NEON GODS

Impeach Obama for (fill in the blank)!

I see the Republicans are baying at the moon again.  This time it's Benghazi.  Sen. Inhofe (R-Moon) predicts Obama will be impeached over the "coverup".  I thought he was supposed to be impeached for a fake birth certificate, or for ObamaCare's death panels, or for palling around with a terrorist (Bill Ayres).  How many times have I heard the Republicans say the words Obama and Impeach in reference to something he supposedly did in the past five years?  Ten? Fifteen?  More?  I thin I heard the first murmurings about two weeks after he took office.

It's funny what high standards Republicans have when someone else is in office.  Did you hear a peep from them when George Bush brushed off the intelligence report before 9/11 that Osama BinLaden was planning an attack, or when the Bush administration authorized America to engage in torture, or when it came out that about $8 billion of our dollars was lost somewhere in Iraq??  The GOP is so incompetent that the only way they can win elections is to gerrymander and suppress the vote, and, evidently, impeach any and every Democratic President.

No doubt the administration spun the facts about the tragedy in Benghazi.  Tell me that Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II administrations didn't do the same for reasons sometimes valid and sometimes not.  Everyone knows it, Everyone knows we rarely ever know the real truth until months or years later.  Often the press manges to finally get at the truth after the fact.  So go ahead a**holes and try to impeach Obama.  The majority of Americans now know the Republican's M.O.: lose the Presidency -> impeach the bastard.  The only real impeachable offense to a Republican is being a popular Democrat.

--Trakker

Gun nuts: fighting tyranny that doesn't exist by acting seditious. They might be insane after all.

More insanity from the addled minds of the gun nuts of America:

On the morning of July 4, 2013, Independence Day, we will muster at the National Cemetery & at noon we will step off to march across the Memorial Bridge, down Independence Avenue, around the Capitol, the Supreme Court, & the White House, then peacefully return to Virginia across the Memorial Bridge. This is an act of civil disobedience, not a permitted event. We will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to put the government on notice that we will not be intimidated & cower in submission to tyranny. We are marching to mark the high water mark of government & to turn the tide. This will be a non-violent event, unless the government chooses to make it violent. Should we meet physical resistance, we will peacefully turn back, having shown that free people are not welcome in Washington, & returning with the resolve that the politicians, bureaucrats, & enforcers of the federal government will not be welcome in the land of the free.

You are welcome to attend unarmed as a supporter, or armed with a recording device.

If this page gets to 10,000 attendees by June 1st, & we have the critical mass necessary to pull this off, (1,000 actual attendees) we will march. Please spread the word, share this event, & invite all your friends.

By all means, march you infantile spoiled adolescents who refuse to grow up and accept that you must obey laws you don't like - just like the rest of us in this once-great country you are doing your best to ruin. And by all means carry your loaded penis-substitutes to show the rest of us just how insecure you are.

The rally organizer writes, "We will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to put the government on notice that we will not be intimidated & cower in submission to tyranny."

Tyranny?  What tyranny?  Tyranny is defined as "arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; despotic abuse of authority."  Every American citizen over the age of 18 has the right to vote for a President, two Senators, and one Representatives who represent them in Washington.  They make our laws and American citizens agree to obey those laws or suffer the consequences.  Our elected officials may be doing a lousy job of governing, and if so we can vote them out and replace them.  It happens every two years.  This is not tyranny. 

No, what these idiots are are really marching about is that they only want to obey the laws they like, and they define everything else as tyranny.  Screw them!  If they set foot in WAshington, DC, they should be arrested, booked, and go on trial for sedition.  It's time to send a message to these haters of democracy that we won't be intimidated by gun-toting thugs threatening our nation and it's government.

--Trakker

It's just a matter of time: NRA edition

Requiring everyone who wants to buy a firearm to submit to a background check is only common sense and is supported by the vast majority of Americans, and in fact a majority in the Senate (54-46!) recently voted to move forward on extending the background checks to private sales.  But it didn't pass despite overwhelming support by the voters.  Why?  Because the dying Republican Party has used Senate rules to define majority as 60%! 

