The reason the Founding Fathers were so fond of militias is that militias played a big part in winning the Revolutionary War. They could form, attack and disperse before the redcoats could bring reinforcements to the scene. This was a great way to attack things like supply trains, which is a big part of the reason Burgoyne lost at Saratoga. As he moved further south from Canada and his supply lines got longer and longer, they became more vulnerable to militia attack.

(That stuff about him not getting his orders because someone in London was going on vacation is bullshit–sorry, G.B. Shaw.)

Of course, anyone who can’t think of a dozen reasons why this is no longer applicable in America today isn’t trying. “Militias” are even more anachronistic than muskets.

a doozy via New Republic

picture from daily news

Remember that debate back in 2012 where wicked millionaire slobs Rick Perry and Mitt Romney were screaming at each other like a couple of drunk country club housewives after Rick Perry accused Mitt of being in bed with his illegal Mexican gardener or something, which is Low Class? No, that was not the nadir of the party that calls themselves “Grand” and “Old”.  Actually it is all pretty funny in retrospect. As bone-stupid as he was, sheer evil didn’t run in Mitten’s frosty veins.

This year, satanic pharmaceutical/insurance corporations — entities that exist solely to profit from the nation’s poor health, ones that would choose to see eventual government debt default & apocalypse over the creation of a public, non-discriminatory health plan to cover actual sick people –  have decided to stop manufacturing the drugs used to kill prisoners. The lobbying groups for pharmacists – like the American Pharmacists Association – represent the citizens who are pharmacists, not the corporations profiting from making the drug. They had some principles, and pressured the companies to stop making them. We see some zillionaire CEOs coming out in favor of raising the minimum wage, stopping employers from being the gatekeepers of access to health care, stopping corrupt banks, not poisoning rivers and killing customers and employees and destroying the food supply. But they don’t do anything themselves. They’re all waiting for someone else to make them do it.

And when their irresponsibility causes devastation, they weasel out of responsibility for their depraved indifference by blaming the lack of being forced to stop. They just don’t seem to have the volition to behave like decent human beings just because that’s what decent human beings do. They’re not just ethically incompetent, they’re ethically incontinent. The Pulse Nightclub  — and all the other mass shootings — is what happens when you let these freaks out of their cages. And Trump is what happens when you rip off the diaper.

Now, supposedly there’s a sizable contingent of NRA members who would support gun controls. But the NRA doesn’t represent the interests of citizens, it represents the profits and political power of the Violence Industry aka “Big Violence”. But there’s no meaningful action to pressure these companies coming from these citizens in the NRA, to say, oh, maybe STOP SELLING MILITARY WEAPONS TO PEOPLE WHO AREN’T IN THE MILITARY. Oh, we will hear polls suggesting these reasonable NRA members are OK with these reasonable measures. But when you hear them talking about it, it’s always educed to self-exonerating solipsisms: “Well I do this, and I think whatever, meMeME” … but no one is actually doing anything other than saying “yes, but not MY privileges! I’M better than all them.”

They would endure meaningful laws to stop gun violence, if someone made them do it. I would like to make them do it. And maybe if all those little first graders blasted to smithereens by some mentally ill kid’s mom’s assault weapons didn’t get us make them do it, just maybe the LGBT community – the only community of anything that ever actually gets of their asses and succeeds in making sewing changes  – can help do it.

aside: why do we need an NRA? They’re just here to shill for the gun manufacturers. I think everyone admits this, no? WHY do politicians even listen to them? It’s like allowing a Madison Ave agency to set foreign policy. When there’s pretty clear and convincing evidence that the MAJORITY of Americans AND a majority of NRA members want commonsense gun laws, who cares if the NRA gives you a D rating? If I were in Congress I’d wear that shit proudly. I’d proudly wearing a D like a fucking scarlet letter on my forehead. But Republicans take money from the NRA. They take money from the NRA, and if you vote for any of these motherfuckers with an R before or after their name, you are part of the problem, you are complicit.

