Steve Coll, in the New Yorker, on Mitch McConnell and “The Tea Party’s Revenge“:
… Like a guerrilla army, the Tea Party is learning how to influence public opinion even when it loses a conventional battle. The budget caps that Obama conceded in 2011 have already enshrined in law a portion of the movement’s draconian fiscal agenda. And although Cruz and his allies in the House won no additional cuts this time, they managed to spread magical thinking among their followers about a possible future debt default. (The next debt-ceiling deadline arrives early next year.) Cruz and the others systematically promoted the idea—the fantasy—that, if the Treasury Department were prohibited from issuing any new debt to finance interest payments and government operations, the country would do just fine. The global economy, this story goes, far from collapsing into crisis, would prove resilient, and, while some nonessential federal departments might wither for lack of funds, that would only demonstrate how Americans could get by with a much smaller government.
This campaign has been dismissed by some Wall Street analysts as just a form of coercive bargaining. Washington is a grand opera of phony crises. Congress has raised the debt ceiling more than seventy times since 1960 without forcing an actual default. It’s tempting to believe that even a diva like Cruz, who, after all, holds a law degree from Harvard and evidently aspires to higher office, would never countenance a final default. Yet history is rife with political radicals who have shocked the world by doing just what they always said they would: Confederate secessionists, for example, who seem to inspire so many Tea Partiers today…
As recently as 2007… it still seemed possible that a modernizing Republican Party might build a formidable political coalition of Latinos, evangelicals, disaffected Catholic Democrats, high-tech entrepreneurs, libertarians, social and educational reformers, and eclectic independents. Instead, as Geoffrey Kabaservice puts it in his history of the Republican decline, “Rule and Ruin,” movement conservatives have “succeeded in silencing, co-opting, repelling, or expelling nearly every competing strain of Republicanism from the party.” Political purges have no logical end point; each newly drawn inner circle of orthodoxy leaves a former respected acolyte suddenly on the outside. That a Tea Party-influenced purification drive now threatens such a loyal opportunist and boardroom favorite as Mitch McConnell seems a marker of the times.
McConnell’s would-be usurper is Matt Bevin, a businessman who owns a bell company; his campaign slogan is “Let Freedom Ring.” He told Glenn Beck recently, “We have got to wean people from this idea of free lunches.” (He might start with fellow Kentuckians; their state pays sixty-six cents in federal taxes for every dollar of federal spending it takes in.) Bevin pleaded, “What we need to tell the American people is that the party’s over.” Presumably, he didn’t mean the Grand Old Party, but the American people may be forgiven for thinking that he did.
***********
What’s on the agenda for the start of another week?
dmsilev
Arguing with a laser. So far, the laser is winning.
Pogonip
Since Halloween is this week, may I recommend the Fat Vampire series of e-books by Johnny B. Truant. On sale this week. Funny and well-written. No, I am not related to Mr. Truant, nor do I get a cut of the proceeds.
Schlemizel
@Pogonip:
I just check out goodreads take on Fat Vampire – it sounds like a good time, THANKS!
I need to be entertained while waiting for the coming apocalypse. My guess last time was that they really did mean it this time & were going to kill us but sanity prevailed at the end. Each blow from these nutbags is just softening up the nation fo believe the death blow is not going to hurt.
I know the similarity to pre-Civil War America has been made many times but it seems to me nobody has mentioned the obvious, particularly when discussion ‘peak wingnut’. My assumption is peak wingnut will look a lot like peak slave supported secessionist. With the same devastating results magnified 1000x because of the times we live in. Always the optimist (!) I am hoping the collapse and destruction of the US can be localized to just this nation & not cause a global collapse.
Scott S.
@Pogonip: Is Truant any relation to the Johnny Truant from “House of Leaves”? ‘Cause that would be weird…
MomSense
I think my youngest brought the pestilence home from a Halloween party and generously shared it with me. I have a crazy couple of days at work with deadlines to meet. Loading up on Advil, cold medicine and coffee.
raven
Joe has this dude on right now.
raven
@MomSense: I feel like shit too. Long weekend trip and the day out in the wind by the fire Saturday seems to have knocked me back.
JPL
@Schlemizel: One of the most understood part of the secession movement, or so I’m told, is that the slave owners were really, really, really good to their slaves. Also, too what is wrong with America is the ten commandments.
