Baby on Board

If all that I read were the sporting goods catalogs that arrive in the mail I would still know something was up.  There are suddenly pages of drum magazines for sale to fit  everything from non-military versions of  long guns to shotguns to semiautomatic pistols.  Drum magazines, you'll remember seeing them on The Untouchables, great round things holding 75 to 100 rounds mounted on the infamous "Chicago Typewriter."   One catalog even features violin and cello cases fitted out to carry them.  Fedora and Zoot Suit sold separately. What you'd need to carry a Glock pistol with a 75 round drum mounted below the grip, I don't know, but it's next to useless as a concealable or even portable weapon. So why this feeding frenzy?  Why just now?  Is there an invasion coming?

Gun shops are getting very crowded again.  There's a large supermarket style one under construction in my area of coastal Florida.  Prices are rising and they can't seem to keep military-looking fake 'assault rifles' on the shelves.  Another catalog features a kit allowing one to bolt together two Ruger 10/22 rifles - the kind of gun some country gentleman might give his son on his 18th birthday into a two barrel, crank operated .22 rimfire Gattling gun, complete with tripod.  Only $397 but you have to supply your own pair of rifles. Their website bears a headline saying they're up to a week behind on shipping orders because of  massive demand.

In barber shops and hardware stores and the Sporting Goods department at the local Wal-Mart, you hear muttering and whispering about "that monkey" and they don't mean Wayne LaPierre.  I heard an octogenarian friend say at dinner the other night "we don't have any freedom any more."  She'd just sold her handgun from the fear that someone would steal it and murder someone and she'd be blamed.  It isn't true of course, I don't think there's any way of tracing guns in Florida, but the fear is on the street and in the retirement homes and the mansions and yachts and trailer parks. That monkey is after our guns.

Yes, it's gun control time again with one side arming themselves for war and the other side howling Gun Control like ragged extras in a  Frankenstein movie.  The President has offered a package of measures designed to calm the hysterical on both sides and  it's not likely to do that, or so I think.  It's the "biggest legislative effort in a generation" says the Huffington Post,  "a bold and potentially historic attempt to stem the increase in mass gun violence."  Lets see what it looks like after passing through the entrails of Congress. Surely some of the proposals were pinned to the coat-tails of  a tragedy like a rider on an unrelated bill: ban the armor piercing ammunition?  Well it's really not that nor are the hollow points we use for hunting "Cop Killer Bullets" either.  How does one argue for meaningful gun control with all that lying going on?

 Really most of these inflammatory lumps of high velocity hyperbole are just that: attempts to emotionalize and to dupe the uninitiated and succeed in polarizing the attempt to do something useful. To me, much of this heated argument  is corrupted by dishonest coinage, invention and the refusal by both sides to examine  the axioms their arguments rely on. GUN CONTROL! and when I ask "what kind?"  The expression I get from either side is the same -- I must be one of them!

Will banning the millions and millions and millions of  guns and accessories now in 150 million private hands  do anything?  By the time anything like another loophole-ridden, designed-to-fail ban hits the streets, the number of these things buried in back yards and hidden behind paneling in basements will have doubled and the ranks of camo-clad, militiamen and survivalists and preppers will have grown further and short of a house to house search of 100 million private residences and storage lockers and bunkers, very little will be done to reduce their numbers.And nice people, ordinary people, educated people, affluent people are buying guns they would have had no interest in -- because Obama's gonna ban them.   The best way to create demand is to ban something.

And if Congress does do it again, and if they suddenly disappear with a wave of the magic wand, will someone still be able to find the hardware to kill a score of innocents?  Could you get drunk in 1929?  Can you get stoned in 2013? Of course.

Have all the miscellaneous and ballyhooed safety regulations done anything?  Mandatory trigger locks, microstamping of firing pins, loaded chamber indicator and magazine disconnect regulations?  No. Has there been an increase in the murder by firearm rate as is being said?  No. It's lower than it was in the 1950's. The fear is oversold.  Much of what is being proposed can be no more effective in protecting school children than those stupid, yellow Baby on Board signs people put on their cars in the '70s.  It's just there for the "I hate guns" people.

I'm still wondering if there has been an increase in mass gun violence or if the handful in the last few years is a statistical blip and the result of the unrelenting "never forget" emotional media coverage  that promotes repeat performances, but that question will never be settled when opinions on both sides are bolstered by selective facts, when the tenets of faith, the proclamations of activists and politicians and lobbyists are taken as axiomatic without question.  

