Miserable and Pathetic

I watched in complete wonder and awe at last weekend's annual NRA convention. I say that because I don't think I have ever seen a collection of more angry, hateful and paranoid people gathered in one place. Everyone is out to get them and they are eternally in a state of conflict. What a miserable and pathetic way to live your life. I'm nearly certain that many of the folks who fought hard for Manchin-Toomey and who still are fighting for changes to our gun laws felt beaten down after seeing the all the chest thumping and mouth foaming going on down in Houston last weekend. To those of you that do, I say this: the NRA is finished.

Their recent gathering demonstrated that they are going all in with one political party. They have more or less given up on the Democrats and have aligned themselves with the nutballs running the GOP today. Ultimately, this will prove to be a fatal error. Why? Because the GOP have a political agenda consisting of one belief: denying President Obama and the Democrats success. We've seen in the last several elections that only being the party of "No" is a loser. You have to stand for something.

The NRA used to stand for something and had broad support in both political parties. Heck, they used to even stand for universal background checks. Take a look at this...


WTF happened? Well, politics, along with business, did. The NRA knows that there are less people that own guns today than they did 20 years ago. They want those people to buy more guns and the only way to get them to do that is use the propaganda of fear, hatred, and anger. What better place to have a captured and ripe audience for this than the GOP in 2013.

The problem is that this demographic is shrinking and the NRA knows it. This is their last gasp to earn enough money to invest and live comfortably on a beach somewhere for the rest of their lives. There aren't very many younger people that own guns or are as fervent about this issue. Further, it's only a matter of time before the political head winds blow them over. The 80-90 percent of Americans who support universal background checks are going to remember this vote next year and in 2016 and it's not going to be good for many senators.

It's going to be even worse for them when another shooting happens, especially if the shooter purchased the guns at a place that would have had to require a background check under the new law. I'm betting that one of the next shootings is going to personal affect the gun community in such a horrific way that the paranoid bullshit will all finally be over.

Here's to hoping I'm wrong because I'm truly sick and tired of a collection of psychotic assholes putting the people I love at greater risk every day simply because they are riding the Randian high of a fevered, adolescent power fantasy that is clearly causing them to see and hear things that do not exist. Truly, we do not need any more senseless death from gun violence, particularly at this time when some of it could be mitigated by simply refining our gun laws.

Take heart, sensible people everywhere who don't see visions of government troops seizing your guns. It's only a matter of time now. Be patient...

Yet Another Terrorist We'll Immediately Forget

The FBI arrested a terrorist in Montevideo, MN, last Friday.

Buford “Bucky” Rogers, 24, of Montevideo, was arrested and charged Friday with being a felon in possession of a firearm after federal authorities found Molotov cocktails, suspected pipe bombs and guns during a search of his mobile home, according to a federal criminal complaint and affidavit.

Authorities believed Rogers was about to attack the Montevideo Police Department.

Why will we forget Bucky? He's a white supremacist. He formed a group called the Black Snake Militia. Some of his Facebook rants include:

“The NWO [New World Order] has taken all your freedoms the right to bear arms freedom of speach freedom of the press ...” read one profanity-punctuated message.

“ever one better get your guns ready cuz there comeing FEMA” and “The war is here tsa agents are doing random cheeks and shooting people for no reson,” read others.

In short, Rogers is parroting all the nonsense the NRA and the Republican Party have been spewing for the last five years.

When two smart Muslim kids kill three people and injure hundreds it's time for a witch hunt. But when crazies like Adam Lanza mow down dozens of kids in a school, or illiterate white supremacist militiamen like Bucky Rogers plan to murder police with pipe bombs, there's absolutely no cause for alarm.

The right in America has a double standard on terrorism. If you're a Muslim or a lefty and you plot mass murder in Boston or New York you're a terrorist. But if you're a Christian, or a right-wing white supremacist, or a tax protestor who parrots everything Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh say, and then plot to blow up a Martin Luther King day parade, an abortion clinic, an IRS office or a police station in Montevideo or Spokane, you're a "wacko bird," as John McCain is wont to say.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has tracked more than one hundred incidents of right-wing terrorism and conspiracy to commit terrorism between 1995 and 2012. These include attacks on temples, the police, judges, abortion clinics, race-based murders, murders of co-conspirators, IEDs planted along parade routes, and so on.

Much has been made of the fact that the Tsarnaev brothers watched videos of Anwar al-Awlaki, ostensibly motivating them to plan the Boston bombing. But, by the numbers, we should be more worried about the people who are watching Internet videos of Glenn Beck and the president of the NRA.

