After getting pantsed by Trump repeatedly, the Beltway media might be in the process of remembering how to do their jobs, but this still made me laugh:
Trump: “Someone please kill my opponent!”
Clinton: “What the hell!”
Media: “Hillary, stop swearing!”— Scott Slemmons (@SSlemmons) September 16, 2016
As of this posting, the cops in NYC are still trying to sort out who set off the bomb that injured 29 people. They’re calling it an “intentional blast” and have found a second device that may have been another bomb that failed to detonate.
The Washington Post has an interesting article authored by Terrence McCoy. It’s about a dangerous explosion of another type: the proliferation of open carry laws nationwide. It focuses on one Trump-supporting dude in Georgia who is too afraid to shop at Walmart without his AR-15. An excerpt:
Jim [Cooley] goes everywhere now with a gun — if not the AR-15, then his sidearm — and is so reliant on one being close by that it surprises him to think the majority of his life was lived otherwise. He was raised in a working-class family in Chicago, where he can’t imagine living now because of its strict gun laws. But they didn’t bother him then. He didn’t hunt. He didn’t fear for his safety. If his dad had a gun, no one knew. He grew up without a gun, went to church without a gun, married Maria without a gun, began raising two children without a gun, and settled into a life that felt as safe as it was dependable.
But then it began unraveling, starting when he was fired from a trucking job days after telling Maria, who was pregnant with their first child, to quit her job and focus on the baby, that he could support them both. Their first bankruptcy filing wasn’t far behind, then the second, and the third, and then they were moving to Florida, where Maria had family and where Jim got a job with a grocery chain. It transferred him to Winder, and he moved the family into a middle-class neighborhood struggling with crime and drugs.
So here’s at least one Trump supporter who actually is dealing with “economic anxiety.” The article alludes to “crime and drugs” in his Georgia neighborhood but doesn’t elaborate on any actual dangers Cooley faces other than money woes. Those suck for sure, but they aren’t something you can shoot.
The article suggests Cooley is living on disability checks and that he went broke when he incurred huge hospital bills after having a heart attack while uninsured. Trump and the state and local-level GOP knobs this dude probably also supports want to slash the social safety net and kill the ACA, thus ensuring millions more Americans go broke from medical bills.
But these facts probably don’t enter into Cooley’s calculus. He’s afraid, so he arms himself with weapons of war, and he supports a racist, sexist, xenophobic demagogue who promises “change,” even though the few changes Trump has articulated would negatively affect Cooley.
It’s not a rational choice, any more than the decision to carry an assault rifle into Walmart is. Oddly, Trump and the gun both seem to function as penis extenders.
debbie
Open carry will not end well.
WaterGirl
I love that. It captures the election in fewer than 15 words.
gene108
I honestly think people, who are so insecure they need a gun with them everywhere have some level of mental health issue that is undiagnosed.
There’s no reason to be that paranoid on an every day basis.
Hunter Gathers
Like most White people, Cooley is a moron. Nothing more, nothing less. He thinks that when the safety net gets slashed, he won’t be affected, ’cause he’s white. Only the niggers and the spics will lose their benefits. Typical white fucking moron, probably can’t spell his name, but can go on and on about his fucking rifles all fucking day. Fuck him. Fuck him in the ass with a big rubber dick.
Emma
Many years ago, when the company my father worked for folded and took all the employees’ pension funds with it, my father resorted to working several part-time jobs and I moved away to a new city I had never seen and where I had no family so I could send money home. Funnily enough, it didn’t occur to us to arm ourselves against imaginary ravening hordes. I guess we’re not white males with racial resentment issues.
gene108
I honestly think people, who are so insecure they need a gun with them everywhere have some level of mental health issue that is undiagnosed, more so than as a phallic symbol.
There’s no reason to be that paranoid on an every day basis.
amk
Can’t afford to put food on the table for his family, but can afford to buy stupid guns?
Corner Stone
It’s a sickness, a mental illness that is as bad as any addictive behavior.
Karen S.
And yet, my wife and I manage to live in Chicago every day… without guns! Granted, we live in a Northside neighborhood (Andersonville just over the border from Uptown which is gentrifying in fits and starts) and while there aren’t as many shootings here as there are on the South and West sides of the city, we have not been immune. A few years ago, a 14-year-old boy was shot and killed in a pizza joint that was a two-minute walk from our condo. Still, neither one of us has ever responded to any of the many shootings we hear and read about by deciding that we need to arm ourselves with guns. Honestly, I’m more inclined to fear idiots like the open-carry dude in the Washington Post story (and the Chicago police) than I am any of the gangbangers in the city.
Iowa Old Lady
I’m reading a YA book called RADICAL in which the main character is a prepper. The book is in first person and you get sucked into the paranoid mindset. They see danger everywhere.
I’m heading off shortly to spend a couple days with a friends. A break from election craziness will do me good. Everyone take care of yourselves and one another.
Nicole
What makes me so anxious about the open carry advocates is that it is all motivated by fear, and, as my very dog-fearful pooch can attest to, fear can turn to aggression very quickly. And just as a large dog-fearful dog is more dangerous to other dogs than a small dog-fearful dog, a fearful person with a gun is more dangerous to other people than a fearful person without a gun.
(On the other hand, my dog-fearful dog has to actually get approached by an aggressive dog to react; left to herself, she chooses to avoid getting close to other dogs. Would that a lot of these fearful gun folk would exhibit the same amount of common sense.)
OzarkHillbilly
Electile Dysfunction, I am so stealing that.
JPL
The more that Michelle campaigns for Hillary, the more likely Trump will say something about her. She is popular and well liked, and that might convince some to go to vote for Hillary.
Corner Stone
I know people who don’t go to the restroom or shower without having one within reach. And as progressive as they may be in other areas – choice, equal pay, etc, they are one issue voters.
And they have completely lost their shit this election season.
Corner Stone
@JPL:
If they are not actively telling him this as an absolute No Go or everyone will publicly quit his campaign I would be surprised.
phoebes from highland park
@amk: Not only guns, but cigarettes! And stupid Trump tee-shirts. I’d feel sorry for these people if they weren’t so damn scary.
khead
“Comments are now closed. We turn off the comments on stories dealing with personal loss, tragedies or other sensitive topics.”
Too bad. The comments on this earlier “Trump guy” story from the WP are pretty good.
HinTN
One wonders why he was fired.
CarolDuhart2
@debbie: I don’t see how it could. Sooner or later an open carry person is going to get into an argument in a store and start firing rounds at somebody and hurt a lot of people. That’s one reason open carry was banned in the first place.
Uncle Cosmo
@OzarkHillbilly: But keep in mind:
HinTN
@OzarkHillbilly: It’s the title of a crappy, both siderist screed from Alan Dershowitz, in which he wrings his hands about extremism on the left and the right drowning out the sensible middle. He then makes a tepid case for Clinton over Trump, but he’s really only concerned about who’s gonna be Israel’s BFF.
geg6
If this guy is so financially stressed, why is he wasting his cash on pen1s extenders? These people are idiots and I have no sympathy for him if he’d rather waste money on arms and ammo than feed his family.
oldster
@Corner Stone:
“It’s a sickness, a mental illness that is as bad as any addictive behavior.”
Yup. One factor to keep in mind is the degree and frequency of fantasies that are involved in this outlook. These people actively fantasize, for a lot of their waking hours, about being attacked, and about shooting back at their attackers.
And that’s why it escalates.
Because you first fantasize about being jumped by a mugger, and that is scary and makes you feel little and powerless. Then you fantasize about how you’ll pull your pistol and shoot him, and that makes you feel secure again. That’s when your brain gets the shot of dopamine that makes the cycle addictive.
But later it occurs to you: what if there are two muggers, or five? It’s just as easy to fantasize about five as one–it’s all your fantasy. But now when you fantasize about the five, then fantasizing about your pistol no longer brings you the feeling of security you had. Your brain starts into withdrawal, gnawing insecurity and dysphoria. You need to fantasize about having an assault rifle.
And at first you fantasize about attacks in the alley, so you go out armed. But then you start fantasizing about being attacked in your home, so you need to stay armed at home. Then you fantasize about being attacked in the shower, so you need to keep a gun with you in the shower, too.
It’s all driven by relentless, self-tormenting, ever-escalating fantasies. That’s why it’s so easy for them to become completely unhinged, and so hard for them to get in touch with reality again.
Tripod
@gene108:
Yea… it’s called FOX News. I believe the heart of Bowling for Columbine was Marilyn Manson’s observation that fear drives consumption. I suppose it also gives meaning to empty lives.
OzarkHillbilly
@Uncle Cosmo: Heh.
@HinTN: Navel gazing, eh?
debbie
@JPL:
He won’t be able to help himself.
Jim Parene
I have never been frightened enough to feel that I needed to carry a gun.
I used to enjoy going to the range and plinking at targets with my .22, but I stopped going when the assholes with the assault weapons, camo outfits, targets depicting black people and other hated (feared) groups of people, began to take over the range.
My .22 has been locked in a gun safe for 10+ years now.
I hate being associated with hateful, cowardly, frightened people.
hovercraft
So he told her to quit her job. He was always a Neanderthal, he just hadn’t found his natural habitat yet. When he ends up in the land of gun fetishists he takes to it like a fish to water. The guns are both phallic, but more importantly are replacement for the ‘power or manhood’ he has lost as a result of all of his failures. He was supposed to be the ‘man’ the breadwinner, and yet has been reduced to living off of government handouts, so to feel powerful again he owns guns to show his manliness. Pathetic man is still pathetic and insecure.
BR
Morning reminder to volunteer! Let’s lock down NH, VA, CO, NV, FL, and NC, and try to get back in spitting distance in OH and IA.
Jonny Scrum-half
@Hunter Gathers: That statement about white people is a pretty offensive generalization.
EthylEster
Read heart rending story in today’s Tampa bay times to experience the true idiocy of Florida law:
Sorry but linking to article is beyond my smartphone abilities.
