Although every bit of the stuff I do drips classic rock, I never watch geezer rock anymore. As with WhiteManistan, I’m embarrassed to be related, if only faintly, to the tribe.
When you’re old you oughta be able to rock. To be good at it you have to be willing to be taken for a fool. However, there’s no point in making it harder. And some things you must let go because they’ll sink your ship immediately. (It’s also why I never go out to hear middle and upper-middle aged white guys in blues bands.) Increasing entropy isn’t something money can opt you out of.
I was oblivious to the 12-12-12 concert but the New York Times does a good dissection of embarrassing-looking old rockers.
“I will donate $1,000 to #121212Concert if Roger Daltry buttons his shirt,??? tweeted Alan Zweibel, 62, a comedy writer …
With his shirt thrown open during a rousing rendition of “Baba O’Riley??? Mr. Daltrey — a specimen for his age, to be sure — unfortunately invited comparisons to his groupie-magnet self from the “Tommy??? era. In doing so, he violated an obvious dictum for seniors: keep your clothes on in public.
Then the piece gets to Iggy Pop, a tremendous physical specimen, endurance wise, at 65. He does not, as the New York Times piece insists, look like a Joffrey dancer.
What the cult of the gun looks and feels like. What’s wrong with them? Going Norman Vincent Peale won’t help. Folk rock, not an easy pill. But good for you, like vitamins for the brain.
John Mcafee is an oil slick of bad publicity, attracting sycophants and the press wherever he goes.
I remarked about two weeks ago that he’d effectively nullified the business p.r. arm of McAfee Associates, for the short term.
Here’s a graph of the “buzz,” on McAfee security vs. the big competitor, Symantec.
Ever since McAfee’s been in the news his gossip rep of his old company has been taking a nose dive.
Anti-virus software makers, it should be noted, have never actually been very popular. So I’m sure this doesn’t mean a lot in the corporate marketwise. But it is amusing.
Eventually McAfee Associates will recover to sub-mediocre parity with Symantec. When photos of John McAfee and and his freshest hookers disappear from the news pages for a bit.
Gun shop owners say the increase in gun sales is related to consumers who fear the possibility of future restrictions or bans on weapons.
David Willis of EJW Outdoors Inc. at 4667 Arendell St. said Tuesday his store has seen a marked increase in gun sales for every caliber across the board. — Morehead City, NC
The 4,166 criminal background check requests for gun deals Virginia State Police received last Saturday, the day after the Newtown, Conn., shooting massacre, was the highest volume the agency’s registered since the state began running checks in 1989 …
Even so, a 42 percent increase in transactions — they represent the number of checks requested, not guns sold — the day after a gunman killed 20 children and 6 adults at a New England elementary school is attention-grabbing. — Richmond, VA
Sam Bishop stood Tuesday at the counter of Sharp Shooting Indoor Range and Gun Shop. He was looking at a gun for home security while he felt he still could, he said. “I want to be just one step ahead of everybody else,??? said Bishop, who was checking out the Spokane gun store’s selection of pistols
Spokane gun stores are reporting increased sales since the Newtown, Conn., school massacre Friday, which has sparked talk in Congress of potential gun control legislation. Sales already appeared to be up in 2012 before the latest tragedy. — Spokane, WA
Dobson and other local gun shop owners said fear of gun control has fueled sales since a school shooting Friday. Meanwhile, legislators and advocacy groups such as CeaseFirePA call for tighter gun restrictions and some retailers suspend sales of an assault rifle similar to one used in the Connecticut massacre.
Dobson, who owns West York Sporting Goods, said his store has been busy with customers who are “concerned only criminals will have guns” and they’ll be defenseless. It takes more guns, not fewer, to make a safer society, he said.
“(Lanza) could’ve used gasoline instead of guns,” Dobson said. “He would’ve had another way to kill people. He could’ve driven a car through the school or run over them in the parking lot. What happened is really terrible. It does bother me. [But how comes it doesn’t sound like it really bothers you?] But gun control is not the answer.”
