Big Business created a Religion Monster. Now they Don’t Like their Creation. Waaaah.

It’s pretty much like Frankenstein, but with less humanity and pathos. As reported elsewhere, business interests pushed for “one nation under God” and manifold other Constitutional violations in the mid-to-late 1900’s so as to defeat government regulations, earn more profit, and screw their workers. And it worked: national prayer breakfasts, references to God all over our currency and other state and federal artifacts, and so on. “Establishment Clause? It’s just words on a piece of paper, amIrite Bros?” Lots of rights for corporate personhood, and fewer rights for human personhood. All with the Lord’s apparent sanction.

So the government wound up sponsoring, at the behest of the wealthy and powerful, the promulgation of Christianity. But not just ANY old sort of Christianity, oh my goodness gracious no. What we have been saddled with is a shadow theocracy composed of the most patriarchal, repressive, and authoritarian denominations: Catholicism, Baptists, CICU, Nazarenes and the like.

A perfect plan to undermine the Constitutional system, creating a neo-feudal structure in which users can be controlled and unknowingly transformed into modern-day serfs and villeins. And it has succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its creators: look at how much steeper the sides of the economic pyramid have become over the past 50+ years, and how much sharper is its point. Look at how many Americans no longer think for themselves; instead, they blindly accept the sermons of their pastors and bleatings of their favorite pundits.

Success, indeed. The rich have gotten much richer, the government has been bought and sold to the rich, and everybody else fights over the few remaining scraps and crusts that fall from the high table down to where we can grasp them. But into every Eden there must slither a snake, and one has done so in this case: the peasantry and the less-intelligent members of the elite are taking their religious indoctrination and using it in ways that Big Biz does not like.

For example, the new “religious freedom restoration” laws that are being pushed around the country. They are not that much different than many other religious laws that have been passed over the years, but these are costing Big Biz money. So Big Biz wants the laws rolled back, and the rabble are resisting.

Dr. Frankenstein’s monster turned on him, just as the neo-feudal schemes of the 1% are turning around to bite them in their corpulent kazoos. It’s instructive, and weirdly satisfying, to see evil marring evil. But the glee one feels at the discomfiture of the corrupt is tempered with the knowledge that we are still in chains forged by decades of slow, steady undermining of our system of government. And the additional awareness that it is going to be far beyond difficult to undo what we have allowed to be done to us in the name of God.

The Religion Monster is running amok, and lots of we lowly types are being trampled thereby. Time to grab the torches and pitchforks, and deal once and for all with the monster and its mad creators. And that soon.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Having the “Right” to carry a gun does NOT make you smart enough to actually do it.

Ron White, a very funny comedian, once made a joke about being busted by the cops while drunk: he had the right to remain silent, but “did not have the ability”. Not only funny, but instructive. We all have rights, but we don’t always have the ability to use them as the law intended.

Here is a very good example: a man exercising his right to openly carry a gun was robbed of said gun by another man carrying a concealed weapon. Pretty dumb move, to put a just-purchased weapon on public display without being prepared for what might happen:

William Coleman III was robbed of his Walter- brand P22 just after 2:00 a.m. October 4 in Gresham by a young man who asked him for it — and flashed his own weapon as persuasion.

Coleman, 21, was talking to his cousin in the 17200 block of NE Glisan St., after purchasing the handgun earlier that day, when a young man asked him for a cigarette, police said.

The man then asked about the gun, pulled a gun from his own waistband and said “”I like your gun. Give it to me.”

Coleman handed over the gun and the man fled on foot.

Once can debate the Second Amendment all one wishes (this writer is a proponent of RKBA), but just like any other right, one must use a brain cell or two when exercising it. When speaking freely, one should be aware that other people might disagree with their speech. When assembling freely, one should be prepared for someone else putting together a counter-demonstration. And when hanging a gun on one’s hip, one should be trained and prepared for how to responsibly handle it.

Mr. Coleman was NOT at all prepared. He could have carried his own gun as the robber did, concealed. That way he’d be equipped to defend himself without risking theft. Or he could have taken other measures to guard against theft. (Helpful hint: a gun is not a magic wand. It is a weapon that can be defeated, or taken away, by an opponent who has more skill than you have.)

Ya know, if it’s the possibility of armed conflict you are trying to cope with (as Mr. Coleman clearly was), you should learn something about, well, armed conflict. Only a completely uneducated idiot would allow the enemy to know the details of his own offensive and defensive capabilities (read Clausewitz and Sun-Tzu for the basics of military straegy and tactics). And a complete idiot is what Mr. Coleman surely was, because he did not bother to learn Thing One about HOW to exercise his rights: he just ran on out and started exercising them.

