Karma's A Bitch

Led by GOP Whip Steve Scalise, the skullduggerers in the US House of Representatives have been busily disassembling the rules regarding the sale and ownership of guns.

I'm not celebrating the shooting of Mr Scalise, btw, so you can stuff that one right back in your ditty bag. That said, I'm not surprised this shit finally caught up with 'em; and I'm not surprised they've kept very quiet about it - possibly waiting for the Focus Group results to inform the Image Consultants on how best to respond, in order to keep the votes and the lobby money they use to buy those votes.

I am saying we need to drop the knee-jerk reactions and admit that this might've been averted if we took the Safety thing more seriously - or the Background Check thing - or the Magazine Capacity thing - or the simple fact that adding a random guy's gun to any mix is  always plenty of justification for the good guys' assholes to pucker up.

To be fair (which I don't do lightly cuz the Ammosexuals rarely play fair in turn), they didn't really make it easier for nutballs to buy guns, in spite of what the Leftie Memes often claim. 

But also to be fair: Like I said, the Radical Right continues to pimp the NRA bullshit about guns making us safer.

What makes me think they're wrong?

• Why can't you carry a gun in a police station?
• Why can't you carry a gun on an Army base?
• Why can't you carry a gun into a courtroom?
• Why can't you carry a gun on a commercial aircraft?

Because, for fuck's sake, it's not fucking safe, you fucking morons.

Turnabout's Fair Play

When a Trump fans tells you to "respect" your president... SHO...
Let's re. how they treated Pres. Obama, shall we? pic.twitter.com/HALa9AbhkO

— vlh (@coton_luver) December 30, 2016

It seems at first blush I'd be exposing myself to the Hypocrite charge, but that presupposes Obama and Trump are the same and that fits perfectly into the False Equivalence fallacy.

Point being that Obama didn't have any of it comin' because it was all just a buncha made-up bullshit, while it looks like practically everything Trump's taking flak for is either true or has a pretty high probability of being true.

The GOP lost their minds and set the rules that are getting them bitch-slapped right now, so they don't get to whine about how unfair they think it is.

Karma's a motherfucker.

Today's Tweet

"I just wish that I had not voted."— Trump supporter despondent over Mnuchin, who's bank foreclosed on her home: https://t.co/WZASUp9D5Z pic.twitter.com/k720708Y6h

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) December 2, 2016

So yeah - you got butt-raped with your pants on, and because you're just too fuckin' dumb to sort thru the obvious bullshit, you're forcing the rest of us to share in that little Personal Growth Opportunity. Thanks and fuck you so very much, you ignorant twat-waffle. I hope you enjoy a long and miserable period of well-deserved self-loathing, cuz you earned it, lady.

Almost forgot - generations yet unborn wanted me to pass this message to you:

(Ed Note: I guess I'm not quite ready for a lotta forgiveness and reconciliation just yet)

Knife Fight

I don't much like the way Rachel tells her stories, but dang, this one's pretty worth it.

And if I may be indulged for a brief momentito - what was all that about draining the swamp? That Trump Bunch is a fucking swamp.

Gotta Wonder

In Trump's defense, he probably has never read the First Amendment.

Or the rest of the Constitution.#ImWithTur pic.twitter.com/vPw6AQQNtH

— Eric Wolfson (@EricWolfson) November 2, 2016

Today's Vine

The Exodus

I realize this could come under the general heading of That's What Bloggers Are For, but I don't think I wanna put in the kind of work it's prob'ly going to take to stay up with the potential stampede of Repubs as they start to understand how important it is to get the fuck away from Donald Trump.

But I think somebody should be keeping some kind of scorecard on this.

One of the House's top conservatives now says he cannot support presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump after the real estate mogul questioned whether a federal judge could be fair given his "Mexican heritage," according to CNN political reporter Manu Raju.

Raju reported on-air Wednesday that Rep. Bill Flores (R-TX), a chair of the conservative Republican Study Committee, said he "was incredibly angry" at Trump for attacking U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel's integrity based on his ethnicity. Curiel is presiding over lawsuits against Trump University in California.