Dobson said he’s afraid the massacre was an opportunity for President Barack Obama and those in favor of gun restrictions to push their agendas. — York, PA
At Staudt’s Gun Shop in Harrisburg, owner Joe Staudt says he sold out his usually large stock of semi-automatic weapons by Wednesday …
Sheriffs around the state report a sharp increase in applications for permits to conceal a handgun or carry one in a vehicle. — (AP) Harrisburg, PA.
Greg Apple is selling a lot of semiautomatic rifles …
The guns on display at the Portland Expo Center are various models of the AR-15, the military-style rifle that one gun lobby says is “among the most popular firearms being sold.???
The 41-year-old Apple sips a Pyramid beer and urges people to buy now. The state of Oregon or President Obama, he says, could ban these guns in a matter of days.
But the national cascade of grief has had an inverse effect on buyers at the Portland gun show: The more horrified the nation became as news spread about Friday’s shooting in Connecticut, the more heated the sales of guns—especially the AR-15. [Portland, a few days before the Newtown massacre, had another multiple murder by a white man with an AR-15].
Customers are buying Bushmasters so fast that stores have trouble stocking it. “We sold 14 yesterday,” says Ross Meyer of Gunworld & Archery in Elko, Nev. “That’s way up. All of our suppliers are out of them.”
According to CBS4 news partner the Miami Herald, gun stores across South Florida are reporting record sales in the wake of the mass murder at a Newtown, Connecticut elementary school last Friday.
The move by some gun owners to buy up as many weapons as possible may accelerate Wednesday when President Barack Obama will announce his plans for new gun control initiative …
He said ammunition has been “at an all-time shortage for the last three or four years, since the President was elected the first time.
“We all have ammunition to sell but we don’t have all the ammunition we would want to buy,??? said Demicco. “Ammunition companies are operating a full tilt and people are stocking up on ammunition not knowing what potential legislation may be in the offing.
“There is tremendous fear of the unknown,??? he said. — Hookset, Connecticut
“Leave us the hell alone,” blurted Ted Nugent on Twitter. But he and his kind won’t leave us, the hell, alone.
As with most things, the cure to this mess begins and ends with the family. Traditional family values have been under siege for decades by our culture of contempt. In the absence of a solid family, the whole thing slowly unravels and rots.
“What ails us is a spiritual bankruptcy of cultural values,” Nugent writes.
Here’s the man of cultural and traditional family values, sampled from only two DD blog excerpts over the past two years:
What followed was the mother of all tirades against the mayor of Chicago, President Barack Obama, most Northerners, gun-haters and every “Chairman Mao motherfucker in the White House.??? We don’t remember hearing this sort of language directed towards Dubya during his tenure in office, at least with not this much volume and hate.
Shit is getting real. He’s preaching. Fuck this and fuck that. He’s railing. It’s awe-inspiring.
When he shares his political views? That’s entertaining, too, in a borderline frightening way.
He railed on government in general and the president in particular. He invited his audience to storm down to Springfield and take it over. Right after an f-bomb-laced barrage, he remarked that it was nice to see children in the audience …
Next, his bandmates – all in helmets now – recreated the famous photo of troops raising the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima. It was a strange thing to tag on at the end of a concert. But in true Nugent fashion, they triumphantly waved their machine guns …
Freedom and guns, enough to gag on. This show was canceled by Discovery, yesterday. Nugent has long been a scoundrel who often benefits in the catering to the worst aspects of US society. It is good for everyone else when he has a bad day.
Corporate America liked WhiteManistan only insofar as its not a public relations nightmare or liability.
From the wire, the giant investment brokerage that holds much of the US domestic firearms manufacturing base in a consortium called the Freedom Group is bailing on it and Bushmaster.
A major private equity firm has decided that putting its clients’ money into a company that makes assault-type weapons isn’t a wise strategy.
