Some of you are Jason Isbell fans, so you’re probably in on the joke already, but for the rest of us… It started with an “anti-gun” tweet:
If you’re on here arguing the definition of “assault weapon” today you are part of the problem. You know what an assault weapon is, and you know you don’t need one.
— Jason Isbell (@JasonIsbell) August 4, 2019
Legit question for rural Americans – How do I kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?
— William McNabb (@WillieMcNabb) August 4, 2019
McNabb’s response is not exactly coherent, but he didn’t think he needed it to be, because he’s using his in-group’s Conjure Words: I need to be able to protect my [most valuable possession] at [extremely short period of time] notice, from [obviously terrifying violent threat group]. (Actual statements may or may not be calibrated to exactly 14 words.)
Now, feral hogs are a genuine threat, in their habitat. But most people on twitter — even the ones in feral-hog territory — find the idea of mowing down entire herds in one’s yard with an automatic rifle… less than serious. And, unlike most of such ‘threat groups’ (black teenage gangs, Mexican drug-mule rapists, Islamic terrorists), there’s no ethical barrier to mocking the however-imaginary anti-porcine terrors of ones’ online neighbors…
“Hi, I’m Willie and I’d like you to believe that I send my small kids out into a yard plagued by marauding herds of feral pigs which I then slaughter with semi-automatic gunfire in front of them… because that’s a very real scenario that makes perfect sense.” https://t.co/OG7rBQgdYN
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) August 5, 2019
Srsly. And if you live someplace that regularly requires an assault rifle to protect your kids from local wildlife, move. https://t.co/0uJ8t6m3wx
— Mig Greengard (@chessninja) August 5, 2019
I don’t usually get optimistic about gun control, but maybe it’s a tipping point that today an average American tried to come up with a legitimate reason to own an assault rifle, and went with “an army of monster pigs are gonna eat my babies” and a million people said “haha no.”
— Kibblesmith ?? (@kibblesmith) August 6, 2019
if you can't kill it with a shotgun, it's the superior species and you need to just let what happens happen.
— trek (@hollejolle) August 5, 2019
Do I need to read about feral hogs the week of the Iowa State Fair???#Hawgs
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) August 5, 2019
What idiot called it “fighting 30-50 feral hogs” and not “serving in the Boar War”
— Matt Ford (@fordm) August 5, 2019
Everyone mocking feral-hog Twitter appears to be ignoring that the alternative is 48-hours-after-a-mass-shooting Twitter, the single most horrible Twitter of them all.
— Dara Lind (@DLind) August 5, 2019
The feral hog guy's name is McNabb. Of course it is.??
— JJ MacNab (@jjmacnab) August 5, 2019
I have shot
the 30-50
feral hogs
in the yardand which
you were concerned
would eat
the childrenForgive me
I winged a kid
a slow one
no great loss— WhatFreshHellIsThisHat (@Popehat) August 6, 2019
In ~72 hours this will be completely incomprehensible pic.twitter.com/QljE5XSWHM
— Patrick Monahan (@pattymo) August 5, 2019
Patricia Kayden
Lol! That whole thread is a hoot. The best suggestion is for feral hog guy to simply build a fence. Shooting hogs around one’s small children is a dumb idea.
BlueDWarrior
It’s crazy the types of justifications people are coming up with to try and explain why owning an assault rifle as a civilian should still be a thing.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
How do I protect my kids from feral hogs without napalm and cluster bombs?
Anne Laurie
@BlueDWarrior: “My magic anti-tiger rock is very effective! You don’t see any tigers around, do you, huh libtard?”
Amir Khalid
Henry Cavill in character as Clark Kent does not exactly remind me of defenceless children playing in the yard.
patrick II
You liberals are just in denial about all of the mass murder of children by feral hogs incidents we constantly see in the media.
Amir Khalid
@BlueDWarrior:
This one is more or less on par with the zombie apocalypse fantasy, if ever-so-slightly more realistic.
hueyplong
See what happens when Cletus ventures into the wrong side of town in the wild internet and attempts to fill out his 2nd Am madlibs without proper NRA support due to its ongoing self-immolation?
