Category: firearms

Righteous Prey by John Sandford

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Another action packed novel with Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers.

Righteous Prey (2022) is 32nd in the series. Virgil finally gets a publishing contract!

This time our heroes are trying to takedown a group of vigilante billionaires — all who got rich by early investment in Bitcoin.

The vigilantes make a list of American assholes — people most deserving of assassination.

For example, one target is exactly like Rush Limbaugh, a dangerous rightwing extremist radio shock jock.

The general public is sympathetic to the killers.

“We’re going to murder people who need to be murdered.” So begins a press release from a mysterious group known only as The Five, shortly after a vicious predator is murdered in San Francisco.

The Five is believed to be made up of vigilante killers who are very bored… and very rich. They target the worst of society — rapists, murderers, and thieves — and then use their unlimited resources to offset the damage done by those who they’ve killed, donating untraceable bitcoin to charities and victims via the dark net.

The Five soon become the most popular figures on social media, a modern-day Batman… though their motives may not be entirely pure.

There’s a real anti-Gundamentalist theme in this book, as well.

It’s far too easy to acquire weapons of war in the USA.

American Spirits by Russell Banks

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Russell Banks died in 2023 at age-82.

His novels are known for “detailed accounts of domestic strife and the daily struggles of ordinary often-marginalized characters” …

Banks was the 1985 recipient of the John Dos Passos Prize for fiction. 

Continental Drift and Cloudsplitter were finalists for the 1986 and 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction respectively …

I only knew the name as the author of The Sweet Hereafter (1991).

American Spirits (2024) is his last publication.

Grim but compelling narratives from this fine writer.

Three stories unearth the bitterness and violence seething in a working-class American town.

These long narratives by the late Banks are all set in the northern New York village of Sam Dent that featured in The Sweet Hereafter (1991). But where that story dealt with a tragedy that affected the whole town, these explore the welter of pain that can afflict a single house. …

Kirkus Reviews – American Spirits

He based these stories on chatter he heard from strangers while sitting in a bar in Keene, New York. Some wearing MAGA hats. 😀

He was watching sports on TV while listening in to the conversations of drunk patrons.

Russell Banks writes to be a better person.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Wrecker by Carl Hiaasen

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Wrecker is Carl Hiaasen‘s 27th book. His 7th for younger readers.

You could call it Young Adult.

Though there’s no sex, no profanity — right wing snowflakes in Florida managed to get him banned from some appearances. Good publicity, of course. 😀

Hiaasen is one of the funniest authors working today. But humour is less important in this one.

A longtime journalist with the Miami Herald, Hiaasen simply takes actual stories from the Florida news — and fictionalizes them. 

He mocks American culture and Florida politics, in particular. 

Released on September 26, 2023, Wrecker is set in Key West during the COVID-19 pandemic. Kirkus Reviews called it, “A batten-down-the-hatches thriller anchored by critical real-life themes“.

Fifteen-year-old Valdez Jones VIII calls himself Wrecker, after his ancestors who made a living salvaging shipwrecks. He is thriving thanks to the online schooling during lockdown that allows him the flexibility to be out on his boat. …

This thrilling story featuring wry, witty writing also explores the history of racism in Key West, the environmental impacts of cruise tourism, and the effects of Covid-19 on both people’s lives and criminal activities. Wrecker is a sympathetic character whose intelligence, savvy, and strong moral compass lead to a satisfying finish. 

Kirkus

Intelligent — you won’t be surprised that he hates Trump.

Author James Patterson offered this praise: “Carl Hiaasen remains the undefeated, unscored-upon conscience of Florida, maybe the conscience of the whole country.

Carl’s only brother was Rob Hiaasen, an editor and columnist at The Capital newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, who was killed in the mass shooting at the newspaper’s office on June 28, 2018.

Red Knife by William Kent Krueger

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Cork O’Connor, now a Private Investigator, paints a picture of racial conflict in rural America, as well as a sensitive look at the secrets we keep from even those closest to us and the destructive nature of all that is left unsaid between fathers and sons, husbands and wives, friends and lovers.

Of the series so far, this is the book I enjoyed least.

It’s too complicated. Too violent.

Gundamentalist Americans make insane mistakes yet the author seems to have nothing against guns — aside from Cork moving his own weapons away to safe keeping.

A school shooting thrown into the mix too.

Staying NEUTRAL is Supporting the Oppressor

On By Rick McIn bad news, education, ethics, firearms, GOP USA, government, human rights, things getting better, things getting worseLeave a comment

In Coach Education we have a concept called ETHICAL ACTION.

If you see something you think is wrong, take action.

Record what you saw in a diary. Keep records.

Videotape what you saw.

Notify authorities in a respectful, diplomatic way.

Ideally you ask the (possible) offender: “Why are you doing that? I don’t understand.”

People wonder why I’m so vocal about the high crimes of Donald Trump.

Ethical action. That’s why.

Trump inspired smarter people in Florida to enact a law called Don’t Say Gay. That’s like passing a law called Don’t Say Black. Don’t Say Latino.

We should take ethical action against people who discriminate when their Constitution clearly states that ALL ARE CREATED EQUAL.

Support the lesser of two evils if both sides are bad.

Martin Niemöller was a Lutheran pastor. Initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler and a self-identified antisemite. Later best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime during the late 1930s and for his widely quoted 1946 poem:

“First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Never by Ken Follett

On By Rick McIn bad news, books, ethics, firearms, GOP USA, government, Islam, things getting worseLeave a comment

As a teenager I loved Follett’s World War II thriller, “Eye of the Needle” (1974).

Follett got even more famous writing historical fiction: Kingsbridge Series ➙ Century Trilogy.

