harikari.com

Al Qaeda bombed the World Trade Center towers, not Muslims.  But the members of al Qaeda are Muslims!  They follow the teachings of the prophet Muhammad and worship the Islamic god Allah! 

And that’s supposed to be the reason for halting the development of a Muslim community center two blocks away from Ground Zero?

Are you familiar with the Army of God?  It’s a Christian terrorist organization that’s responsible for attacks against doctors that perform abortions.  In 1998, Eric Rudolph, one of their members, bombed a clinic in Birmingham, Alabama.  The explosion killed a security guard and maimed a nurse.  Because the Army of God is a Christian organization, shouldn’t we use the same logic the anti-Ground-Zero-Mosque people are using to ban all Christian churches built near medical clinics that perform abortions?

And what about Fred Phelps?  Because Westboro Baptist Church is made up of xenophobic, homophobic, Jew hating, Catholic hating, Muslim hating followers of Phelps, then aren’t all Christians, regardless of their interpretation of The Bible, tainted by the hateful actions and beliefs of the members of Westboro Baptist Church?   If they are, then Christian organizations should be banned from building churches or community centers anywhere near the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. or any memorial to a slain homosexual.

These are just two examples of this game that anyone can play, including Jon Stewart, who did a fine job connecting Fox News to terrorism last night.  The point is that just as the followers of Christ are divided into hundreds of sects and denominations, some of which are hateful and violent, so are the followers of Muhammad.

As William Dalrymple pointed out in a column for The New York Times earlier this week, the Muslim group that plans to build the mosque two blocks from Ground Zero is lead by Abdul Rauf who is:

…one of America’s leading thinkers of Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which in terms of goals and outlook couldn’t be farther from the violent Wahhabism of the jihadists. His videos and sermons preach love, the remembrance of God (or “zikr”) and reconciliation. His slightly New Agey rhetoric makes him sound, for better or worse, like a Muslim Deepak Chopra.

Dalrymple points out that Sufis are despised by Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, and that the Pakistani Taliban has attacked Sufi shrines with suicide bombers and rockets killing dozens of worshippers.

Sounds to me like Rauf and his followers are our allies in this “war on terror,” not our enemies.  Are we to deny them their right to freely practice their religion anywhere within our borders?  I don’t think so, and neither does the mayor of New York City or the neighborhood association that approved the mosque project.  But many Republican politicians are against it.  They love this conflict because it gives them yet another issue they can use to drive a wedge between conservatives and liberals. 

Just what is it with Republicans?  Why are they against religious freedom? Why are they against local control of commercial lands?  Why are they against the U.S. Constitution?

Why do Republicans hate America so much?

Americans need to face a hard fact: we almost certainly dodged another Great Depression by a hair’s breadth thanks to the combined efforts of Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the Obama administration and the much maligned Democratically-controlled Congress. But the fallout from the near economic collapse and financial meltdown is likely to endure for years and not months. The problems are deep and widespread, global and not merely national in scope

Whilst our government is not entirely helpless in the face of this recession, neither does it have in its bag of tricks a silver bullet or a magic wand to make it disappear. Unaccustomed as they are to an unemployment rate near 10%, Americans are unlikely to see a dramatic improvement any time soon no matter which party rules in the White House or congress.

In Europe, the harsh consequences of recession-induced joblessness is ameliorated significantly by a substantial social safety net that provides a livable income, retraining opportunities and housing assistance.  America’s Swiss-cheese version offers few such protections. The fact is Americans are just a pink-slip away from personal catastrophe, where a job lost can mean no health insurance (although thanks to Democrats that will change by 2014) and perhaps homelessness for themselves and even their children.

On NPR recently I listened to some bright spark from one of the right-wing think tanks explain why extending unemployment benefits is a disincentive to those who have been unemployed longer than a few months to search vigorously for a job – this despite credible estimates that there are five job seekers to every available job in the market. Is $300 a week a fortune to people who were earning $50K just year ago? Not on the planet most of us live on, that’s for sure. He went on to suggest more of the unemployed should be willing to uproot their families and move; or be prepared to take a job at McDonald’s at minimum wage, as though you can support a family that way.