Emma
@Jonny Scrum-half: You mean like white people have been generalizing about blacks and hispanics for decades if not centuries?
hovercraft
@Corner Stone:
True, but this is the Donald we’re talking about. The more she gets out there and mocks him the harder it will be to resist. How many tweets has he dictated and had to delete at this point? One of these days he’s going to hit the tweet button, and then the shit will hit the fan.
JPL
Google Jim Cooley Winder and it appears that he doesn’t like the police, either. I didn’t read his twitter feed or watch the you tubes, but those with a stronger stomach that I, might want to.
geg6
@Jonny Scrum-half:
I’m white and not offended at all. It’s true. When you see the majority of white people supporting a guy like Trump, you have to conclude that the majority of white people are morons.
You should know better...
@Emma: Yup, and when they do it, it’s wrong.
Two wrongs don’t make a right…
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Hunter Gathers:
Pretty much. Also losers who know they’re losers, and their guns give them the ability to feel intimidating without any consequences. Morons and cowards do open carry.
BR
@hovercraft:
And he’ll say the same pitiful thing as he did with the Khans — “I was viciously attacked. Am I not allowed to respond?”
geg6
Color me shocked, but John Dickerson just held Kellyanne’s and Reince’s feet to the fire on the birther shit and didn’t let go. Actually cut them off. Fucking hilarious. Go ahead, Donnie! Keep pissing off your greatest allies, the press! Winning!
Dave
@geg6: Hell I’m a straight white dude 36 veteran etc etc.. I only say this because I’m basically half serious when I say white dudes need to lose the vote for twenty or thirty years. I don’t really mean it but man that kidding is starting to fray a bit.
Gelfling 545
@Corner Stone: I just don’t get why they are losing it. I mean, THEY don’t think they’re mentally ill of terrorists, do they? So how would they be hurt by reasonable gun control?
CarolDuhart2
@Jonny Scrum-half: It is mostly white males who have this fantasy. It’s a dominance fantasy-if I scare people with my gun, everyone else will leave me alone, or better yet, acknowledge my superiority.
Other groups who are living much rougher real lives don’t seem to feel the need to walk around with this stuff. Part of it is street sense-an open carried gun is a magnet for trouble-sooner or later you’re going to be challenged in some way, in the same way that people used to make challenges when men carried swords. Another sort is that they’ve created resources, inner and outer to cope with trouble. The open gun carriers lack real resources both inner and outer, and are too stubborn to learn on-or even ask anyone else-for help.
Gvg
@Emma: yes, exactly like that. Wrong is wrong.
Gelfling 545
@Uncle Cosmo: Now wiping coffee off my iPad. Still chuckling, though.
Waynski
@Hunter Gathers: “Fuck him in the ass with a big rubber dick.”
I suggest you’re being too kind with the inanimate penis. Police baton “Guiliani time” might be more appropriate.
Gelfling 545
@Jonny Scrum-half: I have been a white person all my life and find that statement to be…..pretty much true.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
The media demanded a pivot and Il Douche told them to go fuck themselves. This may not be ending well for him.
Uncle Cosmo
@Gelfling 545: :D
Almost not really a joke: Worked for Dubya in 2000, dinnit?
rikyrah
@Hunter Gathers:
BWA HA HA HA HA
this made my morning ?☺
PPCLI
As much as racism was clearly a motivation for the birtherism, I think it is important for people to press equally hard on the fact that support for birtherism is absolutely deranged. Once Obama released a birth certificate copy, it was attested to by the Hawaii official in charge of these things (a Republican, as it happened) and the newspaper birth notices etc were located, only a crazy person with a feeble grip on reality would continue to think there was a genuine question there and press for the “long form” birth certificate (a phrase that I had never heard before then, and I suspect was invented for the occasion.) And after the release of the more detailed document, only a crazier person with an even feebler grip on reality would keep believing Obama wasn’t born in the US.
Not only did Trump keep believing this and hammering on it, he supported it with even nuttier bizarre conspiracy suggestions, like the not-nearly-famous-enough tweet in Dec. 12 2013: “How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s “birth certificate” died in plane crash today. All others lived.” This is nuts. Dregs of the internet conspiracy material. It suggests the man has lost touch with reality.
[And when you combine that with the Vince Foster murder speculation, and the Rafael Cruz — Kennedy assassination charges, etc etc….]
Also it would be nice to see a few main-stream journalists note that Thomas McInerney one of the people who introduced Trump at his farcical hotel infomercial — one of Trump’s “88 [sic] generals” — supplied a sworn affidavit to a court-martial arguing that belief in birtherism should excuse someone from obeying an order to report to combat. Perhaps the good general (ret.) should be asked if he still believes that birtherism is a legitimate grounds to refuse to deploy, and whether he still believes that Terrence Lee Lakin was wrongly convicted.
tl;dr version: Yes, birtherism is racist. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that it is also batshit insane.
Matt McIrvin
@Jonny Scrum-half:
He’s right, though. More than 50% of white people support Trump. That’s “most”.
Felonius Monk
@OzarkHillbilly: Only cure for Electile Dysfunction is the Little Blue State.
Botsplainer
@oldster:
On people who insist on keeping multiple firearms in every room, I always say “if you need that many, you won’t survive the encounter. And if things have gotten to the point where you have an encounter involving that many weapons, you may wish that you won’t survive the encounter.”
tybee
@Jonny Scrum-half:
well, aren’t most white folk voting for the drumpfster?
ETA: and i see i was beaten to that point, repeatedly.
Matt McIrvin
@Botsplainer: If you’ve got multiple firearms in every room, isn’t it going to be hard to, you know, keep the bad guys form grabbing some of them?
Corner Stone
@Gelfling 545:
Ahh, excellent question! There is no such thing as “reasonable gun control”. You see, that is where the lie begins! Because any “reasonable” limitation to gun ownership/possession/brandishing is the first step in emasculation. It’s a creeping tyranny, you see. Today background checks, tomorrow gunshow loophole closed. Then it’s all over. You wake up one day and that bitch Hillary has confiscated all your guns and left you vulnerable to the brown hordes who will now rape your pets and slaughter your family. Or worse, lesbian farmers will shove organic produce down your throat. While you are powerless, powerless I say!, to stop them.
MJS
@Gvg: Meh. We’ve had it easy for centuries. We shouldn’t really take issue with someone calling all of us stupid.
Roger Moore
@hovercraft:
I don’t think he dictates them; he types them himself. If he dictated them, there would be somebody acting as a filter for his thoughts and he wouldn’t fly off the handle so often.
Immanentize
On a positive note, I made these fabulous Cajun crab-stuffed tomatoes last night. Yum!
On the cost of guns issue, I may have told y’all this before but a former student of mine opened his own criminal defense practice and was specializing in street type crimes — DUI, drug possessions, Assaults, Domestic Violence charges, etc. His clientele was mostly 30-40 year old white guys, many with kids, many divorced. Most working class guys. And most didn’t have much money saved for their criminal defense attorney when they got caught doing the stupid. But he knew his clients — he would take some money and their guns as payment. Then he would resell them. He had a coat closet in his front hallway that was like a friggin armory. It is amazing how some men will spend 2K on a fancy rifle and scope but not pay child support.
Patricia Kayden
So Trump gets to wish harm on Secretary Clinton (again) and not get hounded with questions? Sigh.
P.S. When will the media focus on Secretary Clinton voters and what motivates them to vote for her? I don’t need to hear any more humanizing stories about White bigots who are voting for Trump because they’re afraid of the coloreds.
TS
@geg6: Given the total failure of Trump in both his personal & business life – his zero understanding of government and policies – his incitement of hate and violence among those who support him – and the fact that the media made much of the birtherism for years & used it to attack the president – I have no idea why this has now become the issue that will bring Trump down. The media had so many choices & they chose this one – which although is highly insulting and racist – it is nowhere near the worst that Trump has done.
Mike in NC
Dana Milbank — not kidding — spent a night at Drumpf’s tacky new DC hotel and wrote a hilarious piece about it for the Washington Post. Not surprisingly, the place is loaded with grossly overpriced crap and almost all of it is imported.
Immanentize
@Gvg: It may be wrong but it is also a constant feature for people of color that only sometimes gets called out. So it is an equality question too.
And people who are privileged always experience equality as discrimination.
japa21
@Gelfling 545: I am pretty sure I have been a white male all my life. I don’t remember the first few years, but the pictures I am shown that purport to be me during that time do indicate that I have always been white and male. Anyway, I also agree. White males particularly fit that generalization, at least a majority do.
amk
@Gvg: What, you don’t like ‘telling it like it is’?
MJS
@Corner Stone: It may be because I’m a little hungover today, but that “lesbian farmer” deal doesn’t sound so bad.
Corner Stone
@PPCLI:
I don’t contemplate too much on how deeply crazy the idea of “birtherism” itself is. If I know someone is unsure about where POTUS was born I understand they are racist and I do not wish to associate or do business with them.
Their vulnerability to a conspiracy theory that defies all timelines and logical thought is really irrelevant.
I would also deeply disagree with this part:
There was no affirmative action required by Obama to somehow “get past” or prove up his essential American-ness. There was nothing but racism. And he’s not going to get past that with a sheet or two of certified paper.
debbie
@Patricia Kayden:
I’m disappointed that her Secret Service doesn’t seem to have spoken to his Secret Service who has told Trump to button it.
JPL
What’s up with the lesbian farmers?
Gindy51
@Immanentize: Not it is not amazing at all..
Tripod
They are what Stan Greenberg refers to as the fuck-you-boys. Trump’s core constituency. Ronald Reagan empowered them to behave in any way they wanted – hey, we’re all white males in America… Now that bill is coming due in a whole host of ways; political, health, financial…. and their response is carrying an AR15 when picking up some asswipe.
Mike in NC
@Patricia Kayden: Yeah, white bigots are rallying behind the fascist but “most white people”? I’ve yet to meet one who’ll admit they like Donald Trump.
The Ancient Randonnuer
@TS:
He punked the Villagers and they are having none of that. It’s about them being made to look like chumps and little to do with the actual issues. You know it’s hard out there for a journo, when they tryin’ to get that money for the rent
Corner Stone
@Hunter Gathers: Respectfully, you’ve really missed the mark with this Cooley guy. I am pretty sure he can spell his name.
