In all seriousness, I assume he's going to demonstrate how he gets his hair like that. pic.twitter.com/iHYtqK0Xgf
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) July 21, 2015
.
Sure, like you could’ve resisted.
Guess Little Prince Rand is missing the attention of his Trump-curious bros. Because, seriously, from the Washington Post:
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is working on legislation to allow soldiers to carry guns on military bases, and could introduce it as soon as this week. That could establish him as a leader among conservatives who say last week’s massacre at a Chattanooga, Tennessee recruiting station should change how the military looks at the issue…
Paul’s commitment to gun rights has a stronger pedigree than Trump’s. He is closely tied to the National Association for Gun Rights, a group that positions itself to the right of the NRA.
“I think guns are a great deterrent anyway,” Paul said on Monday. “I’ve also had bills, for a couple of years now, making it easier to arm pilots. “
In the wake of Chattanooga, Paul has also criticized immigration laws, asking whether they are letting anti-American elements into the country. “I’m very concerned about immigration to this country from countries that have hotbeds of jihadism and hotbeds of this Islamism,” he told Breitbart News reporter Matthew Boyle last week. Paul expanded on those comments Monday, recalling how he had wanted “Rubio’s legislation” – i.e., the stillborn 2013 immigration reform bill – to add screening for potential terrorists.
“We wrote a letter to Harry Reid, saying we should slow the bill down, and have a discussion about putting the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System in,” said Paul. “It gave extra scrutiny to countries that had radical elements that were professing a desire to harm Americans or America. I don’t think it has to say one religion or not, but I think you find out that most of the anti-American movements around the country do seem to be coming from predominately Islamic countries.”…
Guess it’s not pandering if he really believes that being scared of the correct “radical elements” is more important than eliminating redundant and worthless government paperwork, right, men?
Major Major Major Major
Semi-reposted from earlier:
Me and other Mr. Majorx4 and my dad just saw the symphony perform the score to the 2009 Star Trek movie while projecting the scoreless version live. It was awesome.
Unrelated: a sneak peak of the next chapter in my story thing whatever click my nym if you’re curious!
piratedan
going to be quite popcorn worthy witnessing this race to the lowest common denominator. Almost as entertaining as watching the media fluff their horse race mantra and trying to show the false equivalencies regarding transparency, to wit… Hilary being slow to release her e-mails regarding Benghazi is just like Trump hiding his business failures and financial disclosures. Bernie Sanders not being prepared at Netroots Nation is just the same as Ted Cruz being anti-immigrant, anti immigration and anti-sanity.
and the scary part about all of this, is that we’re incredibly trapped inside our own tribal influences, is that a cretin like Trump could still get 40-45% of the national vote. That is simply scary.
Major Major Major Major
the real question is, why doesn’t Hillary have a chainsaw?
And if she does, would that be too masculine or pandering to the zombie-pic base?
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Major Major Major Major:
They’re doing a similar thing here in LA with “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Since Stanley Kubrick is G’s personal Jesus, we are going.
Comrade Dread
The answer is always more guns. More violence. More fear. Kill.
Doesn’t matter what the consequences are. The answer remains the same. Be afraid. Kill your fellow man. THEY are coming.
James E Powell
I watched a bit of CNN this evening (not my house) and the whole lot of them appear to be incredulous and not a little disappointed that the Chattanooga shooter turns out not to be an ISIS inspired hater of America and our freedoms.
mtiffany
@James E Powell:
But! But! But! He’s brown! -ish.
wasabi gasp
Diving off a dangerously high stack of legislation into a kiddie pool would make an impression.
Tree With Water
@Comrade Dread: I think the GOP is about played out. Dismiss any and all polling results about everything, and pay no mind whatsoever to the corporate networks- they’re only fucking with you.. people by the bucketful are beginning to see through the hucksters, and that trend will only accelerate. I predict ruin for the party of rule or ruin come November 2016…
mtiffany
Anyone else following the West Coast drought? I have some friends that live in Oregon close to NoCal border and some friends that live in SoCal and was wondering how much rain they would need to end the drought. I found this at WaPo (scroll down for map, mid-article):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/07/20/all-that-record-breaking-rain-in-california-still-isnt-enough-to-dent-the-drought/
joel hanes
Anyone else following the West Coast drought?
fairly closely, yes — I live in Silicon Valley.
