The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    ironboltbruce's picture

    Gun Control? Let's Make That Weapons Control.

    By ironboltbruce on Sat, 12/15/2012 - 9:00am |

     

    Gun Control?


    After the tragedy in Newtown CT, our fascist-controlled corporate media has the mush-minded American Sheeple once again demanding they be allowed to trade liberty for security in the form of more domestic gun control.

    Well why just guns?  And why just domestically?

    Like Dubya before him, around the globe our fascist puppet president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama kills innocent children and other people falsely counted as "militants" every time he fires drones at so-called "terrorists".  

    Does he cry then?  Do you?

    Gun control?  Let's make that weapons control.  And let's start by disarming our war-mongering corporate fascist police state and defanging our out-of-control military/intelligence/security serpent before we disarm ourselves.

    Comments

    Anyone with any feeling, with children, cried yesterday, we cried over those children and adults who were killed possibly by a crazy for no fucking reason.

    Your blog should be banned, you should be banned from this site forever for your inflammatory Libertarian utter bullshit seeking to inflame and anger people.  DRONEZZZZ...

    You live in a world of black and white, a world of your own creation, where you get to make everyone your enemy if they don't agree with you 100%. That my friend is the real face of fascism.

    Thanks for coming here and calling us all sheeple again, that certainly will get lots of people supporting your ridiculous position.


    by tmccarthy0 on Sat, 12/15/2012 - 9:50am

    It sounds like we could all calm down a bit.

    It is worth considering that alot of killing of innocent people has occurred under American authority during the Obama years. I remember how awful Abu Gharib seemed back in 2004 - well, someone is less tortured or less murdered because the president is no longer a developmentally disabled frat boy and is now a progressive, academia approved black man.


    by Orion on Sat, 12/15/2012 - 12:23pm

     ...the president is no longer a developmentally disabled frat boy and is now a progressive, academia approved black man.

    I cannot find the words to express how disgusted I am with that comment. I hope that some day you will learn what motivated you to say such a hateful thing about this man. 

     


    by CVille Dem on Sat, 12/15/2012 - 5:55pm

    Michael,

    Is it possible to remove the comments which directly attack one of our frequent contributors? I don't really care much about IBB, and choose never to respond to him. But I don't like the vicious personal attacks on Orion (possibly based partly on a misreading of his comment) for pointing out that people are being killed in our wars and somebody loved them too.

    I realize that people are hurting, I'm reeling as well, but these comments are misdirected and not appropriate. I don't think our president needs this kind of support....

    Thanks for your consideration,

    erica


    by erica20 on Mon, 12/17/2012 - 4:40pm

    Yeah, I had trouble figuring out the objection -

    "progressive" - well, not so much but we'll let people pretend...

    "academically approved"- isn't that the Harvard Law Journal plus U of Chicago professor?

    "black man"- umm, no? weren't Republicans out of touch by being all white, while this election was about coalitions of minorities including blacks, Hispanics, gays, 2/3 of Jews (plus women who aren't a minority)... Is our post-racial politics going to fall apart because someone came out and noticed the President's black?

    Or maybe CVille was offended about Bush as developmentally challenged...

    But I'm also not sure of the need to attack Bruce, much less Orion, though Bruce does use the term "fascist" indiscriminately and inappropriately.


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 12/17/2012 - 5:29pm

    I recall a panic on a bridge in Baghdad from a bomb in 2005 - 200 people died trampling each other, leaping off the bridge....  don't think it made US network news.

    Bales at least will face the death penalty for his rampage in Afghanistan. US contractors who fired on civilians didn't. Our drone strikes miss quite often - since there are only 100 or so serious Al Qaeda left there, it's pretty crazy that collateral civilian damage is worth it. But we even target Afghani & Pakistani rescue operations & funerals with drones, some kind of mop-up mentality. But since there's a Dem in office, few complaints - more outrage over a small Benghazi attack than anything in 11 years of Iraq/Afghanistan war.

    But I'm pretty sick of the lots-o-tears combined with "now's not the time to discuss gun control". If you want an example of how to effectively lobby, just look at the NRA. 

    Kudos for McCarthy, Bloomberg, Manino, others for starting to use this occasion to push for gun control action. Good luck getting any traction.

    Though it's not a panacea - as Lulu pointed out, even toilet paper rolls can be deadly (hopefully only when weaponized). Tim McVeigh killed using a fertilizer bomb. And can we easily control all the guns coming from Mexican drug gangs?

