Anyone who wants a few moments entertainment should check out the NRA webpage. They seem to be having a hissy fit over the movement to make gun shops register multiple assault weapons purchases along the border with Mexico, since the assault weapons used by the Mexican drug cartels mainly come from these sources--smuggled, to be sure, but purchased along the border. The NRA tries to convince everyone the guns are coming from Guatemala, but hey, please, put down the Acapulco Gold and get real.
You can certainly understand how they feel. No red-blooded, big-dog Southern citizen wants to have home and hearth put at risk by having to register the purchase of machine guns, AK47s, bazookas, grenade launchers, ground-to-air missiles and other items necessary to stand off the....well, let me see...people ringing the doorbell? Jehova's Witnesses? A massive attack by...hmmmm...okay, a ravening, wife-raping gang of liberals, for example. A bunch of foaming-at-the-mouth lawyers from the ACLU. Or even, God forbid, some very pigment-blessed folks trying to register voters door to door. The skin crawls at the danger, women swoon, men go around with solemn faces and glower determindly into the sunset while attempting to pull in that beer gut so as not to ruin the effect.
Who knows why they worry. It is now legal to mow down that guy at the curb who gave your vintage Mustang a longing glance, as long as you claim self defense. And that little girl two houses down in a brown uniform selling Girl Scout cookies...well, I mean, brown, for the love of Christ! The very color suggests a nightime raid by some kind of mob determined to rip those stuffed animal heads from the wall and run off with them. With that kind of danger looming, there is full justification for breaking out the bazooka and having at it.
You could stay up nights in a sweat just thinking about opening the front door to find an African American teenager standing there trying to get you on his newspaper route, or a Mexican gardener wondering if you'd like him to mow your lawn. Nothing says "security" like a machine gun behind the door.
Nothing says "paranoia", either, as well, or "I've left the bonds of earth and now float several feet above Myrtle Beach, dressed in my cowboy outfit, because I stopped taking my medication."
martes, 1 de mayo de 2012
The team picture
My training team got together at the park this morning with our new t-shirts and had our picture taken. I think I managed to close my eyes for every shot. Being shortest and oldest, I was in the front line. Well, it was fun, no matter what I looked like! And TootSweet was outstanding; our only problem occurred when an idiot with two untrained beagles on long leashes went by. The beagles barked and went slightly mad, but I couldn't swear in court that the owner didn't bark too.
An article came out in a news magazine about the new "Christian right"; I didn't read it, I must confess, since I've had enough of Christians on the right to choke a hog. They don't seem to understand the most basic precepts of their own beliefs, poor devils. Starting with the fact that "Christian right" is an oxymoron, and in fact many of the said individuals are also morons.
For those who believe in the figure of Jesus, it should occur to them that he was a rebel of the first order, not some fundamentalist jerk trying to get people to believe the earth is six thousand years old and man walked with the dinosaurs. Jesus didn't give a hoot how old the earth is. He was much more concerned about not judging people because of their gender or occupation (Mary Magdalene, for example). He was incensed at the economical exploitation of others, and he had the poorest opinion of the hidebound, the prejudiced, and the excluders. The things that Jesus are supposed to have said make up an infinitesimal portion of the writings in the Bible; everything else is editorializing, politicizing, and pure fantasy. As far as actual history goes, the accuracy of what Jesus is supposed to have said is no more reliable than the flood of "pieces of the True Cross" that circulated among the royalty during the middle ages and later.
But among people who take him seriously, they should realize that he was an enemy of orthodoxy, yet they have now turned his figure into an excuse for out-Poping the Pope. They are a form of American jihad, willing to sacrifice anyone who doesn't believe as they do, willing to subordinate half of humankind to the category of slaves devoted to reproduction--since this half of mankind, according to these people, has no right to govern its bodies or determine how they are to be used. These folks are willing to accord a collection of cells incapable of living outside the body of the mother more rights than the mother herself, who is not a potential human being, but is one already. Jesus never said a word about reproductive rights, by the way. This stuff has been invented since his time and to serve other interests.
To end on a positive note, the NYTimes had an article last week about how Cheney's heart treatments have more or less followed the entire history of heart health. Funny, isn't it, how someone like Cheney doesn't seem to have any trouble at all getting a heart for transplant while others have to wait unto death? But, as one perspicuous reader noted in the comments section, settling the issue once and for all, Cheney's heart transplant is to be celebrated since he didn't have one before.
An article came out in a news magazine about the new "Christian right"; I didn't read it, I must confess, since I've had enough of Christians on the right to choke a hog. They don't seem to understand the most basic precepts of their own beliefs, poor devils. Starting with the fact that "Christian right" is an oxymoron, and in fact many of the said individuals are also morons.
For those who believe in the figure of Jesus, it should occur to them that he was a rebel of the first order, not some fundamentalist jerk trying to get people to believe the earth is six thousand years old and man walked with the dinosaurs. Jesus didn't give a hoot how old the earth is. He was much more concerned about not judging people because of their gender or occupation (Mary Magdalene, for example). He was incensed at the economical exploitation of others, and he had the poorest opinion of the hidebound, the prejudiced, and the excluders. The things that Jesus are supposed to have said make up an infinitesimal portion of the writings in the Bible; everything else is editorializing, politicizing, and pure fantasy. As far as actual history goes, the accuracy of what Jesus is supposed to have said is no more reliable than the flood of "pieces of the True Cross" that circulated among the royalty during the middle ages and later.
But among people who take him seriously, they should realize that he was an enemy of orthodoxy, yet they have now turned his figure into an excuse for out-Poping the Pope. They are a form of American jihad, willing to sacrifice anyone who doesn't believe as they do, willing to subordinate half of humankind to the category of slaves devoted to reproduction--since this half of mankind, according to these people, has no right to govern its bodies or determine how they are to be used. These folks are willing to accord a collection of cells incapable of living outside the body of the mother more rights than the mother herself, who is not a potential human being, but is one already. Jesus never said a word about reproductive rights, by the way. This stuff has been invented since his time and to serve other interests.
To end on a positive note, the NYTimes had an article last week about how Cheney's heart treatments have more or less followed the entire history of heart health. Funny, isn't it, how someone like Cheney doesn't seem to have any trouble at all getting a heart for transplant while others have to wait unto death? But, as one perspicuous reader noted in the comments section, settling the issue once and for all, Cheney's heart transplant is to be celebrated since he didn't have one before.
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