How Do We See Ourselves?

Take a look at this video from Dove...



It's truly amazing to me how so many women look upon themselves so negatively. What is it about culture that drives them to do this? It's not just advertising or Hollywood.

Nor is it just women. The next time you are in a group of people try this experiment. Tell a story about how you fucked something up and watch everyone laugh along with you. Then tell a story about how great you are at something and listen for the crickets. Maybe you might get one person that gives you some props but for the most part, we cheer self deprecation and jeer self affirmation.

I don't get it.

Great Tweets!

Perfect For A Saturday Night

This is one of the most deranged and hilarious things I have ever read. Apparently, things are just as bad in sororities as we thought they were. Here is an excerpt:

I will fucking cunt punt the next person I hear about doing something like that, and I don't give a fuck if you SOR me, I WILL FUCKING ASSAULT YOU.

Since authoring this email, she has resigned from Delta Gamma. She should take heart, though. There is a place for her on the inter webs...the right wing blogsphere.

She'd fit right in!

Come Again?

Poll: Gun vote boosts Kay Hagan, Mary Landrieu 

TUCSON SHOOTING SURVIVORS GAVE JOHN MCCAIN 19 ROSES TO THANK HIM FOR HIS GUN VOTE

What was all that business again about senators being afraid to vote in favor of Manchin-Toomey?

Yep

Begin The Spin

U.S. Adds 165,000 Jobs, Unemployment Rate Dips

 The headline unemployment rate ticked lower to 7.5% from 7.6%, the lowest in four years. Economists had predicted an increase of 145,000 jobs and that the unemployment rate would remain unchanged.

Perhaps the best news out of the jobs report was that highly disappointing March numbers were revised upward to 138,000 non-farm jobs created, up from the 88,000 originally reported. In total, revisions added 114,000 jobs to the workforce in February and March. 

Get ready for the new spin which will shift from "Obama is ruining the economy" to "it should have happened sooner and would have if a conservative was in charge!"

Meanwhile, check out the revised February numbers...wow!

Tragic

We currently live in a society that goes to great lengths not to offend people for their way of life. Schools teach children to be kind to one another and try to understand what it's like to walk a mile in someone else's shoes. Yet, I do not get this.

And I never will.

Truly, this is a foreign country to me and yet it's just a few states away from me. We have young hunters up here in the North Woods but there aren't any ads in the paper for "my first rifle" or an abundance of photos that show children with guns. People in my state take gun safety a lot more seriously. Apparently, they don't in states like Kentucky.

How could this mother be so fucking stupid? I really don't care if I offend anyone with this but what a class A moron! Even though this tragedy resulted in one death, it's still the same thing as Newtown...idiot mom allows child access to guns...results in loss of young life.

Oh well, accidents happen, I guess. There's nothing to be done whatsoever. Anyone who tries to do something or prevent something like this is Hilter.

The Greatest Nation, Impotent Before Madmen....

Proving Me Wrong Every Single Time

Take a look at this new ad from the GOP.



Note the photo at the 19 second mark. That's President Obama consoling Nicole Hockley, mother of Newtown shooting victim, 6 year old Dylan Hockley. I didn't think it was possible for conservatives to get any lower. They continue to prove me wrong every single time.

I'm wondering what kind of people do a victory dance by showing the mother of a 6 year old shooting victim in a campaign ad. Senator Toomey was right. This was all about stopping Obama, not about protecting 2nd amendment rights.

Great Blog

I was having a discussion with Nikto the other day about how informative it would be if someone started a web site that illustrated the regularity of gun violence in this country. Well, guess what? There already is one and it's great.

Joe Nocera is doing every American a service with his daily updates. This needs to be expanded on a larger scale so people can see how truly awful this problem is and work to prevent further injuries and deaths. As of right now, the federal government is not doing anything to stop this so it has to be up to us.

What should we do?

President Juice

At the press conference on Tuesday, ABC's Jonathan Karl asked the president whether or not he had "the juice" to get things done in Congress. Mr. Obama smiled and quoted Mark Twain about premature demises but the question made the rest of the nation wonder...does he?

It's fairly obvious that the president has a great deal of disdain for Congress. This would include his own party as well as the Republicans. He doesn't have the patience for the schmooze game and he lacks assholeishness of Lyndon Johnson to make people's lives a living hell until they pass what he wants passed. So, he opts to play the long game and that means that in the short term, he looks weak and ineffective. Hence, the comment about juice.