Poor Internet Gen Lee. No Stonewall Jackson at Gettysburg because of an unfortunate friendly fire incident.
ola azul
@BlueDWarrior:
Time was, I used to in-person challenge provocative gun-nuts with the simple queries: “Why should your fetish be society’s problem? Why are you ENTITLED to own a weapon whose sole purpose is to kill people? If you insist on shooting assault weapons, why not join the military?”
Ultimately I decided (coward that I am) two things:
1. The solution to this problem was decidedly NOT going to be effected thru the “aggrieved” parties, so “dialogue” with gun-nuts was but rhetorical masturbation. And:
2. I enjoy living and prefer to continue apace.
Millard Filmore
Adam or Cheryl will have to explain the gravity of this:
“Huge explosion at Achinsk Ammo Depot in in Krasnoyarsk, Russia today”
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212352847
David Evans
Call me naive, but I thought McNabb was a satirist. Could anyone really be that OTT?
Betty Cracker
I joined in the feral hog fun with a light-hearted tweet…
…and was promptly reminded just how fucking insane people on Twitter are when you get out of the boat (there is kind of a boat on Twitter if you stick to your timeline). One gun-humper embedded video allegedly showing Ted Nugent shooting feral hogs from a helicopter — blocked that fucker without watching the video. Another accused me of not understand the challenges of rural life and suggested I set feral hogs loose in my city “condo” — I informed that quarter-wit that I live in a goddamned swamp.
Interesting that this set them off in such a big way. I see feral hogs while checking my mailbox, FFS. Somehow, I manage to get through the day without a weapon that can also be used to kill a dozen people in under a minute. My guess is these Twitter tough guys who claim to need a Bushmaster to protect themselves and their families from marauding hogs are considerably less butch than advertised in person.
Nicole
Oh my god, that poem. The original was on NYC subway cars for ages, it felt like. Props to Popehat.
One of my other favorite responses on Twitter said of the post, “This is like an SAT question for meth heads.”
scav
Hadn’t thought about it for eons, but I once camped amidst feral hogs and they came in the middle of the night and attacked our coolers. I seem to remember we resprted to waking up and making loud noises. And survived! How unAmerican of us!
eta. can I possibly have lead such an interesting and topical life?
nah.
sukabi
@Amir Khalid: Jason Momoa doesn’t strike me as feral hog material either.
mrmoshpotato
Are we back in the ’20s filming a Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd slapstick comedy? Because that’s the only likely situation I can think of.
ola azul
@Betty Cracker:
When I was a boy, my old man knew Ted Nugent. Indirectly, I, too, knew, or at least had exposure to, Ted Nugent. I hunted whitetail deer around Ted Nugent as a yute, both on someone else’s land and at his cabin near Manistee, Mich. Saw Nugent up close. Tweren’t pleasant.
Some might wanna slag on me for hunting, and that’s OK. Have got that a lot. That’s on me and a separate discussion.
What I can say, unequivocally, fwiw, is this: Ted Nugent the man is an even bigger egocentric rampaging asshole in real life than he appears in public, which, I think it must be granted, is quite an achievement. Ted Nugent is an awful human being, end stop. Completely self-serving — a needy narcissist who don’t know shit, much like Trump.
If one were inclined to enjoy his music, which I am not, it is the sort of experience that might make one wanna revisit their esteem.
mrmoshpotato
@David Evans:
I hadn’t thought of that, but we’re in a time where satire is reality in a sense. If one of these gun-humping, Trump-loving Nazi shitbags wrote a piece about eating children, would you be able to detect satire or if it was monstrously serious?
cs
I spend too much time online. Spent decades reading conspiracy theories for entertainment. Seen all sorts of madness. Poe rarely gets me. But reading Bill McNabb’s post… I mean it’s obviously satire, right? I know everyone’s mocking him, but throwing small children + rabid packs of feral hogs + assault rifles together in a stew is almost certainly satire. No one, not even the magas, are that dumb. Are they?
