My Conversation With Gun Nut Regarding Newtown

I've had an ongoing debate with my gun-nut neighbor, and, incredibly, the slaughter of 20 Newtown children has not changed his mind. Here's how it went Saturday morning: ME: "After what just happened you can't possibly object to the ban of assault weapons." GUN NUT: "I can and do. If the government can ban assault weapons, what's next--hand guns?" ME: "The old slippery slope argument, huh? The same logic you right-wingers use to ban gay marriage. If gays can marry, what's next--legalization of bestiality? What does one have to do with the other?" GUN NUT: "The Second Amendment protects my rights to own any gun I want." ME: "The Second Amendment refers to militias, citizen armies, not private citizens. And there were no assault weapons in the 18th century." GUN NUT: "What if someone breaks into my home, and I don't have a gun?" ME: "Statistics show that it is 1000 times more likely that someone in your own family will accidentally kill himself with your gun, than it is that you will kill a home invader. It is also 10,000 times more likely that a deranged or unbalanced person will get a hold of your gun and kill innocent people, than it is that your home will be invaded." GUN NUT: "I don't care what the stats say." ME: "But don't you have any compassion for those poor children who were slaughtered at that school in Connecticut? We've sent men to the moon and invented a polio vaccine. Surely we can protect the most innocent and vulnerable among us." GUN NUT: "Not if it means banning weapons." ME: "So, your right to have an assault weapon is more important than a child's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?" GUN NUT: "It's guns that gave us that right." ME: "Huh? What kind of logic is that?" GUN NUT: "Without guns we can't protect ourselves from mad men like the one who shot up that school." ME: "You mean the children should have been armed?" GUN NUT: "No, but the faculty and administration could have been" ME: "Are you insane? That's not civilization, that's the wild west." And so it goes. Gun nuts and the NRA now have the blood of children on their hands. Columbine, Aurora, Portland, Atlanta, Virginia Tech, Milwaukee, Newtown. The bodies are piling up, and there is no end in sight.

Time For Costas Critics To SHUT UP

"Costas should commentate on football games and SHUT UP about gun control." Those were the words of Laura Ingraham, an evil right-wing witch with the soulless eyes of a snake and a viper's heart. She attacked NBC sportscaster Bob Costas for having the temerity to speak up and express his antipathy towards America's gun culture and the ready availability and abundance of guns in this country. But Costas was right...here we go again. The Portland mall shootings a couple days ago were just the latest in a long line of random killings. The response to which has been yawns and shrugs from the right wing. Apparently conservatives are content with this kind of America, where anyone, anyhwere at anytime can be gunned down for no reason. The Portland shooter had an AR-15, a military weapon that is illegal to own. How did he get it? No one seems to know or care. The NRA cares not whit about the victims, and the right wing says these things are going to happen. The problem is they happen over and over. Every week there is news of some random killing. Someone needs to do something, and Costas had the courage to speak up. The GOP is really the party of death. If they don't kill you with gun violence, they will deny you critical health care. If they don't kill you by cutting Medicare and Social Security, they will starve you to death by eliminating food stamps. If you don't die in their electric chairs, they will round you up and deport you. If you didn't die in Iraq, you may not survive Afghanistan. When will one of these shooters hunt down Laura Ingraham...PLEASE!

Another Republican Bites The Dust

Republican Jim DeMint resigned from the Senate today, and I started blowing up balloons, pouring the booze, and breaking out the noisemakers until I realized that he's from South Carolina, where it's as likely he'll be replaced by a Democrat as it is that Rush Limbaugh will join the ACLU. The South Carolina governor, Nikki Hailey, will simply appoint another right-wing extremist who will make us wish for the good old days when DeMint was in the Senate. DeMint resigned to head up the Heritage Foundation, a "right-wing think tank." This oxymoronic term is right up there with jumbo shrimp, Army intelligence, open secret, and Hell's Angels. There is no such thing as a conservative intellectual, and right-wing "think tanks" are nothing more than gatherings of quasi-fascists construing outlandish justifications for making the rich richer and the poor poorer. One Republican nut job, upon hearing of DeMint's resignation, said, "No Senator has fought harder for liberty and freedom than Jim DeMint." Horse manure. DeMint spent his entire time in the Senate fighting against our liberties--to breathe clean air and drink fresh water, to be free of random gun violence, to die with dignity, to have a meager income in old age to be free of starvation, to have women do what they wish with their own bodies, to be free of economic oppression, to be free of unnecessary war, to be free to collectively bargain for better wages, and to have the liberty of speaking freely in public places. DeMint's version of freedom is only this--the freedom of corporations to pollute, to control, to buy politicians and elections, to oppress workers, and pay no taxes while making huge profits. That's not engendering freedom; that's catering to plutocratic self-interest. Good-bye, DeMint...and go fuck yourself.

