the parable of the good republican

 

(Luke 10:25-37 for a modern audience)


²⁵ And, behold, a certain MBA graduate stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit vast sums of money from my wealthy parents who manage thine hedge funds?

²⁶ He said unto him, What is written in the books of Trump? how readest thou?

²⁷ And he answering said, Thou shalt endeavour to have thine earnings taxed at the rate for capital gains; and neglect not to make use of the carried interest exemption.

²⁸ And He said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live exceeding well and see many paupers suffer in thy time.

²⁹ But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And what of my neighbour, who still labors for salaried wages?

³⁰ And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among a number of large corporate bankers, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.

³¹ And by chance there came down a certain liberal that way: and when he saw him, he went off to find governmental authorities to provide assistance.

³² And likewise a Sodomite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and he too went in search of the authorities, but in an exceeding swishy and fruity manner.

³³ But a certain Republican, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had obvious solicitude for him,

³⁴ And went to him, and looked on his wounds, and said, "Thou shouldst appear before a specialist for thine hurts. Hast thou health insurance of surpassing quality?" And, drinking unto himself a cup of wine of exceeding price and taste, he taught the man that the Lord God hath commanded the bankers to do him harm perforce in order to punish the man for homosexual behavior, or for failure to attend the proper house of worship. He suggesteth unto the man that he might borrow copious funds from his forebears to create a business concern, which would then allow him to obtain exceeding generous tax relief from the possible new emperor, who was knownst to be far kinder to job creators than the current ruler. As the Republican aided the man in this fashion, the man crawled himself to an inn and with his last coins secured himself a room, wherein he collapsed unto the bed. But the Republican pointed out that the man should takest the floor and the Republican the bed, for the Republican's charitable givings had been exceeding large in the previous tax year, and such generosity must be justly rewarded,

³⁵ And on the morrow when the Republican departed, he took the man's beast as reasonable payment for the Republican's time and advice, and said unto the innkeeper, "As thou art a business owner, perchance wouldst thou wish to contribute to the Romney/Ryan campaign? Verily I say unto thee that I am a bundler unto this campaign, and wouldst be mightily honored to accept thy donation unto their cause. Believeth me, when thine tax savings accrueth unto thee, thy generosity will be repaid many times over." Thus too did he secure substantial 501(c)(4) donations from those selfsame bankers who had beaten and robbed the now destitute man earlier in this tale.

³⁶ Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the corporate bankers?

³⁷ And he said, He that explained the teachings of Rand and Reagan unto him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.

 

Posted with Blogsy

the real mitt romney?

Listening to Stephanie Miller this morning, she had her former voice guy, Carlos Alazraqui, on, and they got to talking about Mitt, and who the "Real" Mitt is. The quest for the "Real" Mitt is apparently a serious one. Carlos thinks Massachusetts Governor and Reasonable Moderate Republican Mitt is the Real Mitt, which is a theory I see commonly held among my admittedly small and anecdotal circle of commie friends, but which I just don't get. Why would you assume that the Mitt who you find more likeable is the Real Mitt, and the current one you can't stand is some phony affect he's put on for this race? Isn't the reverse just as likely true? Or, maybe, the Real Mitt is neither of them?

You know who I think the Real Mitt is? This guy:

Hi Mitt!

...but he's never once tried to run for office as this guy, because this guy couldn't get elected "douchenozzle of the year" by the American Douchenozzle Society. "I mean, we all respect a good douchenozzle, but this guy just takes it too far," they'd say.

let me be the first to say what everyone else has already said

Tonight's The Newsroom drove home one point above all: Aaron Sorkin's preachings are far more tolerable when they're about fictional things rather than when they're basically more pious sounding regurgitations of stuff lots of other people have already said about real things that happened a year and a half ago. zOMG WHAT IF THEY DIDN'T LET THE DAILY SHOW LADY GO ON TEEVEE AND SAY THE SAME THING ABOUT THE DEBT CEILING DEBATE THAT LOTS OF OTHER PEOPLE WERE ALSO TOO SAYING ABOUT THAT SAME THING ALSO ON THE TEEVEE AROUND THAT SAME TIME?????? CAN AMERICA HAVE SURVIVED IN THE PAST? NO!

Sorkin does have a way of repackaging conventional wisdom in ways that he seems to think are bold and interesting, doesn't he? The heroic Bartlet Administration was very heroic and bold in the way that they usually wound up achieving Villager Consensus by Acting Like Grown-Up Republican Men Despite Being Liberal and Often Female, At Least According to Them. Studio 60 was so self-referential I kept thinking they must have gotten each week's script by colonoscopy. But at least they weren't directly rehashing stuff that was actually said about real events and pretending that this is somehow bold or edgy.