This means that just 20 of the reddest states in the country now control politics in America!  This is certainly NOT what the Founding Fathers envisioned.  They acknowledged that the smaller rural stats needed protection from the larger, more populous states, so in the Senate they made every state equal by giving each state the same number of Senators, two.  So in the Senate, Wyoming's 576,000 people are equal in influence to California's 38,000,000 people!  Quite a perk, no?  But that inequity is just not good enough for the Republican Party.  The GOP now insists that those 20 smallest states, plus one more Senator, can block any bills the 30 largest states want to pass! And they wonder why those of us in the larger, more populist states despise the Republican Party?

This level of inequity is stupid of course, and will only enrage the rest of the country more and more each year until the radical right and their wealthy puppeteers are finally crushed by a furious public.  The religious right, the gun nuts, the bigots, and the fear-mongers seem blissfully unaware of just how despised they are by a growing number of Americans who merely want America to move forward and prosper.

Still, the real blame for what happened yesterday lies at the feet of Harry Reid.  He's had two chances to end the current filibuster rules that the Republicans have been using to shut down the Senate and he's done nothing.  It is unreasonable to require 60 votes to get something passed, especially in a nation so divided as we are now.  Obviously the best thing we can do right now is disband the Senate and send them all back to the real world where they will have to have to get a job and live without all the perks they now get.  At least it will save us a bundle of money. 

As for the gun laws that were defeated.  They will be back and they will eventually get passed because the public and the press is now paying close attention to the NRA and gun nuts, and the people are beginning to realize what a bunch of ignorant, lying sons of bitches they are.  The NRA and the gun nuts (as opposed to regular gun owners) are a small minority.  We're seeing more and more NRA members speaking out publicly against the stupidity of opposing background checks.

Let me be clear, here.  Most gun owners are normal, decent people who support things like background checks, but the NRA's leadership, and those gun rights groups even more radical than the NRA, are truly despicable human beings, similar to international arms merchants who make millions off the death and suffering of innocent human beings.  Yes, there really are people out there who don't care that thousands of innocent people die every year due to lax gun laws.  They consider these deaths as nothing more than human detritus, like the wood shavings we get when carving a figure.  The press is now unmasking these grotesque human beings and the sight is not pretty.  It's just a matter of time...

--Trakker

Prayer?

Sad news.  A young man committed suicide yesterday.  He was the 27 year old son of influential Pastor/author Rick Warren. 

According to Warren, 'over the years, Matthew Warren had been treated by America’s best doctors, had received counseling and medication and been the recipient of numerous prayers from others.'

So Pastor Warren is asking for your prayers.

As a parent I can imagine how much pain the Warrens are in right now, and I can only sympathize, but PRAYER? Why? If prayer worked, his son wouldn't be dead would he? I'm certain the Warrens prayed daily for the safety of their family and other loved ones, How did Einstein define insanity, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?  
 
Believe me, I was raised Baptist, prayer is nothing but a wish.  If it makes you feel good, fine.  But if you believe there is a God or expect prayer to change reality, you might want to try some critical thinking.

--Trakker

We can't try to control gun sales because people can kill with anything, even a spoon!

WhooooBoy, gun control is not going away!  People are finally fed up and paying attention to the huge scam that the NRA has been pulling on the American people (i.e., the Second Amendment has no limits, and gun owners are all super-good citizens and super patriots and we should be thankful they are willing to walk among and scare the shit out of our kids  protect us).  No longer do gun nuts control the comments section of gun death news articles.  Finally, the press is paying attention to the lies and stupidity the NRA and gun nuts spout and are pushing back.

It does not always go well, however.  The other day Piers Morgan (aka "I'll do anything for ratings") had Dana Loesch as a guest on his program along with Grover Norquist and Van Jones to discuss gun control.  Gary Legum at the blog, Wonkette, went ballistic over assembling such a lightweight lineup to discuss a serious subject.  Here is Legum's take on the participants:

Piers: Piers Morgan "is [no] great soufflé in the baking dish of life.

