Derail and Catch Fire

The derailment yesterday of a North Dakota oil train in Mt. Carbon, WV, made national news:

The tank cars exploded and fell into a river, causing a water treatment plant to shut intake valves. They were still burning 21 hours later. Thousands of people may have their water turned off. Charleston is downstream of the spill

What didn't make national news was a derailment in Ontario of a train carrying crude oil from the tar sands of Keystone XL fame:

The train, heading from Alberta to eastern Canada, derailed shortly before midnight about 80 km (50 miles) south of Timmins, Ontario, a CN spokesman said. Canada's largest rail operator said 29 of 100 cars were involved and seven were on fire.

Another oil train fire killed 47 people in Quebec in 2013, and several other trains have exploded in North Dakota and on the east coast.

The cars carrying the crude oil in West Virginia were the new, supposedly safer, tank cars that the railroads didn't want to use because they cost too much. Turns out they aren't much better than the flimsier ones they want to continue using.

Oil prices are really low now because of the glut of oil coming from Canada and North Dakota. Now is the time to take a step back and reevaluate everything about the way we're getting oil out of the ground. And it's not just train accidents.

Oklahoma used to have two or three earthquakes a year. Now they're having two or three a day. It's due to injecting massive quantities of fracking fluid into fault lines, which lubricates them and allows them to slip. But oilmen insist that it's not their fault:

But Kim Hatfield of the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association says he's not convinced there's a connection. He says oil companies have been pumping brine down wastewater injection wells for decades. More than 3,200 of the wells dot the state.

They've been pumping this crap into the earth for decades and they don't think it has something to with the 100-fold increase in earthquakes. Right...

Clearly we need to continue to drill for oil for the foreseeable future. But we don't need to drill so manically fast that we kill innocent people who live along railroads and pipelines, and destroy the houses and property values of people who live near injection wells.

The oil coming out of the tar sands and the Bakken formation is much more flammable than other types, according to that liberal rag, the Wall Street Journal. The sulfurous chemistry of Canadian tar sands oil may also make it more likely to eat through pipelines, which is one reason many land owners along its route are skeptical.

Cleaning up oil spills, compensating land owners, shutting down water treatment plants, repairing damaged track inflict significant economic costs on people who aren't profiting from the sale of this highly flammable oil. It's the tragedy of the commons all over again.

It's obvious that pipelines should be used to transport this oil, but they have to be up to the task. The right technical solution isn't clear yet: putting highly corrosive and flammable crude into a pipeline may never be feasible. It could be that the right solution is to filter out the problematic components of the crude first. (And then where do you dump that?)

In the long run what will stop an oil company from ignoring that requirement in 10 years, once all the shouting is over, and start pumping explosive acidic oil across America? How do you make pipeline owners strapped for cash because of low oil prices keep their lines properly maintained?

When these companies violate these agreements and everything explodes in their employees' faces the execs just have that subsidiary declare bankruptcy and then go off and form another subsidiary to do it all over again.

Building a Consensus by Letting ISIS Be ISIS

The reason Saddam Hussein was so easily defeated in the Gulf War after he invaded Kuwait in 1990 was because almost literally the whole world -- including the rest of the Middle East -- was against him.

The United States led a coalition of international forces that prepared for months before attacking in January. By the end of February Saddam was completely defeated.

After the debacle of Vietnam the United States finally got one right.

Sadly, Dick Cheney, the Secretary of Defense who led the successful campaign to unite the world against a tyrant, completely forgot the lessons learned in the Gulf War when he and President George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003. W and Cheney were either duped by Iranian spies who wanted to destroy Saddam with the American hammer of death, or conspired with them. This resulted in another war in which the United States went it alone and invaded a country on false pretenses.

The American body count in Iraq was lower than the Vietnam war, mostly because of improvements in body armor and field medicine. But the worst outcome of the Iraq War was its effect as a recruiting tool for terrorists. Here was proof positive that the United States was a Christian nation (Republicans keep telling everyone America is a Christian nation) bent on repeating the barbarities of the Crusades, bombing women and children, torturing Muslims in Abu Ghraib, forcing Western culture (i.e., democracy) onto a Muslim country after ginning up phony evidence that Saddam was making a nuclear bomb and was involved in 9/11.

Since then, the same neocon chicken hawks who invaded Iraq in 2003 have been champing at the bit to invade other countries: Iran, Libya, Syria, and Iraq again; you name it. They have been relentlessly criticizing President Obama for "not doing enough."