Ok, I guess it isn’t satire. But if you gave me the call (“What use do you have for an AR-15??”) with the response (“Shooting a herd of feral hogs in 3 minutes to protect small children!”), I’d swear someone was making the sort of sarcastic jokey response that’s insanely common. I probably would come up with something that absurd just for the hell of it. I just can’t wrap my brain around someone saying that seriously.
I swore the trumpies would never break me. But I think they finally managed it.
Betty Cracker
@ola azul: I am unsurprised to learn that Nugent is a raging asshole in all aspects of life.
raven
@ola azul: Ugh, I saw him at the Kickapoo Creek Rock Festival in 70!
low-tech cyclist
I’d seen references to the 30-50 feral hogs last night, but I had no idea where it came from. Thanks for filling me in, Anne!
And now that I know where Jason Isbell stands on assault weapons, how about his friend Mr. Tillman?
low-tech cyclist
@cs:
I thought so at first, but then I clicked through to his Twitter, and no, he’s serious.
Jeffro
I vote for ‘trek’ ftw
But then again I’m only several hundred replies in to the thread =)
Keith P.
I will say that “40-50 feral hogs attacking my kids” is better than “for the zombie apocalypse”, which I have heard from more than one person.
ola azul
@Betty Cracker:
Fair enough. Was just trying to convey, and suspect I is failt in the endeavor, that he’s *even worse* in person than his ogreish troglodyte assholery in the public imaginaton. (And, to your original point, a fronting coward, btw.)
The sorta shitheel that’s, quite frankly, astonishing to encounter in the wild, like it’s sorta hard to believe such a maelstrom of hideous actually exists. I guess his charms appeal to certain types a peeps, cuz I seen it, but like Bob Dylan sings, it ain’t me, babe.
RAVEN
@ola azul: Hey, I booked my retirement trip out of Venice, LA in Sept. Have you seen this “Seakeeper” anti-roll technology? Our boat has it.
gene108
Good grief, the filibuster is what’s saved from 1,001 bills gutting our healthcare system, privatizing Social Sexurity, etc, when Republicans controlled the WH and Congress.
You want lasting change increase the seats in the House above 435 members. Maybe make it 535, after the next census, to balance out the over representation of rural districts.
Ian R
@Amir Khalid: To be fair, he doesn’t exactly remind me of Clark Kent, either. Why they let Snyder direct movies about characters he hates, I just don’t get.
Booger
OMG Popehat wins this month’s internet for that one…took me two readings going “…wait a minute…I’ve heard this before somewhere…”
Daoud bin Daoud
If my property was invaded by 30-50 feral pigs, I would definitely want a use a small tactical nuke.
What could go wrong?
gene108
@Ian R:
Read the whole thing
https://io9.gizmodo.com/batman-v-superman-spoiler-faq-of-justice-1767720335
ola azul
@RAVEN:
Had not heard of it till recently. Gyroscope-tech, baby! Sposed to greatly diminish the discomfiting (to many) roll of the indifferent uproarious sea. For a mere 20K or so, might could get me one (if had space to put it). Glad it’sa added value in your jaunt, specially if you’re susceptible. Sounds like a cool trip in the works!
Will say: spent my entire boyhood working on charterboats in the summer, ages 13 to 19, mostly Lake Mich. but a lil on Lake Erie as well, so have seen literally many hundreds of folks reax to the singular bewitching spell of motion sickness.
And have formed a completely bullshit unscientific anecdotal hypothesis, which is: It *seems* like there ain’t no guessing who gets seasick and who ain’t; i.e. folks you might think are pukers ain’t, and them’s you think will be fine is oft afflicted. And what I draws from that was that peeps is either physiologically fortunate — or they ain’t. Seems like it’sa inner-ear thing, and I allus ascribed it to like the gay or straight or bi debate — i.e. it’s mostly hardwired and a body ain’t got much say in the matter. Your amenability (or not) is what it is. Seasickness can be mitigated if one is susceptible, to be sure, but it’s largely beyond one’s control if one is prone to it. (Will also say: know a fair number of commercial fisherfolk who *still* get seasick, a miserable experience, but do what they must to fight thru it.)
Me, being an insensitive brute, have been blessed (so far! never say never!) with an obdurate resistance to the affliction.
