The Right’s Dangerously Bad History

Here's your history lesson for today. There will not be a quiz, only knowledge.

Robert Parry

More significantly, however, the American Right has inculcated in its followers a bogus idea of what the U.S. Constitution did. Typically, the Right’s founding narrative jumps from the Declaration of Independence in 1776 to the Constitution, which was written in 1787 and ratified in 1788. What is usually left out is the nation’s experience with the Articles of Confederation, which governed the new nation from 1777 to 1787.

By ignoring the Articles, the Right can pretend that the Constitution was written with the goal of establishing a system dominated by the states with the central government kept small and weak. That version of history then is cited to support right-wing claims that federal officials, such as Roosevelt and Obama, violate the Constitution when they seek national solutions to the country’s economic and social problems.

However, in the real history, the Framers of the Constitution, particularly George Washington and James Madison, were rejecting the structure of “independent” and “sovereign” states (with a weak central government or “league of friendship”) as established by the Articles of Confederation. The Framers had witnessed how that system had failed and how it was threatening the future of the newly independent nation.

Thus, Washington and Madison led what amounted to a coup d’etat at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Though their instructions were simply to propose amendments to the Articles and refer those suggestions back to the state legislatures, Washington and Madison instead threw out the Articles entirely and produced a dramatically different structure.

Gone was the language in the Articles about “sovereign” and “independent” states. Instead, national sovereignty was shifted to “We the People of the United States.” The new Constitution made federal law supreme and granted the central government sweeping new powers over currency and commerce as well as broad authority to act on behalf of the “general Welfare.”

Much more.

"Let's deal with this on a rational, intellectual level"

Yeah, like that'll happen. Heh.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Funny Gun Fails

In honor of "Gun Appreciation Day". It's all fun and games until somebody blows their foot off. Then it's really funny as long as it's not yours. Heh. Be sure to see the tuff guy at the end. Snort...

Via HuffPo.

The Unholy Trinity

Drugs, alcohol, and guns are not a good mix in the hands of dumbass bozos. Probably good "law abiding" NRA members too. Go read this. Video too. RIP, microwave oven...

Recreational assault weapons fire riddles Ohio home, narrowly misses officer

Update:

Mrs. G brought up the excellent point that drugs, alcohol, and firearms should only be trusted in the hands of professionals with all three like me'n Fixer. Heh.

Dysfunction Junction

Paul Begala on "Why the GOP resembles a failed state".

The textbook (OK, Wikipedia) definition of a failed state contains several elements, not all of which apply to a political party—such as maintaining a monopoly on violence, which, thank God, is not part of the job description for House Republicans. But other tests in the Fund for Peace’s Failed State Index sound as if they were written with Boehner’s bunch in mind:

“Mounting demographic pressures.” Republicans have lost ground among Latinos, Asian-Americans, single women, and younger voters. At this rate, in another quarter century they’ll be left with no one but Clint Eastwood and his chair.

“Delegitimization of the state.” That’s kind of the entire point of modern Republicanism, isn’t it?
...

“Rise of factionalized elites.” Are you kidding me? The country clubbers hate the Tea Partiers, the neocons hate the traditionalists, the libertarians distrust the religious right; this isn’t a political party, it’s Yugoslavia circa 1991.

Heh. The Repugs haven't done anything good for the country as a whole since Eisenhower built the Interstate system. The internal turkey-slap that's going on in the GOP isn't very good for the nation in the short term, although I think it will be in the long term, but the Bush Years showed we can survive anything, even if only barely, and it's sure as hell fun to watch! And, brother, we have it coming to watch these assholes tear each other to shreds!

Quote of the Day

From Obama to the NRA: Suck on This Executive Power by guess whom:

For those of us who think few things are more fun than watching conservatives lose their shit over something, yesterday was like Christmas, New Year's, and St. Blowjob's Day all rolled into one.

Yes, it IS great fun to watch the wingtards come unglued! Please enjoy the rest of his post.

You tell 'em, Barry!

Gleefully gleeped from I'm 2 seconds from slapping the SHIT out of a bitch ass Republican.

A few solutions to the "gun problem"

While I was looking for a 2nd Amendment to c&p so I wouldn't have to type it out, I ran across this:

On May 8, 1792, Congress passed "[a]n act more effectually to provide for the National Defence, by establishing an Uniform Militia throughout the United States" requiring:

[E]ach and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia...[and] every citizen so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch with a box therein to contain not less than twenty-four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball: or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder; and shall appear, so armed, accoutred and provided, when called out to exercise, or into service, except, that when called out on company days to exercise only, he may appear without a knapsack.[99]

Heh. Lemme see ... white males. Check. Under 45 years of age. Exempts me and most of the guntard loudmouths. Check. Musket or firelock. What, no Bushmasters?! Well, OK, check. Twenty rounds? Hardly enough to go downtown. Harrumph. No knapsack is good. So's the bayonet.

