Just another day in a land where everyone has a gun and nobody has a chance...

God bless America...

At some level you have to ask yourself, what the hell is wrong with those people?

The second amendment is a beautiful thing. At the same time, there's something to be said for having some checks in the system that would prevent the mentally ill from buying assault weapons. Whatever excuses will be proffered up over the next few days, there's no getting around the fact that one would have to be profoundly disturbed to take a gun into Walmart and shoot people down.

No doubt we'll soon hear the argument that if only more folks in Dayton or in that El Paso Walmart had been carrying, the shooters would have been stopped sooner. Is that the answer?


Probably not. Mass shootings are a symptom of a deeply dysfunctional society. The symptoms won't go away until the underlying root causes are addressed, and as far as I can see, that's not even on the agenda.

Pot-addled hillbilly's blog gets 88 page views in one day

From Yemen!

I shit you not! From Yemen!

Are there even 88 computers in Yemen? Or did the guy with the computer view my blog 88 times?

Who knows?

And I don't know shit about Yemen. Other than it's one of the poorest places on earth, but nevertheless one where lots of folks have ample money for guns and bullets. Long live the second amendment, I guess.

I also know that they've been having the crap bombed out of them by the Saudis. The same Saudis who buy many billions worth of guns and bullets and missiles and bombs and fighter planes and all that shit from the US and the UK.

Rumour has it that both the US and the UK have sales reps on the ground in Yemen to assist in the field trials of all those beautiful weapons systems they've been selling the Saudis.

But that's just the way of the world, is it not?

Anyway, here's hoping Buddy over there with the computer enjoyed what he read today.

Meanwhile, things are moving right along in the cabinet-building process for the president-elect. Seems he found a guy nick-named "Mad Dog" for Secretary of Defense.

I don't know anything about the guy, so maybe it's one of those ironic nick-names. You know, like when the smallest kid in your grade nine class got the nick-name "Big Jim."

Time will tell... although I suspect that what it's going to tell us isn't something we necessarily want to hear.

Like, "it's too late..."

Hard to know what the president-elect has up his sleeve for his next headline-grabber, but it's kinda fun speculating about it, wouldn't you agree?

I mean, it could literally be anything.

A dozen more cabinet posts filled with guys nick-named "Mad Dog?"

Or "Chainsaw?"

Who knows?

Gotta admit I've oodles of empathy for the folks who think the wrong person won. I mean it's gotta suck watching this shit-show unfold. The only thing I don't get is how those folks imagined anything would be better if the fake progressive had crashed through that glass ceiling.

After all, that's who the script-writers had up next. Yup, the first black president had his run, and the first female president was on deck.

You know what happened then...

What happens next?

And here's to you, Yemen guy; thanks for reading! Keep your head down and your spirits up!

I'm raising a pint to you right now!

Burqa wearing Texas woman kicked out of restaurant for carrying gun

I'm wondering if the new Texas law legalizing open carry applies to folks wearing a burqa?

In the interest of consistency, one would think it would.

Wearing a burqa is a matter of religious freedom. Carrying a gun is a matter of the second amendment.

But our operatives in Texas have discovered that there is more to this story. Jesus Apfelbaum, proprietor of Jesus' Best Mex in San Antonio, claims that the customer was not asked to leave because of the gun.

"I respect the law and I respect the second," Mr. Apfelbaum told our reporters. "We didn't kick her out for the gun, we kicked her out 'cause she was breast-feeding right here in our restaurant... you know what that looks like? When you roll up six feet of burlap to stick a baby on your boob, you're basically sitting here naked!"

Burgers boobs and guns

Seems like burger joints are becoming the new ground zero in the struggle for human rights.

Just ten minutes down the road the Irish Cottage burger and beer joint has inadvertently become the focus of the "right to breastfeed anywhere anytime" crowd. The particulars of the story seem to be in some dispute, but I think at the end of the day reasonable people will agree that it's reasonable that babies should be allowed to eat when they're hungry.

Meanwhile, 1,500 miles down the road in Texas, the Whataburger chain is setting itself up for a long journey through the legal system because they're denying Americans their second amendment rights while they're enjoying a family meal. This can only end badly for Whataburger.

The think tank here at Falling Downs is hoping to see the march of human rights advance until we see a melding of those two rights. Yup, pistol-packing mammas feeling the freedom to feed Baby, not only at Whataburger and at the Irish Cottage, but everywhere in between.

That's the way God meant it to be.

Get used to it!

Why Jon Stewart is wrong about Dylan Roof's terrorist cred

The word "terrorism" is one of those slippery handles that serves many masters.

It is always a term intended to heap shit on the people you're talking about. I think the English teachers call that a "pejorative."

It's a propaganda term, a political term.

That's why we time and again see last year's terrorist morph into next year's statesman, as has happened in the Middle East and in the UK, and most noticeably to Nelson Mandela.

Terrorist today. Icon of freedom, hope, democracy, everything good under the sun the next day.

So what happens when we apply this slippery propaganda term to Dylan Storm Roof?

As in, "Dylan Roof is a terrorist."

What does that word mean to America?

Terror/terrorist/terrorism.

That's what America has been fighting a no-holds-barred battle against since 9/11, is it not?

Terrorists.

Evildoers.

When we affix that label to Dylan Roof, we excise him from the body of that great dysfunctional family known as America. That label marks him as an outsider, an enemy, someone we've been fighting for years.

That's not who Dylan Roof is.

Dylan Roof is very much a member of that dysfunctional family.