The Republic of Stupidity
Ah yes… the contemporary GOP…
An ever increasing percentage of an ever shrinking demographic…
I look forward to the day they represent 100% of nothing…
p.a.
Tell Bevin we could start by privatizing the TVA, giving his fellow citizens the freedom to freely enjoy the free market unsubsidized electrical rates they are free to pay once they are off the government teat.
Mustang Bobby
Andy Kroll has a good piece at Mother Jones about how Minnesota is reclaiming its liberal heritage inspired by the late Paul Wellstone.
I’m losing a day at work to go to Sebring to pick up my car after emergency repairs were required on the transmission.
Pogonip
@Scott S.: I sure hope that Johnny B. Truant is a pseudonym. Schlemizel, enjoy!
danielx
Let’s see, enjoying a couple of the fall days that almost make living in Indiana worthwhile, hopefully finishing an Excel model (and getting paid!), more home winterizing activities…and taking the daughter unit to her first real job, with a paycheck and everything!
MomSense
@raven:
Sorry to hear that you aren’t feeling well.
Baud
I love the irony of the fact that Kentucky has set up the best health exchange website. I don’t know what impact it will have on the election, but it’s still cool.
Baud
@MomSense: @raven:
Feel better.
JPL
@MomSense: He’s still listening to Morning Joe so he can’t be that sick. hmm, Maybe that statement is backwards.
IowaOldLady
I fired my agent and am engaged in the painful process of querying for a new one.
WereBear
@The Republic of Stupidity: Congratulations, you’re the King of Nothing!*
*The Honeymooners
WereBear
@IowaOldLady: Ack! Like breaking up a marriage… sorry to hear.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mustang Bobby: Was up in MSP for a week to visit my sis this summer and I can say this with a certainty: Minnesota is a whole ‘nother country.
fka AWS
Dick Cheney is being interviewed on Morning Ho. Ugh.
Phylllis
Back to the office after being out almost all of last week for a conference. They used to fun and refreshing, now they just wear me out. I am so ready to retire from this job.
JPL
@fka AWS: Let me guess, his daughter is running for Senator and he didn’t go fishing with Enzi. The strangest comment reported was the President should not have reported the death of bin Laden. It’s apparent that he doesn’t understand the internet because there was quite a buzz before it was reported.
My son was playing a game and notified me that there was a lot of buzz on the site about a high profile person being killed in Pakistan.
also, too.. my internet knowledge is limited cuz I have no idea how you play games with folks all over the world. lol
amk
@Mustang Bobby: Great read. Hope the dems in TX and FL would learn from it.
Kay
@Baud:
You really do end up pulling for Beshear, just because his approach is such a contrast to the grim, joyless hand-wringing or outright opposition:
If you’re going to sign on in a state like Kentucky, may as well go all-in.
IowaOldLady
Beshear really came across as a someone who cares about governing and knows how to get things done.
OzarkHillbilly
@amk:
Nahhh. Big difference between FL, TX and MN: The people in MN are genuinely nice. Not so sure about FL but Texans are just a$$holes.
Baud
@Kay:
He needs to run for Rand Paul’s seat when the time comes.
Fred
The Tehadi strain of “fuck you and the yankee horse you rode in on” isn’t new.
In 1978-9(Jimmy Carter 55 mph regs in force) I was riding through the hills of Tennessee going down a switchback narrow two lane road. It was paved and even had lines painted on it. There was a hairpin turn that just missed a heart stopping drop off. If you went off there you would have plenty of time to pray. And there big as life was an honest to goodness official traffic sign: SPEED LIMIT 55 MPH.
The message was clear: “Screw you and yer Yankee Gubmint!”
Secede already and welcome to it. Just pay back the last couple of decades of moochin’ offen our Yankee Gubmint, please. A couple trillion ought to defray the costs a bit.
Kay
@Baud:
I know he’s termed-out and maybe it is just “good government” or a “legacy” but my sense is he’s running for something after this.
Good for him.
I myself think going from governor to senator would suck, because governors have much more power in a practical, get-things-done kind of way.
Baud
@Kay:
What else is there, unless he’s angling for a cabinet appointment?
