Whiskey Fire

Obscurity and Misery

Kathryn Jean Lopez is a Woman of Mystery. Among these mysteries are how on earth did she ever get a job, and also, what idiocy is she complaining about now -- was the lotion not placed correctly in the basket again?

Gracious.

Immiseration

I use that word a lot (I did in my syndicated column this week). I should probably find more adjectives, but it really does capture so much of the misery of the hour on matters of family, and relations between men and women, and the lack of flourishing among so many around us.

This is someone who has been paid as an "editor." This is also someone who thinks that "immeseration" is an adjective, and who is probably only allowed to get away with "lack of flourishing" because she was told at gunpoint that "flourishment" is not a word.

Remember: the National Review is a place for Intellectual Conservatism.

Her syndicated column is, as it happens, scrumptious. Oh, wait. I meant that "it is full of scrumptiousnessitude."

There was a young man — 23 at most — quietly saying his morning prayers on Capitol Hill on the third day of 2013, and it seemed for a moment like an injection of the warmest ray of light in the midst of a blistering cold spell.

Only the most dreadlfully abject junkies get high off sunlight, but then I guess if you're suffering from chilblains, you wouldn't be too upset at the odd "blistering cold" locution. Or too enthused about some poor young fella desperately emploring Jesus to make him not gay.

He walked into St. Peter’s Church on the House side of Capitol Hill shortly after I did for a bipartisan, ecumenical prayer service that marked the beginning of the 113th Congress. The last days of the 112th had been a bit . . . hellish. And so to see John Boehner sitting up front and then Nancy Pelosi being whisked in by the Secret Service — one could be tempted to be cynical. Was this all a show? If it was for real, it was a portrait of civility. Leading the prayers were not just the priests who welcomed all to the Catholic parish a few stones’ throws away from the Capitol building but also Protestants, the Jewish Eric Cantor, the Muslim Keith Ellison.

Can someone amongst our readership please fact check this? How many stones need be thrown here? Yes, yes, you can go first.

Blah blah... OK, here we go:

We’re not dreaming the way we used to. The generation that went to outer space has grandkids who may not be leaving their parents’ basements anytime soon.

NRO CALLS FOR MASSIVE GOVERNMENT SPACE PROJECT.

They’re not getting married. And even if they do get married, they are crippled by ridiculous expectations as to who men and women are and should be in the 21st century, and many of them are deprived of religion, which has been known to help us to figure out how to live joyfully.

I was born an Irish Catholic. My wife is an Irish Catholic. We know from "ridiculous expectations as to who men and women are and should be." We "live joyfully" mostly because we jettisoned the "Catholicism." 

The idea that "Catholicism makes most Catholics happy"... well, I'd like to see the research on that one.

Blah blah.

Grace is amazing, as the hymn tells us.

Fuck you.

Get a load of this:

And despite our bad decisions or indifferences or despairing of politics, there are men and women of principle. Among them is the Green family, which runs the Hobby Lobby arts-and-crafts chain. They run their business in a way that they believe will be conducive to the family and faith lives of their employees. They are refusing to comply with the infamous Health and Human Services mandate because they are evangelicals who are opposed to abortion, and they are consequently now in defiance of the law. Whether America knows it or not, they are fighting for freedom itself with their defiance and their witness to trying to live lives of integrity. To be “free” includes not  complying with a culture that has become complacent about its immiseration.

"To be free" means that you get to make your own choices as regards to the insurance you are provided as a condition of your employment. For Lopez, "freedom" means the right of employers to control the consciences of their employees.

I didn’t interrupt that kid who was praying to ask him, but I hope his prayer was that men and women in elected office are inspired by the likes of the Greens, instead of viewing them as backward anomalies whose view of religious liberty belongs in the past.

I hope the lot of you repulsive authoritarian creeps gets shat on by a Heavenly Elephant.

Hooray!

An incomprehensible wingnut squawk! SHITZAM!

Uh, let's get into the spirit of the thing.

"Buggrit! Millenial hand and shrimp!"

Does that help...?

Laughter Guns

So why, again, does anyone legitimately need, for home use, semi-automatic firepower sufficient to murder a full score of schoolchildren?

We have already examined the fascinating answer to this question as provided by Glenn Reynolds. Other right-wing blog luminaries have also weighed in, however. The following appears at Townhall, so you know it is... special:

While the use of pistols in the home are helpful, they’re not the best weapons to use when it comes to protecting property. This is why people need a semi-automatic rifle which yes, can come in the form of an AR-15.

We shall charitably consider this something written in English. More specifically, Crazy English. The author wishes us to understand that everyone in America ought to have a semi-automatic rifle because of, first, the riots in Los Angeles following the Rodney King verdict.

