Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

People are weird.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

You are here: Home / Gun Issues / Gun nuts / Open Thread: Ammosexuality, Internet Trolls

Open Thread: Ammosexuality, Internet Trolls

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Tip of the hat to commentor Anoninimous in the prior thread.

Also, after reading this article in The Atlantic, I’m glad we have better commentors here than the National Journal:

… A couple of weeks ago, National Journal changed its comments policy, opting to eliminate comments on most stories as a way to stem the flood of abuse that appeared on the site. Naturally the comment-section reaction to that announcement helped reinforce the reason editors said comments had to go in the first place…

For all the boycott threats and comparisons to Hitler, though… the site seems to be doing better now. If anything, user engagement has increased since the comment policy changed. Pages views per visit increased by more than 10 percent. Page views per unique visitor increased 14 percent. Return visits climbed by more than 20 percent. Visits of only a single page decreased, while visits of two pages or more increased by almost 20 percent…

***********
Apart from mocking the competition, what’s on the agenda for the evening?

Reader Interactions

69Comments

  1. 1.

    ? Martin

    Making a nice dinner. Hoping to get lucky with the AR-15 tonight. She seems flirty today. I’m optimistic.

  3. 3.

    Ash Can

    Who says it wasn’t us BJ commenters going over to National Journal and dropping F-bombs and shit in the comments that convinced the editors there to close the comments?

  10. 10.

    ? Martin

    A friend of ours just bought into a few race horses – quite a bit of money actually. He’s always been a huge horse racing fan and has even called a few races at his local track. I don’t possibly see how that can be a wise investment, but whatev. Everyone’s got their hobbies, I guess.

  11. 11.

    Violet

    @raven: Love all the excitement and the pageantry. And love watching the horses run. I just don’t know much about it. Apparently the guys who own California Chrome aren’t big time racing horse owners–they’re just two average guys from Nevada or something.

  12. 12.

    Luthe

    Hey Anne Laurie, why isn’t Pierce linked to in the sidebar? You quote him often enough.

  20. 20.

    Mike in NC

    California Chrome blows it; Village Idiots will pillory Obama on their Sunday shows.

  21. 21.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mike in NC:

    Impeach!

    (Hey, that might not be a bad name for a racehorse. Impeachment, by Benghazi, out of Obamacare.)

    Edited for reasons.

  24. 24.

    big ole hound

    Chrome was raised 50 miles from me so I was rootin’ for him but as the jock said he just ran out of gas after 3 races in 5 weeks.

  25. 25.

    Violet

    @Mike in NC: They’ll also blame the brown, non-native-English-speaking man who was riding the horse. If the jockeys were white and spoke English, as God intended, things might have gone differently.

  27. 27.

    gene108

    Finishing up some work-work this evening and tomorrow.

    Looking to get my resume together and hunt for a new job.

    17.5 years at my current employer, but I think it is time for a change.

  28. 28.

    Hal

    These open carry guys remind me of the guys who used to appear on Phil Donahue wearing diapers while sitting in a crib. How completely insecure in yourself are you that you have to walk around with a giant assault rifle around your shoulder?

    For arguments sake, let’s say they are at the local homestyle buffet and the place is being robbed. Could they take out the robber or robbers without hitting other patrons? I wouldn’t want to be within a 1000 feet of these morons. I’m sure they all have metal testicles hanging from their trucks too.

    Oh, also:

    Obama’s D-Day Gum Chewing Sparks Anger

    Really? How long before the type of toiler paper Obama uses is a major scandal?

  29. 29.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @Hal:

    For arguments sake, let’s say they are at the local homestyle buffet and the place is being robbed. Could they take out the robber or robbers without hitting other patrons?

    No.

  30. 30.

    rikyrah

    In a article that appears in the June 2014 issue of GQ, the magazine salutes Dave Chappelle’s sold out shows with a look back at what some folks (at least the one’s who were lucky enough to be there) consider to be one of the funniest nights on earth. They literally called it that! One night, Dave made a surprise appearance at the Comedy Cellar in N.Y.C. and he invited several of his famous friends onstage. It turned into a comedy roast/toast/pass the mic session. Here are their reflections:

    Chris Rock:
    Dave is like Prince.

