Via TPM, I learn that a Lousiana state representative wants those carrying guns to stay out of Starbucks:
In response to the recent decision by Starbucks to let gun owners know that they are not welcome in its coffee shops, State Representative and Defend Louisiana founder Jeff Thompson is urging conservatives to take their business to those coffee shops and diners who are friendly to gun owners and who respect the Second Amendment.
For the record, I believe Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz never said gun owners weren’t welcome in the chain’s stores. This is what he actually wrote:
…we are respectfully requesting that customers no longer bring firearms into our stores or outdoor seating areas—even in states where “open carry” is permitted—unless they are authorized law enforcement personnel.
I would like to clarify two points. First, this is a request and not an outright ban. Why? Because we want to give responsible gun owners the chance to respect our request—and also because enforcing a ban would potentially require our partners to confront armed customers, and that is not a role I am comfortable asking Starbucks partners to take on.
Boy, does that sound hostile to me! I guess being asked, nicely, not to discomfort others (and/or scare the shit out of baristas) is too much for the delicate fee-fees of the firearm obsessed. If you feel naked without a full magazine with which to face down the threat of a triple decaf soy latte (which, I’ll admit, is a weapon of mass-degustation that troubles me greatly) then this request really is a terrible cross to bear.
But for all my scorn for those who think wandering around city streets with a pistol on your hip and/or a long gun on your shoulder is simply an expression of American heritage (and/or paranoia severe enough to require medication), I have to say I heartily approve of Thompson’s call for the armed to forgo Starbucks. The chain doesn’t brew my favorite cup, but they’re reliably OK and — more important — ubiquitous, so especially when I travel I find myself dosing up there fairly often. It gives me a great relief that when I do it’s getting more likely that the only thing hot I’ll encounter will be not lead, but coffee.
And as for the corollary of Thompson’s proposed Starbuck’s boycott? I can’t see how anything could go wrong with corralling gun owners into a single enclosure. After all, legal gun owners are invariably responsible.
Image: Arthur William Devis, Emily and George Mason, 1794-1795.
srv
We are all Dirty Harry
Bobby Thomson
You know Cleek’s law? My law is don’t rely on rationality because people are really stupid.
PurpleGirl
I like Starbucks’ teas (especially Chai Latte) and their walnut loaf. They are usually a pleasant place to sit for a while, where you won’t feel that you have to leave after a short time. (Sometimes while shopping I need a longish break.) Would I feel as comfortable with an open carry at the next table — probably not. Would I feel comfortable any place with people who open carry around me — probably not. I’d have to wonder what is it they think could happen or if the physical area was so unsafe that they need a gun with them.
JPL
What a gorgeous painting but I have to wonder if that’s a terrorist in the background.
Suzanne
I would go to Starbucks in support, but I hate Starbucks.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
Remember that this is the group for which minimally extra scrutiny in background checks is tantamount to total gun confiscation. Anything short of ‘free guns forever’ is ‘hostile’.
Roger Moore
What a bunch of childish whiners. They really can’t stand being told no, and throw a snit fit any time somebody tries. I’d say they’re acting like a bunch of toddlers, but toddlers don’t usually throw their snits over matters of life and death.
JPL
Many decades ago, I lived in LA and remember the good old days. If you didn’t finish your cocktail, they’d put it in a to go cup. If a married woman tried to open a charge account, even if that person had a good income, you needed your spouse’s permission to open a credit account. Years later, while living in IL, my son’s pediatrician told me a story about her daughter trying to divorce an abusive husband in LA. She asked me if it was really that bad and I said yup. When I lived their, they had just passed a law saying females could serve on jury duty but had to register. Sorry to say, I didn’t register.
IowaOldLady
When I was hired for my first English prof job, the dean asked me if my husband approved of me working full time.
Chris
I am far from the first person to say this, especially on this blog, but it is truly amazing how easy it is to ruffle their supposedly rugged and tough minded feathers, and send them into an enraged rant about how you’re trampling their constitutional rights every time you tell them anything other than “if it feels good, do it.”
“I am a strong, manly, ruggedly individualistic American, who pulls himself up by his bootstraps, who takes responsibility for his life, who doesn’t whine or make excuses like a namby-pamby intellectual liberal elitist every time something upsetting happens, and who can generally take anything the world can throw at him.”
“Hey, would you mind if we ordered mushroom pizza instead of pepperoni this time around?”
“MOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY THE MEAN LIBERAL IS ATTACKING MY CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO PEPPERONI” ::collapses into a sobbing heap::
JPL
@Chris: Can’t remember who but someone on this very site wrote that according to some, The Constitution gave them unregulated rights to….
