A Letter from the Rude Pundit to Joshua Boston, Gun Owner and Fellow Epistolarian:
"Dear Joshua Boston,
"First, let me compliment you on writing a full-fledged letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein regarding your strong feelings on guns. The epistolary art is one that is fading in this electronically-mediated age. So, indeed, kudos to you, sir, for taking the time and effort to say something you believe using more than 140 characters at a time and mostly good syntax and punctuation.
"Now, that aside, I believe the only response to what you are writing is this: What fucking fantasy land are you living in? Seriously, it's like the NRA fucked Glenn Beck with a dick made of talking points and he shit you out fully formed, crazy, and ready to go, with Rush Limbaugh and Fox 'news' as your molesting uncles, fingering your asshole so that you only say what they fuckin' tell you to say.
"You wrote to Senator Feinstein, who actually just stood up for the right of the government to keep secret the extent of its surveillance programs from even basic scrutiny in the name of 'security,' a clear abrogation of due process guarantees. I'll bet you were fine with that constitutional ass-reaming.
"But no one better touch your guns, right, Joshua? You write, 'I will not register my weapons should this bill be passed, as I do not believe it is the government's right to know what I own.' So I take it that your car and home, if you own them, are completely off the grid, unknown to any government entity? You continue, 'Nor do I think it prudent to tell you what I own so that it may be taken from me by a group of people who enjoy armed protection yet decry me having the same a crime.' Tell you what. If you can prove that you are under the kind of constant threat from constant exposure at public events where you are the focus, like, say, a member of Congress or, you know, the president, you can have armed protection. Oh, and, by the way, if everything in Feinstein's bill passes, which it won't, but even so, if you register your gun, you don't get it taken away. See, the law would do the opposite of what you say it will. No, no, Joshua, don't start the slippery slope of bullshit. Read the proposal, not the propaganda that Sean Hannity earfucked you with.
"Now every pig-blowing asshole on the internet is saluting you for your 'bravery' or some such shit because you regurgitated the vomit that you were fed. You've been summoned to speak to the Doocy on Fox, where you said gun laws would turn us into Nazi Germany. Really? You don't think that sounds totally monkey fuck insane?
"Here's the other problem, though, with your letter, one that the conservative punditocracy and media have pretty much avoided. You say, 'I will not have some woman who proclaims the evil of an inanimate object, yet carries one, tell me I may not have one.' Now, put aside for a moment that Feinstein is a gun owner who witnessed, up close, the results of gun violence against elected officials, and put aside that perhaps those things might give her a bit of perspective that might be worthy of hearing out.
"No, instead, look at what you wrote next: 'I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free...I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned.' You see what you did there? You said you won't have 'some woman' tell you to do something because you are 'the man.' I'm not making this up. I'm not overreacting. You fuckin' wrote it.
"That undercurrent of sexism should discredit you completely. Instead, you are now the commoner of the moment, the new Joe the Plumber, ready to be exploited and fluffed by every craven whore in the right-wing media."
"You end your letter by saying, 'I will not be disarmed to suit the fear that has been established by the media and your misinformation campaign against the American public.' Study after study, by people who, well, shit, study these things, disagrees with you and the gun industry and their lobbyists. But you have decided to live your life as a manipulated tool. What the hell, huh? It's easier than thinking for yourself. Enjoy it. If you hurry, maybe you'll get a weekend with Ted Nugent out of it."
"Best, RP"
(Note: The Rude Pundit did not discuss Boston being an ex-Marine because being a Marine has less to do with anything than how much action Boston might or might not have seen, which the Rude Pundit couldn't find.)
1/04/2013
Photo of a Moment of Calm Hope in Hopeless Pakistan:
That's 12 year-old Sadia Mukhteya up there. She is from a rural area of Pakistan where the Taliban has been fighting with the government. Her family displaced, she is learning English at a school in the slums of Islamabad. The lesson is on intransitive verbs, which are verbs that have no direct object. The subject of the sentence acts, but the only effect of the action is on the subject. Let us hope that Sadia learning to read English (or any language) is not intransitive.
While lessons like this are going on, the girl who no doubt has inspired Sadia and other girls in that class, Malala Yousufzai, was released from a hospital in England. She was shot in the head by a Taliban soldier because she is a vocal advocate for the education of Pakistani girls and the Taliban is comprised of a bunch of wretched, delusional assholes who hate women. So, in a very real way, despite her smile, Sadia is risking her life in standing up and demonstrating her reading ability. Malala will not be returning to Pakistan yet, as she needs further reconstructive surgery on her cranium.
In the same district where Malala was nearly murdered, a couple of days ago, five female teachers and two aid workers were shot dead in their van by gunmen on motorcycles. While it may be related to the recent attacks on foreign aid workers trying to vaccinate Pakistanis against polio, it may also be because they were trying to educate girls, and one cannot help but think about the symbolism of the slaughter of the women teachers. All seven were locals.
Some Pakistanis actually believe that polio vaccines for children are a way for Americans to sterilize Muslims, hence the attacks on those giving the potentially lifesaving injections. Believing the extremist position here would seem crazy, yes, except, you know, for all the American drone strikes that keep hitting Pakistan, killing, yes, the very people who would want Malala and Sadia and the teachers dead, but killing others, civilians, in a war that's not quite a war.
At the funerals for the teachers and the aid workers in the northwestern town of Swabi, hundreds of villagers turned out to bury the dead.
They wept and prayed. Intransitively.
That's 12 year-old Sadia Mukhteya up there. She is from a rural area of Pakistan where the Taliban has been fighting with the government. Her family displaced, she is learning English at a school in the slums of Islamabad. The lesson is on intransitive verbs, which are verbs that have no direct object. The subject of the sentence acts, but the only effect of the action is on the subject. Let us hope that Sadia learning to read English (or any language) is not intransitive.
While lessons like this are going on, the girl who no doubt has inspired Sadia and other girls in that class, Malala Yousufzai, was released from a hospital in England. She was shot in the head by a Taliban soldier because she is a vocal advocate for the education of Pakistani girls and the Taliban is comprised of a bunch of wretched, delusional assholes who hate women. So, in a very real way, despite her smile, Sadia is risking her life in standing up and demonstrating her reading ability. Malala will not be returning to Pakistan yet, as she needs further reconstructive surgery on her cranium.
In the same district where Malala was nearly murdered, a couple of days ago, five female teachers and two aid workers were shot dead in their van by gunmen on motorcycles. While it may be related to the recent attacks on foreign aid workers trying to vaccinate Pakistanis against polio, it may also be because they were trying to educate girls, and one cannot help but think about the symbolism of the slaughter of the women teachers. All seven were locals.
Some Pakistanis actually believe that polio vaccines for children are a way for Americans to sterilize Muslims, hence the attacks on those giving the potentially lifesaving injections. Believing the extremist position here would seem crazy, yes, except, you know, for all the American drone strikes that keep hitting Pakistan, killing, yes, the very people who would want Malala and Sadia and the teachers dead, but killing others, civilians, in a war that's not quite a war.
At the funerals for the teachers and the aid workers in the northwestern town of Swabi, hundreds of villagers turned out to bury the dead.
They wept and prayed. Intransitively.
1/03/2013
A Slow Head Shake for the House of Representatives Over the Failure of the Violence Against Women Act:
From a late 2012 report from the organization Futures Without Violence: "The Facts on Violence Against American Indian/Alaskan Native Women":
- American Indian women residing on Indian reservations suffer domestic violence and physical assault at rates far exceeding women of other ethnicities and locations. A 2004 Department of Justice report estimates these assault rates to be as much as 50% higher than the next most victimized demographic.
- According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs at least 70% of the violent victimizations experienced by American Indians are committed by persons not of the same race— a substantially higher rate of interracial violence than experienced by white or black victims.
- Federal government studies have consistently shown that American Indian women experience much higher levels of sexual violence than other women in the U.S. Data gathered by the U.S. Department of Justice indicates that Native American and Alaskan Native women are more than 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than women in the USA in general.
- In addition to practical problems of funding, training, coordination, and jurisdictional complexities, tribal governments suffer from an inability to use what sovereignty duties they are realistically allowed to implement. Researchers have suggested that the erosion of the tribal government’s ability to address crime significantly harms American Indian and Alaska Native women in particular. American Indian advocates argue that tribal government’s inability to prosecute non-American Indian and Alaska Natives attracts offenders of various crimes to Indian country.
One of the reasons Republicans opposed reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act was the issue of giving tribal governments jurisdiction over white men who assault Native American women. To have done so would have given clarity to who enforces what laws and how, a threadbare patchwork, at best, now. To oppose it is, well, savage.
From a late 2012 report from the organization Futures Without Violence: "The Facts on Violence Against American Indian/Alaskan Native Women":
- American Indian women residing on Indian reservations suffer domestic violence and physical assault at rates far exceeding women of other ethnicities and locations. A 2004 Department of Justice report estimates these assault rates to be as much as 50% higher than the next most victimized demographic.
- According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs at least 70% of the violent victimizations experienced by American Indians are committed by persons not of the same race— a substantially higher rate of interracial violence than experienced by white or black victims.
- Federal government studies have consistently shown that American Indian women experience much higher levels of sexual violence than other women in the U.S. Data gathered by the U.S. Department of Justice indicates that Native American and Alaskan Native women are more than 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than women in the USA in general.
- In addition to practical problems of funding, training, coordination, and jurisdictional complexities, tribal governments suffer from an inability to use what sovereignty duties they are realistically allowed to implement. Researchers have suggested that the erosion of the tribal government’s ability to address crime significantly harms American Indian and Alaska Native women in particular. American Indian advocates argue that tribal government’s inability to prosecute non-American Indian and Alaska Natives attracts offenders of various crimes to Indian country.
One of the reasons Republicans opposed reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act was the issue of giving tribal governments jurisdiction over white men who assault Native American women. To have done so would have given clarity to who enforces what laws and how, a threadbare patchwork, at best, now. To oppose it is, well, savage.
1/02/2013
Fiscal Cliff-Leaping: The Hopeful Politics of Capitulation:
Like the confused feelings one has sitting alone after a particularly intense one-night stand ("Will we do it again?" "Am I confusing love with fucking?" "Was he honest about no STDs?" "Did she steal my iPad?"), let us put aside the myriad questions about the fiscal impact of the fiscal cliff aversion deal voted on and just concentrate on one of the pleasures of the entire exercise: President Obama just wrecked Republicans ideologically. You don't believe it? You wanna cling to your "shitty negotiator" idea this time (which the Rude Pundit has agreed with on numerous occasions)?
Yes, had Obama waited until after taxes had risen on everyone, he might have gotten more of what he wanted. But here's the deal: at that point, Republicans would have been voting on a tax cut. You understand the jujitsu here? Sure, Obama campaigned endlessly on raising taxes on income over $250,000 and settled on something more generous to the rich, but the very core of Republican being for the last couple of decades, the belief that created the Tea Party and that they clung to like mad dogs on the last bone in the junkyard, was that no-how, no-way, not-ever, pledge-allegiance-to-Grover were they gonna raise taxes.
And what did Obama, with a heavy assist from Joe Biden, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, just get the majority of Republicans in the Senate and 85 in the House to do? Yeah, motherfuckers, it's like finally convincing the tight-ass fundamentalist kid on your dorm floor to smoke some weed and chill the fuck out. President Obama just corrupted the Republican brand. Assholes who had just been elected opposing tax hikes just violated their explicit campaign promises. Was that worth $200 billion in lost revenue? Was it worth upcoming battles on entitlements and the debt ceiling? Yeah, it was.
The bonus is that the fiscal cliff vote tossed the so-called "Hastert Rule" into the toilet and flushed. Yeah, Dennis Hastert instituted an anti-democratic and anti-Democrat policy when he was causing the Speaker's chair's legs to buckle. He said that no legislation could be voted on unless a majority of the majority supported it, essentially destroying the role of the minority party. The fiscal cliff deal shitcanned that.