Keith G
After pricing various options and tussling with my recently acquired stinginess, I figure I will pop in to a nearby Best Buy at opening today and purchase a 32″ Samsung LED Smart HDTV for $399. Functionally, it will be used more as a monitor than a conventional TV. I have a cable bringing wifi, but not TV. I live in a part of central Houston where over-air digital signals are easily received with a simple outside dish antenna.
Anyone have experience with this or other smart TVs?
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: President?
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Maybe. I think he’ll need more than having launched a successful website. But I don’t know that much about him.
C.V. Danes
And why, exactly, does the “party have to be over?” So that the rich can live their lives of unbridled excess while the rest of us fight each other for the scraps?
Kay
@Baud:
Well, why? That is now the measure of greatness.
I’d like to see more ex-governors run, so I hope he does. Nothing wrong with a real primary, as long as it’s not packed with grifting clowns. It makes the nominee stronger and creates a real debate.
Also, hopefully Republicans will have a full roster of grifting clowns, so good contrast.
Mustang Bobby
@Fred: One of many of my favorite moments from The West Wing: “Can we have it back, please?”
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: All I know is he is a Democratic Governor of a Republican leaning state who has managed to get the working poor of his state healthcare. Doesn’t sound like much, but it is more than MO’s own Jay Nixon has accomplished, and it is a start.
Whether it is enuf or not is to be determined, but the American electorate seems to have a fondness for governors of late.
Baud
@Kay:
Good point.
NotMax
@C.V. Danes
The very essence of ‘trickle-down’ policies.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
True. I don’t know if he’s too conservative for national Democrats in other areas. But he’s certainly earned the right to be in the ring of he chooses.
Honus
@Fred: The 55mph national speed limit on divided highways was proposed and signed by Richard Nixon in 1974, well before jimmy carter ran for president. As far as 55 mph signs on winding rural mountain roads, this has been the case forever in places like Tenessee, West Virginia and Kentucky.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
Just got done with a three day stretch of 12 hour nights. Didn’t do a fucking thing (except abstract histories for the entire next week’s patients) all weekend. Got an emergency case 90 minutes before I was supposed to be done, so now I’m all hopped up on adrenaline. Trying to counteract it with wine. Not feeling hopeful.
I have had 6 hours of sleep in the last 72 hours. I can’t sleep during the day very well.
More fodder for that asshole cornerstone.
Fuck you, stalker.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Keith G:
Well, we have a bluray that has the funcionality of a smart TV. Basically, you get hulu and netflix and pandora and the like built in.
I would suggest a surround sound system.
rikyrah
The Obama Diary has a great thread up of real people whose lives have been changed by Obamacare. Let’s spread the word:
http://theobamadiary.com/2013/10/27/obamacare-stories-how-the-aca-affects-you/
rikyrah
In case we didn’t already know..
Shopping While Black
is real as a muthafucka.
……………………..
Fourth New York shopper, pointing at Macy’s, makes racial profiling allegations
Art Palmer says four plainclothes cops questioned him three blocks away from the flagship store after he bought $320 worth of Polo dress shirts and ties.The latest accusation echoes those by Trayon Christian and Kayla Phillips against Barneys and by actor Robert Brown against the same Macy’s.
…When Palmer returned to the store the next day to complain, a Macy’s manager blamed it on the cops and said officers frequently come into the store to monitor surveillance videos without permission, according to Palmer.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/4th-nyc-shopper-accusing-macy-race-profiling-claims-article-1.1498427#ixzz2j1GoWaNa
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud:
I would suspect that that is what would stand in Jay Nixon’s way, but who knows? I voted for him twice as Gov, but would never vote for him as Pres. in a primary.
Paul in KY
Heading to New Orleans Wed afternoon for the Voodoo Music Festival. Headliners are Pearl Jam, NIN, The Cure.
Should be righteous.
C.V. Danes
@NotMax: I think it is more properly described as “tinkle-down” economics ;-)
Paul in KY
@Baud: We have some real good data processors in the fair Commonwealth.
nastybrutishntall
@rikyrah: The blood boils. Even in liberal NYC…
mai naem
@JPL: The easy thing to say with Cheney is that every time his mouth is open, he’s lying. Actually, you really know he’s lying when he does that stupid combo of kinda squinting and turning his heads so that you can really see the Bells Pallsy thing going. He thinks it looks like a VIP having deep thoughts in a Hollywood movie, but goddamnit, I know he’s just lying.