Keith P
I know people who eat, drink, and breathe all things gun-related, and I’ve heard a few people in person say that they’d give up their guns over their dead bodies, but I seriously do not understand that mindset. It’s a piece of metal crafted into a machine, yet their are people out their who devote their lives to almost worshiping it, and there are others who apparently would rather be shot to death than have to replace one that would otherwise be confiscated for whatever reason.
Comrade Mary
I would just like to confirm that I do not suffer from nail fungus, have never suffered from nail fungus, and have never run a search on the topic of nail fungus.
So who the heck in this blog did or wrote something that summoned up an unspeakably gross illustrated ad for some nail fungus treatment right on the front page?
(Not counting me, of course, who has used the term “nail fungus” several times just in case this helps spread the love and the ad to those yet unblessed. You’re welcome.)
WereBear
I wish the gun owners’ fervent and maniacal desire to carry a deadly weapon 24/7 in the absence of job requirements and imminent danger would get the DSM designation it deserves.
If I insisted that I wear a jumpsuit studded with razors because I wanted to make sure I was not fondled on the bus, I would be locked up. Why do gun owners get away with something even more dangerous?
dmsilev
@efgoldman: The number of gun owners in the US is slowly trending down. What is sustaining the political power of the NRA is that the political involvement of those owners is high and motivated. But, if their numbers continue to drop, that will eventually stop mattering.
WereBear
@Comrade Mary: I wound up installing AdBlock, as suggested by a commenter a few threads back, because I was similarly discomfited by that ad.
Working great! And I paid for it, so my conscience is clear!
Amir Khalid
So, Thompson wants gun owners to protest Howard Schultz’s request by complying with it? Yeah, that’ll show’em.
Despite not carrying a firearm, I stopped patronising Starbuck’s myself years ago. My vending-machine Nescafé habit (acquired in my newspaperman days and now given up, Gott sei dank) means coffee any better than that is just wasted on me.
PurpleGirl
@efgoldman: Well, they didn’t us AK47s but four Puerto Rican nationalists shot up the House chamber in 1954. From Wikipedia:
Churchlady
@Chris: Open carry is relatively recent in all states. How did manly men show their prowess before they could openly carry? If it took that to feel manly, did we have nothing but wimps before? I think not.
Tokyokie
Everybody has a constitutional right to freedom of speech, but that doesn’t mean that the movie theater can’t throw your butt out if you’re talking loudly on your cellphone during the film. Why should it be different for second-amendment rights?
Mind you, I’m somebody who thinks that open carry = assault. Those who insist on doing so are implicitly using the threat of violence to alter the behavior of others.
Comrade Mary
@WereBear: I have AdBlock, thanks, and I use it everywhere but here. I don’t block ads here because I like to throw a little extra change at our blog host (DANCE, MONKEYBOY! DANCE!) and I’m also curious about how ads work out in the wild, so to speak.
For example, I’m seeing an evolving set of ads here for an online store I browsed earlier this week. The first ad showed me three of the exact products I had browsed. That stuck around for a couple of days. Today, I got an ad from the same store that showed the same products, then, on a second page, some new products. And as soon as I refreshed the page, I got another ad from them that auto-scrolled several pages of stuff. I can only assume that they think they have a live one here.
John O
@efgoldman:
The debate won’t turn until the circular firing squads the NRA fetishizes about become commonplace. I’m oddly torn about wanting this to happen.
That road rage incident where the two guys killed each other is kind of what I’m talking about. Culling the herd!
MikeJ
@Amir Khalid: I worked at a bank in Rome where they had better espresso out of the vending machine than most cafés in the US made. This was the same place where one of the sysadmins kept an ashtray on top of the half million dollar server.
JPL
@IowaOldLady: The younger generation has voted democratic in presidential elections but they really have no clue what it was like earlier. Cuyahoga River which led into Lake Erie was on fire and females had limited rights. They really assume that there are certain rights that won’t being taken away. The younger generation is one Rand Paul or Ted Cruz away from having their lives ripped apart.
also, too. I’m still cranky from reading the Unwinding unless you couldn’t tell.
JPL
@Churchlady: I’d rather have open carry rather than concealed carry. At least that way, it gives me the right to shop in a store without assholes.
Chris
@JPL:
A lot of the people in my generation make me despair sometimes, but I have to keep reminding myself that my own particular demographic skews much more white and college educated than my generation as a whole. And even in my demographic I’m reading from plenty of pissed off people noticing what a crock the economy is… and quite a few of them actually jumping to the right conclusions and asking for the right things, instead of just blaming Obama and demanding that the Market-God be unchained even more.
nancy darling
I stopped at the White Oak filling station/convenience store in Berryville, AR for a bag of ice the other day. They had a sign on the door saying no weapons were allowed on the premises. I don’t know if that is corporate policy or up to the individual franchisee. They are a small chain (AR and MO) headquartered in Harrison.