Whatever happens, I doubt my shotgun will be confiscated, nor my Civil War pistols or my Flintlock Rifle. I'm sure I'll still be able to go to the outdoor shooting range and make holes in targets with a .22 pistol  Top Shot will still be on the History Channel and the Biathlon will still be held and Sarah Palin can still hunt for moose. Floridians will still be able to shoot wild hogs and Burmese pythons and out in the bayou, they'll still be able to hunt 'gators with .22 rifles. The fear is oversold.

Whatever happens, much legislation will be designed by people who know dangerously little about firearms and in a state of near hysteria and much will be sabotaged by their opponents terrified of symbolic emasculation and little will change. No one will bother to mention or discuss or factor in the fact that gun violence is still on the decline and that the level of gun control in any particular state or city does not correlate to that decline. It's a battle of preconceived notions and it's all about irrational fear.

Increased penalties and such won't effect anyone bent on committing  suicide and taking a few dozen innocents with him. Banning an auto-loader with a 15 round magazine when Abraham Lincoln's brass bound Henry repeater will fire 16 rounds in 16 seconds will  not make anyone all that much safer and we'll go on banning all kinds of things to "save the children" and setting the stage for a massive Republican victory in 2016.  America loves guns or we wouldn't own 300 million of them. America loves guns the way it loves trucks and football and beer and that's not going to change.

 

Dear Josh

As a side note, I honestly intended to send this out. Unfortunately, I found 6 Joshua Bostons in Kentucky, two of whom were in Louisville, and I don't randomly spam people just because they MIGHT be the right person. If anybody finds an actual physical (or email) address for him, please advise. (Just like in school, be sure to show your work.)

So, just after Christmas, an ex-marine named Joshua Boston posted the following open letter to Dianne Feinstein on CNN's attempt at social media, CNN iReport.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, I will not register my weapons should this bill be passed, as I do not believe it is the government's right to know what I own. Nor do I think it prudent to tell you what I own so that it may be taken from me by a group of people who enjoy armed protection yet decry me having the same a crime. You ma'am have overstepped a line that is not your domain. I am a Marine Corps Veteran of 8 years, and I will not have some woman who proclaims the evil of an inanimate object, yet carries one, tell me I may not have one.

I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America. I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned. I am an American. You will not tell me that I must register my semi-automatic AR-15 because of the actions of some evil man.

I will not be disarmed to suit the fear that has been established by the media and your misinformation campaign against the American public.

We, the people, deserve better than you.
Respectfully Submitted,
Joshua Boston
Cpl, United States Marine Corps
2004-2012

There. Now you have the backstory, in case you missed it.
_____________________

Mr Boston,

You don't know me, but, just like you, I was in the military. Unlike you, I did more than just two tours - I retired after 21 years. On the other hand, I only had two vacations in the Middle East, to your four. So, things even out, I guess.

I read your "open letter" on the CNN website with some interest. I get the general impression that you don't support the idea of gun control: if I'm wrong about that, please tell me.

Oh, and congratulations on learning to use Spellcheck: so many of your fellow lunatics can't manage even that much. But next letter, maybe you should see about getting somebody to help you with the punctuation. I know that's hard for a Marine (or even an ex-Marine), but we all need help sometimes.

I could argue with you on the subject of gun control - it's actually not that difficult to refute every one of the NRA's talking points. The hardest part of the debate is keeping you guys from yelling; you seem to feel that your arguments are more valid when they're louder.

Now, since then, you've become something of an internet celebrity. Your letter has gone viral. You've appeared on Fox News several times, you've been interviewed by Piers Morgan (that one seems particularly popular), and there seem to be people lighting candles and incense under your picture. You're another Internet celebrity. Enjoy it while it lasts, I guess - those 15 minutes die out pretty fast.

I'll tell you the truth, though: I'm not impressed. To be honest, other marines aren't impressed. But I'm not going to try to argue the Second Amendment with you, despite the fact that even the most extreme right-wing Supreme Court justice has said that it's not as all-encompassing as you seem to think.

I could even argue history with you. You seem to ignore the first half of the second amendment, because the full text is "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

See, back then, every town had a militia. Where we've got the National Guard, they had the local militia. And when they said "well-regulated," they meant it. They had volumes of regulations covering the behavior of the militia.