Puts me to mind of the woman who I think of as “the woman who wouldn’t take no for an answer”. When I’s bringing boat north from SF Bay to Sitka in ’16, was a young lady who was innerested in coming north with (had put a craigslist ad up for crew, she had responded). Met her, liked her, but she was diminutive. Boat was new to me and bigger’n I had dealt with heretofore, so (to my shame) I had said no. Was worried about losing her overboard, but, thinking back, that were stupid and small-minded. But that was where my mind was as I faced the idea of crawling up that shit-kicker coast for the first time in my own boat. No excuse, but that’s what I’s thinking.
But, like Lizzie Warrren, yet she persisted. Kept asking to go. Me (to my shame) I kept saying no.
So three days before was schedzed to departch, was doing sea-trials offa Golden Gate, droppt 150-pound anchor in 25 fathoms of water, let out a buncha scope and shut down the engine (lucky me; more on that inna bit). Went to puttering, boutta hour later (so hydraulic fluid was cooled by then), fired up and raised anchor. Got boom chain just over roller and hydraulic hose burst in my face (which, were it hot, woulda disfigured my already ugly mug). First time I used my brand-new sailing winches was in tying bowlines onto chain and ratcheting up segment of anchor rode, cleating off, tying another into lower segment of chain, etc. to retrieve anchor inna ridic leap-frog manner. (By myself, best I could do.)
Anyways, hadda buddy arriving from Boston to make run north in three days, in desperation called Anna n sez: “Prolly notta attractive offer, but: If you’re willing to get filthy helping me replace hydraulic hoses onna anchor winch, you’re welcome to come.” She was game, and she was a great boon in the endeavor. Again, to her immense credit.
But, to get back to the seasickness bug, careful what you wish for. From Pt . Reyes to Mendocino Bay, we had seas escalating from 8-footers to 21-footers before we (I) said fuck it, let’s get offa the ocean (part of that where-can-I-get-offa-the-shitty-ocean prob is dictated by the fact that the entire west coast has a dearth of good anchorages and most refuges require passing over a bar, which is its own hazard).
Anna spent much of that time bemoaning her desire to come north. (We had to take soundings in the dark of night to step in the wheelhouse cuz she was rolling around on the floor wondering, rather loudly and uncomfortably, why she ever wanted to do this.) But, again, to her inestimable credit, she fought thru it and is fishing up her now.
So that’s my roundabout way of saying, wish I had me a seakeeper. Would be a boon to them’s that passes thru (and might be a comfort to me as well). Do a lotta drifting on seas in the 5 to 8 foot range; would make nights more smooth, ain’t no doubt.
Love to hear the Red Barber report when you return.
leeleeFL
@raven: He’s coming to my area. I am offended already. Fumigation needs to be planned. At least, I shall smudge sage.
Another Scott
@Daoud bin Daoud: I’m not getting out of the boat; maybe this was addressed there.
So Mr. McNabb mows down 30-50 feral hogs on his property. Success!!
Then what?
Some of them
wayweigh up to, what, 1000 pounds? What’s he going to do with the 3,000-50,000 pounds of carcasses?“Hehe, we’ll have a barbecue!!11”
Yeah, who’s going to clean them. You’ve got a freezer that can hold 3,000-50,000 pounds??
Hey, McNabb, I’ve got an idea. Maybe, if you can’t afford a fence, maybe get some noise makers and just scare them off. Metallica’s ‘Don’t tread on me’ may work there, too.
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
(“Too many people can’t think even one step ahead.”)
low-tech cyclist
@gene108:
You don’t have a cite for that because it didn’t happen.
In 2017-2018, Mitch tried to kill the ACA via reconciliation, which only required a majority. The GOP didn’t get a majority. No filibuster was involved.
The last time before that when there was a GOP President and the GOP controlled Congress as well was 2005-2006. GW Bush tried to privatize Social Security, but wanted to at least have a veneer of bipartisanship, knowing that if the GOP killed Social Security all by itself, it might kill the GOP. The Dems were united against privatization, so Bush and the GOP chickened out and didn’t even try to pass Social Security privatization legislation. Again, no filibuster was involved.
