Pound, pound, pound … sometimes I feel as if I am on the wrong end of a pile driver. The constant bickering between Rhett or Rick is wearing me down.
Almost two years ago, I posted this short, stop-motion animation by Normal McLaren who won an Oscar for Best Documentary (Short Subject) in 1953. Yikes: 1953! You would think we would have learned something in the past half century, in the past 234 years since the republic was born, in the past 6,000 years of recorded history …
Never mind: Just watch the damn film (and pay attention).
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Out, out, damned spot
I saw this clip on The Impolitic this morning: perky Sharron Angle having a bit of a smugfest about how Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Ben Franklin really wanted us to have the uninfringable right to own firearms, not to facilitate raising a militia, as was stated, or to put food on the table or keep the fox out of the henhouse, but to protect us against tyrannical despots demanding to provide us with affordable health care.
To be fair, I'd like to know the rest of the sentence starting "we need to take Harry Reid out. . ." Vote him out of his elected position, or just "take him out?"
Inquiring minds want to know, but batshit crazies with their hairy ears glued to the radio don't bother to ask. They already know. One has already spoken and as in Mao's famous statement about the voice of revolution -- from the muzzle of a gun. Indeed many self styled conservatives seem to have read intensively from the little red book.
I'll give her the benefit of the doubt for the nonce, but although Jefferson did indeed, how literally I don't know, suggest further revolutions, one would have a hard time convincing me the system he helped design wasn't intended to facilitate that process bloodlessly and with due process of law.
The bit about guns being needed to protect against "tyranny?" to allow the minority to have bloody revenge for the actions of elected representatives? Sorry, Sharron, this is beyond the boundaries of acceptable speech and perhaps even further into the territory of treason, if fomenting armed insurrection against an elected government be such.
It recalls Henry II crying "will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?" Not exactly a demand that someone kill Thomas à Becket, but someone soon did and Hank got to wash his hands of the matter. Whether it be the king of England, the Queen of Scotland or a Prefect of Roman Judea, some bloody bastard is always seeking such cleanliness, but that damned spot usually proves rather difficult to remove.
To be fair, I'd like to know the rest of the sentence starting "we need to take Harry Reid out. . ." Vote him out of his elected position, or just "take him out?"
Inquiring minds want to know, but batshit crazies with their hairy ears glued to the radio don't bother to ask. They already know. One has already spoken and as in Mao's famous statement about the voice of revolution -- from the muzzle of a gun. Indeed many self styled conservatives seem to have read intensively from the little red book.
I'll give her the benefit of the doubt for the nonce, but although Jefferson did indeed, how literally I don't know, suggest further revolutions, one would have a hard time convincing me the system he helped design wasn't intended to facilitate that process bloodlessly and with due process of law.
The bit about guns being needed to protect against "tyranny?" to allow the minority to have bloody revenge for the actions of elected representatives? Sorry, Sharron, this is beyond the boundaries of acceptable speech and perhaps even further into the territory of treason, if fomenting armed insurrection against an elected government be such.
It recalls Henry II crying "will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?" Not exactly a demand that someone kill Thomas à Becket, but someone soon did and Hank got to wash his hands of the matter. Whether it be the king of England, the Queen of Scotland or a Prefect of Roman Judea, some bloody bastard is always seeking such cleanliness, but that damned spot usually proves rather difficult to remove.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Just keep saying it. "Words have consequences"
Good freaking god, right wing! What the hell is the matter with you? Can't a guy take a break? I mean, don't you know that Fallout: New Vegas is out there? And it's not going to play itself! Can't you just chill the hell out for a while?'
But no. It's Glenn Beck, it's Sarah Palin, it's all the rest of you ignorant fucks. You go spewing your violent rhetoric when you don't think it means anything, and then try your damnedest to back away from it when your chickens come home to roost, don't you? Seems to me like the only person who would, you know, "retreat," instead of "reload"... well, hell, if you can't live up to the stupid philosophy you've been spouting for the last three or four years, then I guess you're kind of a pussy, aren't you?
I mean, come on!!
It's sad when you've got to let your congressbitches Durbin and Alexander make excuses for you because you're too scared to face the demon you raised.
And you know, it's even sadder when people have been pointing out that the crazies are coming out of the woodwork on this very issue, over this specific graphic, for almost a year, and you still can't figure out that maybe you're part of the problem.
OK, let's be real. Every time you meet up with some rightard screaming about how "liberals just want to blame this on Palin," there's a couple of things to remember.
If they say "well, lefties talk mean about Republicans, too," remind them that there's a big difference between "talk" and "shoot." (The saddest part, of course, is the right wing trying to justify Sarah Palin's rhetoric by digging deep into the farthest depths of the internet to find leftists making threats, too.)