Over The Cliff And Through The Woods To Grover's House We Go

Just as one evil Republican, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, tried to steal the recent election, another evil Republican--someone named Grover Norquist--is trying to ruin any chance of returning fiscal sanity to the U.S. Who is Grover Norquist? Just a tubby lackey for super-rich conservatives. He is not an elected official; he does not hold any office. He is simply the guy who forces all real office holders (at least Republicans) to pledge to never raise taxes. He came to prominence with the Bushies, and he continues to hold the country hostage. One thing we need to reduce the deficit is tax reform (read: tax the living hell out of millionaires and billionaires). But Grover Norquist is holding that stupid pledge over the heads of House Republicans. If they vote to raise taxes on the rich, Grover promises to bring hellfire and damnation down on their heads (read: no more campaign money from rich right-wing donors). Ironically, if Grover succeeds, he will precipitate his own demise. Like all Republicans, he is blissfully unaware of his own obsolescence. If taxes aren't raised as part of some Obama/House deal, then we are going over the fiscal cliff...which means the Bush tax cuts will expire, and we will all be paying higher taxes. To that I say, "Bring it." I'm willing to pay my fair share as long as the top 2% are paying theirs. And as a bonus, Grover will be an endangered species, just like the other muppet that Republicans hate--Big Bird.

Rasmussen, Rove, and Morris: Bitches of Fox & GOP

As far as anyone can tell, the GOP has not conceded the election. Mitt Romney, instead of fading slowly in the sunset as he should, is whining about the "gifts" with which Obama bribed the electorate. (I am still waiting for my gifts to arrive in the mail.) Mitt is apparaently oblivious to the fact that the financial gifts he was offering his constitutency, the 1%, amounted to billions of dollars in tax breaks. Regardless, the Bain of Mormon just won't go away. But it's the bitches of Fox News: Rasmussen pollsters, Dick Morris and Karl Rove who won't concede that the Democrats got more votes, fair and square. Rove is still counting votes in Ohio. Morris, whose prediction of a Romney landslide wiped out any shred of credibility he had, keeps showing up on O'Reilly's show to tell us how he miscalculated by only a few percentage points. The worst of all are the Rasmussen pollsters who had Romney ahead by 9 points on November 5. Why would anybody pay any attention to these lying, corrupt idiots ever again? They are paid by FOX to lie to the American public. If FOX News insisted the world was flat, Rasmussen would jimmie up some poll which read: 87% of Americans believe the earth is flat. If FOX tried to convince us that pigs can fly, Rove would grow wings. If FOX told us that our mouths are really our assholes, and vice versa, Morris would...well, Morris proved that one already.

Republicans Are Really Darwinists, Not Christians

Ask Republicans what moral code they live by and most likely you'll get a Bible lesson (usually fiction) and verbal allegiance to the Almighty. They will tell you that they strictly follow their Christian precepts. As one elderly Republican acquaintance put it: "I live in a godly way." But Republicans must never read their Bibles because nowhere in it does it say, "Look out for number one," or "I've got mine, and you are on your own," or "Blacks and Muslims are not God's children," or "Social Security is a communist plot," or "Jesus was a gun-carrying, supply-side capitalist." Jesus was a destitute, compassionate, peace-loving whistle-blower...in other words, a liberal. And what the Bible says is that we should love one another (tolerance), that charity towards the least among us is a good thing (welfare), and that the rich man shall not gain the Kingdom of Heaven (tax the hell out of the wealthiest 1%). Point this out to Republicans, and they will likely wave a Bible in your face and declare that these are godless, socialist views. All the while blissfully unaware that they are the real atheists because they subscribe to that godless belief called Darwinism. Conservatives live as social Darwinists; they praise those who thrive in this dog-eat-dog world--the more ruthless and cut-throat one is in capitalist America, the more worthy one is of special status (i.e. the Romans who crucified Jesus). Those who are disadvantaged and need help to compete (student loans, equal pay, Head Start, Affirmative Action) are condemned as weaklings sucking at the state's nipple. Republican/Darwinists believe only the fittest (read richest and most privileged) should survive, and the rest should just die off. (By the way, this philosophy sounds eerily reminiscent of the Third Reich's philosophy.) Darwinist Bill O'Reilly was on TV whining the other night about Obama supporters getting entitlements from the state; he decried the state providing help for those who have less money than he. In the next sentence he decried liberals' desecration of Christianity's holiest day...you know, Christmas, when there is supposed to be goodwill toward men and love for the least among us. Ah, those Republican Darwinists...the hypocrisy makes me laugh.

Good-Bye, Mitt, And Good Riddance

Today I am as a giddy as a school girl on Christmas Eve. It's not just that a decent, fair-minded moderate won four more years in the White House; it's that I'll never again have to listen to the plastic, shallow, rudderless Plutocrat they call Mitt. As malleable as putty, a political chameleon unlike any other, Romney was a peculiar invention of super PAC money and CEO-driven America. Aiming always to please, Mitt cared not whit about anything except his own advancement and self-enrichment. Like a used-car salesman, he said and did anything to please the customers as long as he could make the sale. And when it comes to politics, all his life Mitt has done what the big money has told him to do. Now he's adrift on his own plush island, political career over, never to be heard from again. I should say good riddance and be done with him, but I can't resist a few parting shots: 1) How about that 47% now, Mittster? Looks like they kicked your ass. 2) Due to yesterday's voting results, the House and Senate now have binders full of women. 3) Now that the Grinch has been banished, it looks like all the little kids can keep watching Big Bird on TV. 4) The auto industry is so profitable now, it is sending a limo for you so you can catch your flight to the Caymans or Switzerland to be reunited with your money. 5) Possible jobs for the unemployed Mitt: --Playing Thurston Howell III in a TV revival of "Gilligan's Island." --Producing an off-Broadway play of his life, "The Bain of Mormon." --Offering tax advice for billionaires. --Selling Attachable Dog Carriers for Car Rooftops. Rim shot. O, Mitt, we hardly knew ye.