Republican intransigence had to be kicked down the stairs of the Capitol because Obama knows that he's dealing with this collection of lunatics and ideologues for the rest of his term. 2014 ain't gonna change the House because gerrymandering has made it almost impossible. So he and Nancy Pelosi had to put together what is essentially a governing coalition of Democrats and the Republicans who actually give a shit about, you know, governing. The cherry's been popped, the thinking might be, so maybe now we can have some real fun.
Now that something big has happened in a truly bipartisan fashion, the Eric Cantor faction of the GOP - the teabaggers and other assorted cockmongers, most of whom wear nerd glasses just waiting for punching - is going to seem petty and churlish. There's gonna be a war in the Republican Party in the next Congress. We see it in the outrage over Boehner blowing out of DC without a vote on a Sandy relief bill. We saw it in the overwhelming vote for the tax hike in the Senate. Some of these fuckers want to get things done. Other fuckers want to keep cock-blocking Obama.
And, even though the price of admission was high, the Rude Pundit's hoping that the show will be worth it.
Like the confused feelings one has sitting alone after a particularly intense one-night stand ("Will we do it again?" "Am I confusing love with fucking?" "Was he honest about no STDs?" "Did she steal my iPad?"), let us put aside the myriad questions about the fiscal impact of the fiscal cliff aversion deal voted on and just concentrate on one of the pleasures of the entire exercise: President Obama just wrecked Republicans ideologically. You don't believe it? You wanna cling to your "shitty negotiator" idea this time (which the Rude Pundit has agreed with on numerous occasions)?
Yes, had Obama waited until after taxes had risen on everyone, he might have gotten more of what he wanted. But here's the deal: at that point, Republicans would have been voting on a tax cut. You understand the jujitsu here? Sure, Obama campaigned endlessly on raising taxes on income over $250,000 and settled on something more generous to the rich, but the very core of Republican being for the last couple of decades, the belief that created the Tea Party and that they clung to like mad dogs on the last bone in the junkyard, was that no-how, no-way, not-ever, pledge-allegiance-to-Grover were they gonna raise taxes.
And what did Obama, with a heavy assist from Joe Biden, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, just get the majority of Republicans in the Senate and 85 in the House to do? Yeah, motherfuckers, it's like finally convincing the tight-ass fundamentalist kid on your dorm floor to smoke some weed and chill the fuck out. President Obama just corrupted the Republican brand. Assholes who had just been elected opposing tax hikes just violated their explicit campaign promises. Was that worth $200 billion in lost revenue? Was it worth upcoming battles on entitlements and the debt ceiling? Yeah, it was.
The bonus is that the fiscal cliff vote tossed the so-called "Hastert Rule" into the toilet and flushed. Yeah, Dennis Hastert instituted an anti-democratic and anti-Democrat policy when he was causing the Speaker's chair's legs to buckle. He said that no legislation could be voted on unless a majority of the majority supported it, essentially destroying the role of the minority party. The fiscal cliff deal shitcanned that.
Republican intransigence had to be kicked down the stairs of the Capitol because Obama knows that he's dealing with this collection of lunatics and ideologues for the rest of his term. 2014 ain't gonna change the House because gerrymandering has made it almost impossible. So he and Nancy Pelosi had to put together what is essentially a governing coalition of Democrats and the Republicans who actually give a shit about, you know, governing. The cherry's been popped, the thinking might be, so maybe now we can have some real fun.
Now that something big has happened in a truly bipartisan fashion, the Eric Cantor faction of the GOP - the teabaggers and other assorted cockmongers, most of whom wear nerd glasses just waiting for punching - is going to seem petty and churlish. There's gonna be a war in the Republican Party in the next Congress. We see it in the outrage over Boehner blowing out of DC without a vote on a Sandy relief bill. We saw it in the overwhelming vote for the tax hike in the Senate. Some of these fuckers want to get things done. Other fuckers want to keep cock-blocking Obama.
And, even though the price of admission was high, the Rude Pundit's hoping that the show will be worth it.
1/01/2013
The Rude Readers' Haiku Review of 2012 (The End):
That's it. After today, we're done with haiku for a while, and we're done with looking back on that bastard of a year, 2012.
From Bernie J.:
Biggest hero of
Twenty-twelve? The waiter who
Caught Mitt’s real feelings
From Dan L.:
Old Man Clint Eastwood
Conversed with a chair. Now Mitt
Is shit out of luck
From Karen H. in Connecticut:
If mom didn't have
All those damned guns in the house
No kids would have died
From Ginny R.:
Leaching teachers on
The public teat, radicals
Now let’s give them guns.
From TheraP:
Christmas Eve, our town
Lost a cop, shot on duty
By her Gulf vet spouse.
From Libbyliberal:
Defense Spending
Quagmires of blood, fed
troops by Congress-whores for goals
of Vampire Lobbies.
From Tom M.:
Ice caps melted fast
Sandy submerged the East Coast
It is still a "myth."
From Radical Russ:
Colorado and
Washington legalized weed
Sky remains in place
From Sarah P.:
Bake Mama Some Brownies
Who needs Amsterdam?
Roll on, Columbia, and
Rocky Mountain High!
From Rabbit Earz:
A genius excuse!
Hillary's "concussion" keeps
her from a lynching.
From David B.:
Taint Nuthin' Toit
A ball-less scrotum
Under Mitch McConnell’s head
Embodies Repugs
From Diane M.:
Old Veterans
Survived WW2
Busted my ass for long years
Die in poverty
From Vince G.:
Four years running, Rude
I never made the big time
You still dissin’ me.
Let's go 2013. Bring on your wrecking ball. Back to regular rudeness tomorrow.
That's it. After today, we're done with haiku for a while, and we're done with looking back on that bastard of a year, 2012.
From Bernie J.:
Biggest hero of
Twenty-twelve? The waiter who
Caught Mitt’s real feelings
From Dan L.:
Old Man Clint Eastwood
Conversed with a chair. Now Mitt
Is shit out of luck
From Karen H. in Connecticut:
If mom didn't have
All those damned guns in the house
No kids would have died
From Ginny R.:
Leaching teachers on
The public teat, radicals
Now let’s give them guns.
From TheraP:
Christmas Eve, our town
Lost a cop, shot on duty
By her Gulf vet spouse.
From Libbyliberal:
Defense Spending
Quagmires of blood, fed
troops by Congress-whores for goals
of Vampire Lobbies.
From Tom M.:
Ice caps melted fast
Sandy submerged the East Coast
It is still a "myth."
From Radical Russ:
Colorado and
Washington legalized weed
Sky remains in place
From Sarah P.:
Bake Mama Some Brownies
Who needs Amsterdam?
Roll on, Columbia, and
Rocky Mountain High!
From Rabbit Earz:
A genius excuse!
Hillary's "concussion" keeps
her from a lynching.
From David B.:
Taint Nuthin' Toit
A ball-less scrotum
Under Mitch McConnell’s head
Embodies Repugs
From Diane M.:
Old Veterans
Survived WW2
Busted my ass for long years
Die in poverty
From Vince G.:
Four years running, Rude
I never made the big time
You still dissin’ me.
Let's go 2013. Bring on your wrecking ball. Back to regular rudeness tomorrow.
12/31/2012
Rude Readers' Haiku Review of 2012:
Damn, you're all some haiku-writin' motherfuckers. The Rude Pundit asked for and received a full facial of little poems, with a couple of hundred sent in so far. He's picking through for ones that give him a little thrill in that electric area of taint-to-balls. It's totally subjective and not fair at all, like capitalism or e-dating. Here's the first bunch. More tomorrow.
From Becca M.:
Electoral Math
Mitt forgot enough
Minorities voting is
A majority
From Larry B.:
Deaf Ears
Election over
America has spoken
Tea bags should listen
From Chris W.:
Didn't want to run
But ran for ten years, because
Dancing horses suck
From Athenawise in New York City:
Lonely Star State
Texas: "Let's secede."
The rest of the nation says,
"Good idea. When?"
From BB in Los Angeles:
The Pot Calling Anybody Anything
Rush called Fluke a slut.
No birth control needed with
Dominican boys.
From Doug S.:
You want birth control?
Ev'ry day? Close your damned legs!
Here you go, you slut.
From Julia V.:
what's more important--
foreclosures or abortions?
we found out this year.
From Phil K. in Wisconsin:
Villain of the Year
Governor Scottie Walker
Koch Brothers sex slave
From Nancy G.:
Wildfire, derecho,
drought, failure of the corn crop:
these are just previews.
From SPL:
Remote drone attack
It's like playing Nintendo
Home by five o'clock
From Sue in California:
Fear Not
Pachyderms corralled
Obama stand firm, hit hard
A cliff I fear not
(You can keep sendin' 'em to "rudepundit@yahoo.com")
Damn, you're all some haiku-writin' motherfuckers. The Rude Pundit asked for and received a full facial of little poems, with a couple of hundred sent in so far. He's picking through for ones that give him a little thrill in that electric area of taint-to-balls. It's totally subjective and not fair at all, like capitalism or e-dating. Here's the first bunch. More tomorrow.
From Becca M.:
Electoral Math
Mitt forgot enough
Minorities voting is
A majority
From Larry B.:
Deaf Ears
Election over
America has spoken
Tea bags should listen
From Chris W.:
Didn't want to run
But ran for ten years, because
Dancing horses suck
From Athenawise in New York City:
Lonely Star State
Texas: "Let's secede."
The rest of the nation says,
"Good idea. When?"
From BB in Los Angeles:
The Pot Calling Anybody Anything
Rush called Fluke a slut.
No birth control needed with
Dominican boys.
From Doug S.:
You want birth control?
Ev'ry day? Close your damned legs!
Here you go, you slut.
From Julia V.:
what's more important--
foreclosures or abortions?
we found out this year.
From Phil K. in Wisconsin:
Villain of the Year
Governor Scottie Walker
Koch Brothers sex slave
From Nancy G.:
Wildfire, derecho,
drought, failure of the corn crop:
these are just previews.
From SPL:
Remote drone attack
It's like playing Nintendo
Home by five o'clock
From Sue in California:
Fear Not
Pachyderms corralled
Obama stand firm, hit hard
A cliff I fear not
(You can keep sendin' 'em to "rudepundit@yahoo.com")
12/28/2012
A Haiku Review of 2012, Part 2: Gun Crazy:
(Yesterday, the Rude Pundit began his annual attempt to encompass the year in as few words as possible. And he invited rude readers to send in their own haiku as 2012 gasps its last breaths. So far, he's gotten an Iliad's worth of verse, and he wants more. Keep those haiku a-coming. Send 'em to "rudepundit@yahoo.com" and the best will be posted on Monday and Tuesday. Now, on with the show...)
Death in Florida
Trayvon was shot dead.
The NRA backed up George.
Can't blacks stand their ground?
Death in Colorado
Crazy-eyed coward.
Theater of sitting ducks.
Joker would be pleased.
Death in Wisconsin
Hate crime against Sikhs
By a racist thug who bought
his gun legally.
Death in Chicago
More murdered children
By guns than Newtown times six.
One year, one city.
Death in Newtown
The funeral home
Laid to rest eleven kids,
Didn't take a dime.
(Yesterday, the Rude Pundit began his annual attempt to encompass the year in as few words as possible. And he invited rude readers to send in their own haiku as 2012 gasps its last breaths. So far, he's gotten an Iliad's worth of verse, and he wants more. Keep those haiku a-coming. Send 'em to "rudepundit@yahoo.com" and the best will be posted on Monday and Tuesday. Now, on with the show...)
Death in Florida
Trayvon was shot dead.
The NRA backed up George.
Can't blacks stand their ground?
Death in Colorado
Crazy-eyed coward.
Theater of sitting ducks.
Joker would be pleased.
Death in Wisconsin
Hate crime against Sikhs
By a racist thug who bought
his gun legally.
Death in Chicago
More murdered children
By guns than Newtown times six.
One year, one city.
Death in Newtown
The funeral home
Laid to rest eleven kids,
Didn't take a dime.
12/27/2012
A Haiku Review of 2012 (and an Invitation to Haiku, Too):
For something like the 78th time in a row, the Rude Pundit is ending a year by going back to basics, ancient basics, and stemming the vomit of words that normally issues forth for something quieter. Yep, it's haiku time, where for a couple of days the Rude Pundit and rude readers look back on the awful and the wonderful of the dying year in brief poem form.