The key is simply public support. If the Dems pass programs that large numbers of people would be pissed if the GOP repealed them, they won’t need the filibuster to save them.
But if the Dems leave the filibuster in place and can’t pass anything to begin with, how does that work out?
Oh yeah: voter suppression continues, the planet gets cooked like a well-done steak, guns remain unregulated, the minimum wage stays at $7.25, unions continue to have the deck stacked against them, etc.
Ken
I’m not familiar with the original of Popehat’s poem, can someone enlighten me?
Another Scott
@Ken: +1
Cheers,
Scott.
raven
@ola azul: ; My buddy is coming from Berkeley and he saw it and booked that boat. I’m fine with it because it’s expensive anyway so what a bit more. As far as seasickness, the trip I will always remember was Maui when I caught the big tuna (for me). Six people on a 32 ft Bertram and 4 were sick the entire trip. I hurled but I kept fishing and they all went below and laid down! I was also on a charter where a fighter pilot from Eglin hit the wall and he was so pissed!! This is a 12 hour rig trip and I know the weather is a crapshoot, fuck it and drive on!
zhena gogolia
@Ken:
William Carlos Williams, “This Is Just To Say”
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56159/this-is-just-to-say
Raven
@ola azul: Also, RE the Pacific. Our cap’n in Maui wanted to go between the Big Island and Maui but he looked at the group and said “nope”. I’ve fished Hatteras and the Gulf but that roll in the Pacific was totally different. My old man was a destroyer sailor in the Pacific and his BIL was on the crew as well. He developed seasickness when the war started and even when they put him on a cruiser he couldn’t hack it. It always tickles me that his kids go on and on about his “service” and he never left the states.
Raven
The Honda Point disaster was the largest peacetime loss of U.S. Navy ships. On the evening of September 8, 1923, seven destroyers, while traveling at 20 knots (37 km/h), ran aground at Honda Point, a few miles from the northern side of the Santa Barbara Channel off Point Arguello on the coast in Santa Barbara County, California. Two other ships grounded, but were able to maneuver free off the rocks. Twenty-three sailors died in the disaster.
These were the class of cans my old man was on.
Ken
@zhena gogolia: Thanks!
Don K
@ola azul:
I recently read an oral history of the Detroit rock scene from the 60s on, and one of the members of the MC5 is quoted as saying, “Nugent has always been an asshole.”
Doug
Catherynne Valente chimed in from her way to Worldcon:
When I wake up
Well I know I wanna be
I wanna be 30-50 feral hogs
https://twitter.com/catvalente/status/1158573694861529089
Raven
@Don K: What they say abut Seger?
The Truffle
Someone suggested to Mr. McNabb that he should simply call the local wild hog pest control in his Arkansas town. Why do easy solutions never occur to these nuts?
ola azul
@Raven:
Yikes! Dead reckoning: now there’sa freighted n weighted phrase that inspires terror. ‘Member when I first came to AK in ’91, my now life-long friend (we wuz born in the same hospital in Flint, Mich. 25 years apart; we still — ironically, course — likes to sez ’bout sumpin worth doin’: “It’s worth the drive to Frankenmuth!”) put me in charge of running the boat — a 20-y/o-kid, mind — while he went to town to get down with his girlfriend. “Catch some fish, kid,” I can still ‘member his farewell as he got onna skiff bound for Sitka. This was before GPS, course, so naturally there was fog, and other boats, course, and rocks galore offa Biorka Island. I fisht in mortal fucking terror, but somehow got lucky and din’t sink his boat.(Go me! Woo-hoo! More luck than good management, but there it is.)
Have hadda use dead reckoning on very rare occasions, and the suffocating sense of dread leavened by uncertainty is some difficult to convey. As cited in the article, the ocean does weird shit and there’sa lotta factors in determining just where one is. And perhaps that’s just a modern reax, cuz that was just SOP back in the day; have oft thought one of the greatest inspirations for superstitions for which fisherfolk n sailors is renowned, is due to the cognizance of forces that can kill you over which you have so very minimal control, most lspecially in the pre-tech age).