    Marlon Wayans: Like Bigfoot.

    Rock: You never know when he’s going to show up. That night was a comedy booty call from Dave. [in Chappelle’s voice] “I’m in town, man! You should come on down!” Dave’s my favorite comedian. So…

    Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson: I was on a date, and I was trying not to look at my phone, but I heard a beep and saw the name Rock: “I’m down here at the Cellar. Chappelle’s going on in twenty minutes.” That was the fastest “Check, please!” I’ve ever said in my life. I lied to my date and said I’d been called into the studio.

    Wayans: I was out with Bill [Bellamy] after a Knicks game and hit Kevin [Hart] up. He was in town to host SNL. He was like, “Yo, I’m at the Comedy Cellar. Chappelle and Rock are here.” I was like, “Word. Let’s go.”

    Thompson: I grabbed the only seat left: There’s a piano onstage, and I took the bench. Chappelle gets up and riffs for forty-five minutes about—who’s the guy with the prosthetic legs? Oscar Pistorius? Dave was talking about how Pistorius would be the least vulnerable guy in prison, because all he has to do is scrape his legs on the steel bars every night. He started making this sharpening noise, and we were just done, all of us.

    Bill Bellamy: Me and Marlon walk in, and Dave is onstage. When he was 18 or so, I hosted a night at this club in East Orange, New Jersey—the Peppermint Lounge—where he used to perform. So I know if he sees me, he’s gonna go crazy. He sees me. He says, “People, this is unbelievable. I think I’m having a flashback.”

    Thompson: Then, one by one, he just called them up, kind of like the Harlem Globetrotters’ Magic Circle.

    Bellamy: Kevin Hart walks out. And here comes Chris Rock. Then Dave was like, “Who else is in here?” That was rich. So then me and Marlon come up. People go goddamn crazy. And we just start passing the microphone, telling stories about each other. It was a Black Pack moment.

    Kevin Hart: That crowd got something money can’t buy. They got authenticity.

    Rock: Yeah, it was kind of a lovefest.

    Bellamy: I remember Chris saying Marlon fucked one of his ex-girlfriends.

    Wayans: Dave says something about my mama’s vagina, about her having ten kids. I said, “Don’t make me call all the Negroes that came up out that vagina. You don’t want to get the Wayans beat-down.” He goes, “Oh, please don’t call them niggas.”

    Bellamy: Chris said something to Kevin that congratulated him on his success—but it was like, “You may be hot right now, but Dave Chappelle is hot forever.”

    Rock: You’re not going to sit there and let other people be funnier than you. I mean, I like Kevin, but come on. I’m not conceding.

    Bellamy: But we all had our moment to say how much we love and appreciate each other’s talent. It wasn’t a roast. It was a tribute.

    Rock: And it’ll never happen again. There’s no Coachella of comedy where we all get together, you know?

    Dave Chappelle: I had no idea all those guys were going to be there. You know, comedy is surprisingly competitive. It’s like being in the Karate Kid tournament every night. I’ve known these guys for years and have always respected their talent, but on that night, I got to experience it up close. That’s why it was special. But it made me laugh that Ahmir told his date he needed to go to the studio. Why didn’t he just bring her to the show?

    http://theybf.com/2014/06/06/bobbys-bbq-bobby-brown-debuts-line-of-bbq-sauces-more-dave-chappelle-reflects-on-comedys

  31. 31.

    Mnemosyne

    @rikyrah:

    Chappelle said exactly what I thought about Questlove’s story! I guess the date wasn’t going very well.

  32. 32.

    Elizabelle

    Secretariat and Affirmed faced fields of five horses.

    California Chrome was one of 11 racing, and several of those horses were fresh.

    I don’t blame Chrome’s owner for his complaining — since it’s a Triple Crown event, maybe the field should not include horses that did not race in the Derby and Preakness — and maybe even both of them. Now, you go up against spoilers, and it’s not actually a fair contest, in that aspect.