Appalling, outrageous and shameful though it may be, this is the prevailing view on the right and among congressional Republicans. It highlights the extent to which most Republicans are completely out of touch with the way most Americans live, and lack any ability to empathize with those in distress.

So it does matter which party steers us through the hard times and best prepares the country to take advantage of the global recovery when it does come. And that, ladies and gentlemen, would be the Democrats.

American families that are hurting need help not platitudes. Yes, they need jobs. But these do not grow on trees nor appear on government demand. In the short term unemployed Americans need government assistance to ensure they have basic financial assistance, can keep a roof over their family’s heads and for re-training where that is feasible.

And as the economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman endlessly preaches, we also need to take advantage of the low cost of government borrowing to invest heavily in our human resources through increased spending in education, and on needed infrastructure improvements.   To cut spending now on these essential engines to our future prosperity as states struggle to balance their books is myopic and idiotic.

As for the deficit, we don’t need lessons on fiscal rectitude from a party that:

1. Drove us into two wars (and botched both of them),
2. Turned a budget surplus into a deficit quicker than you can say “Bush tax cuts for the rich,”
3. Passed into law an unfunded Medicare drug benefit to pander to and keep seniors in their political column,
4. Calls for fiscal austerity, but still wants extend Bush’s tax cuts for the rich even though their expiration would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the treasury,
5. Wants more spending on an already bloated Pentagon budget and on border fences with Mexico, and finally,
6. Whose deregulatory zeal got us into this mess in the first place.

Dick Cheney was wrong; deficits do matter – but not now.

I understand that Americans are unhappy with the Obama administration and congress for not fixing the economy. The fact is there are no easy answers or quick fixes to our economic doldrums, and much depends on what happens outside of our shores and beyond our control.  The impulse to hold someone, anyone, responsible for what ails us is strong.

Yet to elect more Republicans, a party bereft of ideas and only able to obstruct and impede government, is to invite paralysis to our policy making machinery and the infliction of more pain on those Americans who need our help in these times.  Please, let’s not cut off our noses to spite our faces in November.

Ever since Democrats passed the stimulus bill in early 2009, Republicans in congress have attempted to portray themselves as born-again deficit hawks, eschewing their profligate ways during the George W Bush years.  Fortunately, this fiction has not survived the question of what to do about the Bush tax cuts for the rich which are due to expire.

The Obama administration intends to let them expire, thereby saving the treasury some $697 billion over 10 years.  GOP leaders, however, support an extension of all the Bush tax cuts because (and they even manage to say this with a straight face) they don’t add to the deficit at all since they stimulate the economy and actually pay for themselves.  This nonsense has been disproved so many times you’d think even Republicans would be embarrassed to trot it out again; but it does highlight, in addition to a certain obtuseness, their hypocrisy on the deficit.  According to the GOP, extending unemployment benefits to those hit hardest by this recession must be paid for with offsetting cuts elsewhere in the budget, but the rule shouldn’t apply to tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans least touched by the downturn. Sweet!

McConnell and others in the GOP explain the difference in terms of their opposition to government spending adding to the deficit, but this hardly concerned them when they were passing the Medicare drug benefit or appropriations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – none of which were offset with spending cuts elsewhere.  Even now when pressed to identify specific and significant cuts to government spending in programs such as Medicare or Social Security or the defence budget, GOP spokespeople dodge and weave and obfuscate shamelessly without ever giving a straight answer.  Indeed, if you listen to them in other contexts, they insist not enough is being spent on things like border security.

This incoherence is fundamental to today’s national Republican Party and is guided by an essential right-wing conviction:  that an unfettered free market is paramount, and that government has no business and is essentially ineffective in all but a few areas such as national security.  The party therefore has no incentive to make government work efficiently or effectively either when they are in power or in opposition, since this would undermine their guiding principal.  This explains, for example, the utter incompetence of the Bush years when the GOP controlled both the White House and the congress, and the intransigence of today’s congressional Republicans as they strive to thwart any and all initiatives of the Obama administration.  For Republicans gridlock is good.

