Piers Morgan…

Man without a country?

Irony Upon Irony

Piers Morgan thinks it’s ironic that there’s a campaign to deport him for exercising his right to free speech under the 1st Amendment

I think it’s ironic that Piers Morgan claims 1st Amendment protection in his campaign to strip law-abiding, actual citizens of their 2nd Amendment rights.

Cat-Free Zone

As the mice celebrated a new life of freedom and safety….

Shouldn’t The White House Be A Gun-Free Zone?

The First Family deserves our best efforts to keep them safe.

Update:  Oh, look here; it appears someone took this thought straight to the White House.

I mean, really. If the best way to keep vulnerable children safe at school is to designate schools as gun-free zones, shouldn’t the First Family live in a gun-free bubble?

Oh, I know that John Doe can’t carry a firearm into the White House, but what about all those Secret Service agents milling about the place? They have guns! And what about those Marines? Do you suppose they’ve checked their weapons at the door? I think not! It’s a scandal, really, how cavalier we are with the First Family’s safety!

Does that sound silly to you? I certainly hope so, yet that is the favored strategy of the American Liberal for protecting the nation’s school children…unless they are lucky enough to attend school with Sasha and Malia Obama.

Before [Sasha and Malia] go to their first day in their new school, the Secret Service will run background checks on the school’s staff and maybe some of the students and their families. Agents will accompany the girls to and from school every day. They may, depending on space, set up a small command center inside the building. If not, they’ll set one up outside. They may tap into the school’s closed-circuit camera system if there is one. 

How many agents will be assigned to the girls? “The appropriate number to get the job done,” according to my still secretive friend, Agent Alswang.

If gun-free zones are so safe, why all the fuss?

What about the President himself? Yes, he’s the most powerful man in the world and surely, very, very important, but is he more precious to us as a people than our children? (Note: If your answer is yes, please reassess your priorities.) I can say without hesitation, I would rather see a President dead – no matter who is sitting in the White House – than 20 six and seven-year-olds. At least those who choose to run for President know what they’re getting into.

My point here isn’t to say that the First Family needs less security; I’m saying that our nation’s schools need more. People who object to well-screened, well-trained, armed school personnel because they don’t want their children exposed to guns are living in a fantasy world where guns are malevolent beings in their own right and a gun-free zone sign extends magical protection to all who enter those hallowed halls.

If the events that unfolded in Newtown, Connecticut, last Friday haven’t disabused those magical thinkers of the idea that gun-free zones are anything other than killing zones, then nothing will; they should be ignored as unserious on this issue.

Doesn’t our nation’s most precious resource, our children, deserve the best protection we can provide? If so, arming school personnel should be considered as one part of the answer.

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Thank you, John Hawkins, for two links today.

Mourning In America

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
Lamentation and bitter weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children,
Refusing to be comforted for her children,
Because they are no more.”

Jeremiah 31:15

Waking up to the realization that yesterday wasn’t just a horrible nightmare, imagining how much worse this morning is for the parents of the slain children. No words of wisdom; no words can comfort. Just a bone deep, ineffable sadness.

Are You As Stupid As A Teabagger?

Tipikle teebaggers.

Ignorant, redneck teabaggers, don’t you just love to make fun of them? Of how stupid they are. How they never have an original thought. The way they believe everything that Rush Limbaugh and Fox News tell them, and then just parrot it back? They don’t even know what they’re saying! One look at their slack jaws and vacant stares tells you everything you need to know.

If it’s true that Tea Partiers are stupid, then liberals have redefined “stupid” to mean “able to correctly answer basic questions about current events.” Pew Research asked 1,101 adults three simple questions about the fiscal cliff and found that only 23% answered all three questions correctly, while 45% answered one or none correctly.

Republicans fared better than Democrats and independents, but their results were still lackluster.

Republicans are more knowledgeable about the fiscal cliff than either Democrats or independents. Yet even among Republicans, only 30% got all three questions correct and 37% missed at least two. Among Democrats and independents, 19% and 22%, respectively, could answer all three questions correctly. Nearly half of Democrats (47%) and 44% of independents missed at least two items.

There was one ray of hope, however.

However, one group of Republicans stands out as particularly aware of the details of the fiscal cliff standoff: Tea Party supporters. Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who agree with the Tea Party, 48% correctly answered all three questions, and another 34% got two out of three correct. Republicans who disagree with the Tea Party or have no opinion about it score no higher than the national average on the subject of the fiscal cliff.

Maybe – just maybe – more people should be watching Fox and listening to Rush. So everyone can be as stupid as a teabagger.

Karma. I Hear She’s A Bitch.

It looks like JB Properties is having a bad day. That’s what happens, I guess, when you order seniors living in your adult apartment complex to take down their Christmas tree.

Bob. Just. Stop. Talking.

Please. Because I don’t really have time for all this writing.

You’re so close to the truth, here, Bob (can I call you Bob?), but you’re blinded by your anti-gun bias.

“Give me one example of an athlete — I know it’s happened in society — but give me one example of a professional athlete who by virtue of his having a gun, took a dangerous situation and turned it around for the better. I can’t think of a single one. But sadly, I can think of dozens where by virtue of having a gun, a professional athlete wound up in a tragic situation.”