I well understand the "white male" part, since the purpose of the militia was ostensibly to defend the government from outside invasion in the absence of a standing army which the Founders abhorred, but also for the more immediate danger from Indians who might resist white males bent on killing them and dispossessing them from their ancestral lands, and against slave revolts which might distress the white male economy of the time.

Remember, this country was built on genocide and slavery, so I guess this 'militia' approach worked quite well.

But I digress. Back to my original intent, no Founding Fathers/Constitution pun intended.

I think a large part of the 'gun control' problem could be solved with duct tape like every other problem. Strategically placed in mass quantities over the mouths of Whine LaPee-air of the NRA and others of his whinyass gun nut ilk. I don't know how much it would help the actual problem, but it'd be a lot more blessedly quiet. Those whiny loudmouth sonsabitches aren't the real problem with gun violence anyway. I won't go into the 'defending the country from the government' non-argument because it's just plain silly. Bushmaster, meet M-1 Abrams, A-10 Warthog, pissed-off Marine Private who would rather be in bed with his girlfriend (wouldn't we all? Heh.) instead of in East Dump Truck, Idaho, dealing with a bunch of fat old wannabes who just shit their pants when a real rifle was pointed at them, etc. etc.

I like guns, own several, and enjoy shooting them in a responsible manner. I think there are an awful lot of us who would just plain like to see the gun nuts STFU and quit making hollow threats which serve no useful purpose except theirs, which is fearmongering of the "The Sky Is Falling!" variety. Hey, we've got a government that can kick your ass without raising a sweat. Man up and deal with it. Yeesh.

The real problem is the deranged shooters who don't say a damn thing until they start working their trigger fingers in a school or mall or other public place.

In other words, you won't know I am going to shoot you until you are shot. That is the only heads up I am ever going to give on that subject.

Here's an idea I and others have had which might actually help.

A majority of the mass shooters appear to be young men, boys really, who are loners and estranged from society at least in their own heads which is where it counts. What's bothering them? What do they want?

They want to get laid like every other young man and can't, because they're shy or peer group outcasts or whatever. They're suffering from DSB (Dreaded Semen Backup) and find unacceptable outlets for their frustration. I'm not joking about this.

A good partial answer is safe, affordable, legal prostitution so they can let a few toads outta the bag and relax a little. I'm not joking about that either. I know our puritanical system full of anti-fun people would never permit that so I'm pissing into the wind but it's something to think about.

Why won’t you ever change?

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on fear of change and how it fucks everything up. Also, since it's Wednesday, I think I'll change my socks...

It all comes to mind as I’m reading about how the NRA is right now sneering like furious, changeless trolls at the Obama administration, given how the latter is daring to propose stricter background checks on gun sales and a complete ban on all assault weapons.

Is it not amazing? Gun fanatics are furious that gun fanatics are being blamed for America’s gun fanatics problem. So cute.

The NRA, like any conservative group, reviles change. The NRA exists solely to enflame fear of the unknown, fear of Other, championing only ignorance and childish anxiety about the world. Their membership depends entirely on a lousy educational system and a visceral hatred of nuance. After all, the less intelligent and informed you are, the more dangerous the world appears, and the more you will desire a deadly weapon to compensate for what you lack in compassion and perspective. What, you calling me stupid? You calling me ignorant and racist and violent? Say it to my Glock.

The NRA, sadly, is far from alone. Did you notice the unmitigated shock and disgust the entire Republican party faced – and is still facing, every day – when it realized the American electorate had finally tipped away from its once-stable, white-male base? The timbre of the nation has permanently shifted, and the GOP is gnawing off its own fingers in panic.

Hmmmmm...that might actually create jobs, like when they need to take a leak or try to jack off with no fingers...

Most people, tragically, have no conception of the radical new, of true spiritual transformation, of seeing through our endless social constructs to the other side. Change as wild possibility has been drilled out of us by capitalism, gun lobbies, reality TV, Wal-Mart, politicians who have a vested interest in promoting stasis and preventing evolution, even going so far as to deny the latter exists at all.

If focus groups led the world, we’d have no iPhone. When you let numb groupthink rule technology, you get Microsoft. If you let conservativism rule, you get Mitt Romney, the Catholic Church, abstinence education, homophobia, sexism, monster trucks, the Iraq war, corporate groupthink, a sad, low-level hatred of anything that is not exactly like you. It’s not that stability or consistency are wrong. They can be quite wonderful. It’s that they’re just as much an illusion as anything else.