Rainfall in this area has been about 90% of normal since last July, but the three preceeding winters established a serious deficit. And winter snowfall and snowpack in the Sierra (where our summer water comes from) has been abysmal this year, the worst on record.
Lawns up and down our block are going brown. We’re only flushing the toilet at need. Our cars are dirty.
I’m seeing more and more dead or dying trees, dead rosebushes.
If this isn’t one real hum-dinger of an El Nino winter (wet and warm), followed by one or two cold winters with the Gulf of Alaska storm gate open (Pacific high fades, jet stream kinks down the coast) —
if we don’t get that, we’re in very real trouble.
Kropadope
False libertarian is false.
dogwood
So I guess this is the Kentucky Chainsaw Massacre. The lust for violent rhetoric and action is simply insatiable among republicans.
Tree With Water
@mtiffany: Indications are reportedly multiplying that an El Nino is forming that bodes well for a wet fall and winter. This is the second major California drought of my lifetime, and as stupid as this sounds (and is, in fact), I’ve got a feeling it’s going to break, too. I sure hope so, if only because among its many afflictions a drought puts everyone increasingly on edge- including me. The last one broke the winter the 49ers won their first Super Bowl, and it poured with a vengeance. Indeed, there were quite a few house slides throughout the region, including some that incurred fatalities.
mtiffany
@joel hanes:
I really do hope you folks get what you need. I realize that Calfornia is not one single climatic zone — it’s not all dry SoCal LA Basin climate — but what’s fascinating (to me at least, and I don’t mean to minimize the seriousness of the situation) is that the north of the state needs 16 to 20 inches of rain to end the drought, and the chances of that happening are about 50% in the next six months, while the southern part of the state (including Silicon Valley) needs “only” anywhere between 4 and 12 inches of rain but that has less than an estimated 20% down to 0% probabilty over the next six months.
I live in the Finger Lakes region of NY and we’ve had so much rain that most farms couldn’t plant even half of their crops.
Between the drought there and the near-monsoon here, I’m not looking forward to see what’s going to happen to food prices in the next six months…
joel hanes
@mtiffany:
I looked at the map you linked to, so I know what you mean —
but it’s a bad idea to suggest to a Californian that Silicon Valley is a part of Southern California.
SoCal ends at Pismo Beach.
Everything north of there, including the entire SF Bay region, is NoCal.
Tree With Water
@mtiffany: There is a rule of thumb about calculating the rainfall in California per degree of longitude, which unfortunately escapes me at the moment. It might even hold true around the planet, for all I know. It is: for each degree of longitude north from the Mexican border, add 10 inches of rain. Or something like that. San Francisco’s average is around 22 inches annually (in non-drought years), while my neck of the redwoods 70 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge clocks in at 32″- 33″ inches annually (I think)..
Tree With Water
@joel hanes: I’ve always considered Monterey to be the north-south border. The city itself belongs to the northern California, but everything between it and the Mexican border is southern California.
joel hanes
@Tree With Water:
I just can’t see Carmel and Big Sur as SoCal, sorry.
But Pismo Beach, with its main street running right down onto the sand,
and its beach-based economy, and its fuck-the-environment ATV and RV culture,
is definitely SoCal.
EconWatcher
Of course Trump won’t get the nomination, but it looks like he may do more damage than the clown car parade did last time.
Zinsky
@Comrade Dread: Amen, comrade. Fear causes the cerebral cortex to disengage and people resort to limbic, lizard-like thinking. Look at how reptilian Scott Walker looks! I keep expecting a long, pink lizard tongue to shoot out of his mouth and grab a fly when he is talking.
Anyway, look how successful the Pentagon has been in convincing people that “terrorism” is an existential threat to the United States, when you are more likely to die falling off a ladder or from getting hit by lightning than by a terrorist attack. Why haven’t we declared a “war on ladders”?
Joel Hanes
@Zinsky:
lizard tongue
Nah, the reptile is Cruz.
One could take Walker for a zombie — the flat affect, the dead eyes, the slack face — and maybe even for a zombie in the voudoun sense of re-animated flesh under the mental control of another person. Certainly there’s a sort of evil collective intelligence that animates Wisconsin’s shameless Republicans, and gives us Judge Randa and the Fitzgeralds and all their ilk — and Walker seems to incarnate it for them.