Voters should remember this as they go to the polls this fall.  By any reasonable standard, the Obama administration and congressional Democrats have accomplished a great deal in the last two years, virtually all of which I happen to believe, will be to the long term benefit of the country.  In the short term, the stimulus really did soften the blow of this deepest of economic downturns.  Yet the number of jobless is still way too high and Americans are feeling unsettled and grumpy; Democrats, unfairly or no, are likely to feel the brunt of their ire.  Republicans will benefit simply by being the party out of power. But a party as bereft of ideas as the GOP and whose policies and ideological devotion to deregulation largely caused the mess in the first place should not be rewarded with increased power and influence.  That is simply a recipe for prolonged national pain.

Rand Paul, son of Ron Paul, and Tea Party candidate for Senator of Kentucky won the primary.  He beat Trey Grayson in the Republican primary.

“I have a message,” Mr. Paul said, delivering a victory speech in Bowling Green. “A message from the Tea Party.  A message that is loud and clear and does not mince words: We have come to take our government back.”

Back from who?  The black man in the White House?  The bankers on Wall Street?  The super rich people that horde all the money?  The poor brown people who mow their lawns, pick their fruit, scrub their tubs, and burp their babies?  Who?

I’ve read a few articles about the Tea Party over the last few days, and I think that Michael Kinsley summed them up best in his article “My Country Tis of Me” for The Atlantic:

Not only do TPPs not have one big issue like Vietnam—they disagree about many of their smaller issues. What unites them is a more abstract resentment, an intensity of feeling rather than any concrete complaint or goal.

…

If the Tea Party Patriots ever developed a coherent platform or agenda, they would lose half their supporters.

The Seattle Times ran a feature piece on a Tea Party leader in last Sunday’s Pacific Magazine.

IF THE TEA Party movement is about the rage of the pitch-fork-wielding masses toward a government run amok, then Keli Carender is its most unlikely heroine.

She’s 30, fresh-faced, Oxford educated and about as Seattle as you can get in her slacker wardrobe of plaid duds and Converse All Stars.

Like the brainy girl in the front row of civics class who rolls her eyes every time the teacher gets a date wrong, there’s a little snarkiness in her disposition, perhaps a tick learned on her night job as an improv comedian.

But as a leader in a movement full of people who only see dark clouds over America’s horizon, Carender manages to be pleasantly partly-sunny, her hopes set firmly on shaking up the November midterm Congressional elections.

The article quotes a 69-year-old Tea Party supporter, Betty Donovan:

“I’m tired of them taking money from people that earn it and giving it to people that don’t earn it,” Donovan says, referring to health-care reform.

She doesn’t specify who these non-earners are.  The populism of the Tea Party movement makes targets of strange bedfellows, from welfare recipients to Wall Street titans.  The one universal enemy, however, is Big Brother.

Yes Big Brother.  The Federal Government.  The same organization that sends her a Social Security check every month and provides her with medical insurance.  What she and her gang of angry old white people object to is that Big Brother is running a deficit.  I would bet that she voted for George Bush twice, and I am certain that she hasn’t thought about how, if the Bush Administration and the brownshirt Republicans in congress had not given away trillions of dollars in tax cuts to the super rich and had not started two unfunded wars that cost trillions of dollars, Big Brother would have been in pretty good shape going into this recession.

One more observation about this quote from Keli Carender in the Seattle Times feature:

“The difference between maybe a leftist group and our group is we are very much individualist,” she says.  “It is a little bit harder to get a unified message.”

It’s probably harder because their “unified” message is about hate.  It’s hard to just come out and say that because, well… it would sound hateful.  Hard to rally around that.

Let’s start with the Democrat. 

Connecticut’s Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is looking to take over retiring Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd’s seat in the Senate. 

Yesterday The New York Times released a story that puts his campaign in jeopardy:

At a ceremony honoring veterans and senior citizens who sent presents to soldiers overseas, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut rose and spoke of an earlier time in his life.

