Guns 'n' whiskey

The great state of Tennessee, which used to be known as the three states of Tennessee before a dentist from Mississippi became governor and thought the state should at least pretend to be more unified, is giving us a law that can only be described as, well, the dumbest law ever devised by a state legislature. Looking at it, I can only conclude that the state legislators of Tennessee are complete morons who hid behind the door the day the brains were given out.

But what can you actually expect from the state that probably leads the country in meth labs per capita? I was in Tennessee recently and had the misfortune of having to purchase some behind the counter allergy medicine, the kind that has a banned substance used in concocting methamphetine. In order to buy said medicine, one must show the behind the counter staff your ID and sign a form that says you will abide by some part of the U.S. code that presumably deals with what you intend to do with a banned substance.

"This is the part where I swear I won't use it to make meth, right?" I said to the nice lady behind the counter, who promptly looked at me like I'd just insulted her favorite nephew, which, given the propensity of meth labs in the state, I may well have.

This isn't the first time, of course, that Tennessee has given us something of a dubious nature. The state's given us three presidents, although none of them were actually born there. There was that son of a bitch Andy Jackson, a war "hero" who launched the native southeasterners on what became known as the Trail of Tears. He had a particularly strong hatred for the natives.

There was the uneducated tailor Andrew Johnson, picked by Abe Lincoln as his vice president in an unsuccessful bid to coddle the South. Johnson, I suppose, you could call the accidental president, coming to the office as he did via the assassination of his predecessor. Johnson's chief claim to fame is botching Reconstruction so badly that we still haven't recovered from it.

And then there's James K. Polk. I have no idea who he was or what he did, but given Tennessee's track record with presidents, it was likely nothing to write home about. It's probably a good thing that the Supreme Court stole the election from Al Gore.

It's not that I don't appreciate the state of Tennessee, mind you. There have been some good things to come from there. Gore, for example. He's done more as a private citizen to get things moving on the environmental disaster we're living in than he probably could have done as president having to fight the idiots who make up Congress, who, after all, are just a few steps above state legislators. Or, in the case of congresscritters like Michelle Bachman, a few steps below.

And there's Dolly Parton. She's funny, can actually sing and write songs, is fairly liberal and has done more for the incredibly poor people of her native Sevier County on her own than the state ever even thought of doing. She may look fake, but she is as real as they come.

And then there's ... um ... I'm sure there's something else. It's a very beautiful state. But I've gone on long enough and not even told you what the Incredibly Stupid Law does.

It allows people to go into bars with guns.

I know. I mean, I watched Deadwood. I have no desire whatsoever to live it.

Now, to be fair, the law does allow individual bars to "opt out" by posting a sign saying they don't allow guns, which I think the legislators added in because somebody told them it might be unconstitutional to force private businesses to allow people to bring guns.

But seriously, for what unimaginable reason did these guys think it was a good idea to mix alcohol and guns? Were they worried about a terrorist attack on the local Last Chance Saloon and thought, hey, if the citizens are armed, they can put down that problem right there. Or maybe Tennessee has a problem with shootings in bars the way other states have at schools.

Y'gotta admit. It is an awfully stupid law. But on the other hand, maybe it's not such a bad idea after all. Who's going to be going into a bar with a gun? Stupid people, that's who. And if they get a little intoxicated and then get into some ridiculous altercation with somebody, whose loss is it really -- besides their families -- if they shoot each other to death? Now, given that drunks probably can't shoot straight, some innocent bystanders will probably get hurt. But they're probably packin too and it was just happenstance that they weren't the ones in the fight that time.

So why not make it a national law? Why should Tennessee have all the fun? Congress could style it The Stupid People Eradication Act of 2009, and we'd all be a lot happier and safer because of it.

Just imagine if murdering extremists Scott Roeder, James von Brunn and Abdulhakim Muhammad Bledsoe had run into one another at a bar with that law in effect. Roeder and von Brunn woulda probably shot Bledsoe just on principle right away, then Roeder and von Brunn would get into a fight over whether providing abortions is worse than being black or Jewish, and eventually they would pull out their guns, fire, and they'd both be dead. In a matter of moments, three fewer terrorists on the loose.

And three more Americans who did nothing wrong would still be alive.

I'm not sure what the Tennessee legislature hopes to accomplish with this law, but I think, if applied correctly, it could seriously reduce the problems caused by insufficient or corrupted brain activity.

And who wouldn't want that?


AWOP Political Contributing Editor

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Right to health care

Since my recent foray into market forecast at News Writer's Guide to the Market was such a spectacular failure -- I consistently predicted doom and gloom even as the markets rose and rose -- I thought perhaps it might be time to wade into another arena about which I know next to nothing, although even that's a far sight better than an awful lot of Americans these days.

