Whiskey Fire

Because an NRO Gig Means Never Having to Make Sense

Republicans do not like it when Americans vote. For example, this NRO fuckface.

Yesterday afternoon, ThinkProgress rather predictably added itself to the parade of outlets making offensive and fatuous comparisons between modern voter-ID laws and the era of systematic racial discrimination that stained the largest part of American history.

For fuck's sake.

You can read for yourself the stuff fuckface quotes from TP; here is his shithead response:

I’m not quite sure why the genuinely sad fact that Eaton was subjected to outrageous and capricious rules during the Jim Crow era is relevant here. Those rules were designed specifically to be nigh on impossible to pass and to limit black Americans’ citizenship; the issue at hand in this case is that Eaton driver’s license and voter-registration card have the wrong name on them. As such, she will presumably be incapable of doing such various and quotidian things as buying nail polish in certain stores, riding some forms of local public transport, getting on an airplane, entering a government building, using credit cards in certain stores, using Medicare, applying for a firearms permit — and, now, voting. Perhaps I’m missing something, but the solution to this would seem to be to fix the name on her driver’s license and voter-registration card?

Hey, fuckface?

The "solution" is to leave her the hell alone. She hasn't been doing a damn thing wrong in exercising her right to vote for lo these many years.

The whole point, you fuck, is that changing the rules like this places a burden upon certain Americans that they have never had to face before in order to solve a wholly imaginary problem, that of "voter fraud," which does not exist.

Indeed. Let's take these fucks at their basic premises.

They are against Big Government Beauracracy.

Except they love the shit out of Big Government Beauracracy when it comes to the most fundamental act of democracy: voting.

Oh, and they also want total freedom to carry guns everywhere without being hassled by The Government... but they are outraged that the NYPD can no longer stop n' frisk.

Hot damn.

But see, Liberals Are the True Hypocrites!

In New York City, an ID costs $10 (or $6.50 if you are elderly or unemployed). Meanwhile, a permit to purchase a firearm — a constitutional right, remember — is around $420, and, of course, you need an ID just to apply. On the logic of the anti-voter-ID crowd, this means that those who have trouble getting IDs (for whatever reason) are effectively deprived of the right to bear arms and that, given how expensive and time-consuming the process is, the poor are shut out even if they have identification cards.

I know. Actual poor people bitch about this all the time, especially black people. Oh wait no they don't.

The illogic here is captured by the "if all your friends were jumping off a bridge" hypothetical posed by all mothers everywhere ever. "Oh yeah neener guns" is so stupid a reply to voter ID that, well fuck you. Sorry you were raised by the wire momma, I guess.

When I bring this up, it is usually met first with indignation and then with the well-rehearsed opinion that there is nothing inherently or constitutionally wrong with expecting people to prove that they are allowed to own a firearm.

Oh what fun you are at dinner parties.

On the other hand, if you consider that it is not beyond the pale to ask people to prove that they are who they say they are, then perhaps you might consider offering all necessary condolences to Rosanell Eaton for the way she was treated when she was aged 21, but also suggesting respectfully that she go and get her driver’s license fixed.

Yeah, well, fuck you. Forcing someone into a bureaucratric mess of Big Government runarounds just so they can do the most fundamentally American thing possible, that is, vote....

Well, fuck you. Fuck you once, fuck you twice, fuck you raw with this pickle knife.

You racist fuck.

Well, If YOU Have a Gun, I Sure Feel Safer!

Oh, hello there. More deep thoughts to share with us, then?

I cannot wait.

Teach gun safety in classrooms and leave sex education to parents. Plan B won’t save young people from incurable STDs, but guns will protect women and children from being raped or murdered. The more young people know about guns, the safer our society will be.

So, uh, what?

If every child in America carried a gun to school every day, America would be safer? Because their gym teacher would teach them about gun safety? So they can, I don't know, shoot chlamydia in its stupid face with a gun?