    Downside is, you could end up with more injured horses. Three big races in five weeks.

    NYTimes reported that some in horse racing suggest stretching out the Triple Crown season — give the horses (3-year olds!) more time to rest up.

    What do you guys think?

  34. 34.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Dear Open Carry Texas: I’m really sorry about your very small dicks.

    There, now that I’ve said that, can you stop telling us all about how small they are?

  35. 35.

    Cassidy

    For arguments sake, let’s say they are at the local homestyle buffet and the place is being robbed. Could they take out the robber or robbers without hitting other patrons? I wouldn’t want to be within a 1000 feet of these morons. I’m sure they all have metal testicles hanging from their trucks too.

    Not only no, but a slung rifle is not a rifle ready to be used.

  36. 36.

    PsiFighter37

    @Elizabelle: I don’t give much of a shit about horse racing, mainly because I just don’t see the appeal at all. You’ve got (mainly) rich guys who own horses and programatically breed them based on their bloodlines or their athletic traits. They probably increase their grift by getting a good number of these horses injected with steroids (so at least the sport is not unlike sports in which humans are the main participants), and the masses get to blow their money by betting on them (which is really the only thing to ‘root’ for in the sport – you can’t follow a horse like you can follow a team).

    I’m also tired of the owners complaining – first about having their horse wear a nasal strip, then about this? Maybe they’re showing themselves to be the dumbasses (or at least the WATBs) that they jokingly called themselves.

    Who gives a fuck. Even the whole pageantry, with the dressing up and the hats, is just a way to make the plebes feel like they’re part of the monied gentry class of yore for a drunken afternoon. Horse racing is a fucking worthless excuse for a sport.

  37. 37.

    TooManyJens

    @Elizabelle: I absolutely blame him for complaining. Secretariat and Affirmed faced few horses because they were so dominant that hardly anybody felt they had a chance, not because there was some rule against new shooters in the Belmont (there wasn’t; there never has been). California Chrome was vulnerable because his pedigree is speed-oriented and lacking in stamina. He was suspect at a mile and a half and all the other owners knew it. I’m impressed that he did as well as he did, with his breeding. His owners should be proud, but instead they’re (at least the one guy) deciding to be assholes. Nobody owes it to you to make it easier for you to win the Belmont, buddy.

    The whole thing reminded me of Hillary Clinton complaining about the nominating process in ’08. It was ugly. Somebody at NBC should have done a mercy killing on Steve Coburn’s mic.

  40. 40.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Secretariat for the win. Greatest racing horse, ever. Totally blew away what was left of the field at the ’73 Belmont Stakes.

  41. 41.

    TooManyJens

    And you know what else, I bet CC’s trainer, who led Swaps over when he won the Derby in 19-fucking-55 and knows a thing or two, wishes Coburn would STFU. That’s just a guess, mind you.

  42. 42.

    Mnemosyne

    @Hal:

    If you were going to rob a place, wouldn’t you shoot the open carry guys first so they couldn’t interfere?

  43. 43.

    Amir Khalid

    @Elizabelle: Just for a moment there, I was wondering why the Democratic Action Party, part of the Pakatan Rakyat (opposition) coalition in Malaysia, would want to own an American racehorse.

  44. 44.

    Elizabelle

    My pups went to a marvelous dog kennel not far from Secretariat’s birthplace. Thought of him every time we passed.

  46. 46.

    SFAW

    @Mnemosyne:

    If you were going to rob a place, wouldn’t you shoot the open carry guys first so they couldn’t interfere?

    No.

    I’d shoot them first because they’re morons who don’t deserve the protections of a rational, adult society, and they’re scaring – on purpose – the people that DO. (Actually, I would be OK with just doing it on GP, no robbery required.) As Shakespeare or someone else said: “Think of it as evolution in action.”

  47. 47.

    Ian

    Yeah, NJ was a cesspool. Multiple times, I sent screencaps to their contact address capturing death threats and genocide threats against liberals.