--and--

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) signaled Tuesday that he may not support Donald Trump unless he renounces his attacks on a federal judge's ethnicity before being formally nominated at the GOP convention in July.

--and--

Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins said she won't endorse GOP presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump until he starts behaving more "presidential."

--and--

Republican U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk on Tuesday said he "cannot and will not support" Donald Trump as the GOP's presidential nominee, citing the real estate mogul and former reality TV star's "past attacks on Hispanics, women and the disabled like me."

"It is absolutely essential that we are guided by a commander in chief with a responsible and proper temperament, discretion and judgment. Our president must be fit to command the most powerful military the world has ever seen, including an arsenal of thousands of nuclear weapons," said Kirk, who suffered a stroke in 2012. "After much consideration, I have concluded that Donald Trump has not demonstrated the temperament necessary to assume the greatest office in the world."

The Atlantic has a fair piece on this subject - I only hope they can keep it updated.

And also too - at some point in the post-Trump period (assuming Trump does cause the near-fatal splintering of the GOP that lotsa people are expecting), we should anticipate the spinmeisters stepping up with "Donald Trump has done a great service to our party ... blah blah blah ... strengthening ... blah blah blah ... reminding us of our core values ... blah bah blah ..."  

And the translation will be "What an asshole that guy was - but at least when he left, he took an awful lot of those other assholes with him".

Fly paper.

Today's Tweet

This is just plain fuckin' genius.

Oh Lord!
What I wouldn't give for this to happen!
Hahahaha!https://t.co/y9ma5Wunly#SCOTUS #ClarenceThomas #Scalia pic.twitter.com/CMpoKp2jR5

— Cornelia (@PaladinCornelia) February 15, 2016

It'd scare fuck-all outa Clarence Thomas, wouldn't it?  And it'd keep Senate amoeb-licans busy for months - especially if the White House made a show of bringing somebody in to shepherd the nominee thru the process; somebody like Alan Simpson maybe (not that he'd do it, but fuck me, that'd be fun). There's a knife-fighter out there somewhere looking for his shot at shoving something of substance up a few asses on the hill.

Half of the GOP might actually suspect that Obama's just fuckin' with 'em now and they'd  pull back a little, but ya gotta know the others would be happily scrambling to find ways to fuck her over which will let a bunch of them in for a nice little beating come November by providing some extra motivation the Dems can use to drive people out to the polls.  They'll need it to overcome the problems caused by voter ID.

Do it.

I Done A Bad Bad Thing

I retweeted a Mock Paper Scissors thing, and I put a tag on it inviting the inference that there was something way more to the story than what it actually is, and that was a very shitty and Breitbart-ey thing for me to have done, and I apologize; and yes I'm really really really not sincere about that at all.  Fuck 'em.  Fuck 'em both.  Dig up Andrew Breitbart's dead moldy crumbling corpse, pack it in rancid lard and make Donald Trump wear it like a ski mask.

Donald doesn't go down - ex-wife #3 says what? https://t.co/bThL76SGTg

— Mike Roberts (@EvilleMike) December 12, 2015

No red states and no blue states - just the United States of Fuck That Guy.

Comin' Back On Ya, Barry

OK, to be real clear - I hate the thought of the Secret Service guys brainstorming on how to handle this new type of potential threat, and coming up with the idea of carrying Obama around in a bullet-proof sedan chair or some-fuckin'-thing, but at the same time, why am I having such a hard time not thinking, "Payback's a bitch, ain't it?"

--and--

As Meat-Space becomes too dangerous for everybody but the cops and the military, when might we expect the emergence of the first All Cyber-Space President?

About That Torture Thing

Our politicians and Press Poodles and everybody else showing off a talent for farting thru their mouths have all been telling us for quite a while that they don't want those rotten terrorists at Gitmo to be brought into this country because they'll stink up the joint - or some such nonsense.

Here's the thing.  I think we know now why we can't just close Gitmo and bring 'em here - it's because we tortured them.  If we put these guys into the regular channels of either our civilian justice system or the military justice system, we lose 'em.