But invading yet another Middle-eastern country without the support of the rest of the world would backfire just as surely as W's Iraq invasion.

The new threat that has Lindsey Graham convinced that "we're all gonna die!" is ISIS, a Muslim terrorist army of foreign invaders that have been attacking Syria and Iraq. ISIS has been financing its war with oil from captured refineries and ransoms paid for people they've kidnapped, plus cash from religious fanatics in countries that are supposed to be American allies.

Lately countries have stopped paying ransoms, and in response ISIS has been murdering people of all nationalities in grisly fashion: they've beheaded Syrians, Kurds, Afghans, Frenchmen, Iraqis, Americans, Britons, Japanese, Egyptians and even their own soldiers who deserted. They burned a captured Jordanian pilot alive.

In response Jordan and Egypt have launched air attacks against ISIS in Syria and Iraq and Libya.

The same sort of thing is now happening in Pakistan, which had long supported the Taliban in Afghanistan, sabotaging American efforts. Now the Taliban is murdering Pakistani schoolchildren by the hundreds.

ISIS is harder to fight than Saddam because it's not a country: it's just a terrorist group with cells all over the place. That makes it impossible to attack and defeat in a purely military fashion. A consensus has to be built to attack ISIS not just on the battlefield, but in the banking system, the oil markets, and on Twitter and Facebook.

What Republicans call "inaction" on ISIS is no such thing. President Obama is building a consensus in the world that ISIS is evil incarnate and must be destroyed.

True, ISIS is running rampant and killing innocent people in the Middle East: mostly Muslims in Iraq and Syria. And they're taking all the heat for it.

But if the United States had started a major bombing campaign in Syria and Iraq when John McCain demanded it, there would be thousands of innocent Syrian and Iraqi civilian deaths from collateral damage from mistargeted American munitions. That's just the way war is. We would be blamed for all those deaths, as we are for drone attacks that kill innocents in Yemen and Pakistan.

That collateral damage is what turns the residents of the Middle East against us.

It's likely ISIS has killed the same number of innocent people that would have died as collateral damage from American bombing had we invaded when the chicken hawks first started squawking. The difference is that the blood is on ISIS's hands.

It's sad, but we have to let ISIS be ISIS to convince the rest of the world to act against them. The actions that Egypt and Jordan have taken show that this course of action is working. Timing is important. If the rest of those countries don't act fast enough, they will be the ones to suffer. But they have to make the decision -- if the United States forces the issue yet again, it will backfire.

ISIS cannot be defeated until the recruitment of foreign fighters is stopped, their oil sales are blocked, and the cash flow is cut off from their financiers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar -- ostensible American allies.

And bombing the hell out of Syria and Iraq won't solve those problems.

Ranking the Presidents

Given that it is President's Day, I thought I would put up list ranking our nation's presidents from best to worst. It's a hard list to make when you consider that from van Buren through Pierce there isn't much to really say one way or another. And the Gilded Age presidents basically all phoned it in (which is why they are towards the bottom). But, hey, it was a lot of fun...so without further adieu, he is my list.

1. Abraham Lincoln
2. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
3. George Washington
4. John F Kennedy
5. Theodore Roosevelt
6. Harry S. Truman
7. Thomas Jefferson
8. Bill Clinton
9. Dwight D Eisenhower
10. John Adams
11. James Madison
12. Barack Obama
13. James Monroe
14. Jimmy Carter
15. George HW Bush
16. Ronald Reagan
17. Woodrow Wilson
18. Ulysses S Grant
19. John Quincy Adams
20. Gerald Ford
21. Grover Cleveland
22. Grover Cleveland
23. John Tyler
24. Calvin Coolidge
25. Martin Van Buren
26. Zachary Taylor
27. Millard Filmore
28. James Polk
29. Rutherford B Hayes
30. James Garfield
31. Chester Arthur
32. Benjamin Harrison
33. Franklin Pierce
34. William McKinley
35. William Howard Taft
36. Warren Harding
37. William Henry Harrison
38. Herbert Hoover
39. Richard Nixon
40. George W. Bush
41. James Buchanan
42. Andrew Johnson
43. Andrew Jackson
44. Lyndon B. Johnson

How Conservatives Win in 2016

Law Enforcement Concerns Create Unlikely Alliances in Missouri and Beyond

So when a measure was introduced recently in the Republican-held General Assembly calling for sharp limits in the revenue that Missouri towns can derive from traffic fines, it was not surprising that black lawmakers voiced support. What was unexpected were their allies in the cause: white, suburban Republicans, a former St. Louis County police chief and leaders from several conservative groups.