Too many Americans stop thinking once they get to “rights”. We all need to consider our responsibilities as well. But FIRST, we must think about our capabilities.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

The NRA is Full of S***: A Horrific School Shooting in Pakistan Proved It.

Pakistan just had its own version of the Newtown school massacre. Heavily-armed lunatics stormed an army-run school in Peshawar and killed lots of innocent children. And this writer has already heard more than one gun nut say this proves the need for more private gun ownership. They draw a parallel between the two killing sprees and smugly proclaim that more “good guys with guns” could have protected the kids in Peshawar.

There is a teeny-tiny problem with this “argument”: it is bulls***. Pakistan is full of gun owners, good and otherwise.

Pakistan barely regulates guns at all. Their gun culture is NRA Nirvana. In fact, the Pakistan government hands out licenses for automatic weapons to citizens who are afraid of being attacked. Hell, you can legally carry grenades and rocket launchers in some parts of the country.

Plus, the school in question is operated by the Pakistani military. Do the gun nutters really think that country’s army is a bunch of anti-gun activists? Puh-leeze.

No, Gentle Reader, what this despicable atrocity demonstrates is that guns aren’t the solution for every criminal problem. You can carry all the firepower you want on your person, and still wind up dead if some a**hole gets the drop on you. And your kids can still be killed by homicidal motherf***ers like the Taliban, Timothy McVeigh, or Adam F***ing Lanza, no matter how many guns you sell to the general population.

Security cannot be obtained by guns alone. It is a product of careful thought, law, justice, collaboration and intelligence. NONE of which the NRA bothers with.

Guns are a Constitutional right, and one which this writer believes in and exercises. Carefully and in a responsible manner, with a focus on varmint control and home defense.

The only way to keep our kids safe from gun violence is to have a society with less violence. We will never achieve that by pushing our citizens to own and carry more guns so as to be ready to commit violent acts of their own.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Gun Nuts have jumped the shark: Iowa is granting carry permits to the legally blind

Christ in a teapot, this is beyond stupid. Iowa is allowing legally blind people to carry guns in public. Yes, that is correct.

This is bats*** crazy. Blind people packing heat and blazing away on the street. Absolutely bugf*** insane.

From the Des Moines register:

Private gun ownership — even hunting — by visually impaired Iowans is nothing new. But the practice of visually impaired residents legally carrying firearms in public became widely possible thanks to gun permit changes that took effect in Iowa in 2011.

“It seems a little strange, but the way the law reads, we can’t deny them (a permit) just based on that one thing,” said Sgt. Jana Abens, a spokeswoman for the Polk County sheriff’s office, referring to a visual disability.

Polk County officials say they’ve issued weapons permits to at least three people who can’t legally drive and were unable to read the application forms or had difficulty doing so because of visual impairments.”

People, please: this is where the NRA and gun nuttery in general have gone. To a very strange place indeed, where not just convicted felons and the mentally ill must have guns (yes, they think that); but now, blind people who cannot see what they are shooting at must have guns, too. If there is a dumber, crazier, and just generally jackass idea out there than this one, it will be surprising.

Guns for people who cannot see. Good God.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Kokesh The Crazier Cancels His Idiotic “Protest” in Dizzy City

Adam Kokesh has decided that threatening D.C. with thousands of loaded rifles was a bad idea after all, so he has cancelled the “protest”. Seems that local enforcement was determined to, you know, enforce the law.

Mr. Kokesh (spellcheck wanted to change this to “hashish”, which is weirdly appropriate) now wants his “followers” to march around state capitals on July 4th whilst carrying loaded rifles instead: he wants them to demand that the states dissolve the Federal government in what he calls ” the final American Revolution” .

Krazy Kokesh says if threatening lawmakers with loaded long guns does not do the trick, then an armed revolution “may be necessary”.

Mrmmmm, Kokey old buddy, if we really were so oppressed that we needed a revolution, do you think the big bad Fed’ral Gummint would be letting you out of prison so you could “organize” your little comic-opera putsch? Think about it.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Joe Biden Schools NPR Reporter, and Squashes the NRA

NPR’s Melissa Block got herself pretty well embarrassed by our Vice President yesterday. Mr. Biden did what politicians rarely do: he pushed back against her repetitious quoting of NRA propaganda with his own facts and viewpoint, without flinching, yelling or screaming. You can listen to it or read it here.

The “journalist” kept on trying to steer the conversation back to Gun Loony Land, but Joe was having none of it. Time and time again, he called BS on her “questions” (all too often, they were statements masquerading as questions) and responded with the facts.

As someone who is fed up with the sorry state of the “news” in this day and age, it was a treat to hear a politico nut up and school one of these biased, unprofessional weasels.

Mr. B & C