Sporadic posting.
Wednesday, March 31, 2021
Saturday, March 27, 2021
FYI
Hi, there. I'm a gun owner. I have in my house, right at this moment: 2 pistols, 2 rifles, and 3 shotguns. Which is a lot, especially considering that my wife has never touched any of them. I'd like to talk to you about why America's obsession with AR-15s is just so damn odd.
For decades – as far back as the ATF hands out statistics on the website – Americans bought about 3 million firearms a year. Which seems like a lot. These aren't paper napkins. They're not disposable. Every gun I own is over 40 years-old. One of the shotguns was made in 1908.
Around 2008, the number of new guns bought each year started going up rapidly. After decades at around 3 million a year, it jumped to 5, then 6, then 8, then 10. What happened? What happened was a whole new category of gun.
Up until around 2008, the majority of rifles sold fell into one of two categories: .22 rimfire 'plinkers' used for holing paper targets or hunting small game, and larger centerfire 'deer rifles' used for pretty much anything bigger than a ground hog. Many were lever or bolt action.
Guns like the AR-15 were out there, of course. I saw plenty of ads in my Sports Afield or Field & Stream when I was a kid (and I'm old). I just never knew what the hell I would do with one. They were expensive to buy, expensive to shoot, and kind of useless.
An AR-15 is worse, and a lot more costly, for shooting at targets than a .22. You certainly can't use it on small game. When it comes to deer, or elk, or antelope, it's not nearly so good as guns purpose built to knock down those targets. For decades, most gun owners agreed.
When people talk about the AR-15 as "America's favorite rifle," what they leave out is that this is an extremely recent phenomenon. Go back a couple of decades, and these guns were a tiny percentage of gun sales. Even for gun owners, they were kind of a rarely seen item.
It wasn't until 2005 that sales of AR-15 style rifles, from all manufacturers, exceeded 100K in a year. By 2008, they had jumped to 300K. In 2012, they exceeded 1 million. They topped 1.5 million just one year later. The AR-15 *became* "America's favorite rifle" in just a few years.
In the last few years, deer didn't suddenly become smarter. Rabbits didn't stage an uprising. Woodchucks didn't discover flack jackets. What did happen was a national epidemic of fear, one that allowed expansion of a new category: rifles for hunting people.
That 3 million or so annual demand for plinkers, deer rifles, shotguns, and target pistols is still there, as it always has been. It's just that now it's topped by 6 million+ a year in AR-15s and ugly Glock-style pistols (guns for hunting people, pocket edition).
Which means that in the last two decades millions of Americans purchased guns that really aren't much good for anything other than shooting millions of other Americans. And that "America's favorite rife" is a gun few gun owners cared about until very recently.
But of course, everyone has reason to care about AR-15s now. And to worry about people who are SO DAMNED SCARED that they paid out large sums to buy a machine designed for nothing else but killing people. In large numbers. Quickly.
Mark Sumner
Friday, March 26, 2021
FRANKLIN GRAHAM: A Trumper's Lament
UPDATE:
I just heard from our P.E. friend, Dave Miller, that this was not from Franklin Graham. I should have known better than to rely on the Mother Ship for accurate information because that group NEVER verifies if something is true or not. My mistake and my apologies for thinking something from a right wing blog had any merit!
Here's Dave:
According to Snopes, and I remember seeing this years ago, at best, this has been misattributed to Graham and has been around since at least 2015.
Here's part of what they had to say...
"The only factual element to this item is its attribution, which is incorrect: These words were not delivered at the Jacksonville Pastors’ Conference in January 2015 by Franklin Graham, the president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. This item had already been circulating anonymously for more than two years prior to that event, attributed to no particular individual or publication.
“The American dream ended” The first term of Joe Biden [NOTE: President Biden has been in office for TWO MONTHS, not "the first term" and America is on Donald Trump's budget!] has been the final nail in the coffin for the legacy of the white Christian males who discovered, explored, pioneered, settled and developed the greatest republic in the history of mankind. [NOTE: Those same white Christian males, burned women as witches, stole land from and killed the indigenous peoples of North America, and went on to break EVERY SINGLE TREATY THE white Christian government made with the Native Americans. Those same white Christian males and females built this country on the backs of Africans who were kidnapped from their native countries and brought to the New World and used as chattel slaves.]