Business owners in LA’s Koreatown knew what was coming their way, so they armed themselves with shotguns and semi-automatic rifles in order to defend their property. They stood on their rooftops as they watched black smoke pour down the street. The cops weren't there to help them.

All right. Accept this, arguendo, but then wonder upon the second historical incident herein cited:

Then of course, there was the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. New Orleans became a place of complete anarchy in a matter of hours. In addition to property owners being forced to stave off mobs of people roaming for food, water and shelter to survive as the government failed to provide emergency services, they had to protect themselves against dangerous looters. But not only were New Orleans residents forced to defend themselves against immediate threats to their person and property, residents also had to protect themselves from the government.

As the water started to recede, leaving New Orleans a chaotic wasteland, police officers began going door to door confiscating weapons. Who did they take them from? Mostly poor black residents in New Orleans' 9th Ward.

Oh, OK. So the lesson we're supposed to learn here is that in the event of a temporary, catastrophic, unusual breakdown in times of extraordinary crisis, everybody ought to immediately grab a semi-automatic rifle, because everyone else is trying to kill you and rob you, even the cops.

How... sensible.

Say what you like about the tenets of gun-nuttery, at least it's an ethos.

And then there is Saint Red State and the blather.

It does go on, so to sum up: a meth-addled woman walked into a guy's house where his kids were, and then she walked away and the cops arrested her. The guy then went to NYC after 9/11 and saw National Guard troopers carrying modern combat weapons. He decided he needed one of these weapons himself, because if someone breaks into your house they will only laugh at you if you have a .38 because nobody is scared of handguns or, I don't fucking know, shotguns, which only shoot daisies and marshmallows.

Do I shit thee? I shit thee not.

In conclusion, everyone needs an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, preferably with a compass in the stock, and then they need to write An Internet Theme about it, and everyone will read it and rapturously exclaim, "Oh! The theme I've been waiting for all my life. Listen to this sentence: 'An AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time.' Poetry. Sheer poetry!"

For the love of fuck.

Annnnyway, rifles.

MAS. Oh, have fun in the comments over in both links. They are top-notch, top-notch.

MUCHO MAS. One thing that pisses me off is the constant nattering about what anyone "needs for home defense." You NEED a phone that connects to 911. Pretty much, period. And odds are, unless you are poor enough to be stuck in a really bad place, you will never even need that in regards to "home defense." You definitely don't fucking "need" a semi-automatic rifle.

 

Hoarding Coins in the Competition Zone

Until now, I have not weighed in on the Great Platinum Koin Konspiracy of One-Thirteen, so I quite forgive you for not as yet having made up your minds regarding the wisdom of the ploy. Allow me therefore to present Dispositive Evidence as to why the president should immediately get on the phone to the Treasury and say, "mint me that coin right fucking now." And hang up.

Creating the platinum coin would piss off Megan McArdle. Ergo, minting the coin would be empirically correct.

McArdle's post is shouty gibberish of the "everyone is wrong except Megan McArdle" class, and need not detain us. All one ought to consider is that lazy hacks are not even right once an ever.

Which brings us by inevitable vicus of regurgitation back to Ann Althouse and environs. Althouse fondly imagines that she has slain K'Thruglu through an ingenious combined attack consisting of pig-ignorance, preening allodoxia, and willful idiocy. Which is to say, the usual horseshit.

Paul Krugman responds to the pushback he's received on "the trillion-dollar-coin thing":

There seem to be two kinds of objections. One is that it would be undignified. Here’s how to think about that....

The professor is about to teach us how to think. Get ready!

... we have a situation in which a terrorist may be about to walk into a crowded room and threaten to blow up a bomb he’s holding. 

Okay. A hypothetical. I'm up for hypotheticals. And it's an analogy, because the trillion-dollar-coin thing isn't promoted as a solution to terrorism. But terrorism is something that you can picture quite concretely and you understand it as very real and scary — unlike the debt ceiling problem which is awfully abstract. (Even to say "ceiling" is to resort to metaphor.)

Well, she concedes, or senses, that Krugman is using a metaphor and not advocating literal clown-based law enforcement, which is for Althouse a major achievement. However, "the debt celiling problem" is only "awfully abstract" if you are either genuinely or disingenuously sufficiently cretinous to take the several minutes it requires to understand it.

Which is why Althouse doesn't, or can't (who cares) acknowledge why the extended clown metaphor Krugman uses works. If a gang of utterly absurd cretins manages to engineer a ridiculously dangerous situation, what can you do but send in the clowns? It takes a joker to catch a fool.

I mean, look -- in 20-thousand-10 a lawless bunch came riding into town; they reached for their guns with their tiny little hands and they shot the sherriff down. They terrorized the citizens, they caused a saloon brawl, and no one would stand up to them, even though they were so small. 

So the platinum coin would come to right a wrong.