As the article notes, this is happening on a national level as well. If they can lose the old white bigots on their side, conservatives have policies that will appeal to black voters that are aligned with their less intrusive government ideology. The same holds true for Latino voters.

The Democrats better take note of this and watch out.

Concealed Carry Body Count

Looks like we have some data on concealed carry permits and gun violence. The data is very detailed. Here is an example...

Circumstances: On January 8, 2008, concealed handgun permit holder Joshua Noel Jones, 22, shot and killed 15-year-old Daniel Wayne “Danny” McKinnon. According to news reports, the two were traveling in a Chevrolet Z71 pick-up truck with two other friends—Alicia Algier, 23, and Justin Whiddon—after having visited a Wal-Mart and getting breakfast at a Waffle House restaurant. According to news reports, the three males were apparently “dry-firing” (pulling a gun’s trigger presumably without a bullet in the chamber) handguns at one another in the truck when Jones shot McKinnon with his 40 caliber handgun. When Algier was asked why she didn’t do anything to stop the males from dry-firing their guns, she stated, “It concerned me. They’re guys, I been told they do it all the time, dry firing their guns.” Whiddon also dry-fired a .22 handgun—owned by Algier—at Jones. In court, Algier stated, “I keep it for safety because I’m a woman.” Police retrieved three handguns and four rifles from the truck after the shooting. After allegedly shooting McKinnon, Jones did not give police an official statement, instead asking for an attorney. According to police he did, however, state that the handgun went off accidentally. Jones was charged with manslaughter and was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Responsible gun owners rejoice at "dry firing."

The Demographics of 2016

From a recent Real Clear Politics piece...

Among voters 18 to 34 years old — men and women who will be an important force in American politics for another half-century — Republicans are in serious trouble. By a factor of more than two to one, according to the latest NBC News/​Wall Street Journal poll, those voters take a negative view of the GOP. Indeed, Republicans find the most support among voters 65 and over, and even this group is split between those who have a positive view of the party and those who view it negatively.

So, how does the GOP appeal to that younger demographic? And what happens when those older voters pass away?

Really Bad Words

From a conversation with a gun "enthusiast"

"If you convince me 100000 will die from guns in the USA every year, unless we have gun control... And zero will die with gun control.... I still choose freedom. No matter who dies, I take the high road of freedom and justice for all."

Amen! It's a good thing we live in such a black and white world.

And don't we already have gun control?

Here Comes the Sun

This is a really cool video of the sun:



All that is going on over our heads all day long, and we never see it. The sun just seems like this bright and silent unblinking eye, but in reality it's an incredibly violent place constantly exploding with the force of ten thousand billion nuclear bombs every second.

And the galaxy is filled with billions of stars just like it, circled by billions of planets very much like our own, except ours is probably the only one that through some accident of chance has not been wiped clean of intelligent life by an asteroid, or a comet, or volcanoes, or a collision with another star, or a supernova, or a deadly beam of radiation from a gamma ray pulsar halfway through the galactic disk.

Meanwhile, most of us sit down here and snipe at each other, arguing over whose god is bigger, in a vain attempt to puff up our egos and make ourselves seem important in this infinitely huge and beautiful universe.

Defriended!

A long time tennis friend recently defriended me on Facebook. I suppose it was a long time in coming after his wife did a couple of years ago. He divorced and remarried an absolute hard right wing psycho three years back and has slowly been descending into the anger, hate and fear that comes with that territory (side note...he told me after he married this woman that she liked to have her hair pulled and be smacked around while he fucked her...why is it always the conservatives that are so weird with sex?:))

Two days ago he posted a rant about a form letter he received from Senator Amy Klobuchar. He had written to her about welfare reform and was pissed about the letter he got in return. I queried...

What exactly were your concerns about welfare reform?

He responded...

Mark - Here is my concern about welfare - well, why don't I just recant a conversation I had with someone trying to rent my townhome from me:

Me: I see your section 8 status expires soon. Person wanting to rent townhome: that's okay - as long as I find a place to rent by the deadline I will get the section 8 housing credit for life..... Maybe it's just me but I don't think that person really needs my tax dollars...but Mark - if you want to pay for them maybe they could just set up a payroll deduction out of your account. They payroll deduct my donation every week.