Dana: ""Your Wonkette has a history of falling for self-absorbed and somewhat dimwitted women, and even we would not go anywhere near Dana Loesch, who projects a cloud of toxic dimwittedness so severe we imagine entire fields of grass withering as she walks across them.

Grover: Norquist is known for one thing, and that is the dogmatic enforcement of an anti-tax creed he thought up when he was twelve years old. He should not be given access to so much as a box of crayons, because he would eat them while complaining about stupid liberals who want to make him share his crayons with starving poor people."

And poor Van: "Why Van Jones keeps subjecting himself to debates with conservatives on CNN is a mystery that will perhaps one day be solved by a good psychiatrist or a swift kick to the nuts. Really, he can’t do better than this?"

I don't know much about Dana Loesch (I believe it's pronounced 'Lash') but after reading the transcript of her remarks she brings nothing original to the table...she obviously gets her talking points from the NRA: magazine size is meaningless because everyone can reload in just a few seconds...military weapons aren't being sold...gun control freaks are trying to ban certain firearms because they look scary...her son has a BB gun that looks like an AR-15...anything can be an assault weapon, even a spoon....(yes, she actually went there).

Wonkette had some good answers to Loesch's arguments.

This is a pretty standard gun-nutter argument: that people want to ban guns for aesthetic reasons, namely that they look scary. So let us make it clear: the pro-gun control crowd wants to place limits on the types of guns available to the public because these guns make it a hell of a lot easier for a mass shooter to kill lots of people in a very short period of time (Jared Loughner needed all of 15 seconds to fire off his 33-round clip, hitting 18 people). No one is talking about banning any gun, particularly Dana Loesch’s son’s BB gun, because it looks scary. Hell, no one is talking about banning BB guns, period, because everyone knows the worst you can do with one of those things is shoot your eye out. We hope your one-eyed son can live a full life despite his lack of spatial and depth perception, Dana Loesch.

Loesch: Anything can be qualified as an assault weapon. If you stab someone with a spoon, it can be qualified as an assault weapon.

Stabbing people with spoons! WHY ARE OUR POLITICIANS NOT SHUTTING DOWN THE DEATH MERCHANTS AT WILLIAMS-SONOMA, HENGHHHH?

The spoon argument is particularly stupid. It boils down to this: It's futile to ban guns or control firearm sales because people can kill with anything, even a spoon!   Let's rephrase this: It's futile to find a cure for cancer because people die of all kinds of other illnesses, even the common cold!  Yeah, that's what passes on the right for "logic."

Back to Wonkette:

If we were debating gun control with any kind of intellectual rigor, we could ignore the remarkable jumble of stupidity emitting from Dana Loesch’s mouth hole at a frequency usually only audible to bats. If this country prized intellectual rigor in debates about complex and important issues, Dana Loesch would just be one more dipshit college dropout suburbanite the neighbors stop inviting to barbecues because she always starts political arguments... Unfortunately, intellectual rigor and common fucking sense go right out the window where guns are concerned because people like Dana Loesch have not been confined to the sanitariums where they belong, but have instead been handed radio shows and television contracts.

Ouch. 

I've been accused of writing mostly angry posts.  Probably, although I'm not by nature an angry person.  This blog was started as a safety valve where I could let off steam so I wouldn't scare my grand kids with political rants.  But, come on.  Innocent people are being killed daily by people with firearms.  We've made it too easy for disturbed, paranoid, and suicidal people to get dangerous weapons, and the NRA has consciously worked to insure that 1) guns are available to everyone and 2) easy to get.  THEY KNOW that their work to insure even the insane and disturbed can get a gun will result in a fair number of deaths and even more injuries and maimings, AND THEY DON'T GIVE A DAMN!  They don't.  20 dead 1st graders is a price they are willing to pay to sell more guns.  THEY DON'T CARE.  They don't.  So, of course I'm angry.  And so is America, if the polls and comments on news articles are to be believed.

--Trakker

 

The luckiest people around?