Part 1: Yes, That Election Happened:
Not Newt
For some odd reason
Pundits thought Gingrich would win.
Blind men don't see bombs.
Enough Frothing
Santorum sought to
Secure the crazy voters.
Bachmann said, "Not me?"
Revenge of a Lost Romney
Up in dog heaven
Seamus is laughing out loud.
Who needs shit hosed now?
Rafalca Shook Her Head
Camp Romney tried hard
Too make an ass a stallion.
Voters know a fake.
Why "Why?" Is Easy
Obama trounced Mitt
In ways that boggled the right.
Facts do matter, Fox.
Why "Why?" Is Easy II
It seems that women
Like body freedom, hate rape.
Repubs don't get that.
The Rude Pundit will have more coming soon. But he's inviting you, oh, sweet readers, to submit your own haiku about 2012. For instance, leaping to the front of the line is Mona P., who sent in this little number:
Playing Chicken With 2013
Dodged the Mitt bullet
Blew past the Mayan doomsday.
Fiscal cliff? Yee Haa!
See? That's simple. One line of five syllables, one line of seven, a last line of five. You don't need to send a title or a bribe, although both are welcome. Email your haiku to "rudepundit@yahoo.com". The best'll be tossed up here Monday and, perhaps, Tuesday.
For something like the 78th time in a row, the Rude Pundit is ending a year by going back to basics, ancient basics, and stemming the vomit of words that normally issues forth for something quieter. Yep, it's haiku time, where for a couple of days the Rude Pundit and rude readers look back on the awful and the wonderful of the dying year in brief poem form.
Part 1: Yes, That Election Happened:
Not Newt
For some odd reason
Pundits thought Gingrich would win.
Blind men don't see bombs.
Enough Frothing
Santorum sought to
Secure the crazy voters.
Bachmann said, "Not me?"
Revenge of a Lost Romney
Up in dog heaven
Seamus is laughing out loud.
Who needs shit hosed now?
Rafalca Shook Her Head
Camp Romney tried hard
Too make an ass a stallion.
Voters know a fake.
Why "Why?" Is Easy
Obama trounced Mitt
In ways that boggled the right.
Facts do matter, Fox.
Why "Why?" Is Easy II
It seems that women
Like body freedom, hate rape.
Repubs don't get that.
The Rude Pundit will have more coming soon. But he's inviting you, oh, sweet readers, to submit your own haiku about 2012. For instance, leaping to the front of the line is Mona P., who sent in this little number:
Playing Chicken With 2013
Dodged the Mitt bullet
Blew past the Mayan doomsday.
Fiscal cliff? Yee Haa!
See? That's simple. One line of five syllables, one line of seven, a last line of five. You don't need to send a title or a bribe, although both are welcome. Email your haiku to "rudepundit@yahoo.com". The best'll be tossed up here Monday and, perhaps, Tuesday.
12/26/2012
Things That Brought the Rude Pundit Unmitigated Joy in 2012:
The Rude Pundit is giving his brain and soul a day off from thinking about pushing the NRA off the fiscal cliff or whatever the hell is going on out there. Instead, he's doing a non-political thing here, a kind of year-in-review thing, but instead of listing ten movies you can scoff at, this is a bit more personal. Here's some moments in cultural type things that were little rays of light for the Rude Pundit in the dark tunnel of 2012:
1. In the movie tent at the end of the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee in June, with the band fun. and two others groups loudly echoing around, the Rude Pundit sat with two great friends and about fifty other people and watched Beasts of the Southern Wild. And all of the noise and exhaustion faded away. This was something unexpected, strange, and magical, and, by the end, so beautiful and true, that, when the lights came up, we three grown men were crying, as was pretty much everyone else in the tent. No film this year came close to inducing that kind of visceral feeling.
2. "Take a Walk" by Passion Pit is a pop song with teeth about men who, frankly, could only afford to eat at Taco Bell. The story of people suffering in the recession, it climaxes with this bridge that describes the Tea Party generation about as well as any song:
Honey it’s your son
I think I borrowed just too much
We had taxes, we had bills
We had a lifestyle to front
And tonight I swear I'll come home
And we’ll make love like we’re young
Tomorrow you’ll cook dinner
For the neighbors and their kids
We could rip apart those socialists
And all their damn taxes
You’ll see I am no criminal
I’m down on both bad knees
I’m just too much a coward
To admit when I’m in need
So why is this in a list of joy? Because it's all set to a bouncy, driving tune with a chorus that won't leave your head and, truly, you won't mind. (Bonus song: "Christmas in the Room" by Sufjan Stevens)
3. In the encore of his first concert ever at the Prudential Center in Newark, Bruce Springsteen picked up a sign from the audience that said, "Play one for Levon." He walked around to the E Street Band and talked it over, going through some quiet chord changes, and then he said that he hadn't played this song since his bar days and that this was for Levon Helm. Yeah, Bruce Springsteen played "The Weight" as a singalong for 20,000 people, and it was one of those moments where there was nowhere else on earth you wanted to be. (Concert runners-up: The Kills at Terminal 5 in NYC and The Roots at Bonnaroo)
4. The play We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915 at the Soho Rep in New York. More than any other theatre this year, this work by Jackie Sibblies Drury, about a group of self-involved actors trying to figure out how to do a play about the first genocide of the 20th century, consistently surprised its audience with its shifting tones and perspective.
5. The conversation between Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert at the Wellmont Theatre in Montclair, New Jersey was not really about politics (or Hugh Grant). But it was two incredibly smart, incredibly funny men sitting on stage and talking about how they conceive of and create their shows for over two hours. Now that was some bliss.
The Rude Pundit is giving his brain and soul a day off from thinking about pushing the NRA off the fiscal cliff or whatever the hell is going on out there. Instead, he's doing a non-political thing here, a kind of year-in-review thing, but instead of listing ten movies you can scoff at, this is a bit more personal. Here's some moments in cultural type things that were little rays of light for the Rude Pundit in the dark tunnel of 2012:
1. In the movie tent at the end of the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee in June, with the band fun. and two others groups loudly echoing around, the Rude Pundit sat with two great friends and about fifty other people and watched Beasts of the Southern Wild. And all of the noise and exhaustion faded away. This was something unexpected, strange, and magical, and, by the end, so beautiful and true, that, when the lights came up, we three grown men were crying, as was pretty much everyone else in the tent. No film this year came close to inducing that kind of visceral feeling.
2. "Take a Walk" by Passion Pit is a pop song with teeth about men who, frankly, could only afford to eat at Taco Bell. The story of people suffering in the recession, it climaxes with this bridge that describes the Tea Party generation about as well as any song:
Honey it’s your son
I think I borrowed just too much
We had taxes, we had bills
We had a lifestyle to front
And tonight I swear I'll come home
And we’ll make love like we’re young
Tomorrow you’ll cook dinner
For the neighbors and their kids
We could rip apart those socialists
And all their damn taxes
You’ll see I am no criminal
I’m down on both bad knees
I’m just too much a coward
To admit when I’m in need
So why is this in a list of joy? Because it's all set to a bouncy, driving tune with a chorus that won't leave your head and, truly, you won't mind. (Bonus song: "Christmas in the Room" by Sufjan Stevens)
3. In the encore of his first concert ever at the Prudential Center in Newark, Bruce Springsteen picked up a sign from the audience that said, "Play one for Levon." He walked around to the E Street Band and talked it over, going through some quiet chord changes, and then he said that he hadn't played this song since his bar days and that this was for Levon Helm. Yeah, Bruce Springsteen played "The Weight" as a singalong for 20,000 people, and it was one of those moments where there was nowhere else on earth you wanted to be. (Concert runners-up: The Kills at Terminal 5 in NYC and The Roots at Bonnaroo)
4. The play We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915 at the Soho Rep in New York. More than any other theatre this year, this work by Jackie Sibblies Drury, about a group of self-involved actors trying to figure out how to do a play about the first genocide of the 20th century, consistently surprised its audience with its shifting tones and perspective.
5. The conversation between Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert at the Wellmont Theatre in Montclair, New Jersey was not really about politics (or Hugh Grant). But it was two incredibly smart, incredibly funny men sitting on stage and talking about how they conceive of and create their shows for over two hours. Now that was some bliss.
12/25/2012
Continuing a Christmas Tradition (Now with Zombies):
Like movies about Bedford Falls suicides and pole-frozen tongues and eyes almost shot out, some things are a tradition around the rude house. Reruns are good for the soul.
Before Twitter, Instagram, Buzzfeed, and many other places you can get your fix of weird shit, the Rude Pundit posted this Christmas blast from 2004, updated with two new and horrifying photos:
Xmas - And, lo, a small teddy bear will lead them:
In the days before Christmas, the Rude Pundit roamed his neighborhood, looking at the displays in the charming stores and corner markets. There he saw the agony of so many dichotomous feelings about this holiday. One window had a kneeling, praying Santa next to a baby Jesus in the manger. Santa's hat was off. He was balding. Another display had the jolly old fat man landing his sleigh and reindeer on the roof of the manger. Surprisingly, neither Mary nor Joseph seemed rattled by the noise, although a camel was looking upward, as if asking, "What the fuck?" The Rude Pundit loved that camel.
Ah, sweet camel, what the fuck, indeed. Christ and commerce, Alleluia. The Savior has been born and he thanks you for your presents. Santa showing that he'll even honor the king of the Jews in the land of Islam. There's no telling what it means (and don't get all up in the Rude Pundit's face about St. Nicholas). Except this: we want to embrace both things, good deconstructionists that we are: Santa, who soothes our greed, and Jesus, who promises us peace. Either way, we want them both to tell us we're good people, nice people. And, of course, guilt-ridden Christians want to make sure that Santa toes the party line, you know.
For the holiday, here's a few of the Rude Pundit's favorite nativity sets, none of which are intended to be mocking of the event:
That right there is the Veggie Tales Nativity. In case you don't know, Veggie Tales are cute vegetables who love Christ and salad tossing. The newborn savior up there is a carrot. Get it? A baby carrot? What a delight.
Holy shit, that bear nativity is one of the creepiest fucking things the Rude Pundit's ever seen. Staring straight ahead with their dead eyes, it looks like a satanic cult sacrifice to some horrible bear-demon. Although, the three wise bears have provided snacks for the blood rite: salmon, honey, and berries. All go well with cub entrails.
Speaking of entrails, here's the First Halloween Nativity Set, with Three Wise Zombies and Frankenstein's Monster and his Bride as Joseph and Mary. Who's that in the crib? Why, it's Dracula as Baby Jesus, ready to drink your blood rather than have you drink his.
Those are supposed to be pugs in that nativity, although they look like a nightmare of gas-mask wearing koala bears. Frankly, who needs to wage a war on Christmas when the supposed believers actually advertise an anthropomorphized birth of their Lord and Savior with "Bring the true meaning of Christmas into your house year round with the Complete Pug Nativity!" Yes, the true meaning of Christmas through toy pugs.
This is not to mention the Chickentivity, the Moosetivity, the Barntivity, the Native American Nativity, the Gingerbread Nativity, and the various Beartivities, all available unironically for your Christmas consumption.
(Note: Previous editions of the nativity post have included the Dogtivity, the Boyd's Bears Nativity, and the Rubber Duck...oh, fuck, you get the idea.)
Like movies about Bedford Falls suicides and pole-frozen tongues and eyes almost shot out, some things are a tradition around the rude house. Reruns are good for the soul.
Before Twitter, Instagram, Buzzfeed, and many other places you can get your fix of weird shit, the Rude Pundit posted this Christmas blast from 2004, updated with two new and horrifying photos:
Xmas - And, lo, a small teddy bear will lead them:
In the days before Christmas, the Rude Pundit roamed his neighborhood, looking at the displays in the charming stores and corner markets. There he saw the agony of so many dichotomous feelings about this holiday. One window had a kneeling, praying Santa next to a baby Jesus in the manger. Santa's hat was off. He was balding. Another display had the jolly old fat man landing his sleigh and reindeer on the roof of the manger. Surprisingly, neither Mary nor Joseph seemed rattled by the noise, although a camel was looking upward, as if asking, "What the fuck?" The Rude Pundit loved that camel.