Peale
@JPL: you missed the lesbian farmers conspiracy? Apparently the department is trying to influence the future direction of politics in rural America by seeding lesbian farms in Iowa.
oldster
@amk:
Look, he’s just saying that your micro-aggressions are invading his safe spaces, and he’d like some trigger-warnings.
Matt McIrvin
@PPCLI:
I don’t think any such thing exists.
I have two birth certificates. One is a tiny thing, a slip of flimsy paper the size of an index card and nearly faded to illegibility, that my parents were actually issued when I was born in 1968. The other is a newly-printed document I ordered a few years ago from the state of Missouri and it looks a lot like the one Obama released. As far as I know, these are the only types that can be had. There is no “long form”.
Ruckus
@Hunter Gathers:
I would think using his AR-15 would be more satisfying and productive.
Mai.naem.mobile
@JPL: Michelle has to needle Trump on late Fri afternoon/evening. Thats when Ivanka does her Shabbat thing and Trump has his Twitter meltdowns. The needling has to involve his intelligence or lack of.
Peale
@The Ancient Randonnuer: yep. Honestly it’s a way for them to vent their frustration at the way he treats his reporting pool without actually addressing the fact that his promises are insane, expensive, ludicrous and harmful to everyone and would be disaterous for most. Even if the guy weren’t racist, he’d be a horrible president. So instead they want to talk about stuff from five years ago, as if we never h are f birtherism until today and Obama’s qualifications are a campaign issue.
Linda
I know a lot of people like this, including my brother. They are obsessed with guns, even though they live in places where nothing bad hardly ever happens, even in gated communities.
TS
@The Ancient Randonnuer:
They are sure slow on the uptake – he’s been punking them for over 12 months – shows their lack of whatever that it took his latest piece of free advertising for the new hotel to send them around the bend. Their intelligence seems to be almost as low as that of Trump supporters.
PPCLI
@Corner Stone:
I didn’t suggest that Obama should have needed to do that. Birtherism was crazy from the outset. I’m just noting that with each successive bit of documentation it got even crazier.
There are people who don’t see the racism inherent in birtherism. They are no doubt willfully blind, but they exist, and it would be silly not to try to reach them by pointing out the manifold other respects in which Trump’s birtherism is disqualifying, for example that it exhibits a complete disengagement from reality and an inability to process evidence.
The Other Chuck
@oldster: With the gun, one also gets reward reinforcement every time the trigger is pulled when using it on the firing range. Hell, I think the second amendment should be repealed, but I still got a powerful rush last time I fired a gun. Also too, the gun lifestyle comes with a community, which is probably the most powerful reinforcement of all.
Matt McIrvin
@Mike in NC:
National polling pretty consistently indicates that most white people support him. In many cases, it’s even though they also think he’s manifestly unqualified to be President, which implies to me that they knowingly prefer national suicide to electing Hillary Clinton. That’s stupid, flat-out stupid.
Gelfling 545
@Corner Stone: Thanks for the translation. I don’t speak gun nut.
hovercraft
@Roger Moore:
No he actually dictates them to an assistant. He is tech. challenged, his assistant has to basically do a google search for him several times a day, and print out all the articles, which is what he then marks up with a Sharpie, and when really hot and bothered he send the article to the author/publication with notes.
Ruckus
@Jonny Scrum-half:
It is pretty offensive. But consider the context here. How many non whites are in the gun fetish group? How many whites are voting for Trump, running on the racist platform? How many whites are waving the confederate flag and yelling about getting their country back?
BTW I’m an old white guy and yes it’s offensive. But think about how much truth is in HG’s comment.
Roger Moore
@Gelfling 545:
Because the NRA has convinced them it’s the thin edge of the wedge. Sure, you say you’re only for reasonable gun control now, but in 5 years you’ll be taking everyone’s guns and sending them to FEMA camps. That’s why they can’t give an inch.
TS
@PPCLI:
I very much doubt that – given it only happened to a black President. They may pretend not to see it as racist.
Peale
@hovercraft: yep. He was raised in the era before manly, powerful computers made typing something executive class men wanted to do rather than a task to be delegated to a female assistant. I’m sure the qwerty order still gives him problems.
Botsplainer
OT, but did anybody see how FSU coaches and the athletic department stuck poor DeMarcus Walker in front of a microphone without giving him time to process the loss or having a serious meeting between the coaches, OC, DC and team leaders to formulate a new strategy forward? The kid was floundering, thrown to the wolves and stuck with coming up with useless word salad.
I really felt for him.
What a despicable bunch of assholes they were.
Roger Moore
@CarolDuhart2:
FTFY. We all know that open carry applies to whites only. It doesn’t say it in the law, but that’s the way it’s enforced in practice, and the people who would be risking their lives by open carrying certainly know it.
PaulB
I’m wondering if there isn’t a loose connection between a teenager cutting herself and behavior like this? In both cases, it’s a feeling that their lives are spiraling out of their control. In both cases, it’s a desperate attempt to hold on to control of the one thing they can. I know it’s oversimplification but I do wonder if there isn’t some sort of root cause connection down deep.
Uncle Cosmo
@Matt McIrvin: Bingadingdingo!
After I went out target shooting a couple of times & established that I could deal with the recoil of a handgun, I considered getting one for “home defense”. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that
Bottom line: Having a gun would either have no effect on the chances of being mugged or burglarized (if no one knew I had it) or would actually increase them (if a prospective burglar/mugger knew).
Plus handguns are a serious investment (coupla hunnert bux min).
Issue solved.
Corner Stone
@PPCLI:
I understand what you’re suggesting, I just disagree. Just like when a white person who is working class starts complaining about taxes I understand they are telling me they dislike/fear people of color, the same for any acceptance of any level of birtherism. Misguided or not, willfully blind if you will, the person that tells me they are unsure where the president was born is telling me they are racist. That’s all birtherism is, the core tenet of bitherism is racism. Black people are not like us and can never be fully American.
Other conspiracy theories are also crazy and reject logic and the laws of the universe, but do not have to be about race relations. This specific CT is not about the theory involved, just racism.
SiubhanDuinne
Instead of spending the afternoon fretting about how Trump is trying to destroy the world, I’m off to see Dr. Strangelove. First time I’ll have watched it on the big screen since it was released, although of course I know it well from repeated TV and DVD viewings.
Gelfling 545
@Linda: Browsing the magazine rack in my local supermarket for the fall gardening issues I came across an abomination called Gardens and Guns. Now this store is in a nearby suburb which is not exactly a hotbed of crime. Well, there was the meth lab in the storm drain culvert at Walmart, but, hey, entrepreneurship. On the whole though, the most these people have to fear is themselves doing something idiotic with their guns. Not surprisingly, that district skews heavily Republican.
redshirt
@JPL: I don’t disagree about Michelle’s popularity, but why would Trump mocking her cross any line he hasn’t already crossed hundreds of times? Why do you think it would make any difference?
Heck, he regularly calls Sen. Warren “Pocahontas” without pushback.
El Caganer
If Jim Cooley were black, how many times do you think he’d make it in and out of Walmart before getting shot by the police? I’m figuring none.
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
Especially if you pull the trigger partway through the operation.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Yep. And they are both individually and collectively self reinforcing. And the reinforcement comes larded up and packaged with a bunch of code words and phrases: statist, Liberty, free, slave state, independent, anti-collectivist, patriot, if you have to get permission its not a right, etc. Spend any time in the comments at the world’s largest firearms website, doesn’t matter what the post is about, and the comments pretty quickly devolve into posting with these words and phrases in them.
dmsilev
@Peale:
I hope they don’t try that here in California; do you have any idea how much water it takes to grow a crop of lesbians?
Hunter Gathers
I also love that these people believe that ‘political correctness’, a fucking abstract, is destroying the country. You have to be stupid to believe that.
“Make America Great Again”? Fuck you. We’re already great. You’re just pissed off that you can’t drop racial slurs in public or at work anymore. Deal with it, you fucking crybabies.
debbie
@Hunter Gathers:
I actually heard Glenn Beck say, “Diversity and tolerance are destroying the Constitution.” Quote Unquote.
Shell
Notice how Trump always refers to them as ‘armed guards’ or ‘security’. Like they’re somehow hired goons. They’re called the Secret Service, pinhead, and you have them too. Or perhaps your followers think you can ward off any threats by your sheer awesomeness.
NorthLeft12
@WaterGirl: Actually my take on the media’s reaction to Deadbeat Donald’s ridiculous comment on Sec. Clinton’s SS protection is;
“Trump Challenges Clinton’s Commitment to Gun Control”
Elizabelle
NY Times website, right now. A tale of this paper’s coverage: using the first 2 words in headline about each of the candidates, up at the top of the webpage:
Full headlines are “Trump’s Empire Girded with $885 Million in Tax Breaks” and “Clinton Struggles in Florida despite Advantages”
Adam L Silverman
@CarolDuhart2: Actually the first modern, as in the past 60 years or so, movement to ban open carry was in California. The Black Panthers had found a loop hole in CA law: they could openly carry long guns – rifles and shotguns – unloaded with them. So they started to do so. When they decided to go to the CA state house to observe the legislature, and if possible speak to some legislators, they went open carrying rifles and shotguns. Lets just say it was not taken as a group of citizens exercising one of their “natural, civil, and Constitutional rights” while peaceably assembling at the state capital to petition their government for a redress of their grievances. Rather it was considered scandalous and provocative, frightening, and threatening. The legislators thought so, the folks working at the state capital building thought so, the school field trip chaperones and the school kids parents thought so, and ultimately Governor Ronald Reagan thought so to signing the bill to ban open carry in CA into law as quickly as the legislature could get it to his desk.
Duke of Clay
@gene108: This nails it. I lived just east of Downtown Atlanta in
mixed race neighborhoods (I’m painfully white) for a few years and never felt the need for a weapon. But Winder? WINDER? Really?
hovercraft
@redshirt:
EW is a far left DFH, Michelle is a popular first lady with a 64 % approval rating. Attacking her would get the type of reaction from white women that attacking the Khans got. EW is a politician, Michelle is not.