On July 27, 2008, Jim Adkisson walked into a Unitarian church, killed two people and wounded two others, because he "wanted to kill... every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book,” but knew he couldn't get to them.
On April 4, 2009, Richard Poplawski shot and killed three police officers, because he was scared of "the Obama gun ban that's on the way." He was an avid watcher of Glenn Beck.
There are literally dozens of examples of increasing, escalating rightwing violence over that last three years. It's time for these frothing media types to get a clue, that maybe their spittle-flecked rants are only making things worse.
As usual, Keith Olbermann said it best. And if you haven't seen this yet, you need to.
And, you know what? If you just have to get your violence on, you could try Fallout, where you get to kill people virtually for a while, instead of out here in meatspace. Give it a shot (so to speak). Nobody gets hurt, except for a couple of pixels. Try it.
But no. It's Glenn Beck, it's Sarah Palin, it's all the rest of you ignorant fucks. You go spewing your violent rhetoric when you don't think it means anything, and then try your damnedest to back away from it when your chickens come home to roost, don't you? Seems to me like the only person who would, you know, "retreat," instead of "reload"... well, hell, if you can't live up to the stupid philosophy you've been spouting for the last three or four years, then I guess you're kind of a pussy, aren't you?
I mean, come on!!
It's sad when you've got to let your congressbitches Durbin and Alexander make excuses for you because you're too scared to face the demon you raised.
And you know, it's even sadder when people have been pointing out that the crazies are coming out of the woodwork on this very issue, over this specific graphic, for almost a year, and you still can't figure out that maybe you're part of the problem.
OK, let's be real. Every time you meet up with some rightard screaming about how "liberals just want to blame this on Palin," there's a couple of things to remember.
If they say "well, lefties talk mean about Republicans, too," remind them that there's a big difference between "talk" and "shoot." (The saddest part, of course, is the right wing trying to justify Sarah Palin's rhetoric by digging deep into the farthest depths of the internet to find leftists making threats, too.)
On July 27, 2008, Jim Adkisson walked into a Unitarian church, killed two people and wounded two others, because he "wanted to kill... every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book,” but knew he couldn't get to them.
On April 4, 2009, Richard Poplawski shot and killed three police officers, because he was scared of "the Obama gun ban that's on the way." He was an avid watcher of Glenn Beck.
There are literally dozens of examples of increasing, escalating rightwing violence over that last three years. It's time for these frothing media types to get a clue, that maybe their spittle-flecked rants are only making things worse.
As usual, Keith Olbermann said it best. And if you haven't seen this yet, you need to.
And, you know what? If you just have to get your violence on, you could try Fallout, where you get to kill people virtually for a while, instead of out here in meatspace. Give it a shot (so to speak). Nobody gets hurt, except for a couple of pixels. Try it.
The Liberals did it, the Liberals did it!
The reaction was swift and predictable. Trolls, whose abusive name calling I won't indulge by posting have assured me that the Arizona shooting was the work of a "Liberal" like me although a man obsessed with returning to the gold standard and pretty much toeing the Tea Party line sounds pretty conservative although I'm the first to say those words are less meaningful as descriptive words than they are as tribal markers. Enraged paranoid schizophrenic who was provided a target by irresponsible political rhetoric? But that won't do, this is a game for two parties, not for reasonable people.
Fox, without of course admitting any culpability or telling it's viewers that they were
doing it, has demanded it's talking heads tone down the rodeo of rage. Sarah Palin redacted the hell out of her web site and that picture of smiling Beck pointing two pistols at the camera suddenly disappeared from view so that they can say who me?
I don't expect any public self-examination and I do expect the hunt for false equivalence to escalate on the Republican side along with the effort to portray the shooter as being outside the ring of righteous wrath, around which their circus tent is pitched. I'm sure that soon enough, Michelle Bachmann's desire to have people "armed and dangerous" so that they can "fight back" will be cleansed of inherent irresponsibility and any trace of inappropriateness, but I'm not sure the idiot rage can be stopped at this point even if God raptures up the entire Fox staff and Bachmann loses the power of speech. (please, God?)
The hoplophobes, the safety nuts who would dearly like and fatuously think they can legislate away all they are afraid of, (and that's lots of things) from cars that go faster than a Model T to McDonalds Happy Meals are pushing
more gun control and usually without any knowledge of guns or how they're already controlled. There's a great deal of hoopla about "extended magazines" from those who call them clips and confuse cartridges with bullets.
Hey, that a handful of Saudis and Egyptians could hijack a plane because reinforcing the cockpit doors was an unnecessary government regulation is scarier, but that's just me. I still don't want to make all sharp things illegal. That Tim McVeigh and accomplices were able to buy fertilizer and fuel oil and rent a truck was more deadly. Where's the Mothers Against Ammonium Nitrate movement? What's to stop me from buying some and going spontaneously insane?
