One of the excuses de jour of why to not enact stringent gun controls is that the problems would be solved if guns were kept away from those who are mentally ill.

There are lots of problems with this contention:

1. Guns kill. They facilitate violence among human beings. The more guns that are in our society, the more likely it is that someone, deemed mentally stable or mentally ill, will be able to use one. The most effective way to control guns is to reduce their number. It’s kind of like the most effective way to combat obesity is to reduce calories.
2. Who really knows how to define or categorize who is mentally ill? Much as we may like to think otherwise, the fields of psychology and psychiatry are inexact sciences. Labels, diagnoses are things that we are forced to do because the nature of human communication requires descriptions to explain even what is uncertain.
3. For what it is worth, researchers have found that at some point in our lives, over half of Americans will experience some sort of mental illness. We move in and out of periods of our life when we are depressed or anxious. The symptoms of other problems such as manic-depression or bi-polarity occur at varying times in a person’s life. For all of us, some days are good ones, other days are miserable.

Considering that we are people in motion, not just physically but also mentally, it is wise to minimize our proximity to weapons that can either do harm to others or to ourselves.

Consider one of the nation’s greatest proponents of gun rights, Missouri Governor Eric Greitens. To say that he had a bad day yesterday would be putting it mildly. He was humiliated to do the perp walk as he was indicted for on a felony invasion of privacy charge for allegedly taking and transmitting a non-consensual photo of his partly nude lover. Details of what exactly happened fall short of actual facts, at least with regard to what the general public knows. But it is rather clear that there was some sadistic, if not masochistic, behavior involved by Greitens. There was clearly hypocrisy involved as he ran for governor as a man of family values (his official gubernatorial portrait is not an individual one; rather it includes his wife and two children).

But hypocrisy may be normal for politicians, in fact, for most of us. But he has other strange behaviors such as disappearing for days at a time. He is very belligerent towards others. He has few friends, even among those who are supposed to like him like his Republican colleagues.

It certainly is not for me to say that Eric Greitens is mentally ill. However, despite his military career which included being a Navy Seal, he still seems to be rather fragile. Again, that is not an indictment of him in comparison to anyone else. It is simply evidence that if we want to have a safe and secure society, we are better off having as few guns as possible within the civilian population.

Unless Greitens is convicted, he will be free to purchase virtually whatever guns he wants. That scares me. I think that it’s scary for America.

How many times has he been called one of the “good guys,” and as Wayne LaPierre, executive vice-president of the National Rifle Association says, “the only way to top a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.”

If only LaPierre and his like knew on any given day who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. I think that’s beyond all of our pay grades, even his, which is high. To be safe, let’s get rid of as many guns in civilian hands as we can.

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Missouri Governor Eric Greitens has gone out of his way to make things as difficult as possible for women seeking reproductive health services and abortions. Before last week, Missouri’s restrictive laws had already reduced abortion services to one location in the entire state. But that wasn’t enough for Greitens. He called a special session of the Missouri legislature specifically to deal with abortion issues—and specifically  to make things worse—and  the legislature obliged.

Republican Gov. Eric Greitens has said he called the special session on abortion in reaction to the St. Louis ordinance banning discrimination in employment and housing based on “reproductive health decisions” and a federal judge’s ruling that struck down some Missouri abortion restrictions passed in previous legislative sessions.

The ruling, which the state is appealing, tossed out requirements that doctors who perform abortions have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, and that clinics meet hospital-like standards for outpatient surgery.  Greitens wants lawmakers to enact other restrictions on clinics in place of those that were struck down.

Here’s what he got in the special session: The latest piece of legislation in Missouri encompasses a long list of new, even harsher regulations. Judge for yourself.

The Missouri legislature has now passed a bill that:

• Allows the state attorney general, not just local prosecutors, to prosecute
  abortion-law violations
• Requires doctors—not nurses, nurse practitioners or other medical
  personal—to explain potential medical risks to women 72 hours before they
  can obtain an abortion
• Establishes surprise, annual inspections of abortion clinics
• Establishes whistle-blower protections for employees of abortion clinics
• Bars local governments from passing ordinances that adversely affect alternative-to-abortion pregnancy centers—the ones that, nationwide, tell women lies and omit information needed for them to make good decisions about their reproductive health.

Of course, these new restrictions will be challenged in court. We can only hope that they will be struck down. They are shockingly harsh. But what is not shocking is the unrelenting effort by Missouri legislators—and now the newly elected Missouri Governor—to go out of their way to block women from exercising their lawful right to make their own health decisions—a right that has been guaranteed by the US Supreme Court since 1973.  Missouri has many problems: This is the one they go to special session on?