Ah, sweet camel, what the fuck, indeed. Christ and commerce, Alleluia. The Savior has been born and he thanks you for your presents. Santa showing that he'll even honor the king of the Jews in the land of Islam. There's no telling what it means (and don't get all up in the Rude Pundit's face about St. Nicholas). Except this: we want to embrace both things, good deconstructionists that we are: Santa, who soothes our greed, and Jesus, who promises us peace. Either way, we want them both to tell us we're good people, nice people. And, of course, guilt-ridden Christians want to make sure that Santa toes the party line, you know.
For the holiday, here's a few of the Rude Pundit's favorite nativity sets, none of which are intended to be mocking of the event:
That right there is the Veggie Tales Nativity. In case you don't know, Veggie Tales are cute vegetables who love Christ and salad tossing. The newborn savior up there is a carrot. Get it? A baby carrot? What a delight.
Holy shit, that bear nativity is one of the creepiest fucking things the Rude Pundit's ever seen. Staring straight ahead with their dead eyes, it looks like a satanic cult sacrifice to some horrible bear-demon. Although, the three wise bears have provided snacks for the blood rite: salmon, honey, and berries. All go well with cub entrails.
This is not to mention the Chickentivity, the Moosetivity, the Barntivity, the Native American Nativity, the Gingerbread Nativity, and the various Beartivities, all available unironically for your Christmas consumption.
(Note: Previous editions of the nativity post have included the Dogtivity, the Boyd's Bears Nativity, and the Rubber Duck...oh, fuck, you get the idea.)
12/24/2012
We've Probably Lost a Few Elves Already:
That's the North Pole up there where the lines converge in that picture, where we tell our children that Santa Claus lives with a bunch of elves. The elves are either immortal or have elf sex in order to keep Santa's workshop supplied with workers. Crazy elf orgies. Think about that when your Elf on a Shelf is watching you get undressed.
The white stuff surrounding the North Pole is Arctic sea ice. The orange line indicates the median extent of the sea ice in the years 1979-2000. In other words, a not-insignificant amount of ice is just gone, children, gone.
It gets even jollier for the fat man. See, the problem isn't the air temperature. Oh, no. That's been "unremarkable" over the last decade. It means that record ice melt is because of some days are warmer than others. It's because the water is warmer. And that means Santa is well and truly fucked.
According to NOAA, in the last year alone, there's been a record growing season, the longest duration of Greenland ice sheet melting, record low snow one month, record low sea ice, and, of course, indications that the total melting will go much faster than previously estimated.
While our politicians don't care or act on any of this, you can bet that Santa gives a damn about science at this point or he'd better learn to balance on top of that candy cane-striped pole while he watches a red glowing nose fade as its owner sinks into the Arctic sea.
That's the North Pole up there where the lines converge in that picture, where we tell our children that Santa Claus lives with a bunch of elves. The elves are either immortal or have elf sex in order to keep Santa's workshop supplied with workers. Crazy elf orgies. Think about that when your Elf on a Shelf is watching you get undressed.
The white stuff surrounding the North Pole is Arctic sea ice. The orange line indicates the median extent of the sea ice in the years 1979-2000. In other words, a not-insignificant amount of ice is just gone, children, gone.
It gets even jollier for the fat man. See, the problem isn't the air temperature. Oh, no. That's been "unremarkable" over the last decade. It means that record ice melt is because of some days are warmer than others. It's because the water is warmer. And that means Santa is well and truly fucked.
According to NOAA, in the last year alone, there's been a record growing season, the longest duration of Greenland ice sheet melting, record low snow one month, record low sea ice, and, of course, indications that the total melting will go much faster than previously estimated.
While our politicians don't care or act on any of this, you can bet that Santa gives a damn about science at this point or he'd better learn to balance on top of that candy cane-striped pole while he watches a red glowing nose fade as its owner sinks into the Arctic sea.
12/21/2012
In Brief: Four Lines from Wayne LaPierre's "News Conference" That Apply to Wayne LaPierre and the NRA:
1. "[O]ur society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters — people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them."
2. "How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame — from a national media machine that rewards them with the wall-to-wall attention and sense of identity that they crave."
3. "There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people."
4. "Isn't fantasizing about killing people as away to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography?"
Yeah, that batshit insane, divorced-from-reality, humanity-debasing speech happened. If NRA members don't quit en masse, they deserve all the condemnation and scorn the sane majority can heap on them.
1. "[O]ur society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters — people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them."
2. "How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame — from a national media machine that rewards them with the wall-to-wall attention and sense of identity that they crave."
3. "There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people."
4. "Isn't fantasizing about killing people as away to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography?"
Yeah, that batshit insane, divorced-from-reality, humanity-debasing speech happened. If NRA members don't quit en masse, they deserve all the condemnation and scorn the sane majority can heap on them.
A Teacher Speaks About Trying to Return to Normal, Post-Newtown:
The Rude Pundit has spent this week on the issue of guns because a crazy son of a bitch took his crazy Mom's crazy guns and shot a bunch of kids a week ago. It just seemed important, you know? Not to concentrate on the mental health aspect, not the "culture," whatever that means, but the guns because it's the guns. This is being written while Wayne LaPierre of the NRA tries to make it about everything but the guns. It's pathetic.
Today, one-week after, he wants to bring it back to the classroom. Beyond the politics, beyond Newtown, teachers of small children had to go back to school and talk to their kids about what happened.
Here is a response to the Sandy Hook shooting sent to the Rude Pundit from a 2nd grade teacher in New York City. You'll forgive her the occasional surges of outrage:
It is a typical morning in my classroom. I stand outside the door, shaking hands with my students as they enter, asking after new baby siblings and cold symptoms, commenting occasionally to my friends that need that morning boost: "We're going to have a great day!" They unpack inside the room and they move purposefully. One student sits at a desk and writes a letter to another, explaining a small grievance. The girls are a little bit more talkative than usual this morning and I don't mind, but I keep my ears tuned like antennae for words I'll need to react to (shooting, Connecticut, killed-- "we'll talk about that in a bit, okay?"). They read our morning message, and it's all about math today and about deciding whether their answer is reasonable.
This is our every day. This room, this space, this group, this teacher- none of it is perfect, but it is ours and it is sacred. Do. Not. Disturb. Amazing learning-type-stuff happening ‘round these parts.
Furthermore, I think to myself, as they read and respond to my message-- we are not reasonable.
We are perfectly unreasonable, these kids and me-- as we, day in and day out, exchange a love of learning and love of one another and an understanding between us that I have come to believe can only be found in an elementary school, amongst these smaller-than-you people who are totally wired for learning, and do so with an incredible zest and vigor that it acts as a contagion on even my worst and most exhausted days.
Of course, I have no way of knowing if this was true for the teachers and students at Sandy Hook. Of course this isn't about my class. And sure, I'm "just" a teacher without a firearm to protect myself. Goddammit. What happened a week ago was personal. It paralyzed me at my very core. I am incredibly angry. I am tremendously sad. Yet I am also shamefully, terrifically relieved in this order: "It was not me. It was not my class. Not my kids. It was not anyone I know. It was an isolated incident. We would have been in our math groups, learning about two-digit addition. Where the fuck is the lockdown procedure handbook? We are three floors up, so would we have more warning? Our closet has no doors. I am in the middle of the hallway and directly across from the main office. How far would they fall if I had to toss all 25 of them out the window to safety? (There’s a second story roof deck, right?) How long would that take?" The other thought that kept me up? "I'd take a dozen bullets if it meant saving just one of my kids." I humbly beg your understanding: that is not heroic. That is the job. I am, amongst a hundred other things, a protector. I protect them from one another, I protect them from themselves at times, I protect them from the weather, hell, sometimes I even have to protect them from their own parents. Again: that is the job.
Taking a bullet, is, of course, not really the job. But safety sure as hell is. We talk about safety constantly in our school. It is a tagline in our daily life, hitched onto practically everything we (or the kids) do (or don't do). Hold the railing...so you're safe. Eyes forward...so you're safe. Hands to yourself...so your friend is safe. I moved the desks...so you could be safe. I thought when I first started teaching that the "safe" line would lose its juice-- would be somehow devoid of all potency with overuse-- but here's the heartbreaking truth of the matter, and what makes me full-out weep with sorrow every time I think about the shooting:
The “safe” line? It works every time. Well, almost.
Yes. Really. Because kids want to be safe. And they expect you to help them do that. They will tell you, if they did something stupid, that they didn't know any better. And they're generally telling the truth.
Safety is sacred. You know it, and they know it. It's a cause that everyone can agree on.
All this to say that we had to approach this topic with our kids, of course. For safety's sake. I was honestly surprised to learn on Monday morning that some teachers thought it was best not to bring up Newtown unless their students did. They asked about how parents would feel. Some folks were worried about getting asked "too many questions." My m.o. with my kids is always the same: proactivity. Get out in front of issues, before they bloom and spread into a hybrid mess of concerns you hadn't anticipated. I knew we had a chance--a narrow window through which we could help steer this conversation.
How do you turn the incredibly sad, the paralyzing, the absolutely unthinkable into a conversation to be had with seven year olds?
Well, first you start with honesty: "As, I'm sure most of you have heard, something absolutely terrible happened in Connecticut on Friday. Raise your hands if you know what I'm talking about...Yes, it’s true that children, teachers and the principal were killed."
"I'm sure you have a lot of questions. And I'll take them, but first I'm going to talk a little."
And then came Mr.Rogers. Thank heavens for Mr.Rogers.
I told the kids exactly what I needed to hear to deal with what had happened: We are safe in our school just as we have always been. We will practice drills to be sure that we are prepared in the case of an emergency, which would be a very unusual circumstance. (lots of nodding)
Then: horrible things will always happen in this world. Sometimes the world can exceed our expectations for being a kind of terrible place. Sometimes those things are designed by nature, like Hurricane Sandy, or the hundreds of other natural disasters that have happened and have killed people and destroyed many lives. Sometimes, horrible things are designed by other people, like wars and bombs and shootings just like this one.
Our job right now is to "look to the helpers," to think about the people in the community who are doing everything they can to support the families who have been effected by such a terribly tragedy. Kind of like how there were a lot of people helping out when people lost their homes and businesses during Hurricane Sandy.
But WHY did he do it, Ms.P?
I know that is the question you all have in your minds. Why would someone do this? How? Lots of people have ideas about why. Honestly, though, only he really knows. And he is gone. Which means we will never know.
For me, now, I could get involved in the gun control debate or the mental health conversation or any choice of the myriad topics available based on my personal connection to the tragedy-- but day by day they become more and more tangential and less a central part of the conversation I'm really interested in having. How do I help my kids understand that they can all be the helpers? Not just to clean up after the horrific messes made by others, but to elevate us all to be better.
The Rude Pundit has spent this week on the issue of guns because a crazy son of a bitch took his crazy Mom's crazy guns and shot a bunch of kids a week ago. It just seemed important, you know? Not to concentrate on the mental health aspect, not the "culture," whatever that means, but the guns because it's the guns. This is being written while Wayne LaPierre of the NRA tries to make it about everything but the guns. It's pathetic.
Today, one-week after, he wants to bring it back to the classroom. Beyond the politics, beyond Newtown, teachers of small children had to go back to school and talk to their kids about what happened.
Here is a response to the Sandy Hook shooting sent to the Rude Pundit from a 2nd grade teacher in New York City. You'll forgive her the occasional surges of outrage:
It is a typical morning in my classroom. I stand outside the door, shaking hands with my students as they enter, asking after new baby siblings and cold symptoms, commenting occasionally to my friends that need that morning boost: "We're going to have a great day!" They unpack inside the room and they move purposefully. One student sits at a desk and writes a letter to another, explaining a small grievance. The girls are a little bit more talkative than usual this morning and I don't mind, but I keep my ears tuned like antennae for words I'll need to react to (shooting, Connecticut, killed-- "we'll talk about that in a bit, okay?"). They read our morning message, and it's all about math today and about deciding whether their answer is reasonable.