In 2021 he published a geopolitical thriller — Never. Quite a departure.

Never is set in today’s world.

The sprawling saga is a fictionalized story of our world stumbling towards a nuclear war that nobody wants.

It begins in the Sahara Desert. Islamic terrorists, drugs and human trafficking.

The American President Pauline Green is a 4′ 11″ Republican. A former gymnast. Of course she’s challenged on the right by a Trumpy populist. Top of the American agenda is a revolt in North Korea. Rebel military have seized the nuclear weapons.

A high-ranking Chinese Intelligence official offers insight into the mindset of that superpower.

This book is terrifying as you can see how a nuclear war could start. In fact, I’m affected enough to no longer want to travel to Taiwan or Korea for hiking. They are both too close to nuclear attack.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

As always, Follett writes great love stories. It’s the human stories that separate his work from other authors.

Click PLAY or watch an interview on YouTube.

Another book with a similar plot is 2034: A Novel of the Next World War (2021).

Economist – Gun Violence in America

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60% of gun deaths in the USA are suicides.

Mostly white males.

States with stricter firearms regulation have fewer suicides.

67% of Americans want stricter gun laws.

10% want them further relaxed.

Buybacks (voluntary is best, in my opinion) would be one way to start reducing the number of deaths.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

March For Our Lives – Welcome To The Revolution

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Ban assault weapons.

Young people — including the Stoneman Douglas survivors — have to campaign for change. It’s their future.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

On By Rick McIn books, economics, Facebook, firearms, GOP USA, government, human rights, things getting worseLeave a comment

With a rating of 4.36 / 5.00 on GoodReads, this book is popular. And depressing.

My takeaways:

  • Stop worrying about Russia. It’s the richest of the rich deciding American politics.
  • Charles and David Koch started as Libertarians. In fact, David ran in 1980 as candidate for Vice President for the Libertarian Party. In recent decades everything the Kochs do is to enrich themselves. #FollowTheMoney

  • The Kochs will cheat, lie, steal, intimidate to enrich themselves. The GOP are merely a means to an end.
  • The Kochs are good businessmen, employing many. For all the hundreds of millions they’ve spent, mostly on Republicans, they’ve made more back on legislation enriching the richest of the rich.
  • The 2010 Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision made the situation much worse.
  • Because their business is mostly Petrotoxins, the Kochs are keenest on preventing action on climate change.
  • Currently Americans for Prosperity is the main Koch lobbyist.
  • The E.P.A. identified Koch Industries in 2012 as the single biggest producer of toxic waste in the United States.

The U.S. political system is a fail, I’d say.

40% think Trump is doing a good job. A majority of those, I’m guessing, believe what they hear on FOX News and right wing radio.

Americans so easily misled deserve worse education, worse health care, medical bankruptcy, etc. … There’s no helping people like that.

I keep thinking American voters will figure out the richest of the rich are taking too much money. They don’t

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (2016) is a non-fiction book written by the American investigative journalist Jane Mayer, about a network of extremely wealthy conservative republicans, foremost among them Charles and David Koch, who have together funded an array of organizations that work in tandem to influence academic institutions, think tanks, the courts, statehouses, Congress, and the American presidency for their own benefit.

Mayer particularly discusses the Koch family and their political activities, along with Richard Mellon Scaife and John M. Olin and the DeVos and Coors families.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Jane Meredith Mayer is an American investigative journalist who has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1995. …

In 2016, Doubleday published Mayer’s fourth book, Dark Money, which became an instant national best-seller, and the New York Times named it one of the ten best books of the year. …

Mayer revealed that approximately six investigators, led by former New York Police Chief Howard Safir, had been hired by the industrialist Koch brothers in an effort to try to dig up dirt in order to smear her reputation, and that accusations of plagiarism had been leveled at her. She responded by publicly airing those tactics of intimidation, effectively debunking the smear campaign.

 

Martin Luther King Jr – I have a Dream

On By Rick McIn ethics, firearms, government, human rights, musicLeave a comment

“I Have a Dream” is a public speech delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he calls for an end to racism in the United States …

I still have a dream, a dream deeply rooted in the American dream – one day this nation will rise up and live up to its creed, “We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal.” I have a dream…

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I’m reading a book about those days. President Kennedy playing a balancing act between King and his supporters and the segregationists, mostly whites in the southern States.

Amazing days. King was far from perfect. Nor was Kennedy perfect. (Both were womanizers, for example.) But I admire both in different ways.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had been proposed by President John F. Kennedy in June 1963, but opposed by filibuster in the Senate.

Thereafter, President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed the bill forward, which in its final form was passed in the U.S. Congress by a Senate vote of 73-27 and House vote of 289-126 (70%-30%). The Act was signed into law by President Johnson …

Warm-up acts at the 1963 March on Washington:

Gospel legend Mahalia Jackson sang “How I Got Over“, and Marian Andersonsang “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands“. …

Joan Baez led the crowds in several verses of “We Shall Overcome” and “Oh Freedom“. Bob Dylan performed “When the Ship Comes In“, for which he was joined by Baez. Dylan also performed “Only a Pawn in Their Game“, a provocative and not completely popular choice because it asserted that Byron de la Beckwith, as a poor white man, was not personally or primarily to blame for the murder of Medgar Evers.

Peter, Paul and Mary sang “If I Had a Hammer” and Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind“. Odetta sang “I’m On My Way“.

Charlton Heston, James Baldwin, Marlon Brando, and Harry Belafonte were there.

Charlton Heston supported civil rights?

Yep. He was a big booster of Democrats before switching to the dark side with Reagan and then the NRA.