    Plus we live in our security-fetish-fear-driven state that now feels tasering is acceptable for a Chinese woman trying to buy $16,000 worth of iPhones. Hate to see what would have happened if she were stealing. Do we really trust our government so much, one that now thinks targeted extra-judicial assassination and detaining inmates naked is okay, as long as we're worried about terruh?


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 12/15/2012 - 7:05pm

    Are you that out of touch? And you do realize that the current President was not president in 2004, right?

    Well let me give you a dose of reality, because your little personal attack against the President makes little sense Orion. Do realize that IBB blog is a classic false equivalency? You do understand that right? Or are you just that out of touch?

    Do you have any idea of what it is to be a parent? No, you don't, you are clueless just like bolthead, you have no idea the kind of emotional connection that comes with having children. That kind of connection is indescribable, it is so deep that when something happens to your own child, it hurts you, if your child were killed in some unspeakable manner, it kills a part of you. This isn't just an rhetorical device used by a writer to show a connection with another being, it is what happens.   What we parents saw that day in Connecticut, we saw our own children, we know about the unspeakable pain those parents affected were experiencing. We sobbed along with them, knowing they never get to see their child grow up, a piece of them was ripped from their lives in the most violent and unacceptable way.  We, including the President, have nothing to offer these parents, because nothing wipes away that kind of pain, they are going to have to live with that pain, every single day of their lives.  Every fucking day. The President's speech was pitch perfect. Your attempt to downgrade his speech along with boltheads lame attempt to do so, reflects who and what you are.

    You and bolthead think that because we don't often speak of those children affected by dronez we, including the President, don't have the right to react as we have to the horror in Connecticut. But to make matters worse, bolthead calls us all names to make his point and you for some reason support that, good to know what you think of the people at DAG. We are sheeple, but you, you are so much smarter than we are. What.A.Joke.

    If you think this is the time to discuss dronez in order to make the Presidents statement about the horror that took place in Connecticut less; that his response wasn't perfect, you need a wake up call.

    But I did learn something about you personally, from your response, which was good to know.


    by tmccarthy0 on Sun, 12/16/2012 - 8:38am

    Wow, nice - a full frontal attack on Orion, a guy who's noted he has some cognitive/communication difficulties, all because he didn't gush over another post-atrocity "I feel your pain" speech. I think he'll hold his own, but seems quite over-wrought for a guy giving his opinion.

    I didn't see the speech, and I don't care if it's "pitch perfect"- go ahead, record it, can it, play it for the next 18 atrocities as well - still as useless as tits on a warthog. The NRA has p3wn3d us, and all we can do is make up good speeches and then do absofuckinglutely nothing.

    What will that speech do for my kids? Help them go to school tomorrow, knowing nothing will be done because we have to have nowhere-to-be-seen Dudley DoRight gunowners protecting their freedoms? That the chance of a copycat attack has just increased, but the chance of something practical to stop it hasn't changed?

    From what everyone says, it's never time to discuss any of this stuff until it's stone cold and everyone's forgotten and moved on to the next election horse race where we can discuss contraception and support for Israel ad nauseum. As long as we're going to have jokey responses to deadly serious issues, we might as well turn to James Gardner.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 12/16/2012 - 9:28am

    tm,

    FWIW, and reluctantly to Bruce's point, I'm pretty sure the President is aware of the heart-wrenching irony of ordering drones to kill people, some of them innocent children, abroad while mourning a senseless tragedy here at home. The President knows that he is the one responsible for all those deaths, including those of innocents caught in the crossfire. How could he not? He probably does lie awake at night wondering if being a special type of killer makes him any better than a garden-variety one in the eyes of his fellow humans or in the opinion of his maker. He may cry about it. I know I would.

    But regarding the attack on Orion, I do not see how writing something hurtful, that brands one of our frequent contributors as "clueless" because he notes the inconsistency, adds anything useful to the conversation. I wish you had not written these things, because they marginalize a person who is not your enemy and demonstrates the very practice which exists among gun-owners of seeing enemies where there are none.

    The President's speech was pitch-perfect because he made the choice to draw everyone together and provide inspiration for change rather than directly attack those who might disagree with him on certain points. When he said "We can do better than this," he meant all of us.

    Just in case you're thinking that I have no idea what those parents are going through, please understand that my daughter, my only child, is a first-grader. Listening to the President read those first names, which could have easily been hers and her young friends, was almost unimaginable. But the very preciousness of what those parents have lost and what the rest of us, by whatever grace exists in the universe, still have, needs to inspire us to fellowship and patient action in pursuit of a nation that is safer for our children. Anything less is an insult to the children's memory and perpetuates the cycle of seeing perfectly ordinary people as "the other," which is precisely how Nancy Lanza managed to set the stage for this tragedy, and how more people will do the same unless we help them realize that these "others" don't really exist--there is no "other;" there's only all of us.

