Member to NRA: Drop Dead

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I joined the National Rifle Association some years ago, after moving to Arizona, because I liked their work in gun-safety education and in firearms understanding. I'm not a hunter, but I know hunters. I'm a military veteran, so guns are not unknown to me. And I live in what used to be called the Wild West.

But I'm not renewing my membership.

The NRA, which has always had radical right-wing elements, has become nothing more now than an armed subsidiary of the extremist wing (and is there any other these days?) of the Republican Party, its publications foul with nasty propaganda, outright lies, and incessant Omaba-hating.

This has occurred under the aegis of the NRA's boss, a fellow named Wayne LaPierre, who wears a pompadour the likes of which I haven't seen since the Lawrence Welk Orchestra's trombone section was on a bus. LaPierre, who snarls like a warrior, is actually one of those faux warriors I love to identify -- a guy about my age who loudly supports war but who himself managed to dodge the Vietnam draft when he was a young man. They are called "chicken-hawks," and the list is long and sad.

And by the way, what the hell kind of a name is "Wayne LaPierre?" Sounds like something W.C. Fields would have cooked up.

Now my membership renewal in the NRA is predicated on the need to "defeat President Obama" who, LaPierre tells me in my renewal letter, plans to "dismantle the heritage of our country and tear down the foundations of our liberties."

LaPierre makes a cool $1 million as the guy leading the NRA into this folly.

My $25 renewal fee is not coming your way this year, LaPierre. The NRA is no longer an organization that has value as a representative of gun-owners and gun-safety advocates who are not also right-wing screwballs (and draft-dodgers).

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Man With a Gun

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There was a big fat guy sharing a confidence with a dealer in very large firearms yesterday at the Crossroads of the West gun show in Tucson.

"I know a guy high up in Homeland Security," the fat man was saying with self-assurance. "If Obama gets reelected, the first thing they're going to do is take guns away from anybody who's a member of any organized church."

The gun dealer nodded gravely, but actually he was looking over this lunatic's shoulder, searching for potential buying customers, of which there seemed to be few among the throngs of people who wandered the crowded aisles by counters and booths stocked with a staggering selection of rifles, shotguns and handguns, ammunition, magazines, martial-arts gear, hunting and survival knives, and even the occasional table full of religious end-times books. Will the religious nuts in America -- and I include even the perpetually alarmed nuns who taught me in grade school in the 1950s -- ever get tired of predicting the imminent end of the world, as a consequence of political opponents, insufficient public holiness, or (the 1950s nuns here) causing offense to the Virgin Mary in word, thought or deed.

They're wearing me out, these people.

Anyway, at the gun show, I was surprised to see the sign out front telling attendees that they had to check their own guns at the door. Maybe I miss the point of that, but it seemed to me that the gun show people were signaling that they are as wary as the rest of us might be of a crowd of armed gun-nuts assembled in a large group.

The Wall Street Journal the other day had a story saying that gun sales were going to go up sharply if Omaba gets reelected.

Says the Journal, "Even though there haven't been any substantial changes to gun-control laws under Mr. Obama, Cabela's, Bass Pro Shops, Smith & Wesson Holding Corp. SWHC -2.41% and Olin Corp., OLN +0.52% the maker of Winchester bullets, are anticipating another bump in sales this winter if President Obama is re-elected. Smith & Wesson raised its full-year sales forecast last week to $530 million ..."

Noted. But I saw no sign of the imminence of that at this gun show, where the lookers were in far, far greater strength than the buyers. Nor do I find the gun-show spectacle as alarming as this overwrought piece in Salon seems to have found a similar show in Phoenix.

I simply do not see a lot of guns being bought at these events, though there are a whole lot on sale.

Dunno: Maybe the gun market is sated? I mean, anybody who wants a gun -- for whatever reason -- probably already has one or more. And guns are extremely well manufactured. Buy one and it lasts pretty much forever.