This is our every day. This room, this space, this group, this teacher- none of it is perfect, but it is ours and it is sacred. Do. Not. Disturb. Amazing learning-type-stuff happening ‘round these parts.
Furthermore, I think to myself, as they read and respond to my message-- we are not reasonable.
We are perfectly unreasonable, these kids and me-- as we, day in and day out, exchange a love of learning and love of one another and an understanding between us that I have come to believe can only be found in an elementary school, amongst these smaller-than-you people who are totally wired for learning, and do so with an incredible zest and vigor that it acts as a contagion on even my worst and most exhausted days.
Of course, I have no way of knowing if this was true for the teachers and students at Sandy Hook. Of course this isn't about my class. And sure, I'm "just" a teacher without a firearm to protect myself. Goddammit. What happened a week ago was personal. It paralyzed me at my very core. I am incredibly angry. I am tremendously sad. Yet I am also shamefully, terrifically relieved in this order: "It was not me. It was not my class. Not my kids. It was not anyone I know. It was an isolated incident. We would have been in our math groups, learning about two-digit addition. Where the fuck is the lockdown procedure handbook? We are three floors up, so would we have more warning? Our closet has no doors. I am in the middle of the hallway and directly across from the main office. How far would they fall if I had to toss all 25 of them out the window to safety? (There’s a second story roof deck, right?) How long would that take?" The other thought that kept me up? "I'd take a dozen bullets if it meant saving just one of my kids." I humbly beg your understanding: that is not heroic. That is the job. I am, amongst a hundred other things, a protector. I protect them from one another, I protect them from themselves at times, I protect them from the weather, hell, sometimes I even have to protect them from their own parents. Again: that is the job.
Taking a bullet, is, of course, not really the job. But safety sure as hell is. We talk about safety constantly in our school. It is a tagline in our daily life, hitched onto practically everything we (or the kids) do (or don't do). Hold the railing...so you're safe. Eyes forward...so you're safe. Hands to yourself...so your friend is safe. I moved the desks...so you could be safe. I thought when I first started teaching that the "safe" line would lose its juice-- would be somehow devoid of all potency with overuse-- but here's the heartbreaking truth of the matter, and what makes me full-out weep with sorrow every time I think about the shooting:
The “safe” line? It works every time. Well, almost.
Yes. Really. Because kids want to be safe. And they expect you to help them do that. They will tell you, if they did something stupid, that they didn't know any better. And they're generally telling the truth.
Safety is sacred. You know it, and they know it. It's a cause that everyone can agree on.
All this to say that we had to approach this topic with our kids, of course. For safety's sake. I was honestly surprised to learn on Monday morning that some teachers thought it was best not to bring up Newtown unless their students did. They asked about how parents would feel. Some folks were worried about getting asked "too many questions." My m.o. with my kids is always the same: proactivity. Get out in front of issues, before they bloom and spread into a hybrid mess of concerns you hadn't anticipated. I knew we had a chance--a narrow window through which we could help steer this conversation.
How do you turn the incredibly sad, the paralyzing, the absolutely unthinkable into a conversation to be had with seven year olds?
Well, first you start with honesty: "As, I'm sure most of you have heard, something absolutely terrible happened in Connecticut on Friday. Raise your hands if you know what I'm talking about...Yes, it’s true that children, teachers and the principal were killed."
"I'm sure you have a lot of questions. And I'll take them, but first I'm going to talk a little."
And then came Mr.Rogers. Thank heavens for Mr.Rogers.
I told the kids exactly what I needed to hear to deal with what had happened: We are safe in our school just as we have always been. We will practice drills to be sure that we are prepared in the case of an emergency, which would be a very unusual circumstance. (lots of nodding)
Then: horrible things will always happen in this world. Sometimes the world can exceed our expectations for being a kind of terrible place. Sometimes those things are designed by nature, like Hurricane Sandy, or the hundreds of other natural disasters that have happened and have killed people and destroyed many lives. Sometimes, horrible things are designed by other people, like wars and bombs and shootings just like this one.
Our job right now is to "look to the helpers," to think about the people in the community who are doing everything they can to support the families who have been effected by such a terribly tragedy. Kind of like how there were a lot of people helping out when people lost their homes and businesses during Hurricane Sandy.
But WHY did he do it, Ms.P?
I know that is the question you all have in your minds. Why would someone do this? How? Lots of people have ideas about why. Honestly, though, only he really knows. And he is gone. Which means we will never know.
For me, now, I could get involved in the gun control debate or the mental health conversation or any choice of the myriad topics available based on my personal connection to the tragedy-- but day by day they become more and more tangential and less a central part of the conversation I'm really interested in having. How do I help my kids understand that they can all be the helpers? Not just to clean up after the horrific messes made by others, but to elevate us all to be better.
As for my girls, they understood. They still feel safe...because they have no idea that I’m considering flinging them from a third story
window in the event of an emergency.
Hope springs eternal in my classroom.
12/20/2012
What to Do: A Post on Gun Laws That Will Piss Off Guntards:
If at its news conference tomorrow, the NRA says it will support some new gun laws, it will truly be a sign of the Mayan apocalypse. But who are you kidding? The NRA is gonna call for arming everyone and blame people who don't have guns for the violence because the NRA is an organization led by slimy, corporate bought-and-owned motherfuckers who are merely a lobbying arm of the gun industry with a huge financial stake in deluding the most vocal, paranoid, and depraved section of its membership. So while Senator Joe Manchin and others who are having a few doubts now about their oath of fealty to the National Rifle Association can say that the NRA should be "at the table" discussing new gun laws, the rest of us, the ones who think that ownership of military-style weaponry is nuts, will have to come up with a way forward from Newtown and the legally-purchased Lanza arsenal that was used so horribly.
The Rude Pundit begins with a sad, simple premise: shit that can be done in his lifetime. Because a total gun ban, hell, just a total handgun and assault weapon ban in this country is realistically never going to happen, and, even in the wildest utopian scenarios, it would take decades to achieve.
Countries that have banned guns have not become lawless wastelands where dictatorial Kenyan Muslims put them in forced labor concentration camps. One oft-cited statistic is that Japan only had two gun deaths last year. Let's put that in perspective. We have about 2.5 or times the number of people as Japan in the United States. That means 5-6 gun deaths for our 310 million people. Twirl that around you brain for a minute or two.
Here we go:
1. The basics - stuff that the majority of the country agrees on: Background checks for all gun sales. A ban on all assault weapons and magazines over 10 rounds. This is pretty much the stuff that President Obama called for yesterday. If you disagree with this part, you are such an extremist that we have nothing further to talk about, but, please, guntards, read on so that you have more stuff to angrily masturbate over while tickling your prostates with your pistols.
2. Beyond basics - stuff that is still easy to do but makes guntards beat their heads and scream - Every gun registered. Licenses to use guns, renewable by test every 2 years. A ban on some kinds of bullets, like hollow points. A ban on online sales of weapons. Microstamping firearms. Bullet identification systems. Massive funding of gun buybacks. Limit firearm purchases to 1 a month. Cap the number of firearms one can own unless registered as a dealer. License all dealers. Required use of safety locks and storage in homes with children.
3. Getting radical - Things that aren't especially radical, but in our hysterical nation, seem that way - A federal law against concealed carry of firearms. A ban on large purchases of ammunition. No private sales of firearms. No firearms in homes with people who would not pass a firearms purchase background check. A confiscation of all assault weapons that were previously banned. If those have to be from some people's cold, head hands, well, that's their choice to make.
To all the guntards who would read this and huff and puff and say, "Only criminals will have guns and how will we defend ourselves," the Rude Pundit has not said you can't have a pistols in your home to take down the occasional home invader, even though you're more likely to kill yourself or a family member with it than ever have to face off against anyone Straw Dogs-style.
You own a weapon. You own a thing that is meant to kill people. Respect that. Respect that society has a stake in making sure that your mechanism of death isn't used stupidly or criminally. Statistically, you will never get the chance to be a hero. You will never stop a mass shooting. In fact, pretty much everyone who ever did stop one was a trained police or security officer or ex-military.
You might hate speed limits because you know you can drive fast safely. But all it takes is one person not as skilled as you believe you are to spin out and kill a whole bunch of us. If you speed a lot and get caught, you get your license taken away. All you gotta do is respect the speed limit, and you can drive as much as you want.
Gun laws exist not to deny you anything, but to protect the rest of us.
If at its news conference tomorrow, the NRA says it will support some new gun laws, it will truly be a sign of the Mayan apocalypse. But who are you kidding? The NRA is gonna call for arming everyone and blame people who don't have guns for the violence because the NRA is an organization led by slimy, corporate bought-and-owned motherfuckers who are merely a lobbying arm of the gun industry with a huge financial stake in deluding the most vocal, paranoid, and depraved section of its membership. So while Senator Joe Manchin and others who are having a few doubts now about their oath of fealty to the National Rifle Association can say that the NRA should be "at the table" discussing new gun laws, the rest of us, the ones who think that ownership of military-style weaponry is nuts, will have to come up with a way forward from Newtown and the legally-purchased Lanza arsenal that was used so horribly.
The Rude Pundit begins with a sad, simple premise: shit that can be done in his lifetime. Because a total gun ban, hell, just a total handgun and assault weapon ban in this country is realistically never going to happen, and, even in the wildest utopian scenarios, it would take decades to achieve.
Countries that have banned guns have not become lawless wastelands where dictatorial Kenyan Muslims put them in forced labor concentration camps. One oft-cited statistic is that Japan only had two gun deaths last year. Let's put that in perspective. We have about 2.5 or times the number of people as Japan in the United States. That means 5-6 gun deaths for our 310 million people. Twirl that around you brain for a minute or two.
Here we go:
1. The basics - stuff that the majority of the country agrees on: Background checks for all gun sales. A ban on all assault weapons and magazines over 10 rounds. This is pretty much the stuff that President Obama called for yesterday. If you disagree with this part, you are such an extremist that we have nothing further to talk about, but, please, guntards, read on so that you have more stuff to angrily masturbate over while tickling your prostates with your pistols.
2. Beyond basics - stuff that is still easy to do but makes guntards beat their heads and scream - Every gun registered. Licenses to use guns, renewable by test every 2 years. A ban on some kinds of bullets, like hollow points. A ban on online sales of weapons. Microstamping firearms. Bullet identification systems. Massive funding of gun buybacks. Limit firearm purchases to 1 a month. Cap the number of firearms one can own unless registered as a dealer. License all dealers. Required use of safety locks and storage in homes with children.
3. Getting radical - Things that aren't especially radical, but in our hysterical nation, seem that way - A federal law against concealed carry of firearms. A ban on large purchases of ammunition. No private sales of firearms. No firearms in homes with people who would not pass a firearms purchase background check. A confiscation of all assault weapons that were previously banned. If those have to be from some people's cold, head hands, well, that's their choice to make.
To all the guntards who would read this and huff and puff and say, "Only criminals will have guns and how will we defend ourselves," the Rude Pundit has not said you can't have a pistols in your home to take down the occasional home invader, even though you're more likely to kill yourself or a family member with it than ever have to face off against anyone Straw Dogs-style.
You own a weapon. You own a thing that is meant to kill people. Respect that. Respect that society has a stake in making sure that your mechanism of death isn't used stupidly or criminally. Statistically, you will never get the chance to be a hero. You will never stop a mass shooting. In fact, pretty much everyone who ever did stop one was a trained police or security officer or ex-military.
You might hate speed limits because you know you can drive fast safely. But all it takes is one person not as skilled as you believe you are to spin out and kill a whole bunch of us. If you speed a lot and get caught, you get your license taken away. All you gotta do is respect the speed limit, and you can drive as much as you want.
Gun laws exist not to deny you anything, but to protect the rest of us.
12/19/2012
Guns and the Constitution: "Keep and Bear," Not "Buy and Sell":
In 1989, now-deceased conservative megahero and Amish bearded fucksack Judge Robert Bork said, "I'm not an expert on the Second Amendment, but its intent was to guarantee the right of states to form militia, not for individuals to bear arms." In the same lecture, he added that "assault weapons could be banned under the Constitution," and that other restrictions on guns were constitutional. In 1991, he went at the gun rights' lobby: "[T]he National Rifle Association is always arguing that the Second Amendment determines the right to bear arms. But I think it really is people's right to bear arms in a militia. The NRA thinks that it protects their right to have Teflon-coated bullets. But that's not the original understanding."
