Traitor?

Words have meaning. People sometimes forget that when they are excited or angry and can use words they wouldn't ordinarily use. People sometimes ask themselves "Did I really say that? Did I really mean that?" The emotions fade but the words remain.

The word this week was treason.

“Anyone that commits treason should be shot,” Al Baldasaro, an adviser to the Trump campaign for veterans issues, told The Daily Beast. “I believe Hillary Clinton committed treason. She put people in danger. When people take confidential material off a server, you’re sharing information with the enemy. That’s treason.”

Wow! Treason.

"Treason against the United States shall consist only of levying war against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, or giving aid and comfort to them."

Treason against the King was used so loosely by the British that our Forefathers laid out a very specific definition of the crime. Furthermore, they stipulated that no one could be convicted of treason without two witnesses of the treasonous act.

The act of calling your political enemies traitors has a very long history, which is probably why the charge is once again being thrown around. One should keep in mind, however, that once the standards of proof are lowered for a crime it becomes far easier to be charged for it yourself.

Added 7/20/16 18:48:50

The Secret Service is officially investigating Al Baldasaro, an adviser to the Donald Trump campaign for veterans issues, who called for Hillary Clinton’s execution for “treason.”“The U.S. Secret Service is aware of this matter and will conduct the appropriate investigation,” spokesman Robert Hoback told The Daily Beast on Wednesday afternoon.“Anyone that commits treason should be shot,” Baldasaro told The Daily Beast earlier in the day. “I believe Hillary Clinton committed treason. She put people in danger. When people take confidential material off a server, you’re sharing information with the enemy. That’s treason.”Baldasaro was expanding on a comment he made on Tuesday, when he called for Clinton to be “put in the firing line” over her mishandling of classified emails.The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.—Asawin Suebsaeng

And the VP Candidate Is - Not Newt!

The Donald finally did something smart and picked Mike Pence as his VP candidate. Fortunately, he didn't pick Newt Gingrich. This, a day or two after Newt, responding to the Nice Truck Massacre, said that we needed to interview every Muslim in America - he didn't indicate if that included American Citizens or just aliens - and deport every one that said that they believed/followed/had heard of Sharia Law.

Now, I like Newt. Not when he is a politician, but when he writes fiction. I loved his "Pearl Harbor"/"Days of Infamy" alternate history series, where he examined the "what if" of a Japanese Invasion of Hawaii as part of the Pearl Harbor Strike.

But that was fiction. Let's talk about the real world.

I get that people find terrorism scary. That's why it's called terror. But responding to it with proposals that tear down our Freedoms is just not the way to go. Terrorism is not an existential crisis for the United States.

Let me say that again in another way. We have been suffering from Middle Eastern terrorists since the 1970's. Look at the Islamist Terrorism Attacks Wikipedia page. Yes, it is long, bloody and painful. But the West is still alive and thriving. America is still kicking.

Back during World War II, America faced an existential crisis. We pulled a Newt stunt: we packed our Japanese up and sent them to immigration camps. When it was over, we came to two conclusions:

1. We lost the use of a number of our own citizens, both in the military (the 100th Infantry Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team) and in civilian labor forces.
2. The land, homes, and businesses that the Japanese (Isei and Nisei) were forced to liquidate was property that jealous whites had coveted and were able to grab at fire-sale properties.

While I suppose that some of the people that benefited from the WW II Japanese situation believed that the "Dirty Japs" didn't deserve their property, most Americans do, and believe that we did something wrong.

Why are we proposing the same types of things today, when our country is not faced with nearly the same type of threat?

Are we really scared of Islam and Islamic terrorists so much that we want to risk our Constitutional Rights of Religious Freedom and Citizenship?

Or is it that we respond so well to politicians that use the fear of others, outsiders? Are we hoping to find some group that we can hang for all the problems we see?

There were another class of politicians that did the same thing back prior to WW II. Does anyone remember Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin? They stoked the fears of their peoples with the outsiders, the others, the Jews. It worked pretty well.

