More Fun With Guns

Breaking now is the story of the latest example of how safe everybody is in the US because of easy availability of guns.

Returns

Can we talk a little about ROI here for just a sec?

Tampa has spent $2 Million on surveillance cameras and other security thingies, and they expect the GOP convention to pump about $175 Million into the local economy.
ROI = 8,750%

Charlotte says they should get an Econ Bump of about $136 Million, after spending $766K beefing up their security systems.
ROI = 17,750%

Even in the very important Paranoia Sector, the Dems are a much better and smarter investment.

Because these "conservatives" are lying sacks of shit.

(hat tip = MoJo)

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.

The New Navy

From Addicting Info:

Since its launch 18 months ago, the USS Independence has come down with a severe case of corrosion. You see, the hull construction is a composite structure with some components utilizing steel, and other components using aluminum. If you expose an item made up of both steel and aluminum to an environment containing an electrolyte, such as seawater, it produces galvanic corrosion...

So the US Navy will be able to continue America's totally righteous domination of the world - anywhere, any time - except in places where they have oceans.

Today's Pix

Ridicule Is A Good Tool

America is a pretty weird place sometimes.  We have a tendency to see popularity and call it virtue.  eg: In the early 70s, no car was more popular than the Ford Pinto, and we assumed it was a high quality product because it was so popular - ignoring the poorly-kept secret that the Pinto was experiencing a high rate of failure which included the propensity to explode on a fairly regular basis whenever any other car crashed into it from behind.

I get the feeling a lot of people "got conservative" and started voting Republican just because they believed it to be the popular thing to do - and must therefore be the right thing.  All that hippie shit was cool for a while when we were younger, but eventually, you gotta "grow up and think like an adult" - "ya gotta live in the real world".  So that's what we did in the 80s and 90s.

But now (like always I think), things are shifting back in the other direction.  It's not nearly as cool to live in that libertarian cocoon - we're getting back to an understanding that I can't just be myself; having no regard for anybody else; demanding the whole world adjust to my needs and accommodate me.  That's the false premise that forms the basis of what passes for being "conservative" now.

So, at some point it becomes obvious enough that the zeitgeist has shifted enough to make ridiculing the "conservative" point of view a very effective agent for change.

Thank you, Todd Akin (R-Pluto) for kinda putting it over the edge for us.





The Satirical Political Report

The Freepers are having fits too.
The denial is so thick and sticky you could spread it on ice.

Y'know What Really Gripes My Ass?

This is what really gripes my ass:

A nationwide USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll of people who are eligible to vote but aren’t likely to do so finds that these stay-at-home Americans back Obama’s re-election over Republican Mitt Romney by more than 2-1.

Two-thirds of them say they are registered to vote.

Eight in 10 say the government plays an important role in their lives. Even so, they cite a range of reasons for declaring they won’t vote or saying the odds are no better than 50-50 that they will:

• They’re too busy.
• They aren’t excited about either candidate.
• Their vote doesn’t count.

The first 2 excuses are just the typical high-school-fuck-around bullshit that way too many people seem never to outgrow, but that last one is an absolute triumph of self-defeating circularity.

Here's the thing, kids - the only way your vote doesn't count is if you don't vote.

How fuckin' stupid do you get?

Laundry Day

Say What?

(via Democratic Underground)

This is what you call "clarification"?

As Virginia's Governor (Vaginal Bob) McDonnell was chairing the GOP Platform Committee meetings, adopting the Anti-Choice plank that reaffirms the official policy of the Republican Party (and commits their candidates) to pushing for an Amendment to the US Constitution intended to outlaw all abortions, we have Reince Priebus all over the joint on TV saying Romney doesn't agree with it.

'Scuse me, Mr Priebus; a question, sir:  What's the point of putting in all that work on a platform, if you then choose somebody who doesn't agree with that platform to be your party's national leader?

After 30 years of saying one thing (ban abortion), and doing as little as possible once they get elected, maybe the jig is finally up.  The Rubes are kinda hip to the tricks now - and it looks like the GOP is starting to implode.

Guns And Wildfires

Just tossin' it out there.

From MoJo:

Indeed, target shooters are becoming something of a scourge across the rain-starved West, and especially in Utah, where humans have caused more than 500 wildfires this summer. At least 22 of those have been set by people shooting targets, tin cans and what-not off rocks in the scrub brush, where sparks from the bullets hitting rocks have collided with bone-dry brush and caused massive fires. One large fire blamed on target shooters squeezing off rounds near the town dump in Saratoga Springs, home of tea party congressional candidate Mia Love, caused close to 9,000 people to be evacuated, and forced Love to miss an event with soon-to-be vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, who'd been raising money on her behalf.

Key & Peele

Mr Obama and his Anger Translator.

(hat tip = Addicting Info)

God's Anagram

Take this:
     MITT ROMNEY AND PAUL RYAN

Rearrange the letters to make this:
     MY ULTIMATE AYN RAND PORN

Spooky, ain't it?

Today's Pix

Amen, Brother

Roger Ebert on the Separation of Church and State:

I do not propose to discuss the issues of abortion, birth control and in vitro fertilization. I'm more concerned with those who would pass laws enforcing their religious beliefs. They apparently see no conflict between the laws they propose and the separation of Church and State.

What the First Amendment provides is that each and every American is entitled to follow the teachings of the church of their choice, or for that matter no church at all. What if your beliefs, or your church, permit abortion or in vitro fertilization? Are you now to become a criminal? The problem with such laws is that they would legislate the personal religious beliefs of the candidates.

It's interesting to note that Ryan/Romney (and their wingnut supporters) are pushing the issues of Women's Reproductive Health (eg) as "issues of morality", glossing over the simple fact that they'd surely tell us they get their morality from their religious beliefs - if the Press Poodles ever bothered to ask them.

The bible may be a fair place to start - and it's quite possibly the repository of the very best thinking of its time - but the probability has to be extremely high that people have come up with some stuff that's a tad more up-to-date; and at least as likely to make better sense for me than something written 8000 years ago.

Wait - What?

So if it shows up in USA Today (with a feeder from the front page, no less), then it's like official? Like it's obvious and everybody's known about it all along?  Like McPaper hasn't ever helped the "conservative" dipwads peddle bullshit about how "the jury's still out on AGW", and how "smart people can disagree about the causes"?

Humans have already changed Earth's atmosphere by releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide and similar heat-trapping gases from power plants, vehicles and other sources, scientists say. The resulting rise in air and sea-surface temperatures, along with melting glaciers and land ice, will push up sea levels globally by more than one-and-a-half feet by 2100.