"let your women keep silence in the churches"

(That's 1 Corinthians 14:34, for those playing at home)

¡Ese torero maravillosa cabriolas poco se lleva una capa roja muy bonita!

Shorter His Eminence "100% all-male heterosexual masculine thunder" Timothy Michael Cardinal Dolan, Ph.D., D.D., SWCM ISO G*M, Cock Bar NYC 

"Love and Gratitude for the Sisters" 

It is because we deeply and truly honor the devotion and service of our Catholic sisters so much that we can tell them to shut the fuck up about poors and stop looking at us funny anytime we're in the same room as an underage boy, or Jesus is going to send their stupid bitch asses straight to hell.

Most of it is boilerplate "some of my best friends are Negroes/homos/camel jockeys/etc."-style buttering up, but by the end he wants you to know that, goddamnit, these nuns have been nice and all, but when did they start flapping their yaps without permission?

Contrary to what you may have heard, Rome loves the Sisters!  When you love someone, you show concern.  And, recently, the Vatican expressed some concerns about the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), a group that represents a lot of Sisters.

Right! See? We here at NAMBLA Worldwide love us some lady-folk. We're just concerned that they might have started thinking for themselves, is all, and we know that nobody wants that, so let's just nip it in the bud, am I right?

That expression of concern contained high praise for the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and even higher esteem for all the nuns in America.  The concord between the Holy See (which asked for and initiated the Leadership Conference of Women Religious  half-a-century ago) is strong enough for both sides to ask tough questions.

For example, the nuns ask: "Why are you guys spending all your time obsessing over men having sex with each other? And what are you doing with that boy there in the janitor's closet?" And then the bishops ask, "Bitch, who the fuck told you that you were allowed to speak?" It's the strength of the concord that allows such tough questions to be asked.

But the concern is real:  the Holy See loves the Sisters so much they want them as strong, faithful, and influential as possible, and legitimately worries about features threatening their very identity as “daughters of the Church,” to borrow Elizabeth Ann Seton’s favorite description of her sisters.

...and like any other daughter, we want them to exhibit that strength and faith by doing and saying only what we tell them to do and say, and only when we tell them to do or say it. It's called "equality."

Some say that Rome is too soft, and should have suppressed the Leadership Conference of Women Religious , because it is heretical; one letter even called them “Unitarians”!

Yes, "some say." You sisters wouldn't want "them" to get the wrong idea, right?

The other extreme claims that the stuffy, oppressive, sexist Vatican is scared of these independent, free-thinking women, and should leave them alone.

But, I mean, the Vatican? Sexist? How can we be sexist when we spend so much time trying to help you gals out with all those important doings up in your uteri? We know you can't handle that shit on your own, baby, so we're here to tell you what to do and take that weight off your shoulders.

But such caricatures hardly help.  All that helps is humility in both partners, and a profession of faith that, in the end, it’s not about one side or the other, not about the grievances of the Leadership Conference for Women Religious or the worries of the Vatican, but it’s all about Jesus and His Church.

Which, you know, He didn't appoint no Holy Mother to run it, see what I mean?

If the Sisters can survive the battlefields of the Civil War, they’ll survive the dramatic changes of the last five decades, and the current examination by Rome.

Yeah, you little ladies will be OK. Just stop thinking and everyone will be fine. OK, sweetie, you run along now. There's a good girl.

And what is never in question is our love and gratitude for the Sisters!

Gosh, that's swell, but the question we really had was: are you guys ever going to stop raping children and then covering it up?

Hello? Anything? Anybody there?

(I apologize profusely to Sadly, No! for stealing basically their entire format.)

for america!

some say...

Since it works so well for Fox, I thought I'd give the "some people say" style of reporting a try.

• Some say that Mitt Romney seems to have Asperger's Disease, but others say he's just an asshole.
• It has been said that Mitt Romney is being backed by the global Illuminati and that he will further their nefarious ends once in office.
• Some are talking about Mitt Romney's citizenship and whether he might actually be a Mexican citizen and therefore ineligible for the Presidency.
• Some people have suggested that the second-largest investor in News Corp., Saudi billionaire al-Waleed bin Talal, is an active financier of extreme Islamist and terrorist causes.
• It's been alleged that House Majority leader Eric Cantor is working on behalf of shady foreign banking interests.
• People are saying that Mitt Romney may very well be the Anti-Christ, given his deep Mormon roots and the controversial Mormon "White Horse Prophecy," which they argue closely matches Biblical accounts of the Anti-Christ.
• Over two years after the rumors first began appearing online, people are still talking about the allegations that Glenn Beck murdered a young girl in 1990.