The founders had a simple reason for curbing this right: Quakers and other religious pacifists were opposed to bearing arms, and wished to be exempt from an obligation that could be made incumbent on all male citizens at the time.

When the Second Amendment is discussed today, we tend to think of those “militias” as just a bunch of ordinary guys with guns, empowering themselves to resist authority when and if necessary. Nothing could be further from the founders’ vision.

Militias were tightly controlled organizations legally defined and regulated by the individual colonies before the Revolution and, after independence, by the individual states. Militia laws ran on for pages and were some of the lengthiest pieces of legislation in the statute books. States kept track of who had guns, had the right to inspect them in private homes and could fine citizens for failing to report to a muster.

(Saul Cornell, author of "A Well-Regulated Militia:The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America")

Yeah, but, see, that kind of argument doesn't do much for you. Logic has left the building. The historical reasons for the Second Amendment don't matter so much as your ability to take out your automatic weapons and blow the shit out of everything in the neighborhood, does it?

I just want to point out a couple of little things you should consider, outside of the Freudian glories of firing off your boom-stick.

First off, Senator Feinstein doesn't carry her gun everywhere. She just happens to own one. That's not hypocritical: she isn't trying to ban all guns everywhere - she wants some simple, common-sense laws to be instituted. Are you aware that out of the 23 executive orders the president just signed into law (yes, they're legal and they're constitutional, despite what you'd like to believe), one of them made it legal once again for the CDC to look into gun violence?

Yes, did you know that the NRA had gotten some of their trained Congressional poodles to make it illegal to even examine one of the 15 most common causes of death in the US? That's how afraid they are of reality.

But, of course you'd see Senator Feinstein's actions in the worst possible light: after all, she's a woman, and I hate to break this to you, but you're sexist.

Yeah, I know. You'd like to deny it: either to call it a lie, or to attack the messenger (it's a pretty common tactic: "liberals always call conservatives racist," as if simply denying it makes it less true).

I mean, it's pretty obvious just from your choice of words. "I will not have some woman... tell me I may not have one," or "I am the man who keeps you free... I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned."

Those are your own words. But that's just subtext, so maybe that's too subtle for you. Let's look at some of your other words. "I will not register my weapons should this bill be passed, as I do not believe it is the government's right to know what I own. Nor do I think it prudent to tell you what I own so that it may be taken from me..."

That's adorable. Paranoid, but adorable. So I suppose that your car doesn't have a license plate, right?

Let me explain what you've done with your idiotic little rant. You made this statement on a nationally-read website. You told the American public that you weren't going to comply with the law. Now, hypothetically, some members of that same public might just work for the government. And they might just file your little letter away for future consideration.

And then, later, a couple of people might just knock on your door. With pictures of you at a shooting range, firing an unlicensed weapon. Since you aren't listed as owning, say, an AR-15, that could very well be considered "probable cause." And then you get a citation: even then, the government would be unlikely to confiscate your guns - they'd just take them as evidence, and you'd end up with a fine.

Of course, if you still didn't register your weapons, then they would be perfectly within their rights not to release the weapons back into your custody. Which may seem like "confiscation" to you, but it's something that they wouldn't be able to do if you'd just complied with the law.

I'm not saying that this is a likely scenario. I'm just pointing out the obvious flaw in your logic. The most likely way that your stubborn ignorance would turn around to bite you would be if you ended up arrested on, say, drug charges, or suspicion of being a terrorist: some charge that resulted in a search warrant against you.

Licensing your guns doesn't put you on a "confiscation list," despite what you read in The Turner Diaries. It just keeps you from getting further charges filed against you when the guns turn up in your possession.

But mostly, I'd like to thank you. When people see the immediate and illogical overreaction of people like you, to the mere suggestion of guns getting at least as much regulation as a car? It highlights the insanity of certain parts of the American public. And maybe suggests to them that there are some people who probably shouldn't be allowed access to firearms. People like you, Josh.

So thanks for your efforts to get some common-sense gun laws put into place.