And just for the record -- despite the pundits' deep sighs of relief and fresh new predictions that we're climbing out of the economic hole 30 years of conservative government dug us into -- I still think there's a lot more nastiness yet to come. This is a fake out. Reminds me of when I went to see Jessica Lange as country music crossover star Patsy Cline in that movie -- Sweet Dreams. I would go see Jessica Lange in anything, then and now.

Patsy Cline, as we all know (well, those of us old enough) died in a plane crash in Tennessee. In the movie, Patsy and her friends are on board that plane when the engines quit. Oh no, theatre-goers thought. This is it. Sweet dreams. But after a few heart-stopping minutes, the pilot gets the engines going again. Everyone on board the plane breathes again. Everyone in the audience breathes again. And then the plane slams into the side of a mountain.

Pretty stupid of us, really. We all knew the fucking plane was gonna hit the mountain, because we were all Patsy Cline fans and we knew what happened. But when those engines started again, we had some kind of amnesia. Like we forgot it was a movie, and we thought, hey, Patsy survives, even though we knew damn well she didn't. When the plane hit the mountain, the gasp in the audience was audible. Very audible.

Thus it is with the economy. We all know what's gonna happen, but we've been lulled by the start-up of the engines, not realizing we've lost too much altitude and we're gonna hit the fucking mountain.

But what do I know? I'm no economist, and I've been wrong for months on this.

So the other issue I'd like to tackle is health care. Yes. An insurmountable mountain on its own, I'm likely to need a bigger plane and maybe two pilots to maneuver this one.

Here's what I know about health care: In the United States, if you gots the bucks, you gots the care. If you don't, welcome to the emergency room.

So here's the deal. The president wants to put a public option for health care insurance on the table to cover those folks whose employers don't provide it, who don't have employers or who can't afford private insurance.

The big objection from the president's opponents, as best as I can see, is that it might work.

Yes, public health care could become so successful at lowering premiums and providing quality care that it would hurt the private insurers.

I don't know about you, but it seems to me the private insurers are most of the problem now. Let's hurt them.

The objectors also worry that under a public option, health care might be rationed and some unnamed, faceless bureaucrat who's never seen the patient will decide how to handle the case.

Excuse me, but for those of us with insurance, isn't that how it's handled now? I think they call it "managed care." Manage this, fuckers. And besides, that would never happen to them, because they're all fucking millionaires. They get what they want, when they want it.

And that's a lie anyway. The objectors like to malign the Canadian system, but has anybody noticed a stream of Canadians fleeing to the United States because they can't get the open heart surgery they need? I didn't think so.


But the insurance companies -- and the pharmaceutical companies -- have the politicans sewn up rather well, so what we end up getting in the way of health care reform won't be much of a reform. It may look different, but the results won't change -- the rich folks will still be able to buy what they want, nameless, faceless bureaucrats will still determine when the rest of us are sick enough to get that coverage and there'll still be a helluva lotta people waiting in the ER waiting room because of a sore throat.

Unless ... unless ... Congress somehow gets the idea that there might be consequences to leaving the status quo. Not sure where they might come across that idea ... maybe ... nah. Y'all don't want to bombard them with calls and letters. And if you lose, as you probably will, you'll have to make good on your threats, and you know what a pain in the ass that is.

But progressive folk are lining up Democratic opposition to the war suplemental bill. Last time I saw a count, they had 11 of the 28 Democrats they needed to stop it. It's gonna be close, but it could work. They already got the Lieberman-Graham amendment barring the release of any more torture photos dropped. Success may be closer than we think.

I have far too many friends who are one major medical bill away from bankruptcy, and that just shouldn't be. Conservatives are wrong when they say that it shouldn't be government's job to take care of the health care of its citizens. I say what could be more right?

And please, don't even get me started on the socialist bullshit. What the hell do they think Medicaid is? Ohhh riiiiight. They'd like to ditch that too. Compassionate conservative my ass.

The Declaration of Independence says that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are our inalienable rights. Universal health care coverage will help keep us all healthy. And that means we keep those rights.

Unless, of course, the conservatives really do believe that only some of us deserve those rights.


AWOP Political Contributing Editor

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Sunday morning paganism

So a cheating ex-House Speaker and a fundamentalist preacher former governor walked into an evangelical church ...

No, seriously. They did. Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee went to church together. OK, it was a political forum held at a church. But they went together. Talk about your odd couples.

I dunno about you, but Newt Gingrich as a leading religious figure I never saw coming. Newt and morality don't belong in the same sentence, although I just did it right there.