Our lege has been outdoing themselves in the stoopid department this year on issues of open carry, concealed carry, guns in church, etc. when they are not busy meddling in lady parts and trying to outlaw tattoos.
Amir Khalid
@Comrade Mary:
In keeping with Balloon Juice custom, let me congratulate you on this wonderful news regarding your health.
I have my own problem with unpleasant ads on this site, where I have disabled Adblock because John Cole asked me nicely. I’m getting campaign ads from US Senator John Cornyn, whose people seem to think I’m a Texan voter. I click on the ads when I remember to, because I’m told that this sends some pocket change Cole’s way.
WereBear
@Comrade Mary: The ads never used to bother me, but people are successfully ignoring them. So the artwork is now deliberately designed to catch the eye. Like the people with bizarre hairstyles or missing their dental appliances or have arms sprouting where they shouldn’t be. That ad was the last straw.
And I’m sympathetic to our bloghost’s efforts; I tried to support my own site with ads but I’d get kicked off the network because they weren’t making any money from me. So now I’m running a fund drive and that’s working out pretty well.
Putting information on the Internet isn’t free. Bandwidth alone starts mounting up if you are reaching significant numbers of people. I am happy to donate to my favorite places, like this one, because that’s how it all works these days. Coincidentally, I had put some money in Mother Jones’ tip jar a few days before the Romney tape broke. So that was a little like winning the lottery!
Long Tooth
I live in California, which has fairly strict permit to pack laws. No doubt I often mingle in public with people with permits (and without, unfortunately) without realizing it.
However, if I ever do see someone packing anywhere in my vicinity, I’m heading the other way. If it happens in a business establishment, I’ll be disinclined to go back.
I feel sorry for sensible people who live in states like Louisiana, where imbecile yahoos like Thompson have effectively negated the sensible concept of well regulated laws that effectively control firearms.
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: In such a case, I will also put my AdBlock on pause as soon as that disgusting thing goes away!
I’ll do my bit for BJ, but there’s a line I can’t cross.
JPL
@nancy darling: AR has always been kinda screwy. We headed up to Devils Den for Thanksgiving one year with another family. We stopped at a gas station/grocery store to fill up and buy beer for the holidays. It was a dry area, which we didn’t know. The owner thought that my ex, friends, six kids and I looked suspicious and called the credit card company. The person from the bank asked to speak to my ex and mentioned they approved the sale but we should leave the area cuz the owner was odd. duh
doug r
@Tokyokie: Yeah, their projection of insecurity in the form of implied violence intimidates the rest of us and makes the rest of us feel more insecure.
Roger Moore
@efgoldman:
I’m a little more hopeful. The evidence says that gun ownership is trending down, and reasonable gun control is very popular. The crazy gun culture represents a small but very vocal group that is backed up by industry money, rather than any kind of broadly popular opinion. They’re shrinking, and they’re likely to keep shrinking into the future. They depend heavily on intimidation, but they really only have enough strength to fight on a narrow front. They depend on most legislators being unwilling to step out of line so they can really beat on the ones who do. If they ever start to lose, they’re going to be faced with more defections than they can fight at one time and the fear of them is going to fade.
dmsilev
@WereBear: My personal comfort zone is blocking Flash (I’m on Safari and use the ClickToFlash extension; there are similar things available for other browsers). That blocks the annoying animated/loud ads, but lets static stuff through so I’m not a complete leech.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Well, I’m afraid that the tiny minority of gun nuts have won. Not that the sane should give in and let them have their heavily armed way. All of the recent tragedies haven’t moved the national consensus opinion on reasonable limits on gun purchases one micron. So it’s probably not going to happen. The obsession with carrying personal firearms is a dangerous addiction that’s getting people killed daily.
I come from a family of hunters, and we have three times as many firearms as people. There are firearms in the room I’m sitting in. So I’m not anti-gun. I’m just pro-sanity.
WereBear
@efgoldman: The Black Russian!*
Like all things Republican, this gun situation is making less and less sense. Crime is down. Riots are rare. We don’t live in Dodge City.
But perhaps their behavior is simply reflecting the fact that everyone who meets them winds up wanting to punch them in the face, and they are actually acting sensibly against a credible threat.
—
*Blackadder, Season 1
Funny story: Mr WereBear had never seen any of them! So I acquired the collection and every ten minutes he would exclaim, “So that’s why you always say that!” And laughing. Especially during the Prince Regent season.
RSA
Thompson:
I imagine coffee has a history in Louisiana, but I doubt that coffee shops are part of the state’s heritage, and certainly no one needs a coffee shop to enjoy the great outdoors or protect one’s family.