What?

Is THAT your thesis...?

Well, OK then --

Rush Limbaugh said on his talk radio show on May 1: “We know kids are gonna get guns anyway, why not teach them how to use them?” The king of talk was right. Instead of pushing morning-after pills on 15-year-old girls, we should be showing young people how to responsibly use the preeminent tool they have to defend themselves in the event of a violent attack—a gun.

All 15 year old girls should carry guns with them at all times? Because then they won't get pregnant? In what world does this make sense?

Beg pardon. Carry on.

Americans use guns to hold off assault far more than they use guns to commit murder or violent crime. Indeed, Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck has shown that Americans use guns to defensively prevent crime about 2 million times a year—often by merely brandishing a weapon in front of a would-be-assailant.

Hold on -- do you mean that 1992 study that "included gun uses against animals and did not distinguish civilian uses from military or police uses"? Because surely you realize as a thoughtful observer that you have to carefully analyze statistical research and account for bias, and that actually even this highly dubious study said "2.5 million" and not "2 million," so you've even botched your own point? Surely, you care about your facts -- excuse me?

What's that?

Right.

Well-rebutted.

Yes, I know I said "butt"...

Sure, point to you.

But how do we end gun violence, then?

More and more, psychiatric drugs are being miss-prescribed or abused and President Obama’s FDA is contributing to this mess. Medications are increasingly being prescribed to young people that could be setting them up for violent behavior. Instead of prescribing talk therapy, we are loading young people up on meds that are known to cause suicidal thoughts and/or incite aggression.

"Miss-prescribed"...?

Nevermind.

But... What medications are these? And... "talk therapy"? We need more Freud? What?

And if as you said before, violent crime is down overall, which you said is due to concealed carry laws, how could that be true when you then say that the youngsters, they're ever-more increasingly hepped up on goofballs?

Why, it's almost like you're totally whiffing on some obvious contradictions in what you're saying, or else you don't care, or else, perhaps, when the wind blows hard enough from the East your Western ear emits a mournful B-flat, reminiscent of what happens when a toddler learns how to make sounds breathing over an empty Coke bottle --

Gotcha.

Oh you're not done.

It’s time for young people to go through gun education before their teachers brainwash them about gun control.

Wait, weren't you going to tell us how if 15 year old girls had firearms training, they wouldn't need the morning after pill? Because that was kind of strange and I thought you'd maybe explain that --

OK.

Well congratulations, I guess, on finding the precise part of the world where you'll manage to keep yourself fed and employed. Since in the real world, you couldn't get a gig hiring yourself out as mulch...

Shadow of a Gun Nut

Sarah Palin is in the news because the Lame Stream Media doesn't like to be accused of bias towards carnival geeks.

Sarah Palin blasted President Barack Obama and gun control advocates Friday, blaming them for "exploiting" recent mass shooting tragedies to promote their political agenda.

That would be the "political agenda" of not having schoolchildren murdered by crazy people armed with weapons that are remarkably efficient for the purposes of murdering schoolchildren.

Speaking to a welcoming crowd at the National Rifle Association convention in Houston, the folksy former governor from Alaska also used chewing tobacco at one point to draw some laughs.

I bet she did.

If I were Michael Bloomberg, whom I have cordially disliked since even before he became a Republican, I would, for shitsn'giggles, pass a law banning the swilling of chew-juice from pint glasses, just to watch Palin try to "draw a laugh" chugging this in front of the happy shouty morons who pay her to talk "folksy."

Annnyway, this:

Politics of emotion, she argued, won't make the country safer. "It's the opposite of leadership. It's the manipulation of the people by the politicians for their own political ends. It's not just self-serving. It's destructive and it must stop."

So, then, if your kid or spouse is killed for some reason, you're not allowed to speak your mind about what you think the best public policies might be to prevent other Americans from suffering your loss, because to do so is to embrace the "politics of emotion."