As far as Beshear isn’t he a medical doctor? Also too, maybe if Hillary runs, she can have him as the VP.
OzarkHillbilly
@mai naem:
With Cheney, a lie is as deep a thought as he is capable of.
Citizen_X
Now there’s a business to take America forward in the 21st century.
Paul in KY
@mai naem: Gov Beashear is a lawyer by trade.
Woodrowfan
@Fred: Nixon signed the 55 MPH law, not Carter. 1974. (sorry Honus, didn’t see your post)
I hate how the repugs have convinced the US (even Democrats) that the worst part of the 1970s energy crisis was during Carter, when it was really under Nixon and Ford after the 1973 Arab oil embargo. The 1979 Iran embargo was under Carter but not as bad.
handsmile
@nastybrutishntall:
As I trust you know (by the snark of your comment), the NYC Police Department under Commissioner Ray Kelly is anything but “liberal.”
And had it not been for federal judge Shira Scheindlin’s decision that his “stop-and-frisk” policies were unconstitutional, the bastard would likely have been named Secretary of Homeland Security. (By the way, was there any thread discussion here about Obama’s very interesting and unexpected nomination of Jeh Johnson for that post?)
One of the very many reasons I am delighted (and am volunteering for his campaign) that Bill de Blasio will become the next Mayor of New York City is that Kelly is almost certain to be given the “opportunity” to resign and Police Department policies/practices to be reformed.
handsmile
@Paul in KY:
I note that you go to a lot of music festivals (ya lucky bastid!). Are you a music journalist/music professional by any chance, or just some unreconstructed hippie? :)
bjacques
@Citizen_X: Chico’s Bail Bonds should sue.
Paul in KY
@handsmile: Boy oh boy, would that be cool! Nah, I’m just a boomer that discovered these things (outdoor rock festivals) about 3 years ago & I’m hooked. Too young to go to Woodstock, Altamont, Atlanta, etc.
Best & cheapest way to see a bunch of excellent bands. I am a civil servant by trade.
Hope you get to go to one sometime. I think you would like them. Get to meet alot of cool, young people. Just about all of them very polite & happy to see whomever we are waiting in the heat/rain to see. Music is a great converation starter.
ThresherK
On Sunday we all learned that the WS game 3 was the first ended on an obstruction call.
After last night, can someone tell me if another WS game ended on a non-pitch? Balking in the winning run, successful pickoff, wild pickoff? I’ll even accept catcher’s interference.
Dead Ernest
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
Ouch. I feel for you Brother/(Sister?).
With so little sleep, you might now be able to sleep during the day.
When I end up with that little sleep it seems all my decisions are wrong. You must know you need the sleep. Hope you try and are successful. Sweet dreams.
Goblue72
@mai naem: that’s the doctor dude from Star Trek DS9.
catclub
@OzarkHillbilly: “All I know is he is a Democratic Governor of a Republican leaning state who has managed to get the working poor of his state healthcare.”
What a contrast with the GOP governors of Dem leaning states! It is like they are forced to toe the national GOP line, which means they have to screw their citizens. Not the best formula for re-election.
OTOH: Walker has already been re-elected. So what do I know.
handsmile
@Paul in KY:
Been there, done that. Now it’s hard to get the Hoveround through the kidz.
In summer, there are a number of multi-band festivals in NYC, but nothing of the magnitude of say, Bonaroo, which I recall you’ve attended for the past couple of years. I’m likely to go to at least one of these each summer, but at this point my preferred venue/experience for listening to music is clubs or concert halls. NYC provides no limit to those opportunities (which I indulge weekly), but of course it means that I’ll no longer be hearing Pearl Jam live. And for that, there are tugs of envy for you.
Have a magnificent time in N’awlins, my friend!
rikyrah
FreedomWorks Blogger Shocked By Texas Turning Blue Under His Nose
Author: Egberto Willies October 25, 2013 6:21 pm
Texas is the sleeping giant in the United States. It turns out that Battleground Texas is starting to scare the hell out of the Right Wing Tea Party Texas Republican Party.
