Bring in the McClowns

It seems I write the same things over and over again because the Republican pattern repeats indefinitely.  It's OK when we do it or say it or demand it, it's anti-American, tyrannical, too little, too late, too much, too soon when they do it. Even if Republicans invented it or pioneered it or used it until yesterday it's different when "they" do it.

How long ago was it that John McCain and  Fox News and the rest of the merry bunch made a circus act with all three rings full of how Obama is a "tyrant" for appointing all those Czars?  "More Czars than the Romanovs," tweets the funny man.  So where's the big red nose and oversize pants when John McCain tells us that hapless weakling Obama isn't appointing the Czars we need?  That's right, John McCain has joined Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), sponsor of H.R. 3226 (111th): Czar Accountability and Reform (CZAR) Act of 2009  in condemning the administration for this egregious failure, invoking the "if it's bad, it's Obama" clause in the Party rules. 2009 is when George W. Bush left office -- just coincidentally -- and of course George had 33 of them, but let's keep that quiet.


Of course there's no public office with the title Czar on the door as far as I know. It's a media epithet that began in the 1940s and of course there's nothing unconstitutional about the President appointing "other public ministers" no matter how much they chuckle and chortle and lie in the Fox newsroom.
But quoting history and public record never seems to have much effect on the magic thinkers and pea-brained partisans of any stripe.  The public's eyes are always on the jugglers and clowns and what they're doing now, not what they did ten seconds ago.

"No one knows who's in charge," says McCain, his face revealing nothing of how his party, with the help of the NRA has blocked the nomination of a Surgeon General, an office designed to take control and coordinate the process of informing the country of what's being done.  Yes, the NRA, because the Surgeon General might just get involved in gun policy.  Can't have that. Better a plague than risk a gun grabber liberal doctor commie near our weapons. Better this country perish from the earth.

Transient Sanity Events

Particles do escape from black holes, or so argues Steven Hawking. the phenomenon is called Hawking radiation. Things do escape beyond the event horizon at the NRA as well apparently. It's called a Transient Sanity Event.

Members of Open Carry Texas, people who think it's really cool to act like a 6 year old with his new Hopalong Cassidy cap gun on Christmas morning, are cutting their NRA membership cards in half over a statement that somehow escaped the gravitational well of craziness and irresponsibility:

  “Let’s not mince words. Not only is it rare, it’s downright weird and certainly not a practical way to go normally about your business while being prepared to defend yourself. To those who are not acquainted with the dubious practice of using public displays of firearms as a means to draw attention to oneself or one’s cause, it can be downright scary.” 

The official apology for having allowed a sanity particle to escape was forthcoming from the NRA who called it one man's opinion and assuring the OCT people that

 "Our job is not to criticize the lawful behavior of fellow gun owners”

 except perhaps fellow gun owners who think these people are "downright scary."

 “If they do not retract their disgusting and disrespectful comments, OCT will have no choice but to withdraw its full support of the NRA and establish relationships with other gun rights organizations that fight for ALL gun rights, instead of just paying them lip service the way the NRA appears to be doing,” 

 responded Open Carry Texas openly.You know what's even scarier?  The idea that anyone thinks the NRA is too reasonable and that there may be other groups who are even more irresponsible.

Can this possibly end without bloodshed?  Texas, like many states, has a " menacing" law that has consequences to someone who causes you  to believe they will cause physical harm or serious physical harm to another person, their family or property.  Frankly, someone coming into a place of business or even a public square looking like Pancho Villa, or even carrying a holstered pistol makes me feel menaced and without a doubt, the police would be deluged with calls about armed men at playgrounds, gas stations, fast food restaurants and everywhere.  Welcome to the OK corral because every one of these open carry fools might just have that secret blaze of glory fantasy.

George Bush and the NRA

 ". . . and forgetting long-passed mischiefs, we mercifully preserve their bones and piss not on their ashes."

-Thomas Browne-

 _______________

I have to admit that there was a time I considered joining the NRA -- a couple of times actually.  The first was when I heard that Michael Moore belonged to it and I thought that membership would mean that my frequent maledictions might find their way to someones desk,  and the second was when I found that the one local rifle range that allowed black powder muzzle-loaders like my flintlock Kentucky long rifle required NRA membership.  In both instances my better senses took over and I decided it wasn't worth it.

I understand that following Wayne LaPierre's comments after the Sandy Hook massacre there has been a rash of resignations from the rank and file membership and a recent Snopes e-mail and a number of blog articles have reminded me of  the 1995 resignation from the NRA of George H.W. Bush. The President wrote an open letter to the NRA  after the group's refusal to disassociate itself from the then NRA spokesman LaPierre who gloated over the deaths of  the "Nazi's" as he called the federal officials slaughtered in Oklahoma City.