But reporters like Karl should take note of what the president has accomplished thus far. That's pretty impressive, if you ask me. It demonstrates that his opting for longer term victories is a much more effective strategies. Besides, the political media is locked in the 48 hour news cycle and has the emotional intelligence of Kim Kardashian so what do they really know?

What many also fail to note is that conservatives simply don't want to allow the president to win...anything. Senator Pat Toomey, co-author of the Manchin-Toomey gun safety bill, summed it perfectly.

"In the end it didn’t pass because we’re so politicized," Toomey told editors from Digital First Media in an interview published Wednesday by the Norristown Times Herald. "There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it."

There's a word for that...what is it?....I can't quite seem to remember what it is...hmm...:)

David Firestone echoes this sentiment.

It doesn’t really matter how many business groups say the immigration system has to change, or how many suburban voters are disgusted by the easy access to guns for criminals. For these Republicans, the visceral hatred of the president is their only guiding star, and they are absolutely convinced the voters in their districts feel the same way.

I call it Obama Mental Meltdown Syndrome (OMMS). Not to be outdone by the Bush Haters and still stung by the fact that at least they had a reason to loathe our 43rd president, OMMS sufferers remind of children. They stomp their feet, foam at the mouth, and just can't stand the fact that "the other side" is, in reality, winning. President Obama is transforming this country to a center left one just as Ronald Reagan moved it to the center right. They know this is happening and that's why they are doing precisely what they are doing.

The problem for them, however, is that voters are not on their side. Further, the president and the Democrats have learned that they need to be more aggressive in an ongoing way in rallying support. 2014 is not going to be 2010, hence the transformation of the president's campaign machine into Organizing For America.. If conservatives continue the way they are now and don't pass immigration reform, for example, 2014 is going to be very kind to the president. 2016 will be even kinder.

Moreover, if Hillary runs and wins, which she likely will given all of this and the very weak GOP field, you can say buh-bye to the politeness and soft peddling of Congress by the White House. Heck, she'll make Lyndon Johnson look like Mother Teresa!

WTF??!!

PART FOUND NEAR WTC FROM TYPE OF JET HIJACKED 9/11

What I find interesting about this story is the rope they found that was possibly used to lower it in to the crevice. Is this a message? Or has it just been stuck there since 9-11-01?

Filthy Gun Grabber!

Not On Display

With the recent dedication of the George W. Bush presidential library, I think it is only fitting that I reprint, in its entirety, Tomas Young's letter to our 43rd president and vice president. No doubt, this will not appear on display in Dallas.


To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From: Tomas Young 

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care. 

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. 

I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief. I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. 

I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole. Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage. I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. 

I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences. I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. 

I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire. I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? 

I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul. My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

Sweet!

Good news on the economic front.

U.S. economic growth accelerated from January through March, buoyed by the strongest consumer spending in more than two years. The strength offset further declines in government spending that are expected to drag on growth throughout the year. 

Despite the sequester and the tax increases, I think this year is going to be fantastic, economically. We've certainly started it off right!

Good Words

If only Americans reacted the same way to the actual threats that exist in their country. There's something quite fitting and ironic about the fact that the Boston freak-out happened in the same week the Senate blocked consideration of a gun control bill that would have strengthened background checks for potential buyers. Even though this reform is supported by more than 90% of Americans, and even though 56 out of 100 senators voted in favour of it, the Republican minority prevented even a vote from being held on the bill because it would have allegedly violated the second amendment rights of "law-abiding Americans". 

So for those of you keeping score at home – locking down an American city: a proper reaction to the threat from one terrorist. A background check to prevent criminals or those with mental illness from purchasing guns: a dastardly attack on civil liberties. All of this would be almost darkly comic if not for the fact that more Americans will die needlessly as a result. Already, more than 30,000 Americans die in gun violence every year (compared to the 17 who died last year in terrorist attacks). 

What makes US gun violence so particularly horrifying is how routine and mundane it has become. After the massacre of 20 kindergartners in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, millions of Americans began to take greater notice of the threat from gun violence. Yet since then, the daily carnage that guns produce has continued unabated and often unnoticed.

People are noticing, though, and I don't think the gun community is going to be happy in the next couple of elections. Kelly Ayotte isn't faring well after her vote. Pat Toomey, however, is faring well. Once again, I don't think the Right cares about winning elections anymore. Just arguments.

Where Are YOU on the Chart