Bill Minnich
TSgt, United States Air Force
1983-2004

Let's Celebrate MLK Jr. Sunday and the Second Inauguration of BHO

Greetings to all. Lot's of reasons to celebrate this weekend. The most important being freedom. May we always remain a free and united people. I guess it has been four years since I created what I consider to be my greatest blog post to date on the Dog Report, entitled Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Blogging. The excitement of four years ago has not diminished in any way for true believers. There is much to do and many bridges to build, but we can again unite as a nation and push forward into a brighter future for all citizens. Had a wonderful time in church this morning. I coaxed my old pipe organ into something resembling a gospel organ sound and actually cut loose fairly respectably on We Shall Overcome. I thought it would be fun to check the WNYC website for news this morning. Happily, I stumbled upon this amazing series of never-before-released radio interviews with Dr. King recorded in 1961. You will find synopses of the four interviews which inform the listening. I am listening to the first interview as I type. It is deeply personal and very biographical in an important way to anyone who cares about the modern history of our republic. Enjoy. And soldier on for justice brothers and sisters. We are climbing Jacob's ladder.

Winning the messaging wars

Our Republican friends seem to be fond of bumper-sticker ideology. Well, let's give them simple statements, and use their own catch phrases against them.

Here's my current favorite. Feel free to spread it as far as you can.

Copy it and post it on Facebook. I'm not proud. Go crazy. Take credit for it yourself, if you want. I'd just like to see it out there.

GUNZ AND KULTURE

By (O)CT(O)PUS

Years ago, I was researching delusional thoughts for a paper on psychotic disorders. Where do delusional thoughts come from? Are there patterns or archetypes? Should all killing rampages be considered copycat crimes?  Or something else?

We find examples of delusional thinking across a range of psychological disorders - dissociative, bipolar, personality, and psychotic disorders, as examples. Delusions are often expressions of inner conflicts, drives, memories, and feelings. For lack of a better expression, I call these “cultural artifacts” because they rise to the surface from the Spirtius Mundi of culture and infuse the mind.  Delusional thoughts take many forms: Astral entities, historical events or persons, personifications of painful emotions or traumatic memories, revenge personae, or voices in the head – all born of our culture and made manifest in shocking crimes.

Every massacre demands an explanation. Law enforcement will gather evidence and assign motives to explain the unexplainable; the public wants answers; and parents seek reassurance.  Every night on cable news, talking-head gasbags will assault our senses as competing stakeholders weave false hypotheses and self-serving narratives. Perpetrators rarely live to disclose their delusions in detail; they take their secrets to the grave.

If you accept this concept of delusions as cultural artifacts, then perhaps you might approach from a different perspective the murderous rampages that continue to confound and mystify us.

Perhaps there are other artifacts less visible to us. How does social stress correlate with violent crime? How do we quantify and measure alienation and depersonalization - the kinds of torments that find a path of least resistance in the delusional mind?  Recently, one of our readers named democommie commented:

Poverty does not cause crime; it breeds despair. Mental illness does not cause crime; it removes inhibitions and the ability to control dark impulses. Guns do not cause crime; they enable people who despair … to attain, if only for a moment, a feeling of control, of superiority over others. That the feelings of control and superiority often result in the taking of other's property, dignity, safety and, far too often, their lives is not the result that they dreamed of. It is the stuff of nightmares.

The incidence of mental illness is constant across various population groups – as constant as background radiation in the Universe. The rate of violent crime in the mentally ill population equals the rate of violent crime in the general population. Yet, America has a far higher prevalence rate of violent crime across all population groups compared with other nations.  Why?  Gun merchants offer easier access to arms. Simulated violence in games and entertainment provide scripts for delusional reenactment. Desperation drives motive. These are cultural artifacts.

Let there be no doubt. Easy access to arms correlates with higher incidence rates of violent crime, and America leads the world.  The U.S. has 50% of all guns in circulation worldwide and 30 times the murder rate compared with other industrialized nations. Undeniably, gun culture is the vestigial relic of a frontier mentality deeply imbedded in the American mythos. Cowboys and guns are cultural artifacts.

Reductio ad absurdum. After a weeklong silence following the Sandy Hook massacre, Wayne LaPierre of the NRA responded with this prescription: Fight fire with more firepower; place armed guards in every school; arm the good guys to neutralize the bad guys.  More guns!  Turn America into an armed fortress with self-appointed militias and vigilantes in every city and town.

LaPierre offers not an imaginary dystopia but a real one – like a bad Mad Max movie – creeping into our lives. Is the ubiquity of guns an acceptable vision for our children and future generations? If you understand the pervasive impact of “cultural artifacts” on people, then LaPierre’s prescription for fighting fire with firepower is akin to pouring gasoline on a raging inferno.