By the way, that's Newt's lesbian half-sister Candace up there. I couldn't bear to see Newt or Mike in that spot. I once took Candace to a baseball game. She almost caught a foul ball.

And what is this obsession my colleagues have with this guy anyway? He's a bitter, nasty politician who won his first congressional race by pummeling Democrat Virginia Shapard, a married mother of two, with campaign ads like

Newt will take his family to Washington and keep them together; Virginia will go to Washington and leave her husband and children in the care of a nanny!

Right after winning the race, of course, he served his wife with divorce papers. While she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery. I think he wanted to marry the staffer he'd been screwing or something. What a swell guy.

And some kind of expert? Other than being a former House Speaker and all around pig, Newt Gingrich is known for being a "historian" who writes books speculating that the Confederate army won major battles they actually lost during the Civil War.

Just for the record, if you'd really like some speculation about the Confederacy winning that war and what might have happened on this continent in that event, try Harry Turtledove's alternate history The Great War series, which begins with the idea that the Confederates won the Civil War and carries that scenario through the middle of the 20th Century, detailing the very bloody (alternate) history that might have occurred and the horrors that might have been unleashed. Quite unlike Newt's little fantasies where the South wins and all is well after that.

Again, Newt and Mike -- too much. That's Harry Turtledove.

But I digress, as I often do with too little coffee.

So Newt and Mike walk into a political forum at Rock Church in Hampton Roads, Virginia, where Huckabee says that the California Supreme Court decision upholding Proposition 8 is "a miracle from God's hands" akin to the Americans' victory over the British in the Revolutionary War and Newt says

I am not a citizen of the world. I am a citizen of the United States because only in the United States does citizenship start with our creator.

...

I think this is one of the most critical moments in American history. We are living in a period where we are surrounded by paganism.

Holy shit. I guess socialism just wasn't bad enough. But now we're all pagans. And damn, I didn't know that it took "our creator" to make us citizens of the United States. I thought IT WAS BEING BORN HERE OR NATURALIZED.

But hey, that's why the right has a little credibility problem. They go on and on about patriotism and the Constitution and what not, but they ignore it when it comes to dredging for votes.

And how nice they're still dredging at the bottom of a leaky barrel.

But let's get back to this pagan thing. Like, what's wrong with being a pagan, I mean, other than not being Christian? The word itself is one of those Latin roots words -- paganus, which I think meant rural bumpkin or something. Right wing, evangelical Christians, though -- the kind that Newt and Mike were patronizing on Friday -- take it much further these days and generally use it to mean "not us." They sometimes make allowances for Judaism -- because of that whole Armageddon thing -- and used to make allowances for Islam, before the recent unpleasantness. I'm not sure that Muslims aren't now lumped into the pagan category. Or maybe they're just labeled "terrorists."

I'm sorry he didn't say "heathen," though. I used to refer to myself as a pagan, before "neopaganism," whatever the hell that is, got all popular among the Not Christian crowd. Now I prefer heathen. It's the same word, really, heathen being an Old English translation of paganus. But there's something much more unseemly about heathen. And I'm nothing if not unseemly.

Much the same as I was peculiarly attracted to the word "queer" in my second grade spelling book. I guess the spelling book people were oblivious to uses of the word other than how they defined it, which was "odd" and, oddly enough, "peculiar."

I guess you could call me a queer heathen.

Actually, you can call me whatever you damn well please. One thing I've learned in all my years -- well, actually in the last few months -- is that the only definition of me that matters is the one I have. So you can call me queer, call me heathen, call me pagan, call me batshit insane if you want, but it really doesn't matter. Says more about you than it does about me, unless, of course, you actually call me what I am. And then it still says more about you, that you actually get it.

But please. Don't call me a Republican. That'll really piss me off. It'll prove you're stupid, and I have a real problem with stupid people.

Which, of course, brings us back to Newt and Mike and going to church on Friday. Ollie North spoke at that little event too, which was called "Rediscovering God in America." I guess lying and cheating and breaking the law is OK by God in America, although I'm also guessing that it would not be OK by God in America if someone from the Not Christian crowd did it. Or someone, like, say, the president, who is perceived as being Not Christian by the extremist Christian crowd.

Not that I'm implying anybody is a hypocrite or anything. I'm just sayin.

I lay it out the way I see it. You decide whether it's bullshit.


AWOP Political Contributing Editor


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Pay attention

As a rule, I really quite enjoy learning new things. It keeps me on my toes and serves as a solid reminder that despite outward appearances, I really don't know everything.

Most of the time, the new things learned register little more than a check mark in the box beside "Well, I did not know that, but now I do." But I learned something last week that I still can't quite wrap my mind around.