As I've said before, I have no personal objection to gun ownership. I have always known hunters, even before I moved to a part of the country that used to be known as the Wild West. I have friends who are cops and other law enforcement agents. I'm a Vietnam veteran. I don't get hysterical about guns -- well regulated, to borrow a few words from the Second Amendment.

On the other hand, I recently declined to renew my membership in the National Rifle Association because the NRA -- which used to do important work in gun-safety and firearms training education -- has now become nothing more than a propaganda arm for the lunacy wing
of the Republican Party. And frankly, it just bugs me that the $1 million-a-year head of the NRA, the pompadoured Wayne LaPierre, is one of those loud-mouthed faux warriors who, like so many others in his cohort, is a draft-dodger who somehow managed to avoid going to Vietnam, back when there was real shooting.

Also, I wish the gun crowd, including those who are responsible gun dealers with genuine regard for firearms training and safety, would drum out the most indisputably ugly and unacceptable wares at those gun-show tables.

Nazi flags? Not okay.

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That Latest Shooting on the Border

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The media have become startlingly lax on police stories, which is essentially what the latest shooting on the Arizona border south of Tucson is: a police story.

Initial reports yesterday from the Border Patrol said that three agents on horseback had been fired on, with one killed, in the dead of night while responding to an alarm from one of the ground-sensors that the high-tech contractors have installed along that rugged and forlorn portion of the border.

Horseback in the middle of the night, in primitive terrain? I was shaking my head over that one when, by mid-afternoon, the Border Patrol story had changed. No, the men were on foot.

Weirdly enough in the southern Arizona area, the Los Angeles Times newspaper usually has the sharpest regional reporting fopr the Tucson area, given the nearly total surrender of the feeble Tucson news media and the inability of the Phoenix daily, which really does try, to overcome the fact that at least half of its readership is made up of delusional people.

Here's the L.A. Times story.

Here are the two major things missing in all of the reporting,  local and national:

1. What do the two surviving agents say about what occurred?

2. What was the nature of the gunfire? Did the agents fire, and if so, how many rounds?

There is a kind of breathless lunge in the news accounts I've read to circle this into the politically charged narrative of the "Fast and Furious" scandal that involved guns being allowed to fall into the hands of Mexican drug gangs as part of a hapless sting operation run out of the Phoenix office of the Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms agency, abetted by a feckless federal prosecutor's office in the Arizona capital.

That may be the case, but let's make a simple request of the media at this point:

How about you can the speculation for a day or two, do some reporting, and get the facts?

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Border Shooting Media Coverage: Operation Fast and Stupid

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[UPDATED OCT. 7]

The knee-jerk proclivity of the media -- local, regional, national -- to buy into pre-existing narrative is on full display this afternoon in southern Arizona, where the story of a Border Patrol agent killed by gunfire early Tuesday morning has gone off-narrative.

I suggested it would probably do just that, when I posted here a few days ago a suggestion that perhaps reporters on the scene might want to start asking some basic questions about the Border Patrol's initial accounts of the incident.

After days of credulous, half-baked media accounts that struggled to fold this particular tragedy into the "fast and furious" narrative, it now is becoming clear that the fatal shooting of the Border Patrol agent was the result of so-called "friendly fire."  In the dead of night, responding around 2 a.m. to a routine alarm of a tripped body-motion sensor in primitive desert five miles from the border, near Bisbee, agents evidently mistakenly fired shots at each other.  One agent, Nicholas Ivie, was killed and another was hospitalized (and later released) with gunshot wounds. A third was not hurt.

The Arizona Republic newspaper in Phoenix is now covering the story reasonably accurately, as is the woefully understaffed, dispirited Tucson paper -- now that the F.B.I. has handed out a press release. Here's today's story in the Arizona Republic, with confirmation from the F.B.I. that the shootings were accidental and did not involve hostile fire. But note that the story calls this a "stunning development." Well, maybe it seems "stunning" today -- but only if you had failed to see the obvious from the beginning. The story also inaccurately states that the Border Patrol reported that the agents were on foot. Not so. The initial Border Patrol press releases had them on horseback. No one has addressed that oddity.  Oh, wait: The Los Angeles Times, apparently enamored of that Old West cowboy-in-the-moonlight image, still has them on horseback today!]