And whenever I think a them kinda things, and how hard it is to pinpoint one’s exact location, and why it matters relative to hard water (rocks n shoals n the like), it puts me to mind of the ice-bound boys on the Endurance, who hadda sail 800 miles or so in the very worst sea conditions in the world (Antarctic) from Elephant Island to South Georgia,, and if they’s wrong by even 1 degree, they’s off by 60 miles.
fwiw, if you like that kinda yarn, “Endurance” by Alfred Lansing, is a phenomenal read. Every time you think them boys is outta the shit, they’re innit further and deeper. It’sa amazing tale. There’s also a version by Worsely, who was the nav officer, but, while inneresting, it suffers cuz Worsely’s one a them laconic understated non-showy types who, if it were 40-footers he’s battling, he’d merely say the weather was disagreeable. Which, granted, it IS, but that’s some wanting in conveying the gravity of the sitch. Lansing interviewed buncha survivors and weaves an intersecting tale of the entire party with a bird’s eye view. Quite a ripper, really.
cmorenc
People like McNabb *are* the feral hogs most other folks are afraid of if they take themselves and their kids into a public space such as say, a Wal-Mart.
cliosfanboy
@ola azul: I like his music, at least the guitars. But his lyrics are sick so I do not own anything by him… not surprised he’s worse in person
Raven
@ola azul: After my old man died In found one of his shipmates and called him. Lot’s of tales of the South Pacific but, at one point, he said “thank god we weren’t in the Atlantic”! My old man was really fussy about how they got short-shrifted in the Pacific so I always focused on that theater. When I stated to read about
The Battle of the Atlantic”, damn!
Hey what do you know about this “standup fishing” for tuna and wahoo? They have these harnesses that go under your but and you lift with your legs. I caught my tuna in a chair but these oil rog boats don’t have em.
Llelldorin
Well, you can see his problem. The thing that traditionally goes in that rant is “invading commies,” but the gun nuts owe way too much to Russia these days to use that one… so they’re just kinda casting around, now. Feral pigs? Really, extremely cross ravens? They need to use something!
afanasia
@Ken: https://poets.org/poem/just-say
ola azul
@Raven:
Prolly not much help here. Inna ‘nuther lifetime, usedta be editor of a fishing rag; will say: am aware of the stand-up battlers, but ain’t never rigged up n did it per se, so can’t help much there, ‘cept to say: seems like a capital way to getta hernia if yer legs give out!
Biggest fishes I is caught is been tarpons, easily; biggest one got fly fishing (estimated, course, released in Belize) ’bout 160-170 pounds. One of our contributors was a fly-fishing guru-guy (and a helluva courtly fine fellow; convinced our publisher I oughtta meet him not cuz it were necessary but mostly cuz I wanted to — tho I told him it were necessary — so flew to Maryland; he gimme a Sage 12-weight fly rod w/his inscription on reel seat; still gottit); Lefty Kreh don’t mean much to some, but he’s purty renowned in certain circles; hope he’s still alive, was last I knew, but that was prolly 5-8 years ago; Bernard was in WWII, Battle of the Bulge, if mem’ry serves, be in his 90s now if he’s alive yet. ‘Member as a 25-y/o-kid sending him my leader I caught my biggest tarpon on in Belize like a fan-boy, and ‘member him, in his dry, bemused, matter-a-fact way saying, “Yep, sure looks like a leader that’s been hooked up to a big tarpon.” (Feel silly now, but at that age, I was so goddamn proud and wanted to thank him for alla his help with my insufferable and manifold questions.)
That were sorta stand-up fishing, I guess, tho’ I were like to fall down by the end after 3+ hours inna skiff, last hour or so in the dark. Hadda 11-weight Penn fly rod n reel w/a weight-forward SciAnglers flyline (on loan, perks; miss them days).
