Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Benghazi!

So... let me get this straight: The emails concerning the Benghazi! talking points were selectively edited by "unknown actors" to prove that the Benghazi! talking point emails were selectively edited.

No, you can't make this stuff up. ABC "got hold" of some White House e-mails that "proved" that the Benghazi! talking points were selectively edited. Except... well, those e-mails that ABC "got hold" of were selectively edited. That is, they did not say what they used to say back in the days before they were selectively edited.

We used to call this lying. Now, of course, it's just "spin." Because... well, because Obama! Apparently, these days it's perfectly OK to take something that someone, in the course of doing their job, wrote, and then change the words to make it mean something different and then release it to the press as long as the changes you made cast the President -- you know, that Muslim Socialist Kenyan guy -- in a bad light. Perfectly OK.

You can read the whole sordid tale here.

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

This Should Be Fun

Item: "29 percent of Americans think that an armed revolution in order to protect liberties might be necessary in the next few years..." - Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind poll, May 1, 2013.

There's a funny thing about these people who think we might need to resort to armed violence to protect "liberties." What liberties are they talking about? Their liberty to take their guns and force everybody else to do what they want. Yeah, that liberty.

Here's the thing: These people have demonstrated, time and time again, that they have no use for this "democracy" or the "will of the people" unless everybody else agrees with them. The Constitution of the United States? It's fine with them, but only one of the little bits that got tacked on after it was written, that bit that says "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." All that other stuff in the Constitution? They don't really have much use for it. They'd like the government to just leave them alone, thank you very much, except where they happen to like the things that government does for them.

Now, never mind that the second amendment is fairly baffling insomuch as nobody really knows what the hell "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state..." means. Not even the Supreme Court knows what the hell that means. There have been a number of decisions related to the second amendment -- United States v. Cruikshank, 1875; Unites States v. Miller, 1939; United States v. Heller, 2008, to pick three -- that say, respectively, that the right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution (Cruikshank), that the second amendment protects arms that have a reasonable relationship to the preservation of the efficiency of a well regulated militia (Miller) or that it protects a right, not unlimited, to  possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home (Heller).

Don't tell any of this to the knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers who threaten to take out their shotguns and their Rugers and their AR-15s to wave in your face if you disagree with them. They are, by and large, too stupid to understand anything containing words with more than two syllables.

Anyway, it looks like the rest of us might have to arm ourselves as protection against these gun-toting lunatics. That's the bad news. The good news? These idiots are more likely to kill themselves than they are to hit any target that might be shooting back. (See any of the GunFAIL diaries by David Waldman at Daily Kos. Here's a few links to get you started: Gunfail III, Gunfail IV, Gunfail V, Gunfail VI...) There are many, many idiots out there with guns. Note that I have not said "all gun owners are idiots." What I have said is that "many idiots own guns." And if those idiots keep insisting that I have to do things their way or else they will use their guns on me, well... you tell me. At any rate, I think if you say things like "I love this country!" then you should realize that this country is defined by a document, the Constitution, and the democratic-rule-of-the-people that the Constitution embodies. And that implies that you shouldn't get your way just because you're willing to wave a gun in my face.