Davis X. Machina
@CarolDuhart2:
The problem is, you see, that they aren’t really people, not in the proper sense of the term, and as a result don’t have the same sorts of feelings that you and I have.
Ruckus
@Uncle Cosmo:
You could also be like the guy I know who lives by himself and just knows that someone is going to break in. He keeps a gun within reach when he’s watching TV. Well he set a magazine on top of it went into the bedroom and fell asleep. Woke up to hear someone in the house, reached for his gun and remembered where it was. Will they find it, will they shoot him, etc…….. They of course don’t find it and leave. Does he learn anything positive from this? Why would you even ask that question, of course not.
NorthLeft12
@redshirt: Deadbeat Donald’s regular taunting of Sen. Warren by calling her Pocahontas is probably the “best” example of his sense of humour.
And by best, I don’t mean that in a good way. The man is a humourless bully.
Adam L Silverman
@EthylEster: Here you go:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/tampa-man-shoots-father-of-three-then-calls-stand-your-ground-hotline/2293853
JPL
@Peale: Do they receive special paperwork only for lesbian farmers? lol Are they afraid of competition?
Davis X. Machina
@dmsilev:
People have forgotten the old folkways. You seed them in the lee of a Subaru, which limits wind-driven evaporation.
Suzanne
@Jonny Scrum-half: I thought it rang true, and I’m white. You can imagine #notallwhitepeople to be there at the end if it makes you feel better.
The guns come out when cultural potency is imperiled.
SoupCatcher
To pull a complete Bill Frist diagnosis out of my elbow…
I wonder if we’re seeing the results, decades down the line, of high-school sports brain injuries that were never diagnosed.
Maybe we’ll look back to this time period – when we are starting to pay more attention to concussions – in the same way we look back at the removal of lead from gasoline and the resultant drop in the violent crime rate.
Adam L Silverman
@Roger Moore: Android phone is him. iPhone is someone on his staff tweeting for him.
Gin & Tonic
@Felonius Monk: Rhode Island?
Belafon
My brother’s kind of going through that. He’s not made the best choices in life, in part because he can’t stay focused, which hurts him if things get boring. Recently, he’s tried to fix some of it, but momentum is currently causing things to not go his way.
He doesn’t have a gun right now, but I think he’s a Trump supporter, and I think it’s because he believes Trump will provide at least the illusion of control over his life. It’s so much easier to blame others, because at least it means someone is in control, even if it’s someone against you. The only consolation about him being a Trump supporter is he’s not going to vote this November.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jonny Scrum-half: No, it’s not, and I’m white.
Adam L Silverman
@Mai.naem.mobile: Someone did an analysis: most of his anti-Semitic stuff – retweeting neo-NAZIs, making anti-Semitic comments, retweeting anti-Semitic images – appear to correspond to just before sundown on Friday through Sunday AM. When Ivanka and her family are off the grid because they’re shomer shabbos (keeping the sabbath). There doesn’t seem to be a pattern for the vile stuff he sends at other times.
Adam L Silverman
@Linda: Who do you think is going to protect the gates to the community? You want him on that wall! You need him on that wall!//
Suzanne
@TS:
Oh, there are plenty of people deluded enough to believe this. People convince themselves of all kinds of shit. Just like people honestly delude themselves into pants-crapping about ISIS but then drive recklessly, completely unaware that they are more likely to die in a wreck then from any ISIS action. People are stupid.
#notallpeople, to make our friend feel better.
Adam L Silverman
@Roger Moore: Yep. And the recent legislative and referendum actions in California and the recent Attorney General regulatory actions in Massachusetts reinforce their fears.
Citizen_X
@Immanentize:
Unpossible. According to Trump ‘n’ his Stormfront buddies, most crime is done by the Negro.
Suzanne
@Hunter Gathers: The handwringing about “political correctness” is really better translated as “I’m sad that I can’t say racist/sexist/classist/homophobic/ableist shit without suffering social consequences.” That’s all.
Adam L Silverman
@dmsilev: You want the low moisture, drip irrigation kind. I’m pretty sure the Israelis have a variant you can order through the seed catalogs. They were developed for the farms in the Negev.
Corner Stone
@Citizen_X:
Well if it’s just the one guy then how hard can it be to stop him?
kindness
I guess buying an AR15 is cheaper than buying a brand new big red Corvette.
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman:
Isn’t that, um..kind of the worst of both worlds?
Adam L Silverman
@Shell: Because he’s retained his paid Trump Organization security. The old white guy with the buzz cut you see out dealing with people in the crowds at his event is a retired FBI special agent that has been running Trump’s corporate and personal security for years. He’s a nasty piece of work. He was the guy that threw Jorge Ramos out of that press conference and I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t the guy that personally, physically detained the news producer on Friday AM. He was also the guy that kicked the Indian-American college student out of that Trump rally a month or so ago. He is the interface between the Secret Service and Trump’s corporate security. So that’s how and why Trump uses the language – he lets this guy, that works for him, coordinate the stuff. He can’t understand this isn’t how its done for everyone else.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Its California – you want to be able to grow them there or not?
Citizen_X
@Adam L Silverman: That is…all kinds of messed up.
I think Ghost Freud just dumped his whole Trump file on Ghost Jung’s desk, saying, “Screw it. I can’t even with this guy.”
Elie
The Republican Party bears huge responsibility for the damage and potential destruction of the community that makes up this country, using fear and hate. I pray and will work for their defeat, but this kind of damage is more insidious and difficult to repair without moral leadership across the board. We are all damaged by what has happened and I am so sad about it. I pray that Hillary can win this and has the gut feel for what to do.
mayyouliveininterestingtimes
@Belafon: I have a friend who I believe is a Trump supporter and the consolation with him is that he can’t vote in November. This makes me wonder if I’m a shitting friend because I’m happy that my ex-con friend can’t vote. Eh, I’ll take it.
Adam L Silverman
@Citizen_X: It is what it is.
Mobile
@Jonny Scrum-half: I’m old and white and have lived in the deep south most of my life. I am sorry to say, I, for the most part, agree with his comment, and am not offended. I wish I could say he wrong. Are you saying that he is?
Frankensteinbeck
@Adam L Silverman:
Dude, you of all people should know they do not grow lesbians on farms in Israel. The Orthodox would have a screaming government-backed fit. In Israel lesbians are a small-scale, personal garden crop grown with love, and the local Rabbi struggles with his feelings when he finds out about it.
…if that sounds unusually detailed, I maaaay have lived in Orthodox villages before.
germy
Penny Lane
glory b
@BR: we should compare volunteer notes.
I did registration drives at the African American Heritage parade and the Black Arts Festival here in Pittsburgh.
I’ve also been leaving forms in the lobby so of local churches.
Yesterday, while at the grocery store, a young Black guy asked me if my voter registration was up to date. I was happy to see him.
Doug R
@Jonny Scrum-half: No, it’s not. That commenter is talking about White people, not white people. If your main identity is “White” that’s the start of your problem.
Matt McIrvin
@Adam L Silverman: I have actually heard an American Marxist radical use the word “statist” approvingly. Didn’t know they did that.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
WTF Retard
So he carries a gun around? Jesus fucking christ, this idiot is more likely to shoot himself than anything. I’ve lived my entire life on the edge of South Oakland CA, drug dealers have been killed on my street corner, my house broken into, stolen cars dumped in front of my house and I’ve never felt personally threatened to the point I felt I needed a gun on me at all times. Gun in the house so if some twit tries to break in, yes, on you, pure idiocy.
And an AR-15 for self defense, what does he expect the druggies to engage him at 400 meters? This sounds like wee dick with a midlife crises and the economic anxiety is just an excuse.
Adam L Silverman
@EthylEster: I’ve read the Tampa Bay Times report. One of the biggest issues here is the Hillsborough County State Attorney Mark Ober. For those not in/from Florida, Instead of calling them District Attorneys Florida calls them State Attorneys (don’t ask). Anyhow, Ober has been a train wreck as a State Attorney and that’s saying something because Florida has a long, proud history of electing really bad county prosecutors. Right now he’s in trouble for hosing up the local portion of an across the state lines, lured by a male adult and turned into a sex slave case involving a then 13 year old girl. And not just screwing it up in terms of the prosecution, but also very publicly. The girl actually wrote him a letter and publicly released it in order to shame him into doing his job and prosecuting the guy – and doing so with appropriately serious charges – that lured her across state lines and used her as a sex slave. He is up for reelection next month and is facing a credible challenger and the hope seems to be that all this bad press will finally get him removed from office.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/criminal/mother-of-victim-in-sex-case-criticizes-ober-amid-contentious-state/2292800
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/09/teens-letter-shames-gop-prosecutor-for-closing-her-rape-case-you-dont-deserve-this-job/
http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/election-opponent-accuses-hillsborough-state-attorney-mark-ober-of-not/2273128
Adam L Silverman
@Frankensteinbeck: okay… backs away slowly…
Miss Bianca
@Jonny Scrum-half: I am a white person, living in gun-nut territory, and I heartily endorse this generalization.
Adam L Silverman
@Matt McIrvin: The Marxists or the radical localists?
germy
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: He’ll kill his family and then turn his gun on himself. I don’t need a crystal ball.
Anoniminous
@Matt McIrvin:
State action is controlled by who owns the means of production. Under Capitalism it is repressive, under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat it is progressive.
(This has been your One Minute of Marxist-Leninism.)
ETA: Stay tuned for an exciting discussion of the vexed question: was the Soviet Union a mere manifestation of State Capitalism or a Degenerate Worker’s State. There’s sure to be fireworks a’plenty!
ThresherK
I haven’t seen the Sunderland third kit until now. The pink/navy and hoops is really working for me…not that I’d buy one.
(Disclaimer: West Ham fan still takin gmy lumps from yesterday. But I’m a guy who knows what shades of pink suit me.)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
And what does this nitwit thinks going to happen when it goes down.