The two surviving agents -- whose accounts were conspicuously missing from the initial media reports -- have hired lawyers.

(Watch how fast this story gets downplayed and disappears, now that it's clear the media botched it. Absolutely in character when they're dead wrong, reporters still persist in holding onto a bogus report, with half-assed sourcing that seems to stem from something somebody told a Fox News affiliate in Texas, about two arrests made in Mexico. Maybe the Mess'cins did have something to do with it, they are obviously suggesting. Well, maybe you're just covering your butt, I would say.)


From the first reports of this incident, it was apparent to me -- and should have been clear to any reporter with the most basic news instincts -- that something did not add up in the Border Patrol account. The agency's initial report, well into Tuesday afternoon, asserted that the three agents were on horseback when they either were ambushed around 2 a.m. by, or somehow became involved in a gunfight with, assailants who were presumed to be drug smugglers who had crossed the border from Mexico.

Horseback? In the dead of night? In that rugged, rocky terrain? Even though it was a bright moonlit night, that made absolutely no sense to anyone who knows anything about riding a horse.

Then the Border Patrol changed its story -- and the credulous media waltzed along with the new version, never wondering about the difference from the old.  No, wait: the agents were on foot! But did the media then ask, well, where did this horseback information come from? They did not, not that I could tell.

Did reporters on the scene ask what the two surviving agents, who were obviously witnesses, had told their supervisors about the incident? What had they seen? And what kind of gunshot wounds were found? How many shots were fired, by the presumed assailants and by the agents themselves? The most obvious signal that this story did not add up was the absence of any public accounting by the two surviving witnesses.

But no, the media did not ask those questions (or if it did, the stories in print and on the supremely credulous Tucson television news stations did not reflect it). Instead, the media accounts -- local, regional, national -- all curled up in the cozy narrative formed by the right-wing political hysteria over "Fast and Furious," the botched sting by the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms office out of Phoenix (abetted by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix) that inadvertently led to the 2010 murder by a drug smuggler of a Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, who was shot by a gun that was traced back to the Fast and Furious sting.

The usual cheap right-wing opportunists from the statehouse in Phoenix rushed in on Tuesday to politicize this latest shooting, along with a predictable selection of the odious Tea Party rabble-rousers, state and national divisions. 

Facts, or the lack of facts, did not seem to matter. It was an easy narrative, spun by reflexively politicized local sheriffs in the highly militarized border region,  supported initially by the Border Patrol who presumably had some deductive information when the witnesses clammed up, bought into readily by lazy media who failed to ask the most simple questions of the authorities when this occurred:

What happened out there? Who shot whom? And who knew what, when? That's police reporting 101.

The acting sheriff of Cochise County, Rod Rothrock, made this statement in a press conference yesterday when it was announced that Agent Ivie had been shot during gunfire exchanged among the three agents, each firing from defensive postures once Ivie started shooting.

"Had they been encountering drug smugglers or whoever, their actions would have been appropriate. It's just tragic they encountered each other."

Cochise County has an acting sheriff because the elected sheriff, Larry Dever, a prominent voice in the right-wing drive to thoroughly militarize the border and flood it with armed agents, died Sept. 18 when the vehicle he was driving rolled over on a Forest Service road. Dever was drunk at the time, the medical examiner's office said the other day

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Update on American Airlines

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American Airlines says it is slowly digging out of its current mess with delays and canceled flights, as it has been grounding flights today after determining that more inspections are needed following several incidents of passenger seats coming loose in its Boeing 757 aircrafts, which carry 180 passengers.