During my parenthood years, I tried to teach my children the relationship between responsibility and freedom. Responsibility earns trust and confidence; the penalty for misconduct is more parental supervision and less independence. A reasonable proposition for raising children, I thought. Yet, ours is a society that fails to understand this relationship.  Every public controversy, every perceived loss of freedom (whether imagined or real) represents a failure of responsibility.

Which is worse: A crazed gunman who kills 20 children at a clip?  Or junk food merchants who consign  children to lives of obesity and diabetes? Or designers of video games who market violence to children and call it entertainment? Or arms dealers selling automatic weapons that appeal, not to legitimate sports enthusiasts, but to adult children reared on action toys - who project their self-image of manhood through the barrel of a gun? Or reckless speculators who game investment markets and leave millions of lives in financial ruin? Or a corporate CEO who orders massive layoffs - casting entire families into panic and debt - then rewards himself with a million dollar bonus. Crimes of violence against people committed in the name of easy money, fast money, and free enterprise - these have become cultural artifacts.

How often have we heard people in the news disclaim or dismiss a public controversy with: “No laws were broken.” And how often have we thought: The word ‘legal’ is not necessarily synonymous with the word 'ethical.' Legal acts, all too often considered irresponsible and reprehensible, have become cultural artifacts.

What preoccupies our thoughts in this forum? We write about chicanery and corruption, inequality and injustice, abuse of our public institutions, the lies and deceptions of persons who aspire to positions of power and authority over us; of town hall hooligans, legislative gridlock and deadlock, and a public held hostage by political hacks and henchmen.  How often have we felt bullied and abused!  These too are cultural artifacts.

We may talk about the dangers of easy access to automatic weapons; about loopholes in our system of background checks and bullet holes in our mental health establishment; about the subliminal influence of violence as entertainment; about competing ideas of gun ownership versus public safety. These controversies, grave as they are, overlook other urgent questions:

How will more guns or less guns serve us when “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold?” Have we fostered a culture of remorseless and ruthless sociopathy?  Are incidents of gun violence signs and symptoms of a culture in crisis?

We equate freedom with excess and excess with freedom. We enable overindulgence without self-restraint.  We practice brinksmanship but not citizenship. With each passing year, we drive all standards of civility, community and accountability further into the wilderness. National conversations turn fractious and fragmented; not even the high ideals of secular democracy bind us together.  We covet freedom but spurn responsibility.  Perhaps the worst monsters of society mirror the accelerated grimace of a culture grown monstrous.

Let’s talk about the cultural artifacts that crash in the mind. Perhaps we should start this debate at the beginning by reaffirming those values of a democratic republic whose mission and purpose is to secure “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The price of civilization is never cheap. We demand the rights and privileges of full membership, but refuse to pay our dues.

The N-Word Debate Resurrected

I have no problem with Quentin Tarantino's use of the word nigger in his film, Django Unchained. As he has said, it's accurate usage for the historical period of the film. I also don't have a problem with his usage at the Golden Globes. It really is about context. He didn't call anyone a nigger; he made an observation about its usage.

(Note: I'm breaking my own rule in this post in using the word nigger instead of the euphemism, n-word. I think that it's time for me to take away the power of the word in my life.)

However, I do take issue with the prevalent mythology that black people use the word nigger all the time. I'm black and 57 years old. I don't know all black people but I know a lot of black people. NONE of the black people that I know typically use nigger as a greeting or in general conversation.

The arguments that I read from white people who feel put upon because they can't use the word is that black rappers say it all the time! I don't know any rappers, but I don't count entertainers looking to make a dollar as the standard by which I live.

Black people do not run around greeting each other with the word as a rule. Among many black people, it is not considered a polite term to simply use in greeting.

What I don't understand is why under normal circumstances a white person would desire to say nigger. What's the point? If you really hold no racist feelings, then why on earth would you want to use such a vile and demeaning term? Is it some cheap thrill?

If you are engaged in a discussion where you need to say nigger, then I have no issue with that. However, it would come across as less offensive if you simply said n-word. What most black people object to is the use of the term nigger to define us. You can't call me a nigger and argue that you have a right to do so because it's not fair that only black people can say it. I just don't buy that white people are really that stupid or naive.