There you have it. I report, you decide.

which of course, in german, means "a whale's vagina"

Sometimes, when you're a 24-hour news network and you have to vamp for a while to occupy your 24-hour news schedule, things don't quite come out right. Other times, when you're a 24-hour news network whose core principle is that knowing anything about anything could risk biasing your news coverage, you find yourself saying stupid things in important situations because, well, 24 hours, somebody's got to keep talking, even if we don't know what the fuck we're talking about.

Such was hapless CNN's fate on Sunday, as the Worldwide Leader in News found itself covering breaking news of the tragic and horrific shooting at a Sikh Gurdwara in Wisconsin, with, by all appearances, not a single person in the studio who could explain what a "Sikh" is or, even, to maybe Google the word "Sikh" and read what they found. There's an excellent if depressing blow-by-blow here. The short version is that CNN started getting reaction from Sikhs outside the Gurdwara, one of whom identified the worshipers as "Hindu Sikhs." Now, while I, a humble broke-ass writer, have no idea what that gentleman meant, I do know that Sikhism and Hinduism are not the same thing, and I don't even have to Google it (though I did, to make sure I could, because fact-checking or something). He could have been referring to the fact that gurdwaras are open to worshipers from all faiths, and perhaps a number of the worshipers at that gurdwara are Hindu. The various religions (Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism) that have been prominent on the subcontinent over the centuries have had periods where they related with one another in what we might call ecumenical terms; Hindus studied under Sufi shaykhs, holy sites were common to two or more faiths, etc., so this is perfectly reasonable. He could have been identifying them as Indian sikhs; "Ind" and "Hind" are variants of the same identifier, and use of the term "Hindu" as an ethnic or national marker would not be out of the question. The point is, the guy said something that made sense to him, but not being that guy, nobody else knows quite what he meant. CNN, the Worldwide Leader in News, where, again, somebody really ought to know this stuff or be able to take five minutes (even during breaking news!) to look it up, immediately latched on to the theological declaration of Some Guy in the Parking Lot and assured its viewers that Sikhs are not Muslim, they're Hindu. Well, and I repeat myself, no.

Throughout all of their confusion about what Sikhs actually ARE, CNN quickly and repeatedly knew that it could tell us what they are not, and how it's apparently very "unfair" that crazy white supremacist 9/11 revenge-seekers don't also know this (via):



Oh dear. CNN placed a great deal of emphasis on this point, that Sikhs have been "unfairly" targeted for attacks since 9/11 because American nuts easily confuse them with Muslims. Now, while it is true that Sikhs have faced reprisals since 9/11 from American nuts who easily confuse them with Muslims, you know what is also "unfair"? WHEN AMERICAN MUSLIM COMMUNITIES ARE ATTACKED OVER 9/11. Shit, I'd go so far as to say that it is unfair to attack any group on the basis of that group's religion, skin color, dress, appearance, or the like. But apparently CNN wants to hold out the possibility that a group could be "fairly" targeted if you were sure you knew who they were, like if the Sikhs had really pissed you off or something, or if you shot up a mosque instead since, you know, no mistaken identity there. I know this isn't the impression CNN intends to convey, but the Worldwide Leader in News ought to have some sense of what words mean and how they can convey implications to the listener/viewer.

Once the backlash from CNN's bizarre decision to retcon around 6 centuries of religious history and make Sikhs Hindus began to flow in, CNN decided to have on Rajwant Singh, Chair of the Sikh Council on Religion and Education, to describe what Sikhism is, which in context struck me as a little like having the mayor of Greensburg, Kansas, on to talk about the history of his town immediately after most of it had been destroyed by a tornado. While it's obviously important that Americans understand what Sikhs are, and apparently some don't, CNN's attempt to educate its audience could have come at a slightly more appropriate time, and maybe without the "zOMG why don't you nuts go attack the RIGHT brown folks?" sense that permeated their coverage.

what is the lesson here?

It's that everything they run on that godforsaken propaganda network is a lie. Every. Single. Thing.

random wonderments, 03 august 2012

• I wish him all the best, and wish his family maybe to buy some decent safety goggles or something?