The post Missouri’s 2017 abortion law is as harsh as they get appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Many Missouri Democrats have been wondering about Eric Greitens—the former Navy SEAL who is considering running for Governor in 2016. A few years ago, when he emerged onto the political scene, he sounded pretty good, his values seemed right, and some people thought he could be a reasonable choice for U.S. Congress, or for Governor, on the Democratic ticket.

But he’s not. And today, in an editorial for Foxnews.com, he answered the question that he’s been repeatedly asked: “Why aren’t you a Democrat?”

He has now made it clear that, although he was raised as a Democrat, he now rejects the Democratic Party and calls himself a conservative Republican. His proclamation, though, is fraught with contradictions, full of rhetorical holes, and almost completely devoid of actual ideas:

I was raised as a Democrat. I was taught that Harry Truman was the greatest president ever because he was strong, stood up to the communists, and most important, he was from Missouri. I was taught to stand up for the little guy, and that bigger government was the best way to do that…There was one rather large problem. As I got older, I no longer believed in their ideas.

So, Greitens apparently still believes in standing up for “the little guy.” But he wants to do that by joining the Republican party—the party of the 1-percenters, the party that has somehow convinced a lot of “little guys” that Republicans care about them while picking their pockets, refusing to raise the minimum wage, and trying to kill Social Security.

…I had concluded that liberals aren’t just wrong. All too often they are world-class hypocrites. They talk a great game about helping the most vulnerable, with ideas that feel good and fashionable. The problem is their ideas don’t work, and often hurt the exact people they claim to help.

Wait, who are the hypocrites? Sorry, Eric, but “talking a great game about helping the most vulnerable,” while doing the exact opposite has become a Republican trademark.

Greitens complains that,

…After four tours of duty as a Navy SEAL officer, I came home from Iraq and watched the VA – the second-biggest bureaucracy in the country – fail my friends. The VA was broken and my friends were suffering. And yet, time and again, the only “solution” I heard from liberals was to spend more money. It made me angry.

I agree that the VA has not worked for many veterans. But who broke it by cutting its funds? And who started two unnecessary—unfunded—wars, without planning for the hundreds of thousands of wounded soldiers they spawned? Check your history, Eric: Those were the actions of a Republican president and a Republican-dominated Congress.

Greitens goes on to say:

I became a conservative because I believe that caring for people means more than just spending taxpayer money; it means delivering results. It means respecting and challenging our citizens, telling them what they need to hear, not simply what they want to hear.

I’m afraid that Greitens has that all backwards. What Republicans tell citizens–what they want them to hear– is that “we have the greatest healthcare system in the world,” and that “we live in the greatest country in the world,” and that tax breaks for huge corporations will trickle down as more jobs and more money for little guys, and that a raise in the minimum wage is bad for America.

But what citizens actually “need to hear” is that their homes are in foreclosure because Republicans would rather protect banks than people; that they are not going to get a living wage or a raise, because Republicans would rather kill unions and help their corporate donors rather than workers; and that the biggest result of “trickle down” economics has been the biggest trickle up transfer of wealth in the history of this country.

The worst are politicians who smugly talk about caring for the little guy, and then abandon the poorest, and most vulnerable.

So true. So, Eric, why would you want to join Republican efforts to cut TANF funds and food stamps and to prevent hundreds of thousands of people from getting Medicaid health benefits? The people who rely on these things literally to stay alive are the poorest and the most vulnerable.

I believe Missouri is heading the wrong direction, and I don’t trust the career politicians who created this mess to fix it.

And I agree that Missouri is heading the wrong direction. But the damage is being done by the Republican-dominated Missouri State Legislature. We are intermittently saved from total disaster only by the tenuous veto power of our Democratic governor. I would like to think that a person like Eric Greitens, who seems intelligent and well-intentioned, would not want to be a rubber-stamp for the economically, medically and socially dangerous laws that Missouri’s right-wing legislators seem intent on inflicting onto their constituents.

Finally, Greitens states what he would do differently:

I believe in replacing ObamaCare with something that actually works. I believe in putting working families and job creation ahead of special interests. I believe that in a free society we have to defend religious liberties and the 2nd Amendment, and protect innocent life, so everyone has the freedom to pursue happiness. I believe in reforming welfare, so every person can have a chance at a life of dignity, purpose, and meaning.

In other words, he doesn’t have any ideas, just platitudes and Republican talking points. He’s come a long way from his Democratic upbringing, which he describes as “standing up for the little guy, for working families and the middle class.” Instead, he has shifted to Republican red-meat, fundraising gold in the form of phrases like “religious liberties” [anti-same-sex marriage], “2nd Amendment” and “protecting innocent life.”