“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008.  “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it — Afghanistan or Iraq — we owe our military men and women unconditional support.”

There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam.  He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.

…

In an interview on Monday, the attorney general said that he had misspoken about his service during the Norwalk event and might have misspoken on other occasions.  “My intention has always been to be completely clear and accurate and straightforward, out of respect to the veterans who served in Vietnam,” he said.

But an examination of his remarks at the ceremonies shows that he does not volunteer that his service never took him overseas.  And he describes the hostile reaction directed at veterans coming back from Vietnam, intimating that he was among them.

Are you kidding me?  He’s been lying, uh I mean “misspeaking,” about his service during the Vietnam war?  Who does he think he is?  George W. Bush?  

Five deferments from 1965 to 1970 isn’t exactly what you brag about to a group of veterans, unless you align yourself with Dick Cheney who once said he “had other priorities in the ’60s than military service.”  Yes… like his apprenticeship to Lucifer.

And now for the Republican.

Indiana Congressman Mark Souder, a self-described Conservative Christian, resigned today after admitting to an extra-marital affaire with a part-time staffer.  The Washington Post reports:

The conservative Christian congressman’s chief of staff, Renee Howell, confronted him last week over the rumored affair with Tracy Meadows Jackson, according to a source in the office. On Tuesday morning, two weeks after winning the primary, Souder publicly admitted the affair — without naming the staffer — and said he would resign effective Friday.

The affair began after Jackson was hired in 2004, according to the source in the office.  Jackson, who is married, was to be a guest host with Souder for a daily radio spot he recorded for WFCV, a Christian radio station in Fort Wayne, Ind. Jackson also at one point played host for a local cable-access show that served as a platform for Souder to discuss conservative issues, and she helped produce numerous videos of Souder’s speeches and positions, including one in which they discussed his strong support for teen abstinence.

Silly rabbit, abstinence is for kids!  It’s not for grownups.  And if you happen to be an egotistical, hypocritical, married congressmen that’s not getting enough at home, no problem – just go add a fuckbunny to your staff!

Since President Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, the administration and Democrats in Congress have arguably:

Saved the United States economy from a meltdown which could easily have become a depression; given a new lease on life to the US automobile manufacturing industry whose collapse would have been disastrous to Michigan in particular and the Mid-West in general; put into law health-care legislation which fills a crucial hole in the nation’s frayed social safety net and taken a giant step towards ending the shame of being the only advanced country that doesn’t offer universal coverage to its citizens. And with luck, Congress will, by summer, pass an overhaul of the financial regulatory system which will be the most significant and far reaching in a generation to protect us from the sort of catastrophe that befell the nation at the end of the Bush administration.  Assuming, that is, the GOP hasn’t found a way to block it.

The Democrats’ reward for this impressive record of accomplishment from the American electorate will, at best, be a much reduced majority in both houses of Congress or, very possibly, the loss of one or both to the Republicans.  These are the same Republicans who have given the word “obstructionism” a whole new meaning and dimension; the same Republicans who have repeatedly put what they perceive as their political interests ahead of those of the country.

Yes the deficit is dangerously high and attributable in part to TARP and the 2009 stimulus bill. Yet most economists agree that the government couldn’t stand by and do nothing in the face of the sort of deep and destructive recession Obama inherited from the Bush administration. The $787 billion stimulus, passed with just one Republican vote in the Senate, gave a much needed boost to the economy and saved hard pressed states from devastating cuts to teachers, police and other critical public servants. And TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) which, in any case was passed at the end of the Bush administration, has been used wisely to prevent a disintegration of our financial system.

As for the health-care legislation, once Americans have penetrated the smokescreen of misinformation generated by the GOP, they will come to realize that at a time when money talks and Big Business rules, Democrats showed great political bravery and determination in striking a telling blow for ordinary, hardworking people who feel, and usually are, powerless in this political environment. The health care bill will ensure that wealth flows, just for a change, from the affluent to the benefit of those less well off in our society. 