Off topic, but I spent time yesterday watching videos of Rhiannon Giddens/Carolina Chocolate Drops jamming various country/gospel/gaelic songs and just having a good time, and concluded that people with musical talent have got to be some of the luckiest people around.

 

--Trakker

Spring? Not until winter is finished with us.

Of no real interest to anyone but myself, but I'm at our cabin on Cabin Mountain in West Virginia and it was +6° this morning with 4 inches of new snow on the ground (we've had over 16 feet of snow this winter) - and it's still snowing.  Yes, folks, winter out here ends when next year's winter begins.

--Trakker

Politics is pretty simple these days.

Understanding politics is actually pretty easy these days. 

The rich and the corporations want to severely shrink the federal government. This would greatly reduce their taxes and rid themselves of regulations and government oversight.  Putting this crudely, they want to be able to pollute and to cheat (they don't see it as cheating though) with impunity.  Accumulating wealth and the bottom line are what matters most to many of them.

The tea party/red state Republicans also want to dismantle the federal government, but for a different reason.  They want to turn everything over to the states because the red states are fed up with being required to govern in compliance with the Constitution of the United States.  They don't recognize the separation of church and state, they don't want to acknowledge that abortion is a woman's right, they don't want to extend any rights to gays.  They want to be able to teach extreme right wing fairy tales as facts in their schools.  None of this can happen as long as the Federal government is strong enough to enforce federal laws and policies.

Both of these groups want to drastically shrink the federal government.  They seem to agree that the federal government should concentrate only on maintaining a national military to protect them and to fight wars (oh, and provide massive financial help to Israel).  Other than that the federal government should shed almost all current responsibilities and go away.  Leave everything to the private sector and the states.  In other words, they want to take the word "United" out our name and become a confederation of independent states.

These two groups have a lot of clout now, and the rest of us are having a lot of trouble figuring out how to respond to this assault on our government, a government that has traditionally protected our rights and provided safety nets for the poor and financial help for the young as they start their families and begin careers.  Sometimes I find myself wishing a chunk of red states would secede and form their own country and implement their own brand of government so we could all determine for ourselves if it would work (hint: I already know the answer to that.  In fact we would soon have an illegal immigration problem with the people fleeing those states).

--Trakker

Open Carry: Intimidation

I've been hearing a lot of gun nuts deriding people who get freaked out by the sight of gunowners openly carrying guns to political rallies or political functions.  They are contemptuous of the unarmed who feel intimidated or nervous around civilians who walk around armed when there is little need for it (most of the cases where this has occurred are not dangerous places - especially during the day when the incidents occur.

First of all, don't try to tell me that intimidation isn't part of the psychology of those who open carry, especially at political rallies or meetings with politicians.  America has a long tradition of insisting on equality in politics and in our day to day activities.  We don't always rise to this goal but it is an important part of what has made us great, but when two people meet to discus or negotiate or whatever, if one person is unarmed and the other is openly carrying an assault rifle, they are not equal and the unarmed person always knows that in the end the armed person has the upper hand, and the armed person knows it. Intimidation.

We're not at war in this country.  Crime is dropping.  The chances of anyone being accosted on the street is almost nil.  More than half of the people in this country go about their lives year after year without being armed or even thinking about it.  I've lived over 60 years in America, much of it in Washington, DC, where we're told by gun nuts is a very dangerous place because until recently guns were banned. 

There is very little reason for anyone in this country to feel the need to carry an assault rifle in public.  I'm convinced a large percentage of people who walk around openly carrying a firearm are doing so to psychologically bully the rest of us.  They want to remind us that they are more powerful than us, that you better not "mess" with them.

--Trakker

The stupider the person, the more certain they are that they are always right

Comment posted on WaPost to a snarky article about the way the federal government categorizes their workers as essential vs. non-essential (essential workers must come to work when the government shuts down for severe weather events):

-------------------------------------------- 

hammeresq

8:22 AM EST

Outside of the military, there is not one essential worker that works for the federal government.

--------------------------------------------

Isn't it amazing that the stupider a person is the more certain they are that they know everything?

That's one reason our nation is on a downward slide - the willfully ignorant now have their own cable news channel and their own political party and far more political power than their numbers warrant. 