At the same time a large sporting goods chain has said that, at least for now, it would not sell those types of weapons.
The decisions came as pressure rises for the government to do something about the proliferation of assault-type weapons that have been used in several recent mass shootings.
Cerberus Capital Management said Tuesday, after discussions with investors, that it would sell its stake in Freedom Group, a major weapons producer whose portfolio includes such well-known gun brands as Remington and Bushmaster Firearms.
“Separately, Dick’s Sporting Goods also said Tuesday that it would temporary stop selling guns at a store near Newtown and suspend the sale of ‘modern sporting rifles’ for all stores nationwide,” the piece adds.
However, that is trivial in comparison with a partial display of Walmart money-makers.
It’s possible to see how the gun lobby and its corporate backers can be beaten. Lacking the numbers of a genuine multicultural majority, allow them to loudly defend the right to purchase assault guns and high capacity magazines and to blame the horrific on other causes.
They became paranoid ogres over the years and the political will and interest was not there to show people what precisely it was they were up to. Now that everyone has been shocked by the tragedy in Newtown, let the ideological monsters of the gun right and NRA show the country what they really care about — still being able to buy Bushmasters because it’s right wing white guys and, damn it — leave us the hell alone, you’re trying to victimize us!
Shunning is a viable strategy. Cultivation of national revulsion toward an unacceptable sporting hobby and a covetousness toward horrendously inappropriate weaponry is a legitimate thing to do.
That how you make people lose in the voting booth. You tell their story, just as it is.
People may lose interest. It may fail. But it’s certainly worth attempting.
Like it or not, the Newtown massacre has exposed (in a very horrid context) one of this country’s more astonishing and frankly nauseating fetishes — getting hard over assault rifles if you’re white. And it’s not all white people, not anyone I know, and I’m pretty pale.
But in the last couple of years, [Newtown] residents began noticing loud, repeated gunfire, and even explosions, coming from new places …
Yet recent efforts by the police chief and other town leaders to gain some control over the shooting and the weaponry turned into a tumultuous civic fight, with traditional hunters and discreet gun owners opposed by assault weapon enthusiasts …
“Something needs to be done,??? said Joel T. Faxon, a hunter and a member of the town’s police commission, who championed the shooting restrictions. “These are not normal guns, that people need. These are guns for an arsenal …”
“It was like this continuous, rapid fire,??? said Amy Habboush [of the sound emanating from a private unregulated outdoor firing range], who was accustomed to the sound of gunfire but became alarmed last year when she heard what sounded like machine guns, though she did not complain to the police …
Mr. Faxon, the police commission member, who is a lawyer, said he wrote [a] new ordinance, which would have imposed additional constraints on shooting, including limited hours, and a requirement that any target shooting range, and the firearms that would be used there, be approved by the chief of police to make sure they were safe. This was no liberal putsch …
A modest proposal to curb the gunfire failed.
Anyway, “liberal putsch” is what I’d call an unfortunate choice of words by a writer striving to be interesting and colorful.
Hitler, who was not a liberal, or even remotely like anyone in Newtown, installed a machine gun in the Munich Bier Hall to control and intimidate an assembled crowd in the famous event from pre-World War II history that popularized the word ‘putsch.’ The next morning Hitler and his paramilitary force marched out to try and take Munich. Twenty people were killed in the skirmish that ensued, 16 of them Nazis. Hitler was sent to prison where he wrote Mein Kampf.
The Times piece also mentioned the enthusiasm for using semi-automatic assault guns to blow up propane tanks and Tannerite-packed targets at private gun ranges. It’s a sporting activity almost unavoidable if you’ve been paying attention the last few years. (A mind-rotting collection of homemade YouTube videos are here and here.)
“One of great strengths of the NRA has been its bipartisanship,” said Jeremy Mayer, a political scientist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. “Now it’s almost all Republicans and it will be harder for the NRA to deal with a bunch of united and angry Democrats.”
It is expressed a bit too lightly.