Frankly I'm more spinally shivered that people drive drunk while talking on the phone and smoking cigarettes at 40 over the limit in 7500 pound vehicles with bumpers at the height of my face. It's a clear and present danger. I'm in danger from people who run jet skis through packed anchorages at 60mph and towing their kids behind on inner tubes more than from madmen with guns in a country where violent crime has been declining for decades. If I go 6 miles southwest of here, I'm in more danger from alligators and wild hogs than from any man sane or otherwise. But even if we do ban everything that has the potential for mayhem -- like alcohol or drugs or 1200 horsepower speed boats; kitchen knives and chain saws, most of us are smart enough to know it won't solve the problem. Most of us.
The problem is crazy violent people. Instead of providing care and treatment, we protect their freedom to roam about, soak up the Fox fantasies about overthrowing the government with violence until they flip and buy a gun or drive the wrong way down the interstate -- or fly a plane into an IRS office.
Freedom isn't safe. I wish I could make those words flash like a neon sign and I wish the Democrats would not so quickly and obliviously shoot themselves in the foot by making this about more ineffective gun control. That's not because I like them so much. It's because what I want is something between the "we can't trust you to be responsible" and the "why should I have any responsibility for anything" attitudes.
Fox, without of course admitting any culpability or telling it's viewers that they were
doing it, has demanded it's talking heads tone down the rodeo of rage. Sarah Palin redacted the hell out of her web site and that picture of smiling Beck pointing two pistols at the camera suddenly disappeared from view so that they can say who me?I don't expect any public self-examination and I do expect the hunt for false equivalence to escalate on the Republican side along with the effort to portray the shooter as being outside the ring of righteous wrath, around which their circus tent is pitched. I'm sure that soon enough, Michelle Bachmann's desire to have people "armed and dangerous" so that they can "fight back" will be cleansed of inherent irresponsibility and any trace of inappropriateness, but I'm not sure the idiot rage can be stopped at this point even if God raptures up the entire Fox staff and Bachmann loses the power of speech. (please, God?)
The hoplophobes, the safety nuts who would dearly like and fatuously think they can legislate away all they are afraid of, (and that's lots of things) from cars that go faster than a Model T to McDonalds Happy Meals are pushing
more gun control and usually without any knowledge of guns or how they're already controlled. There's a great deal of hoopla about "extended magazines" from those who call them clips and confuse cartridges with bullets."Why would anyone want one?"is the loaded question as though they weren't the choice of many yacht owners who find themselves in an updated and unwanted episode of Pirates of the Caribbean - and many of my friends have been. It's either that or buy an Uzi at twice the price. They used to be banned! it's said, and that's true - or sort of true since they weren't really taken off the marked by that ban. With a supply of tens of millions of units, banned weapons and accessories actually saw a boost in sales of "pre-ban" items, but that remains news to those who really are so far out of the great loop of reality they think a semi-automatic rifle is far more dangerous when it has a plastic military stock instead of a nice walnut one. No military in the world uses what we're told is an "assault rifle" and of course the famous ban didn't actually ban these civilian weapons -- but who reads? Who needs to when we have those freeze dried, microwaveable TV Dinner opinions available? Solidarity, on both sides of the mainstream, is too much fun to risk and emoting is the American pass-time, of course. But I digress.
writes one website Jeremiah. How could we have made that illegal without making it illegal for millions and millions and millions of people who like to shoot targets, clay pigeons or real pigeons? How could we make it impossible when all our efforts to make things go away by outlawing them have failed and made the alleged problem worse? Are Democrats all about not trusting the citizenry and imposing prior restraints without probable cause? It's too easy for their opposition to make that case and apparently it's too hard for Democrats to recognize the contradiction or that they're equally the party of fear as the party that obsesses about taking away guns and imposing Sharia law. In fact this incident could be a gain for Republicans who have used the fear of more gun bans to make Democrats into depraved authoritarian bogeymen.
"That Jared Loughner was legally able to obtain the gun and ammo that he used to attempt an assassination of a member of Congress, slay a federal judge, and kill others should send a shiver down the collective spine of this nation."
Hey, that a handful of Saudis and Egyptians could hijack a plane because reinforcing the cockpit doors was an unnecessary government regulation is scarier, but that's just me. I still don't want to make all sharp things illegal. That Tim McVeigh and accomplices were able to buy fertilizer and fuel oil and rent a truck was more deadly. Where's the Mothers Against Ammonium Nitrate movement? What's to stop me from buying some and going spontaneously insane?