Origuy
The Heyward Fault just woke me up here in San Jose. USGS says 4.2, just north of Fremont. I’m on the second floor and the bed shook for a little while.
raven
@Origuy: I’ve been away so long, I could go wrong and lose my way. . .
Cervantes
@Tree With Water:
I like you, Tree With Water, you know I do, but that just … lacks objectivity!
Cervantes
@Joel Hanes:
I like it.
BillinGlendaleCA
Joe sez that The Donald was just repeating a Franken joke, and the media isn’t covering that The Donald sez Grandpa Walnuts is a war hero.
Joel Hanes
@Origuy:
Here in Santa Clara we got a short sharp shock.
David Koch
@BillinGlendaleCA: Sounds like Joe is trying to get on the Trump ticket.
NotMax
@Joel Hanes
Ooh, Gilbert & Sullivan The Mikado reference.
(Or Pink Floyd.)
Cervantes
@Joel Hanes:
I hope that’s more than you meant to say!
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I agree with Joe. Trump should double down. Maybe tell some Andrew Dice Clay jokes next.
Mustang Bobby
@David Koch: They go together like salt and peter.
prufrock
As a former Marine, I can say with some confidence that letting a bunch of 18-22 year old kids run around strapped all the time will be a disaster. There is a reason that privately owned firearms have to be checked into the armory if you live in the barracks. That reason is that 18-22 year old kids are morons, whether they are serving the country or not.
Joel Hanes
@Tree With Water:
[looks at map]
Oh, hell, I can’t in good conscience include San Simeon in NoCal either.
Do you know the Lucia Road ? I could make a case for Lucia as the west end of the line,
and Mammoth Lakes on the east end.
Gimlet
Could be a shock when the money trail leads back to the US and various other governments.
Clooney joined forces with US human rights activist John Prendergast in a project called The Sentry that aims to investigate the flow of money in and out of conflict zones and give policymakers the tools to take effective action.
Using data collection, field research and analysis technology, the initiative plans to expose how conflict is financed and profits laundered, with a website encouraging people to anonymously submit leaks and tips.
Clooney, said the aim was to “deny war profiteers the proceeds from their crimes”.
Gimlet
Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro has filed assault charges against transgender reporter Zoey Tur.
At the ESPY’s, Shapiro referred to transgender men and women as “mentally ill,” refused to use the proper pronouns when referring to them, and baited Tur by calling her “sir.”
“What are your genetics, sir?” Shapiro asked Tur who put her hand on his neck and warned him, “You cut that out now, or you’ll go home in an ambulance.”
Later during the panel discussion, Tur dismissed, Shapiro telling him, “You’re consumed with hatred. You’re a little man, a little boy.”
According to a report at Breitbart.com, Shapiro filed the report Sunday morning alleging he was assaulted and that he filed the report to teach “the left” a lesson.
Germy Shoemangler
@Baud:
Excellent veep choice.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Why is Rand Paul setting a fire in a perfectly good new wheelbarrow? No Detroiter would do that. You use that thing until it falls apart, put it back together and use it a few more years. What kind of irresponsible showoff destroys things that way?
Kay
The chainsaw gimmick is back?
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2008/11/wapo-regulatory-failure-at-office-of.html
Joel
@Gimlet: Ben Shapiro is a worthless dipshit, so it doesn’t surprise me that a shitheel organization like ESPN would want him around.
kindness
I read somewhere that it was G H Bush that signed the bill restricting gun carries on a base and that Clinton let it happen by carrying it out.
If that is so & I suspect it is, why is it that Democrats have this one pinned on them? Or is this just another IOKIYAR?
Germy Shoemangler
I like his shirt: “DETROIT REPUBLICAN”
translation: “not black”
Baud
@Kay:
And on each page was written “The American Economy.”
Sherparick
The Chattanooga shooting and the Charleston Church shooting have been an interesting chance to do a compare and contrast experiment on the reaction by our right wing, Apparently, the shooters shared a lot personality traits in common (depression, drug use, unable to maintain a job). However, one white Christian southern boy who like to surround himself with Confederate flags and participate on white supremacy web sites and then slaughters 9 innocent people in a church with the announced intent to start a race war. However, this is not terrorism, says nothing about Southern white right wing culture, just an “isolated” act by a nut. In the second case, a search indicates that despite perpetrator coming from a Muslim family, it appears more and more mass killing done to trigger “suicide by cop.” Mohammad Abdulazeez from latest reports appears in fact tragically Americanized (Southernized), adopting the regions growing fetish with firearms as the way to resolve his personal issues. http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/20/us/tennessee-naval-reserve-shooting/index.html But with our right wing his nutty action means all Muslims are terrorists!!! Interesting example of finding the mote in the eye of the other and not seeing the beam in one’s own.