Dylan Roof is every bit as American as apple pie and the second amendment.

Calling him a "terrorist" allows America to avoid looking at itself.

Why banning the Confederate flag is stupid

So far, we've got a lot of "voluntary" bans; Walmart and Amazon and so forth putting a finger to the wind and responding accordingly.

That's kosher, I guess. They are market-driven companies responding to the demands of the market.

I think we have to respect their freedom to do what they do in terms of what they stock on their shelves.

What we should be all over them about is wages and working conditions.

But that's another discussion.

Sadly, it's not hard to see where politicians are going to start cashing in on the issue-du-jour and try to legislate the Confederate flag into oblivion.

That would be a massive mistake.

In the first place, that's a move that would run face-first into the first amendment.  Secondly, that would motivate a lot of your second amendment stalwarts to notice the first.

Bingo!

Every public square in America will be overtaken by flag-waving open-carry aficionados, and you know what flag they'll be waving!

Only in America; nine year old blamed for not handling recoil on Uzi machine gun

Therefore, it's her fault that her "shooting instructor" was mowed down when that Uzi went sideways...

Only in America.

Like, does ANYBODY even ask what the fuck a nine year old is doing with a Uzi?

Even in Israel, home of the Uzi and the most militarized nation on the planet, they don't hand Uzis to nine year olds.

While I'm a big fan of the Second Amendment and all that stuff, the Land of the Free has truly become the land of the retards...

Americans deserve more than one right

Mind you, the one they still have is a good one, and I hope they manage to hang onto it.

But being an American should give you more rights than the right to bear arms.

There's a lot of hysteria being fanned by folks with a vested interest in making you forget that you should have more than that one right. It's as though as long as you can hang onto your gun everything else is hunky dory.

So while you're sitting under that overpass, jobless, homeless, kids in foster care, as long as they let you keep your Bushmaster with the 30 round clip things are fine. Besides, you'll need it to defend yourself from the government...

Think that one through. The patriots who think they're going to take on the government with an AR-15 could learn a lesson from the patriots in Afghanistan and Yemen. When the government of the USA comes to get you, it'll be with a Hellfire missile from 30,000 feet. Won't much matter if you've got the 10 round or the 30 round clip on that baby. Nor will it matter if you've got the latest hardware or a vintage 12 gauge side-by-side.

But in the meantime, you could give some thought to demanding a few rights besides that one.

In the richest country in the world, should it not be possible for every citizen to have the right to a roof over their head?

Shouldn't every American have the right to go to sleep every night without feeling hunger?

How about the right of your children to get an education?

Getting health care when you're sick might be a right to consider.

Or the right to a job with a wage that provides a dignified standard of living to you and your family.

The right to live out your life in peace and security in your old age would be a welcome addition.

Think big, America! You are the richest and most powerful nation in history. You deserve so much more than the right to bear arms!

Why Ted Nugent should fire up a fattie

Don't get me wrong. I love Ted. He's one of the finest rock-and-roll guitarists who ever lived. As far as I'm concerned he's right up there with  Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page.

In fact, I think one reason he has never gotten his due as a musician is because he goes so far out of his way to push the envelope of political incorrectitude.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's an envelope I often try to push in my own way.

And I know that in his heart Ted is a sportsman when it comes to his hunting activities. Just today he was Tweeting from his deer-sit where's he's spending Christmas Eve with a crossbow.

That's a far cry from sitting in that deer-sit holding a Bushmaster with a 30 round clip.

I know Ted would correct me. That's not a clip; it's a "magazine."

So we know that Ted is, after all and above all, a true sportsman.

But when a toff like Piers Morgan gets him on TV Ted doesn't do himself any favors. What the hell is up with that "suck on my machine gun" stuff?

Ted, get a grip; that just makes you sound like a weirdo.

That's why you should fire one up now and then, Ted. It'll mellow you out a bit. In fact, if you want to head up this way I can hook you up with the coyote hunters around here. Nobody's got a 30 round clip, but they're providing an essential public service to the local farm economy.

And they bag dozens of coyotes every winter.

I can hook you up with some primo Puslinch red-hair too. It does a great job taking the edge off.

Hell, you won't even miss that 30 round clip.

Deport Piers Morgan?

Maybe it takes an outsider to put America's gun culture in the spotlight.

A petition to have Morgan deported back to his native England has by now more than 50,000 signatures. Those are folks who want to deport Piers because he has been using the old Larry King slot to lobby for tighter gun control legislation in America.

They see his lobbying as a threat to the Second Amendment.

Aren't they forgetting the First Amendment?

Frankly, while I don't necessarily agree with him across the board, he's one of the highest profile media personalities making an issue of what unfettered access to military hardware is doing to America. That's a debate that's long overdue.

It's easy enough to endlessly regurgitate the truism that it's not guns killing people, it's people.

Yet it's also beyond debate that people with guns kill a lot more people than people without guns.

One of the tragedies about this entire non-debate is how little serious discussion there is about the underlying factors that are behind so many of the headlines.

After all, there are plenty of societies around the world where guns are common but mass killings are virtually unheard of. Maybe it's time to look at a couple of the other contributing factors.

The rampant over-prescription of psycho-tropic drugs.

The almost complete absence of support systems for people with mental health issues.

If Joe Shmuck down the street has lost his job and his house and his family has deserted him and he's been gobbling down the anti-depressants, is it a good idea that he be able to buy, no questions asked, an arsenal of military grade hardware and thousands of rounds of ammo?

I think not.