It turns out that FreedomWorks blogger Shane Wright wrote a blog piece that lays it out pretty well. He says,
Top-level Democrats and OFA strategist are on the ground all across Texas registering hundreds of new voters every week. Currently Battleground Texas reports that they are on pace to register approximately 600,000 new Democrats by the 2014 midterms. Considering Rick Perry won the gubernatorial race in 2010 by less than 700,000 votes, Texas could be in real trouble. Mathematically speaking, the path to the White House could be lost for an entire generation if Democrats are able to turn Texas.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/10/25/freedomworks-shook-core/
Paul in KY
@handsmile: Thank you! Am glad you are in NYC with all the opportunities to see live music.
Will host a brew for you when I’m down there :-)
Jay C
@handsmile:
Well, your volunteering efforts seem to be paying off – a new poll (NYT/Siena College) shows Big Bill with an almost incredible 45-point lead over his GOP rival. At this point, the main point of debate seems to be which rooms Chiara and Dante are going to get at Gracie Mansion……
And Ray Kelly is definitely going to need to get cracking on his resume: the embarrassment over “Stop-and-Frisk” was bad enough: I hadn’t known (if the guy from Macy’s is correct) that the NYPD were enforcing “Shopping While Black” harassments on their own hook: this hopefully will be the first policy chnged under a De Blasio Admin…
Tone in DC
@rikyrah:
Don’t those cops have Madoff wannabes to catch?
It’s an epidemic. And I thought Humidity Central was bad for this harassment.
Frankensteinbeck
Late to this party, but…
@C.V. Danes:
Officially, the answer is ‘Because those inferior brown people couldn’t possibly compete with us if the government weren’t rigged in their favor, and if we chop off the safety net they’ll go back to being barely seen and not heard like we remember in the good old days.’
However, I’ve lived in Kentucky. Here, the answer is ‘Fuck you.’ It’s raw hate, aimed at the whole world.
Chris
Apart from Latinos, everyone listed here was a part of the original, Southern Strategy, Nixon/Reagan coalition that came into being fifty years ago.
handsmile
@Jay C:
de Blasio’s lead in the polls is quite staggering (and of course joyful to his many supporters). He has long been an unapologetic progressive and the success of his mayoral campaign across all five boroughs of NYC (well, not so much on Staten Island) attests forcefully to how eager/desperate the majority of New Yorkers are for an end/revision to the policy preferences and governing style of Emperor Bloomberg.
I myself would be hard pressed to nominate which of those policies should be the “first [to be] changed under a de Blasio Admin.” So much needs to be done to reorient the priorities of this city, where the median income is under $50K.
I must say I was surprised that the NYT endorsed de Blasio in yesterday’s mayoral race editorial. Inasmuch as the paper endorsed Christine Quinn in the Democratic primary and has run a series of anti-deBlasio and pro-Joe Lhota news features since that time, I expected it to punt, i.e., decline to tender an endorsement in the contest.
Chris
@Woodrowfan:
What makes me really mad about that era is the way all these economic woes were held up as proof that “oops, well, clearly Keynesianism’s failed. Quickly, back to the Gilded Age!”
For the sheer absurdity of the premise (an Arab oil embargo is going to wreck your day no matter what economic system you’re using), and also for the contrast between that and the way laissez-faire economics, when it goes through crisis after crisis, can always expect to be defended with a cohort of “it’s not our economic model’s fault”/”the problem is we weren’t laissez-faire ENOUGH”/”give us another chance, honestly, this time it’ll work!”
Tom Q
@Chris: Yeah, I had the same reaction going over this. Unless the GOP was suddenly going to make massive inroads into the Hispanic vote, it was hardly in a position in 2007 to be considered a “formidable coalition” — Bush’s re-election (the weakest ever for an incumbent) was their only popular vote victory since 1988, and the signs of the demographic swing which we now take for granted were well in place. Pundits have long overrated that 40+% of the Hispanic vote Bush got — as if was predicting some future wave of conversions, rather than being a one-shot deal.
And, as you say, all the other groups mentioned were already part of the Nixon/Reagan coalition, which had been dwindling since its high-water mark in ’84.
Omnes Omnibus
@catclub:
Not true. He survived a recall.