• We're all wondering the same thing.


• Well, there was that one time when he dressed up like a condom...

• The upside of climate change, I guess? Nothing could possibly go wrong there.


• Forget VP; Get this guy on the Supreme Court, ASAP!


• Still better than the Bush endorsement.

i vaguely remember reading something about an eye, and a beam being in it, and another eye...well, whatever; i'm sure it wasn't important

Now that McCarthyite (No, wait! McCarthy was a Patriot! Must keep wingnut memes straight!) noted communist infiltrator and pederast Harry Reid has had the temerity to suggest that Mitt "Mitt" Romney's refusal to release his tax returns stems from the possibility that he didn't have to pay any taxes despite his obscene wealth, wingnuts the world over are OUTRAGED at this baseless attack against a political figure without any evidence to back it up. I thought, in the spirit of comprehensively tackling the problem of unsubstantiated allegation being treated as serious accusation when leveled against those seeking high office, I would helpfully list several other instances of exactly the same sort of thing that have been foisted upon the public over the last couple of decades. Unfortunately it's not comprehensive, but at least it gets us started:

• Bill Clinton ran coke through Mena Airport
• The Clinton Body Count
• Hillary Clinton had a lesbian affair with a Russian spy
• Hillary Clinton's lesbian lover is a terrorist agent of the Muslim Brotherhood
• Lesbian (?) Hillary Clinton had her lover Vince Foster murdered, also because he knew too much about the Clintons' super-illegal land dealings and also too crime of passion something something
• Pardongate
• Whitewater
• Wampumgate
• Travelgate
• Filegate
• John Kerry shot himself for a Purple Heart
• Swiftboating
• Climate change is all a giant conspiracy to something something RICH SCIENTISTS AND DEATH TO AMERICA
• Iraq was behind 9/11
• Iraq had WMD
• Birtherism
• Obama is a Muslim (or possibly the Antichrist!)
• Obama is a gay coke addict
• Eric Holder sold guns to Mexican drug cartels in order to increase support for gun control
• Obama supports reparations
• Obama won't release his transcripts because they prove he's a foreigner/he's stupid/he did gun-running for Muslim terrorists/he's a commie/whatever

None of this is to say that what Reid is doing is necessarily right, or good, just that, hey, this is the way politics is done nowadays and it's the people complaining loudest about Reid who are the ones who created this environment. The expectation that Democrats should be better than this even though Republicans are not, or that Democrats should unilaterally concede the "making shit up" ground to Republicans no matter how effective it proves to be, is naive at best, and comically ludicrous when it spews forth from the crowd that lies with impunity about every Democrat under the sun in order to score political advantage.



P.S. And, yeah, zOMG EVEN THE LIBERAL JON STEWART SAYS REID IS AN ASSHOLE! This is particularly not relevant for several reasons:

• Who gives a shit?
• Jon Stewart isn't particularly liberal.
• He ended that particular bit with a long look at all the whackaloon lies that have been invented whole-cloth by just one show on one right-wing TV network, but onward Fox goes without any concern over Jon Stewart's disapproval.

The only thing of note from Stewart's segment is the hypocrisy it takes for the right to suddenly pretend that they A) care what Jon Stewart has to say and B) are offended at unsubstantiated accusations being tossed at political figures.

How the stupid gets mainstreamed

Fucking actuarial tables, how do they work?

They include gradually raising the retirement age to compensate for the fact that we now live, on average, 14 years longer than when F.D.R. signed Social Security into law.

Look, I don't expect Alan Simpson to understand this stuff; he's a pissed-off old dude who would be shouting at people for stepping over the line on the shuffleboard court if Obama hadn't stupidly plucked him out of retirement to give him another crack at fucking the country over. Plus, before he lost his mind to age he was a senator, which is a job that anybody with half a functioning brain is disqualified from getting. But Bill Keller until recently was executive editor of the New York Fucking Times and is actually believed by his readers to be able to tell the difference between his ass and a hole in the ground. And so I'd love to know how it's possible that Bill Keller doesn't realize that "life expectancy at birth" is the wrong statistic for this particular argument, and that the correct statistic, "life expectancy at age 65," shows that the increase he's talking about is roughly half of what he says it is.


(via)

well the jerk store called, and they're out of you!

Completely predictable, but funny nonetheless.

i'm not that dumb, am i?