The followingi is from the always useful Flightstats.com:

On Thursday, American's on-time arrival rate was a dismal 63 percent. From Sept. 16 to Sept. 30, only 52 percent of its flights arrived on time. During that time, the airline cancelled 907 flights and experienced 12,531 delays. In contrast, Southwest, Delta, United and US Airways combined for only 435 cancellations during the same period, and averaged a collective on-time performance rating of 87 percent.

September's On-time performance ranking of Major North American Airlines

Alaska Airlines - 89.13%

Delta Air Lines - 88.78%

US Airways - 87.15%

Southwest Airlines - 86.27%

Jetblue- 82.98%

United Airlines - 80.87%

Air Canada - 68.59%

American Airlines - 59.08%

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Chicken/egg question for OCD planning experts

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I%26#39;m trying to plan our vacation so that on the magic 180th day out I%26#39;ll be able to have my ducks in a row to make reservations (several character meals are desired, so I know this is important). However, how do I decide which park on which day when I don%26#39;t yet/can%26#39;t yet find out the information for which parks have Extra Magic Hours on specific days.

From my understanding, that info won%26#39;t be available until six months in advance, giving me no time to plan in advance for the restuarants.

How do OCD planners handle this discrepancy???

Thanks!

Chicken/egg question for OCD planning experts

I think www.allears.net have common dates, and ';peak days'; charts. to let you know what days are best for which park during the time of year you go.

There are several guide books, I suggest you try to pick one up.

Well unless im doing math wrong... 180 days is 6 months.... so you could have a loose plan, look at the magic hours, compare them with your peak days chart and make a decision. Its certainly a mornings worth of work, but if you do it that first day (6 months out) than you can pull it all together that day and be one of the first people to get reservations.

I suggest going to barnes and noble or borders and getting a planning book, they will help gather a loose plan that might have some minor last minute tweaking as magic hours tend to be the same for the same parks at the same time of year.

Chicken/egg question for OCD planning experts

Unless you%26#39;re going at Christmas, or another very busy time, you can be a couple of days into the 6 month window. In January, I had booked some places a month before, %26amp; walked right in to the Garden restaurant (Chip %26amp; Dale) at Epcot at the last minute. One exception to this is Cinderellas dining in the MK castle. Be on the phone at the beginning of the business day (Orlando time) exactly 6 months to the day/minute. I%26#39;ve heard of people phoning at 9:15 am 180 days prior, %26amp; it%26#39;s booked!

As seminolegirl said, get a book, or check touringplans.com to determine crowds. Another thing you could do is book a restaurant for 2 days, maybe one under your husband%26#39;s name if they%26#39;re fussy, %26amp; then cancel one when you get the extra magic hours schedule. Just be sure to cancel it ASAP, so somebody else can book the time. Good luck!

You%26#39;ll have a much easier time if your trip begins at the latter end of a month (you didn%26#39;t specify the dates you%26#39;ll be traveling to Orlando).

Say for instance, you%26#39;re traveling at the end of September, so you really can%26#39;t call for dinner reservations until the end of March. However, the Dinsey calendar for September is posted at the beginning of March, so you have some ';lead time'; to see which days in September are having specific events.

If, however you are traveling at the beginning of a month, you won%26#39;t have quite the lead time, but the Disney calendar does post 6 full months ahead of time, so you%26#39;ll have a small window for planning.

We are going in two weeks and I made all my reservations 180 days in advance. I asked questions on this forum, read all the menus and wrote down what we were interested in. Then when I was able to see what parks had the extra magic hours I made my final plan and called right away. I had several choices written down just in case one of my choices was already booked full. We are going during a very busy time but it all worked out. I am a planner so it killed me to wait until the 180 day mark. Good luck and have fun.

I do enjoy the planning part.....and it is kind of fun watching my family becomed convinced that I%26#39;m crazy!

We are going Thanksgiving week, from Saturday before until Friday after, so it will be quite a busy time, but given the information you all shared, I will have a little leeway between knowing the EMH info and being able to book.

One other question:

Is the 180 day out date the calendar date six months earlier (like May 19th for a Nov.19th arrival) or is it actually 180 days (counted out) before arrival?