Keith P
Speaking of guns, there’s been a massacre at a mall in Kenya. Because the US political world is so screwball, I don’t even need to bet that some jerkoff shock jock on right-wing radio is going to somehow link it to the violence in Chicago just so they can link it somehow to Obama. And then, it will get legs because they’ve got a support system to do that for every other screwball idea that pops up on the radio. DAMN YOU MARCONI!! MAR-CO-NIIIIIIII!!!!
Baud
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
I’m sure there is some Greek term that describes this logical fallacy, but I don’t know what it is.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Baud:
Give it a try in your own words. I’m saying that a spate of highly publicized gun deaths have produced little measurable popular sympathy for tougher gun purchase laws, and have produced a powerful preemptive pushback from the gun lobby. They’re winning, and reasonable reforms have zero traction. Charles Pierce recently expressed the same opinion.
scav
@RSA: Well, apparently Louisiana is such a violent hell-hole full of untrustworthy neighbors that it’s too dangerous to even take a quick coffee-break between family-protecting running gun-battles. The downstairs basements of all the churches now double-up as target ranges. They hand pink and blue loaner guns to visitors.
Roger Moore
@WereBear:
It’s all about fear of not being the dominant political group anymore. Crime may be going down, but the minority population is going up, and that’s very scary for people who don’t like anyone who isn’t just like them. Being heavily armed is a key way of making them feel in control and capable of defeating the brown hordes. The more they lose politically, the more tightly they’re going to cling to their god and guns.
WereBear
From the looks of them when the news captures their disgruntlement, these gun nuts no longer get their butts kissed just for being white and male. Women don’t defer to them, their “lessers” won’t move aside on the sidewalk, their hobbies are denigrated, and their interests are not supported.
These are all positive turns of events, mind you, and with the proper attitude they could improve their life.
They could have a true life companion instead of a maid they sleep with and yell at. They could expand their circle of friends to people from other walks of life and a more varied skin tone. They could develop new hobbies and discover new interests.
But they prefer to complain.
Roger Moore
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
And you’re wrong. Tougher gun purchase laws are broadly popular, even among NRA members. But enough legislators are in the pockets of the gun lobby, and the gun lobby has been successful enough in intimidating legislators who want to pass tougher gun laws, that nothing is happening. It’s just another example of the disconnect between popular opinion and legislative outcomes.
Baud
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
Well, we had some states pass laws, so the premise is false. Yes, the NRA recalled a couple of folks in Colorado, but that will likely be a short lived victory. The gun control issue was moribund for a long time, and was only re-energized because of the Sandy Hook tragedy. Things like this take time, so I don’t believe there is a legitimate reason to believe that nothing will ever change.
MikeJ
@RSA
In New Orleans. I don’t know where Café du Monde stands on gun totin’.
WereBear
@Roger Moore: Ha, writing similar things more or less simultaneously. Jung had a word for that. :)
Villago Delenda Est
@efgoldman:
Odds are good that such a creep would be spraying toward the Democrats, not the Rethuglican slime.
JPL
@Keith P: Chicago has always had a high crime rate and if they continue on the same path, the murder rate will be lower than it was in the mid sixties. Thinks about that.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
I guess I’ll have to go to Seattle’s Best to get my second amendment high.
JPL
@Villago Delenda Est: Odds are they don’t know the difference
Jay S
I thought Starbuck’s drinks were generally weapons of mass construction. The destruction is mostly collateral damage.
Elizabelle
Charles Pierce despaired that Obama would not be re-elected. He is too pessimistic sometimes.
I think the tide is probably turning ever so slightly towards gun control, because the gun nuts, as always, have overplayed their hand.
The gun nuts got themselves requested to not carry firearms into Starbucks by their very own actions. It was ugly to try to hold a gun rights gathering at a Starbucks in Newtown, CT.
If the gun nuts now want to find their very own “Brew and Shoots”, let ’em.
It’s not like they’re being frisked on entry; they can still discretely conceal carry to their little hearts’ content.
They just can’t force the rest of us to sip hot coffee next to their cold steel.
Robert Paehlke
I hope all the gun friendly establishments put a big ‘guns welcome’ sign in their window so I can be sure to stay at least a mile away.
Elizabelle
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
I like Seattle’s Best coffee better. Tasty.
Baud
To be fair, he requested people not bring guns into their shops, but has not yet asked women not to get abortion-on-demand there.
Liberal bias, if you ask me.
Mike in NC
This subject reminds me of the donut shop scene from “Boogie Nights”.
schrodinger's cat
When you are too sexy for your fur, you don’t need guns to impress others.
schrodinger's cat
I probably live and have lived in a liberal bubble, but I haven’t seen anyone other than the police with a firearm in IRL.