Why is it that the broadcasters at any event like a royal wedding, major funeral, or Olympic opening ceremonies feel like they have to explain everything for us like we're idiots? "That was JK Rowling, who is famous for having written the blockbuster 'Harry Potter' series of young adult books, which have sold millions of copies worldwide. Books are collections of words and possibly pictures printed on paper and bound together in order to be read. Words, you may know, are combinations of sounds intended to convey thoughts and concepts in verbal communication, and typically recorded in written form as several strings of letters." I'm only making part of that up. Am I wrong, do we need this stuff explained like this?

Update: Also, too. They really do think we're that dumb.

let me try something...

Other countries that aren't America are stupid. People who live in countries that aren't America are stupid and probably not even real people. The Olympics are stupid because we have to pretend that countries that aren't America are not stupid, and act like we like them when we should probably be doing War on them. The Opening Ceremonies of the stupid Olympics are stupid because the people who are in them are not Americans and probably not really people, but here they are doing some stupid not American dance when meanwhile they should be dead because we did War on their stupid not American countries.

Mr. Hiatt, I can has job please?

(via)

teardrops rolling down on my face, trying to forget my feelings of love

Back when I was a youth individual who was not the right height to be in sport, I used to have conservative friends tell me that conservatives were better than liberals because liberals are always appealing to emotion and squishy feelings while conservatives are all about cold, hard logic. That was total nonsense 15 years ago--movement conservatism moved from fact to emotion half a century ago when it decided the best way to take and hold power was to appeal to white America's racism and religious bigotry--but I wonder if any conservatives would even try to advance the argument now. The modern conservative gets drummed out of the club for accepting the science of climate change and/or evolution over religious pablum and voodoo capitalist wishing. The entire tax and economic platform of the Republican Party is built on an appeal to "morality," in the bizarro Randian universe where "morality" equates to "I got mine fuck you." We can't touch defense spending because we're terrified of everyone and everything, and you can't feel pride in America if we're not spending on military hardware as the next 20 nations combined. Gay rights, reproductive rights, contraception (WE'RE STILL ARGUING ABOUT CONTRACEPTION, FOR FUCK'S SAKE!); these debates are all had on Republican terms that are completely emotional, and of course only Republicans' emotions are allowed to have any relevance.

I was put in mind of this by a couple of things that have come out of Romney's campaign lately. First was Mitt's typically creepy reaction to the Aurora shootings, which was like "guns don't kill people, people kill people" except if you tried to make that point just after you'd eaten half a pan of pot brownies.

“Well, this person shouldn’t have had any kind of weapons and bombs and– and– and other devices. And– and it was illegal for him to have many of those things already...But he had them. And– and so we can– we can sometimes hope that just changing a law will make all bad things go away. It won’t. Changing the heart of the American people may well be what’s essential to improve the lots of the American people.”

As the great Charlie Pierce might say, this is all my balls, and that Mediaite piece is correct to note that if Obama had said something that stupid and borderline offensive, he'd have been getting reamed for it by right wing media all week. "Changing the heart of the American people"? Blow me, Mitt. The American people didn't massacre a theater full of innocents; that was one crazy person with weapons he was able to buy legally, despite being crazy, and one of which had a magazine that could hold a hundred fucking bullets. This is because we have no gun control laws to speak of, because Republicans long ago decided that the Bill of Rights should be trimmed down to the Bill of Right, and also because our mental health system is a complete disgrace, because Republicans long ago decided that the only legitimate function of government was to facilitate the upward redistribution of wealth from middle and working class Americans to bankers and defense contractors. As for his position on the efficacy of lawmaking or governance (the thing he's supposed to be running to do), I'm not sure if Mitt thinks we should eliminate all laws because, you know, bad things happen anyway, but that's the logical endpoint of what he said. The result is a total lack of real ideas to help combat the problem of dangerous people getting guns and then using them, just a nakedly bullshit emotional appeal to change Americans' hearts.

Second was Walking Bag of Puke John Sununu, on the Oh Really Factory, last night.

[Obama's] you built -- "you didn't build it" moment I think is really resonating around the country. (not really) And I know he's trying to walk away from it saying it's out of context but when you look at the context the context is worse. (no, it's not) And even worse than the context is the tone and the -- and the really arrogant and insulting way he's addressing people who have had success.

I want odds on how many more weeks John can go before the words "uppity n*****" slip out of his mouth. But here, again, it's all about feelings; Obama was arrogant, he insulted business owners, the Democrats are being mean to bankers, blah blah blah. Screw the facts, screw proper context (which, oh by the way, the fact that Romney is running a purely emotional campaign and also running maybe the most dishonest campaign in history, these are not unrelated things), nothing matters but how I feel and how I can make you feel. It's a lousy way to conduct your politics.

not good

This, if accurate, does not sound promising...

