And not that purple dinosaur who has ruined so many millions of parents lives. At any rate, Barney Frank unplugged, shredding Gingrich:
Is there a funnier congressman?
by John Cole| 26 Comments
This post is in: Election 2012, Humorous
And not that purple dinosaur who has ruined so many millions of parents lives. At any rate, Barney Frank unplugged, shredding Gingrich:
Is there a funnier congressman?
by John Cole| 58 Comments
This post is in: Gun nuts, Republican Stupidity, Assholes, Sociopaths
This week, the House of Representatives took time out of its busy schedule of going home for vacation to remind us, once again, why it has the strong support of about as many people who believe Rick Perry should be the next president of the United States. It approved a bill requiring states with strict gun regulations to honor concealed weapon carry permits issued in states where the gun rules are slightly more lax than the restrictions on who can dispense ice cream cones from a truck.
“This bill is about freedom,” said Representative Chris Gibson, a Republican from upstate New York. In this Congress, it’s hard to find anything that isn’t. Cutting Social Security is about freedom. Killing funds for Planned Parenthood is about freedom. Once again, we are reminded that, as Janis Joplin used to sing, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
Here’s an example of the way the House plan would work. California has very strict limits on who can get a permit to carry a concealed weapon, involving extensive background checks by local law enforcement. Utah, on the other hand, is really mellow about the whole thing. You don’t even have to live there to get a Utah permit. Just ask the 215,000 non-Utah folks who’ve gotten one. And, in Florida, “it is so easy that a staffer in one of our offices was able to complete the form in less than 30 minutes,” said Representative Alcee Hastings, a Florida Democrat.
Under this bill, California’s strict rules on gun permits are now expanded to include anybody who drives into the state waving a Florida or Utah permission slip.
The bill passed 272 to 154. It’s a law-enforcement nightmare for states that take gun regulation seriously. There’s no national database cops can check if they stop someone who’s carrying a gun with an out-of-state permit. Some state records aren’t available at all.
They hate Democracy unless the people vote the way they want. Sure, all you folks might have voted on sensible gun laws for your state, but Chris Gibson knows better.
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Assholes
The rundown on the WH shooter:
Federal authorities charged a 21-year-old Idaho man on Thursday with trying to assassinate President Obama. They said he had told friends that he believed the president was “the Antichrist” and that he “needed to kill him,” according to a complaint filed in federal court.
The man, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, of Idaho Falls, who is accused of firing a semiautomatic assault rifle at the residential floors of the White House last week, was also “convinced the federal government is conspiring against him” and had become “increasingly more agitated” before he disappeared from Idaho last month, the complaint said.
The court papers were filed in conjunction with a brief appearance by Mr. Ortega-Hernandez in a federal courthouse in Pittsburgh on Thursday afternoon. Mr. Ortega-Hernandez was arrested Wednesday at a hotel near the town of Indiana, Pa., and officials intend to bring him back to the District of Columbia to face the assassination charge, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Mr. Ortega-Hernandez — who is heavily tattooed, including the word “Israel” on his neck — spoke briefly during the appearance, replying “yes, ma’am” when asked by a magistrate judge if he understood that most of the legal proceedings would take place in Washington, according to The Associated Press.
***It was not clear for several days that someone had deliberately fired at the White House. But the Secret Service has now found at least two bullets. The agency would not say where the White House had been struck, but workers on Wednesday were examining a window overlooking the Truman Balcony, an area outside the second-floor residential quarters where the first family sometimes relaxes or hosts guests. A second round was found outside.
The shooting came from roughly 750 yards south of the White House, just outside the outer security perimeter. The security perimeter extends to the south edge of the Ellipse, where the National Christmas Tree is displayed. It is across Constitution Avenue from the more distant Washington Monument.
The crazy thing is that nuts like this have access to guns at all. And what is in the water in Idaho?
