World News Korner

Courtesy of Des Moines Register:

Language allowing children of any age to possess a handgun could be added to one of the final bills up for consideration in Iowa's 2014 legislative session.

State Rep. Clel Baudler, R-Greenfield, has offered an amendment to the so-called "standings" bill striking wording currently in state law that allows only minors 14 years and older to possess and shoot handguns with adult supervision.

The change would mean a child of any age could, for example, shoot a pistol or revolver at a shooting range so long as they were supervised by a parent or guardian or a shooting instructor with parental consent.

A standalone bill with similar language was introduced earlier this year, but failed to advance. The standings bill contains several appropriations – including billions of dollars in funding for K-12 schools – but frequently is the target of numerous amendments on unrelated matters in the final days of the sessions as lawmakers are looking to tie up loose ends and adjourn.

Baudler's amendment is at least partially inspired by the Gibson family of Johnston. Nathan Gibson has been taking his 8- and 10-year-old daughters to the shooting range and on hunting trips for years, but was turned away earlier this month when the gunsmith alerted him and his 8-year-old of the law.

Iowa Gun Owners, an advocacy group, has highlighted the Gibson family in an effort to get the law changed.

There is NO way that this can seem like a good idea to any reasonable parent. I mean where is the mother?

I don't have a problem with teaching your children to shoot, but just like learning about where babies some from, there is an appropriate age to start that educational process.

Click the link at the top and take a look at the Des Moines Register video. Then tell me if it doesn't make you gasp just a little.

All I could see as a parent while watching it was at least a hundred and one things that could go wrong. If I were the insurance company covering this shooting range I would make it very clear that there were to be no small children on the premises, or it would be cancelled or the premiums would go through the roof. Law or no law.

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Courtesy of the Smoking Gun (No pun intended.):

A 19-year-old Tennessee woman had a loaded handgun hidden in her vagina when she was brought into jail yesterday afternoon following a collar for driving with a suspended license, police report.

As Dallas Archer was being booked into the Kingsport jail, a female corrections officer alerted to an “unknown object” in the teenager’s crotch during a search.

The jailer and a female cop then accompanied Archer to a bathroom for further examination, a review that led to the recovery of a “North American Arms 22 LR revolver (loaded) which Ms. Dallas had concealed in her vagina,” according to a Kingsport Police Department report.

A subsequent check revealed that the five-shot mini-revolver--which is four inches in length--had been “stolen from an auto burglary in 2013.” The handgun, which police valued at $250, is owned by John Souther, a 70-year-old retired car salesman.

And here I thought I knew so much about that part of the female body. I had no idea it could be used as a holster.

Of course to be serious for a moment, THAT is why they make guns this small. So that they can be concealed more easily, and evade detection. And it almost worked.

If it had, just imagine what might have happened inside of that jail.

My favorite part of this story was the 70 year old owners reaction when told where it had been hidden:

When told where the gun had been stashed, Souther said, “Oh, gosh.” He noted that he would eventually like “the little fellow” returned, but added that the weapon would require “a bath in bleach.”

Interesting perspective, worrying about what a female sex organ might do to a weapon, rather than what an instrument of death might do to the insides of a woman.



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Courtesy of Washington Post:

Prior to Cliven Bundy's now-infamous remarks about whether black people were better off as slaves, the controversial Nevada rancher recalled what he described as the days when "Negro" groups rioted in Los Angeles. He also suggested that minorities are against his cause.

"Where is our colored brother? Where is our Mexican brother? Where is our Chinese -- where are they?" Bundy said. "They're just as much American as we are, and they're not with us. If they're not with us, they're going to be against us."

Bundy then recalled the time he worked on the east side of Los Angeles during the Watts riots of 1965. He said he sought refuge in a hotel when things got particularly dicey.

"About two blocks south of Harbor Freeway, they were setting the world on fire," Bundy said. "And who was setting it on fire? It wasn't We the People. It was the Negro groups -- people theirself were setting their own city on fire and raping their own city and stealing from their own city."

"If they're not with us, they're going to be against us." Yeah nothing adversarial about that!