(Yes, yes, that is an obscure joke. Permit me my small joys, redsnouts. At any rate comparing The Tea Party to The Terror of Tiny Town is in every respect thoroughly cringe-worthily apposite.)

Nothing Althouse says equates to a "point"; she doesn't understand the actual issue, and on that basis crowns herself Queen Honeytwit of the Dipshits.

Like I said, same as it ever was.

 

The Times, They Are A-Wanking

I am given to understand that shits must be provided concerning Senator "Chuck" Hagel becoming enthrowningly coronated as Lord High Mega-Duke of the Pentagon. Sir Andrew is lathering waxy about it all.

Unlike so many of the lemmings and partisans of Washington DC, Hagel actually called out the catastrophe of the Iraq War as it happened.

Except for the "voting for it in the first place" bit, this is unexceptionable.

I may on a rare occasion forgive, but I only forget when it comes to the location of my car keys, or the location of my children, who are at least as elusive as Robert Denby. As regards politics, I'm still pissed off about that whole Treaty of Limerick fiasco.

Which means that I am regarding the Chuck Hagel nomination sideshow in the light in which it deserves to be regarded, as yet another instantiation of the doxa of the American governing class, namely, "we are only arguing about what exactly constitutes a stupid war, not whether or not America should be allowed to wage one whenever it likes."

I bet the GOP nominates Benjamin Netanyahu in 2016. And I bet the Democrats run Chuck Hagel.

Rifle Games for 7-Year-Olds, What a Drag

A woman in Georgia used a revolver to shoot an intruder, much to the delight of the internet's great big fans of the bang-bang-stick. Glenn Reynolds, however, laments that the woman lacked a bang-bang-stick of sufficient heft to satisfy his love of great big bang-bang-sticks.

See, this is where one of those “assault weapons” might have come in handy.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “When some politician starts pontificating that no one needs more than a 10 round clip capacity (or 5, or 3) this is the story that should be shoved in their faces. She fired 6 shots, put 5 in the attacker and he was still kicking. What if there had been multiple attackers. Then that 30 round clip suddenly seems appropriate.”

Well, since she could have purchased one those great big bang-bang-sticks, and didn't, relying on a measly little .38, she was just basically asking for whatever the crowbar-carrying attacker had in mind for her, I suppose.

But why stop at quote-unquote "assault rifles"? After all, as another of Reynolds' inestimable correspondents points out,

I also read on another blog the comments by a western rancher who explained that he always carries a .223 semi-auto rifle when working his own property. Why? Because of wolves. Six charged him one day and it took far more than 10 rounds from his “assault” rifle to drop two of them, after which the other four fled.

What if this woman had not simply faced one intruder with a crowbar, but multiple attackers who were armed with wolves?

Well, her tiny little puny toy bang-bang-stick would have done her about as much good as a tuna-fish sandwich! Stupid "politicians." You can barely hurt anyone with a .38. Even a .40 wouldn't hurt a fly, even at close range, which is why thoughtful gun owners keep lots more weapons lying around the house for emergencies.

Clearly, though, following Reynolds' logic and that of his freedom-loving audience, in a more ideal, paradisical society, this woman would have had the following:

• 14 handguns;
• 43 semi-automatic weapons;
• 9 bazookas;
• Two or three Handy Home Howitzers;
• 15 armed guards on the porch;
• An electrified fence around her property;
• A moat filled with alligators, each equipped with a flamethrower;
• 5 grizzly bears with hand grenades (to repel the wolves).

More responsible "politicians" would subsidize each of these thoroughly necessary items of domestic defense, instead of leaving the suburban-propertied-classes helpless before the wolf-lugging hordes. Likewise, the Airforce needs to be privatized, so that for a nominal annual fee, in a pinch, homeowners can at least call in a drone strike.

Then the Reynoldsian vision for America will at last come to fruition. (Also we will all be immortal robots. The proper sort of "we," anyhow.)

And if anecdotal evidence such as that he cites here proves insufficient to prove his case that all homeowners truly ought to possess firepower of the sort capable of efficiently shooting up elementary schools, the free market provides a solution. People like Reynolds should be permitted to rent out invaders of the variety referenced in the news story above (and I know you know what I mean), so they might finally live out what is obviously their most devoutly-wished personal fantasy.

At a minimum they ought to be able to blow up farm-raised wolves with rocket launchers. I mean, do we or do we not live in a civilized, 21st century nation?

 

 

Add Up the Numbers

Someone conventionally unemployable has something stupid to say at Big Dumb Offal.

According to the FBI annual crime statistics, the number of murders committed annually with hammers and clubs far outnumbers the number of murders committed with a rifle.

Right. "A rifle."

2011: Total murder victims -- 12,664

Total firearms: 8, 583

Please.

It is just too goddamn easy in this country for lunatics to acquire firepower.

But also congratulations to Big Dumb Offal for the most cartoonish misuse of statistics maybe ever.

