Thoughts on high capacity magazines

The United States won World War 2 and kept South Korea from being overrun by Communists with an 8-round magazine capacity. To wit:

After that, military magazine capacity went to 20 rounds in time for Vietnam and we lost that and every mostly unnecessary war since.

So ... if you want to lose every fight you get yourself into, go with large magazines.

Headline of the Day

Judge who ruled against Obama’s recess appointments has long list of ties to republican party shenanigans dating back to Oliver North

Fearless prediction: This ruling will be overturned and Obama's recess appointments will stand.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Something a little different. I have pre-ordered this new album. If you order albums from Amazon, a lot of them now come with AutoRip which means you can download them while you're waiting for the physical CD. Pretty cool.

Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell give the BBC an interview about their new duet CD Old Yellow Moon live Jan 21 2012. The good news for UK/Europe is that Emmylou says June 2013 is being lined up for a leg of the CD tour, I have left a couple of buffering stops in the video, I would normally edit these out but as it is an interview have left them in. Please click like and comment in the box below, thanks Ally.

Thanks to TakenAlsoAlso, UK.

Ho Hum...

Nothing much going on today that pops my cork.

The righties are going farther right. The ones that know what's going on are gaming the system to win with a minority. If ya can't beat 'em, cheat 'em.

Harry Reid snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Again.

Clinton and Kerry kicked the GOP House's ass. That was the bright spot of the week.

Ho hum...

You and me, Nuge

It's a slow day so pardon me for once again giving this asshole nobody space. It's Bob Cesca's fault. Heh. Many links at site.

Yes, Nugent not only threatened the president again, but he implied that he and his "buddies" would stage some sort of geriatric armed revolt if the president continues to push for new gun safety laws. I used the phrase "another chat" because this is the second time in less than a year that Nugent has popped off with some sort of not-so-subtle threat against the president. Rewind back to April, 2012 when Nugent said at the annual NRA Convention, "If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year." The Secret Service responded to that one by paying a visit to Nugent's compound. Oh, and you might recall how, at a concert back in 2007, Nugent said that Barack Obama can "suck on my machine gun."

Yes, one of the gun culture's A-list spokesmen -- and a Republican campaign prop.

A-list? Really?! Asshole? Anachronism? Anarchist?

So here's what he said at the SHOT Show last week via a Guns.com video attained by Media Matters:

I'm part of a very great experiment in self-government where we the people determine our own pursuit of happiness and our own individual freedom and liberty not to be confused with the Barack Obama gang who believes in we the sheeple and actually is attempting to re-implement the tyranny of King George that we escaped from in 1776. And if you want another Concord Bridge, I got some buddies.

Do we have to go over this again? Nugent and his buddies would be utterly wiped out. Full stop. Actually, they might as well be threatening to ride velociraptors into the White House, armed with magic wands and accompanied by Space Monkey Gleek. It's just that ridiculous. The whole notion of an armed revolt and secession from the United States failed miserably in 1865, and the revolutionaries at that time were headed by skilled West Point commanders like J.E.B. Stuart and Robert E. Lee who directed massive armies. These gun nutjobs today have -- who? -- octogenarian D-list electric guitar player Ted Nugent and a gaggle of his redneck disciples. Good luck, boys.

In fact, you know what? Bring it on. Seriously. I'd like to see Nugent try his hand at something like this -- to actually follow through on one of his kneejerk treasonous threats. But considering how he chickened out of the Vietnam draft, we can safely assume that Nugent prefers to only shoot at things that don't fire back.

Note to Nuge: Your "buddies" won't show up anyway, so I got an idea - you and me, Nuge. One on one. We're both old farts so it'd be even. No guns, just you and me. Oh, and a few TV crews to document you saving the nation from the likes of me.

Besides, it'll be fun for the country to watch you get your mouth shut once and for all - swollen shut for a while, anyway - by a godless commie fuck pussy liberal. One who also avoided the draft. By enlisting instead of shittin' his pants.

Update:

It occured to me that if Nuge's dick was as big as his mouth, he could be a porn star. Then it further dawned on me that he could be a porn star anyway. With that mouth he could take an even bigger porn star, if you get my drift. If he could find one that would stick it in a garbage hole.

Poll of the Day

From an article in the LATimes. It looks better there and you can vote if you wish.

Should the president's inaugural speech have included more "outreach" to Republicans?
Yes No
7% 93%

In other words, fuck 'em.

Republicans may have their finger on the faint pulse of an America that is passing away, but Obama’s inaugural address spoke to the emerging majority in this country. Perhaps that is really what Republicans found unsettling in the president’s speech.

The dinosaurs weren't too happy with the meteor either. RIP.

Obama 1; Netanyahu 0

There's a lot on the interwebs today about the results of Israel's elections. My favorite is Andy Sullivan's.

Bibi is still highly likely to be prime minister for a while, but also as decapitalized by his re-election as Obama was recapitalized by his. That leaves an opening. In my view, the president and next secretary of state should now lay out a detailed, mapped, two-state division that the US supports and present it to both Fatah and Jerusalem. If Jerusalem balks, the US should switch its vote at the UN to abstain on Palestinian statehood. If the PA balks, we'll discover something important about them: their willingness to sacrifice for a state alongside and at peace with a Jewish one. Hamas? Leave them out of it for a while, or open up a back-channel. But as Obama's power waxes and Netanyahu's wanes, it would be crazy not to seize the moment.

And that moment is defined by a core fact: the Israeli public is clearly not on the same page as America's neoconservatives right now, not as fixated on the same things they are, and more concerned about their own core well-being than geopolitics or apocalyptic family psychodramas. What the American electorate just told the GOP, the Israeli electorate just told its own far-right government: moderate or get out of the way (my em). Which could be put more simply.

Meep meep.

Heh.

Four more years, oh thank God

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford being grateful. Here's just the last three ¶:

Which leads us straight to perhaps the largest gratitude offering of all. It is a kind of stunned, dizzy appreciation for the now-permanent truism the Obama era hath ushered in, once and for all and never to be repealed. Do you know it?

It goes thusly: When all the old, clenched white males are, en masse, apoplectic, when all the clammy, bloated representatives of the Old Guard could not be more full of hate and resentment for the polyphonic, multicolored direction of the nation, when it is very possible the seeds of calmly chaotic diversity and deep intelligence Obama has planted will bear fruit for decades to come, this is how you know. This is the kind of evolution you want.

Don’t worry, there is plenty of time to complain, find flaw, hold presidential feet to the fire. But let us, just for a moment, be glad those feet are his.

Amen and no shit.

Headline of the Day

Fox & Friends: Obama’s Inauguration Day Happens To Be The ‘The Most Depressing Day Of The Year’

Bwahahahaha! Suck it, bitchez!

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.