Having said that, it sure seems like a reach to charge the guy with attempted assassination. Randomly shooting at the WH is a very serious crime, but taking potshots from 750 yards is hardly an assassination attempt. Or was this a sniper rifle and not an assault weapon? Maybe there just isn’t anything else to charge him with other than attempted assassination.
by Zandar| 69 Comments
This post is in: Free Markets Solve Everything, Republican Stupidity, Blatant Liars and the Lies They Tell, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?, Security Theatre
Ten years after the Transportation Security Administration was created, Republicans have a bunch of conflicting, hypocritical nonsense to helpfully spout in order for you to approve of them grifting the system they made in the first place.
Reps. John Mica (R-Fla.) and Paul Broun (R-Ga.) want to give the Transportation Security Administration a series of drastic reforms for its birthday this week.
Days before the 10th anniversary of the TSA’s founding, and also one of the busiest travel periods of the year, the GOP lawmakers took the agency to task Wednesday using a new report titled “A Decade Later: A Call for TSA Reform.”
“Americans have paid $60 billion funding TSA and they are no safer today than they were before 9/11,” Broun said during a news conference at Washington’s Ronald Reagan National Airport announcing the report. Mica, who wrote the the law that established the TSA in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, agreed. Despite the fact that there have not been any incidents since that day, the TSA has not made flying safer, he said.
“We are safer today, but not because of TSA,” Mica said. “It’s because the American people will not allow an aircraft to be taken over. We saw on Flight 93, and almost every instance of a successful thwarting since, it’s been the passengers, the pilots and the crew.”
I’m no huge fan of the TSA but the notion that the guy who “wrote the law establishing the TSA” saying we’re no safer now than we were on September 10, 2010 is idiocy. The plan here is obvious, defund the TSA to the point it can’t do its job anymore, declare government unable to work, then privatize airport security by farming out everything to contractors to “save money” and create profit for the GOP’s corporate masters. Should anything happen to an airplane, blame the Dems.
The “government can’t possibly work” gameplan is in full effect here, just like similar plans to rid us of the Departments of Education, Labor, Energy, yadda yadda. Why, Zombie Ghost Pirate Bin Laden could steal the treasure of Monkey Island kill your entire family at any time. Government has failed you again!
Besides, real Americans just beat up any terrorists they see and don’t need to rely on others to protect themselves. Get to work making yourself safer, citizen. Alternately, we’d like to sell you this Zombie Ghost Pirate Terrorist repelling rock for a nominal fee…
My Creation, Is It Real, It’s My Creation, I Do Not KnowPost + Comments (69)
by Tim F| 51 Comments
This post is in: General Stupidity
Now Jeb Hensarling wants Democrats offer up some Medicare cuts in exchange for tax revenues. It seems awfully convenient, doesn’t it? Republicans get to keep low taxes for rich people, weaken the social safety net and cut a bunch of ads blaming Democrats for higher taxes and less Medicare (though not in the same ad, lest it give the wrong impression). Democrats should tell them to piss off and eat the trigger. It will hurt (as intended) but a hundred times less than the ridiculous ‘deal’ that is on the table now.
And let the goddamn tax cuts expire already. At least put them on the table and make the GOP give something up if it wants to keep them so bad.
Republicans do not want to cut Medicare eitherPost + Comments (51)
by John Cole| 80 Comments
This post is in: Blatant Liars and the Lies They Tell, Our Failed Media Experiment, Our Failed Political Establishment
Just checked memeorandum, and it looks like we are going to be spending the next couple weeks (and with the GOP’s history of success infusing bullshit into the political discussion, the next couple of decades) discussing this:
Here’s how it works- Obama says something, Republicans completely lie about it, the media notes the lie is catching on without ever actually calling it a lie, the Democrats have to waste resources and respond to the lie, Republicans double down, this sucks the life out of everything else for a couple week, and in ten years this will be conventional wisdom that Obama called Americans lazy, just like Al Gore claimed to invent the internet and the rest of the bullshit that wingnuts have adopted as received truths (snow in November refutes climate change, the more you cut taxes the more government revenue you raise, if a bombing campaign does not make people like you it means you didn’t bomb hard enough or your targeting was off, liberals lost Viet Nam, waterboarding isn’t torture, etc).
We’re so fucked as a nation.
by DougJ| 77 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Readership Capture
If it feels good, do it.