GRAHAM: A coalition of blacks, Latinos, feminists, gays, government workers, union members, environmental extremists, the media, Hollywood, uninformed young people, the “forever needy,” the chronically unemployed that do not want to work, illegal aliens and other “fellow travelers” have ended……Norman Rockwell’s America. [NOTE: Rockwell's America never existed but in the minds of white privileged Christians. While they wax nostalgic over a time that never existed for ALL Americans. African Americans were in Jim Crow America denied the right to vote, attend their tax-paid for public schools, were tortured and killed with impunity for looking at a white person the wrong way, black prisoners were used for medical experimentation without their consent. Women were not allowed to own property, get their own credit card, or access birth control, among many other things.]
GRAHAM: You will never again out-vote these people. [NOTE: "These people" are Americans just as much as Graham is. The language he uses to refer to his fellow Americans shows his true feelings for Americans with different skin color and different cultural backgrounds. He's a bigot .]
GRAHAM: It will take individual acts of defiance and massive displays of civil disobedience to get back the rights we have allowed them to take away.[NOTE: Graham does NOT tell us what "rights" were taken away from him and the white Christian community. He doesn't tell you because no "rights" were taken away. Franklin Graham is a liar. No white Christian has had his/her right to free speech taken away; right to practice his/her religion as he/she chooses; right to a free press; right to address grievances to their government (he's telling them to engage in "civil disobedience," isn't he?) They still have the right to bear arms, assemble, etc. NO RIGHTS HAVE BEEN TAKEN AWAY. The fact that he's free to broadcast this blather shows he knows nothing about the Bill of Rights.]
[Now read Graham's white grievances, all complaints from someone who sees his majority influence waning and watching groups of people he dislikes -- nice Christian, there -- accessing what he was always been able to enjoy without impediment as an American.]
GRAHAM: It will take zealots, not moderates and shy, not reach-across-the-aisle RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) to right this ship and restore our beloved country to its former status. [NOTE: Graham doesn't say what "its former status" was.] People like me are completely politically irrelevant, and I will probably never again be able to legally comment on or concern myself with the aforementioned coalition which has surrendered our culture, our heritage and our traditions without a shot being fired.[NOTE: Graham is being hysterical and rabble rousing here. We are a country of MANY CULTURES AND HERITAGES! Graham is complaining of having to SHARE Americas multi-cultural heritage.]
GRAHAM: The Cocker spaniel is off the front porch, the pit bull is in the back yard, the American Constitution has been replaced with Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” and the likes of Chicago shyster David Axelrod [NOTE the shameful anti-Semitic slur against David Axelrod] along with international socialist George Soros [NOTE: That's the THIRD JEWISH PERSON HE'S NAMED! He's blaming the JEWS, just like in the old days! How nostalgic"] and have brought us Act 2 of the New World Order.
GRAHAM: The curtain will come down but the damage has been done
[NOTE: Graham doesn't name "the damage;" it's just THERE for his fellow Christians to fear and hate -- especially THOSE JEWS!].
[NOTE: Graham has told this old, old, narrative of "blame the minorities and non-Christians for changes the dwindling majority doesn't understand nor want."]
GRAHAM: Those who come after us will once again have to risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to bring back the Republic that this generation has timidly frittered away due to white guilt and political correctness.”
NOTE: Graham is an evil, destructive man who has no connection to or understanding of Christianity.
Graham's nothing more than an old-fashioned bigot terrified of sharing his white privilege with his fellow non-white Americans. He's the sort of person who contributes the most to the destruction of civilized society. He comforts the comfortable and brings more affliction to the afflicted with his hateful rhetoric, not grounded in truth or anything approaching what the founder of his religion believed.