Now the statements above are from yesterday. But Bundy is essentially a broken record when it comes to stating insensitive, or outright racist, comments.

Here are some more from early today:

The press conference, originally expected to announce legal action against the Bureau of Land Management, instead featured Bundy offering a sort of stream-of-conscience take on the reaction to his comments about black people and slavery. He made no apology, and instead used part of his time to scold the media for its coverage of him.

He stood on a makeshift outdoor stage decked with American flags, with supporters occasionally shouting their approval of him. At the end of the event, a few supporters cursed and yelled at the reporters. Bundy, meanwhile, continued sharing thoughts on "the Negro community" in comments that tracked with the attempted clarification Bundy had given to conservative radio hosts throughout the day.

"The question is: Are they slaves the way they are, the way they live, slaves to charity and government subsidized homes?" Bundy said. "Are they slaves when their daughters are having abortions and their sons in the graves and prisons?"

"This thought goes back a long time over the years," he said.

Of seeing black people in their government-subsidized homes in Las Vegas, he said: "I thought, 'Would they be happier if they was home, talking about the South, where they come from? Would they have been home with their gardens and their chickens and their children playing around them?'"

"Would they? That was the question I ask, and I ask you: Would they be happier?"

Would they be happier to have been home, in the South, where they CAME from?

Does he mean on the plantations where they were taken after they were purchased from slave traders? Is THAT the home he is talking about?

The above statements were captured on video (Just in case the Right Wing wants to accuse liberals of taking him out of context.) which you can see for yourself here.

However let me warn you that I tried to listen to the video, and legitimately could only get through about four minutes before my head started to ache.

If anything this guy is even more incoherent than Sarah Palin, and he might actually have dementia.

I have no idea how this old fart inspired anybody to follow him, since all I could think while listening to him talk was "Okay who forgot to give Grandpa his meds again?"

Fox News and the Right Wing media really stepped in it this time.

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Courtesy of The Hill:

House Majority PAC is launching a new ad hitting Rep. Nick Rahall’s (D-W.Va.) Republican opponent for his support from the billionaire Koch brothers.

The ad, from a super-PAC working to elect Democrats to the House, charges that Charles and David Koch have spent more than $1 million to elect state Sen. Evan Jenkins, and outlines a series of negative impacts from Koch spending and influence in West Virginia.

“The Koch brothers wouldn’t be billionaires if they didn’t get what they paid for,” a narrator says in the ad. “In Washington, Evan Jenkins won’t work for us.”

I think it is a great idea to use ties to the Koch brothers, against the candidates that they are supporting.

If you can't outspend them then at least make that money so tainted that the smell of it sticks to their chosen candidate and makes him unelectable.

And that one tag line is the kicker. The Koch brothers wouldn’t be billionaires if they didn’t get what they paid for." THAT is the gospel.


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Click image to play video.

(Here is part two of the bit.)

Damn that was SO good!

I don't know when these Fox News morons will ever learn not to go after an individual who is clearly their intellectual superior by at least twenty or thirty IQ points.

By the way on the same topic after hearing about Bundy's negro comments, his supporters took to Twitter to demand video proof.

So Media Matters provided that proof.

And of course that only made them claim that the video was fraudulent.

Racism, it's not real if you didn't get it on video. And if you did, well that's not real either.

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Courtesy of Time Magazine:

Gun silencer sales in the United Sates are exploding as firearms owners are looking to accessorize.

Silencer sales to civilians shot up 37% in 2013 to nearly 500,000 units, increasing from 360,000 in 2012 and 285,000 in 2011, CNNMoney reports. There’s now a nine-month wait to register silencers with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

The silencer buying frenzy is the second wave of gun-related purchases in the last two years. After the Newtown massacre, gun owners feared that a weapons ban would be enacted and rushed to buy assault rifles. Now that last year’s push for universal background checks has failed, gun owners have a lot of guns on their hands, and are outfitting them with gadgets including silencers, flashlights, laser scopes, stocks, pistol grips and rail systems.

“People have gone crazy buying guns, but they’re done buying them for the time being, so they’re buying accessories,” Ben Shim, a firearms instructor and gun industry analyst with CRT Capital Group told CNNMoney.