The NRA, the leadership, if not the majority of its 4 million members, is a right wing extremist organization. It’s not rational.
I would imagine that most people who are not members have not actually read what its leaders have published in the past year.
Two columns, on the presidential election, are entirely motivated by a desire to frighten membership into contribution by describing a hidden Barack Obama conspiracy, one to be carried to its final nefarious end when he gained a second term.
This is the graphic used to illustrate one of the pieces. Do read the two at the links provided. They go right to the heart of a certain right wing white minority’s obsession with and coveting of heavy weapons.
It’s tin foil hat material, single-minded in the desire to instigate fear and paranoia.
The National Rifle Association is not a respectable or reasonable organization although many of its members (not its brain-trust) may be. And it is certainly not bipartisan in even a minor way. They’ve made themselves into ogres.
An Austin-area gun store owner is joining the gun rights debate with a controversial offer for teachers in light of the tragic shooting in Connecticut.
Crocket Keller of Keller’s Riverside Gun Store says if educators want to get a concealed handgun license, he’ll give them a discount. …
“We need to start thinking out of the box and deal with this violent culture,??? said Keller. “We need to lobby our various state governments to allow teachers to be armed.???
On gun sales, yesterday:
Customers fearful that assault rifles may soon be made illegal are buying now, before sales could be cut off.
We popped into 21st Century Firearms, a gun store in Bluffton.
President David Fillers says since Saturday, the shop has seen a huge uptick in sales of semi-automatic modern sporting rifles, handguns, ammunition, powder, primer, and even holsters.
Fillers says after he heard President Obama speak Sunday night of the need for changes in our approach to gun violence, he’s convinced a big battle could be brewing over possible bans to certain types of weapons.
He’s adamant that assault style rifles should not be outlawed.
” If you read the Federalist papers, our forefathers wanted to protect the same type of guns that our military had. They were concerned about tyranny, they were concerned about a government out of control,” Fillers said. — in Bluffton, Indiana
“You have other people say ‘My goodness, these schools can’t protect us, we’ve got to protect ourselves. We’ve got to buy guns.’ And you have other people who say, ‘They’re going to pass [tougher gun] legislation. I don’t want to be the only one who doesn’t have one. I’d better get mine now,'” says Hyatt.
Kay Duncan, the owner of Brass Balls Pawn Shop on South Main Street, said two customers who came in Friday said they were afraid of what President Barack Obama might try to do on gun control.
“That’s the first thing that came out of their mouths,??? she said.
She said the country has a lot of hunters who wouldn’t take kindly to the federal government trying to take their guns away.
“I just don’t think it would be wise for any gun law changes to be made,??? she said. “There are too many people who are armed. If you count the number of hunters who are licensed in each state, you have an army larger than our (U.S.) army.??? — Winston Salem
“We set a record for this store,” said Greg Burge, the owner of Beech Grove firearms as he straightened the inventory after a record number of buyers jammed the store this weekend. Many of those customers were buying in reaction to members of Congress calling for a renewal of the assault weapons ban. — Beech Grove, Indiana
Keep in mind that the president did zero on gun control in his first four years. But the NRA, and others, peddled this inaction as a hidden conspiracy in which, behind the scenes, coordinated forces in the Obama administration were moving to set the stage to take away America’s guns during his second term.
And now, with a massacre pointedly carried out with an assault rifle, a certain demographic of Americans — all in WhiteManistan — are rushing to buy even more, some of whom would probably say they are now utterly convinced that everything the right was saying about the president during the last four years on the Second Amendment was absolutely true.
They’ve made themselves into ogres (continued).
WhiteManistan is not all just Republican. It’s full of white libertarian kooks, too. Libertarians are right wingers who believe themselves too posh to be lumped in with run-of-the-mill GOP proles.
Backers say the tragedy is the work of one deranged person and shouldn’t cloud the debate in Michigan, and could actually aid in ending the slayings.