Every time there is an article about federal workers in the WaPost the comments section gets hammered with stupid, hateful posts like this, insisting that government workers are: lazy, overpaid, useless, pampered, a drain on the taxpayers, etc. and that we could fire 50% of them and the country wouldn't feel the difference. 

Anyone with an ounce of sense knows better, or at least is smart enough to investigate further before making a fool of themselves, but over the years I've come to understand that we have a frightening number of Americans who are willfully ignorant and need classes of people to hate and denigrate regardless of the facts. 

Sad.

--Trakker

We can debate ideas but not facts.

Recently I've had to delete comments by one of my readers. I don't like doing this, but I have minimum standards for comments: they have to be fact-based, logical, and make sense.

I have no problem with people disagreeing with my posts and explaining why in a comment.  I usually rebut it (if I have time) and sometimes these turn into a mini-debate. Fine, but to have an intelligent debate there must be some common ground and some respect for facts. 

You might recall a few years ago I had a long debate with commenter, Adspar, who saw things differently than I did but at least we both accepted the same reality, we just disagreed on how those facts affected our future.  I agreed with much of what he wrote but not his conclusions.  I enjoyed it but at some point we both realized we were at an impasse.

The commenter I recently banned (for the third time I believe) rejects facts and lives in a world where might makes right.  If you say it often enough and loud enough it becomes a fact.  For example, he recently crowed that Fox News is the most watched cable news network, by far, as though that proved anything.  They may be number one because they are smarter and right more often than the others, or they may be number one because they tell angry, bigoted people what they want to hear instead of the truth.  Just because more Americans believe God made the world in seven days than believe in evolution, it doesn't make evolution untrue.  And because a lot of rich energy companies have spent billions convincing people that people aren't affecting our climate in any negative way, 95+% of the professional climatologists say we are, and dangerously so and all the propaganda in the world won't change their conclusions.  Anyone who can't understand and accept these basic concepts should move on, but this individual didn't and insisted that his make-believe world was the reality I must accept.  Not in my lifetime.  So be it.

--Trakker

 

 

How radical is the Republican Party?

How radical is the current Republican Party?  Here is how a prominent conservative describes it:

No entity in our polity right now is more radical and revolutionary than the current GOP: their contempt for institutional custom knows few bounds when it comes to the short-term tactical possibility of impeding even a newly re-elected president, after losing the popular vote for the presidency, Senate and House. The whole concept of putting country before party is that sometimes you take the long national view rather than the short partisan one. You give the other party a chance to govern, as the Democrats did Reagan. But the anti-conservative revolutionary party that Gingrich began and Kristol egged on is now in its zombie stage – with no viable way back to majority status but lunging slowly and malevolently toward anything that is not far right. That includes the Constitution and its evolved customs and parliamentary traditions. [emphasis added]

Did you notice that part in bold?  In this last election the Republicans lost not only the popular vote for President, but the combined votes for all Senators and all House candidates!  They are a true minority party now and as Andrew Sullivan writes in the above piece, they have no viable way to turn that around.  However, they remain extremely popular in the Fox News states in the South and rural states who will continue to send the ignorant, the fundamentalists, the fear-mongerers, and the gunslingers to Washington to embarrass themselves and their party.

The country is no longer split between liberals and conservatives, but between the rational and the irrational, and the rational voters, both lefties and righties, are in the majority nationaly.

I don't know how this will end.  As long as majorities in the solidly red states and Congressional Districts (the irrational) insist that facts, reality, common sense, and the Constitution are dangerous liberal commodities that must be opposed at all costs(!), we will continue to be a failed nation, as the irrational politicians they send to Washington do everything in their power to make sure nothing proposed by a Democrat ever gets passed nor any Democratic political appointee ever gets confirmed.