“Don’t ever change,” we write, naively, in our friends’ high school yearbooks. Oh my God. Are you insane? I can think of nothing I’d rather do.

I can think of nothing more futile to rail at or be afraid of. Change happens.

Although I DO think everything started downhill when they put the cams on top and did away with pushrods...

It's Time To Right The Colossal Blunder That Is The Iraq War

Charles P. Pierce. In your dreams, Chuck.

One of the more subtle benefits of the nomination of Chuck Hagel for Secretary Of Defense is that it has required in our political discourse that we re-litigate — or, arguably, litigate honestly for the first time — the sweeping criminal fraud that was the selling of the war in Iraq by the administration of George W. Bush. Remarkably, at least in the prominent arenas of public discussion, the "left" side of this debate is primarily represented by people who supported the criminal fraud at first — like Peter Beinart and, admittedly, Hagel himself — and who then soured on the whole business either because they saw what a massive blunder it was, or because they needed to obfuscate their own hysterical support of it in order to maintain their public credibility in a country that was realizing that they'd helped play it for a sucker. And hello to you, too, Andrew Sullivan.

Let us be clear. The Avignon Presidency's excellent adventure in Iraq was a fake from start to finish, planned long in advance of the 9/11 attacks and sold to the country on the basis of "evidence" that bordered on the risible. (Remember the Iraqi drones spraying anthrax up the Hudson?) More to the point, there were people who knew it at the time, who talked about it at the time, who yelled about it at the time, and who, at best, were ignored and, at worst, slandered and marginalized. Those voices are still on the outskirts of the conversation, as though the more right you were, the less credibility you had.

More.

Short of locking up everybody who perpetrated that clusterfuck, I would be happy with the symbolic gesture of locking up Dick Cheney and deny him the luxury of avoiding accountability for his war crimes by being allowed to die a free man.

Shorter: We're Screwed

Obama’s debt ceiling strategy hinges on GOP sanity

Liquid Alert Headline of the Day

Democrats Troll Republicans With Snarky List Of Retreat “Agenda Items”

Also on the suggested topics to be discussed: "How to increase our approval ratings: What root canals, traffic jams, cockroaches and head lice are doing right."

Well, for starters, three out of the four of them aren't standing in the way of progress...

Flu Vaccine Shortage Solved!

In case you're wondering why I hate right-wingers...

...here's the perfect example. Salon.

Gene Rosen sheltered six kids during the Sandy Hook massacre. Now he's become a target of conspiracy theorists
...

“I don’t know what to do,” sighed Gene Rosen. “I’m getting hang up calls, I’m getting some calls, I’m getting emails with, not direct threats, but accusations that I’m lying, that I’m a crisis actor, ‘how much am I being paid?’” Someone posted a photo of his house online. There have been phony Google+ and YouTube accounts created in his name, messages on white supremacist message boards ridiculing the “emotional Jewish guy,” and dozens of blog posts and videos “exposing” him as a fraud. One email purporting to be a business inquiry taunted: “How are all those little students doing? You know, the ones that showed up at your house after the ‘shooting’. What is the going rate for getting involved in a gov’t sponsored hoax anyway?”
...

What did Rosen do to deserve this? One month ago, he found six little children and a bus driver at the end of the driveway of his home in Newtown, Connecticut. “We can’t go back to school,” one little boy told Rosen. “Our teacher is dead.” He brought them inside and gave them food and juice and toys. He called their parents. He sat with them and listened to their shocked accounts of what had happened just down the street inside Sandy Hook Elementary, close enough that Rosen heard the gunshots.

In the hours and days that followed, Rosen did a lot of media interviews. “I wanted to speak about the bravery of the children, and it kind of helped me work through this,” he told Salon in an interview. “I guess I kind of opened myself up to this.”

The “this” in question is becoming a prime target of the burgeoning Sandy Hook Truther movement, which — like its precursor that denied the veracity of the 9/11 terror attacks — alleges that the entire shooting was a hoax of some kind. There were conspiracy theories surrounding the shooting from day one, but the movement has exploded into public view the past two weeks, and a Google Trends search suggests it’s just now picking up steam. It’s also beginning to earn the backing of presumably credible sources like a professor and a reporter.

Take your blood pressure meds or a stiff drink and go read the link in that paragraph. Grrrrrr....

The gist of it is that Obama staged the murders of 20 kids and six adults so he could go after the guntards' firearms.

I'm not going to "start shooting people" like that asshole in Tennessee said but if I change my mind I know where I'm going to start.

And when I'm done there won't be a right-wing problem.

Headline of the Day

Coulter: ‘Not a gun problem,’ U.S. has ‘demographic problem’ with non-whites

I think our demographic problem is too many loudmouth right-wing racist bitches, male and female.