ETA: I have lived in ME, MA, NY and MD.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@JPL: I’d rather have open carry rather than concealed carry. At least that way, it gives me the right to shop in a store without assholes that I can’t tell are armed .
Added for pedantic precision.
The Dangerman
How did carrying into a coffee shop help those four cops in Tacoma a couple years ago?
Redshift
A couple of months ago, Ms. Redshift had gotten together with an acquaintance who is, unfortunately, a conservative, and as they’re walking around a placid suburban shopping district on a weekend afternoon, he announces that he’s carrying his concealed weapon, and asks if she feels safer. Really, that is the mentally of these guys – no matter how unthreatening the situation, they’re always the star of their own action movie. Not wanting a fight, she just said no, rather than expressing pity for his insecurity about the size of his pen1s, as she was tempted to.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Ultraviolet Thunder: We have three times as many coffee grinders as people here, but no guns. And I often drink Starbucks, though Mr. Q does not. What that means, I do not know.
However, my father, a lifelong trap/skeet shooter and hunter (if you killed it, it was to eat by you or a shelter) was way ahead of the curve on renouncing his lifetime NRA membership, in the late 70s/early 80s. He said it wasn’t a sportsman’s organization any longer but rather a handgun lobbying organization. I miss him lots.
Redshift
Grrr, mentality, not mentally. Editing apparently doesn’t work on the mobile site, at least not on my phone.
eemom
@schrodinger’s cat:
I saw an open carrying asshole once at the prescription counter in the nice family-owned drugstore, where I shop all the time, here in my nice NoVA ‘burbie town. Boy did that freak me out.
RAM
The firearms-obsessed are, to a person, sniveling cowards. It’s why they’re firearms-obsessed.
Elizabelle
There was a shooting in the US Capitol in summer 1998, which is why security is so heavy there now.
A paranoid schizophrenic shot and killed 2 Capitol policemen; he was shot as he entered offices belonging to Tom DeLay and Dennis Hastert.
The gunman had previously threatened the president (Clinton, I assume); he’s never stood trial as he’s been found mentally unstable.
shelly
Jeez, it finally sunk in that the Newsmax ‘headlines’ to the right, are simply infomercial scams.
JPL
Amid all the crap on the news, I found this photo of the President and an obvious fan..link She’s dressed in her finest attire and her socks aren’t falling down, so that’s a good thing. Look at the expression on her face. The picture melts my cranky old heart.
Jay S
@Jay S: I see I misread “mass degustation” as “mass destruction”, Wiki defines:
I suspect degustation (mass or otherwise) is rare at Starbucks.
gogol's wife
@JPL:
That is so sweet.
MikeJ
@Jay S: Some of the pastry is made by pretty good local bakeries.
Redshift
@eemom: Yeah, the only time I’ve seen one locally was outside my congressman’s health care town hall in 2009.
Redshirt
Someone smart help me with this description:
What’s the word to describe something that has become “Totemistic” in the minds of the tribe? For example, if you’re a member of the Republican Tribe, you know Benghazi was the worst thing ever.
So the word “Benghazi” becomes this thing, a symbol of how evil your opposition is. Facts don’t matter, details don’t matter, context doesn’t matter, nothing matters except “Benghazi” is bad because Obama is bad.
It’s the same with ALL Republic “concerns” – gun rights, abortion, taxes, etc. The facts and details don’t matter a whit. All that matters is if your tribe is for or against it.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@JPL: Another one of his teachers notes! She was there at a wounded vets ceremony with her folks.
Redshift
@RAM: The odd thing is that the two I know personally aren’t. They seem like fairly normal people, other than the fact that they’re really keen on their guns and consider guns an overriding issue when deciding who to vote for. But it’s likely they are not typical.
Redshirt
I just heard an ad from Freedomworks on the radio, telling everyone to call, call, call their representatives and demand the Government defunds Obamacare – because if they don’t, “Obama and his cronies will prosper while you and your family suffers”.
Pure lies, and yet…
Roger Moore
@The Dangerman:
It helped the patriot overcome the jackbooted thugs.
Roger Moore
@shelly:
Only some of them. The rest are the right whinge crazy take on the news.
Yatsuno
@MikeJ: The pain chocolat sucks. And no I’m not just being a snooty frog about it.
Roger Moore
@Redshirt:
A totem?
Suzanne
@Roger Moore: Totemic?
Elizabelle
Teatemic?
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Roger Moore: @Baud:
Howdy. Back from walkies with teh dog.
