The first rule of firearm safety...

...is never point a firearm at anything you do not intend to shoot. Heh.

Trinidad and Tobago security guard accidentally shoots off his penis
...

The wounded man was taken to San Fernando General Hospital where he remains under guard. Authorities ran a trace on him and found that he did not possess a license for the gun he was carrying. He faces charges of illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition.

Boy, that's adding insult to injury. Ha!

Unfortunately, these types of accidents are not uncommon. The Digital Journal listed reports of accidental gunshot wounds to the penis and testicles in Arizona and Washington state, as well as an incident from September in Port Lucie, Florida in which a man cleaning a newly purchased gun at a party shot himself in the genitals.

There's a buncha links in that paragraph.

I think the point here is, carry the damn thing in a holster that will direct an accidental discharge away from your body. Except for right-wing gun nuts. My advice to them is carry it in your waistband right behind your belt buckle loaded and unlocked.

12 Ways Obama Smacked Down the Tea Party and the Right in Inauguration Speech

Tamped into a nice neat brick at Alternet.

Driving the message home were the hands of the Fates, who conspired to see the second inauguration of the nation’s first African American president fall on Martin Luther King Day, the national holiday whose very creation was opposed by so many who still today comprise the Republican Party’s right wing.

Yeah, that worked out pretty good. Heh.

1. Reminding the nation who won the Civil War. On the eve of Obama’s second inauguration, civil rights leader Julian Bond addressed a crowd of progressives gathered in Washington, D.C., at the Peace Ball convened by the activist restauranter Andy Shallal, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, and a host of progressive entities. Bond spelled out the statistics of Obama’s 2012 victory for the crowd, noting that Mitt Romney’s voters were almost entirely white, and that the only states won by the Republican presidential candidate belonged to the old Confederacy.

“The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the anthem of Union troops in the Civil War, long ago passed into the songbook of patriotic themes, and has been played during the inaugural parades of other presidents, sung on several different occasions by the very white Mormon Tabernacle Choir. But when the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, in all its multicultural glory, was tapped to sing the anthem not from a parade stand, but from the ceremonial podium, a different chord was struck, thanks to its context: the invocation that preceded it, and the president's speech, which followed it.

I got a big kick out of that. Poked the right-wingers right in the eye, that did. 'Bout fuckin' time.

4. Throwing right-wing rhetoric right back at ‘em. [...] To ignore the rhetoric of the right as it is deployed against him lends a sort of cover to the racism that is often implicit in it -- or the simplistic ridiculousness of it all. When Obama, as he has since his re-election, acknowledges and, yes, even repeats that language, he lets the rest of America know that he’s in on the joke, and he thinks it’s a pretty lame joke.

So that line about “the tyranny of a king”? Yeah, that was for the wing-nuts who paint the president as a tyrant in order to justify their call for his overthrow or the overthrow of the U.S. government. Later in the address, Obama, defending the social safety net, took on the right’s “producerism” trope, heard from pundits and politicians throughout Rightlandia, that America is populated by two kinds of people, “the takers” versus “the makers”.

8. Spanish is the loving tongue, amigos.

¡O Si! How d'ya say "heh" in Spanish?

12. Shining a light on voter suppression.

That is going to get worse before it gets better. If ya can't beat 'em, cheat 'em. Now the Repugs are trying to tie electoral votes to their gerrymandered districts. If they had been able to do that this time, Rmoney would have won and we'd be in the soup.

My main take-away from the inauguration was pretty simple: we're relatively safe from the forces of darkness for another four years, but we must be ever vigilant.

"I've Got Enough Crazy For All Of You" By Michele Bachmann

Goblinbooks

That's it. Obama took office, and the new Congress has been settling in for a couple weeks now. All those batcrap pro-life geezers like Todd Akin are probably still making scary rape comments, but they're doing it in their own paneled rec rooms. Newt Gingrich is trolling the talk shows where no one listens to him. Herman Cain and Rick Perry are like Amelia Earhart, only people actually looked for her. And Santorum's writing for a website. A website, do you know how pathetic and irrelevant that is?

If that includes blogs, yes, yes I do...

But Michele's still here. And don't worry children, because Michele will pick up that slack.

I'm a professional. You know this about me. And when my people need me I am ready to provide. And right now, it looks like what we need is extra crazy.

Oh fucking swell. Well, Crazy Eyes, you're just the person who can do it proud.

Going Joe McCarthy on Arab-Americans? I was warming up. Now we're going to talk about how the Amish secretly run MS-13.
...