Ari Adler, spokesman for Republican House Speaker Jase Bolger, said many “believe citizens who are allowed to carry concealed pistols can act in a positive way to bring a tragedy to a close more quickly” …
Ryan Mitchell, a spokesman for bill sponsor Sen. Mike Green, R-Mayville, said the legislation is “about letting those who are vulnerable and defenseless defend themselves.”
Once again, it is another indicator of the great polarization in American society, of the civil war between rural right white America and everyone else. It is very much part and parcel with the ideology of WhiteManistan.
“Gun control” and “gun violence,” as usages, have decreased, the former plunged. “Second Amendment” usages have soared, tied almost exactly to the election of Barack Obama in 2008.
Gun-rights advocates say that the answer [to massacres] is more guns: things would have gone better, they suggest, if the faculty at Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Chardon High School had been armed. That is the logic of the concealed-carry movement; that is how armed citizens have come to be patrolling the streets. That is not how civilians live. When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood not as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left.
The reporter, Jill Lepore, delivers some statistics. That Americans own the most guns in the world is not surprising.
However, inside that statistic is the sub-data that most Americans do not own guns. Gun ownership, in fact, is falling. The numbers come primarily from WhiteManistan, with some statistically trivial exceptions) where owning individuals have many of them (which agrees with the observation of an astonishing number of guns in the name of Adam Lanza’s mother who cannot now answer questions on why she bought so many).
“Gun ownership is higher among whites than among blacks, higher in the country than in the city, and higher among older people than among younger people,” she writes.
“I asked him how [David Keene, president of the NRA] would answer critics who charge that no single organization has done more to weaken Americans’ faith in government, or in one another, than the N.R.A,” writes Lepore, near the end.
“We live in a society now that’s Balkanized,??? Keene told the New Yorker’s journalist. “But that has nothing to do with guns.???
And, previously, as noted up top: While there is always a lot of emotionalism at the time of an incident, the public is largely unaffected by regular massacres. Views do not shift, although the NRA has successfully reduced a basic interest in gun control over the last decade.
Just a week ago, fighting to make 3-D manufacturing plans for guns, including assault rifles, available on an “Internet redoubt.”
That’s real freedom from tyranny.
UPDATE addition:
I noted earlier today that the NRA and gun ownership is indivisible from the toxin ideology of WhiteManistan. All are intrinsically imbued with outlooks steeped in authoritarianism and pursuit of the destruction of those not deemed to be of them.
It notes the NRA bet big in terms of financial support on Romney and GOP candidates and lost the majority of its investment in 2012. And this shows that while complete freedom of gun ownership is a belief of white men, it’s still the ideology of a minority in comparison to the collective US demographic. In other words, it just lost its numbers.
Paradoxically, the Democratic Party remains cowardly when faced by the NRA. But I would bet that there are results that can be had in attacking the modern National Rifle Association and renewing issues in gun control head on.
I believe it could be be pushed further to the fringes of red white rural USA with not much of a downside for the rest of the voting core. It’s irrevocably attached to white GOP politicians. When the GOP goes down it takes the NRA with it.
The National Rifle Association spends almost all of its time demonizing Barack Obama. The Republican Party spends all of its time demonizing Barack Obama and everyone else not like it. The GOP just lost big time.
Non-white voters already alienated by that party are not going to suddenly vote Republican to stick up for getting rid of assault rifles as sporting fun. It is well past time to attack the NRA.
What’s the worst that could happen? More super-rich people with ties to gun manufacturing will give money to GOP politicians? Oh, wait …
Readers note! “WhiteManistan” added as an official category! Yippee!
My intent is to use it in place of the Extremism and Psychopath Vote categories. It supersedes and includes both. WhiteManistan has become, by definition, where extremism lives in the USA.
Yet judging from New Times reporter Michael Miller’s photo, McAfee spared no expense and despite claims of being broke isn’t letting it stand in the way of a lust for nigiri. Miller reported that McAfee spent more than $400 on lunch. He said he’s received “sacks of cash from friends in Canada which was very nice” and that more than 50 people have given him their credit numbers, including one with a $100,000 limit who said “spend whatever you want.”