Yet Americans see none of this.  Still grumpy because the economy remains weak, we will mindlessly punish those whom we blame for not fixing now what hasn’t had time to be mended; and reward those who did more than anyone to put us into the mess in the first place and have done nothing constructive to get us out of it. And as a bonus we will ensure political gridlock in which little that is useful can get done.

Where’s the sense or the justice in that?

A while back we had a post about how far-right wingnuts want kill President Obama.  Well now they are pissed off at the Democrats in congress, and they want to kill them too.  MSNBC reports:

At a news conference in Washington, Hoyer said people have yelled that Democratic lawmakers should be put on firing lines and posters have appeared with the faces of lawmakers in the cross hairs of a target.

…

Gun imagery was used in a posting on the Facebook page of Sarah Palin urging people to organize against 20 House Democrats who voted for the health care bill and whose districts went for the John McCain-Palin ticket two years ago.  Palin’s post featured a U.S. map with circles and cross hairs over the 20 districts.

…

In audio recordings of voice messages obtained by NBC News and other networks, one caller repeatedly tells Stupak “I hope you die.”

“There are millions of people across the country who wish you ill,” another caller says. “And all of those thoughts projected on you will materialize into something that’s not very good for you.”

A fax with the title “Defecating on Stupak” carried a picture of a gallows with “Bart (SS) Stupak” on it and a noose attached. It was captioned, “All Baby Killers come to unseemly ends Either by the hand of man or by the hand of God.”

And the Washington Post reports that in addition to the fax, Stupak also received a voice mail threatening his life:

…and an anonymous voice mail saying: “You’re dead. We know where you live. We’ll get you.”

And as if that’s not enough,  The New York Times reports:

Representative Louise M. Slaughter, a senior Democrat from New York, received a phone message threatening sniper attacks against lawmakers and their families.

…

Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the highest-ranking black lawmaker in the House, said he received an anonymous fax showing the image of a noose.

The Washington Post also reported: 

Some Democrats, sensing a political opportunity, suggested that Republicans were fanning the anger with their fiery comments in recent days. Several GOP lawmakers stood on the speaker’s balcony at the Capitol overlooking a tea party protest last weekend holding up signs that read “Kill the Bill.” Below them, protesters were yelling “No! No! No!” and “Nancy, you will burn in hell for this!”

And now I must give credit where credit is do.  Some of the Republicans heeded the call and denounced the violence and threats perpetrated by their followers, including House Minority Leader John Boehner:

“…violence and threats are unacceptable.  That’s not the American way.  We need to take that anger and channel it into positive change.”

Maybe he said that because he meant it, or maybe he said it because he is a media whore and he wanted to make the papers and be on TV again.  Ugh.  If he’s on again tomorrow morning, I am going to puke up my yogurt.

I am so tired of turning on the morning news and seeing nothing but a bunch of Republicans whining about the passage of the health care reform bill.  I just don’t get why they get so much air time to bash Obama and a bill the Democrats passed after about fifteen months of prolonged debate.  I was hoping that maybe today the media would focus on what was actually in the bill and, I don’t know, maybe have a Democrat explain it and why it’s a good thing.  But no such luck, the Today Show had clips of Limbaugh, Boehner, McConnell, and a gaggle of other rich old white guys.  NPR had a five-minute interview with Judd Gregg (R-NH) who babbled on and on about how the Republicans have been treated so badly by the Democrats.  Hmmm… I wonder if he was sympathetic to the Democratic minority from 2000 – 2006?  I can’t say for sure, but my guess is NOT.  Which reminds me… Jon Stewart said it best shortly after Obama was elected president and the Democrats took over both houses of congress:  “You guys lost!  It’s supposed to taste like a shit sandwich.”   They can serve it up, but they can’t eat it.

Okay so I continue to be frustrated by the mainstream media, and not just because they seem to devote so much time to the losers, but also because the losing party is home to so many mean, xenophobic, racist bigots.  I cannot tell you how pleased I would be if I turned on a major network newscast and saw that they were doing an in-depth report about the hateful bigots that proudly align themselves with Republicans and Tea Partiers. 