I sincerely hope you’re right and I’m wrong about the tide turning toward better gun laws. I’d love for us all to live under less danger of violent death. But I am not optimistic. We’ll have to punish a lot of politicians at the ballot box before we get legislation that will make a difference. maybe have to punish most of them. Until there’s a political price to pay that outweighs the benefits they get from the arms industry and the far right, our politicians will do as little as possible to anger the gun nuts.
Jay S
@Redshirt: I think the word you are looking for is shibboleth.
PurpleGirl
@JPL: She is so adorable, and in her Sunday best outfit.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@JPL:
That was marvelous. Just the president being a grownup for a little girl. So sweet.
gene108
@efgoldman:
I thought the 1968 assassinations of RFK and MLK were the impetuous for the 1968 gun control law that got passed.
Secret Service Agent Brady getting shot trying to keep Reagan alive did eventually get the Brady Bill passed that instituted some kind of background checks for gun purchasing.
***************************************
In short, there was once a time when we had two political parties interested in governing this country and laws could get passed in response to tragedies or near tragedies.
Unfortunately the response from the media, especially right-wing media and the gun lobby, has been to ratchet up the paranoia in those inclined to want to own guns, so they keep buying more fire arms and ammo in defiance of rational information available to moderately competent adults.
For example the inexplicable run on guns and ammo, every time Obama wins a Presidential election.
I don’t know how to get right-wingers to stop having a fit and to realize the world isn’t going to fucking end, if they can’t get everything they want right now just the way they want it, which is basically how right-wingers seem to want to deal with the rest of America.
Jay S
@MikeJ: I can’t say much about the quality of their pastry, I don’t but it, and very rarely by their coffee drinks. But the calorie counts and default sizes tend to be enormous.
Mike in NC
@Redshirt:
Evidently the website for Fascistworks was already spoken for?
schrodinger's cat
@eemom: Seriously creepy!
? Martin
Assholes gotta asshole.
Or something.
WereBear
We can’t, because their world is ending.
The one where they successfully kept down half the population for having ovaries, another significant percentage for having too much of a tan, another big chunk for not having the right parents, and then weeding out anyone sensitive enough to be intimidated or disgusted by the way the little fiefdom was run.
And there they are: kings. Because they are the few fish in an small pool.
Redshirt
@Jay S: That’s it! Thanks.
The Repukes entire platform is shibboleths. There’s nothing real there at all, except perhaps for getting rid of taxes on billionaires. There’s a few guys who sincerely believe in that.
PurpleGirl
@gene108: James Brady was Reagan’s Press Secretary. A secret service agent and a DC cop were shot though.
Jay S
@schrodinger’s cat: We had a rash of prescription drug store robberies here a few years ago. If you are going to live in fear, or in the hope of gun glory, a pharmacy might seem to be a reasonable place to carry. OTOH, I would guess the pharmacist would be more than a bit leery unless they knew the customer well.
RSA
@MikeJ:
I wondered whether I was overgeneralizing about coffee shops, what with all the cafes in New Orleans. I stand corrected. (Safer than standing my ground.)
PopeRatzo
I can’t go to Starbucks because I hate the lingo. “brew my favorite cup” – do you mean make the coffee you like the best? “Dosing”? Really, dosing?
I can’t be around people who have so little self-awareness that they use such precious language to talk about drinking coffee.
I understand they have a special “Clover” machine now that makes coffee that they sell for like seven bucks a cup. Who honestly believes they are worth a seven dollar cup of coffee? Go to a diner to get your coffee and give the extra six bucks to the guy standing in front of Starbucks begging, for chrissake.
You want to learn about income disparity and an entitled mentality? Walk into Starbucks. Observe the behavior of the people in line. Watch the interaction of the cashier (I will not use the term that begins with a “b” which is meant to make the customers feel all europey) and the person ordering the coffee. Watch that interaction carefully.
It explains a lot about our economic system and why it’s so upside-down.
eemom
The Other Cole — who AFAIK doesn’t usually comment much on domestic matters — has a kick ass piece up today.
becca
@scav: plus there’s that brain-eating amoeba in the water supply of St Bernard Parish.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
I hate it that every time there is a link to a Twitter comment or photo, I am enjoined to open a Twitter account.
Is there any other way to see the picture you are discussing? A couple of keywords I could Google?
Thanks!
Ruckus
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
I used to be a hunter. I carried a loaded side arm in the navy when on duty in port. That means I was in sight of and easily in shooting distance of civilians at times with a loaded weapon. All it made me feel like was that I had to carry a weapon. Didn’t make me feel bigger, safer or in any way better. It did make me feel like a target on occasion. I don’t mind guns, they are just another tool. They have a specific use and that is to kill. Because of that I have come to the conclusion that there is no “reasonable” gun control. To effectively control guns the regulations will have to be “unreasonable” if only because we have come so far down this insane road. The problem may actually be small, gun ownership is falling, the younger generations are less likely to be hunters and seemingly less likely to be as scared of everyone not exactly like them. But the level of gun ownership is still big enough, the concept of almost unlimited gun ownership is still strong, and as much as we don’t like it, more people will die. Efgoldman’s list up thread shows that things haven’t gotten better after 40 yrs as far as mass shootings/assassinations goes and he left out some. Not to mention the not so high profile everyday shootings, like the two clowns who just shot each other.
