12.16.12
Posted in WhiteManistan at 9:42 am by George Smith
What the country faces in terms of dealing with national massacres is a WhiteManistan problem. Gun ownership in the US is decreasing. But the numbers of guns owned, the highest in the world, comes from a concentration of multiple gun ownership among a coterie and it is demographically primarily white. The Lanza massacre is a particularly egregious example. The murdered mother was a gun enthusiast, multiple owner, with a semi-automatic assault rifle taken and used in the slaughter. That AR-15 knock-offs have ridiculously become consumer items some white middle and upper middle class white people covet didn’t happen by itself.
“I am the NRA and I vote” is the belligerent banner slogan. Well, WhiteManistan just lost the vote numbers, and how it goes, so can go the modern NRA. I say the modern NRA is not representative of the country.
One looks at their current board members — all of them — white right wingers, people who for the last four years have campaigned to make their followers believe the president is a socialist Muslim not born in America and in league with the UN to impose tyranny through the taking of everyone’s guns. All of it, toxic mean-in-spirit messaging, completely rubbish, tin foil hat stuff. It is the work of monsters and they do it because it serves their interests. It has resulted in a well-documented explosion in sales of weapons. Indeed, I expect the Newtown massacre to result in yet another surge in stockpiling sales as the NRA further radicalizes its base with grass roots gossip along the lines of: “Now they’re really coming after your guns!”
On December 4, in a Richmond news publication (I cited an excerpt yesterday), a journalist published the reaction of an NRA representative on the question of ‘having the right to have an AR-15 regardless of whether they really need them.’
This was the reply: “It’s the Bill of Rights, not the Bill of Needs … jst because it’s someone’s opinion that someone doesn’t need it isn’t a legally viable reason to ban them.???
This is the pugnacious mentality of someone who cannot be reasoned with. And now, after years of pushing it, a horrible flock of birds of death have come home to roost and get in our faces.
What has kept change from happening in the US is cowardice and the lack of realization that the NRA, like the Republican Party of which it is part of the DNA, has lost its numbers when pitted against every other demographic it despises. So, politically — which is where this issue lies in its entirety — it is ready to be beaten. We lack only the courage to take it to them.
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12.15.12
Posted in WhiteManistan at 5:25 pm by George Smith
Orders of magnitude beyond appalling:
The 26 victims who were shot inside a Connecticut elementary school on Friday were each hit by more than one bullet, most of them from the high-powered assault rifle wielded by the 20-year-old suspect, the state’s chief medical examiner said on Saturday …
“I believe they were all first-graders,” [the medical examiner] said.
It is the modern National Rifle Association and public figures like Ted Nugent who have worked so that Americans and cowardly politicians sit lamely by and accept the fool’s hall of fame idea that semi-automatic assault rifles are just natural for sporting fun.
We’ve learned Adam Lanza’s mother “liked guns.” And no one can ask ask the woman why on earth she wanted so many, including the assault rifle.
How did she come to be someone who viewed such things as upper middle class consumer items to covet? It didn’t happen all by itself.
This article, written on the 4th of December and entitled “Guns for fun,” is a now unintentional example of a national psychopathy — the fruit of the NRA.
It digs up a UCLA professor of law who explains shooting an AR-15 creates an adrenaline rush, one which is fun. The man dryly adds that a lot of things are “fun” and create an adrenaline rush, but are also illegal, like driving 150 mph or making videos of small animals being crushed to death under someone’s feet.
Point well taken.
Some excerpts:
“Gun control advocates ask, ‘Why does anyone need this particular kind of gun, like an AR-15 (an assault rifle similar to the one used by the U.S. military)???? Winkler says. “The reason people like an AR-15 is because it’s fun to shoot.???
Shooting a firearm, he says, triggers the same chemicals in the brain as riding a roller coaster—endorphins and adrenaline. “I was out at the range two weeks ago, shooting an AR-15,??? he says. “It was a lot of fun.???