Yes, I can see what Cooley’s imagine is a mugging right now: Some guy with brown skin steps out in front of him, mask on, black and white shirt like a Batman villain henchman. “Sir, this is a mugging. Stand and deliver,.. Oh drat and double drat, I see Sir you have equipped yourself with a firearm and I foolishly gave you a chance to upholster it”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@germy: Very likely by accident too. I’ve known plenty of cops who’ve accidentally shot themselves. That’s why, gun in the house, unloaded and some place secure.
Emma
@You should know better…: But it does make an experience they should have.
Mai.naem.mobile
@Citizen_X: its not stormfront its the white aryan brotherhood members who just got released from the Oregon prison where they got edumacated by Cliven Bundy on ‘the Negro.’
Eric U.
Iowa issues a tiny little birth certificate. Folded in half, it’s barely larger than a business card. The one Utah issued when my daughter was born is 8 1/2 x 11″, but it looks like one of those print it yourself certificates you get for being employee of the month. How long can a birth certificate be? It needs your name, date and place of birth, and a place for a raised seal.
MJS
Maybe the press has covered this and I just haven’t seen it, but there’s video from few years ago of Trump saying his investigators found out some very interesting things while looking into the issue of Obama’s birthplace. Perhaps the next time a journalist had the opportunity Trump should be asked who the investigators were, and what they found.
Patricia Kayden
@Mike in NC: I don’t see where I claimed that “most White people” were voting for Trump (although that may be true since most White Americans tend to vote Republican).
@geg6: I’m almost 50 years old and cannot imagine owning a gun or being so fearful that I felt compelled to own one. That’s some grade A paranoia Cooley and his ilk are displaying.
BR
@glory b:
That’s great! Most of what I’ve done has been phone banking. Here in CA there isn’t much else. (I hope to make the trip to NV at some point.) Lots of volunteer recruiting, not much voter reg or persuasion calls.
Amir Khalid
@ThresherK:
have you seen this comparison yet?
ETA: Incidentally, Manchester United lost 3-1 at Watford today — their third defeat in eight days. This was followed by Jose Mourinho’s usual master class in how to be a sore loser.
Doug R
@Peale: He uses an Android which has voice recognition. It would explain some of his grammatical errors.
Villago Delenda Est
@Suzanne: Contrast this with the howling and screaming about Colin Kaepernick “disrespecting” the troops by taking a knee vs. standing up for The Star Spangled Banner. THAT is actual “political correctness” in action, and no one is more deadly serious about it that wingnuts.
Villago Delenda Est
@MJS: What they found that was “very interesting” were some $1000 a night hookers they could put on their expense tab.
No word on if they’d been reimbursed by Drumpf for that, though…
HinTN
@Gin & Tonic: That was purely meant to cause the phone or keyboard to be destroyed by spew.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@Corner Stone:
Not just any gun, but a 1000+ dollar AR-15! That’s 2 and a half month’s rent for me.
I could see moving into a bad area and obtaining an inexpensive handgun for concealed carry, but not that.
Even when I collected guns, the only time I carried* was when I either was going into a real bad area or didn’t get off work until 3am.
I sure as hell didn’t pack a gun while I was actually working (gun locked up in the back), and I never felt the need to pack while shopping at Walmart.
This dude’s a few fries short of a Happy Meal™.
*Concealed, of course.
Only assholes compensating for shortcomings (heh) or trying to intimidate everyone else openly carry in urban/suburban areas.
Villago Delenda Est
@Eric U.: Reminds me that one fuckhead insisted that Obama’s “Long Form” certificate couldn’t have been authentic, because he viewed it on the internet and couldn’t feel the “raised seal” on it.
J R in WV
@MJS:
Will I get to chew the raw organic vegetables?
OK, then…
Suzanne
@Villago Delenda Est: YES. Even more hypocritical when they fap over the Bundys and the idea of violent overthrow of the government that they say they love.
In a way, I almost appreciate open carry—makes it easy to know who to avoid.
Doug R
@Davis X. Machina: You’re too late. They use rain barrels.
sukabi
@tybee: think it’s most white MEN…let’s try to keep it accurate.
Doug R
@SoupCatcher: Speaking of lead removal and the drop in the violent crime rate, is the upward trend of males 45-54 committing suicide a continuation of this? They would have been in their twenties and early thirties when the crime rate spiked. An internalization of violence as they get older?
hovercraft
From the Sunday shows:
Apparently Pence lives in a cave, because he said this on national TV.
Kellyann Conway lies on Face the Nation. And water is wet.
Rinse Pubis also lies on Face the Nation.
I could link to just about every republicans appearance this morning, but they all basically the same thing, Hillary started it so it’s not Trumps fault. He was so week that he couldn’t help himself but to follow the siren song of Hillary into the land of the Birthers, the spell was very abruptly broken, so now Trump has rejoined the real world.
Jan Brewer special mention, birtherism was a bi-partisan effort, democrats all over the country were expressing doubts about the presidents birthplace.
germy
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I predict this will be deliberate.
J R in WV
@Mike in NC:
I have to admit, I went to town Thursday for a grocery run. The small town where I get on the four-lane into town had 4 or 5 newly sprouted TRUMP signs in lawns, since the last trip into town, I think last Saturday. It is the Republican part of the county.
A sorry event, local people working to elect a racist bigot Nazi to the Presidency of the United States! Am ashamed to even know where this happened!
ThresherK
@Amir Khalid: Florrie from the Fimbles?
As an American I can breath a sigh of relief that I don’t know anyone who has heard of this kiddie show.
Also, as an American who knows more than I ought to about the many layers of English football, I can’t believe I haven’t heard of Dulwich Hamlet, or their crest and kit, before.I don’t know if I have room to root for another team in the UK, but I’ll try.
Major Major Major Major
@hovercraft: Don’t forget that the spell was abruptly broken by Trump!
Adam L Silverman
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman): That’s not a $1000.00 plus AR pattern rifle/AR15. Its MSRP is around $660, but can be had for under $500:
http://www.sportsmansguide.com/product/index/ati-omni-hybrid-maxx-ar-15-semi-automatic-556-223-remington-with-quad-rail-gomxq556-813393018046?a=1819132
If he’d purchased it used or during a Black Friday sale he could have gotten it for well under $400. That’s also not an expensive optic on it – so maybe another $150 at most. Given he probably never shoots it, or just enough to be proficient, and assuming he’s got a couple of thousand rounds of 5.56 NATO and/or 2.23 Remington ammo squirreled away he’s looking at maybe $600 or so more. Given he’s using 15 round magazines, I doubt he’s got that much ammo squirreled away.
It gets mixed reviews even for being a bargain basement AR:
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2014/04/foghorn/gun-review-ati-omni-hybrid-polymer-ar-15/
Villago Delenda Est
@hovercraft: Kurtz and Hume are utter scum.
sukabi
@TS: yeah, nevermind the fact that the media is at least 50% responsible for the birther nonsense getting a foothold in the first place. Any one of those assholes could have smothered it after it’s first breath, but they kept breathing life into it for YEARS. They need to be made to OWN IT. Same with the teaparty bullshit, if the media had done actual journalism instead of propaganda dissemination….
Mike J
@ThresherK:
When I lived in engerland I always did well on trivia night once we got to the “hard” questions about science or geography and had to be carried through the easy pop culture questions about the children’s shows everybody grew up watching.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I have a hard time understanding how the guy is willing to talk openly about what a gutless, bedwetting coward he is. If I were so scared of life that I could only walk outside while toting a machine gun, I think I’d be too ashamed to tell anybody about it.
Miss Bianca
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman): I lived in those “bad areas” in Chicago (as defined by white people, meaning, “I’m outnumbered here by Those People”), and I would never, ever have carried or onwed a gun there. The only reason I ever carry or shoot out here in White People Country is when I go out fox-hunting. (Or when there’s a rattler in my wood-pile). Even then, unless I’m the one carrying the hunting license, I’m not carrying. I don’t think there’s any compelling reason to carry unless you’re military, law enforcement, or hunting. Guns, in my opinion and experience, almost always create more problems than they solve.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@Adam L Silverman:
I didn’t look that close at it.
The last time I bought an AR, it was a Colt back in the 90’s and I paid north of $1000 for it.
My bad.
CarolDuhart2
@kindness: it is. A red corvette costs thousands to buy and thousands to maintain. And you need good credit.
? Martin
This is just straight up cowardice. There’s got to be a public benefit to not allowing cowards to run around with deadly force.
Ruckus
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
You are thinking that he has any level of shame. First mistake. Second might be thinking that he will ever lay any amount of causation of his plight on himself. He has no level of awareness either.
To put it bluntly, as many above have pointed out, he’s a moron.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@Miss Bianca:
I’m thankful that I never had to use that gun, though I will admit that 6′ 240lb guys aren’t your typical mugging target and in retrospect, I didn’t really need it.
I don’t have any problem with concealed carry, just as long as the carrier knows gun safety and the law WRT self-defense.
If they don’t know or practice safety and follow the law, they shouldn’t be carrying a Super Soaker, much less a firearm.
Betty Cracker
@Elie:
I fear you’re right. I know immigrants who are terrified by what might happen to themselves or their families / friends and horrified by the implications of such widespread support for Trump. I share their disgust.
Adam L Silverman
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman): No worries, that’s why I checked the article. I figured he didn’t have a Colt. The best deals on the Colts these days are the LE agency trade ins and my guess is he doesn’t shop where those are sold. And they’re still going to be above 1K.
Doug R
@Mike J: When we moved to Victoria when I was in grade 1, the tv reception was so crappy everyone got cable. That’s when I discovered JP Patches.
Patches fans include Rep. Jim McDermott and Bill Gates.
Since Matt Groening spent a lot of time in Seattle, Krusty the clown is partly based on JP Patches.
Adam L Silverman
@CarolDuhart2: But its still cheaper than the blonde or the redhead when you turn 40!
(what?)
sukabi
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman): and there is the problem… most gun nuts THINK they are safety conscious, but they don’t have a clue…several years ago I had jury duty, during jury selection they were asking who owned a gun, who had taken safety classes… most owned guns, myself and one other person had actually had safety training… got mine in army and don’t own a gun.