Okay so if the rationale for owning a firearm is for protection of home and family, what is the rational for owning a silencer?

Even if you are one of those sovereign citizens types who believe that any minute the Feds might break down your door to take your guns, and make you pay taxes like any other reasonable person, why would wanting to fire back at them silently make any sense?

It wouldn't.

This is an accessory that is only required if you want to kill without being detected.

And the fact that these are being purchased at this rate, should alarm everybody.

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Courtesy of the New York Times:

For now, Mr. Bundy appears to have won, forcing the government to back down after its rangers were met with armed Bundy supporters this month.

“The gather is now over,” said Craig Leff, a deputy assistant director with the Bureau of Land Management. “Our focus is pursuing this matter administratively and judicially.”

But if the federal government has moved on, Mr. Bundy — a father of 14 and a registered Republican — has not.

He said he would continue holding a daily news conference; on Saturday, it drew one reporter and one photographer, so Mr. Bundy used the time to officiate at what was in effect a town meeting with supporters, discussing, in a long, loping discourse, the prevalence of abortion, the abuses of welfare and his views on race.

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.

“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

Well what do you know? The anti-government scofflaw is a racist.

Whoda thunk it? (Me, me, I thunk it.)

Well this is certainly going to complicate things for those politicians who spoke out in support of this moron isn't it?

Yep.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

The remarks brought about a quick rebuke from Chandler Smith, a spokesperson for Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV). Heller had previously called Bundy and his supporters “patriots” for their actions and challenged Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) description of them as “domestic terrorists.”

Smith told the Times that Heller “completely disagrees with Mr. Bundy’s appalling and racist statements, and condemns them in the most strenuous way.”

Bundy’s speech also seemingly derailed Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s (R) apparent attempt to link his gubernatorial campaign to the Bunkerville camp; Abbott had allegedly written a letter to the BLM accusing it of “threatening” to seize land along the Red River in northern Texas.

But after being contacted regarding the rancher’s “Negro” remarks, a spokesperson for Abbott was quoted as saying that Abbott’s letter “was regarding a dispute in Texas and is in no way related to the dispute in Nevada.”

Well it looks like this thing might have played itself out.

Unless of course the majority of his supporters are just as racist as he is.

Uh oh.

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Courtesy of Raw Story:

In a podcast clip flagged by Deadspin on Wednesday, Austin explained why he doesn’t respect Christian opponents of same-sex marriage.

“I don’t give a sh*t if two guys, two gals, guy-gal, whatever it is, I believe that any human being in America, or any human being in the goddamn world, that wants to be married, and if it’s same-sex, more power to ‘em,” he said.

“What also chaps my ass, some of these churches, have the high horse that they get on and say ‘we as a church do not believe in that.’ Which one of these motherf*ckers talked to God, and God said that same-sex marriage was a no-can-do?” the wrestler asked.

“OK, so two [men] can’t get married if they want to get married, but then a guy can go murder 14 people, molest five kids, then go to fucking prison, and accept God. And he’s going to let him into heaven?” Austin pointed out. “After the fact that he did all that shit?”

“See that’s all horseshit to me, that don’t jive with me.”"

Growing up I was never a fan of pro-wrestling, especially after I wrestled in high school.

However I love everything this man just said about Christians and marriage equality, and kid of wish I could buy him a beer now.

I can only imagine how this is going to blow the minds of some of those WWE loving rednecks down south.

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Courtesy of Business Insider:

Members of the U.S. Army can now proudly and officially list their religion as "Humanist," after years of not being able to do so, according to the ACLU.

The Army's faith code allows for designation of Wiccans, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, and over 100 denominations of Christians, among other faiths, but until now had few offerings for those who follow a non-theistic belief system.

However, this week, the Army changed its faith code to allow Humanists to identify themselves as such.

I personally would not consider being a humanist a religion, but anything that helps the non-religious get equal rights is not a bad thing in my book.

Here is the official Merriam-Webster definition:

a system of values and beliefs that is based on the idea that people are basically good and that problems can be solved using reason instead of religion.

As I said, hardly a religion, but still good news.

After all, every little victory helps.

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