I have no problem with using the word in context to describe some historical application of the term. However, I don't find myself in circumstances where there is a need for the use of nigger as a rule. I can't help but wonder just when it is that white people find such a pressing need to say nigger that we're still having this ludicrous discussion about the alleged unfairness of white people not being able to freely use the word.

The Island

The Dhammapada speaks of creating for oneself -- by virtue of some deep virtue -- an island that no tide or flood can overwhelm. I've longed to be frozen in a  Gauguin paradise,  where summer years and summer women smile forever.  I've never found it to be possible, having been born as a straw in the torrent, having spent my life in a river of human madness, wasting my decades in a rage for calm and tranquility that  I've only momentarily tasted; storing away and fondling such moments in  furtive contemplation, as objects in a private gallery.

Life is not too much with me, the passions of people are: the mad velocity of  man, the fury, the sound, the howling, hurtling seething frenzy. It's hardly a secret that the recent explosion surrounding madmen with guns has dropped me into the hopeless, boiling depths of misanthropy, like a stone tossed in a witch's kettle which none of my toil and trouble can cool, but really that's what human events are, have been, will be like: a ferment, a boiling fed by unexamined fire and stirred by secret spoons to some unknown purpose -- or worse, to no purpose at all. So will it always be and we either simmer in the pot or dip our ladles as our situations have determined. Man is not a rational animal and any urge to be a pair of giant claws is only a latent vision of our essential nature.


 A January morning is gilding the treetops near and far into the infinite distance and the dew still glistens on the patio screens. I take my warm cup of hand picked, hand roasted, hand ground coffee from some remote village in Papua New Guinea outside into the creamy fragrant air to examine my bonsai. Lemons and Oranges hang from the gravid trees like Christmas ornaments, the Poinsettia bushes glare like retreating tail lights, a new day's worth of yellow Hibiscus flowers beckons. The forever forest of  white mangrove, mahogany, Sabal palm and buttonwood stretches to the end of the world.  It's still too early for the sea breeze but the soft roar of surf is always audible at this time of year when the scream of insects and birds is at a minimum. Shall I lounge in the hammock reading? Perhaps it will grow too warm.

86 new e-mails after the spam filter disposes of the worst, a smallish crop.  All kinds of breathless announcements of things Obama, the media, the NRA, the Tea Party or the Liberals don't want me to know. Protect the children, Protect your rights, Ban the Guns, Tax the Rich, buy some guns, weekend Ammo blowout!  Lose 30 pounds by next week with the miracle berry. Contribute NOW! before it's too late! The fiscal apocalypse is coming.  Pssssst -- want a date?

Headlines: 1800 burglaries in this mostly rural county in 2012. Eight in my neighborhood this week, one armed home invasion -- shots were fired. We need to buy guns.  We need to ban guns. We need and need and need and it's their fault and we need it now.

10 miles away, where the country road crosses the Turnpike, the big pickups with the off-road suspension are pushing the Jags and leased Bentlys from their tasks of  snobbing at the KIAs and Hyundaes and the Luxo-Utility egoboxes are trying to intimidate everyone, assaulting rear bumpers like Chrome plated rapists while they stumble over their own tires trying to keep any fast vehicles from passing them before they get to the entrance ramp where their entrance will be blocked by countless angry machines trying to get past each other at 95 on their mad diurnal migration down to Palm Beach or Boca or Lauderdale.

Worn out, sunburned, dented fender, busted window; peasant, poseur and ponce. Pasted with bumper stickers:
Change You Can Step in , 
Save the Turtles, 
Jesus is Lord.  
The End of an Era
Ron Jon Surf Shop - Coco Beach
 
Wage earners, payment makers, inflated egos intent on arriving at their appointed places of deflation and cringing conformity -- and before that other son of a bitch does -- screaming, screaming, screaming radios cursing the Right and cursing the Left, big rigs cursing the four-wheelers, country boys cursing the yuppies. Rush hour rodents, their tails on fire. Next performance at 4:00 PM.

Out at the St Lucie inlet, the tide is coming in.
 

Poor, poor Pammycakes

There are, to be honest, a number of bat-shit insane people in America today, who somehow manage to continue to walk among the normal citizenry as if they were useful, contributing members of society.

But we're talking about one specific drooling lunatic at the moment. And her name is Pamela Geller.