This is a thesis jaw-dropping in its idiocy and hypocrisy; does it even need rebuttal?

Obama didn't compel the Newtown family members to appear by rounding them up at gunpoint. Or if he did, kindly prove that.

Anyway, what we have here is a situation where a relatively small minority of Americans are claiming the right, ultimately backed up by their posession of weapons, to define the True Nature of American Freedom.

Which is fine, I guess, at least according to CNN...

How this differs in any important philosophical regard from the position, of, say, the Provisional Irish Republican Army, I cannot say.

How it differs in any practical sense, well (McVeigh cough) who knows. Because this is all just hypothetical!

 

What We Should Fear -- Wily Terrorists Able to Sneak Machine Guns INTO THE HOMELAND

What scares me is that foreign terrorists somehow managed to smuggle firearms into the country.

I mean, pressure cookers, you could get anywhere.

But how on earth did foreign terrorists get the guns they used to shoot at cops?

It's too early to tell if these two guys were Al Qaeda, but it certainly seems possible that AQ has somehow figured out a way to get, I don't know, AR-15s over the border. Maybe they''d hide them in their skivvies?

What a mystery.

It's totally terrifying -- you could be in a public place, and some foreign terrorist could just whip a powerful rifle out of his undies and open fire. Spooky.

Anyway, thank the Great Jesus and the Founders that any Proud American Patriot could stroll into a gun show and pick up some shootin' irons, so they could send back some bullets and show Achmed what for!

That is a Very Comforting Thought.

Almost as comforting as the Sure Knowledge that in this time of national trauma, Americans of all Political Persuasions will doubtless Rally Around Our Commander-in-Chief. You know, as he proposes Bold, Sensible Action. Like invading Belgium.

MAS. Lots of folks arguing about whether or not this guy should be shipped straight to Gitmo or given a  -- gasp -- criminal trial.

NOT EVEN A QUESTION.

TIM McVEIGH GOT A CRIMINAL TRIAL AND NOW HE RUNS AL QAEDA. WHEN WILL YOU LEARN, LIBTARDS??!!!!

They Laughed at the Skibbereen Eagle...

... but where's your Russian Emperor now!

In Modern America, the proud descendents of Skibbereen are now become the mighty and vigilant Commissioners of Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania.

With gun rights coming under fire across the border in New York State, the Susquehanna County commissioners spoke out by resolution Wednesday in favor of the Second Amendment.

Republican Commissioner Michael Giangrieco said the issues in New York prompted him to address the matter on a county level.

He proposed a resolution stating that "any federal act, bill, law, rule or executive order that in any way infringes on our Second Amendment rights by attempting to reduce the private ownership of any firearm, magazine or ammunition shall be unenforceable in Susquehanna County."

In later developments, Commissioner Giangrieco sternly warned Wen Jiabao to "knock it off."

 

(I should hope the Skibbereen Eagle joke needs no reference? Also, comments to the Scranton newspaper story linked above are exactly what you knew they were before you read them. Up in Northeast PA, they sure do get bothered when the Federal Government sticks its nose into Local Affairs. Except when it stops doing that. Click that last link -- it provides an amusing punchline!)

Today in Scary Gummint Bang-Bang Grab Nooz

Shouty nitwit Jim Hoft has a Shocking Report about how the Tyrant Obama is kicking defenseless veterans inna fork and stealing their pop-guns.

This must be Barack Obama’s way of thanking our veterans for serving. US veterans are receiving letters from the government informing them that they are disabled and not allowed to own, purchase or possess a firearm. If the veteran does decide to purchase a firearm he will by fined, imprisoned or both.

I'd accuse Hoft of deliberately blurring a key distinction between disabled and incompetent; the letter that he immediately quotes makes this clear. But Hoft is far too stupid to do anything "deliberately," so we must be charitable as to his motives.

