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

The Torture Report proves, yet again, that Teapublicans are a load of cowards.

Here it is, if you can stand to read it: the report showed how the Bushistas, PNAC types, and “Republicans” in general shat themselves in terror after 9/11, resulting in idiot wars of choice and manifold panic-driven decisions, including the ones that involved torture.

Cowards they are, as has frequently been written on this very blog. But the Torture Report gives a horrifying view into the consequences of that cowardice, that fear, that wimpiness-concealed-by-bravado that characterizes modern Repubs. In their panic-stricken, fear-blinded, gutless, craven states of “mind”, the Bush/Cheney regime lashed out in a manner that was far beyond normal evil:
* People were tortured.
* People were tortured to death.
* The torture was completely f***ing useless, and in fact caused a lot of damage.
* Innocent people were dragooned and tortured.
* “Republicans” proposed, created and implemented these programs.
* “Republicans” STILL think we should be torturing people.

Since then, the GOP has continued to show its yellow bellies on repeated occasion: by making the Prexy keep Gitmo open (said Gitmo being full of tortured people); by not allowing the tortured people to have fair trials; and by trying to cover the whole sickening mess up, even after the world already knows what we did. Cowards, poltroons, pusillanimous dastards, faint-hearted, lily-livered scaredy-cats: that, friends, is what the GOP is composed of.

And the fact that the majority of American voters recently opted to bring in even more GOP “representatives” means that those voters are, what, themselves, exactly? Ponder that one, peeps.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Obama Recently Ordered Military Action. And We Won. You Never Heard About it, Did You?

Yes, that “weak”, “indecisive”, “mom-jeans-wearing” President of ours just ordered a military strike against Middle-Eastern terrorists.  They kicked some Libyan Rebel butt. And the news media kinda sort reported on it. Here is the story: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/world/middleeast/libya-oil-tanker.html?_r=0

You’ll notice this went down a week or so ago, when the airwaves were filled with Foxish, Rushish, Rightish bashing-on-the-wimpy-black-Prexy noise; small wonder that this story got minimal coverage. But contrary to the prevailing “wisdom”, our Prexy saw a threat to Libya’s democratically-elected government and ordered a military strike to save said government. Oh, and that is the same Libyan government that “Republicans” accuse Obama of being such a little nancy-boy about (hint: “Benghazi”).

So why didn’t you hear about this? A simple reason: the “news” media is largely controlled by people who hates them some Obama: http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6  So, if you heard about this at all, it was a few plaudits to to the SEALS who carried out the attack. In fact, they deserved a lot more and better coverage, as did the rest of the command and control apparatus. And yes, that includes the President, no matter what that great military expert Sarah Palin may have to say about it.

As noted before on this blog, the infotainment machine wouldn’t know real news if it bit them on the ass: http://wp.me/p2jksg-2kb  And this is but another example of that phenomenon. If you’re relying on less than, say, ten or more news sources, you are getting the Mushroom Treatment.

This writer mistrusts the corporate media, so he listens to it, and then checks a load of other sources, including foreign media outlets, and even some of the fringe whacko sites here in the USA. Nothing goes onto this blog without being subjected to the crankiest of analyses: it’s a pity that, say, Fox “News” can’t take the time to do the same.

So, please, Gentle Reader, take a few minutes and stroll around the InterTubes, to see what is going on. That is to say, what ELSE is going on that the bean-counters and Raging Righties in their Tightie Whities don’t want you to know. Today’s example: despite the lies that are being spewed, President Obama is capable of ordering swift, decisive military action (like he also did when he caught Bin Laden).

Good one, Mr. President. Way to give the terrorist scumbuckets one in the eye. Even if (or especially if) hardly anyone gives you credit for it.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Darrell Issa Can’t Understand Basic English

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/05/13/2002871/issa-obama-covered-up-benghazi-terrorism-by-calling-it-an-act-of-terror/ is a story worthy of a quick read. In it, Darrell Issa shows his immense stupidity yet again, by claiming that saying that “act of terror” means something different than “terrorist act”. Really.

Of course, it could be that Mr. Issa does know that they mean the same thing. If so, he’s a stinking, manipulative, crooked little man who is wasting taxpayer money and precious time on a partisan witch-hunt.

Neither option says anything good about the man.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Benghazi, Schmenghazi (John McCain, You Scumbucket)

Mr. Blunt and Cranky would like to start off by saying that John McCain obviously does not care one bucket of warm spit about the recent deaths amongst our Foreign Service corps. If he did care, he’d have been making a similar fuss during Bush The Dumber’s administration, as 12 separate attacks on U.S. Diplomatic facilities resulted in quite a few deaths. This writer has been unable to find any record of McCain screeching his loony-bin conspiracy theories back then.

No, this is nothing more than an attempt to weaken the President for partisan political advantage. And even some conservative-leaning publications are saying McCain has taken leave of his so-called senses: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/11/susan-rice?fsrc=scn%2Fob 

It is bad enough when politicos wrap themselves in a flag: when they do the same with the bodies of fallen patriots, it is truly disgusting. Not to mention a kick in the nuts to those patriots who made the ultimate sacrifice, all so some wingnut a**hole can raise more money and score points for his stupid little reindeer games.

Please understand this: there is no one on earth who is braver than someone who’ll go, unarmed, to a f***ing war zone. Yeah, that’s what our diplomats do, 24/7/365. They need and deserve our respect and our support. They do not deserve to have their budgets cut by people like McCain, who after weakening their protection use the consequences to play pin-the-blame-on-the-donkey.

If this were an average political scumbucket, we could forgive: but John McCain knows better. He was an honest-to-God war hero and is fully aware of how dangerous it is to be out there on the sharp end in dangerous territory.  For such a man to behave in such an unpatriotic and inhuman manner shows that he is no longer the man he once was.

 For that matter, we may wish to consider whether he ever WAS the man he claimed to be. After watching that vile, spittle-spewing, raging little leaping gnome over the past week, this writer doubts that John McCain was ever a good, principled and decent man. He most assuredly does not appear to be one now.

Mr. B & C