Creationism? Nutty stuff about the Founding Fathers? We're going to have a national conversation on why Paul Revere's secret belief in Wicca almost destroyed this country, and how the truth needs to be taught in schools. We're going to halt the deficit by creating a cigarette-based economy like they have in prison. I will give half of my speeches entirely in my made-up angel language, and I'm going to bring a fully-automatic AK-47 signed by Jesus everywhere I go.

Oh wait. Now you're going to say that's how you lose elections. I can't govern or get things done by telling people global warming's a hoax and everyone east of Ohio's in a conspiracy, right? You people don't get it. The Republican party is not about governing, bitches. It's about sending chain emails and ruining next Thanksgiving. It's about bringing wicked-looking assault weapons to a rally and calling everyone Hitler. And most of all, it's about turning every crisis into a reality-show-style freakout over globalization and social progress and the fact that you have to dial 1 for English.

Michele is not on her way out. Michele's moment is on the track and headed into the station. And the whole country is going to get a big long ride on this crazy train before it's over.

Yawn. So what's new. I can hardly wait.

Health Care, Female Veterans, and the Rights of Us All

I owe ten years of sobriety to the VA. Go read El Rude-o's guest poster. It might be the longest post there yet.

Today, the Rude Pundit is giving over the joint to Navy veteran and health and disability activist Karen Vasquez, who also happens to be a longtime reader of this here blog. You can read her stuff all the time at The Mighty Turtle. Check this out. It's compelling, funny, and infuriating stuff:

Perspective is a funny thing. It’s shaped by our experience in the present, and those who came long before us in the past.

A woman not being considered a veteran in need of healthcare is in no way shocking, of course. Since the founding of this country, women have had trouble being considered anything other than property until recently. And more recent than you think. In the 1970’s, a woman could not purchase a car without showing she had permission from her husband. Pre-Roe v. Wade: A trip to the doctor for her lady parts required her to be accompanied by her mother or husband. Girls were told in one way or another that they were not in charge of their own bodies. If you find yourself thinking how this is relevant to veteran’s healthcare in the 1990’s, please slap yourself. Thank you.

I’m not going to bore you with my stories of public humiliation and degradation on active duty because I had a vagina. There are enough of those and many grislier than mine. I will dish a little: A certain Secretary of Defense who later went on to be Vice President once told me at a Submariner’s ball, “If they had girls like you in the Navy when I was your age, I would’ve joined.” Oh yeah, I’m sure all he needed was a pretty girl for him decline five deferments. Have another Coors light, Asshat.

Heh.

These are the same types of assholes that called me a "sick bay commando" and other assorted colorful names. They think they are being cute and funny. But they are only exposing themselves for as the ignorant fucks they are. Now, I call them ignorant fucks and not products of their environment because there comes a time in everyone’s life when we get to choose how to travel down life’s path. We can choose to travel with an open mind to nurture a life of change and growth though new information, or we can choose to travel with our heads up our ass in fear. Sometimes, an enlightened path is chosen after people spend years inside their own anuses. Something happens, they emerge, and they choose to be decent human beings. And some learn nothing from life experience and maintain an existence of ignorant fuckery that would insult a caveman.

There's a sentence in there that bears repeating: We can choose to travel with an open mind to nurture a life of change and growth though new information, or we can choose to travel with our heads up our ass in fear.

The crux of the stale biscuit we call "life in America" or "politics".

The short version: if we teach our sons and daughters we are all equal it will be so. Someday.

Word. Please go read the rest.

Headlines of the Day

Powell: Republican leaders should stop ‘idiot presentations’ from Palin and birthers

Good on ya, General. You'll mend your reputation yet.

Harvard scientist seeks ‘adventurous female’ to give birth to cloned Neanderthal

Have Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann been through the change yet? They'd be perfect!

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

OBAMA SWORN IN FOR SECOND TERM
Cites booming gun sales as sign of improving economy.

Poll: 64% of Republicans Think Obama Hiding Something About His Early Life
Like a decade of heavy drinking, or skipping his National Guard duties, or bankrupting a company, or DUIs that dad's friends were able to make disappear, or...

Wow, deja vu all over again...

Boehner's Office Vandalized by House Members of Tea Party, But Boehner Won't File Charges for Party Unity
Also because they're armed and dangerous.

Utah Smoothie Shop Charges Liberals More Than Conservatives
Tell them you're a nativist with an anti-semitic bent and your smoothie's free.

The guy actually said that all 3 liberals in his congressional district pay the extra buck without complaint.

Monopoly to Replace One Of Its Game Pieces
Will replace thimble with bong.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Published on Jan 17, 2013
Another night of wonderful music at the Bluebird Cafe,Nashville, Tennessee
with Emmylou Harris, Ashley Cleveland, Pam Rose and Mary Ann Kennedy.

Thanks to nashvillehigh.

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
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

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!