Frankly I'm more spinally shivered that people drive drunk while talking on the phone and smoking cigarettes at 40 over the limit in 7500 pound vehicles with bumpers at the height of my face. It's a clear and present danger. I'm in danger from people who run jet skis through packed anchorages at 60mph and towing their kids behind on inner tubes more than from madmen with guns in a country where violent crime has been declining for decades. If I go 6 miles southwest of here, I'm in more danger from alligators and wild hogs than from any man sane or otherwise. But even if we do ban everything that has the potential for mayhem -- like alcohol or drugs or 1200 horsepower speed boats; kitchen knives and chain saws, most of us are smart enough to know it won't solve the problem. Most of us.
The problem is crazy violent people. Instead of providing care and treatment, we protect their freedom to roam about, soak up the Fox fantasies about overthrowing the government with violence until they flip and buy a gun or drive the wrong way down the interstate -- or fly a plane into an IRS office.
Freedom isn't safe. I wish I could make those words flash like a neon sign and I wish the Democrats would not so quickly and obliviously shoot themselves in the foot by making this about more ineffective gun control. That's not because I like them so much. It's because what I want is something between the "we can't trust you to be responsible" and the "why should I have any responsibility for anything" attitudes.
Monday, January 10, 2011
I'm digital
I've decided to go digital; to give up the kind of thinking that goes along with gelatinous biological brains and let my thoughts be the product of magnetic patterns on spinning discs and the movement of charges across doped semiconductor junctions. It's amazing how clear things become without the hormones. It's remarkable how far you can see when the emotional soup is gone. I've decided I don't give a damn any more and why should I? You can't squeeze tears from monocrystalline silicon.
So if I see the pathetic end of the United States of America as anything but an increasingly irrelevant, ever petulant and narcissistic giant with little left but monstrous weapons and antiquated mythology as a claim to dignity, it doesn't bother me. Just look at Shanghai and then look at Detroit and tell me how our unending gobbling about rights and duties and liberals and conservatives aren't just aftershocks from an argument settled elsewhere a while ago. The world isn't going in our direction and our direction isn't going anywhere. All our concepts, whether they're from the danger-free and packed in cotton safety state side or the every man his own alpha ape, armed and dangerous fantasy camp, are already irrelevant. We obsess, we make ourselves impotent arguing about making happy meals illegal and whether we should have public education. In the fastest growing and largest country on earth, they shoot you for drunk driving and they're financing our consumerist binge drinking.
The greatest cities, the longest bridges, biggest dams and buildings - the fastest growing economies: they're all elsewhere and in countries with little respect for our ideas of personal liberty and where our individualism is seen as childish and antisocial and obstructionist. Sure, we'll go on yammering about mama grizzlys like this was the 9th century, and small town values and dietary fads, mysterious toxins and quack medicine. We'll still mistrust any new technology and talk to the spirits in pieces of quartz and call on their undetectable energy. We'll still wrap ourselves with bright pieces of red, white and blue and strut about like peacocks, booming about being the best, the biggest, the bravest, the most important -- and if we continue to subvert, dominate, steal and kill on our long downhill road to penury and oblivion, it will still be all about freedom and saving the world. They can ride from Beijing to Shanghai at 300mph in air conditioned comfort in the time it takes us to be x-rayed and manhandled in our decaying airports. I can't even take a 60 mph train to Chicago from here, or go there at all if it snows.
We quibble about our divine right to drive a Hummer or our divine duty to drive a Prius -- they build the biggest hydroelectric plant on the planet even if it means wiping out 5000 years worth of archaeology and displacing millions. They buy more Chevrolets then we do. They're building moon landers and aiming at Mars. We can't afford to go to the doctor.
No, when Haiti begins to look down and laugh at us while we bellow about smaller government and trickling wealth and creeping socialism, there won't be much left but our bloated delusion of relevance. It won't end with a bang or whimper but with the antic, puppet show grotesqueries of Beck and the nasal bleating of Palin. But it will end.
Will we hear the laughter eventually? Of course I won't notice or care if we do or don't. I'm digital.
So if I see the pathetic end of the United States of America as anything but an increasingly irrelevant, ever petulant and narcissistic giant with little left but monstrous weapons and antiquated mythology as a claim to dignity, it doesn't bother me. Just look at Shanghai and then look at Detroit and tell me how our unending gobbling about rights and duties and liberals and conservatives aren't just aftershocks from an argument settled elsewhere a while ago. The world isn't going in our direction and our direction isn't going anywhere. All our concepts, whether they're from the danger-free and packed in cotton safety state side or the every man his own alpha ape, armed and dangerous fantasy camp, are already irrelevant. We obsess, we make ourselves impotent arguing about making happy meals illegal and whether we should have public education. In the fastest growing and largest country on earth, they shoot you for drunk driving and they're financing our consumerist binge drinking.