Apparently, he doesn't know what the word recant means but oh well. I needed some more information because there is no such thing as "section 8 housing credit for life."

Well, why does he have section 8 status? Is he disabled in some way or, perhaps a veteran? And is the government paying you his rent money? Was he or she even telling you the truth? I guess I don't have enough details here to make a more fully detailed comment but you are obviously frustrated so here are some possible solutions. 

First, you could contact Al Franken. He has always been more approachable than Senator Klobuchar. He's called me personally on more than one occasion. Second, you could contact your congressional representative. I'm not sure who that is but I'm guessing it's either Erik Paulsen (R) or Keith Ellison (D) if you still live southwest. Both are very approachable. Representative Paulsen is a great guy. I used to coach his daughter in tennis. Section 8 is federally funded by run by the states themselves. Another option might be to contact your state rep and/or state senator. They would have more hands on experience with this. 

You also might want to check the data in the photo I've attached as it mirrors the overall problem with welfare in our country. Most of our tax dollars go to wealthier people in the form of tax breaks and subsidies. It's actually the people that own homes that are leeching more off of us, Chris. This is true with welfare across the board and why you don't hear much about welfare reform these days. We'd have to start with the hundreds of billions of dollars of handouts that corporations and wealthy people get from the federal government.

He responds...

Yeah - Do you really think I would post a section 8 issue about a vet - I have all the respect in the world for our vets...No it was not a vet. Call me and I will tell you about it. Oh and Al Franken - Yeah he's useless. The only thing he's good at is marching in the 4th of July parade in Eveleth. A nutless monkey could do his job.

A nutless monkey...this is when I realized just how truly awful the right wing hate machine is and what a good job it does at fomenting rage. I responded...

Well, then perhaps you should run for office and try to bring about the changes to welfare that you would like to see. If you think his job is so easy, try it out. Actually, you don't even have to do that. You could organize a group of like minded people and start a serious lobbying effort. All it requires is your time and effort. That's what is great about living in a free country. I sense a lot of anger here, 

I would urge you to not let right wing media take advantage of it. One of the greatest myths (also known as lies) ever put on the American people is that poor people are lazy and spoon of our tax dollars. The biggest deadbeats in this country, in terms of dollar amount out of our tax dollars, are corporations and wealthy people. 

Here are the numbers from the Cato Institute, a right wing organization. $100 billion a year compared to the $60 billion a year spent on traditional welfare programs. This does not include government contracts or tax breaks which makes the handouts even larger.

And then he defriended me...

If there is one thing that has become crystal clear to me over the years it's that conservatives don't want their fantasy land of hate to be fucked with in anyway. They like it for the fiction that it is and if you confront them facts, they will get even angrier. Perhaps it's just best to leave them alone in their land of unicorn farts.

Yet, I still find myself perplexed by the visceral anger that these folks have. It usually starts with the president and then extends to all Democrats. There is nothing out there that is more pointed than right wing anger and, considering that they are also well armed, I'd be a fool not to be concerned that they are going to do something about it.

Thanks, Obama

Check out the video.

The Collected Wisdom of Pat Robertson

Montana Says No to Fashion Police, or Sharia Law Defeated in Montana

A lot of people consider yoga pants to be a crime of fashion. David Moore, a Republican lawmaker in Missoula wants to make wearing them a crime punishable by five years in prison. Thankfully, Moore's law was tabled unanimously by the House Judiciary Committee.

According to the Billings Gazette:

The proposal would expand indecent exposure law to include any nipple exposure, including men’s [emphasis added], and any garment that “gives the appearance or simulates” a person’s buttocks, genitals, pelvic area or female nipple.

Yes, to show how egalitarian he is, Moore would turn men who don't wear shirts into criminals. Would they also wind up on the sex offender list?

Moore literally wants to create fashion police.

Under current Montana law persons convicted of indecent exposure three times can be sentenced to life in prison. Ergo, wearing yoga pants three times could make you lifer. Though to be fair, Moore did want to reduce the maximum penalty five years in jail and a fine of $5,000 as an enticement to get more lawmakers to vote for it.

