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Didn’t see the murder right in front of them?

This story renders me speechless.

A man was killed this past month aboard a San Francisco commuter train in front of several bystanders. They weren’t “witnesses” because they didn’t actually see the crime being committed, in some cases just a couple of feet in front of them.

Why is that? They all were consumed by their texting devices to the point that they didn’t see the killer pull out a gun, wave it around and shoot the victim in the back.

http://us.cnn.com/2013/10/10/tech/san-francisco-shooter-phone/?iref=obinsite

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon told CNN.com, “We’re seeing people that are so disconnected to their surroundings. This is not unique. People are being robbed, people are being hurt, people are being run over by cars because they’re so disconnected because of these phones.”

Justin Valdez is dead. A suspect has been arrested and has pleaded not guilty.

Another key element of this story, though, is the distraction element. It kind of gets to a point I made in an earlier blog post about how telecommunications technology has changed society — and not for the better — by eliminating person-to-person contact in public places.

According to police, several passengers on the train were within a foot or two of the man with the gun. They didn’t see him or the weapon, which he reportedly brandished for several moments before pulling the trigger.

CNN reported further: “‘Just for our own safety, wouldn’t you want to know if somebody standing next to you is pulling a gun out? I think I would,’ Gascon said.

“The security footage of the incident is chilling. The man, donning a baseball hat and smile, lifts a .45-caliber handgun in plain view, three or four times. He waves the weapon as if choosing who he wants to kill. At one point, he even wipes his nose with the gun. But nobody seemed to notice until the blast goes off.”

I am trying to fathom this story as I write these words. This one is going to take some time to process fully. All that’s left to say right now is that this form of 21st-century technology became the death of one young man.

It sickens me.

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A certain irony in this Peace Prize

Congratulations certainly are due the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the winner of the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize.

OPCW won the award for its work in trying to rid Syria of the huge stockpile of chemicals, some of which it used Aug. 21 on its citizens.

The world should applaud the Nobel committee — although I personally was pulling for Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who was shot by Taliban terrorists simply because she was attending school; Malala has taken her cause worldwide in promoting education and persuading the civilized world of the evil being perpetrated by the Taliban against women and girls.

But back to the OPCW.

There’s a certain irony in this organization getting the Nobel Peace Prize.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/11/world/europe/nobel-opcw-dangers/index.html?hpt=hp_bn2

The Nobel Prize is named after Alfred Nobel, a Swedish inventor. What do you suppose is his most famous invention? Nitroglycerin, which he combined with other chemicals to make an explosive more powerful than dynamite.

Nobel in effect is one of the fathers of weapons of mass destruction. Now the Peace Prize that carries his name is going to an organization dedicated to the eradication of a particularly heinous brand of WMD.

Of course, Nobel’s personal history matters not one bit and takes nothing at all from the honor that has gone to OPCW.

May the group take the $1.2 million it will receive and put it to good work to finish the job it has started.

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Paychecks still roll in for lawmakers

I am holding out hope that the government shutdown is close to being ended and that the bickering parties will strike a deal to raise the nation’s debt limit.

Before all that happens, I want to vent one more time against those lawmakers — and even the president and vice president — who continue to draw their pay while taking measures that send other federal employees home without pay.

Some of our members of Congress have done the right thing. U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., for example has donated his salary to food distribution organizations in his home state. He declared that Americans shouldn’t go hungry while a portion of their government has been shuttered.

There have been others of both parties and I salute them all for doing what I believe is the noble thing.

My own congressman, Republican Mac Thornberry of Clarendon? He’s still getting paid. Hmmm. I am guessing a man of his means isn’t exactly living off his $174,000 annual salary.

I am acutely aware that House members, senators and executive branch leaders surrendering their salaries for a brief period of time won’t balance the budget, it won’t bring us closer to good fiscal health and it won’t settle this dispute between the parties.

However, I’ve long respected those who lead by example. We elect these people to lead, to make tough decisions on our behalf and to demonstrate that they are men and women of their word.

One way to demonstrate their commitment is to share in the pain their decisions are having on others.

Giving up a few weeks’ pay is one of those ways.

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This guy embodies civic-mindedness

Mount Pleasant, S.C., resident Chris Cox is the living, breathing symbol of selfless service to others.

The government shutdown has resulted in the furloughing of “non-essential” government employees, such as the maintenance crews that keep our national treasures dolled up for us tourists.

Enter Chris Cox.

Chris Cox, Superstar

He’s been mowing the lawn in front of the Lincoln Memorial for the past several days while our so-called “leaders” are arguing over whether to reopen the government and extend the debt ceiling to enable the nation to keep paying its bills.

Failure to do either of these things will create significant havoc in people’s lives. Economists say defaulting on our national debt obligations could be near-cataclysmic.