One Arabic report has it that that the al-Assad regime has removed hundreds of Sunni officers from responsibilities for safeguarding chemical weapons stores and commanding helicopter gunships. They are giving these sensitive responsibilities to officers from the minority Alawite Shiite community instead, which dominates the upper echelons of the Baath government and military.

random wonderments

• Mitt Romney repeatedly defends President Obama's job creation record.


• I'm pretty sure that our repeated hacking of Iran's nuclear facilities, assuming it is us doing the hacking, is an act of war, but at least this particular hack had some style to it.


• Up next on Fox! A creepy old man harasses young children with insane ravings!


• Chick-Fil-A adds exciting new menu option.


• Those fine Chick-Fil-A folks are also warning families of the dangers of Muppets toys, which have been known to get kids' heterosexuality caught in them and then spit the kids back out as homos.


• Mitt attacks Obama's cowardly plan for Afghanistan pull-out in 2014, then announces his bold plan to pull-out from Afghanistan in 2014.

if only they would stop making us shoot ourselves!

Assuming anyone were reading this, I would ask: "Have any of the vast numbers of people reading this seen the "Mormon" episode of South Park? The one with the song about Joseph Smith?" And then many of you would laugh, and say, "Oh yeah, that was a funny show," or something like that. Anyway, where was I?

Charles Lane, America's Dumbest Editorial Page: "Europe’s role in U.S. gun culture"

Charles Lane, he wrote a column, dum dum dum dum dum...

Shorter:

How can Europeans bemoan American gun culture when they're the ones who keep forcing us to buy their sweet, sweet guns? In fact, I think Europe was the real shooter here!

Exhibiting the same sober, reasoned line of thinking that blames dirt poor coca farmers in Colombia every time some rich white American kid ODs on coke, Charles believes that the real gun problem in America is not that we keep buying them or that nobody seems to have the brains or balls to push for proper regulation of them, but that these damn furriners keep selling them to us. No need to have a serious discussion about our total lack of firearm regulations, or our broken mental and behavioral health system! James Holmes was carrying a Glock, so it's all Europe's fault! This is actually orders of magnitude more stupid than blaming violent movies or video games for these kinds of shootings, and that's already really, really stupid.

Say nothing of the fact that it's not European gun manufacturers' responsibility to forego a marketplace because that marketplace has a batshit insane culture about their product. You don't expect McDonalds to refuse service to anybody with a BMI over 20, do you? What really takes us into the realm of the colossally stupid is that, while Holmes did have a couple of Glocks, the first two weapons he used in the massacre were an American-made shotgun and an American-made assault rifle! It was only after his AR-15 jammed (damn you shoddy American workmanship!) that he finally switched to the Glock. So add "The Actual Facts of the Case" and "Economics" to the List of Things Charles Lane Writes About Without Knowing Anything About Them.

A prohibitive tariff on weapons from Europe wouldn’t end U.S. gun violence, but it might reduce risks at the margin.

No, seriously, it wouldn't. It might strengthen the domestic gun industry though, so, um, woo-hoo? USA? USA?

The last line is my favorite; after noting that the EU has already restricted sales of sodium thiopental to America since it is used for lethal injections (Chuck never passes up an opportunity to bitch about somebody interfering with his favorite pasttime, killing criminals), Lane notes that Holmes might face the death penalty, but that, because of the sodium thiopental restrictions, "Thank goodness his blood wouldn’t be on Europe’s hands." Wow. All this time, these shooting massacres have just been European bullies playing "stop hitting yourself" with poor, innocent America. Um, USA? USA?

a thought on colorado

Aside from boilerplate shouting about The Only Constitutional Amendment That Conservatives Recognize, has anybody actually made the case as to why 100-round drums or 33-round clips should be legal? I don't understand how outlawing these things would violate the Second Amendment, since nobody is curtailing anybody's right to own any gun or type of gun. What is the actual justification for their continued legality? Self-defense? Because if you couldn't bring an attacker down in the first 15 shots, you're sure to stop him with the next 18? Hunting? What kind of deer are we hunting that require a hundred semi-automatic rounds to bring down? Are they cyborg deer? Because maybe if they were cyborg deer, I could understand.

Seriously, what am I missing?

not much worth saying

Senseless violence and tragedy. Thoughts go out to the victims and their families.