Thanks so much!

Do these restaurants really book out 180 days in advance?

I am having enough trouble deciding what to eat for dinner in 2 hours time. I really can%26#39;t think about what I might want in 6 months time!

I%26#39;m having the same issue. And I didn%26#39;t even begin to plan our late June trip until a month or so ago, so I missed that 180 day mark. I don%26#39;t care if we do the Cinderella thing, but we do have the dining plan and we want to be able to get the table service we paid for. Do I REALLY need to make reservations this far out? Or am I out of luck even as we speak?

jenlagirl- I believe that they actually count out the 180 days. When I called in September for our trip this month they told me I called 2 days too early because I had called on Sept. 25 for a March 25 arrival.

jolynda- I%26#39;m no expert but I believe summer time is quite busy so you may want to check into making some table service reservations. From what I%26#39;ve read on this forum over the past 6 months the dining plan is very popular so places book up pretty fast. Maybe just give them a call and see what is available. We are going in less than 2 weeks during a very busy time so I made my reservations exactly 180 days in advance and still had to use some of my second choices because my first choices were already full on the days I was looking for.

First timer with 2.5 yr old and pregnant

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My husband and I are planning a trip to Disney World in last week of May and have the following questions, keeping in mind that

- I will be 7 months pregnant

- have a 2.5 yr old

- only 5 or maybe 6 days of visit

1. Park - thinking of spending 1-2 dys in MK and 1 dy in AK, the 2 parks which will appeal most to our 2.5 yr old.

Questions: Is it worthwhile to also spend 1 day in Seaworld ? Should we skip Epcot (which seems to me is more interesting to older kids/adults)?

2. Resorts - AKL sounds great as my 2.5 yr old loves animals but sounds like it%26#39;s not as accessible as the Polynesian, GF or Wilderness Lodge.

Question: Which resort would you recommend ?

3. Transport - should we rent a car ? If we stay at either Polynesian, GF or WL, sounds like a car is not necessary.

4. Kennedy Space Center - would like to spend 1 day (most likely one of the wkend days when the parks will be most crowded given the Mem Day holiday). How far is the drive from Disney World?

5. What%26#39;s the best way to book the trip ? Seems like i can just book a package on the WDW official site or use a travel agent - will a travel agent have a cheaper price for the same package ? If the price diffn is minimal, I wont want to spend too much time getting quotes for the best price....

Thanks in advance for feedback

If anyone who is experienced visiting WDW with preschoolers or while pregnant has any additional advice, it will be much appreciated too.

First timer with 2.5 yr old and pregnant

are you crazy?

seriously...

I would pick somewhere else to go for the following reasons

1. you can%26#39;t ride on anything

2. you child won%26#39;t remember the trip

3. its not relaxing

4. your child is so young it doesn%26#39;t matter where he goes.

5. preganant in may heat? do you know how hot it is orlando? pregnant women sit inside, with five fans blowing on them and the AC on full blast.

I know I sound harsh... but seriously. I would go to the beaches... anywhere but disney.

go in 4 years maybe five. your children will be the right age than, and presumably (as I do not know you and your husband%26#39;s life plan) not pregnant.

save disney for later and life. take yourself and your son to the beach, relax before the baby comes and save yourself a ton of money!

First timer with 2.5 yr old and pregnant

PS as I am the oldest, I remember my mom pregnant. She tired going to disney during both pregnancies. both with my brother and sister my mom had to be on bed rest. no its not disney%26#39;s fault... but it sure did exhaust her. It is also important to know that, my mom trying to go to disney while being pregnant is because she knows every niche of that place, every relaxing spot, every super air conditioned area... becuase she worked there.

PPS you seriously cannot ride on any ride. you will go there and sit outside all day while your husband takes your son. so you will not enjoy the ';reaction'; to the disney ';magic'; everyone will talk about on this forum. it wont be safe for your baby to go on the rides, and you could risk premature labor.