The greatest cities, the longest bridges, biggest dams and buildings - the fastest growing economies: they're all elsewhere and in countries with little respect for our ideas of personal liberty and where our individualism is seen as childish and antisocial and obstructionist. Sure, we'll go on yammering about mama grizzlys like this was the 9th century, and small town values and dietary fads, mysterious toxins and quack medicine. We'll still mistrust any new technology and talk to the spirits in pieces of quartz and call on their undetectable energy. We'll still wrap ourselves with bright pieces of red, white and blue and strut about like peacocks, booming about being the best, the biggest, the bravest, the most important -- and if we continue to subvert, dominate, steal and kill on our long downhill road to penury and oblivion, it will still be all about freedom and saving the world. They can ride from Beijing to Shanghai at 300mph in air conditioned comfort in the time it takes us to be x-rayed and manhandled in our decaying airports. I can't even take a 60 mph train to Chicago from here, or go there at all if it snows.
We quibble about our divine right to drive a Hummer or our divine duty to drive a Prius -- they build the biggest hydroelectric plant on the planet even if it means wiping out 5000 years worth of archaeology and displacing millions. They buy more Chevrolets then we do. They're building moon landers and aiming at Mars. We can't afford to go to the doctor.
No, when Haiti begins to look down and laugh at us while we bellow about smaller government and trickling wealth and creeping socialism, there won't be much left but our bloated delusion of relevance. It won't end with a bang or whimper but with the antic, puppet show grotesqueries of Beck and the nasal bleating of Palin. But it will end.
Will we hear the laughter eventually? Of course I won't notice or care if we do or don't. I'm digital.
ARIZONA CRIME STATS BACK SHERIFF DUPNIK’S CLAIM: “A MECCA FOR PREJUDICE AND BIGOTRY”
Original Research: RockyNC
Commentary: Octopus
Last year, RockyNC of the Swash Zone posted this article, Arizona Draconia, arguing in part that anti-immigration hysteria in Arizona is NOT supported by Arizona's crime statistics:
RockyNC - "With these numbers in mind, what DID prompt the Draconian measures enacted by the Arizona governor and legislature? The argument that they had to "do something" about illegals in order to fight crime sure doesn't stand up in light of Arizon's own numbers.In aftermath of the Tucson massacre that claimed 6 lives and injured 13 others, it is revealing to revisit Rocky’s findings, especially within the context of Sheriff Dupnik’s remarks:
Sheriff Dupnik - "The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry."In response to Sheriff Dupnik, here is what Senator Jon Kyl said:
Senator Jon Kyl - “First, I didn't really think that that had any part in a law enforcement briefing last night. It was speculation. I don't think we should rush to speculate.”And here is what right-wing radio host Jon Justice, of KQTH FM 104.1 in Arizona, said … calling on Sheriff Dupnik to resign:
Jon Justice - “It was a complete misuse of his power and he owes the media in town, TV and radio, an apology for his horrible comments in the middle of such a tragic day. He should step down immediately from his position as Pima County Sheriff.”Lets look at the facts.
Overall crime rates in Arizona are down by roughly 12%; whereas bias and hate crimes are up by substantial margins. According to Arizona’s Total Crime Index, the composite crime rate dropped from 289,554 in 2008 to 255,133 in 2009, a decline of 12%. In contrast, bias and hate crimes increased from 168 incidents in 2007 to 226 in 2009. Please note: These data show a reversal in bias crime trends. In previous years, bias and hate crimes had declined from 207 incidents in 2005 to 168 in 2007 … until anti-immigration hysteria kicked in and pushed the numbers up.
The good sheriff is right. Arizona has turned itself into Ground Zero for prejudice and bigotry, and there is nothing Senator Kyl, any baghead, or Sarah Palin can say to ‘refudiate’ the data.
In the abattoir, there is an old saying about the utility of pig slaughter: Use everything but the squeal, they say. Tell me, Messrs Kyl and Justice and Mizz Palin …
How do you put lipstick on a squeal?
Sunday, January 9, 2011
6 dead in Arizona
Went out to dinner last night -- a little tiki hut place on the Fort Pierce inlet -- and everybody was glued to the TV wondering if the Saints could pull off an upset. A loud place but not a word anywhere about the blood still waiting to be cleaned up in Tucson. Not a word.
It's all been so predictable that it feels hardly worth posting about it. We're already listening to the "rush to judgment" rhetoric because after all, the guy could be a lone nut, whether or not that mysterious accomplice is apprehended. So why call it political at all? Maybe the guy just didn't like blonds or children or supermarket crowds. So why blame the Republicans for their daily "kill the traitors" passion play. I mean it was all protected speech anyway. (damn good thing we don't have hate speech laws like the Socialists.)