C.V. Danes
@Frankensteinbeck:
Having lived in rural KY myself, I can vouch for that attitude, although things seemed different in Lexington when I went to UK, but that was 30 years ago :-)
Chris
@Tom Q:
The whole point of Nixon and Reagan’s work was to identify groups that could be pulled away from the Democrats and go after them. That’s always what you should do if you’re trying to realign politics in your favor, but you can’t do it with groups that you’ve already pulled over to your side. How the fuck do supposedly educated people not get this? The bottle is empty, you already drank it, and if you want more you need to go to the bar and buy another bottle.
And it’s not just a random article; I read a bunch of opinions from prominent Republicans after 2012 that all added up to “we need to do more to appeal to white people” [or other demographic they already have]
cmorenc
@Baud:
The spin Fox (and that means the GOP) is going with on Kentucky is that the overwhelming portion of people signing up (or showing bona fide serious interest in doing so) via Ky’s state site are medicaid patients, not regular deserving not-freeloading folk. Oh, and BTW in case you haven’t heard Bengazi! Yes, really, the segment on the allegedly inevitably failing, flailing too Ky healthcare program was immediately followed by coverage of another alleged coverup by the administration of some new key piece of information about Bengazi (about Al Quaeda connections, what else?) that will surely, this time, persuade the public what a crucial story this is about the supposed lying feckless incompetence of the Obama administration.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Mustang Bobby:
Well, we have a governor, SoS, a senator (Franken) and at least three congressional representatives (Walz, McCullum, and Ellison) who are beholden to his legacy.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Dead Ernest:
Slept until 2:30. That NEVER happens when I work nights. Usually, I get four hours sleep, tops. God, I feel loggy. Going to take the dog for a walk.
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly: beating a dead thread, but this is bullshit. MN people aren’t “genuinely” nice; why do you think there’s a term “Minnesota nice”? Because it’s a fakey syrupy gloss on barely-concealed hostility or indifference. As for MN going blue, they’re doing it for themselves, not you. (I feel sorry for Wisconsin because the liberals in Madison are really liberal. But the beer’n’brat vulgarians have the upper hand.)
The Florida Democratic Party may be a bunch of assholes but the AFL-CIO and the Teamsters are doing very good work politically in the state. FOP (but not the useless PBA) has been good as well. But there’s not much to “learn from” closed shop states, more like the other way around. FL is turning around. Part of it is a previous major reform in education, which JEB! did his best to unravel (also Rick Scott), but those kids are voting age now and things are fucking changing around here. Texas is going to try to mobilize people of color to vote again after being burned in the past. It’s doable, but it’s a totally different situation.
MN has its share of white supremacists and racism is an issue for example looking at public education in MSP, but overall it’s a much better issue in Texas than in MN or FL. Florida has a bunch of assholes in the panhandle and retired assholes from the Midwest who are big atavistic racists, not to mention the shithole kings, aka sheriffs in Central Florida and so on. But there’s also a second gen Cuban population that’s gone D, a newly mobilized African-American community (that’s been here since slavery times–I should saw RE-newly mobilized because we have a lot of the deans of the Civil Rights movement around), a young, enthusiastically liberal born-in-Florida and diverse South Florida population coming up, graduates of the state college system all over the state, and a diverse Central Florida (read: Orange County) Latino population finally flexing some political muscle. And to top it off you have the liberal end of the Republican Party just cold jumping ship right now. The GOP ascendance was partially because of the Dixiecrats and generally Dem suckage in this state, but the Dixiecrats are very close to purged and/or retired now, and Rick Scott kinda put a nail in the coffin of the quite large D statewide office crossover vote who, for example, put Crist in power. R statewide officeholding is over, they just don’t realize it yet. Big-time R’s are switching parties or endorsing Ds. Oh, and it didn’t help that the Florida GOP has been riven by scandals, including using donor money on personal expenses, at the same time that the AFL-CIO decided to wake up and actually do something right for once.
This state is like ground zero for tea partyin’ shithaids, by which I mean The Villages and Naples and places like that. The crackers are downwardly mobile at this point in history which pulls them further and further out of that social milieu. The only thing hate radio has really got right now is whipping up hysteria about gun control. Yup Obummer’s comin’ fer yer huntin’ rifle ‘cos he wants you to eat arugula and spinach instead of venison this winter. It’s like equating the federal gov with their asshole boss. Many of these folks prefer to take hunting season off so they will have meat for their family.