Thursday, March 25, 2021
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
Our neighbors down the road from our little home in the mountains. Charlemont, Mass.
Two alpine goats and their companion sheep.
Joey enjoying the fire with us.
Jake sunning himself on the stone wall.
Monday, March 22, 2021
Trumpublicans Love Russia More Than America!
The Kremlin and the GOP are equally peeved about losing the last election.
And the Trump cultists are happy to side with the Kremlin against the American president:
Whoa, I didn’t mean to imply tripping was funny. Putin is having fun tweaking Biden with his clever challenge. As are we.
Even with the lag time between translations, Putin will out-think Biden by hours within minutes.
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They shame themselves and dishonor their country for all the world to see!
I will continue to publish their treachery as long as they continue to support Russia's dictator over our American president.
Friday, March 19, 2021
Who's surprised?
A popular tourist destination, Trump’s statue had been a literal punching bag for patrons who left so much damage — mostly deep scratches on Trump’s face — that management was forced to take it off the floor."
A new US intelligence report that finds Russia interfered in the 2020 election to help Donald Trump and hurt Joe Biden also underscores a fundamental truth: The gravest threat to US democracy comes from within.
The report, released by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, finds that Moscow sought to inject misleading information about Biden into the campaign through officials and others close to Trump.
The real bombshell it contains is not the confidence of the spy agencies that Russia hoped to subvert American democracy. It is that US intelligence experts effectively confirmed that for the second election in a row, Trump acolytes repeatedly used, knowingly or otherwise, misinformation produced by the spies of one of America's most sworn foreign adversaries to try to win a US election.
And given the advantage of hindsight, the latest intelligence assessment is not just an isolated example of incriminating evidence against Russia and its efforts to create chaos and discord within the United States.
For all of the stale US debate about whether Trump and his aides "colluded" with Russia, there are now multiple reports, intelligence assessments and other known details to expose a damning reality: Moscow with its election meddling, Trump acolytes pushing false claims of voter fraud and his GOP supporters in the states now passing voter suppression laws share the same goal -- the denigration of the US democratic system.
The Atlanta Massacre and What Trumpublicans Have Become
Asian-Americans Are Scared for a Reason
Officer Jay Baker with the Cherokee County sheriff's office in Georgia offered up his opinion on the shooter's motivations for the killing spree: “He was pretty much fed up and at the end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did.”
(Not as bad as the women he murdered!)
Does anyone who's watched years of policing in this country -- shooting black suspects first, even unarmed suspects! or kneeling on their necks until they're dead! -- does anyone believe this white officer's opinion?
BTW, this Officer Baker had "...posted racist imagery on Facebook — joking about a T-shirt that blamed China for the pandemic. The shirt was a twist on the Corona beer label that said “Covid 19 IMPORTED VIRUS FROM CHY-NA.”
Is there any doubt where this Officer Baker's sympathies are? Disgraceful. Racist.
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On another subject:
I often get emails from friends of P.E. noting what's being posted on various far right blogs. I sometimes repost those stories here because they give us an insight into how far right Trumpublicans/cultists think. The far right blog posts also show me the damage that four years of Trumpism did to America.
For example: I received an email this morning that showed one of those far right bloggers actually being giddy over the recent exchange between President Biden and Putin. But not for a normal reason -- normal being that an American would not take the side of a murderous dictator -- Putin has killed or exiled every opponent who's been a threat to his grip on power. (See Alexei Navalny).
America's own intel community has confirmed that Russia (nothing's done without Putin's imprimatur) tried, again, to interfere and influence the 2020 election to benefit EX-president Donald Trump.
So we see that Putin is a murderer who "offs" or exiles threats to his power, and who tries to (and in some ways succeeds) to manipulate our presidential elections, which should disgust and horrify a normal American.
What was mailed to me today shows that four years of Trumpism has turned Trump's loyal followers (cultists) into favoring Putin over their own American president.
Trumpers actually applaud an ex-KGB Communist dictator over their American president!