Dear Republicans:

If you’ve spent your Good Christian American life allowing the people of the preferred political party, attacking LGBT people, the community Mateen attacked, from pulpits, radio airwaves or the halls of government, then you are part of the problem. And if you don’t care enough about 49 dead young bodies lying on the floor of a nightclub (or the bodies of the little kids in Connecticut, or college kids in Virginia, or many other mass shooting victims in America every year), to have a mature conversation about how maybe people don’t need motherfucking AR-15’s, then you are part of that problem as well. A member of your preferred political party, that you probably voted for, George W. Fucking Bush, refused to renew to extend the assault weapons ban that was put into place as part of the 1994 Crime Bill that Hillary Clinton has long advocated and co-sponsored when she was in the senate.

Now if you are an illiterate half wit who doesn’t have a teevee set or a radio or the internet or can’t read the newspaper, and do not have access to knowing things, you get a pass. But, If you do have any outhouse things then you DID know about those little kids being slaughtered in CT and still voted for a Republican, hence you are a horrible person. Likewise, if you read one of the many stories of an innocent person getting executed in a Texas prison and still vote for a Republican, you are a terrible person.

Let’s break it down: there are two major political parties in this country. One of those parties blatantly and openly attempts to prevent their opposition’s voters from voting every fucking election. One of those two political parties is jonesing for the ability to use state power to kill people. One of these parties is okay with anyone ANYONE in this country having assault weapons and killing our friends, our neighbors, our kids,. One of those parties would accept non-rich Americans dying from preventable diseases for…. literally no reason I can think of right now. What was their reason to be against Obamacare? I CAN’T EVEN FUCKING REMEMBER. Except that Republicans are like drug addicts when it comes to discarding human lives: their stash dried up, their dealer thinks they’re more trouble than they’re worth, and now they’re prowling back alleys looking for a fix.  Seriously, every single Republican wants to let Americans go back to straight up DYING from lack of healthcare. Why would anyone want to deny people subsidies for healthcare? Maybe you should ask Republicans — like, say, evil Florida Gov. Rick Scott. He’d rather let people die. Noone should ever underestimate just how evil Republicans can be. By making stupid points, like how people shouldn’t be denied healthcare just because they live in a shitty state, is probably why no decent person can continue to work within the Republican party anymore (see: RINO Olympia Snowe). Because all real Republicans know that if Congress intended for the ACA to help every single worthless American — even the gross poor kinds living in liberty-loving paradises like Florida and South Carolina — then Congress should have spelled that out in giant flashing neon lights, maybe also with some semaphore flags, perhaps some skywriting, so it would be really super fucking clear that not even Republicans would want to let other Republicans deny healthcare to Americans who need it.

Every single one of these fuckers thinks the “I do” words are for one penis and one vagina only, even if those mean robed jerks on the Supreme Court said “Nuh uh, you dicks.” Also? You weren’t sure if a white supremacist shooting up a black church to start a race war was, like, a race thing. AND you were afraid to say a mean about the Confederate flag. AND your new hero, Donald Trump? You basically agree with him about how someone is doing the raping, and it is the Messicans. We know, because we’ve been listening to you say that FOR YEARS.

I congratulate you, every Republican voter in America, for tacitly approving the hate speech and bigotry that led to the murder of Americans.  I congratulate you, every Republican voter in America, for tacitly demonizing LBGT folk’s  sexuality for 40 years that led to the murder of Americans. You have the nerve to say you are praying for the victims and their families when all the time you have been praying for the slaughter of the victims. Too bad there isn’t some widely held religion in America that calls upon its adherents to help care for each other. But we’re stuck with Christianity which, apparently, teaches “fuck the poor, the different, the voiceless, and don’t give them any fish”.

