimum number of rounds every year. Most police officers never fire their guns except on the practice range, but most police departments require their officers to qualify every year to prove that they can still shoot accurately.

Someone said you don't need to shoot 10 rounds to kill a deer. That may or may not be true. But it is certainly true that if you want to kill a deer you better shoot far more than 10 rounds with whatever gun you're using so that you are familiar with it and comfortable shooting it.

People act like guns are what they see on television, where the good guy never misses the bad guy. Shooting a gun accurately on the range is difficult; in a real life situation, it is, I am told, a hundred or a thousand times more difficult.

I have never shot a gun except at inanimate targets, but I did catch a man a few years ago who had broken into our building. When I saw him I immediately tried to call the police. I had my phone in my hands and I remember staring at it trying to remember how to make it work. I had used that phone thousands of times, but in an emergency I couldn't remember how to make it call the police. The burglar didn't wait for me to figure out how to use my phone and jumped in his truck and drove away.

I can only imagine if the situation had been dangerous and I had been trying to remember where the safety was on a gun.

I don't want people running around with guns who don't know how to use them, and the only way to know how to use them is to use them.

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I always wonder how much good these celebrities do at disasters. Do they do any good?

According to The New York Times, former President Bill Clinton, who was impeached during his second term as president, was pretty worthless in Haiti. The New York Times loves Clinton, but even it couldn't find much good to say about his relief efforts there. The paper did find someone to say nice things about him. But, after all, he is Bill Clinton. In Haiti, Clinton was involved in spending a lot of money, but they didn't accomplish much of anything useful.

But what does Clinton know how to do? Campaigning really isn't going to help anything in Haiti, and neither is holding a bunch of big meetings. Clinton knows how to have sexual relations with young female interns, but that really wasn't a skill that was needed in Haiti. What they needed in Haiti were people who could get to the bottom of a huge mess and get things done.

One member of Clinton's commission described it as a being "like in a play – the facade of a reconstruction project."

There are two very telling facts about Clinton's commission. One is that it operated out of an air-conditioned tent on the grounds of the US Embassy. Before the earthquake, having air-conditioning in Haiti was an enormous luxury, far out of the reach of the vast majority of the population. It was also out of the reach of the presidential palace, judging by the fact that before the quake the palace windows were kept open; I can't imagine why you would open a window in 90 plus degree heat if you had air-conditioning. After the earthquake hundreds of thousands of people were living in tents with no electricity or running water. But the commission that was going to help them had to have air-conditioning for what, according to reports, was a mostly empty tent.

The second most telling fact about Clinton's commission is that when they thought it was dangerous in Haiti they met at a luxury hotel in the Dominican Republic. How can a disaster relief commission help people if it is too frightened to get within hundreds of miles of them?

Clinton's commission was dissolved by the Haitian government.

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I have a challenge for our new governor, Pat McCrory, and I'll include North Carolina Department of Transportation board member Mike Fox: During my lifetime I would like for them to make it possible for me to drive from Greensboro to Charlotte and back during normal business hours without hitting stop-and-go traffic. The state has finally fixed the bridge over the Yadkin River, something that should have been done 20 years ago, but what buffoon decided that just outside of Charlotte there needed to be a two lane bottleneck. I-85 links Charlotte, the state's largest city, with Greensboro, the state's third largest, and Raleigh, the state's second largest. Don't you think it might make sense to make it bigger than the road linking Candor, Biscoe and Star?

It is ridiculous that one of the most important roads for commerce in the state is not in better shape. There is simply no excuse. The state has made a huge effort to pave every little country byway and lane in this state for some obscure reason, but fails to take care of the state's most important highways.

The Republicans now in control have a lot to do, and fixing highway spending should be at the top of the list.

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