At any rate all that is going on is that the VA has been informed that certain veterans are unable because of physical or mental disability to handle their own financial affairs, so they are sending out letters to these veterans to this effect, letters that also inform them that if they have been declared mentally or physically incompetent, the law says they can't have guns. This is something that at first blush normal people would call "a good idea," but that the Hofties among us instantly consider further sufficient cause for violent insurrection, at least to judge by the keen minds of his comments section. As we are soberly advised:

STATE ISSUED ID IS THE SAME AS THE DRIVERS LICENSE. SCHOOL KIDS ARE BEING TRACKED THE SAME WAY. CARRY AROUND SOME STRONG MAGNETS AND EXPOSE THE ID TO STRONG MAGNETS. THEN THEY WON'T BE ABLE TO TRACK YOU. A CAR MAGNENT WILL WORK FINE!

Well, somebody's id has been exposed to strong magnets -- that much is clear.

Hoft learned of this Outrage from a site called "Red Flag," probably because it is proudly Communist, in a News Alert "Written By Constitutional Attorney Michael Connelly, J.D." (Do I shit thee? I shit thee not. That's what he calls himself. He is an attorney and he has a J. D. Those are the most powerful kinds of attorneys, the ones with J. D.s. They are so badass they can capitalize prepositions. So back off.)

Constitutional Attorney Michael Connelly, J. D., sounds the alarm in prose empurpled:

How would you feel if you received a letter from the U.S. Government informing you that because of a physical or mental condition that the government says you have it is proposing to rule that you are incompetent to handle your own financial affairs? Suppose that letter also stated that the government is going to appoint a stranger to handle your affairs for you at your expense? That would certainly be scary enough but it gets worse.

What if that letter also stated: “A determination of incompetency will prohibit you from purchasing, possessing, receiving, or transporting a firearm or ammunition. If you knowingly violate any of these prohibitions, you may be fined, imprisoned, or both pursuant to the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, Pub.L.No. 103-159, as implemented at 18, United States Code 924(a)(2).”?

That makes is sound like something right from a documentary on a tyrannical dictatorship somewhere in the world. Yet, as I write this I have a copy of such a letter right in front of me. It is being sent by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of America’s heroes.

"Tyrannical dictatorship"? No, it sounds like something that was written by the VA.

Constitutional Attorney Michael Connelly, J. D., could have bothered to use the Google on the Internet, but maybe they don't teach you how to do that in J. D. school. If he had done so, he might have learned that there are indeed problems with the VA in regards to its fiduciary program, but that these have nothing to do with his screeching headline, "OBAMA THREATENING VETERANS' GUN RIGHTS." They have instead to do with this.

For decades, theft and fraud have plagued the fiduciary program, in which the VA appoints a family member or a stranger to manage money for veterans the government considers incapacitated. The magnitude and pace of those thefts has increased, despite VA promises of reform. Three of the largest scams – ranging from about $900,000 to $2 million – each persisted 10 years or more before being discovered.

That wily Obama, coming up with a gun-confiscation plan that had led to abuses that occured, as per that link, in 1999.

There is certainly the usual amount of comedy in this latest wingnut eruption, including the sensible contributions of Travis Bickle's less stable and accomplished descendents. But it's also potentially quite nasty, injecting as it does a giant heaping assload of irrelevant paranoia into a situation that ought to be considered a hell of a lot more seriously, especially by any veteran directly affected. 

So. Cal. Police Terror Report

Amazing that a "tear gas" canister that won't make the structure it's fired into explode in flames hasn't been developed in the almost 40 yrs. since most of the Symbionese Liberation Army were killeddied in a fire set by the LAPD's magic tear gas canisters.

A cynical America-hater (me) might think it awfully convenient for certain organizations dedicated to service (to the powerful) & protection (of their property from the less-powerful) that Christopher Dorner will never be placed on trial, let alone have a chance to air his grievances in a public forum.