I mean all that hoopla about how it was the government who killed those people in Waco, not the messianic impostor / child molester and none of that rhetoric had anything to do with Tim McVeigh and associates murdering 168 people in the Murrah building. Hell no, it was the fertilizer that blew up the building and fertilizer control was the real issue, not rebel militias and hate spewing mass media.
The guy who murdered McKinley was all hopped up on Emma Goldman's anarchistic bombast. She told us that he was "president of the money kings and trust magnates." She told us that Czolgosz was a modern day Brutus, killer of tyrants ( sound familiar?) but it's better to blame the Ivor Johnson company. Hey, you don't grind the axe you wish you had, you grind the one you brought.
The protected speech of Taft supporters that spurred the certified nutjob Schrank to shoot the "tyrant" Teddy Roosevelt? Not their fault. We already know about the Tyrant Lincoln. But hey, Obama was a "tyrant" to reform health care, even just a little. and as the stateswoman Michelle Bachmann says, we have to be "armed and dangerous" because that tyrant is the most corrupt president in history. Armed and dangerous. Don't retreat, reload. Next time the guns will be loaded. Here they are - the ones with the cross hairs on them -- take a stand, take them back, but it's not our damned fault that someone was nuts enough to do what we told them to do!
My God, why hast thou forsaken me?
And I mean, why mention that we find it far too Stalinesque to provide mental health services and mandatory commitment to people who are basically only shirkers and malingerers? This just proves they don't deserve it! Besides if we can judge people insane, dangerous and incompetent we might have to enforce those laws that keep guns from them and that would be tyranny. You know what we do to tyrants, right?
And of course we need to make a quarter billion firearms disappear by waving more magic legislation because 60 years of ever tightening regulation has done so much good and never mind that it would take more door kickings and home invasions without probable cause than Hitler ever envisioned to accomplish such a Herculean task. Let's go after box cutters and bottles of mouthwash and shampoo and let's ban mosques so no one can attack us. Let's do like we do with marijuana: just trot out the old rhetoric and blame the same old suspects and keep on doing what doesn't work. Pull the string on the America doll and hear that old scratchy and fatuous voice: Ban, ban, ban, ban, ban and let's not be namby-pamby socialists and discuss the causes of things.
No, we have no proof that the shooter was motivated by the vicious and endless call to violence, so why mention all those Ann Coulter references to killing congressmen and judges? ask the Republican first responders. Want to stop people from murdering doctors? Why take away the chemicals you can make explosives with and take away nails and glass and batteries and canvas backpacks and it will stop, right? Don't blame the "abortion is murder" profiteers. Don't blame biblical gay bashers, blame pick-up trucks. Truks drag gay teens to death, not bigots.
And after all, some liberal somewhere must once have said something we can twist into a false equivalence. I remember one minor league academic who claimed that "heads should roll at Newscorp" was just such a call for ritual murder by this liberal, commie, socialist, sociopath. I guess it's all been my fault all along.
No, all that mess in Africa would never have happened if we banned machetes in Rwanda and that's what they should have done. Never mind the incessant voices chanting "kill the Tutsi cockroaches." Take away the sharp objects and say goodbye to murderous intent. We'll all live in peace.
It's nobodies fault, really, now let's get a good night's sleep and get back to talking about the Saints-Seahawks game last night. A sad night for N'awlins.
It's all been so predictable that it feels hardly worth posting about it. We're already listening to the "rush to judgment" rhetoric because after all, the guy could be a lone nut, whether or not that mysterious accomplice is apprehended. So why call it political at all? Maybe the guy just didn't like blonds or children or supermarket crowds. So why blame the Republicans for their daily "kill the traitors" passion play. I mean it was all protected speech anyway. (damn good thing we don't have hate speech laws like the Socialists.)
I mean all that hoopla about how it was the government who killed those people in Waco, not the messianic impostor / child molester and none of that rhetoric had anything to do with Tim McVeigh and associates murdering 168 people in the Murrah building. Hell no, it was the fertilizer that blew up the building and fertilizer control was the real issue, not rebel militias and hate spewing mass media.
The guy who murdered McKinley was all hopped up on Emma Goldman's anarchistic bombast. She told us that he was "president of the money kings and trust magnates." She told us that Czolgosz was a modern day Brutus, killer of tyrants ( sound familiar?) but it's better to blame the Ivor Johnson company. Hey, you don't grind the axe you wish you had, you grind the one you brought.
The protected speech of Taft supporters that spurred the certified nutjob Schrank to shoot the "tyrant" Teddy Roosevelt? Not their fault. We already know about the Tyrant Lincoln. But hey, Obama was a "tyrant" to reform health care, even just a little. and as the stateswoman Michelle Bachmann says, we have to be "armed and dangerous" because that tyrant is the most corrupt president in history. Armed and dangerous. Don't retreat, reload. Next time the guns will be loaded. Here they are - the ones with the cross hairs on them -- take a stand, take them back, but it's not our damned fault that someone was nuts enough to do what we told them to do!
