A Mass Shooting, A Mass Shooting, A Budget Showdown, and More

For today, a bit of a rant...

• The mass shooting in Washington DC was (no surprise here) committed by someone who by many accounts seemed to have some serious mental health issues.  When will the powers that be stop wasting their banning efforts on the means of killing and start working on the real problem?  Thousands of people are killed each year by drunk drivers but you don't see people trying to ban cars or alcohol.  tldr; the mental health care system in the US sucks.
• There was another mass shooting, this time in Chicago yesterday which barely made the evening news.  It happened in Chicago, after all, the south side, of course, and the shooters and victims were black.  Unfortunately these circumstances make it an almost non-issue, never mind that Chicago has one of the strictest gun control laws in the country (a lot of good that does), never mind that when a non-black shoots a black person it is raised to the level of a national incident but when blacks shoot blacks, Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton are nowhere in sight.  And the first comment on the news article was spot on--why was a baby out late at night in a park anyway?  tldr; black people need to stop shooting black people which isn't a racist comment it is a factual, statistically accurate comment.  Also, gun bans don't work.
• A budget showdown is looming in Congress which promises to set the stage for a lot of (useless) posturing by the Republicans and Democrats.  There will be lots of finger pointing, lots of debate about who is right, and lots of "set up" for the upcoming elections.  Of course this has to be someone's fault so one party or the other will get the blame and Obamacare may or may not make it out alive, so to speak, but the bottom line is that the government is in debt, congress continues to spend like, well, congress, and and yet another unfunded mandate (Obamacare) is put on the table as something that must get done--never mind that there IS NO MONEY to pay for this program and never mind that the government has no idea how to run a business profitably (see US postal service, social security, etc).
• And a few more rants: the irresponsible parents rant (this story), the who gives a crap rant (this story), and the WTF were they thinking rant (this story).

We will resume our normally scheduled programming tomorrow...