“If you look at the cover of a gun magazine today, you’re going to see one of two things: Compact guns for concealed carry, or assault rifles.??? They cater to what [a gun control advocated interviewed by the publication] calls “self-defense freaks, extremely paranoid people, emboldened by the stand-your-ground laws,??? and “hardcore insurrectionists.??? Insurrectionists, [people who says they believe] they need to arm themselves against the government, in particular are the dominant voice in the pro-gun side of the debate, he says.
“They believe they have an individual right to check government by force of arms,??? he says. Insurrectionists are a vocal fringe group, he says, not at all representative of most gun owners …
Bearing in mind that most NRA members, and gun owners in general are either hunters or sportsmen and not crazies, people have a right to have assault rifles like AR-15s, [a representative of the NRA told the publication], regardless of whether or not they really need them. “It’s the Bill of Rights, not the Bill of Needs,??? she says. “Just because it’s someone’s opinion that someone doesn’t need it isn’t a legally viable reason to ban them.???
You should read the entire thing, including the comments — there are only three.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Extremism, WhiteManistan at 12:39 pm by George Smith
Posh Christmas catalog in the US or what Adam Lanza used?
Is that all that can be done? The early returns aren’t optimistic.
From a Michigan newspaper, the usual intelligence-insulting extremist script on self-defense as justifications for a right-to-concealed carry law rammed through the Republican held legislature hours before Newtown:
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.”
At the New York Times, Nate Silver posted a graph showing the citation of various phrases used in news reports relating to “gun rights’ issues over the past decades.
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.
Paradoxically, from a week or so ago, on gun sales soaring in California this year:
“The National Rifle Association has done a wonderful job of demonizing President Obama,??? said [one observer to the newspaper].
In fact, Blek said, Obama’s gun policies have either been nonexistent or a step backward in the eyes of safety advocates …
While a long read, a piece from the New Yorker, written just after another massacre this year, has much to say on the radicalization of right white America’s obsession with owning firearms:
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.???
A letters page from The Chattanoogan of Tennessee, today, shows the bleak split.
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.
It’s quite the holiday gift to consider.
Remember this guy?
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.
If you go to the anti-NRA site, Who Is The NRA Leadership?, it lists its leaders — all white men with the occasional token woman.
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.
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12.14.12
Posted in Ted Nugent at 2:36 pm by George Smith
What would Ted Nugent say?
Not a tweet.
I grew up among gun lovers. Today I fail to understand how anyone decent could be a member of the modern NRA and not feel very bad about it. Its image is the most horrid of base instinct, dog crap, psychotic illogic, conspiracy theory and inhumanity. It boils down to “Don’t f— with my guns or I’ll shoot you. And if you don’t, maybe I’ll shoot you anyway.???
History has presented America’s belligerent gun owners and the NRA with a problem. And depending on what their loudest mouths say, it could be one that stains them permanently.
Ted Nugent, a week ago, again:
2 million Americans use guns each year to defend themselves from punks and thugs. Access to guns saves an incalculable number of lives each year.
Human beings must turn away.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 9:49 am by George Smith
From Fiore:
AND EVERY YOUTUBE FAN IS GUNNA TRY
TO DANCE GANGNAM STYLE JUST LIKE PSY
AND SO I’M OFFERING THIS SIMPLE TWEET
TO FACEBOOK FRIENDS I NEVER KNEW
TO GEEKS ROUND THE WORLD AND JUST DOWN THE STREET
HIGH TECH CHRISTMAS TO YOU.
Go now.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 8:37 am by George Smith
Money graf, from Miami New Times:
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.”
Other fine quotes, in a story dubbing John McAfee the “master bullsh—er:”
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.
From CNBC transcript, this morning:
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.
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12.13.12
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 7:40 am by George Smith
UPDATED
Pix worth a thousand words.
“Broke,” but staying at …
The 20-year old girlfriend left in Guatemala.
“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.