To be sure, Cox isn’t your run-of-the-mill do-gooder. He’s a bit rough around the edges. He reportedly has a colorful past. He might not be able to keep cutting the grass while the feds keep much of the government on the shelf.

You have to admire someone who wants to this kind of a statement. Many of the rest of us just sit around and gripe about Congress, the president and others at or near the top of the federal government chain of command.

This fellow took matters into his own hands.

There’s just something uplifting about this story.

Get yourself cleaned up, Mr. Cox, and run for public office.

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Godspeed, Scott Carpenter

And then there was one.

Of the seven men chosen initially to explore space on behalf of the United States, only John Glenn remains with us. Scott Carpenter, the second American astronaut to orbit Earth, died today at age 88.

Now only Glenn is left. The former U.S. senator from Ohio, in 1998, became the oldest man to fly in space when he took part in a mission aboard the shuttle Discovery.

Carpenter had just one flight into space. It was on May 24, 1962 aboard Aurora 7, the tiny Mercury capsule that made three orbits around the planet. Carpenter’s capsule splashed down off the Puerto Rico coast, but missed the mark by a couple hundred miles. The world waited as Navy ships searched the ocean before finding Carpenter safe and sound after his harrowing mission.

Those were the days, of course, before we took space flight for granted. That was before it all became “routine,” as if soaring off a launch pad atop a flaming rocket, accelerating to 17,000 mph ever was like walking your dog through the neighborhood.

My mother and I would get up early in those days to await those launches. We’d wait literally for hours on end in some cases. In the case of Glenn’s flight, we waited several days as one glitch after another resulted in the flight being “scrubbed” for the day.

Carpenter, and the six men chosen with him, embodied the can-do spirit of the time. We were involved in a space race with the Soviet Union, which had launched the first satellite in 1957 and put the first man into space in 1961. We were still playing catch-up when Carpenter took off. But we got to the moon first and, well, the rest is history.

Speaking of “can-do spirit,” recall that Donald “Deke” Slayton was one of the Mercury Seven, but he was grounded because of a heart murmur. He remained on active flight status until 1975 when he finally got the “go” sign from NASA and he took part in the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission that hooked up with the Soviet spaceship 200 or so miles above the earth’s surface.

Scott Carpenter and his fellow space travelers helped bring a generation of young Americans — such as me — along for a glorious ride into the unknown.

John Glenn is the last of that illustrious corps of explorers.

Just as Carpenter famously said “Godspeed, John Glenn” as his colleague took off in February 1962, let us now wish Godspeed to Scott Carpenter on his own final journey.

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Worse than ‘dog poop’? Really, Rep. Grayson?

So … just how frustrated are members of Congress getting these days?

U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., took the floor of the House of Representatives on Wednesday and said congressional Republicans’ standing in the polls ranks them below “dog poop and toenail fungus.”

Oh, please.

An Arizona state legislator recently compared President Barack Obama directly to Adolf Hitler, which ought to qualify as the supreme insult to civilized human beings everywhere. She has refused to take back her nasty reference.

Grayson’s outburst on the House floor isn’t new for the Florida blowhard. He served a single term in the House before losing his seat in 2010. He was elected once more in 2012 and has picked up where he left off, blustering with hyperbolic references to his political foes.

Grayson fits into that category of national politician who is in love with the sound of his voice and just cannot get to a TV camera quickly enough.

The government shutdown is dragging on. Polling data suggest Congress’s public standing indeed has reached record-low levels. While Grayson and other gasbags are making headlines with idiotic references to their political foes, there appears to be some movement to ending this shutdown and lifting the federal budget debt ceiling — which is the really big deal in all of this bluster.

These times require serious men and women to speak seriously to us about how they intend to govern. Alan Grayson does not fit that category of public official.

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Is it true? Can there finally be a budget breakthrough?

I try to remain optimistic on most matters, even those things relating to politics, policy and the federal government.

Therefore, the glimmer of hope we’re seeing late Wednesday about a possible budget breakthrough strengthens me enough to want to face another day.

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/327665-the-ice-breaks-fiscal-talks-set

President Obama is meeting Thursday with key congressional leaders of both parties to start hammering out a deal to reopen part of the government and avoid the cataclysm that would occur if the government fails to increase its debt limit.

Turns out the chairman of the House Budget Committee, former GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, may have a way out of this mess. It involves a short-term spending resolution that is supposed to buy the principals time to hammer out a deal on “entitlement reform.”

Will there ever be a long-term funding solution that avoids this kind of ridiculousness in the future? That remains to be seen.

At least everyone is talking to each other.

Let’s get this deal done.

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GOP fails to heed the message

Two new polls should turn congressional Republicans downright apoplectic.