Seems there are significant numbers of my colleagues who have no fucking clue what the right wing extremist radio and television hosts are actually saying.

I know. How could they not know? Mostly it appears that my very busy colleagues just don't have the time to keep up with the specifics of what's being said on the airwaves. More importantly, though, is what they tell me about how they set their priorities regarding what they pay attention to and what they ignore.

They don't have the time, they say, for the fringes. And those right-wing bloviator dudes, they're the fringes.

Coulda knocked me over with a feather, I'm tellin' ya. So let me get this straight. My beloved colleagues are so busy parsing what it means for the president and the first lady to take a date night and run up to New York for a show that they don't know that the talkers are poisoning the air waves with the most vile and ugly shit since, well, the presidential campaign. And apparently my collagues missed all that nastiness for the very same reason.

They think it's coming from the fringes, and therefore should be ignored.

What my colleagues seem to have overlooked is that the radical right -- the doctor killers, the gay bashers, the anti-immigrant crowd -- has taken over mainstream conservatism. They're not the fringe anymore, but my studious colleagues are still mired back in the 70s or 80s when the whackos were still considered whackos by all sides.

And that, my friends, is why we all know that Scott Roeder was an isolated individual acting completely on his own. Just like all the other right-wing idealogues who have taken their leaders' rants to heart over the years and taken a gun or explosives to take care of the situation.

"But how many times has that happened recently?" one colleague asked. They mean, of course, that violence has only rarely burst through the thin membrane that keeps it contained, and they're right about that. For now.

But if they're not paying attention to the Glenn Becks and the Lou Dobbses and the Bill O'Reillys and the Sean Hannitys and the Rush Limbaughs and the Michael Savages and the Michelle Malkins and the Ann Coulters, then they're missing something crucial. They did not just suddenly snap one day.

Theses guys who go shoot up a liberal Christian church one day because they don't like liberals aren't acting in a vacuum. They're acting on the what they've been told by their spiritual leaders about the vile, un-American and anti-Christian ways of the liberal. What choice do they have if they believe that they are right, absolutely right, and are backed by none other than god on this one?

See Cartoons by Cartoon by Pat Bagley - Courtesy of Politicalcartoons.com - Email this Cartoon

But my colleagues, they're waiting for proof, solid evidence that when a right-wing extremist kills a doctor who provides abortions it was anything other than he was a disturbed individual who just went over the edge one day.

They might make a half-assed attempt to figure out what made the guy "snap," but the second they find something -- he lost his food stamps, his wife filed for divorce, he got in a fender-bender with a car bearing an Obama sticker -- that search is over. They found their reason.

My colleagues don't look at the atmosphere these people are breathing every day of their lives. These extremist attitudes would die off if they were truly isolated. They thrive on reinforcement from like-minded individuals -- particularly pronouncements from on high, coupled with a political leadership that won't challenge the bullshit and often participates in it.

We heard this same shit during the campaign, when my colleagues, deathly afraid of looking at their own participation in the creating a toxic atmosphere, signed on for the "both sides are doing it" campaign regarding the incredibly racist anti-Obama rallies that McCain-Palin rallies. And yes, there are some losers on the left who play those stupid games. But until I hear the liberals are stockpiling weapons and ammunition, stalking Operation Rescue employees and harassing them with images of women who died because they were not allowed to have an abortion and assassinating Randall Terry, then that argument has no standing here because there is no comparison.

I still don't know what to do about my ill-informed colleagues. Sadly, I guess it's just gonna take more violent death to bring them around.


AWOP Political Contributing Editor

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Conspiracy to commit terrorism

America suffered a terrorist attack on Sunday. One man, the target of the terrorist assassination, was killed.

Oh, don't expect my colleagues to report it that way, because that ain't gonna happen. In fact they're gonna go along with cops.

At this time we feel this is an act of an isolated individual.

And that, my friends, is -- say it with me -- bullshit.

Wichita police also think they "the right person arrested" for the assassination of George Tiller, a Kansas doctor who provided abortions -- and, more crucial to this story -- late term abortions. Not late term "oh my god I really don't want to have a baby" abortions, mind you, but late term "this baby is going to be born with a serious defect and continuing the pregnancy putsthe mother's life at risk" abortions.

Since police think that Scott Roeder is the right person, let's just assume that he is. After all, they caught him in the car identified by witnesses at Tiller's church where he was killed.

Oh, I didn't mention that the motherfucker went to the man's church and killed him there, where he was serving as an usher? What does that say about the killer?

So police caught Scott Roeder in the car witnesses identified. The car with the license plate number witnesses provided investigators. So, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and dispense with Mr. Roeder's constitutional right to presumption of innocence and go all Nancy Grace on him.