Rude Live-blogs Prez's Presser

El Rude-o live-blogged the President's press conference this morning. My main take-away is that it was a good excuse to put whiskey in your morning coffee. Heh.

11:39: And we're off to the races. Obama says that we've got shit to do and we can do it if Republicans stop being such mind-boggling cocks about it.
...

11:44: "The debt ceiling is not a question of authorizing more spending;" it's about paying bills already racked up, he explains. Right-wing bloggers immediately tweet that it's about authorizing more spending. Right-wing blog readers immediately believe the lie rather than the truth.

It is written...

11:46: Says that Republicans in Congress have two choice: act responsibly or act irresponsibly. Does Obama remember the legion of dolts, crazies, and charlatans who make up the Republicans in Congress?

Do you mean the scaredy-cat weaklings who are afraid of being voted off the gravy train if they get primaried by the whackjob base? Yes, yes you do.

11:55: Does Obama understand that he needs to do something that's out there in order to catalyze a real debate on the debt ceiling? The right response on the debt ceiling is to say that the assholes in the GOP are hurting the country and he won't let that happen, so fuck them, let's go 14th Amendment or coin or something. Let 'em take him to court. Let 'em try to impeach. It's bullshit to say that it's up to Congress and believe that Republicans will do "the right thing" when they think the right thing is to fuck up the economy.
...

12:05: Irish coffee number two is even tastier than Irish coffee number one. The touch of Bailey's helps. Hello, afternoon.

12:07: Another gun question, this related to assholes buying more guns because they think Obama will send cut black men to take away the assholes' guns.

It's kinda ironic that the NRA was all FOR gun control when it was the Black Panthers who had guns. Heh.

12:32: Aaaand we're done. What did we learn? That Vice President Biden will make some recommendations on guns and that Obama won't negotiate on the debt ceiling.

In other words, that was more useless than this empty mug on the coffee table.

At least the empty mug made you feel better on its way to getting empty. Or it was a waste of good whiskey.

Everybody's crazy except me...

Do you think "they" are watching you? This guy has raised paranoia to an art form.

A letter I received from Jeff Boss:

“As I write this, I am in a tent on my bed to avoid the cameras that are all over my apartment. I have been chased around the world. I have survived over 1,000 attempts on my life.”

“It is Saturday morning, April 19, 2012. I currently have an NSA husband and wife crew living above me. All of the apartments on my floor have been filled with NSA agents. Mel in 24-C and his friend in 24-D have been recruited by the NSA. Also, Elaina the real estate broker, who owned the pug type dog, is NSA. All employees of the Galaxy Apartment building and its management team have been recruited by the NSA.”

“My microwave cannot be used because it is giving off microwaves outside of the oven. My cell phone is also giving off microwaves same as the oven. My computer and TV are also giving off these waves, along with my electric shaver. This frequency was used in the 1991 Gulf War to put so much fear in the Iraqi troop’s minds that over 100,000 surrendered.”

“I have a GPS chip in my tooth, credit card, and driver’s license. Whenever I go out I am tracked and followed by the NSA. I know you are thinking, why have I survived? Why haven’t they killed me yet? The reason is, I discovered the secret identity codes and use them nonstop to avoid being killed. The NSA has a secret identity sign to alert other agents that you are one of them. This is how I survive…”
...

Jeff was wallpapering Times Square with big photocopied broadsides when I first met him. He was clutching one that read: “JEFF BOSS WITNESSED THE NSA ARRANGE 911.”

Much more. Did I mention he's running for POTUS and Mayor of New York City?

Crazy as a loon and still saner than a Teatard.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

White House May Come Down Hard on Guns
A ban on sales of shoulder-mounted missiles to teenagers contemplated.

Artist Creates Clothes That Hide Wearer From Drones
They're flying off the shelves at Waziristan's Walmart.

Make up your own "fatass fatwa" jokes.

Ohio Family Complains of Flammable Tap Water
But pay their gas and water bills with one check.

Nobody Elected to Baseball Hall of Fame
“I didn't expect it,” says Jerry Nobody, who never batted above .243, but tested negative for steroids.

No Death Star

TPM

The White House has officially responded to the ‘We the People’ petition to commit the US to building a Death Star. Best line: “Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?” Next best: “The Administration does not support blowing up planets,” which may represent a slight shift from the position of the previous administration.

Slight. Heh.

Full response after the jump …

If you are a Star Wars fan (1st 3 of course, the 2nd 3 suck wet monkey ass) DO NOT MISS the White House response. Especially if you have made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs...

Headline of the Day

Undercover 'supply sergeant' helped bring down Alaska militia

This militia will now be "well regulated" as per the 2d Amendment - in the Big House. Good.