My God, why hast thou forsaken me?
And I mean, why mention that we find it far too Stalinesque to provide mental health services and mandatory commitment to people who are basically only shirkers and malingerers? This just proves they don't deserve it! Besides if we can judge people insane, dangerous and incompetent we might have to enforce those laws that keep guns from them and that would be tyranny. You know what we do to tyrants, right?
And of course we need to make a quarter billion firearms disappear by waving more magic legislation because 60 years of ever tightening regulation has done so much good and never mind that it would take more door kickings and home invasions without probable cause than Hitler ever envisioned to accomplish such a Herculean task. Let's go after box cutters and bottles of mouthwash and shampoo and let's ban mosques so no one can attack us. Let's do like we do with marijuana: just trot out the old rhetoric and blame the same old suspects and keep on doing what doesn't work. Pull the string on the America doll and hear that old scratchy and fatuous voice: Ban, ban, ban, ban, ban and let's not be namby-pamby socialists and discuss the causes of things.
No, we have no proof that the shooter was motivated by the vicious and endless call to violence, so why mention all those Ann Coulter references to killing congressmen and judges? ask the Republican first responders. Want to stop people from murdering doctors? Why take away the chemicals you can make explosives with and take away nails and glass and batteries and canvas backpacks and it will stop, right? Don't blame the "abortion is murder" profiteers. Don't blame biblical gay bashers, blame pick-up trucks. Truks drag gay teens to death, not bigots.
And after all, some liberal somewhere must once have said something we can twist into a false equivalence. I remember one minor league academic who claimed that "heads should roll at Newscorp" was just such a call for ritual murder by this liberal, commie, socialist, sociopath. I guess it's all been my fault all along.
No, all that mess in Africa would never have happened if we banned machetes in Rwanda and that's what they should have done. Never mind the incessant voices chanting "kill the Tutsi cockroaches." Take away the sharp objects and say goodbye to murderous intent. We'll all live in peace.
"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the Capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry."said Sheriff Dupnik of Pima County. The damned liberal commie rat. But let's do nothing about that murderous rhetoric or the roaming madmen stirred to mayhem. It's the ACLU, it's the Liberal Media, it's Keith Olbermann -- it's the Satanic Obamanator who wants to give your hard earned money to the 'Negroes' and illegal wetback leprosy spreading drug addled rapists and other unworthies. No, the "conservatives" the loyal opposition didn't expect anyone to actually take the calls to violence seriously and the Constitution protects us when we lie and libel and paint targets on people - and we're strict constitutionalists, you know.
It's nobodies fault, really, now let's get a good night's sleep and get back to talking about the Saints-Seahawks game last night. A sad night for N'awlins.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Death in Tucson
Remember "The guns are unloaded - this time?" Well that was that time, this is this time.
So is there any connection between Sarah Palin's website that put a target on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and someone shooting her point blank in the head? Watch for Palin to clean up the site and do her little witch dance to get out of responsibility for it. Didn't anyone think that people carrying guns to political rallies wouldn't eventually do this?
Frankly I've had one decade too many of Republican howler monkeys like Limbaugh and Coulter and Palin using metaphors and sly inference -- and outright calls to violence and killing judges and congressmen. What does it take to make these tea-sucking, rabble rousing, hate mongering bastards into responsible American Citizens? Probably nothing short of orange jump suits and handcuffs and meantime, watch them looking like the cat Sylvester with yellow feathers all over his lips.
And in the meantime, it's pump out the bullshit, pump out the bullshit and hate hate hate, so don't count on the voters coming to their flaccid senses any time soon.
And here is what Spencer Giffords, the Congresswoman's father, said when asked by a reporter whether his daughter had any enemies:
So is there any connection between Sarah Palin's website that put a target on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and someone shooting her point blank in the head? Watch for Palin to clean up the site and do her little witch dance to get out of responsibility for it. Didn't anyone think that people carrying guns to political rallies wouldn't eventually do this?
Frankly I've had one decade too many of Republican howler monkeys like Limbaugh and Coulter and Palin using metaphors and sly inference -- and outright calls to violence and killing judges and congressmen. What does it take to make these tea-sucking, rabble rousing, hate mongering bastards into responsible American Citizens? Probably nothing short of orange jump suits and handcuffs and meantime, watch them looking like the cat Sylvester with yellow feathers all over his lips.
And in the meantime, it's pump out the bullshit, pump out the bullshit and hate hate hate, so don't count on the voters coming to their flaccid senses any time soon.
