Don't Worry, They Won't Figure It Out

In an election year when the GOP expected to get control of the Senate, they lost ground. The reason that happened can be laid at the feet of the religious right and the Tea Party.

In 2010, the combination of the evangelicals and the Tea party defeated moderate candidates in the primaries and then went on to lose Senate races in Colorado, Nevada, Delaware and Connecticut. In this election, they did the same thing and went on to lose Missouri, Indiana, Maine and Connecticut.*

Conservatives like to say that this nation is "center-right". But when it comes time to nominate their candidates, they forget the "center" part. So they'll keep saying things such a "Romney lost because he wasn't a true conservative" and they will continue to get their asses beaten.

Look at the other GOP candidates for the White House this last election. Does anyone truly believe that any of them, other than maybe Jon Huntsman, would have had a prayer of winning over the middle-of-the-road voters? But Huntsman was too moderate for his party and his campaign sank faster than the Costa Concordia.

By the way, I hope that somebody has the good grace to send a bottle of good champagne to Nate Silver and a box of Seppuku knives to the pundits at Fox News, with a specially-engraved one being delivered by messenger to Newt Gingrich.**
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* Back in 2010, Linda McMahon, who is a pro-wrestling magnate, won the Connecticut primary, defeating the moderate candidate of the party. She self-financed her campaign, to the tune of about $50 million or so, and got shelled in the general election. In this election, she spent about as much of her own money, outspending her opponent by something like 4 or 5 to 1 and lost by 80,000 votes.
** The old European tradition of sending a finely-engraved revolver and one cartridge would be an acceptable substitute. But given the number of "too close to call" pundits this time around, we might have to cheap out a bit.

Duty Done

I was at the polling station ten minutes after it opened and out the door in about eight minutes.

If you haven't voted, get off your ass and go vote.

If you are eligible to register to vote (or if you registered) and you didn't vote, then shut your goddamned yap about politics. Your opinion is worth dogshit. Actually less than dogshit, for at least that has some function.

Vote, people.

A Message for iPod/iPad/iPhone Suckers Devotees.

No comment needed, the snark is self-contained.

Get Offa Yer Ass and Vote

People died for the right to vote. I'm not just talking about soldiers, here.

I mean the people in places, in this country, where registering to vote sometimes meant that the night riders would show up and kill you. I mean the people who protested and who were beaten, jailed and sometimes murdered because they wanted the right to vote.

And it's "too much trouble" for you to drag your dead ass to the polls and vote?

Give me a break. Get up tomorrow, get dressed and go vote. Don't run your mouth about how awful the system is if you cannot take the time to have your say on the one day that you can.

Even now, there is a major political party who is trying to make it harder for the young, the old and the poor to vote. They are the intellectual descendants of the night riders.

Fuck them. And don't just say that. Go vote.

A Political Seuss Parody

Bangity- PPC Match Edition

I shot a PPC match today. Each run through the match is 48 shots, with a maximum score of 480. The procedure is that you shoot and then you decide whether to declare the round you just shot as the one you choose for score. You can shoot more, if you want, for fun, but the round you declared as your scoring run is the only one that counts.

This is a round:

At five yards, three shots, strong hand, from a draw in five seconds. Then three rounds from low ready with the weak hand, in five seconds.

At seven yards, six rounds, strong hand, from a draw in ten seconds. Then there is a reload and you shoot another six rounds from a draw in ten seconds.

At fifteen yards, from a draw, two hand hold, six shots, reload and another six, all in 20 seconds.

At twenty-five yards, from a draw, two hand hold, six shots, reload, six more shots, drop to a barricade, reload, six more shots, in 90 seconds.

My first round was 443 with 11-X. On the third stage for the first six shots, I short-stroked one round, so the cylinder rotated but the hammer didn't move.* After I got a "click" to indicate that I had reached the first round's position, I quickly cycled through the chambers until one went "bang". Then I reloaded and very rapidly got off the next six shots. I barely got the 12th shot off in time.

My second round was 452 with 13-X. I declared that one. According to the scoring card they handed out, that's high expert (3 points under master). And that is with a police-stock S&W Model 10 .38 revolver.

I was pretty happy with that score. I guess I shoot pretty well for a girl. {heh}
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* If I very slowly let the trigger out after dry-firing, I can hear three distinct clicks at the end of the trigger's travel. Those clicks are the mechanism resetting. If I pull the trigger back after the second click, the cylinder rotates but the hammer does not move. I've never had this happen before, but I'm new to fast shooting.

Caturday

Jake, lord of all he surveys.

The half-lidded eyes are his trademark. They make him look too cool for words. Visitors look at his gaze and fall in love with him. I'm convinced that if he wasn't so large, someone would have tried to steal him.

And then I'd have Chuck Wendig's problem.

The War on Reason

Science is an experimental pursuit. When the data and a hypothesis do not agree, scientists question the validity of the hypothesis.

That differs, of course, from the Republican party. They are ideologues. When the data and the ideology conflict, they question the data. So when the Congressional Research Service produced a report that tax increases on the rich would not damage the economy, and that there is little correlation between tax rates and investment, the GOP went completely batshit and pressured the CRS to withdraw the report.

This is not anything new. The GOP is a religious party, though when they are not kowtowing to the evangelicals, they are bowing to Mammon.

We face a lot of serious problems both in this nation and on a global scale. We will make no progress on solving them if we heed the ideologues rather than the data. Those who are blindly following ideology on tax cuts are no different from the ideologues of the Taliban, a party that also rejects science and modernity.

"What does the data tell us" should be the constant question asked by policy-makers. Blind adherence to religious ideology as a method of determining policy should have been consigned to the dustbin of history centuries ago.

The modern Republican party is an embarrassment. History will regard the current iteration of the GOP as a deep stain on the chronicle of this country.

The GOP needs to corral its ideologues and fence them off. Or it will be the GOP which becomes history.

Choose Your Title for This Post: (a) Hooray for Government. (b) Christie is Done for 2016. (c) Steve Doocy is Still the Biggest Douchebag on the Planet.

Watch the clip and pick one.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Second Amendment, Baby!

TROY, MO. • Maybe the bank robber couldn’t see very well through the holes in his mask — the face of Chucky from the “Child’s Play” horror movies — as he walked into Peoples Bank & Trust Tuesday afternoon.

After all, it says right on the door that concealed weapons are allowed in the bank. They’re practically encouraged by the sign: “Management recognizes the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as an unalienable right of all citizens.”

So when the robber walked out of the bank a short time later with a red bank bag full of cash, maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised that bank president David W. Thompson followed him out to the parking lot. Thompson watched the masked robber get in a Ford pickup parked in a handicapped spot up front, then pulled his Colt .380 handgun and pointed it at the man.

“Sir, get out of the truck,” Thompson, 58, recalled demanding. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Asswipe should be going away for five to ten years. Maybe he should have gone to work at Wall Street.