Nothing we have against them can be used in court now because we fucking tortured them.

We completely lost our shit after 9/11. We went more than a little looney, and we did all these really lousy things to people.  

BTW - not to put us on the couch too much here, but we made the transition from Andy Hardy to Vlad The Impaler in one big fuckin' hurry; fast enough to make me think maybe we weren't really making this huge change so much as we were just kinda coming out of the closet(?).

So anyway, when we began to understand just how fucked up it was that we were doing all this really bad shit, we went into the standard CYA mode that happens every god dammed time we allow too few people to hold too much power, and let 'em do their thing without any way to keep an eye on 'em.

And the kicker - we knew it was wrong.  All of us.  We knew it.  It's wrong to torture people. And it was wrong to change the law in order to help us pretend we were still the good guys just trying to protect our sweet innocent little ol' American selves.  We knew it was wrong and we did it anyway.

Can we stop pretending now?

Whoa - George

In the next post down from here, I go all I-Told-Ya-So, but here's a bit of a pre-quel to it that's kinda interesting (in a feel-a-little-embarrassed-for-him-but-not-really-the-prick-should-be-in-fucking-prison kinda way).  Anybody else notice this guy's really lost his game?



Le Shrub was always about as sharp as a bagful 'o wet yarn, but he knew how to deflect and pivot a shitload better'n that.  Dang.

Squandered

What His Shrub-i-ness said back then was bullshit.




Some knew it was bullshit back then - and they said so out loud - and they were either ignored or fucked over because they said it out loud.

Olbermann knew how to put it in terms of having to deal with our shit before we get to move on to anything else.




And he said it a lot.



(Search YouTube = Olbermann Torture)


"But they would not listen. 
They're not listening still.
Perhaps they never will."

Connor And Kermit's Epic Fail

Some of the worst aspects of humanity are chronicled in the story of one Dr Kermit Gosnell - who must forever be known as the Butcher of Lancaster Avenue.

Here's the beginning of Connor Friedersdorf's mostly excellent article:

The grand jury report in the case of Kermit Gosnell, 72, is among the most horrifying I've read. "This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy - and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors," it states. "The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels - and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths."

Friedersdorf is fairly careful not to allow himself to project the savagery of Gosnell's actions onto the larger Abortion Issue - I gotta give him some props for that part, even tho' he made sure to include lots and lots of the gory details so the Dead-Fetus-Porn crowd gets a chance to do as much of that projecting thing for him as he could ever hope for (which he's smart enough to understand in the first place), so ol' Connor kinda restricts himself to some harsh criticism of "The Media" for not picking the story up and running with it.

OK - but if anybody's gonna see this god-awful mess as an opportunity to make some political hay on the "Pro-Life" side, then here's the turnaround:

What Gosnell ending up doing is almost exactly what we can expect in any sector of a totally Unfettered Free Market, unencumbered by Intrusive Gubmint Regulation.

Argue against Government, and insist on letting the Invisible Hand work it's magic.  All well and good.  Just don't act surprised and start to piss and moan about it when you get what you've been wishing for.

Hume And Wallace

I think this is what they call trying to thread the needle. By now, these 2 old pros must surely have developed a hyper-awarenees of consumer feedback; and they just as surely know how nakedly stupid they look when they try to put up some bullshit about how Obama's going to lose this thing in spite of every indication that Romney's campaign has disintegrated in mid-air and is falling to the ground in flaming chunks. And in spite of their best efforts to beat him over the last 5 years, it looks like Obama's about to crush their guy even tho' "everybody hates the Prez and everything he's done" (according to what DumFux News is always dishing up for the rubes). So here they are doing their best to make pretty pictures, painting with the loads of runny crampy diarrhea that Rove and Armey and Ailes gave them to work with. If Obama takes it, they've got practically nothing left but to revert to their old strategy - so of course, this piece makes me think they're hedging, and it looks like they're resetting the frame for more attacks against  Obama's legitimacy.