Baud
@Sherparick:
Have they found out why he targeted soldiers? We know why Roof targeted AA’s.
I agree with you BTW.
Kay
@Baud:
As far as I’m concerned it was a public announcement from those 4 people “we have no intention of doing the job we are paid to do!”
And they were as good as their word. They were proud conservative regulators who took a job they then refused to do, on principle.
The coverage of Rand Paul is amusing because there’s so little mention of his anti-abortion activism. That’s much less cool than “Detroit Republican” wielding a chainsaw, I guess. His pandering to the religious Right is barely mentioned. Libertarians like to pretend that huge bloc of voters don’t exist on the Right.
Baud
@Kay:
This was a while ago, but I saw Cindy Crowley on CNN once saying that Rand was more moderate on abortion because he’s a libertarian.
Matt McIrvin
Demographics of the 2014 congressional electorate:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-p-mcdonald/the-2014-electorate_b_7818118.html
The detail that surprises me here is that long-term trends away from whiteness are so pronounced that the ethnic breakdown of the super-low-turnout 2014 midterm electorate was actually similar to that of the 2008 presidential electorate. But 2014 was a Republican blowout anyway as opposed to 2008’s massive Obama win, which says to me that ethnic demographics aren’t the whole story here. Of course, the age breakdown tells a different tale.
Cervantes
@kindness:
Almost true. It was a Pentagon bureaucrat during G. H. W. Bush’s term who issued that directive. And his Obama-Administration counterpart re-issued it a few years ago.
raven
@Baud: You’re kidding, right?
Baud
@raven:
No. Last I heard, they haven’t yet found any connection to extremist groups, or the type of political radicalism that you might expect to see leading up to this type of action.
Kay
@Baud:
Absolutely false. He goes to those “faith” forums and he’s identical to the rest of them.
So Kasich will announce and he’ll get tons of media promotion 1. because they need a sane person to off-set Trump, 2. because he’s a DC person (he was in the House) and 3. because he’s also a media personality (he had a show on FOX and is Murdoch’s favorite Republican)
But national media consistently over-estimate the appeal of governors outside their states and the GOP has a weird dynamic where Kasich is chasing the same donors and voters as Bush and Kasich is actually bumbling and inarticulate in public. Also, Clinton can beat him in this state anyway even if he’s the nominee which is unlikely.
I hope Democrats won’t panic. They WILL, but I hope they get over it quickly :)
raven
@Baud: Well I don’t think it matters whether he had any association with some “group” or not. He attacked visible representatives of infidels.
Matt
Great idea Rand, but how are we going to fund ICE checkpoints around every metro area to screen for your base? Because there’s a hundred of those shitheads prancing around with their “88” tats and Confederate memorabilia for every ISIS wannabe that turns up here.
Baud
@raven:
And maybe that’ll be the answer. But in Roof’s case, when you dug into his life, you saw a long history that led up to his actions.
FlipYrWhig
@BillinGlendaleCA:
So now Joe Scarborough doesn’t understand basic sarcasm? Because Trump is OBVIOUSLY in that whole clip using a style of delivery that means “Shyeah right, ‘war hero,’ I got your ‘war hero’ right here.” It’s not hard to hear. But I have a lot of practice. I grew up in New Jersey.
Carl Nyberg
As a former military officer and former Navy recruiter I think allowing service members & officers to carry personal firearms undermines good order & discipline.
I can’t imagine any officers or senior enlisted who think this through are in favor of it.
All the firearms & larger weapons on a US Navy ship should be under the affirmative control of the commanding officer. The idea that there are firearms (w/ ammunition) in the berthing compartment with the sailor being discharged for a borderline personality disorder… it’s fucking insane.
The idea that a sailor who gets chewed-out can go get his personal sidearm in two minutes is fucking insane.
Alton Grizzard was QB of the US Naval Academy football team when I was a midshipman. He died when he was shot by another Navy officer. Grizzard was answering the door when shot.