Here they are giddy over showing their public disloyalty to America:
AHA! So Putin has heard all the stories of Biden’s difficulties taking questions, not doing a State of the Union, still not having even done a real press conference………….and Putin wants to ‘continue their discussion’ because he thinks it ‘would be interesting for the people of Russia and for the people of the United States.’ I think it would be, too 
THINK THAT ISN’T WHAT I THINK IT IS? HILARIOUS!? Here’s Putin, in other words:
“Joe! I know you’ve been hiding so you can avoid talking ….and thinking….but I think it would be fun, (since YOU started it by telling the world you think I’m a killer,) to talk together in front of PEOPLE, JOE~ PEOPLE!! The WHOLE WORLD! WHY NOT? ”
How do you say “How do you like THEM apples, you JERK” in Russian?
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Putin's work is complete!
Those poor benighted Trump cultists don't understand what they've become:
Cheerleaders for Putin against their own country!
Thursday, March 18, 2021
Wednesday, March 17, 2021
Trumpublicans: Frozen in time by racism and small minded thinking.
A friend emailed this to me.
Apparently the Trumpublicans are in a tizzy:
"The Left continues to destroy the USA!"
This bit of hysteria was found on a rabid right wing blog.
Only 55 days into the Biden Administration and the Trump cultists claim "The Left" is destroying the USA!
No mention at all about the historical first of EX-president Trump's insurrectionists storming the Capitol of the United States of America (through his incitement), looking for the Vice President of the United States to hang him, causing the death of a Capitol policeman and others, defiling with excrement the Capitol itself, and invading and stealing from Congressmen and women's offices.
But these blind-to-reality Trump cultists are so marinated in ideology that they don't see themselves as the danger to democracy that they are.
A steady diet of Tucker Carlson and other Faux Nooz and other liars and dissemblers have convinced them that it is "The Left" that's destroying America, when right in front of their noses they and we saw with our own eyes what Trump and his cultists did to America!
My friend included this in the email (what do you think?):
President Biden is trying to make up for the above on two counts:
*Repair our social welfare that through neglect has left several behind and therefore perpetuates anger and sadness for the near future.
*Build the infrastructure that we have lost and that we needed to invest in if we are to continue to be a global power and try to guarantee a liveable society.
Given the Republicans' voter suppression tactics and their unabashed use of gerrymandering I am not sure if the country has a credible future.
Time will answer that question."
Monday, March 15, 2021
Yeah. Carlson is really this bad.
BREAKING: After years of trying to curb QAnon messaging, Twitter has now suspended more than 150,000 accounts
And EX-president Donald Jobless Trump was THIS BAD!:
Wow! Former acting Defense Sec Chris Miller, a loyalist appointed by Trump after the November election, says Trump "did incite rioters to go to Capitol" and played a role in what happened on Jan 6 per CNN.
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You know what ISN'T bad?
President Biden's handling of the Covid virus;
Covid relief; and
Doing his job.
President Biden gets high marks on all three from the American people!:
Saturday, March 13, 2021
Friday, March 12, 2021
Thursday, March 11, 2021
To set the record straight...
and not let The Former Guy get away with more lies:
EX-President Trump issued a statement Wednesday telling Americans to ‘remember’ what he did to help the vaccine effort.
In reality, he did very little.
Development of the first vaccine available from Pfizer and BioNTech was not a part of Operation Warp Speed.
Pfizer was offered a contract by the federal government but did not accept the funds. Pfizer did participate in OWS as a supplier of its vaccine, however.
The Trump administration also had virtually no coordinated federal rollout plan, leading to millions of doses going to waste in early weeks of vaccinations.
The Biden administration claims it found the vaccine supply already depleted and said it needed to start the distribution plan from scratch upon taking office.
Trump also promised 20 million vaccinations would occur before the end of 2020, while fewer than 3 million actually were administered.
At the current pace, Pres. Biden is likely to surpass his goal of administering 100 million shots in his first 100 days. --NowThis
You may now return to your regularly scheduled quiet time now that The Former Guy is out of office.