When Newtie issued his call for interviewing all the Muslims, I wondered if he would be willing to just accept their denials of Shariah Law. I suppose he would require a lie detector test, something we reserve for guarding our highest secrets. (I didn't need to go on the box for a secret clearance.) Or maybe that wouldn't be good enough. After all, the Donald want's to bring back waterboarding, and things even tougher. Definitely brings to mind the Gestapo and KGB, and the way they interrogated suspects to ensure their "reliability".

People, get a grip! Show some faith! Our country has done well with our traditions and freedoms under our Constitution. It allows for a lot of different people to live and work together. If we start tearing it down every time one outside group or another starts bugging us, then we are truly lost. Let's show some resolve to ignore these crazy politicians that incite our fear to get what they want. Let's instead find people like Marshall, Eisenhower, Nimitz, and our grandparents, that go out and fight the problem to protect us as we are, not as we shouldn't be.

Am I Going to be Killed By a Muslim Terrorist?

Has the whole world gone crazy?

Today, Friday, July 15, 2016, the world is reverberating in the wake of a presumed Muslim ISIS terrorist killing 84 people on Bastille Day in Nice, France, mowing them down with a truck. Donald Trump says "It's War". Newt Gingrich says we should test every Muslim and deport all that say they follow Shariah law.

Terrorism is designed to get its target population to change the way they live. I get that some people are scared. The way that the media continuously rebroadcasts these events pushes them into everyone's mind. But what is the risk? How likely are we to be killed by terrorists? Should we change the way we live, indeed, give up our basic principals, based on the risk these terrorists pose?

Here is a table for the last 5 years of terrorism related attacks in the U.S.

Year	Total Attacks in the U.S.	Total Fatalities in the U.S.	U.S. Fatalities in the U.S.	U.S. Fatalities in the World
2010	17	4	4	6
2011	9	0	0	3
2012	13	7	6	12
2013	16	7	5	13
2014	19	18	17	32
Total	74	36	32	55
Average	14.8	7.2	6.4	11.0

Even when you go back to 9/11, 3,066 Americans have been killed in terror attacks from 9/11 through 12/31/2014.

Compare that with 42,773 Americans who commit suicide every year.

Let's look at the same period for drug-related deaths:

Year	Prescription Drug Deaths	Opioids	Benzodiazepines	Illicit Drug Deaths	Heroin	Cocaine
2010	22,134	16,651	6,479	8,408	3,036	4,183
2011	22,810	16,917	6,872	10,284	4,397	4,681
2012	22,114	16,007	6,524	11,641	5,925	4,404
2013	22,767	16,235	6,973	14,775	8,257	4,944
2014	25,760	18,893	7,945	17,465	10,574	5,415
Total	115,585	84,703	34,793	62,573	32,189	23,627
Average	23,117	16,940.6	6958.6	12,514.6	6,437.8	4,725.4

More people are dying due to drug overdoses by far. But OD'ing is something you can control: just don't do it. Terror is something that happens out of the blue.

How about some other causes of death?

Year	Lightning	Workplace Death
2010	29	4583
2011	26	4,693
2012	28	4,628
2013	23	4,585
2014	26	4,821
Total	132	23,310
Average	26.4	4,662

Any unwanted death is a tragedy. We spend a considerable effort to try to prevent any unwanted death. And we should work hard on eliminating terror attacks. But we don't change our way of life, give up our basic rights, question our fundamental beliefs. We do our best to prevent what we can and go about our business.

Our founding fathers were of differing religious beliefs. What they wanted was to be left to worship the way they wanted, free of the state questioning them about their religion. We need to worry more about politicians wanting to look into religion than we do about terrorists. In revolutionary America a standing army was a bad thing, because of the temptation for the state to use it to repress the people. Our founding fathers new that war was a terrible thing, the very last choice when all other means had been exhausted. We need to worry more about politicians who want to start a war when anything bad happens than we do about terrorists.

America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. Maybe it is time we start showing a bit more bravery in the face of terrorists. And maybe it is time we worry more about our freedoms than we do about being killed by Islamists (or white supremacists or black protestors or Mexican drug cartels or any of the "others" that alarmists might throw in our face).

Am I going to die at the hands of a terrorist? Most likely not. But I would like to hear a candidate that has a plan to save me from lightning.