But how would such a law be enforced? Indecency is in the eye of the beholder, after all:

Moore said he wouldn’t have a problem with people being arrested for wearing provocative clothing but that he’d trust law enforcement officials to use their discretion. He couldn’t be sure whether police would act on that provision or if Montana residents would challenge it.

In other words, Moore literally wants to create fashion police. He wants to give individual cops license to harass attractive women with threats of being prosecuted for indecent exposure based on their choice of garments. Yep, no way this law could possibly be abused.

I can just imagine how traffic stops would play out in Montana: "Ma'am, I was checking you out, and I noticed that you have nipples and buttocks. That's a crime punishable by five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. But there's a way you can avoid all that drama..."

"Ma'am, I noticed that you have nipples and buttocks. That's a crime punishable by five years in prison."

In the end it wouldn't just be yoga pants. It would be any tight clothing, such as bikinis, or even clothing that rested against the body without constricting it, such as a light cotton blouse, or a sweater. Yes, this upstanding conservative American wants to criminalize women for getting cold and wearing skinny jeans.

The essence of his proposal is that women should be required by law to wear loose clothing. Exactly how is this different from the Taliban and the ayatollahs in Iran who force women to wear hijabs and chadors?

What caused this guy to want to outlaw yoga pants? Well, there was a nude bike ride that made him mad. In other words, one group of people offended him, so now he wants to punish a completely different group -- mostly women -- who have absolutely nothing to do with the first group.

Why are conservatives so hung up on women's bodies in the first place? What are they so afraid of? Are they incapable of controlling their lust? Do they hate women so much they can't stand seeing what they really are?

If Moore doesn't want to be bothered by yoga pants he should stop staring at women's crotches.

It's not like there's some deep dark secret. Everyone knows what human bodies look like -- we all have one. Anyone with an Internet connection can see everything that yoga pants cover up, in much greater detail and in living color.

The answer is really quite simple: if Moore doesn't want to be bothered by the clothes women wear, he shouldn't go to the gym and stare at their crotches and chests when they're in yoga class.

And they keep telling us the war on women is over...

Weather Vs. Climate

The good thing about science is that it's true whether you believe it or not...

The Gun Toting Atheist

Hmm...

Charged with three counts of first-degree murder is Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, who has described himself as a “gun toting” atheist. Neighbors said Wednesday that he always seemed angry and confrontational. His ex-wife said he was obsessed with the shooting-rampage movie “Falling Down” and showed “no compassion at all” for other people.

Falling Down, for those of you who have not seen it, is old white man's porn. Michael Douglas plays a man who just can't take it anymore and goes on a shooting spree across Los Angeles. Here's the trailer.




I wonder how many other members of the Gun Cult get a boner when they watch this film.

Yet They Still Went To The Gun Range

The Eddie Ray Routh trial is underway and information is starting to come out about that day at the gun range.

Shortly before he was shot to death by a troubled former Marine at a Texas gun range, legendary Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle texted a buddy, "This dude is straight-up nuts," a defense attorney told jurors Wednesday. 

A lawyer for Eddie Ray Routh said in opening statements of the man's murder trial that Routh's insanity was so evident that Kyle and his friend Chad Littlefield exchanged texts expressing alarm as the three rode together in February 2013 to a Texas shooting range. "He's (sitting) right behind me, watch my six," Littlefield texted back, using a military reference for watching one's back.

Yet they still went to the gun range. Why?

Because being a member of the fucking Gun Cult makes you that fucking stupid.

Responsible gun owners my ass!

The Answer to the Most Pressing Question of the Day

Conservatives are now presented with a dilemma: in the wake of the murder of three Muslim college students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, should they support the killer, who was a middle-aged white guy simply exercising his right to Second Amendment solutions? Or should they support the victims, who were kind-hearted Muslim dental students that volunteered to help the homeless, and were brutally gunned down by a fanatical atheist?

Speculation is rife about why Craig avowed atheist Stephen Hicks killed a Muslim newlywed couple and their 19-year-old Muslim female friend: was it a hate crime, or just an angry white guy mad about a parking spot?

Well, the answer is staring us in the face: he killed them because he had a gun. No gun, no murder.

Guns are a powerful mind-altering drug like PCP. They represent sheer naked power, power that corrupts quickly and absolutely.

If you put a gun in the hands of the most coldly rational atheist or the gentlest Christian they quickly become raging maniacs.

In so many murders and suicides the gun itself is the motivating factor. Without the weapon and the ability to kill someone as easily as turning off a light switch, thousands of people in this country would not have to die needlessly every year.

