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

Mitt Romney’s New Health Care Plan: Adios, Mother F***ers, You’re On Your Own

People have been asking the originator of ObamNeyCare for his latest and greatest new health care policy for a while now, and until recently getting bupkis for their efforts.  Mitt is nothing if not efficiently opaque, and he has been deflecting the questions with all the ease and grace of a master matador confronted with a herd of elderly, arthritic dairy cows.

This week, he finally told us his new health care policy: It is to “return us to a setting of personal responsibility”. That is code for AMFYOYO (read the headline again and you’ll get the acronym): no one will help you, you are truly on your own, regardless of circumstance. This is, of course, not the true meaning of “personal responsibility”, but it is what politicians usually mean by the term:

When they try to take away the Social Security and Medicare benefits we have been paying for, it’s pitched as “personal responsibility” (or sometimes “individual empowerment”). Meaning? AMFYOYO.

When Reagan threw the mentally ill onto the street, it was pitched as “personal responsibility” (or deinstitutionalization”). Translation? AMFYOYO.

When states cut funding for counties and localities, it is pitched as “personal responsibility” (or sometimes “local empowerment”). AMFYOYO.

And so on. This writer is a big believer in personal responsibility, but knows full well that politicians don’t mean what most of us mean by the term. In politico-speak, “personal responsibility” means “we will give the voters less and our special interest paymasters more”. Just look at the last few decades and see where our money has gone, and how little benefit we, the people, are receiving for our hard-earned.

Back to the current example: Romney, having turned against his own creation (ObamNeyCare), wants to get rid of it and replace it with…nothing. AMFYOYO.

Mr. B & C

Mitt has BEEN Telling Us to Kiss His A** For Years

Much is being made of The Guv’s rude spokesperson, who said some impressively rude things to the press in Poland today. But Mitt (himself Himself) has been tacitly saying it for quite some time, albeit not in so many words. Every time he refuses a reasonable request by the public for information, he is telling us to place our foremost upon his hindmost, vis. and to wit;

He has refused to release the customary quantity of tax returns,

He has refused to clarify his exit dates from, and involvement in, Bain Capital,

He and his staff cleared out their computers and took the hard drives when he became the Un-Guv o’ Massachusetts,

He has provided extremely limited access to the press and non-millionaire members of the public,

and so on.  It is “kiss my  a**” in all but word. Mitt does not think that the American People have a right to know even the most basic information about their potential President. Reminds Mr. Blunt and Cranky of Nixon, and not in a good way.

Note that very little (if any) of what Mitt is hiding and how he hides it is illegal: but most people who want to have a public office understand that the public has a legitimate expectation of transparency and openness. Not Mitt, who is treating the quest for a public office as he did his private sector gigs.

This writer suggests that Mitt plant the smoocher upon his Hairy Buckeye Butt, and encourages his readers to do the same (with physical and regional customizations, of course). 

When he stops telling us to kiss his a**, we will stop telling him to kiss ours.

Mr. B & C