Ms Geller, most famous for blogging in a bikini, is a woman of many talents. She's a raving racist and a willing contributor to any conspiracy theory to come down the pike. She was an early birther, a right-wing blogger, and, two years ago, she was added to the stable of contributors to that Mecca for right-wing conspiracy theories, World Net Daily.

Experience, though, doesn't necessarily lead to wisdom, despite what many people want you to believe. I suspect that she's had full-blown syphilis for so long that she has relatively few brain cells that don't misfire on a regular basis.

As evidence, I present this little essay, entitled The end of America: Why Romney lost.

Most of us are pretty clear on why Romney lost: because Mitt Romney was roughly as electable as Vermin Supreme. But not to the rabid Republicans. To them, Obama won because he was giving out "free stuff." It's their latest idiotic catch-phrase.

It's also the thrust of Pammy's argument here: Obama won because of "free stuff," and America is now being destroyed from within. And then she pulls out some random rabbi, who has the most fascinating non sequitur ever: because Obama was elected, the Jews have to leave America.

And given Obama's relentless hostility to Israel, Pruzansky says, "this election should be a wake-up call to Jews. There is no permanent empire, nor is there is an enduring haven for Jews anywhere in the exile. The American empire began to decline in 2007, and the deterioration has been exacerbated in the last five years. This election only hastens that decline. Society is permeated with sloth, greed, envy and materialistic excess. It has lost its moorings and its moral foundations. The takers outnumber the givers, and that will only increase in years to come." His conclusion for American Jews is stark: "We have about a decade, perhaps 15 years, to leave with dignity and without stress."

See, that's another insane meme that they like to peddle: "Obama hates Israel." Because, you know, ignoring the billions Obama gives Israel in foreign aid and the fact that US-Israeli relations are at an all-time high, Obama must hate Israel! Because... because... because blacks don't like Jews, right?

(At least, not since Sammy Davis, Jr. died...)

In order to get to the conclusion that Obama hates Israel, you have to blatantly, openly ignore reality, but that's what they do best at Whirled Nut Daily. Reality and its left-wing bias have no place in their dark, fetid imaginings.

Which is when Pammycakes decides it must be time to openly break Godwin's Law.

And scarier still is the tenuous status of Jews in America. It’s hard not to draw parallels to persecuted Jews in once-friendly nations and their subsequent persecution, expulsion and slaughter. To think that Poland was once the Israel of Europe. Millions of Jews made Poland their home and had a long history there of over a thousand years. And in three short years … complete annihilation.

German Jews, meanwhile, were so very vested in the motherland they considered themselves Germans before Jews. They were war heroes for Germany in World War I.

How long do Jews have in Obama's America? How long before we can't walk down the street with a kippah or a Star of David? This is already reality for Belgium Jews, Swedish Jews and French Jews. Large portions of Norway are already Judenrein.

Judenrein - "clean of Jews." It's a Nazi term from the Holocaust.

Yes, that's right. Pammy thinks that Obama will be setting up concentration camps now. Because... because... I don't know. I'll be honest: her "logic" broke down so thoroughly that I have no idea how she got from the top of the page to the bottom. Her rambling and gibbering looks a lot like English, but you can almost see the crazed eyes and the drool pooling on her tits.

Let me see if I can help you out a little, though. That last little bit there, where she's talking about the terrible fate of Jews in Belgium, Sweden and France? Yeah, I don't know where she gets that. But that bit about "large portions of Norway are already Judenrein"? Yeah, I tracked that one down: it's from an urban legend that was going around, mostly on email, that there were only 800 Jews left in Norway, and they were preparing to leave because of anti-semitism. No less an authority than the Anti-Defamation League already smacked that one down. But hey, just because it's a lie doesn't mean we shouldn't keep it going, right?

Fortunately for Pammy, the Affordable Care Act that she hates so much will cover psychiatric counseling. Maybe now she can get the help she so desperately needs.

The Vilest Scum in the Universe Are House Republicans

House GOP Lets Violence Against Women Act Die Without a Vote 

House GOP Scraps Hurricane Sandy Relief Package

Thousands Still Without Power 66 Days After Sandy

House GOP Authorizes Funds to Defend DOMA

Tea Party Extremism Behind Fiscal Cliff Fiasco

The Republican Party is the Problem

Push that envelope right out of the box

And think outside the bucket.