Ending A Deeply Flawed Ideology

My mom told me a story about her sister recently that disturbed me profoundly. My aunt has always been a little crazy and has gotten worse since my uncle died 3 years ago. He was staunchly conservative (save for being pro choice) and considered himself a southern gentlemen. He had a very aristocratic nature about him which made sense since he lived in Southern Illinois. My aunt still lives there and most of the people in her town are very conservative as well.

They lived in the house that belonged to my uncle's mother, oddly residing upstairs in the servant's quarters while she was alive. When my uncle's mother died five years ago, they took over the rest of the house. In all the time they lived there, no one else in the family was ever invited over for holiday gatherings or even a short visit. It was very strange. My uncle kept a very tight rein on my aunt and didn't allow her to do many things because he was very traditional. He wouldn't even let her pack a car! I think this had an effect on her over the years and made her mental issues even worse.

I used to get into all sorts of political debates with my uncle. He loved President Bush and hated Barack Obama with all of his heart. The absolute nonsense that used to come out of his mouth was ridiculous. But until he died, I had no idea just how far gone he was, ideologically speaking. As she has been helping my aunt clean out the house, my mother has discovered, much to her horror, that my uncle and my aunt were doomsday preppers.

In the last few months, my mom has found hundreds of canned goods, boxes of food, and many rounds of ammunition. She has also found many guns, including one that was kept loaded by the bedside. My aunt recently showed my mother this and, much to her horror, began twirling it around to "show off her skills." Thankfully, my mom moved out of the room quickly and then had my other uncle come over to the house and take all of the guns out of there.

My aunt is an example of someone who should never be allowed to have a gun. I'm not even sure if she has a license to have one. After my mom told me this story, I understood with much clarity how there are so many accidents with guns ever year. Of course, banning guns isn't going to solve anything. What I'm calling for is the ideology that is at the root of this problem to go away.

Forever.

Time will take care of some of this for our society. When the old white men die off, I think the fevered dreams about totalitarian governments and playing apocalypse will fall away somewhat. In the meantime, I want to see the people of this country reject the idea that having a gun in your house protects you. You don't need to keep a loaded gun by your bed. No one is coming to get you. The statistics show that you are much more likely to hurt yourself, a member of your family, have a member of your family hurt themselves or others, or have it taken away from you if someone does come in to your home. Honestly, people should be more worried about their diet then home invaders. Americans should also worry less about protecting themselves against the government. If the federal government wanted to dominate us with weapons, they could do it easily.

Leave the fear behind, folks, and let's start focusing on actual threats out there like climate change and health issues.

(So Many) Good Words

From a recent question on Quora...I find it childish for people to persist saying " it's just a tool." No, it's a weapon. I find it childish to walk around in a Starbucks or a chipotle with a long armed rifle slung on your back and act like you're it doing it be threatening.

I find it childish to bring ted nugent to a state of the union address when he talks about threatening the president and secretary of state. I find it childish to pretend that a gun is not a weapon, and mock people for being histrionic or irrational for not liking it or feeling nervous because they don't know you and don't know if you're a " good responsible gun owner" or a showboat with an itchy trigger finger. I may have to accept the level of cray-cray on guns in this country ( it hasn't always been like this is my lifetime) but I do not have to like it.

Bigotry against gun owners. Maybe one day I will get to where I get this concept as you do, that being a gun owner is somehow akin to a religion, disability, ethnicity or gender. But I'm nowhere near at that point. As I see it, gun owners in America have so much going for them: a 2d amendment, lots of money, lots of elected officials in their corner. 

To think of myself as a bigot because I have a negative response to the amount of guns that are in this country, and the not-so-rare irreverent attitudes I see ( definition : mine) of people to who own them is hard to swallow. You have the law on your side. You even have numbers in your side. I wasn't aware that gun owners across America were experiencing employment discrimination, or bullying, or social isolation. Owning a gun is owning a possession. If it were a samurai sword, I'd likely think the same thing. Weapons are not a part of your body. You can be welcome places that your gun is not.

Sing it, sister!

Riker Sits Down

Lies About Iraq

The pile on of Brian Williams over the last couple of days is pretty ironic when you consider that Fox News and other right wing media outlets are gleefully dancing about lies told about Iraq. Actually, ironic isn't the word for it.

Hypocritical, pathetic, and disgusting are more like it.