-------------------------------------------
Update from Octopus. Here is the SarahPAC page mentioned by Captain Fogg (above):And here is what Spencer Giffords, the Congresswoman's father, said when asked by a reporter whether his daughter had any enemies:
"Yeah. The whole tea party."
Friday, January 7, 2011
Oh Glenn Beck. I Call Bullsh*t.
I first saw this video over on We Are Respectable Negroes:
Wait, wait, wait....let me get this straight. Glenn Beck is claiming the 3/5ths compromise was put in as a ticking time bomb against slavery? Bullsh*t.
The 3/5th's compromise wasn't a f*cking way to abolish slavery. It was a compromise that got the South to sign on to the Constitution by allowing them to retain more political power in the House of Reps and the Electoral College than it otherwise would have had have based on the fact that a large chunk of its population was technically classified as property, not free citizens! If they'd only counted free citizens, the South would have had significantly less political clout. By counting each slave as 3/5th of a person, the South ended up with a larger population of "citizens" than they actually had, as slaves were neither considered citizens nor had the rights of citizens.
I'mma need Glenn Beck to sit down. Preferably in a corner by himself somewhere, so he can think about the stupidity of the sh*t that spews out of his mouth.
Cross-posted from American Black Chick in Europe.
Wait, wait, wait....let me get this straight. Glenn Beck is claiming the 3/5ths compromise was put in as a ticking time bomb against slavery? Bullsh*t.
The 3/5th's compromise wasn't a f*cking way to abolish slavery. It was a compromise that got the South to sign on to the Constitution by allowing them to retain more political power in the House of Reps and the Electoral College than it otherwise would have had have based on the fact that a large chunk of its population was technically classified as property, not free citizens! If they'd only counted free citizens, the South would have had significantly less political clout. By counting each slave as 3/5th of a person, the South ended up with a larger population of "citizens" than they actually had, as slaves were neither considered citizens nor had the rights of citizens.
I'mma need Glenn Beck to sit down. Preferably in a corner by himself somewhere, so he can think about the stupidity of the sh*t that spews out of his mouth.
Cross-posted from American Black Chick in Europe.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN
The fickleness of politics has once again caused a power shift in the House of Representatives. The GOP is back in the saddle with Rep John Boehner leading the charge. They campaigned on lots of promises to cut spending, repeal “Obamacare” and bring accountability and transparency to the legislative process on Capitol Hill in their new governing document “A Pledge to America” (remember the 1994 vintage Contract With America?) .
Here are a few of the highlights:
CUT SPENDING: "We will roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels, saving us at least $100 billion in the first year alone," the GOP pledge stated.
Their pledge to cut $100 billion from the budget won’t be happening this year and I wouldn’t hold my breath for next year either. Seems they based this promise on $1.128 trillion budget request that was never passed.
Republicans are bristling at accusations that they're backtracking from the $100 billion promise even as they concede they can't pull it off. Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Republicans will set spending limits "for the remainder" of the budget year at levels in effect before the 2009 stimulus.
“Despite the promise of more open debate and the opportunity to offer floor amendments, GOP leaders will bring legislation to repeal Obama's signature health care overhaul bill to the floor next week and deny Democrats any chance to try to preserve popular provisions.” Such as abolishing pre-existing conditions and extending coverage to children to age 26. So much for those new House rules...
You can read more about the Boehner/GOP congressional posturing HERE and HERE.
Bottom line: The GOP will do whatever they can to score points with voters but the reality is no matter what they do, the Senate is still Democratically controlled and will be able to reverse most of the damage done at the House level.
So, look for little if any change over the next two years….. It’s just business as usual on Capitol Hill.
Here are a few of the highlights:
CUT SPENDING: "We will roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels, saving us at least $100 billion in the first year alone," the GOP pledge stated.
Their pledge to cut $100 billion from the budget won’t be happening this year and I wouldn’t hold my breath for next year either. Seems they based this promise on $1.128 trillion budget request that was never passed.
Republicans are bristling at accusations that they're backtracking from the $100 billion promise even as they concede they can't pull it off. Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Republicans will set spending limits "for the remainder" of the budget year at levels in effect before the 2009 stimulus.
“Despite the promise of more open debate and the opportunity to offer floor amendments, GOP leaders will bring legislation to repeal Obama's signature health care overhaul bill to the floor next week and deny Democrats any chance to try to preserve popular provisions.” Such as abolishing pre-existing conditions and extending coverage to children to age 26. So much for those new House rules...
You can read more about the Boehner/GOP congressional posturing HERE and HERE.
Bottom line: The GOP will do whatever they can to score points with voters but the reality is no matter what they do, the Senate is still Democratically controlled and will be able to reverse most of the damage done at the House level.
So, look for little if any change over the next two years….. It’s just business as usual on Capitol Hill.
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