J R in WV
@The Other Chuck:
You don’t get much of a power rush shooting a .22 target pistol.
And while , yes, there is a “community” among shooters, a high percentage of them are totally F’in nuts. While window shopping pistols at a sporting goods store not long ago, there was another serious buyer there, waiting for a clerk to free up.
He was my age, 60s probably, looked healthy, slender, small goatee, which he had colored into red, white, and blue stripes. He was buying guns as his wife’s pension after he dies, thinking that she will be able to sell one every couple of months… as if actual money from Social Security wouldn’t be better than things prone to theft.
Like I said, F’in nuts!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Adam L Silverman:
I’m not certain that we have the same working definition of “proficient,” because I can’t imagine somebody with his emotional profile tolerating enough instruction to achieve proficiency. As you know, practice makes habit, so without good instruction to start…
Adam L Silverman
@Betty Cracker: It is going to take a lot of work to force this stuff back to the extremes. As I’ve remarked a couple of times, and despite the localized upticks of the past week or so (rally violence, anti-Muslim attacks in NY, mosque burning in FL), I am amazed we’ve not seen more localized, low intensity political violence so far. Not sure if this is an indicator that our society is more resilient than I thought or if its pent up and waiting for a trigger to release it. I do fully expect we’ll see more and I’m especially worried for election day. Florida will be the potential poster child for Trump’s “go to these neighborhoods and be vigilant about voter fraud so the election isn’t rigged” stupidity. All its going to take is for some knucklehead to get in someone’s face, specifically someone of color, at a polling place in Florida. For that person to tell them to leave them alone or for a third party to intervene and for the instigator to suddenly feel threatened and feel the need to stand their ground. That sort of thing becomes, because of 24/7 news and social media coverage, contagious very, very quickly.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Miss Bianca: I’ve never been in a situation that having a gun would have improved, and that includes having a gun held to my head and being involved in heated disagreements with actual murderers. Guns escalate encounters. So I agree with you.
OT: Rutherford B. Hayes tops the list. Period, The end.
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: Unless he’s buying rare or hard to find, but in demand revolvers, pistols, and/or rifles, he’s going to be lucky to get his initial investment back. A GLOCK in good shape is never going to cost less than $350 or more than $600 unless its been tricked way out. If he’s buying Civil War Single Action Army and Navy revolvers, then sure, he’s making an investment. But if he’s putting a bunch of current run 1911s away he’s not going to get back anything more than what he puts in. He’d be better off buying a mutual fund of funds. And plunking another $500 or so in each month.
Adam L Silverman
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I meant going to the range and being able to hit what you’re aiming at. Though with a 3 minute of arc (MOA) gun out of the box hitting what you’re aiming at is a subjective term.
Betty Cracker
@Adam L Silverman: Oy. Time to put this stupid phone down and go mix up a pitcher of daiquiris! ?
Villago Delenda Est
@? Martin: Exactly. “Home of the brave” my ass.
Adam L Silverman
@Betty Cracker: Sorry to upset you. L’Chaim! (can you L’Chaim daquiris? Is that kosher? Do I need to text my friend who is a rabbi?)
maurinsky
I read the article this morning, and what’s wrong with Cooley is that he can’t blame himself for his problems, it’s always got to be someone or something outside of himself. The dude made some stupid choices because of the toxic white male culture in this country (which I see changing with many millennials I know, thankfully), but it’s not his fault, it’s always something else, someone else.
Amir Khalid
An idle question. if the US Constitution were to say
would there be car nuts being cavalier about vehicle safety and bad driving habits because of their Constitutional Right?
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: November 9th, 2016. Drumpf loses election in landslide. “It’s been rigged! It’s been rigged! Unfair! Unfair!”. All hell breaks loose.
Matt McIrvin
@Amir Khalid: Yes. They are anyway.
Matt McIrvin
@Villago Delenda Est: I’m far more worried about the wave of violence that will happen if Trump wins. These kinds of guys are the worst when they figure they’ve just won. They won’t wait for him to be inaugurated. Hate crime went way up after the Brexit vote. Lots of people thought they’d voted for the expulsion of all immigrants and that it would start immediately.
germy
@Villago Delenda Est:
Especially when all the major media outlets scream “It’s a tight race! The candidates are virtually 50-50!”
germy
@Matt McIrvin: They’ll be violent if he wins. And they’ll be violent if he loses.
Corner Stone
@Amir Khalid: I am happy for you in that I see you have not met nor trafficked amongst any Sovereign Citizen types.
The answer is they fully believe that any state or government regulation of driving a motor vehicle is against the rights of citizens.
Adam L Silverman
@Amir Khalid: Yes. When the argument about driver’s licenses and insurance is brought up, someone always remarks: you do not need a license or insurance to own and drive a car provided it never leaves your property. You only need it when you are using public (or semi-private) roads. The state can’t prevent you from buying or owning a car or other vehicle, just from using it in public without a license and insurance.
The issue with these folks isn’t that there have always been multiple ways to interpret the Constitution. That even the folks involved with writing it, debating it, revising it with the Bill of Rights, debating and revising those, and then arguing over it as it passed state by state didn’t agree on all of it. Rather it is that they believe that there is only, and has been only, one correct way to understand the Constitution, the BOR, and the 2nd Amendment. That anyone who is not understanding it there way isn’t just wrong (at the worst), rather they are specifically misinterpreting it in order to subvert the Constitution and the United States and are therefore treasonous enemies.
Ruckus
@Miss Bianca:
Was in the shore patrol for about a month (over 40 yrs ago so things may have changed!) and no one carried a gun, except the Marines that stood gate guard duty. That includes the E7 Marine that I rode with. We had a night stick. There of course was a good reason for no guns. Trying to detain/incarcerate drunk young sailors could escalate very easily, a gun would have been used sooner than later. Getting hit with a night stick is much better than being shot. And besides it forces you, the person entrusted to control the situation, to think, to avoid confrontation as much as possible, rather than thinking that you can always just shoot them.
Kathleen
@Patricia Kayden: Too bad these clowns weren’t reporting during the Civil Rights movement in the 60’s. We would have been treated to “Some say the dogs viciously attacked the marchers, but local law enforcement said the dogs felt their lives were threatened”.
ETA: I thought you link would lead to NPR piece. CNN – NPR – same difference.
SFAW
@Adam L Silverman:
That is more fucked-up than I can begin to describe.
One hopes he at least has the “class” — well, for him, that is — not to call her a “kike” or a “hebe,” nor make jokes about ovens, to her face. Not that I have a whole lot of love for Ivanka, but a child should not have to hear that from her father.
He is one cowardly, evil fuck. I wish the white electorate were more sane.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: I am concerned about that possibility. Also, the converse that he wins and it releases a different type of celebratory violence that is also confirmatory for the people engaging in it of their victory, superiority, and place in what they believe is the new (restored) order. I do not know how probable either/both of these are, and am not sure how I’d quantify the risk, but I think either is certainly possible based on what I’m seeing.
Emma
@SFAW: She chooses the privileges his money brings her over her religion and her dignity. No sympathy.
Adam L Silverman
@SFAW: The argument put forward is that she and her husband keep him in check and act as a filter on this stuff Sunday through Friday afternoon. But they can’t when they’re out of pocket on Friday night through Saturday night.
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: True. The kraken has been released. All we are waiting for now is the inevitable destruction of the Golden Gate Bridge.
oldster
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
OT: Rutherford B. Hayes tops the list. Period, The end.
Which list? I mean, as a vocalist, he was over-rated, I think. Not much range, too breathy.
As a producer, he was top of the list. The layering of sound-textures on “Shaft”, for instance, is just genius.
Adam L Silverman
@SFAW: I think she passed “not having to fear anything from her father” over 2 decades ago. What her physical behavior – body posture and where she positions herself in relation to him in space – when they appear together. I’ve seen those tells before.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: Or Joppa, whichever…
Major Major Major Major
@Villago Delenda Est: Something tells me the Brooklyn Bridge would eat shit first.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
As I just checked, some states will not title a vehicle in your name if you don’t have a license. Yes you can buy it but in CA the dealer has to apply for the title and won’t sell you the car without that title transfer, as that transfers legal ownership/ability to operate the vehicle to you and they can’t do that without a DL You could pay for it and have it titled in someones name who has a DL….. I think MN is the same way. I also believe that in CA if you purchase the car and title it in someone else’s name that is a gift, subject to income tax.
NotoriousJRT
@Hunter Gathers:
Really? Most white people are morons?
Amir Khalid
@Ruckus:
So a rich madame can’t have a car in her own name unless she can drive it herself?
Davebo
@Ruckus:
I can remember shore patrol where not only did you only have the nightstick but you weren’t allowed to wear your kneckerchief for fear of being strangled with it by someone.
Villago Delenda Est
@NotoriousJRT: Yes. It sure seems that way when you realize that they’re Drumpf’s only voting bloc.
fuckwit
Obligatory Godwin: this process of economic anxiety turning people to guns and violence and xenophobia has happened before. In the 1930s. In Italy, Germany, and Japan.
Major Major Major Major
@fuckwit: Yes, everybody knows the Germans and Japanese weren’t violent, xenophobic racists with a superiority complex before the 1930s.
Ruckus
@NotoriousJRT:
Have you met a lot of white people? An awful lot of the ones that I see could easily be listed in the moron category for many of the things I hear them say and things I see them do. I travel about 50 miles a day in public transit in a major metropolitan area. I see and hear lots of things that one might put into the moron category. Now to be fair you can’t slide this into any racial stereotyping, in any group of humans some of us are going to fall on the lessor side of thought processing. Some in the lots lessor category. If you add race or guns back into it, a lot of whites are going to fall into the way lessor category. Depending on where you are it might just be most.
Snarki, child of Loki
@fuckwit: “this process of economic anxiety turning people to guns and violence and xenophobia has happened before. In the 1930s. In Italy, Germany, and Japan.”
I already saw that movie, and I didn’t like the ending.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
Looks that way. But then I’ve not seen a lot of chauffeur driven cars in CA. I’m sure they exist but I’ve sent time in Beverly Hills (had a couple of good friends live there), lived in the richest county in CA, Marin for 6 yrs and never saw one.