Saw a guy in Bimini Bahamas one time catch a 685-pound bluefin tuna once inna chair, but what I ‘member most was the cap of the boat, who took umbrage at this young muscle-bound yute who was bragging up his ability to bench-press 400 pounds or whatever the fuck it was. ‘Bout three hours into it, cap never once deigning to back down on the fish to help the poor sap out (and by this time, he’s like a crumpled up dish-rag, wilted n sweltering in the blazing sun), ol’ cap — a native Bahamamian n a dead-ringer for a tall Miles Davis — starts to opine like Zeus on Mt. Olympus from atop the flybridge n sez in this mellifluous rolling lilt: “You know, dese guys come on my boat, and they say, oh, I’ma big man, mon, I can bench-press 400 pounds, mon. But then they tangle wit da big bluefin, and it always ends the same — they all die slowly in the chair.”
And then, and only then, after he had said his piece n relieved his bile, did he back down on the fish. Kid rubbed him wrong with his humble-braggin, I guess, and cap wanted to lettim know.
(Huge Penn reels, heavy drag, fucker SMOKED on the initial run. For a very long time. Never seen power like that — impressive.)
Just Chuck
I honestly thought the feral hogs thing was parody at first. Poe’s law in action.
Uncle Cosmo
@Millard Filmore:
(Pace Tom Lehrer of course…)
Ruckus
Has anyone considered the guy was asking such an outrageous question to show that assault weapons really aren’t necessary?
He had to come up with a pretty unusual situation where it might be possible that an assault weapon might be useable, and where it would be obvious that he couldn’t shoot into the group without hitting his children. And of course there is the why would you want to shoot all those hogs if there was innocent people in the way.
I’m not saying that it’s a legitimate way to phrase this but it does show the stupidity of the argument for assault weapons as having the ability to do anything but kill whatever is in the direction you are firing in.
Raven
@ola azul: So cool! My tuna was only 130.
Ella in New Mexico
@Nicole:
Right? And this one is found in the Math section of that same test:
I need to be able to protect my [most valuable possession] at [extremely short period of time] notice, from [obviously terrifying violent threat group]
patrick II
@gene108:
Do both. Get rid of the filibuster so we can pass some bills. Increase the seats in the House to keep it democratic and block bad senate bills. We won’t be getting 60 in the Senate for the foreseeable future. So, if you want anything done at all, the filibuster has to go.
Otherwise, we are in this one-way ratchet of the only time things can get passed for democrats is when they have all three branches with 60 in the Senate, and that is not happening for a while.
And then appoint two more Supremes because the “moderate” days of Kennedy are over so even with having all of the bills passed we would like to see, nothing of value will get done with Kavanaugh making a fifth and finding any gun law, abortion, an updated VRA or any attempt to limit money in politics unconstitutional.
It’s called Democracy lite, where everything is decided by the right five guys with lifetime appointments.
The government is locked up right now against any meaningful change. With Gorsuch hinting in a recent decision that government regulations should not be delegated to the various bureaus by Congress. Goodbye EPA restrictions on CO2.
lumpkin
I had a guy seriously tell me with a straight face that he wouldn’t allow any member of his family to leave their house near Flathead Lake without a rifle because of all the wolves. I’ve spent a lot of time in the wild areas of Montana and Wyoming where there really are wolves and never seen a single one, though I’ve heard them. I don’t carry a gun either. He had no response when I told him this.
billcinsd
@gene108: Rural districts are not particularly over-represented in the House. The Senate sure, but 4 of the 5 largest districts are relatively rural — Montana-all, South Dakota-all, Idaho-2 and one I can’t remember off the top of my head, might be the other Idaho district or North Dakota. Three of the five smallest districts are relatively non-rural or at least Democratically held, such as Rhode Island both 1 and 2.
Basically most all the really large and small districts come from small states, i. e. those that have 1-3 representatives. The large population districts are those that fall just below the cutoff, the small population districts just above the cutoff.
While there are good reasons to increase the size of the House, over-representation of rural areas is not one of them
SWMBO
@ola azul: He passed. According to Wikipedia:
Lefty Kreh
Born Bernard Victor Kreh
February 26, 1925
Frederick, Maryland
Died March 14, 2018 (aged 93)
Cockeysville, Maryland
Nationality American
Occupation Fly angler, photographer and fly casting instructor
Miss Bianca
@Betty Cracker:
DING DING DING
H-Bob
What about protection from that Wile E. Coyote ?
[Don’t buy ammo from ACME !]