Update: I thought this comment from Fred Kaplan via The Dish about the Hagel confirmation hearing reinforces my points made above nicely:

Not to sound like a Golden Age nostalgic, but there once was a time when the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee prided themselves on having an understanding of military matters. They disagreed in their conclusions and sometimes their premises. But most of them worked to educate themselves, at least to the point where they could debate the issues, or ask questions of a general without coming off like complete idiots. The sad thing about this new crop of senators—especially on the Republican side—is they don’t even try to learn anything; they don’t care if they look like complete idiots, in part because their core constituents don’t care if they do either.

--Trakker

The GOP/Fox News Party is commiting slow suicide and they can't stop it.

Been pretty busy for the past week or so.  I'm way behind on emails, etc.  I watched the SOTU address and thought Obama did a decent job, but it's hard listening to his ideas know that little if anything is going to get done as long as the Republicans are determined to sabotage everything, as usual.  The good news is that it is obvious that the Republicans are about to go over a cliff as a party.

The GOP/Fox News party is very popular in the red states and red districts within the blue states, and those rural red districts still have more power than their numbers warrant, but the Democrat's message is being embraced by more and more independents and moderate Republicans because it makes sense.  The Republicans can't change their message because it is gospel in the red districts where facts and logic are easily ignored.  In other words the Republican Party is committing a slow suicide that they can't stop.  I'm delighted to see that the Obama administration, which has been abysmal at standing up to Republicans for the last four years, appears to have grown at least one of a pair and are hastening the GOP's suicide. If so, this might be a fun year.

--Trakker

The Church Protection Act? What, Jesus is on strike?

Whooeey!  Thanks, Christians in Arkansas, for showing us how you REALLY feel about your God!  They know that either he doesn't exist or he's just not as powerful as advertised.  This is soooo good!

(Reuters) - The Arkansas House of Representatives approved a bill on Monday to allow concealed-carry permit holders to take their weapons into churches, and it is expected to be signed into law by the state's governor.

The Church Protection Act would allow individual places of worship to decide whether to allow concealed handguns and who could carry them. The Republican-controlled House passed the bill 85-8 with bipartisan support. The measure previously passed the Republican-controlled Senate 28-4.

The Church Protection Act!  Imagine worshiping a God that can't even protect those who believe in him when they are in the act of worshipping him!  Wow!

I spent my childhood in a Baptist Church where the preacher and my Sunday School teacher (and my parents) assured me that if I put my trust in Jesus, he would watch over me and keep me safe.  Then, after church, all the men would gather around and talk about how powerful the scary Commies were and how America - you know, God's chosen country - had better build more bombs and fight more wars to keep America safe!  I used to go, "Huh?  You just told me that if we put our trust Jesus he would keep us safe. Was that a lie?"  I was told I would understand more when I got older.

They were right, I do understand now that I'm older. I understand it was all a myth and all those church members know it was a lie, they just couldn't admit it, even to themselves.

Now I see the same thing happening here.  Those good Christians in Arkansas know that their Jesus is just a myth that they believe in when it benefits them, but when push comes to shove they'd rather put their faith in their real God, their gun.

--Trakker

The Bush-Cheney debacle

Some say I blog angry.  Probably.  But then I remember a different America, a better America, and I'm very angry at how our leaders have betrayed us.  Take the Bush II years for example.  Andrew Sullivan wrote this about an hour ago, and he sounds angry too:

Someone in the GOP needs to take Bush-Cheney apart, to show how they created the debt crisis we are in, by throwing away a surplus on unaffordable tax cuts, launching two unfunded wars, and one new unfunded entitlement. They need to take on the war crimes that has deeply undermined the soul of the United States. They need to note the catastrophic negligence that gave us the worst national security lapse since Pearl Harbor (9/11) despite being warned explicitly in advance, accept weak and false intelligence to launch a war they were too incompetent to fight or win, sat back as one of the worst hurricanes all but took out a major city, and was so negligent in bank regulation that we ended up with Lehman and all that subsequently took place.

These were not minor error[s]. They were catastrophic misjudgments which took an era of peace, surplus and prosperity and replaced it with a dystopia of massive debt, a lawless executive branch, two unwinnable wars, and a record of war crimes that had their source in the very Oval Office.

Sullivan has every right to be angry because the Republican Party is his party, and they have turned into a party of clowns.