“We don’t need more rhetoric,” he says. But that’s all we get from Greitens. Go to his website: You can donate, and you can read Greiten’s’ resume, and you can see how handsome he is. But you can’t find anything specific about any new ideas or policies.

It’s very disappointing. Before he got lost in Republican-land, Greitens shoulda coulda woulda been someone we mighta been able to get behind.

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Eric Greitens may run for Governor of Missouri on the Republican ticket: But which kind of Republican would he be?

Greitens is one of the most intriguing and promising candidates that Missouri voters in general, and Republicans in specific, have come across in years. He has a resume that is the envy of anyone, particularly someone who wanted to run for political office.

Greitens graduated from Duke University and went on to be a Rhodes Scholar. In 2001, he attended the Naval Officer Candidate School and is currently a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy Reserve. He was deployed four times to Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia. He served in the elite Navy Seal Team 6.

He has done humanitarian work in Croatia, Rwanda, Zaire, Albania, Cambodia, Mexico, Bolivia and India. Since returning to the United States and St. Louis, he has founded a remarkable non-profit organization for veterans called The Mission Continues.

Now, Greitens is close to announcing his candidacy for the Republican nomination for Governor of Missouri. There is so much that he could bring to the office because of his wisdom and experience. He knows what excellence is; he has written about it, and more importantly, he has practiced it.

Greitens’ books and lectures frequently focus on the importance of values. His first book was called Strength and Compassion and his most recent is Resilience. Considering the acrimony between different groups of citizens in Missouri and the relative dysfunction of the state’s government, including its governmental structure at the local level, a candidate with a strong set of values is a requisite for progress.

In a recent television interview, Greitens said, “People don’t have confidence that their leaders will take responsibility.” He also said, “Evil thrives when good men do nothing.”

These comments raise one obvious question:If Greitens wants to be a change agent for the positive and to advocate values that can help lead Missouri, why is he running as a Republican?

For decades, Republicans have said that they are the party of values. But are these the noble values about which Greitens writes? I don’t think so.

Right now, Republicans in the United States Senate are holding two important measures hostage because they insist on having an anti-abortion clause in a bill to take action to reduce human trafficking. Abortion has hardly anything to do with human trafficking, but Republicans would rather dwell on that than taking a vote on what otherwise is a nearly unanimous bi-partisan bill. The delaying actions by the Republicans include not allowing a vote in the Senate to confirm Attorney-General nominee Loretta Lynch. Lynch may have a resume as strong as Greitens, but that doesn’t matter to Republicans; they would rather delay over what they call “an important values issue.”

Republican values also include a very narrow view of what constitutes a family. If Greitens is elected governor, will he embrace the Republican view on “family” and oppose gay marriage?

As stated above, Greitens is extremely well-educated. Will he join close to half of Republicans who do not accept the concept of evolution or the reality of climate change, caused in part because of human actions? If so, is that what he means by values?

Another issue that would face Greitens as governor would be what to do about Ferguson, and more broadly, about race relations throughout the state. While the United States Justice Department concluded that there was not sufficient reason to charge Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson with any crime, in a complementary report, it described the massive and systemic racial prejudice in Ferguson and other North County communities. Would Greitens stand by other Republicans who favored the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, thereby making it more difficult for African-Americans, other minorities, and the elderly to vote?

On an issue that plagues both parties, what is Greitens going to do about the excessive and almost limitless money in politics? He already has $300,000 in his coffers, without even officially announcing his candidacy. If ever we had a candidate in Missouri who did not need big money to run, it is Eric Greitens. His reputation is essentially as flawless as his resume. He is well-known to the media and is always portrayed in a positive light. He has a number of interest groups ready and able to work for his candidacy. Using the essentially free services of the internet, he can reach virtually all voters in Missouri. A low-budget campaign would stand in stark contrast to the one announced Republican candidate, Catherine Hanaway, who is swimming in cash, including a $1 million donation from a single individual, would-be kingmaker Rex Sinquefield.

I had the pleasure of meeting Greitens upon his return to St. Louis. Several times, he has met with high school students with whom we work. In those gatherings, he stressed the importance of both “strength” and “compassion.” However, there seemed to be a little emptiness to me on the compassion side. Yes, he expressed the compassion for those suffering and backed his words with considerable action on his part. What I didn’t hear from him was a concern for the “common good” that included a call to action, not only by individuals or organizations, but by government, which represents by far the strongest “response team” to any problems we have. Greitens clearly recognizes the many problems that we as a society currently face. He is a remarkable change agent when he is in the private sector. But if he wants to serve in government, then he must treat that government as the most valuable tool that he could have in remedying society’s inequities.

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