 I would never have heard of Lake Superior State University were it not for their annual list of objectionably worn out words or Cliché tropes that need to die -- right now.  I  have to admit that their track record of publishing this somewhat facetious list has  impactified  their reputation in an awesome  way; enough so that I go looking for it every year.

Of course my lifelong effort to avoid pop culture makes some of these things new to me although they may be sufficiently old to you and malodorous enough to the list makers at LSSU to warrant the Big Ban.  I do agree with most of their choices of course.  Guru for instance has not only gone  gangrenous and flyblown and worse, it's also a bit insulting to actual gurus, but  YOLO, you only live once, was a total surprise to me, and hearing it once was more than enough.  YODO, to you dude -- You Only Die Once and if I had my way it would be slow and painful.

 Trending  was a bit of a surprise until I read that it's being used in a novel way by journalists: those irrepressible word creators  -- used not in the sense that a trend line in a graph of literacy rates, for example, is trending downward, ( and I think it is) but in the odd sense that something  trending  is being more frequently noticed and talked about by those same journo-babblers.  Becoming trendy, as it were. 

Trend that one right into the trash, please. The same dank dumpster that  efforting  as a pretentious journo-twit replacement for 'trying' was tossed into a few years back. Yes, I agree with the UP gurus (damn)  that  bucket list  should kick its own bucket and those Randites using  job creators to describe wealthy people should be stuffed into that bucket before kicking it under the bus.  I also agree that it's time to push  fiscal cliff  over the fecal cliff,  ( along with the hack it rode in on) but all in all,  the annual list includes only 12 entries and is really meant to amuse.
 

"There's a slightly serious side to this, but mostly we're trying to have fun with it."

said  university PR director Tom Pink, but I'm a bit more serious than that. I mean I'd like to carry a Cricket bat with IMPACT written on it so as to create a serious impact with people who can't get through 12 words without uttering some maggoty metaphorical use of that word. No, I don't want to  kick ass  because that's another item on my own personal enemies list. It's a long list too, including anything one is likely to say in a Starbucks to persuade them to condescend to charge  you 8 bucks for a cup of coffee.

 Venti  you see, isn't going to die of its own accord, nor even barista.   Certain words need to be whacked, a still viable term,  and anyone venturing to order an  Americano  from Flo at a Georgia Waffle House or any Dunkin' Donuts in America runs the risk of  blunt instrument impact trauma if not an occasion to sleep with the fishes.  (Oops, that's on the list too) Somebody has to enforce these things and if you don't watch yourself, if you  jump the shark,  drink the kool-aid, then welcome to the Cliché Cafe, where the obnoxious neologisms  check in but they don't check out  (dammit!  that's also on the list)  But you know what I mean.  Some things are just too important to leave to nature and entropy.  When some comet wipes us out 100,000 years from now, some idiot is going to say AWSOME! if we don't stop Cliché Cancer in its tracks, nip it in the bud.  (Oh hell. . .)

So it may feel all trendy to talk about alternative medicine and natural medicine, but it doesn't dignify superstition and irresponsible marketing thereof. Words like that: words like pre-owned and mobile estates  are used as industrial lubricants, coined to avoid having to call things snake oil or used car lots or trailer parks -- to charge more for a damned coffee, for instance. That's what I'm talkin' about (ouch) Don't go there, don't buy that and for Pete's sake if you do haff to go there, don't tell us you bought the T-shirt. Keep your dignity in-tact.

What? OK, ok, it's hard to avoid all these solecisms. True, if you use death nail for death knell, mute point for moot point; if you haff to do something irregardless of the consequences, you're beyond help -- and you're in danger.  Either shut up or look carefully for that man with the bat. He's looking for you.   If you hear or read something that's just so cute you haff to work it into the very next thing you say, it's time to be mute even if your points aren't. Somebody else has long since worn it out. Git 'er done and not so much aren't funny any more and portmanteau balbations like  ginormous  are a bit like fish and visiting relatives.  3 days and they begin to smell bad. Be advised.

And that's my real point. Maybe a sense of smell has more to do with good English than a bunch of rules and lists. Maybe we need to develop a track record of waking up and smelling the coffee Maybe striving to be hip is self defeating. Maybe. Maybe it's better to say it hurts than negatively impacts on.  A big wooden bat upside your head hurts too.  Make your choice.  Avoid Clichés like the plague.