Getting back to the idea that you’re a moron, how can you speak those words and not understand what you’re saying? Let me break it down for you.

1. You can’t think of a single example where a gun, in the hands of a professional athlete, led to a good outcome in a dangerous situation.
2. You acknowledge that guns do contribute to good outcomes in those situations among the general population.
3. You can’t think of a single example where a gun, in the hands of a professional athlete, led to a good outcome in a dangerous situation.
4. You acknowledge that guns do contribute to good outcomes in those situations among the general population.

Do you see where I’m going with this? You’re not talking about a problem with the “gun culture”, whatever it is that you mean by that, Bob, and you’re not talking about a problem with the law-abiding general population. You’re talking about a problem with the pro sports culture.  And when I say “pro sports,” I’m mainly talking about football today and I’m including D1 college ball.

Now, there are many, many fine, law-abiding, upstanding individuals playing pro sports and this post specifically does not refer to them; unfortunately there are also a substantial number who take their own press too seriously. They’ve been pampered, coddled and told they’re special…some of them since before they entered high school. It’s not hard to imagine how they come to feel entitled to special treatment. They indiscriminately father illegitimate children, some of them in numbers that would be comic if it weren’t so tragic. Then, they mock Tim Tebow for declining to join them in their bad behavior.

They’ve not been made to face the consequences of their own actions. A case in point? Jerramy Stevens, a man who should have been in jail for assault but instead was playing football, on “scholarship” (and don’t even get me started on that), at the University of Washington, where he committed rape, but instead of serving time, was drafted by the Seattle Seahawks. And who, a decade later, is still behaving badly.

Maybe it’s just me, but this is not my idea of a healthy sub-culture. And, Bob, you project it onto the larger population. Now you think we need to have a conversation about guns and easy access to guns. I disagree. I don’t think that law-abiding citizens should have to accept, or even consider, any more infringements on their Constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms. Maybe it is time, though, to have a conversation about the pro sports culture and how it contributes to producing infantile men-children who blunder about like malicious Baby Hueys, unaware of their own potential for causing harm, requiring ever increasing amounts of supervision to keep them from harming themselves and those around them.

And that’s a conversation where I think you could add some value, Bob.

Bob Costas Still Wrong on Gun Control

Bob Costas laments the fact that he broke his own rule about not commenting on nuanced topics unless there’s enough time to “flesh them out.” Sadly, given more time to discuss his thoughts on gun control, he is still wrong.

“Here’s where I stand: I do not want to see the Second Amendment repealed. … People should be allowed to own guns for their own protection. Obviously, those who are hunters. … Access to guns is too easy in some cases. I don’t see any reason a citizen should be able to arm himself in some states in ways only police or military should — to have a virtual militia [by] mail order or gun shows. Why do you need a semi-automatic weapon? What possible use is there? … Whitlock wrote about a gun culture. That’s what I was focusing on.”

 Isn’t that special? Bob doesn’t want to see the Second Amendment repealed. Good for him! But it appears that he may not be fully aware of the actual wording of said amendment.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Bob doesn’t think we need any pesky militias, but that would seem to be the very intent of the authors of the Second Amendment. A wise person once wrote, “Whether or not the ‘framers of the Constitution’ envisioned semi-automatic weapons has no bearing on the advisability of the current legislation. Rep. Kohl-Wells should re-read the 2nd Amendment and try to understand the thinking behind it. The 2nd Amendment wasn’t written to protect the rights of hunters and sportsmen; it was written to protect the ‘the security of a free state.’ Consequently, it should be assumed that the author envisioned citizens as being well armed according to the standard of the day.”

Sorry, Bob…keep spinning.

Dear Bob Costas

You, sir, are a moron.

Honestly, how can you be wrong in so many ways? First off, you were apparently under the impression that millions of Americans were waiting breathlessly on the edge of their seats to hear your opinion on gun control.  WRONG! Years of yammering on about sports doesn’t make you an expert on 2nd Amendment rights. Obviously. And if someone is going to lecture me about maintaining perspective, it had best be someone who doesn’t make a living yammering on about sports.

Next, you appear to be under the impression that depriving law-abiding citizens of firearms will magically make all firearms disappear. WRONG! The thing about criminals is that – get this, it’s a revolutionary thought – they don’t mind breaking the law. Mind-boggling, isn’t it? In fact, in the first two years after handguns were banned in the U.K., crimes involving the use of a handgun were UP by 40%. And why not…it’s not as though the criminals were at any risk of being fired on themselves.

Last, you claim that if firearms were unavailable, Jovan Belcher and Kasandra Perkins would be alive today. WRONG! Ace makes the case that a trained athlete can kill a woman with a knife. He doesn’t go quite far enough. It’s my thought that as a 6′2″, 228 pound athlete in the prime years of his NFL career, Jovan Belcher likely could have killed Kasandra Perkins with his bare hands.

Do you know what might have made a difference? If Kasandra Perkins had had a handgun of her own and been able to protect herself from an assailant of overwhelming strength. Maybe then her infant daughter would have, if not an intact family, at least a loving mother.

Three strikes, Bob. You’re out.