Want more? Bork's 1997 book Slouching Towards Gomorrah, something of a must-read for a great many on the right, has the following line: "The Second Amendment was designed to allow states to defend themselves against a possibly tyrannical national government. Now that the federal government has stealth bombers and nuclear weapons, it is hard to imagine what people would need to keep in the garage to serve that purpose." Bork was against gun control, but it was up to the people. For most of his life, he thought that the Constitution was no impediment to gun control laws. Later, he would sign onto an amicus brief in the depraved 2008 DC v Heller decision that finally did carve out an individual right to bear arms. Hey, motherfucker saw an opportunity and jumped. Who can blame the old bastard for trying to dick over liberals one last time before he starred in Hell's stage production of Let's Skullfuck Robert Bork with Flaming Demon Cocks? But for most of his life, he was pretty clear: the Second Amendment means what it says.
But let's say it doesn't. Let's say that, like every guntard everywhere, we ignore the first clause, the "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State" section that apparently doesn't mean "well-regulated" or "militia" or "security" of the state at all. Let's just say that only the rest of it applies, the part that says, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed," and that individuals can "keep and bear" guns. Now, the Rude Pundit's no constitutional scholar, but he's pretty sure that there's no contorted stretch of definitions that can make "keep and bear" mean "buy and sell."
That's where Article 1, Section 8 comes in. It's the Commerce Clause, and it gives Congress the power "To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes." That pretty clearly says that when it comes to buying and selling, there can be regulations. It's a direct correlation - selling something? That activity can be regulated. The power there is within every limitation one can think of, a power that even Justice John Roberts' opinion on the Commerce Clause as it applies to the Affordable Care Act can't undermine.
The vile Heller decision barely mentions commerce at all. It was about the keeping of arms. In fact, Justice Scalia, whose starring role in the new play in Hell, Antonin Scalia's Ass Is Repeatedly Sodomized by Lucifer Himself, awaits him, wrote in his Heller majority opinion, "[N]othing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms." So one of the only mentions of the sale of guns in the opinion pretty much says, "Yeah, go ahead and regulate it. That's your fucking jobs."
We don't even need to get into the affirmation of the consitutionality of gun-free zones, like schools.
Congress has all the constitutional tools it needs to do something. National laws, not the patchwork of state regulations. Hell, Democrats, you even have the most conservative judges laying down cover fire while you rush the NRA's walls.
What those regulations should be will be discussed tomorrow.
In 1989, now-deceased conservative megahero and Amish bearded fucksack Judge Robert Bork said, "I'm not an expert on the Second Amendment, but its intent was to guarantee the right of states to form militia, not for individuals to bear arms." In the same lecture, he added that "assault weapons could be banned under the Constitution," and that other restrictions on guns were constitutional. In 1991, he went at the gun rights' lobby: "[T]he National Rifle Association is always arguing that the Second Amendment determines the right to bear arms. But I think it really is people's right to bear arms in a militia. The NRA thinks that it protects their right to have Teflon-coated bullets. But that's not the original understanding."
Want more? Bork's 1997 book Slouching Towards Gomorrah, something of a must-read for a great many on the right, has the following line: "The Second Amendment was designed to allow states to defend themselves against a possibly tyrannical national government. Now that the federal government has stealth bombers and nuclear weapons, it is hard to imagine what people would need to keep in the garage to serve that purpose." Bork was against gun control, but it was up to the people. For most of his life, he thought that the Constitution was no impediment to gun control laws. Later, he would sign onto an amicus brief in the depraved 2008 DC v Heller decision that finally did carve out an individual right to bear arms. Hey, motherfucker saw an opportunity and jumped. Who can blame the old bastard for trying to dick over liberals one last time before he starred in Hell's stage production of Let's Skullfuck Robert Bork with Flaming Demon Cocks? But for most of his life, he was pretty clear: the Second Amendment means what it says.
But let's say it doesn't. Let's say that, like every guntard everywhere, we ignore the first clause, the "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State" section that apparently doesn't mean "well-regulated" or "militia" or "security" of the state at all. Let's just say that only the rest of it applies, the part that says, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed," and that individuals can "keep and bear" guns. Now, the Rude Pundit's no constitutional scholar, but he's pretty sure that there's no contorted stretch of definitions that can make "keep and bear" mean "buy and sell."
That's where Article 1, Section 8 comes in. It's the Commerce Clause, and it gives Congress the power "To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes." That pretty clearly says that when it comes to buying and selling, there can be regulations. It's a direct correlation - selling something? That activity can be regulated. The power there is within every limitation one can think of, a power that even Justice John Roberts' opinion on the Commerce Clause as it applies to the Affordable Care Act can't undermine.
The vile Heller decision barely mentions commerce at all. It was about the keeping of arms. In fact, Justice Scalia, whose starring role in the new play in Hell, Antonin Scalia's Ass Is Repeatedly Sodomized by Lucifer Himself, awaits him, wrote in his Heller majority opinion, "[N]othing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms." So one of the only mentions of the sale of guns in the opinion pretty much says, "Yeah, go ahead and regulate it. That's your fucking jobs."
We don't even need to get into the affirmation of the consitutionality of gun-free zones, like schools.
Congress has all the constitutional tools it needs to do something. National laws, not the patchwork of state regulations. Hell, Democrats, you even have the most conservative judges laying down cover fire while you rush the NRA's walls.
What those regulations should be will be discussed tomorrow.
12/18/2012
On Guns, the Crazies Make the Laws:
As a nation, when it comes to our safety, we have allowed ourselves to be led by the craziest, most paranoid among us. It's a result of a number of things over the last 20-30 years, but, most recently, it's been evident in the our delusional approach to dealing with potential terrorism. You want new evidence? Howzabout this: Last week, the Transportation Safety Administration agents at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport "held a young girl – away from her parents – for an hour while trying to figure out why she tested positive for explosives." It gets even worse. The twelve year-old girl suffers from a brittle bones disease and is confined to a wheelchair. She was on her way to Tampa to get treatment. It gets even worse. She was selected at random for an explosives swabbing test. When she tested positive, she remained crying for an hour, in public, in her wheelchair, at the metal table at security while the inarticulate bumblefucks tried to see if she was going to blow up. And they wouldn't let her Mom sit with her.
Why is the TSA's latest attempt to stops al-Qaeda's brigades of bomb-ready disabled children relevant to the discussion of gun control? Two reasons: First, the completely incoherent and unrealistic airport security policies demonstrate how deeply paranoia guides our nation's thinking. And, yes, the line between security and absurdity is narrow. But let's be generous about it and say, "Fine. I'll take off my fucking shoes because no one wants the plane to blow up."
However, and this is the second reason, that girl in the wheelchair thinks that she tested positive for explosives because she lives on a farm and she wheeled over fertilizer, the kind of fertilizer that is widely used on, you know, farms, but has also been used to make bombs, like the one in Oklahoma City, which had nothing to do with planes, but, still.
Say you go to a farm store, or, hell, even a reasonably large Home Depot garden center. Say you buy a "large quantity of pesticides, combustibles, or fertilizers containing ammonium nitrate out of season or with cash." Or perhaps you fail to state a "legitimate agricultural use for product" you are buying. As far as the FBI and local terrorism task forces are concerned, you are suspicious. As a 2011 FBI memo to such stores said, "Some of the activities, taken individually, could be innocent and must be examined by law enforcement professionals in a larger context to determine whether there is a basis to investigate."
You got that? The FBI or DHS might pay you a visit if you quietly buy too much of a certain kind of fortified shit. If you are a child in a wheelchair, chosen at random at an airport, and you have fortified shit residue on your hands because you touched the wheels of your chair, you will be held until the truth about the fortified shit residue is ascertained.
But if you are on the terrorist watch list, you can buy all the goddamn guns you want, as long as you're not disqualified for other reasons (like not being a citizen, because legal immigrants don't need to be safe). When Republican Peter King, generally a bastard, tried to get a bill passed to close this loophole, it was killed in committee, mostly because the NRA opposed it because freedom and tyranny.
If keeping a crippled child away from her mother because you're afraid she's got a bomb, even when a search produces no bomb, seems fine but allowing Americans on the terrorist watch list to buy guns seems logical, then you are crazy. We've surrendered our ability to regulate or ban gun ownership to the crazies, and their insanity has caused bodies to stack up every day.
How do you know someone is crazy? Wait, let's call 'em "guntards" because fuck them. How do you know someone is a guntard?
Anyone who thinks that teachers should be allowed to carry concealed weapons is a fucking idiot. Putting aside the inevitable, how much shit is stolen from schools? From teachers? You want to add guns to that mix? How quickly will a school be shot up by a student stealing a handgun from a teacher? Maybe that's the price to pay in blood to make sure a kindergarten teacher is armed and ready.
Anyone who thinks that they should own assault rifles because the government might need to be confronted is mentally ill and should be treated as such. (Do you know how quickly the military could vaporize you if it really wanted to? Your AR-15 ain't gonna stop a drone, but, hey, it'll make for funny video for the soldiers back at Fort Collins.) Anyone who thinks they should own assault rifles because they're fun to fire and, gosh, it's just a hobby should be ignored because they fetishize the act of shooting like someone who gets off huffing sweaty shoes. In fact, let's just say that anyone who believes individuals should own assault weapons is out of the discussion because there is no rational reason for it.
This sounds like the Rude Pundit is only talking about the extremists. But our current policy is made by extremists, voted on by politicians cowed by the NRA and other right-wing groups. Fuck, President Obama has made it easier to carry concealed weapons. To what end? A nation that believes it's so dangerous out there that everyone should be armed is a nation that has given up on any solutions beyond isolationism and paranoia.
Don't worry, guntards. No one's gonna take all the guns away. We're not idealists in the United States anymore. We prefer bandages to stitches. But we gotta do something.
More tomorrow. But right now, right this second, the federal government should halt all gun purchases requiring an FBI background check. That'll slow the surge in assault rifle sales that's happening in a pathetic anti-tribute to the dead of Newtown. Obama said he'd do what he could with his office. There's a step he can take immediately while we all figure out what comes next.
As a nation, when it comes to our safety, we have allowed ourselves to be led by the craziest, most paranoid among us. It's a result of a number of things over the last 20-30 years, but, most recently, it's been evident in the our delusional approach to dealing with potential terrorism. You want new evidence? Howzabout this: Last week, the Transportation Safety Administration agents at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport "held a young girl – away from her parents – for an hour while trying to figure out why she tested positive for explosives." It gets even worse. The twelve year-old girl suffers from a brittle bones disease and is confined to a wheelchair. She was on her way to Tampa to get treatment. It gets even worse. She was selected at random for an explosives swabbing test. When she tested positive, she remained crying for an hour, in public, in her wheelchair, at the metal table at security while the inarticulate bumblefucks tried to see if she was going to blow up. And they wouldn't let her Mom sit with her.
Why is the TSA's latest attempt to stops al-Qaeda's brigades of bomb-ready disabled children relevant to the discussion of gun control? Two reasons: First, the completely incoherent and unrealistic airport security policies demonstrate how deeply paranoia guides our nation's thinking. And, yes, the line between security and absurdity is narrow. But let's be generous about it and say, "Fine. I'll take off my fucking shoes because no one wants the plane to blow up."
However, and this is the second reason, that girl in the wheelchair thinks that she tested positive for explosives because she lives on a farm and she wheeled over fertilizer, the kind of fertilizer that is widely used on, you know, farms, but has also been used to make bombs, like the one in Oklahoma City, which had nothing to do with planes, but, still.
Say you go to a farm store, or, hell, even a reasonably large Home Depot garden center. Say you buy a "large quantity of pesticides, combustibles, or fertilizers containing ammonium nitrate out of season or with cash." Or perhaps you fail to state a "legitimate agricultural use for product" you are buying. As far as the FBI and local terrorism task forces are concerned, you are suspicious. As a 2011 FBI memo to such stores said, "Some of the activities, taken individually, could be innocent and must be examined by law enforcement professionals in a larger context to determine whether there is a basis to investigate."