TREASON: the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign's family.

I didn't vote for Bush.  I've condemned him vehemently for his positions and offensive statements.  Although to compare GHWB to his 'George-without-the-H' scion is to make the old man look like George Washington in retrospect, I was enraged when he told us that he couldn't see how an atheist could be a citizen, and when he vetoed the Brady Bill, I wrote him an unpleasant letter.

These days, I have no faith that the Brady three day waiting period measure had any salubrious effect, and although I'm still not a real fan,   I have to give him credit for some things -- amongst which is his resignation letter.  Responding to Mr. LaPierre's vicious characterization of some of the murdered Federal Officers he had know personally as:

"jack booted thugs . . . wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms” wanting to “attack law abiding citizens,”  the former president and life member of the NRA condemned LaPierre's words  as a "vicious slander on good people."

And slander  it was, a thundering manifesto of obvious disregard for the 19 children murdered by a mad bomber or bombers  and of utter and vicious contempt for the lawful government of the United States of America and a tacit approval of armed insurrection.  Now what is the definition of treason again?  Does anyone still see that loathsome miscreant as the defender of  the Constitution or the advocate for lawful and peaceful gun owners?  I don't even want to know the answer. 

Bush,  "a gun owner and an avid hunter."  wrote :

"Over the years I have agreed with most of N.R.A.’s objectives, particularly your educational and training efforts, and your fundamental stance in favor of owning guns. However, your broadside against Federal agents deeply offends my own sense of decency and honor; and it offends my concept of service to country. It indirectly slanders a wide array of government law enforcement officials, who are out there, day and night, laying their lives on the line for all of us."

For an organization heavily funded by those seeking to make the government the tool of  plutocrats, an organization  willing to ignore the murders of 168 people in it's quest to de-legitimize the legitimate government and its institutions and interfere with enforcement of its laws to claim to be upholding anything but  violence and lawlessness is foul and disgusting and worthy of the same kind of contempt as the Klan or the Aryan Nation. They are not a gun owner's lobby, they are a Hate Group, an enemy of  freedom promoting the use of arms to oppose and defy a democratically elected government. 

George H. W. Bush is an old man in failing health I've never really liked, but for that one act I choose to remember him.  And to Mr. Lapierre: I tell thee churlish beast:  A ministering angel
shall he be when thou liest howling.

Irreversible Ratchet

The barber shop I frequent looks like something out of the old West, or at least a Hollywood version of it. Cowboy movie posters, ammunition boxes -- It has more old guns and shooting paraphernalia on display than most small gun shops and indeed Bob the barber is a licensed gun dealer.

So anyway, there I am waiting my turn along with one deputy and the rest of my disreputable contemporaries and reading American Rifleman -- and the first thing I see is an article by Wayne LaPierre of the NRA telling us that the "irreversible ratchet" of gun control has been turned back in Canada after their gun registration policy has cost a fortune and produced no measurable results. Why am I laughing? It's because that "camel's nose" and "irreversible ratchet" argument has been used to death since I can remember to counter any gun control laws at all, reasonable and unreasonable. It's because all I hear from NRA sources is that Obama is a gun grabber and he's so close to grabbing your guns that you'd better stock up on ammo and bury it in the back yard because here we go down the slippery slope to disarmed totalitarianism. Catalogs are selling books on just how to do that and ammunition prices are sky high, along with the prices of military surplus waterproof containers. Shops can't keep AK-47s on the racks.

Then if one looks at the news and realizes that under the current administration gun rights have been expanded to allow concealed carry in the national parks, as they are in most state parks and nearly everywhere else, that the last bastion of handgun banning, Chicago, Illinois may be about to fall and that 309 members of Congress and a majority of Americans approve, -- one has a hard time believing that there is a nationwide confiscation program being planned or that any gun control measures are by nature irreversible. Nearly all the states now issue concealed carry permits while crime continues to decline, so if that policy of citing the slippery slope fallacy has been debunked, where is the apology for all the fear mongering? were they wrong? Did the will of the majority actually prevail over the evil gun grabbing Liberals just like it's supposed to?

No, the ratchet works both ways, the camel isn't interested in your tent and the slope wasn't so slippery after all. Do I suspect that the worst thing that could happen to the NRA would be a definitive affirmation of the second amendment of the individual's right to keep and bear arms and a legislative branch inclined to go along with them? Does a red-neck shoot in the woods?