--Trakker

We are not your opposites!

While catching up on Paul Krugman's blog, The Conscience of a Liberal, this thought struck me as a pretty good explanation of how politics, and the country, has become so polarized today:

...this little exchange is another illustration of a point I’ve noticed before: the way hard-right commentators assume that the other side must be their mirror image. They insist that no government intervention is ever justified; so liberals must support any and all government interventions. They want smaller government, as a principle; liberals must want bigger government, never mind what for. They believe that deficits and printing money are always evil; liberals must be for deficits and money-printing under all circumstances.

It goes even deeper than economics.  Since liberalism is the opposite of conservatism, thus conservatives assume liberals as people must be the opposite of themselves.  They are patriots, so liberals must hate America.  Conservatives consider themselves hard working and honest, so liberals must be lazy and always trying to game the system.  Conservatives believe they are self-sufficient, so liberals must expect someone else to support them.  Conservatives believe completely in capitalism and the free markets so liberals must want to turn EVERYTHING over to the government.

That so many on the right embrace this "mirror image" belief helps explain why the right has increasingly acted as though liberals are not fellow Americans who also love our country, but are their enemies who want to destroy this country. 

Anyone with a brain recognizes this is not true, but a lot of scam artists have made a TON of money pushing this idea, people like Rush, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity.  All have become incredibly wealthy convincing low information and poorly educated Americans that liberals are the opposite of the good, honest, hard-working (mythical) people the right believes themselves to be.

--Trakker

 

NRA members support stricter gun laws? I'm skeptical.

Personally, I'm skeptical of all the polls the gun control groups and the press are using that supposedly show that a majority of NRA members support things like background checks for all gun purchases.  I hope they are legitimate and if they are, that's cause for rejoicing, but I'm still skeptical.

I mean just look at the NRA rhetoric for the past 20 years.  I'm sure that if 200,000 young first graders were shot each year the NRA would insist that it just means we need to arm more citizens and hire more armed guards.  There is no problem that more guns can't fix. Why would anyone join this group of fanatics unless they were just as fanatical?

We know that some NRA members have publicly resigned after seeing Wayne LaPierre's rants since Sandy Hook.  I'm just as certain that many new gunners have joined, impressed with how the NRA has given the finger to sissies who weep for dead kids.  The NRA has a higher purpose - the overthrow of any elected American government that refuses to disband and let the rich and the gunners - and an armed Jesus of course - run the country as they see fit.  At least that's what they tell us Thomas Jefferson intended using their usual made-up quotes.

The NRA claims they have four and a half million members.  In a nation of maybe 180 million adults that's fairly insignificant, and I think they are about to see that far more people oppose them than support them.  They still have the benefit of being well funded and that their members are fanatics.  Unfortunately, some gun nuts are making it clear that they have more allegiance to their guns than to America. 

Getting saner gun laws (and, yes, better enforcement) is going to be a long struggle.  Ironically, the gun nuts will ultimately lose precisely because they have been so successful up til now.  All those guns already in the hands of unstable people will continue to produce mass killings for years to come, providing steady ammunition (if you will) for those who promote gun sanity and public safety.

--Trakker

Gun control is no longer a debate, it's a battle for the return to common sense

The NYTimes has a heartbreaking account of what the first responders found at Sandy Hook Elementary School the day of the slaughter of 20 1st graders.  We tend to focus on the kids murdered and their parents in tragedies like this, but the damage is so much greater than the 26 and their immediate families.  Those who responded and were confronted with the bodies of little children, many who had parts of their face or other part of their body blown completely away.  How can any normal person deal with something like this, especially if you have children of your own.  I found myself in tears once again as I read this.

But there was one thing in the article that bothered me.  This: "...[a massacre] that has inflamed the national debate over gun control."

No, this is no longer a debate, this is a BATTLE, a battle for sanity and survival. 

In Virginia, as in many states, it is perfectly legal to carry a loaded AR-15 into a crowded grocery store, and someone recently did  ...and the cops couldn't do anything because he broke no laws.  Until the trigger is pulled no law has been broken!  Until the trigger is pulled we must legally consider this person "a good guy with a gun" even as he raises the gun to shoot.