You got that? The FBI or DHS might pay you a visit if you quietly buy too much of a certain kind of fortified shit. If you are a child in a wheelchair, chosen at random at an airport, and you have fortified shit residue on your hands because you touched the wheels of your chair, you will be held until the truth about the fortified shit residue is ascertained.
But if you are on the terrorist watch list, you can buy all the goddamn guns you want, as long as you're not disqualified for other reasons (like not being a citizen, because legal immigrants don't need to be safe). When Republican Peter King, generally a bastard, tried to get a bill passed to close this loophole, it was killed in committee, mostly because the NRA opposed it because freedom and tyranny.
If keeping a crippled child away from her mother because you're afraid she's got a bomb, even when a search produces no bomb, seems fine but allowing Americans on the terrorist watch list to buy guns seems logical, then you are crazy. We've surrendered our ability to regulate or ban gun ownership to the crazies, and their insanity has caused bodies to stack up every day.
How do you know someone is crazy? Wait, let's call 'em "guntards" because fuck them. How do you know someone is a guntard?
Anyone who thinks that teachers should be allowed to carry concealed weapons is a fucking idiot. Putting aside the inevitable, how much shit is stolen from schools? From teachers? You want to add guns to that mix? How quickly will a school be shot up by a student stealing a handgun from a teacher? Maybe that's the price to pay in blood to make sure a kindergarten teacher is armed and ready.
Anyone who thinks that they should own assault rifles because the government might need to be confronted is mentally ill and should be treated as such. (Do you know how quickly the military could vaporize you if it really wanted to? Your AR-15 ain't gonna stop a drone, but, hey, it'll make for funny video for the soldiers back at Fort Collins.) Anyone who thinks they should own assault rifles because they're fun to fire and, gosh, it's just a hobby should be ignored because they fetishize the act of shooting like someone who gets off huffing sweaty shoes. In fact, let's just say that anyone who believes individuals should own assault weapons is out of the discussion because there is no rational reason for it.
This sounds like the Rude Pundit is only talking about the extremists. But our current policy is made by extremists, voted on by politicians cowed by the NRA and other right-wing groups. Fuck, President Obama has made it easier to carry concealed weapons. To what end? A nation that believes it's so dangerous out there that everyone should be armed is a nation that has given up on any solutions beyond isolationism and paranoia.
Don't worry, guntards. No one's gonna take all the guns away. We're not idealists in the United States anymore. We prefer bandages to stitches. But we gotta do something.
More tomorrow. But right now, right this second, the federal government should halt all gun purchases requiring an FBI background check. That'll slow the surge in assault rifle sales that's happening in a pathetic anti-tribute to the dead of Newtown. Obama said he'd do what he could with his office. There's a step he can take immediately while we all figure out what comes next.
12/17/2012
Guns and Minds:
I've had a gun pointed in my face by a mugger on a dark New Orleans street. I have pointed a gun at an intruder in my apartment in a crime-filled neighborhood. Had he come closer instead of running, I believe that I would have shot him. I have had another apartment in a clean, nice neighborhood strafed with automatic weapon fire when one gang member was pursuing another down my street. I pulled the bullets out of the stoop and the door. I have had to duck behind a garbage can at my college campus when a man who robbed the bursar's office was in a shootout with police. I have had a loaded gun pointed jokingly at my heart. I was on a street in Chicago when a young man ran by and a car chased him. The car stopped right next to me and a hand holding an AK47 (I think) came out of the sun roof and pointed at me before driving on. I have been target shooting with handguns at ranges multiple times in my life. I have been hunting with rifles that fire buckshot and rifles that fire bullets. I have not done either of those things in years. Growing up in Louisiana, I hung out with friends at their houses where sometimes one of them would ask, "Wanna go shoot some stuff?" and so we'd line up cans and bottles and shoot stuff. We were not using BB guns. I have never fired a semi-automatic rifle, although I have been with people while they were firing them. I have known people who died by gunshot. I know people who saved their own lives by shooting others who were attacking them. I do not come to this discussion naively. I do not come to it clean. I come to it honestly, with almost the entire spectrum of experiences one can have with guns, a spectrum wider than most of the people who believe that the ubiquity of firearms is our only defense against firearms. I have never been shot. I hope I die without that experience.
We need to dwell on horror, on the horror that those children faced in Newtown, Connecticut. We need to imagine how their 6 and 7 year-old minds processed what was happening. We need to individuate them: how many were exposed to enough violence in our culture, through movies, through TV, through online videos, through video games, and, yes, through their own lives to comprehend that they were going to die? How many were kept from that awful knowledge of the evil that exists in world so that they couldn't process the shots, the noise, their classmates bleeding and falling around them before they were hit? It's terrible and it hurts, Christ, it hurts to write this. But you need to know it. You need to know that Adam Lanza walked into one classroom and killed everyone in it, 14 children and 2 teachers. He could do that because he had 30-round magazines. He didn't even have to reload. One man. Everyone in the room. Imagine that. Imagine that.
Before they move on to the level of abstraction and statistic, the children and the adults who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School need to be remembered for their lives, most certainly. But they need to be remembered for the nightmare of their end, vividly, to where it's an ache that can't be soothed, can't be talked away, so that whenever it's mentioned, we all have a kind of trauma, a PTSD that must be treated. We know how. But we refuse out of some sense of misbegotten pride and willful ignorance.
There are many things that must be confronted, that should have been confronted long ago. While I don't agree with everything here, Chuck Todd et al wrote today about the possibility of getting greater gun control through Congress, "[T]he president is going to have to tackle every issue associated with these heinous crimes: gun laws, our gun culture, mental health, the desensitization of violence thanks to Hollywood and video game makers, and of course parental responsibility. If it’s a larger policy discussion, it’s much harder for the most ardent NRA-supporting lawmaker to walk away." I would argue with the violence in Hollywood and in video games part since whenever we start to walk down this road, we turn those into easy scapegoats rather than blame a broken mental health system and a paucity of limitations on gun ownership.
And as far as cultural influences, I would say that a nation that sanctions capital punishment, use of extreme force by the police in many situations that don't call for it, and the murder of people overseas by drones is a nation that has stated, in a quite official way, that violence is the answer to one's problems. I would say that as far as unintended effects go, those things have done more damage to the American psyche than all the versions of Grand Theft Auto we could play.
The first descriptions of Lanza have talked about his mental illness, but they have also talked about the video games that he played. You could lock yourself in a room and get into Resident Evil 6 until your hands were bloody from pushing buttons. Let's say it warps your brain in some way that it wasn't warped before. It's not likely, but let's say it made you bloodthirsty for real, not zombie or creature, blood. If you don't have access to guns and large magazines, you are not going to do what Lanza did. It's that simple. No, really, it's that simple. Bottom line. Ask any cop, any member of the military, any responsible gun owner. Secure the weapons. Always secure the weapons.
We'll talk more about this (and more rudely) this week. Today, mourning. Tomorrow, solutions.
When I had that gun pointed in my face all those years ago, I didn't think, "Damn, I wish I had a gun, too." I didn't think, "Damn, I wish someone else with a gun would come along and save me." I thought, "Damn, I wish he didn't have a gun."
As have many children and adults alike.
I've had a gun pointed in my face by a mugger on a dark New Orleans street. I have pointed a gun at an intruder in my apartment in a crime-filled neighborhood. Had he come closer instead of running, I believe that I would have shot him. I have had another apartment in a clean, nice neighborhood strafed with automatic weapon fire when one gang member was pursuing another down my street. I pulled the bullets out of the stoop and the door. I have had to duck behind a garbage can at my college campus when a man who robbed the bursar's office was in a shootout with police. I have had a loaded gun pointed jokingly at my heart. I was on a street in Chicago when a young man ran by and a car chased him. The car stopped right next to me and a hand holding an AK47 (I think) came out of the sun roof and pointed at me before driving on. I have been target shooting with handguns at ranges multiple times in my life. I have been hunting with rifles that fire buckshot and rifles that fire bullets. I have not done either of those things in years. Growing up in Louisiana, I hung out with friends at their houses where sometimes one of them would ask, "Wanna go shoot some stuff?" and so we'd line up cans and bottles and shoot stuff. We were not using BB guns. I have never fired a semi-automatic rifle, although I have been with people while they were firing them. I have known people who died by gunshot. I know people who saved their own lives by shooting others who were attacking them. I do not come to this discussion naively. I do not come to it clean. I come to it honestly, with almost the entire spectrum of experiences one can have with guns, a spectrum wider than most of the people who believe that the ubiquity of firearms is our only defense against firearms. I have never been shot. I hope I die without that experience.
We need to dwell on horror, on the horror that those children faced in Newtown, Connecticut. We need to imagine how their 6 and 7 year-old minds processed what was happening. We need to individuate them: how many were exposed to enough violence in our culture, through movies, through TV, through online videos, through video games, and, yes, through their own lives to comprehend that they were going to die? How many were kept from that awful knowledge of the evil that exists in world so that they couldn't process the shots, the noise, their classmates bleeding and falling around them before they were hit? It's terrible and it hurts, Christ, it hurts to write this. But you need to know it. You need to know that Adam Lanza walked into one classroom and killed everyone in it, 14 children and 2 teachers. He could do that because he had 30-round magazines. He didn't even have to reload. One man. Everyone in the room. Imagine that. Imagine that.
Before they move on to the level of abstraction and statistic, the children and the adults who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School need to be remembered for their lives, most certainly. But they need to be remembered for the nightmare of their end, vividly, to where it's an ache that can't be soothed, can't be talked away, so that whenever it's mentioned, we all have a kind of trauma, a PTSD that must be treated. We know how. But we refuse out of some sense of misbegotten pride and willful ignorance.
There are many things that must be confronted, that should have been confronted long ago. While I don't agree with everything here, Chuck Todd et al wrote today about the possibility of getting greater gun control through Congress, "[T]he president is going to have to tackle every issue associated with these heinous crimes: gun laws, our gun culture, mental health, the desensitization of violence thanks to Hollywood and video game makers, and of course parental responsibility. If it’s a larger policy discussion, it’s much harder for the most ardent NRA-supporting lawmaker to walk away." I would argue with the violence in Hollywood and in video games part since whenever we start to walk down this road, we turn those into easy scapegoats rather than blame a broken mental health system and a paucity of limitations on gun ownership.
And as far as cultural influences, I would say that a nation that sanctions capital punishment, use of extreme force by the police in many situations that don't call for it, and the murder of people overseas by drones is a nation that has stated, in a quite official way, that violence is the answer to one's problems. I would say that as far as unintended effects go, those things have done more damage to the American psyche than all the versions of Grand Theft Auto we could play.
The first descriptions of Lanza have talked about his mental illness, but they have also talked about the video games that he played. You could lock yourself in a room and get into Resident Evil 6 until your hands were bloody from pushing buttons. Let's say it warps your brain in some way that it wasn't warped before. It's not likely, but let's say it made you bloodthirsty for real, not zombie or creature, blood. If you don't have access to guns and large magazines, you are not going to do what Lanza did. It's that simple. No, really, it's that simple. Bottom line. Ask any cop, any member of the military, any responsible gun owner. Secure the weapons. Always secure the weapons.
We'll talk more about this (and more rudely) this week. Today, mourning. Tomorrow, solutions.
When I had that gun pointed in my face all those years ago, I didn't think, "Damn, I wish I had a gun, too." I didn't think, "Damn, I wish someone else with a gun would come along and save me." I thought, "Damn, I wish he didn't have a gun."
As have many children and adults alike.
12/14/2012
Away in a Manger, 2012:
A mere 42 miles separates the Gaza town of Beit Lahiya from Bethlehem, the city where Christian legend says that a virgin, led by a star, gave birth to the child of God in a place fit for animals. Two thousand years, 42 miles. The family up there was photographed yesterday, just 12 days before the supposed birthday of the Muslim prophet Jesus.
Beit Lahiya suffers mightily whenever there are periods of bombardment from Israel because Hamas was elected to run it. In 2009, the city was wrecked. In this most recent offensive, 8 days of steady bombing, "Suhail Hamada Mohman and his 10-year-old son, who were both killed instantly at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 18, 2012 in Beit Lahiya while distributing water to their neighbors," among other casualties.