No, reasonable regulations won’t work, they are going to have to be unreasonable, and that is going to take a lot more effort than we have been able to muster up till now.
Jay S
@schrodinger’s cat: Well WP thinks I said a bad word.
Shorter me: The prescription counter can be a dangerous place for robbery. I doubt open carry makes it less dangerous for the customers or the person behind the counter.
SiubhanDuinne
@eemom:
@schrodinger’s cat:
A couple of days ago, I was idling at a long red light next to a vehicle that had decals and bumper stickers plastered all over it saying “Driver Is Armed.” I was very glad when he turned off the main road a few blocks later.
MikeJ
@SiubhanDuinne: Should I feel offended that they’ve never tried to force me to open an account?
lamh36
Kaiser Family Foundation has a Health Reform Quiz up on this website. It’s the 10 big questions about ACA that has been the most talking about and which has the most “misinformation” being pushed about it.
I’ve been posted the blurbs to my FB page for my peeps to read.
My plan is to continue to post as much as possible as often as possible.
Anyway, I got an 8 out of 10 (I plan to wording of the question…I was robbed of a perfect score…lol)
Here is the quiz: kff.org/quiz/health-reform-quiz/
If you like it, share it.
Felonius Monk
@efgoldman:
Possibly. But can’t someone wear a bigger codpiece without having a bigger cod?
SiubhanDuinne
@MikeJ: Probably. Some of us are Special Snowflakes :-)
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: You should be able to link to the photo. I’ve never signed up for twitter.
here.. abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/09/how-president-obama-got-a-5-year-old-out-of-kindergarten/
gene108
@eemom:
I think he has this part wrong.
I think big business is pretty neutral on Obamacare.
Sure there are skinflint companies like Wal-Mart, who may see a few cents on their bottom line threatened because they may have to offer insurance to more employees or pay a penalty, but by and large the law is not going to have a material impact on many big businesses; those businesses were already offering good enough health insurance to be compliant with the law for the most part.
If big business, as a whole, was dead set against Obamacare it would never have passed. As it stands, the health care industry, i.e. the largest single chunk of the economy, looks to benefit from Obamacare and they realize this now.
Also, too after spending 3-4 years re-writing HR manuals to make them compliant with Obamacare, it’ll be an undertaking for big business to redo those manuals they have all set to go out in a few weeks, when the law goes live and replace them with what? Manuals that are 4 years old and may not be compliant with whatever gets “repealed”?
Killing Obamacare now will cause more uncertainty (which businesses hate), than anything else.
Ruckus
@Felonius Monk:
Isn’t that what they are trying to do? Carry a (bigger) codpiece? After all isn’t a codpiece just something to protect what little one has? And therefore wouldn’t a bigger one only signify the amount of paranoia one had to protect in the first place?
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL: Thanks, that link took me there. And yes, the picture is adorable! I love love love the way this POTUS interacts with kids. There are so many wonderful stories and photos!
Elizabelle
@JPL:
You do not want to read the comments under that sweet picture.
Why are the stupid and cruel always the loudest?
Felonius Monk
@Ruckus: Seems that way to me.
Ruckus
@Felonius Monk:
Although I have never actually heard of a 9mm codpiece. I don’t think many would brag about that. Maybe they are using code.
Anne Laurie
@Elizabelle:
Pierce (like me) grew up in the traditional Irish philosophical culture sometimes shorthanded as Jansenism. We generally assume that the bad guys are always going to win, that virtue & decency & assisting the helpless is going to be trampled, because that’s pretty much Irish history for the last thousand years or so. On the other hand, we also assume that it’s essential to fight the bad guys every step of the way, because that’s the Obligation (and also: fighting is fun, especially when you’re fighting for righteousness!).
If humans were dogs, the Irish and the Irish-Americans (including the “Scotch Irish” Southern revanchist culture) would mostly be terrier breeds. It’s not that we intend to be offputting and anti-social… we’re just not “easy” associates…
Patricia Kayden
@Suzanne: I don’t drink coffee but I like their scones.
I can’t understand why gun lovers feel they have a right to practice their so-called 2nd Amendment rights within the confines of private businesses.
eemom
@gene108:
That’s a good point, and makes sense.
I liked the piece basically because I just can’t get enough of people calling out republicans for the inhuman scum they are.