The Associated Press/GFK poll puts congressional approval at 5 percent. That’s bad enough. Now comes a new Gallup Poll that says 28 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the GOP, a record low for the Gallup organization.

http://news.msn.com/us/poll-republicans-get-the-blame-in-shutdown

To be sure, Democrats aren’t faring much better. Public opinion surveys are blaming Congress — not the White House or the president — for the government mess that now threatens to blow the economy to smithereens.

And by Congress, I mean members of both parties.

However, since Republicans control the budget-writing arm of the legislative branch — the House of Representatives — they are going to get bulk of the blame if the parties fail to agree on a way to reopen parts of the government and increase the nation’s debt ceiling.

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-on-the-potomac/2013/10/republican-approval-rating-falls-to-lowest-point-in-gallup-poll-history/

Some of us keep harping on the obvious: The GOP strategy, which has been all but abandoned, of trying to link defunding of the Affordable Care Act to approving a new budget is a sure loser. Smart Republicans keep harping on that to the wild-eyed crazies comprising the tea party wing of their party.

Now they’re messing with the debt limit, even suggesting that defaulting on our nation’s financial obligations isn’t that big of a deal.

I do believe it is a very big deal.

Failure to resolve this matter is going to wipe out what’s left of the GOP’s paltry support.

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Where have privacy and etiquette gone?

I consider myself to be a fairly modern man.

However, I do find some aspects of modern culture more than a bit off-putting. I’ll give you an example of something I witnessed this morning. Maybe you’ll agree. If you disagree, well, too bad.

My weekday mornings usually start with a workout at the health club to which I belong. I am up before the sun rises over the Texas Panhandle Caprock and I head down the street, turn the corner and am at the gym in five minutes. I like to get my exercise in at that time of the morning because no one ever calls me; nothing gets in my way. I have no pressing business before the crack of dawn. I usually leave my cell phone at home.

I finished my workout this morning, was getting dressed in the locker room and I heard some young man blabbing on his cellphone — as he was sitting in the hot tub, presumably to relax or relieve tension or do something therapeutic. But he was chatting up a storm, in a voice loud enough for everyone in the locker room to hear.

It occurred to me at that moment that the young man had no sense of, shall we say, privacy. I cannot remember a single thing he said this morning on his cell phone, but it strikes that telecommunications technology has removed much of modern society’s sense of doing some things in private.

Having a personal telephone conversation used to be one of those things. No more. Now mundane, inane, profoundly meaningless conversations become everyone’s business — or at least the business of those who are within earshot in places, such as health club locker rooms, where one doesn’t necessarily need to hear these things.

You want more ranting? Here it comes.

This demonstration of the loss of privacy is just one aspect of cell phone technology that has coarsened society.

How many times have you walked into a restaurant and witnessed a table full of individuals in which everyone at the table is holding a device and texting someone who is not sitting at the table? No one is talking to each other. They’re all communicating with someone far, far away.

And I think at this point I’ll mention as an aside that many men no longer remove their hats when they sit down to eat. I always thought that was mandatory in polite society. Wasn’t it?

My wife and I recently spent some time at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., where we witnessed more than one young parent sending text messages on their devices while their kids were tugging on their clothes, trying to get their attention, seeking some assurance that their wait in line was about to end.

Ah, modern society is great. I’m trying to adjust to it. I’m getting a handle on a lot of what technology is throwing at me. I think I’ll cling to what I still consider “normal behavior.”

Yapping on a cell phone while sitting in a public locker room hot tub doesn’t qualify as normal.

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Immigrants’ tuition becomes key issue

I am appalled at the four major Republican candidates for Texas lieutenant governor.

First, state Sen. Dan Patrick runs an ad alleging he is the “only” candidate for that office who opposes in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants. Not true, say the other three.

The incumbent lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst, says he’s never supported in-state tuition for these students; Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples, who served in the Senate and voted for the issue in 2001, now says he opposes it; Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson has called Patrick a liar and says he never backed the issue.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/10/08/brief-texas-political-news-oct-8-2013/

These guys make me sick.

The only prominent Texas Republican who stands out on this issue is Gov. Rick Perry.

Perry and other immigration reformers have supported granting in-state tuition privileges to Texas high school graduates and college applicants who happened to have moved here as children of parents who came here illegally.

It wasn’t their fault that their parents entered the state without legal documentation. They merely grew up and came of age as Texans. They attended high school, they graduated and applied for entrance into a Texas college or university. They have been accepted and plan to continue their lives as productive residents of the only place they’ve known as home.

Why punish these young people because of something their parents did?

Yet, we hear now from the four GOP candidates for Texas lieutenant governor that none of them supports this compassionate measure. They’re trying to out-menace each other at the expense of young Texans seeking to make good lives for themselves.

Disgraceful.

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