I found some solace in Bob Herbert’s column this morning:

…it is time for every American of good will to hold the Republican Party accountable for its role in tolerating, shielding and encouraging foul, mean-spirited and bigoted behavior in its ranks and among its strongest supporters.

For decades the G.O.P. has been the party of fear, ignorance and divisiveness.  All you have to do is look around to see what it has done to the country.  The greatest economic inequality since the Gilded Age was followed by a near-total collapse of the overall economy.  As a country, we have a monumental mess on our hands and still the Republicans have nothing to offer in the way of a remedy except more tax cuts for the rich.

This is the party of trickle down and weapons of mass destruction, the party of birthers and death-panel lunatics.  This is the party that genuflects at the altar of right-wing talk radio, with its insane, nauseating, nonstop commitment to hatred and bigotry.

Glenn Beck of Fox News has called President Obama a “racist” and asserted that he “has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

Mike Huckabee, a former Republican presidential candidate, has said of Mr. Obama’s economic policies:  “Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff.”

The G.O.P. poisons the political atmosphere and then has the gall to complain about an absence of bipartisanship.

There’s much more detail about Tea Partiers taunting a poor man with Parkinson’s disease, and the spitting, cursing, and name calling done on Saturday by protestors as the Democrats walked into the halls of congress.  Read it all here.

This is slide #31 from a PowerPoint presentation used at an RNC fundraising event in Florida.  The Obama caricature has been around for a while, and this is the first time I’ve seen Pelosi as Cruella de Ville, but Scooby Doo?  Harry Reid?  Really?

Politico reports:

The 72-page document was provided to POLITICO by a Democrat, who said a hard copy had been left in the hotel hosting the $2,500-a-head retreat, the Gasparilla Inn & Club. Sources at the event said the presentation was delivered by [Robert] Bickhart and by the RNC Finance Chairman, Peter Terpeluk, a former ambassador to Luxembourg under President George W. Bush.

…

The presentation explains the Republican fundraising in simple terms.

“What can you sell when you do not have the White House, the House, or the Senate…?” it asks.

The answer: “Save the country from trending toward Socialism!”

Manipulating donors with crude caricatures and playing on their fears is hardly unique to Republicans or to the RNC – Democrats raised millions off George W. Bush in similar terms – but rarely is it practiced in such cartoonish terms.

That’s probably because Republicans rarely even understand satire, so when they try producing it themselves, it turns out to be a failure – pretty much like everything else they do.  Although if obstructing progress counts as “doing something” they have turned pro in that regard.

I read an amusing article by Michael Kinsley on The Atlantic Wire yesterday.  It was about how Ronald Reagan, based on his record and his statements, would not be able to adopt the “Reagan Resolution.”  It’s a list of ten principles to uphold that many Republicans wanted to adopt as an acid test for their candidates getting any money from the Republican Party.  The ten principles are:

(1) Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill
(2) Market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;
(3) Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;
(4) Workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check
(5) Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
(6) Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
(7) Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat
(8) Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
(9) Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and
(10) The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership

Kinsley writes:

He was a great one for assertions of principle but never one for mean-spirited anathemas. It’s a good thing, because if you judge from what he actually did as president, as opposed to what he said he would do—or, by the end, what he might have claimed (or even honestly believed) he had done—Ronald Reagan would not be able to sign the Reagan Resolution.

Kinsley then went through all ten principles and by his count came up with four apostasies of Reagan.  My interpretation of Kinsley’s summary follows, and I say interpretation because Kinsley might be saying Reagan did not comply with #2 (he had no stance on healthcare reform), and it’s difficult to say for sure if he would have adhered to #7.  But anyway…

He increased the size of the government payroll and increased tne national debt.

He signed a law that authorized amnesty for illegal immigrants.

On the “contaiment of North Korea and Iran” principle, the records shows that he publicly supported Sadaam Hussein’s regime, and secretly funneled money to Iran.  I wouldn’t call that contaiment.

He was in favor of the Brady Bill that imposed some restrictions on gun ownership.

(Read Kinsely for yourself to see if you agree.)

That was a good read, but even funnier was this comic that I just read on Mr. Fish’s site.