I am not being mean. just being blunt. please come to orlando and enjoy yourself. Perhaps doing it when your children are older is what I would do if I were you. but again... im not you, and this is just merely one native orlandian opinion about something she saw her family go through.

:) i hope you figure it all out and it results in a lovely vacation for you and your family!

I don%26#39;t mean to be rude, but Seminolegirl has brought up some excellent points. Is it entirely necessary that you go to Disney at this time in your life? You will stand in very long lines in high heat %26amp; humidity. You%26#39;ve listed an itinerary that%26#39;s very full, even for a couple without kids. If you%26#39;re flying, you may have to check that out, because most airlines have restrictions for how late in your pregnancy you can fly. If you%26#39;re driving- God help you because that%26#39;s a very long drive to do pregnant.

Again, I don%26#39;t mean to be a busy body, but SG is right about the risks involved. Don%26#39;t take a healthy pregnancy for granted. Have you presented this plan to your obstetrician or midwife? If they%26#39;ve ever been to Disnay in May, they will tell you the same thing Seminolegirl did.

When I read your post I thought all the same things that semi and potato feet have said as I have some experience.

I arranged to go to Disney in May 2002 knowing I would be 5 months pregnant as we always went with friends and I mistakenly thought that as a very fit %26amp; active 24 year old I could handle it.

Well I couldn%26#39;t. I was exhausted, I couldn%26#39;t go on loads of rides, it was hot, I was miserable. I ended up leaving my husband %26amp; friends at the parks and spending most afternoons lying by the pool relaxing.

I was probably quite similar to you as although only 5 months pregnant I was expecting twins (only found this out 10 days before I was due to leave!)

We didn%26#39;t go back to Disney until last year when my boys were 4. The difference was unbelievable.

As the other girls have said, please think carefully about this. Disney will wait for perhaps a better time for you

All the best

.

You should definitely wait.

I agree too, that you should wait since the 2.5 year old will not remember anything about the trip. It is hot and muggy in May. If you want to go on a vacation before the baby is born I would definitely pick some place cooler. All you need for the little one is a pool and a popsicle for a happy trip.

I agree with everyone else. Your child won%26#39;t appreciate or remember a thing and you%26#39;ll be very uncomfortable. It%26#39;s all about walking and waiting in line and being 7 months pregnant, it will be too much for you.

How about a trip to Bermuda whereby you can hang out by the beach and relax.

If I had read your post two weeks ago I would have said go and relax......enjoy Disney through your 2 1/2 years eyes. Ok well...I had forgot how NOT relaxing Disney is. I was there last week and it was INSANE how busy and fast paced everything was. I love Disney and like earlier post say it isn%26#39;t their fault but you can not relax there. I would have not enjoyed it while being pregnant at all. Now as far as a 2 1/2 year goes it is so fun to see it with them but of course they will remember nothing. I have taken 2 different 2 1/2 year olds and I really didn%26#39;t think it was hard to take them at that age at all but as far as you being pregnant I would say you need to do something more pampering and relaxing. Also, are you sure your doctor would want you to travel so far away at that point?

just thought i%26#39;d add my point of view. We went last september.My daughter was 4 1/2 pregnant and my granddaughter 2 1/2. my daughter coped quite well with the heat, as long as we took everything at a steady pace. As for my granddaughter, everyone here says a 2 1/2 year old wont remember. Well she has not stopped talking about it since. She asks me every day when we can go back, remembers which characters she saw, even what the hotel was like. She even has imaginary conversations with shamu every day on the phone to tell him she%26#39;s coming back.She cant wait till her baby sister is old enough so she can take her and show her everything. She may be an exception, but if your child is bright, i%26#39;d say go for it. You wont be able to do many of the rides but you%26#39;ll still have a great time. Just dont try and pack everything in, you wont be able to do it and drink plenty. And definatly go to sea world.

The 2 1/2 year old will remember it for a while but not for a lifetime.

Many of us have seen the sad results of women in late pregnancy who push too hard. Is it worth it?

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