PurpleGirl
@Felonius Monk: Sure, not just possible but probable. Remember GWB in that flight suit….
Roger Moore
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
I’m hopeful that we’ll get better gun control laws, but I think it’s going to be a long slog to get there. The biggest thing, IMO, is that the gun crazy always amps up when there’s a Democratic president. It happened for Clinton and now for Obama. I think this is an indication that the increase in craziness is a sign of weakness, or at least of waning strength, rather than proof that they’re unassailable. They are trying to lock in as much as they can while they can because they’re genuinely afraid that the Democrats are going to be able to enact gun control legislation. Their response is to counterattack and try to expand gun rights in crazy directions as a show of strength.
Roger Moore
@Felonius Monk:
Yes, and they can pack a bigger firearm without having a bigger cod, too.
DecidedFenceSitter
@Patricia Kayden: From what I understand, from my CCW class, is that the law states any owner may put a message on the entrance that reads “Guns prohibited” and anyone who is carrying is not legally permitted to bring their gun with them. Malls frequently have this.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Isn’t/hasn’t that always been the conservative mode? I think they understand deep down (OK maybe credit where none is due) that their ideas are bullshit but they like how they sound. And that they can because they are completely selfish children. Buckley spoke in a reserved manner and used big words but his ideas still sucked. He just sounded better.
Michael C
@Redshift: Fabulous story!
Reminds me of a time around 1989 when a journalist (I think) asked my boss the Executive Director of the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts, Larry Kessler, if he really personally was committed to safer sex and condoms, and Larry quipped, “Well I’m wearing mine right now.”
normal liberal
@PurpleGirl:
As was Brady, in the head. He nearly died, and was left seriously disabled. He and his wife began and sustained the campaign the led to the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, better known as the Brady Bill. They also had some fairly acid things to say about the sunsetting of the assault weapons ban.
PopeRatzo
It’s a sin that this guy, this Starbucks guy, has to beg gun nuts not to be mad at him for being asked politely not to bring their guns into his fucking stores. Like he doesn’t have a right to do that.
The political correctness that the Right now demands exceeds anything that liberals ever asked for. What, really, was ever asked? Please don’t use the N-word around my kids. Please try not to molest women who are just walking down the street past your construction site. That kind of thing.
But the wingnuts? It’s, “Don’t you dare mention that the people who are perpetrating massacres on our streets and in our workplaces actually use guns to do it“, and “You better not holler at me for saying homosexuals should all be burned at the stake, because that’s my religious faith“. Constantly.
Somehow, someway, they’re going to have to learn that this shit, the guns and the hate and the racism and sexism is just not OK. At some point, people will push back. I hope.
Roger Moore
@efgoldman:
This is my rifle.
This is my gun.
This one’s for shooting.
This one’s for fun.
The bigger the rifle, the smaller the gun.
Nick O. Teen
Starbucks has figured out you can rob people without a gun…just charge $5 for a cuppa!
tazj
Yes, apparently you can’t talk about gun control or you’ll offend gun owners and ruin everything. I ‘m wondering if anyone caught Bill Maher’s show last night. I don’t always watch it but last night the panel consisted of Chris Hayes, Joy Behar and David Frum. They were talking about gun control and it was Bill Maher’s opinion that the president and liberals should stop “poking” gun owners about gun control because our rhetoric was counter productive and was just making gun owners more entrenched in their positions. Of course, David Frum agreed and thought the president should just be quiet about the whole thing. Frum argued that the culture in the U.S. will only change when people realize they’re safe and don’t really need guns.
Scotty_Mack
How about boycotting Starbucks? Guns or no guns they’re a unfeeling corporate mega-chain which destroys local coffee shops, suppresses wages, funnels money out of your local community, and taints their coffee with extra caffeine to make it addictive as possible. Back in 2003 the downtown I live in banded together to get rid of the first starbucks they tried to open here. Over 300 people volunteered their time and money, we set up a coffee table right in front of their door and handed everyone who tried to shop there a free cup of coffee if they didn’t go inside. The Starbucks was closed 35 days after it opened. Now we have several independent coffee shops whose individual owners can set their own rules on the safety of their customers rather than take orders from above.
nicteis
@Redshirt:
The word you’re looking for might be ‘shibboleth’. The Philistines had a hard time with the ‘sh’ phoneme, so ‘shibboleth’ was a military password for the Hebrews in the Old Testament. Now it means any stock phrase that lets members of a tribe or faction know you’re one of them.
(On edit: Ah, I see Jay S beat me to it.)
doug r
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: Joke’s on you. Starbucks bought them a couple of years ago.
magurakurin
@Elizabelle:
Seattle’s Best is owned by Starbucks.