He's guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

And so is Bill O'Reilly.

Yeah, that Bill O'Reilly. Are there any others?

George Tiller was a special target for O'Reilly, who regularly called him Tiller the Baby Killer, and last mentioned the doctor on his show, the most-watched news show on cable television, on April 27. Gabriel Winant at Salon:

[T]he Fox bully repeatedly portrayed the doctor as a murderer on the loose, allowed to do whatever he wanted by corrupt and decadent authorities. . . O'Reilly's language describing Tiller, and accusing the state and its elites of complicity in his actions, could become extremely vivid. . . "No question Dr. Tiller has blood on his hands. But now so does Governor Sebelius. She is not fit to serve. Nor is any Kansas politician who supports Tiller's business of destruction. I wouldn't want to be these people if there is a Judgment Day. I just -- you know ... Kansas is a great state, but this is a disgrace upon everyone who lives in Kansas. Is it not?

But let's not blame all of this on Bill O'Reilly. He'd love that anyway. Then he can sit on his high horse, toss his hands in the air and claim his innocence because he's just a guy with a microphone.

Exactly.

But let's look beyond that. Roeder is supposedly a member of Operation Rescue, the anti-abortion outfit founded by Randall Terry and now run by Troy Newman, who found he had a hard time getting past all the private security guards and the armored car and the gated community that his ilk forced on Tiller. So instead, he targeted Tiller's employees, doing things like sending anonymous postcards to their neighbors with photographs of mangled fetuses, telling them their neighbor -- by name -- "participates in killing babies like these."

Newman issued a statement, of course, condemning the shooting and saying he hoped that the act of a deranged individual didn't cast a pall on the "peaceful" actions of Operation Rescue.

Yes. Peaceful.

And what of Randal Terry? He condemned the shooting too.

George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder.

Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches.

Did I mention that Operation Rescue is based in Kansas and that George Tiller was their Public Enemy No. 1? Must be a lot of celebrating going on at the office today. Guess they'll have to pick another target now and move their HQ.

Oh, and let's add former Kansas Attorney General Phil Kline, the anti-abortion activist who used his state office to harass Tiller legally. Kline lost in court.

Scott Roeder. He served two months of a 16 month sentence in prison after being caught with explosives in his car. And a military rifle, a gas mask, mask canisters, rifle and pistol ammunition and a sheath knife. He posted his feelings on Operation Rescue's Web site and others. He has been associated with the anti-government Freemen movement. His ex-wife said part of the reason for their divorce 12 years ago was his "radical views."

Radical views. That's what they are. Out there. Crazy. But right in line with the Republican Party. Why, just the other day the Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, told CNN he was too busy to tell his fellow partiers to stop calling Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a racist, even though he disagreed with the tactic, because he was just too busy.

Look. I've got a big job to do dealing with 40 Senate Republicans and trying to advance the nation's agenda, and better things to do than be the speech police over people who have their views about a very important appointment.

Guess he hasn't really had time to tell folks to stop inciting violence either. Like Sunday's violence. Like the violence in Tennessee a year ago where another "isolated incident" saw James David Atkisson kill two people at a Unitarian Universalist Church because he didn't like liberals. Or loner Eric Robert Rudolph, who targeted family planning clinics, gay bars and the Olympics for his fury (Rev. Spitz, can you find me over here?) Or Timothy McVeigh, for that matter.

And then they wonder why the Department of Homeland Security would dare to issue a report on extremist right wing violence. I suspect the right wingers were really upset about that report because they knew that they, in fact, are the extremists and worried the rest of us might catch on.

They shouldn't be concerned. You and I, we already know. And my colleagues will treat this incident just like they've treated all the others so nobody else will make the connection.

But that's a connection we all need to make. The anger these folks harbor is just below the surface and breaking through. They lack the ability to handle such a strong force sanely. They believe they are justified in whatever they do. They have been poked and prodded repeatedly by their leaders, some of whom do their poking and prodding by turning away and ignoring the most egregious of the pokes and prods.

The "deranged individuals" who carry out these terrorist acts don't just snap one day. They've been pushed to this logical outcome for years.

Expect more of it.


And do your best to counter it. Tell the truth. Tell my colleagues to tell the truth. It's the only way we can break a millennia long habit of resorting to violence when we don't get our way. Those who resort to violence believe they have no other choice. But they do.

It's called acceptance. Hard concept, I know, for those who have no doubts in their righteousness.

For George Tiller and his family, it's too late. But there's still time for others. Make sure it's not too late for them.


AWOP Political Contributing Editor

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