     


    by erica20 on Tue, 12/18/2012 - 12:44pm

    Ignoring.  You take too much pleasure in this crap.


    by Ramona on Sat, 12/15/2012 - 3:37pm

    This should always be the first ironboltbruce post anybody reads.

    It makes it very clear whether this person is worth listening to or not.


    by Doctor Cleveland on Sat, 12/15/2012 - 5:52pm

    Your  avatar suits you. It looks kind of like one of those police sketches of serial perverts.


    by CVille Dem on Sat, 12/15/2012 - 5:57pm

    "....before we disarm ourselves".

    Was there even one right wing crackpot libertarian who DID NOT vote for (twice) and have great fantasies about the Decidership of REPUBLICAN George W. Bush.....at least until 'the war went bad'? Isn't Ron Paul a card carrying REPUBLICAN?

    Now that Obama is trying to END the wars started by the REPUBLICANS that the Ironbolt Bush Belly Sneethces voted for they equate him with the true 'fascist puppet', their guy, the one who started the wars.


    by NCD on Sat, 12/15/2012 - 6:24pm

    Obama followed the *EXACT* exit timeline that Bush arranged before leaving office, except for trying to arrange residual troops (Malaki wouldn't give US soldiers immunity).

    For Afghanistan, Obama gave a leisurely 3 1/2 year exit schedule for 100,000 troops (after his surge from only *34,000* troops when he entered office in 2009), and is trying to negotiate the likely residual troops after end of 2014. Current US troop strength is 66,000.

     in August 2011, it was reported that the Pentagon is trying to strike a deal with the Afghan government to leave 25,000 US troops in Afghanistan until at least 2024. The 25,000 troop number is still being floated. - 

    http://countdowntodrawdown.org/facts.php

    Compare this with Nixon who went from a half million troops in Vietnam to 24,000 in 3 years, exit in 4. When Nixon makes you look bad on exiting a war.... good thing Obama is fresh and more photogenic than Nixon and has a Dem- label and is somehow considered to be kinda liberal. Saves him from the fate of both Nixon & LBJ. Or maybe we just don't give a shit anymore unless it's students in Connecticut or Columbine, and then it's just for the wake.

       US troop strength Vietnam

    1969 475,200

    1970 334,600

    1971 156,800

    1972   24,200

    1973          50


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 12/15/2012 - 7:03pm

    Are you really comparing 1969 through 1973 US troops to 2012?  Really?  

    REALLY?  Do you understand the difference in what troops had to do in Vietnam ( eg. all pretty much on the ground) vs now ... lots of strategic and remote efforts. 

    You are showing your ignorance, and when you are going for outrage, you should have your facts straight. 


    by CVille Dem on Sat, 12/15/2012 - 7:45pm

    Tee hee hee - " lots of strategic and remote efforts" - so we should be able to get the fuck out, say the day after... last week. Or are you saying that besides collateral civilian deaths, our newfangled technology has bought us quagmire at much lower troop levels? Quite the advance.

    We had 34,000 troops in Afghanistan in January 2009. After our failed surge, we're back to 66,000. Yet we need 2 more years to get those 66,000 home. Nixon was pulling out 150,000 a year, and that was working against the Soviet Union, China providing supply logistics and military support, and a well-trained North Vietnamese army and jungle guerrilla force, not just a bunch of rag-tag militants in unshielded terrain with some improvised ordnance.

    Any idea how absurd this is? One Arabic Blofeld/Dr. Evil type with a few million dollars is more effective at stopping the $700 billion per year US military than 2 world superpowers in the 60's. To quote Maggie Thatcher, I want my money back.

    So are you defending Obama, or the Democratic party, or our failed bi-partisan nation-building foreign policy under 2 administrations and the disgraced just-gotta-train-em dude Petraeus, or the honor of the US military, or Western civilization itself? What exactly has your dander up?


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 12/16/2012 - 3:59am

      Some of the drone attacks have been war crimes, and Obama could probably be charged. But a lot of the dead have been combatants, somewhat less than four out of five according to the New America Foundation.

    http://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones


    by Aaron Carine on Mon, 12/17/2012 - 7:52pm

    Thanks, good link.


    by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 12/18/2012 - 2:33am