Ruckus
@Davebo:
Didn’t you have to wear someone else’s jersey so that they wouldn’t know your rate/ship? I did.
NotoriousJRT
@El Caganer:
This.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: Almost all states that I know of. But you can’t argue the point with them. They believe it and that’s all that matters. But this is, of course, about whether you have to title it. As opposed to just owning it and keeping it on your property. Its a rabbit hole of convoluted logic that usually ends with someone saying: driving is a privilege and car ownership isn’t an enumerated right in the Constitution.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Great minds think alike.
NotoriousJRT
@Ruckus:
I guess my definition of “most” doesn’t match up with you and MOST others here. To me half is not most. YMMV. i would not let that shit pass without challenge from the other side. I have not gotten thru MOST of the thread but I have not seen HG defend the assertion. So, I hear your point, but I don’t agree.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
Well there is that matter of I think it’s called implied liability? It was your car, if you sell it and allow someone to drive it away without knowing at least superficially that they have the right to drive and they hurt someone with it, you can be held to be responsible. If you had done your part they couldn’t have driven away. So one law may not prohibit you from purchasing a car without a license but another law can effectively state that you don’t have the right to give an irresponsible person control of it.
Uncle Cosmo
@Corner Stone: Um, about this – –
IMO the basic WWC complaint is that The dadblame gummint taxes the living shit outa me & gives the money to people who don’t deserve it so they can live high on the hog.
The rich have been running a bait&switch con on the WWC for lo these many generations:
From this point on, the story depends on who’s telling it (the white or the black worker) & whether it’s a Republican or Democratic pastry shop.
The interesting part of these narratives is that the first part is always the same: The owner gets 11 cookies & ducks out. The game is rigged & the WWC knows it. No matter who’s running the shop, Republicans or Democrats, because they get their salaries from the owners of the factories.
The only question is who gets the last cookie & which group gets stuck with the bill for all 12.
Suppose the Democrats say, We’re going to divide up the cookies more fairly. The WWC says
Or suppose the Democrats say, We’ll make the factory owner pay his fair share for the cookies. The response?
The truth is that the WWC isn’t nearly as stupid as our side sometimes treats them. They know they’re getting screwed by the 0.01%. They just don’t see how either party is going to change that. The cultural RWNJs are pissed off at the GOP for promising to kill Planned Parenthood & Obamacare & repeal Roe v. Wade & gay marriage & then when elected pivoting to Tax Cuts For The Already Too Damn RIch. The old-leftish WWC is pissed off at the Democrats for promising to soak the rich without any sort of sensible path to make it happen.
If we could come up with a credible, achievable strategy for compelling the rich & the corp’s to simply pay back a not-so-unfair share of what they suck out of the US GDP & for using the funds to benefit the vast majority of Americans, and then convince the 99.9% that it will work, we could steamroller the GOP. I submit that the vast majority of the ludicrous horce-racey theater-critic coverage of this (& past) elections is to distract the electorate from that sort of policy debate, because that is one discussion the “infotainment telesector” doesn’t ever want to see the light of day.
Meanwhile it’s “I’m gonna get screwed, so let’s make sure the other guy gets screwed worse.”
Ruckus
@NotoriousJRT:
That’s why my original answer was it is offensive. But after how many decades of racism, 10, 20, 40 and lynchings and on and on does it not appear to have more than a ring of truth to it? Have you ever been in the same room with a real KKK hood and robe? I have, in a good ole boys shop in rural SC, hanging in the bathroom that was decorated with old tin signs, everyone of which was racist, as was the good ole boy himself.
So while I may be offended, you and I and the rest of the whites who don’t believe any of the crap, may also deserve at least a bit of the blame. Yes I’m offended but my being offended is absolutely nothing compared to what 400 yrs of being black in American has meant.
Elizabelle
I read the WaPost the story about Jim Cooley. Great detail reporting by Terrence McCoy. Am just as glad they left the comments feature off, because I think the angriness and meanness and snark there would send Cooley even more over the line. Not to mention gun nuts egging him on.
Jim Cooley is physically and mentally not a well person. I feel for his wife, Maria, and wonder why she stays with him. (They do have two kids, and divorce or separation means two households, for a couple already facing foreclosure.)
Story is tragic, really. And it’s tragic that he’s parading around, frightening other people about his assault weapon open carry. Reporter did a great job of conveying how loose Cooley’s control of the gun was. Right down to it flying around in the minivan after a sharp brake.
But for the assault weapon craziness, Cooley is another story about the declining health and economic precariousness of the white working class. Suspect that was the original intent of reporter McCoy’s story, and then the gun lunacy surfaced. Thinking Cooley would not have been as open around the reporter if they had not discussed a lot of other things previously …
Corner Stone
@Uncle Cosmo:
I’m sorry but I have never subscribed to this Thomas Frank-esque portrayal of WWC. I know what they are saying, no allegories needed. They make their salary and tell me about taxes? They mean they don’t want blacks and mexicans to be equal to them in station or acknowledgement.
They look at R’s and see someone who caters to the fatcats but also wants to keep the brown man in his place. They look at D’s and see pretty much on point policy that could make their situation at least more tolerable, but it’s spread around more to include the blacks and browns.
It’s garbage to say they are being screwed equally by both sides and that’s the problem.
Villago Delenda Est
@Uncle Cosmo: So, the game is rigged, and fuckwit sides with the guy who benefits from the rigged game.
My father, who was blue collar most of his life, sided with management against labor in just about every situation you can imagine. Then bitched about blacks getting something approaching a fair shake, at anything.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: a lot of people complain about taxes because paying taxes sucks. Nobody *enjoys* it. If you could push a button that made taxes go away but kept services the same, you would.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
@Ruckus:
Think of it another way. You are out drinking and have too much, can’t, shouldn’t be driving. So you give the keys to your buddy. You may see where this is going….. He gets in an accident, are you in any way responsible? The answer is yes, you gave him control of the vehicle. Your vehicle. Had you passed out and he took the keys, maybe, maybe not, probably depends on the state and local judicial workings.
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major: Why would you say something so ignorant about me? I believe in community and society. I have benefited from having a helping hand up when government was the option of last resort. I believe govt can and should be a force for good in people’s lives.
If I could push a button and have Salma Hayek walk out the bathroom I would. I understand that both things make about the same amount of probable sense.
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major: I don’t *enjoy* paying taxes, but I understand what is happening when I do. Who the fuck said anything about *enjoy*?
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: you said
I said paying taxes sucks. There are reasons to complain about taxes besides being racist.
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major: People in the arena of my WWC and middle middle class area all talk about taxes in one way. They don’t want to pay for blacks to sit at home and have babies on their hard earned nickel.
That’s it. No discussion about infrastructure, new schools, utility districts, nothing. They say taxed enough and it = people who don’t look like me getting over on me and my hard working family.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: and I admire the way you called me presumptuous and ignorant before agreeing with me.
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major: Ahhh. I said something specific. You’re the librarian, go back and read what I wrote.
And don’t tell me I am agreeing with you when it is clear I am not.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: that just isn’t true. Unless you’re completely redefining white working class and middle class to mean people you don’t like and not the rest.
satby
@Major Major Major Major: @Corner Stone: I’m with CS here, because around my old country abode it was the same verbiage about taxes. With some blatant racist statements about how much “free stuff” undeserving people got. And almost every person saying that was getting government benefits whether it was SS and Medicare or SNAP and Medicaid. Point out the obvious to them, and the response was inevitably “but WE EARNED” those benefits.
Corner Stone
I know lots of wealthy and high income earners who complain about taxes. I also grew up and now live in a community that complains about paying taxes in a specific way.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
That’s pretty funny, he’s able to be racist anti-semitic while his Jewish daughter’s family keeps their sabbath. No offense, but it makes me laugh…
Major Major Major Major
@satby: sure, there’s loads of people like that, but that’s not what CS said.
@Corner Stone: so you’re saying you enjoy paying taxes? You said you would push the button, which was more or less agreeing with the summary of my statement.
Ruckus
@Major Major Major Major:
Of course that’s because a bill of goods has been beaten into most of us, that taxes don’t go to things we want and need but to things that go to others. I’d bet that most people see taxes that way instead of the cost of operating a reasonable society. Because we’ve been told that for decades, by the very people who benefit most from reducing taxes, the wealthy and large corporations. And the taxes we do pay go, in large portion to purchasing military hardware, made by some of those big corps. They get it both going and coming. Bernie was partially right about the money thing. Of course he wanted to correct it poorly and left out about 90% of everything else, but still a stopped clock and all.
Major Major Major Major
@Ruckus: all I’m trying to say is that there are reasons besides being a hypocritical selfish racist to complain about taxes. That is all I am saying. Why am I getting so much push-back? I don’t enjoy paying my internet bill either but i like having internet. I can still complain about lousy customer service without thinking only I deserve internet or whatever.
ETA: and of course a lot of the taxes and regulations people blame the federal government for/complain about are actually local in provenance, especially in places like CA.
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major: No, I did not say that re: your impossible scenario. And I am not agreeing with you.
Major Major Major Major
I know plenty of god-fearing socialist WWC people who complain about taxes and still believe in a just vision and whatnot. Unless we’ve redefined white working class to mean something other than working class white people.
Miss Bianca
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman): Yeah, it’s that “do they know what they’re doing” part that always worries me. Plus, whatever my fantasies to the contrary might have been, I figured escalating a mugging by trying to pull a gun myself would likely just have ended even MORE badly.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: so you enjoy paying taxes, seeing the withholding amounts on your pay stub, maybe owing a little extra in April, cutting that check? Doing the paperwork? You never think, aw man, I could’ve (insert thing money can buy), if it weren’t for those dang taxes!, not even a little? You’ve never been out with friends and said, yeah, that sucks?
ETA: even “that sucks, oh well, that’s the cost of social justice and pluralism” is half complaining.
SFAW
@Emma:
Don’t care. Just because she’s pampered, doesn’t mean she should have to face that shit from her father.