But then McAfee starts to talk, and it is instantly clear something is not right …
McAfee also started opening up about his life. He said that he cared deeply for both his girlfriends, Amy and Sam, and was worried for their safety in Guatemala, but that monogamy and love were illusions. “This is a rare truth,” he said, before quizzing his three listeners on whether they had ever had an affair.
“I don’t sleep with Amy anymore,” McAfee volunteered. “She tried to kill me four times. She stabbed me in the ass. I’m deaf in one ear because she tried to shoot me in the head. Since we stopped having sex, she hasn’t tried to kill me. Not even once.”
McAfee then offered to hook me up with his sadistic ex. “Sam is not going to want to skin you alive,” he said, “because she will notice that you are actually faithful to women.”
In one moment he promised to tell me the absolute truth. In others, he said he disdained journalists and admitted to playing “practical jokes” on them by routinely lying to them.
“I have no future, no dreams, no plans,” he said. “If you don’t have plans, then life is nothing but chaos.” McAfee paused. “Here’s the truth of life,” he said. “You can be the president but if nobody pays attention to you, you don’t exist.”
And suddenly I understood why McAfee looked so old, so ragged. Without a past or a future to retreat to, his life had become one frenetic moment: an endless search for recognition. Without his young women around, he had turned to reporters for validation.
Read it. Finally, a decent article on John McAfee, after the business and tech media’s weeks of bungling and being the man’s miscellaneous tools.
McAFEE: YOU KNOW, MY ACCOUNTANT MAY KNOW WHAT I’M WORTH. I HAVE NOT ASKED HIM RECENTLY. YOU KNOW, I’M 67 YEARS OLD. I EAT WELL AND I HAVE ENOUGH MONEY FOR FOOD AND CLOTHES. I REALLY DON’T HAVE A CLUE SIR.
FRANK: JUST A BALLPARK.
McAFEE: YOU KNOW, LESS THAN FIVE MILLION DOLLARS CERTAINLY
McAfee uses the term “sir” to mock journalists. Some of them haven’t been hipped to this fact quite yet.
McAfee has 5 million, or maybe more, mysterious people give him money in Miami, he spends $400 on a routine lunch and has contempt for everyone he deals with, even people granting favors.
Read his blog for the comments. Note the banner marker — how many sycophants he attracts, even when he treats them like dirt.
Here at the end of 2012 I have the Culture of Lickspittle’s first ever Man of the Year.
John McAfee. Amen.
Here, too, is a YouTube video of McAfee’s 1.2 million dollar beach front hooker palace north of San Pedro (think a criminal element Key West) on Ambergris Caye. Readers will note it was uploaded in 2011. McAfee was apparently looking to unload it well before his current bamboozling. By view count, very few people in media seem to have noticed the sale and video tour hiding in plain sight.
There’s another hidden laugher in this. If you do a keyword search of the news feeds for “McAfee,” the tycoon’s antics drown out everything issued by his former company. For the short term he’s made their publicity arm on enterprise security somewhat useless.
“I would like spend my declining years on the beach, fishing … I would like to go to England.” — John McAfee
“‘Broke’: McAfee opens his new cell phone in his plush hotel room after saying he had nothing left of his $100m fortune but the suit he was wearing,” reads the caption at the Daily Mail.
From a CBS piece:
A source familiar with the McAfee’s situation told CBS4 News that McAfee was briefly questioned by IRS agents after he got off the plane in Miami. The source told CBS4 investigator Jim DeFede that federal agents are examining whether McAfee engaged in money laundering or tax evasion when he left the United States three years ago and settled in Belize.
“I don’t know why the IRS would because I am paranoid and the last people in the world that I want after me is the IRS,??? he replied when asked about the IRS.
One assumes McAfee must still have a considerable amount of liquidity.