 

Like I said - I think these guys know they're being laughed at to the point where they're having a hard time continuing to pretend they're anything even remotely resembling real-life journalists. So y'know what? Fuck 'em.

Oh, Sweet Jesus

I feel something like human compassion towards Joe Scarborough - or actually I would feel it if he wasn't such a partisan dick most of the time.

Bring It

So I used to be like:

But now, I'm all like - c'mon - get at me, Bro:

Just Sayin'

The Tea-publicans love America and hate Americans - and they lose if everybody votes.

Without Apology

Here's what I've been thinking:  "Conservatives" have had a field day with the Clever Turnaround that says it all when it comes to convincing the 30-40% of people who really don't wanna think much more deeply than your basic bumper sticker.  They need to categorize the issue, and file away something that's easy to recall, and sounds more or less like it fits with the standard bullshit that "all we really need is some good ol' fashioned common sense up in here".

We've heard it a thousand times.  In response to mountains of facts and miles of perfectly cogent reasoning about the honest-to-god, real-life need for sensible Gun Control, they say, "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns".

So how 'bout we fight fire with fire?  I've been having a lot of fun trolling the facebook posts of my Radical Right friends, and it's a little weird, but it's almost like they just don't expect to get any push back on anything - like they can say any bullshit thing, and nobody's gonna call 'em on it.  It shocks the hell out of 'em sometimes when all I do is hit 'em with the kind of crap they usually come up with.  One guy put up something about how things had gotten so bad under Obama, so I posted a comment saying he sounded like he was being very critical, and then I asked him why he hated America.  I could almost feel the heat when he posted his next comment, which came in very short order, and of course, ended in ALL CAPS!!!!!!!

But here's what I've boiled it down to - this is what I'm gonna try.  Whenever somebody says some wacky crap about repealing ObamaCare (eg), I'm gonna turn it around and just say:
--"When healthcare coverage is outlawed, only outlaws will have healthcare coverage".

--or--

("All taxation is theft")
-- "When taxes are outlawed, only outlaws will collect taxes"

--or--

("Churches and good neighbors should care for the less fortunate")
("The Government has no business trying to force me to look after poor people")
-- "When charity is outlawed, only outlaws will get charity"

--or--

("Government Workers and Retirement Obligations are bankrupting state and local governments.")
--"When law enforcement is outlawed, the outlaws will be law enforcement."
--"When clean water is outlawed, only outlaws will have clean water."
--"When safe streets are outlawed, only outlaws will be safe on the streets."
--"When pensions are outlawed, only outlaws will have pensions."

What else?  Must be a gajillion of 'em.  Roll with me.

Akingate

Dems really shouldn't try to make Todd Akin the GOP Poster Boy, but then again, they probably should.  It's a tough call.  You should never let people forget about a fundamental failure of your opposition, but you also don't need to give "the independents" a reason to propagate the false equivalency of "both sides do it".

It's pretty hard to play this one - and ya gotta play it just right, but I think it's legit to demand a straight answer from every Repub candidate about where he stands on the Todd Akin question.

Another one from Addicting Info - this time making the case for defining the GOP as the party of Akin:

As has been repeated, ad nauseam, pregnancy by rape is not rare in the slightest (about 5% of rapes result in pregnancy. There is no worldview in which this is rare) and the very idea that a woman’s body would “shut the whole thing down” is not supported by any real science.

But that wasn’t the part which was supposed to remain secret.  Republicans mangle science on a regular basis. It’s kind of their calling card. No, the part that set off the firestorm from the right was the phrase “legitimate rape.” The idea that women are whores that have it coming is both widespread and deeply embedded among conservative politicians. It used to be a fringe belief and that is why Republicans rarely spoke out against making exceptions for women who were raped or the victims of incest. These days, the fringe is the mainstream so now? No more exceptions! But how to justify punishing women who have already been violated? Take away their victimization. Redefine “rape” so any woman not physically beaten to the ground wasn’t really raped. This is the bill Akin tried to pass last year. This is what Akin really meant and he did not misspeak in the slightest other than to forget to lie.