    When I responded in that last thread, the conservative response was, no joke, “BLAARRGGHH!!!! YOU LIKE SEMEN!!” (only slightly paraphrased). Swear to god. Take conservatives out of the equation, and it’s amazing how civil the conversation is. And I don’t mean that homogeneous groups are nicer (although they usually are). Go to Free Republic to see what I mean. Miserable bunch, and they all think the same.

  48. 48.

    SFAW

    Re: why do the ammosexuals bring their assault rifles (etc.) to public venues?

    As the saying goes: because they can. (For those unfamiliar with it: that saying originally applied to dogs.)

  51. 51.

    Tom Q

    @TooManyJens: Plus Affirmed raced against Alydar — a horse that might have won the Triple Crown himself absent Affirmed — in all three races, and only nipped him by the barest nose in the Belmont.

  52. 52.

    J.D. Rhoades

    @? Martin:

    Here in my part of NC, there’s a fair amount of horse training, boarding, breeding, etc going on. It’s a classic example of a business you can make a small fortune in, but only if you start with a large fortune.

  53. 53.

    TooManyJens

    @Tom Q: Yes, I should really have said that it was the Affirmed/Alydar pair that was dominant that year. A lot of people thought Alydar would finally turn the tables in the Belmont (just as his son Easy Goer did 11 years later).

  55. 55.

    Violet

    @PsiFighter37: I could say much the same thing about most professional sports. Rich owners, athletes examined every possible way before being selected for the team, many athletes taking performance enhancing drugs, average people betting on outcomes.

    The owners complain because stadiums are too small or salary caps are too stringent or some other reason. Owners generally complain.

    And plebes dress up in team attire, painting faces and wearing stupid hats and enjoy a drunken afternoon.

    It’s not that different.

  57. 57.

    pseudonymous in nc

    It’s weird how certain comments sections in relatively dull, neutral spaces — NJ, The Hill, even Bullshitico — become infested with wingnuts. Same with local newspapers.

    I assume that if you provide feeding grounds for wingnut shitheels and don’t have the resources to moderate them, then they drive out everyone else?

  58. 58.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    @Violet: That’s all true. Professional sports is a con, less bloody than gladiatorial games (usually), but still designed to distract the plebes from how fucked their lives are.

  59. 59.

    patrick II

    @Ken:

    Secretariat’s winning times in the Kentucky Derby (1:59.4, Preakness (1:53), and Belmont (2:24) were all record times that still stand today.

    In comparison, California Chrome won the Derby in 2:03.66. Tonalist, the winner of Belmont today won in 2:28.52. One second equals about 5 lengths, so Secretariat would have beaten both California Chrome and Tonalist in their respective wins today by over 4 seconds, or over 20 lengths — about the same distance he beat the second place finisher at Belmont in 1973.

  60. 60.

    Hill Dweller

    @patrick II: Moreover, Secretariat had horrible starts in both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, but still set the records. He also ran each quarter mile faster than the previous one in the Kentucky Derby, which has never been duplicated.

    Secretariat was literally a freak of nature. His heart was nearly three times the size of an average horse heart. Hell, Sham, who finished second to Secretariat in both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, would have probably been a Triple Crown winner in any other year.

  61. 61.

    J R in WV

    I thought the horse ran a good race. You can’t win them all. Secretariat, that was a horse. I’ve just watched a couple of his races, and Youtube has the last video of him, just days before they had to put him down for bad hooves. Real tear jerker that was…

    Horses are wonderful critters… we had a big one, I bought her from my neighbors, the Bachelor Appalachian Farmers who farmed their place with her. When I bought her they bought a 1948 Ford 9N Tractor. Pet was a bay mare with a white blaze and black mane and tail and feathers around her feet.

    She was about 1700 pounds and 18 or 19 hands tall. Feet the size of pie pans. I had a big saddle, and once in a while would ride her up on the ridge. There was a road right on top, and the ridge top trees weren’t often cut, they weren’t straight, so they were 4 feet thick and a couple of hundred feet tall, all twisty giant oaks. When the wind blew and the clouds scudded just over the mountain tops and we ran down the ridge, it was pretty amazing.