What a strange and random coincidence that your folks are once again making giant gaping assholes of themselves — with the reality show tragicomedy that was presidential primary and the clown show that is their “leadership” in Congress — Americans are feeling a lot more warm and fuzzy toward the president. His “loyal opposition,” the other great party, was dedicated to his failure from day 1, and did nothing but say that whatever choices he made were the wrong ones.  ¡Qué sorpresa! Bamz isn’t the evil usurping dictator, bent upon dividing the country and destroying the nation with his commie thugishness that nearly ALL of your pathetic party has been caterwauling about this whole time. Just think how much more progress we as a country could have made if sellout asshole hypocrites like you hadn’t been carrying water for the lunatic base this whole time, instead of being honest and telling the batshitinsane tea turds that they were full of shit, as you now seem to have miraculously discovered. Fuck off, miserable villager, none of you supposed party elders has been willing to stand up and be the adult in your party for the last eight years, lest you lose a mid-term or two culling the crazy from your ever shrinking tent. Now the bill has come due, as you twits realize the terms of the Faustian bargain you made and weep as your party goes up in flames as the lost boys dance around the piggy’s head in bloodthirsty glee…

What I will remember most about about B. Barry Bamz is, for the first time in eight long painfully slogged-through years, not feeling embarrassed or stabby when I heard my President speak. The most dignified, intelligent and thoughtful American president of modern times, Bamz is a reminder that amid Tea Party craziness and Trumpery, hysterical slanders, racist smears and savage politics, a man can not just survive and thrive, but walk tall without descending in to the gutter with his opponents. An ethos of compassion and dignity and an abiding decency. A Democrat.

So a brand new sign of the sick times we live, Facebook introduced a feature that that allows you to alert your friends that you are safe if you live in the area of the shooting. Good to know my friends are safe, but we’re so much fucked. “So you didn’t get slaughtered today by a psycho with unregulated access to a stockpile of AR-15s? There’s an app for that”.  So what we all need on our cellphones now is the “I’m not dead yet” app?

Today – because I talk to strangers – I chatted with a twenty-something feller coated in #Bernie merch. He was #Bernie, #NoCompromise “all the time”. He told me that #Bernie brought out all the kids to get involved in politics. And I said you know, the first time I was eligible to vote, I just went out and voted, and I didn’t need a sticker and the people I voted for didn’t need too do a lot of eggshell-walking and appeasing and back patting (besides, every goddamn one of them lost, but we all dusted off and went on with business.) As a teenager, I volunteered for the MONDALE campaign because: OLD, and cried when he lost. I couldn’t BELIEVE anyone was actually going to vote for Ronald Reagan. I was young and stupid, and didn’t understand the process. Then I told this young revolutionary that “volunteering” didn’t mean going to fun rallies and meetups with other fun Youngs, and being on Twitter and such. This was basically The Middle Ages, where phone calls were made in semen stained phone booths and information was garnered from taking to other people, and “volunteering” fucking sucked. I worked a nightshift at the hideous phone banks where people screamed at me for waking them up, and sat at a booth on a NYC street where more people screamed at me. No one got to be on teevee, or on Instagram so no one gave you credit for anything you were doing. You did it because you COULDN’T BELIEVE THAT RONALD REAGAN MIGHT ACTUALLY BE OUR PRESIDENT, and that was an untenable possibility that we had to prevent. No one had cool photo-ops or buttons or t-shirts. But we did it anyway. Then he had the temerity to being to invoke Hill Shill Elizabeth Warren and told him to talk to the hand and said that I know, I know, chicks aren’t supposed to talk about dudes that way. I want my America back. America was founded on developers screwing their employees and suppliers. How do you think Mt. Vernon got built? without slaves?

And then the youngster pretty much said “you’re old, we know better, and our values are more important than the democratic process”.

At least I have the satisfaction of knowing this child will be middle-aged in about 3 months.

The Democratic Party is Coming Together While the Republican Party is Coming Apart The Democratic Party is Coming Together While the Republican Party is Coming Apart The Democratic Party is Coming Together While the Republican Party is Coming Apart The Democratic Party is Coming Together While the Republican Party is Coming Apart The Democratic Party is Coming Together While the Republican Party is Coming Apart The Democratic Party is Coming Together While the Republican Party is Coming Apart The Democratic Party is Coming Together While the Republican Party is Coming Apart The Democratic Party is Coming Together While the Republican Party is Coming Apart The Democratic Party is Coming Together While the Republican Party is Coming Apart The Democratic Party is Coming Together While the Republican Party is Coming Apart The Democratic Party is Coming Together While the Republican Party is Coming Apart The Democratic Party is Coming Together While the Republican Party is Coming Apart