Here’s his property at Ambergris Caye, listed for sale at 1.2 million. And if you look on YouTube, you can see he’s had it up for sale since 2011.
It is, indeed, the same property I found using Google Map a week or so ago.
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12.12.12
Posted in Extremism, Psychopath & Sociopath at 4:43 pm by George Smith
When the Republican Party moves on something it can never contain it’s burning desire to attack everything it hates, across the board.
I’ll leave the coup which turned Michigan into a right-to-work state to others.
Close on the heels of it is another bill, GOP authored, to curb the menace no one can see but the far right.
From the Detroit Free Press:
A Muslim rights group has urged Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to veto legislation designed to block use of Islamic law in the state should it reach his desk.
A House bill to bar use of “foreign laws that would impair constitutional rights??? was on Tuesday’s House agenda. Rep. Dave Agema, R-Grandville, sponsored the bill, which doesn’t specifically mention the Islamic legal code called sharia. However, the bill’s supporters have said they are concerned about the use of sharia spreading …
Pure and simple, it’s a bigot’s bill, another part of the Republican Party’s obsession with getting after people they hate.
And, nationwide, it has been common in red states since the election of Barack Obama, pushed by persistent lobbying by Islam-o-phobe groups in Washington, often associated with Frank Gaffney.
“The question now is whether Michigan Republicans can find time to deal with a nonexistent Shariah takeover when they’re so hard at work crushing unions and curtailing women’s rights,” comments a piece at Mother Jones.
It would be almost funny. But when you’re laughing the Republican Party, even though a minority, always manages to ram through toxic
legislation at the local level.
The creeping menace of fluoride sharia — from the archives.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 1:42 pm by George Smith
From the wire:
Guatemalan immigration officials Wednesday afternoon deported John McAfee, who is headed to Miami, according to news reports.
“I’m free, I’m going to America,” the software anti-virus pioneer said at the Guatemala City airport, the Associated Press says. He was escorted to the airport by immigration officials.
Before leaving for the airport he told Reuters, “I’ll be leaving at 3:30 (p.m.) to Miami. That was the only option I had. I can’t take a flight that stops in any other country and there are only two flights going to America today.”
“I’ve been running through jungles and rivers and oceans and I think I need to rest for a while,” is one quote.
“But I will continue my fight for human rights and the charitable work for 20 year-old girls I have become known for in Miami,” the ex-anti-virus king said.
Living Like John McAfee just lost its luster. Miami not quite the same jungle home.
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Posted in Psychopath & Sociopath, Ted Nugent at 11:50 am by George Smith
What he really thought.
With today’s news of the Oregon AR-15 massacre, what would Ted say?
We know.
Just this week, on the last shooting, from the WaTimes:
[Bob Costas], blamed the murder-suicide on easy access to guns. He lives in a strange fairyland of ignorance and denial …
What Mr. Costas didn’t say and possibly doesn’t know is that 2 million Americans use guns each year to defend themselves from punks and thugs. Access to guns saves an incalculable number of lives each year.
From the LA Times:
A young masked man, bent on a mission of destruction and death, entered an Oregon mall and opened fire, turning the holiday shopping season into a chaotic horror that could have been much worse, police officials said Wednesday …
The man entered the Clackamas Town Center, a popular suburban mall several miles from downtown Portland, on Tuesday afternoon. He was wearing a hockey-style mask and a protective vest and began firing with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, stolen from someone the suspect knew, police said. There were also several magazines of ammunition.
If only more people would carry AR-15s when doing Christmas shopping, perhaps this could have been avoided and the punk shot dead.
Some people are mentally unfit. Ted Nugent is such a person.
The black and bleak humor in this is that it presents Nugent with having to write about another nuts shooting only two days after he ranted about all the idiot liberals who try to destroy American freedom after each massacre.
UPDATE
And now it’s orders of magnitude worse. Why would anyone want to be in any club or organization this man speaks for is beyond understanding.
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