There's no point here other than that this exists, people being forced to go about their lives in a nativity of rubble.
A mere 42 miles separates the Gaza town of Beit Lahiya from Bethlehem, the city where Christian legend says that a virgin, led by a star, gave birth to the child of God in a place fit for animals. Two thousand years, 42 miles. The family up there was photographed yesterday, just 12 days before the supposed birthday of the Muslim prophet Jesus.
Beit Lahiya suffers mightily whenever there are periods of bombardment from Israel because Hamas was elected to run it. In 2009, the city was wrecked. In this most recent offensive, 8 days of steady bombing, "Suhail Hamada Mohman and his 10-year-old son, who were both killed instantly at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 18, 2012 in Beit Lahiya while distributing water to their neighbors," among other casualties.
There's no point here other than that this exists, people being forced to go about their lives in a nativity of rubble.
12/13/2012
Antonin Scalia Doesn't Give a Damn About Your Little Problems:
There are few things in this world that are surely going to happen, but one that you can make book on is that Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia will die, probably in the next few years, statistics being what they are and Scalia being 76 years old and so overstuffed with anger and hatred - sorry, "animus," as he would say in the dickiest way possible - that his poisoned heart will probably explode. Hopefully while he's sodomizing his hand while watching morbidly obese ass spank porn, something titled Five-Hundred Pounds of Grey, perhaps.
And when Scalia does choke on his own bile and die, the Rude Pundit wants to get all the queers he knows, every leather bear and feather twink, every chopped-haired dyke and short-skirted femme, and everyone in between, and have a great big orgy at that bastard's wake. One great, big sodomy fest, right in front of his corpse, hell, right on top of the body in the casket, the blissful acts of cocks sucked in willing mouths, of strap-ons thrust into wet pussies, of asses filled and unfilled, over and over, celebrating that, at last, one of the last symbols of generational intolerance is gonna be put into the ground, sticky with sex and semen from the joyful fucking, from the perverted fucking, from the loving fucking, all the fucking that he would find repulsive. Now that's what you'd call "justice."
For, truly, there is nothing that Scalia offers this nation of any use. He demonstrated that at Princeton this week when he responded to student Duncan Hosie, who had asked Scalia to comment on the judge's comparing gay sex with murder and bestiality. Snarked Big Tony, "If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against these other things? Of course we can. I don’t apologize for the things I raised." Then, having compared "homosexuality" to murder, Scalia said, "I’m not comparing homosexuality to murder. I’m comparing the principle that a society may not adopt moral sanctions, moral views, against certain conduct. I’m comparing that with respect to murder and that with respect to homosexuality." He said that this was a reductio ad absurdum argument he was making.
Now, the Rude Pundit's not a fancy Supreme Court Justice. He's just a small-town, country professor. But he's pretty sure that you only use reduce an argument to the absurd if you have contempt for the very thing that is being argued and for those who are arguing it. Here's an example: Antonin Scalia is like a living dinosaur; sure, it's interesting to contemplate, but a dinosaur has no place in the modern world. It's better off extinct.
Scalia also said that he didn't give much of a thought for the Bill of Rights, that it was an "afterthought" by the writers of the Constitution, and that "Every tinhorned dictator in the world has a bill of rights." So we have a Supreme Court Justice who admits that he thinks the amendments to the Constitution are useless and he derided the idea of a "living constitution." All of which is quite odd, considering that Article V of the Constitution is about how to amend the thing, which means that the founders believed that it was a document that could be revised and changed, that, in fact, it ought to be, as times changed. They gave the Constitution its pulse. Scalia believes it was stillborn.
Yeah, Scalia will die someday. He'll never retire because what the fuck would he do with all the anger he has towards this nation? Take it out on his begonias? On the kids on his lawn? But the nation has sped by Antonin Scalia. As he wheezes his rage into the setting sun, everything he has done will surely be undone.
There are few things in this world that are surely going to happen, but one that you can make book on is that Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia will die, probably in the next few years, statistics being what they are and Scalia being 76 years old and so overstuffed with anger and hatred - sorry, "animus," as he would say in the dickiest way possible - that his poisoned heart will probably explode. Hopefully while he's sodomizing his hand while watching morbidly obese ass spank porn, something titled Five-Hundred Pounds of Grey, perhaps.
And when Scalia does choke on his own bile and die, the Rude Pundit wants to get all the queers he knows, every leather bear and feather twink, every chopped-haired dyke and short-skirted femme, and everyone in between, and have a great big orgy at that bastard's wake. One great, big sodomy fest, right in front of his corpse, hell, right on top of the body in the casket, the blissful acts of cocks sucked in willing mouths, of strap-ons thrust into wet pussies, of asses filled and unfilled, over and over, celebrating that, at last, one of the last symbols of generational intolerance is gonna be put into the ground, sticky with sex and semen from the joyful fucking, from the perverted fucking, from the loving fucking, all the fucking that he would find repulsive. Now that's what you'd call "justice."
For, truly, there is nothing that Scalia offers this nation of any use. He demonstrated that at Princeton this week when he responded to student Duncan Hosie, who had asked Scalia to comment on the judge's comparing gay sex with murder and bestiality. Snarked Big Tony, "If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against these other things? Of course we can. I don’t apologize for the things I raised." Then, having compared "homosexuality" to murder, Scalia said, "I’m not comparing homosexuality to murder. I’m comparing the principle that a society may not adopt moral sanctions, moral views, against certain conduct. I’m comparing that with respect to murder and that with respect to homosexuality." He said that this was a reductio ad absurdum argument he was making.
Now, the Rude Pundit's not a fancy Supreme Court Justice. He's just a small-town, country professor. But he's pretty sure that you only use reduce an argument to the absurd if you have contempt for the very thing that is being argued and for those who are arguing it. Here's an example: Antonin Scalia is like a living dinosaur; sure, it's interesting to contemplate, but a dinosaur has no place in the modern world. It's better off extinct.
Scalia also said that he didn't give much of a thought for the Bill of Rights, that it was an "afterthought" by the writers of the Constitution, and that "Every tinhorned dictator in the world has a bill of rights." So we have a Supreme Court Justice who admits that he thinks the amendments to the Constitution are useless and he derided the idea of a "living constitution." All of which is quite odd, considering that Article V of the Constitution is about how to amend the thing, which means that the founders believed that it was a document that could be revised and changed, that, in fact, it ought to be, as times changed. They gave the Constitution its pulse. Scalia believes it was stillborn.
Yeah, Scalia will die someday. He'll never retire because what the fuck would he do with all the anger he has towards this nation? Take it out on his begonias? On the kids on his lawn? But the nation has sped by Antonin Scalia. As he wheezes his rage into the setting sun, everything he has done will surely be undone.
12/12/2012
The Ideological Bankruptcy of the Republican Party (Part 1):
As conservatives continue to lick their wounded asses and try to figure out just how they got so badly chewed in the November elections, one thing has come into clear relief, like Brigadoon emerging from the foggy moors: these are profoundly stupid people. Their version of self-reflection goes like this: "Huh, I tried to fuck this weasel, but it didn't want to be fucked, so it bit me on the balls. Maybe next time I'll put on different colored underwear." It simply doesn't occur to them that perhaps the problem is they shouldn't try to fuck weasels.
Which, of course, is the best lead-in to discussing conservative writer Jonah "Lucianne Makes Me Lick the Sweat Off Her Tits" Goldberg's latest "column" (if by "column," you mean, "words waterboarded into sounding like an approximation of an idea"). Goldberg knows the problem: "The GOP is not a Christian club," but it seems that way to those who are not Christian, specifically Asian Americans.
Actually, there's a paragraph by Goldberg that needs to be quoted extensively in order to get the full facial of fucktardery: "President Obama did spectacularly well with Asian Americans, garnering nearly three-quarters of their vote. This runs counter to a lot of conventional wisdom on both the left and the right. On average, Asian American family income is higher and poverty is lower than it is for non-Latino whites. Entrepreneurship, family cohesion and traditional values all run strong among Asian Americans, and reliance on government runs weak."
Now, you might read that and think, "Well, obviously, they looked at the values and policies that the Republican Party represents, including the crass emphasis on financial acquisition, the demonization of those in need, the constant barrage of anti-immigrant sentiments, and the insistence on government interference in the most intimate aspects of people's lives, and they made the well-reasoned decision to tell the GOP to go fuck itself."
But, then again, you probably wouldn't write, as Goldberg does, "Well, Indian Americans earn like Jews and ... vote like Jews." You also gotta love the awesome racism of elevating Asian Americans over blacks and Hispanics.
The devolved mutant heir of William F. Buckley's movement posits, "Perhaps the most common explanation for the GOP's problem with Asian Americans is the party's pronounced embrace of Christianity, which turns off many Jews as well." Jews and Buddhists and Hindus, man, always thinking about their faith over their nation. What's wrong with them? So Goldberg's solution is...well, not really a solution at all. It's more or less "Let's reach out to the non-Christians while making sure we don't alienate the Christians."
You just wanna grab Goldberg by his sweaty collar, smack his greasy face a couple of times, and say, "No, you pampered twat, it's not the messaging. It's the underlying ideology." Goldberg and most of the right are stunningly blind to this. They are betting that Americans are too stupid to know what the GOP actually believes and wants to do.
But November demonstrated that Americans do understand it and reject it, pretty much everywhere except, you know, places where people actually did vote the way they did almost solely because they're white and Christian.
As conservatives continue to lick their wounded asses and try to figure out just how they got so badly chewed in the November elections, one thing has come into clear relief, like Brigadoon emerging from the foggy moors: these are profoundly stupid people. Their version of self-reflection goes like this: "Huh, I tried to fuck this weasel, but it didn't want to be fucked, so it bit me on the balls. Maybe next time I'll put on different colored underwear." It simply doesn't occur to them that perhaps the problem is they shouldn't try to fuck weasels.
Which, of course, is the best lead-in to discussing conservative writer Jonah "Lucianne Makes Me Lick the Sweat Off Her Tits" Goldberg's latest "column" (if by "column," you mean, "words waterboarded into sounding like an approximation of an idea"). Goldberg knows the problem: "The GOP is not a Christian club," but it seems that way to those who are not Christian, specifically Asian Americans.
Actually, there's a paragraph by Goldberg that needs to be quoted extensively in order to get the full facial of fucktardery: "President Obama did spectacularly well with Asian Americans, garnering nearly three-quarters of their vote. This runs counter to a lot of conventional wisdom on both the left and the right. On average, Asian American family income is higher and poverty is lower than it is for non-Latino whites. Entrepreneurship, family cohesion and traditional values all run strong among Asian Americans, and reliance on government runs weak."
Now, you might read that and think, "Well, obviously, they looked at the values and policies that the Republican Party represents, including the crass emphasis on financial acquisition, the demonization of those in need, the constant barrage of anti-immigrant sentiments, and the insistence on government interference in the most intimate aspects of people's lives, and they made the well-reasoned decision to tell the GOP to go fuck itself."
But, then again, you probably wouldn't write, as Goldberg does, "Well, Indian Americans earn like Jews and ... vote like Jews." You also gotta love the awesome racism of elevating Asian Americans over blacks and Hispanics.
The devolved mutant heir of William F. Buckley's movement posits, "Perhaps the most common explanation for the GOP's problem with Asian Americans is the party's pronounced embrace of Christianity, which turns off many Jews as well." Jews and Buddhists and Hindus, man, always thinking about their faith over their nation. What's wrong with them? So Goldberg's solution is...well, not really a solution at all. It's more or less "Let's reach out to the non-Christians while making sure we don't alienate the Christians."
You just wanna grab Goldberg by his sweaty collar, smack his greasy face a couple of times, and say, "No, you pampered twat, it's not the messaging. It's the underlying ideology." Goldberg and most of the right are stunningly blind to this. They are betting that Americans are too stupid to know what the GOP actually believes and wants to do.
But November demonstrated that Americans do understand it and reject it, pretty much everywhere except, you know, places where people actually did vote the way they did almost solely because they're white and Christian.
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