We all know the First Amendment has limits. You can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, but the Second Amendment allows a stranger to carry a loaded semi-automatic assault rife into a crowded supermarket??   Please tell me why common sense must be suspended when it comes to guns?

--Trakker

Why millions of Americans decide to live gun free and oppose those who don't

A family in Albuquerque is dead, and we're lucky it wasn't worse, much worse. 

From the Albuquerque Journal:

Nehemiah Griego had long harbored violent fantasies that included mass killings and murder-suicide scenarios.

More recently, those fantasies started to crystallize into a specific plan to kill his family, his girlfriend’s family and even strangers at a local Walmart, Bernalillo County Sheriff Dan Houston and one of his lead investigators said Tuesday.

According to sheriff’s investigators, the 15-year-old followed through with part of the plan early Saturday, when they say he fatally shot his mother and younger brother in bed, his two young sisters in another room and then waited five hours to ambush his father in the family’s South Valley home. ...

The victims are: Greg Griego, 51; Sarah Griego, 40; Zephania Griego, 9; Jael Griego, 5; and Angelina Griego, 2.

The guns were unsecured in the parent's closet. 

Officials said the two guns used in the killings, as well as two pistol-grip 12-gauge shotguns found in the Griegos’ home, had been purchased legally. It is not clear, however, who bought them.

[Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office Lt. Sid] Covington said it appears some of the guns owned by [the shooter's father] Greg Griego – including possibly those used in the killings – had been purchased by Greg Griego’s friends and then either sold to or given to the pastor. BCSO is working with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to trace the history of those guns, as well as the two shotguns.

Griego had told friends, colleagues and inmates he worked with that he was an ex-con and had done prison time. That raised the question of how he obtained the guns.

This is why so many Americans, especially those with children, don't own firearms and don't want to be around people who do.  The shooter's girlfriend's family and customers at the local WalMart were going to be the young shooter's next victims showing just how much harm one family with guns and a child with murder-suicidal fantasies can unleash on an unsuspecting society.  And don't give me that crap about how an armed citizenry would prevent or reduce the carnage of lunatic shooters.  That is pure fantasy. Ironically we hear far more stories of unarmed citizens tackling and/or disarming shooters then we hear of an armed citizen shooting the shooter.

Get real America!

--Trakker

 

Don't insult our intelligence!

In case you don't see any more comments from reader Dan.D. D***, know that his comments will be deleted as I see them. 

I've let him post comments because his arguments perfectly illustrate the crazy logic used by many of the frenzied gun nuts in this country.  It also gave me someone I could vent my frustration on.  But, enough.  As I understand it from him, I must trust my fellow citizens to carry loaded firearms in public around my kids. If I don't I'm protecting car-jackers (what?).

Every day we read about "law-abiding" gun owners shooting someone either in anger or because of they don't know how to handle their firearms or because they left a dangerous firearm someplace where a kid could get it.  And yet that's a risk they are willing to impose on me and my family.  They are perfectly willing to take away my right to live in an environment free of firearms.

I've managed to live 67 years and raise three kids in a big "dangerous" city without a gun, and millions of other in big "dangerous" cities have done the same.  That should be our choice and I'm outraged that gun nuts have managed to convince politicians that I should no longer have that right.  Now we must allow potential crazies to carry loaded firearms around our families, and are now told if we don't like it we should buy a gun to protect ourselves from them and the criminals they have been arming for decades.

No! I'm fighting back and so are millions of others who are tired of getting bullied by the firearm industries and the gun nuts.  We're tired of reading about whole families being slaughtered, or school children being murdered by gun owners and we don't want to be next.  I believe there are places in America now where average Americans have a greater chance of being shot by a "law-abiding" gun owner than by a criminal.  We don't want to live in a society where our schools, our malls, our movie theaters, and our parks must be protected with security guards or armed citizens.  This is the fckin' 21st century! Why are we living like it is 1790?

--Trakker