Look, I don’t like her any more than you do, but it’s not about “Princess Ivanka and Donald,” it’s about “daughter and father.”
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major: You’re going to continue and try to completely lie about what I have typed here?
Then continue on, sir.
The Lodger
@Felonius Monk: Delaware?
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: ok, so the ignorant thing I said wasn’t about enjoying taxes, but about the button (I only said two things). Usually when people say “if I could push a button to do (other impossible thing) I would but it’s impossible” they’re agreeing with the first button. But you carry on too. Have a nice afternoon!
Still seems weird you wouldn’t push the button if you don’t enjoy paying taxes.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
Well, sure, investing in funds would work [until the Jews crash the economy again to steal the cream] for both him and his wife. He was spending north of a grand for each piece as best as I could tell. Which would be resalable pretty easily around here, as long as the economy keep trickling along.
But he was crazier than that, that was the minor symptom. the red white and blue striped beard was the Flag o’ Crazy! Except for that he looked almost normal… “looked” almost normal.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
Here in WV you can put “Farm Use Only” on the doors and drive w/o registration or current inspection within 15 miles of your “farm” which is undefined. I was once pulled over by a deputy with 90 big bales of hay on an old Ford 250 for no current inspection.
He said first thing “Could you see me behind you?” and I answered “I pulled over didn’t I?” having seen him do a U-turn behind me after driving past. Then he said “If I had seen your Farm Use sign I wouldn’t have bothered you…”
I did have liability insurance, collision was a waste of money. It was a ragged out truck. I sold it to a friend for him to use the motor out of it for $150. The transmission was shot from pulling too much weight. Both a truck load of hay AND a trailer load of hay over a steep hill.
One of the guys with me said “Put it in low gear JR” and I said “I did that before it got steep!!” Smoked that boy, but got over the hill and home with the load.
But no license plate, no reg, no inspection needed. Especially with a load of feed or hay on board. If all you had was beer and fishing rods it might end differently.
ETA: Mrs J once saw a Lexus SUV with the Vanity license plate “FARM USE” on it. Pretty funny… Probably a country boy done good.
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
Bingo (and I am not slamming your father or singling him out).
The essence of racism in America has always been the vicious need to deny black people and others a fair break. The mantra that the gummit is somehow giving blacks too much or more than they deserve is a late addition to the racist standard playbook.
Ruckus
@Major Major Major Major:
Sorry wasn’t really directed at you, more of a general statement.
I know you understand and I know you live in a taxed paradise, CA. Although I have to say when I moved to OH quite some time ago my rate of property tax was higher in OH than CA. The amount wasn’t but that’s because my 2 bdr house in CA was valued at around $350K and a slightly bigger, better house, in a better neighborhood with what looked to be better schools cost $115K. The bill for the OH house was within $100/yr of the same as the CA house. Now of course that had a lot to do with prop 13 but still.
Chris T.
@Adam L Silverman: See? It was done by those Commie Libtards like Ronnie Reagan in Californicate!
(I don’t really need a /scarcasm tag here, do I?)
Elizabelle
Stuck this in the current thread too, but since it relates to Betty’s WaPost link:
More about Jim Cooley, the Georgia open carry guntoter profiled in the WaPost today (from Betty’s morning thread).
From the NY Daily News in June 2015: Georgia man can legally carry AR-15 rifle in Atlanta airport terminal: ‘It should be no cause for concern for anybody’
This guy was very possibly not fit to serve in the National Guard, and thinks the rest of us should “stay inside” if we don’t like him carrying a loaded assault weapon around the Atlanta airport. Or Wal-Mart, as he did in the WaPost article. Assault rifle tucked into the basket on his scooter.
This open carry stuff is ridiculous. So is the Georgia legislature that would pass laws allowing this insanity.
The Lodger
@Matt McIrvin: The “long-form birth certificate” is a version of the same Secret Loophole scam that manifests itself in fringed flags, lower-case identification, citizen’s arrest warrants for elected officials, and the other sovereign citizen detritus we’ve all come to disrespect.
In short, a significant number of people believe civilization is invalidated by rules that only they are aware of, and the rest of the world will follow because, reasons.
Anyone who ever fell for any of that is one with the Bundys.
The Lodger
@Gelfling 545: the meth lab in the storm drain culvert at Walmart
That, my friend, is what we call the trifecta.
EthylEster
@Adam L Silverman: I grew up in Tampa but left for college and seldom go back. But I keep up with the news there.
About the only silver lining to the perpetual Florida storm cloud is the Tampa bay times. The paper I grew up with, the awful Tampa tribune, folded recently. The former St Pete Times rebranded and sucked up all the tribune subscribers. yay.
Thanks for making the link.
jamesjhare
Looking at crime statistics it looks like there’s more than average property crime in Winder, GA but below average violent crime. Considering it’s a town of less than 15,000 it’s pretty hard to really take crime statistics for such a small sample that seriously. Just a few crimes in a town that small will have an outsize impact on statistics. I also fail to see why you need a gun to “protect your family” from property crime. Property crime is certainly distressing but it’s not something a gun is going to do much about.
Jonny Scrum-half
@Emma: Yes.
Jonny Scrum-half
@Ruckus: I’m white too. I can’t say that I was seriously offended, but it is an offensive statement that’s counterproductive, as well. Generalizing about racial groups is wrong. I have no problem with someone saying that Trump supporters are morons, although I know a lot of them and they’re not stupid or even bad people. They’re just blinded by various things, often related to race.
Jonny Scrum-half
@Hunter Gathers: Since I disagreed with you in the beginning of the thread, I thought I’d let you know that I think you’re 100% correct here.
Jonny Scrum-half
@Mobile: Yes, I’m saying he’s wrong. Most white people are not morons. Even most Trump supporters aren’t morons.
I don’t think that it’s either accurate or helpful to generalize about races, or even to label an individual human being with a one-word epithet. Everyone I know, including but not limited to Trump supporters, is a complex person, with good sides and bad.
Ruckus
@Jonny Scrum-half:
I was offended for the same reason. But I at least understand why someone would say what HG said.
I have to disagree on the rest though. If Trump supporters were smart they wouldn’t be Trump supporters. Unless they are racists. Anyone not a racist and in the least bit smart should be able to see through his bullshit. Now one may not like the other choice, usually for bullshit reasons, she’s a she, they’ve bought into the 25 yrs of Clinton bashing, but Trump is so fucking bad that if you are smart at all you can see the choice is clear. Vote for Clinton or don’t vote. But voting for Trump is voting for all racist all of the time. Let alone that he has no policies and has chosen a running mate that’s actually worse than he is. It’s a disaster ticket, you can not convince me that smart people are voting for them. Smart people have some concept of how the world works. They may not like it and may want it done differently but they have a concept. Trump has none. Pence has none. Someone who likes them and/or is willing to vote for them has no concept. That does not make them smart.
Jonny Scrum-half
@Ruckus: I guess it depends on what you mean by “smart.” I have an older relative who is very smart – she’s an accomplished doctor, and actually voted for Clinton in 2008. She’s a big Trump supporter. Now, she’s also racist, but that doesn’t make her stupid.
Regarding your observations of Trump, I completely agree. In fact, I have concluded that it’s actually impossible to change the mind of someone who is voting for Trump. If his actions and statements don’t make it clear that he’s not a serious person, no factual argument will sway them.
One of the few truthful things Trump has said in the past year is that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and he wouldn’t lose support.
pseudonymous in nc
I’ve stopped at that Walmart. Not by choice. Winder is part of the Atlanta exurbs, former farm country that’s been populated by the sprawl along University Parkway between ATL and Athens.
I’m going to be gentle-ish on Cooley — perhaps more than he deserves — because he’s not a well man and his own story is not going to end well. (I fear for his family.) It’s pretty clear that disability plus guns plus access to Alex Jones and militia shit sent him down a rabbit hole of paranoia and power fantasies which he regurgitates on social media. In short, he’s been radicalized.
Ruckus
@Jonny Scrum-half:
You did notice that I said “Unless they are racists.” Which I don’t consider very smart. How smart is it to hate people based on what, the color of their skin? When I was in college I tutored statistics. Every one of the people I tutored were accomplished in math, at least as much as they had in high school and did OK in the rest of their classes. They just could not understand statistics. They weren’t stupid but they just could not see the forest for the equations. Your older relative is a doctor and voted for Clinton in 08 and is now voting for Trump? Did she fall and hit her head in the last 8 yrs? Has dementia started to set in? Or as you say she is clearly a racist, so what was wrong with McCain in 08? IOW what made Clinton OK 8 yrs ago and not OK today? Because given what you’ve said either something is wrong with her or she really isn’t that smart, not anymore. And a smart person will be able to learn from a factual argument. It’s a mark of intelligence that facts are actually important and useful. Trump’s supporters just are not smart, if for no other reason than the one you stated, no factual argument will sway them.
Ruckus
@pseudonymous in nc:
Not arguing with you here, just running off at the keyboard.
Isn’t is societies right and duty to protect itself from people like him that have major issues or just want to walk around with that much firepower not in a war zone?
He’s carrying around a loaded gun, with an unloaded mind, what could possibly go wrong?
Jonny Scrum-half
@Ruckus: Regarding my aunt, she’s actually a big supporter of women’s right, which make the switch from Clinton so unusual. Despite her intelligence, she’s always had poor judgment in many ways. I don’t think there’s dementia, but maybe I’m missing something.
Regarding being “smart,” I think humans are much less rational than we like to pretend. The Trump phenomenon proves it, but there are many other examples, and they’re not limited to conservatives.
dww44
@Jonny Scrum-half:
Yep.This sorta sums up where we are in this election right now. You should go read Booman’s post about Taibbi’s RS article. Anyways it’s one of Booman’s better rants and in it he concludes:
pseudonymous in nc
@Ruckus:
Oh, I agree, but “society” in that part of Georgia is defined by “paranoid white guys with AR-15s in gun safes and handguns in drawers” and “pudgy militia cosplay types demonstrating against mosques and implicitly threatening local government.” Those choices are enabled by a legislature that supports open carry regardless of the threat and the human cost. The die has already been cast.