It's almost as if there are no such things as tear gas canisters at all, but only explosive devices that happen to have a little tear gas in them.

I'd also like to hear less whining about dead police ossifers (You live by the gun, you die by the gun. Can't be simpler than that, so stop whining.) & more concern for the mother & daughter newspaper carriers & guy who didn't fit the description of Dorner (but were driving pick-up trucks not at all similar to Dorner's) & were all three nearly murdered by the gang that can't shoot straight, the police. (You know, the "good guys" w/ guns who'll stop bad guys w/ guns. My ass.)

Almoost finished, but here's a late update: Thanks to Typepad reading what I typed & providing related links & posts (Which is more than a little frightening, by the way.) I see the L.A.Times has reported this:

Related articles

Dorner manhunt: Incendiary tear gas reportedly used on cabin

Try the link in that dumb-ass box ("Powered by Zemanta™," whatever that is.) but few who don't pay an inflated price can access that fish-wrapper, even from links. Nonetheless, before it was hidden I saw the phrase "hot gas." Turns out this is a thing. A works-out-great-for-the-coppers thing.

And how could I have imagined what the hoped for result was w/o knowing that tear-gas canisters are deliberately designed to be incendiary? It's as if I'm psychic or something!

— M. Bouffant

Auguries of My Left One

To see a world in grain of Rand

And a heaven in a fake gun grab

So stroke yourself 'til you bloom in your hand

By detecting Stalin in your salad

The ingenuity of Greater Wingnuttia in detecting the Ways What-in They Is Oppressed is surely impressive. For instance, this mouthbreathed emanation.

President Obama has so little regard for the United States Marines risking their lives under his command life that they were forced to dismantle their already empty parade rifles for his second inauguration parade.

Gosh.

You't think some fine l'il loon would be pleased that what are, after all, Gummint Agents (like Them Thar Revnooers) would be unarmed. Taking out the bolts of all Gummint Rifles would make it that much easier to seize the substations after the Usurper does something utterly egregious, like making Army Rangers wear pink boas into combat, or issuing executive orders mandating the knocking-down of every Proud American's char-coal grill.

Sad Freaks of the Nation

Most people don't want to walk around packing a gun, because who wants to live in a world where you have to always think about having a gun? That is a shit world.

Let's Shoot the Deficit in the FACE with a GUN

Some people are saying we should not be scared of The Deficit. These people are WRONG and CRAZY. The Deficit is incredibly scary!

Just last night I was standing in my kitchen when all of a sudden I looked out the window and I saw three great big young Deficits walking by on the sidewalk. The Deficits had on saggy pants and gold chains and were listening to loud "gangsta rap" on a boom-box. My liberal wife wasn't there but if she were she would have surely let out a gasp of terror, just like Mika Brzezinski recently did when a threatening swarthy man frightened her with his uneducated gang lingo.

(Pictured: A typical Deficit)

These Deficits did not look at me but kept walking, a clear giveaway that they were "casing the joint," to use their "slang." Clearly I only narrowly escaped being violently assaulted by this wolfpack of rape-lusting Deficits.

If only I had an AR-15, this whole terrifying Deficit attack could have been avoided. Sure, I could have "called 911," but I don't believe in big government, and also those socialists at the police department threatened me with "felony charges" if I kept calling them five times a day with scary stories just like this one. And sure, maybe I could have gone after the Deficits with one of the 36 shotguns that I keep loaded at all times, but next to an AR-15, shotguns look like daisies and puppies, they are not "scary looking."

If Obummer and the lie-berals really wanted to destroy the threat of the Deficit and keep the Deficit from home-invading American homes filled with American women and American children, the government would immediately send every American $10,000 dollars to go towards the purchase of an AR-15 Not-Assault Rifle with lots left over for ammunition and all the manly fixin's!

That would show those Deficits!!!!!!

(Pssst... someone email this to Glenn Reynolds, because this might actually work.)