    The big work horses were, a long time ago, bred from the destriers – the war horses that armored Knights fought from. Pet didn’t have any mean in her, she liked to work slow and hard, pulling a plow suited her fine. But those ridge top runs on cool cloudy days, she liked that a lot. You could get the feel of it riding a really big horse. They go pretty fast, but not for very far…

    These are very different from the running horses, the Arabians and such. But very similar in other ways. Horses are great critters, you just need to get to know one. Racing, I don’t know anything about that… but horses are great.

  62. 62.

    RandomMonster

    Fucking hell, why doesn’t Betty C get some royalty points for the ammosexual line? C’mon Bill Maher.

  64. 64.

    TooManyJens

    @PsiFighter37:

    (which is really the only thing to ‘root’ for in the sport – you can’t follow a horse like you can follow a team)

    Huh? People absolutely can and do become fans of individual horses and root for them.

  65. 65.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @TooManyJens:

    People absolutely can and do become fans of individual horses and root for them.

    I think it’s easier to become a fan of a jumper. I give you Desert Orchid, who had a fan club that visited him right through his retirement up to the end of his life.

    I do like the gee-gees, but I can’t really get into flat racing on dirt. I’d be very comfortable going to the races out in Ireland where, “well, y’kno, he’s a good haarse…”

    @Violet:

    If the jockeys were white and spoke English, as God intended, things might have gone differently.

    The funniest part of that is that all jockeys regardless of origins seem to have the same accent, and they’re generally not the best speakers. Because they ride horses all day.

  66. 66.

    JoyfulA

    @J.D. Rhoades: We had down the road one of most prominent pacer-trotter breeders in the country, hundreds of gorgeous horses grazing on hundreds of neatly fenced acres. And polo matches, too! The state supports raising horses through its cas1no income.

    Still, when the owner of the horse business (and the other businesses that made his father or grandfather rich enough to have a horse business) died, it didn’t take long for the heir(s) to clear the fields of horses and start putting up land for sale in what became over the last few decades valuable commercial property.

    The horse business, even with the state helping out, is not a way to make money.

  67. 67.

    DavidTC

    and the masses get to blow their money by betting on them (which is really the only thing to ‘root’ for in the sport – you can’t follow a horse like you can follow a team).

    Interestingly, horse racing is one of the few places it’s pretty easy to make money while betting, although slowly.

    Why? Because horse racing, unlike most casino gambling, is played against others. (And the casino games that are played against others, like poker or baccarat, are full of professional players who will beat you, period. That is how they earn a living, beating people like you.)

    But with horse racing, the other players are idiots. They make really dumb bets, absurdly complicated ones that they can pick the winners in ten races or whatever. And all that money goes into a single pool…and is split among the winners, minus the house cut, of course.

    If you take a single race, and pick whatever horse is favored, and bet they will place…you’ll pretty much always win, or at least win on average. And as a good deal of the people are betting on the crazy stuff, you’ll make a slow profit.

    Granted, it’s not actually a money making enterprise. Winning $1.10 off a one dollar bet is not really worth it when you factor in the time to buy a ticket, and the more money on that side of the pool, the smaller the proportional payout gets, so you can’t walk in with $1000 or whatever and hope to make $200. This trick only works because the ‘sane bet pool’ is almost always under-filled to start with, because the other side is full of insane people with insane bets.

    But if you’re watching the races anyway, go ahead, place some tiny bets on the obvious choices, have lots of fun as your bets mostly pay off, and walk out of there with enough won money to cover gas back.

    (Other sports betting can work the same way, with people placing dumb bets, but those are big enough pools of money that the professionals have gotten into them, and will quickly correct any imbalance between probability and bets. Individual horse races, however, are happen too fast and the amounts of money are too small for them to try to ‘bet against stupid’.)

  68. 68.

    Phoenician in a time of Romans

    @Mnemosyne: If you were going to rob a place, wouldn’t you shoot the open carry guys first so they couldn’t interfere?

    Actually, I’d just throw some firecrackers in where these guys are standing, and come back and rob the place a couple of hours later dressed as an EMT while the dead and wounded were being carried out.

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