Knockout Punches for the Freaks; Or, Trahison des Chucks

Oh hello there, Chuck Norris. Say something amusing.

Resolve to Conquer or Die

I promise! I mean, since you asked so nicely.

When President Barack Obama was re-elected, the winds waned behind many patriots' ships' sails. My wife, Gena, and I felt that sock in the gut for our country and posterity, too. But instead of cowering in defeat, I believe we need to discard conventional (unsuccessful) strategies and advance in new directions.

Oh, just cower in defeat already. Nobody likes you except for angry old white people.

The future of our country is going to hinge not upon the Republican Party's reinvention (as so many think) but upon each of us patriots asking what isn't working about our approach and modifying our attacks for greater impact in the culture and political wars. You don't fight and win unconventional wars with conventional weapons; that's why we lost in November.

Nobody likes you except for angry old white people.

The majority voted to continue to be pelted from within the U.S. by the Obama administration and from without by the United Nations' rogue usurpation of Americans' rights. In the past six months alone, the Obama administration has teamed up with the U.N. to enforce Internet intrusions, clamp down on gun rights, further regulate the airline industry, utilize billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to expand U.N. global warming control and expand global abortion. And who can forget the proliferation of Agenda 21 and growth of Interpol to enforce its new international law?

THE UN HAS NUKES AND EXTENDS GLOBAL ABORTION AT NUKEPOINT. IF YOU DON'T ABORT THAT FETUS, IOWA VIRGIN WOMAN WITH YOUR URERUS FULL OF JESUS, THE UN WILL ATTACK YOU WITH NUCLEAR MISSILES.

Nobody likes you except for angry old white people.

Will the next four years of Obama intensify the secular progressive assault against our republic and your freedoms? Without a doubt!

Nobody likes you except for angry old white people.

The big question is: Will the next four years result in the fundamental transformation of the U.S.? The answer to that is: Only if we let it. Freedom is lost not by a single election but by surrendering to everyday assaults on our liberties.

Nobody likes you except for angry old white people.

What Washington wrote to the Continental Army before the Battle of Long Island should be inscribed on every patriot's wall now, given November's defeat: "The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed. ... The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army. ... We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die."

November's defeat ...?

Losing a democratically conducted election -- what Washington was supposedly fighting for, recall, was the right to have democratically conducted elections -- means there is a necessity for armed insurrection?

Chuck Norris is a traitor.

Or he would be, if he were smart enough to understand what he's saying, which he isn't.

And that's why nobody likes him except for angry old white people. Fuck them.

 

Ann Althouse Is an Absolute Shit

Ann Althouse is a shit.

And, by the way, I've gotten some pushback in email and on the web, saying that it was "shameful" and "appalling" for me to tie Clinton's health problems to a possible intent to avoid testifying about Benghazi. Let me tell you that a core motivation to my blogging — and I've been going at this for 9 years now — is to stand tough against people who try to cut off debate with this kind of shaming.

It actually is shameful to pop off with nonsense in the absence of evidence, and that is why Ann Althouse is a despicable person.

And yes, I know exactly how long Ann Althouse has been a despicable shit on the internet.

ADDED: Here's something I would dearly love to do with this blog: I want to make it so that emotive, intimidating outrage like that backfires. I want people to learn that they can't get away with empty assertions like "I am aghast" or "You are despicable." You have to give reasons for what you think. Even if you really feel those feelings. And, of course, many of these hack writers don't actually feel the feelings they scribble about. They just don't want to have to talk about the actual issue. They want to make it something that everyone feels they'd better not talk about. But that should be a loud signal: We need to talk about it!

Ann Althouse once called GWPDA a sexist.

I have a suggestion for something I would dearly like to see Ann Althouse do with her blog.

More to come.

MAS. Do you know, I am sort of thinking that I might like to go long-form on Ann Althouse, with all the apparatus. And all the nine years.

If I can catch him once upon the hip,
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.

 

Learning to Hunt for You

Apparently there is some class of shouty budget nonsense currently occurring involving people paying close attention to the opinions of Eric Cantor.

The metric ass tonnage of the shits I refuse to give remains incalculable.

MAS. In a similar vein, Kathy Griffin performed mock-fellatio on Anderson Cooper, a collection of words that means little to me but very much upsets right-wing clodhoppers. Such as our lifetime companion, Noel Sheppard.

No matter what vulgar things Kathy Griffin does on CNN's live New Year's Eve broadcasts, the folks at the supposedly most trusted name in news continue to invite her back.

On Monday night's program, after first telling co-host Anderson Cooper "I'm going to tickle your sack," she shortly after midnight actually kissed his crotch (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary)

Golly.

Well, good for Kathy Griffin. I only know her peripherally, but so what? Anyone who gets a rise out of these idiots, I like.