First Draft

Weekend Question Thread

What was the first concert you ever attended?

A.

Saturday Blogwhoring Thread

Post away.

A.

When The Spell Is Broken

The Onion or Politico?

Headline of the day: Hayworth Ties McCain To Obama.

Sound like a winning strategy to you? Or is it some weird Tailhook inspired game?

Enquiring minds want to know...

Death to the Trend Story

WHOOMP there it is!

1. "Online Dating Grows, Sheds Its Stigma."

Next: Tattoos not just for sailors anymore.

*

The MSM: Yesterday's trends tomorrow.

A.

Friday Ferretblogging: Tricks

Some friends recently went on a cable-access show and demonstrated how they taught their ferrets to roll over on command for treats. I haven't gotten there with Bucky yet, but he does sit up and beg pretty well:

A.

Generation 'Dryl

I read this about four times, hoping that in some way, by clicking on some link, this would take me to The Onion’s home page and that this whole thing would be a prank. Apparently not.

Not only are parents drugging their kids with Benadryl, cough syrup and other over-the-counter meds when the kids don’t need them, but they are doing in because the kids have “become too much to handle.”  So many parents have taken to medicating their kids in this way that doctors could put together a large enough sample to conduct research on the phenomenon.

According to a study in the Journal of Pediatrics, almost 1,500 cases this abusive act occurred between 2000 and 2008. And those are only the ones that the researcher found and examined. Something tells me this is like roaches: see one and you know you’ve got hundreds more hiding.

Parents were likely to use the drugs to keep kids quiet on long car trips, airplane rides or when they just needed some peace and quiet. Approximately 14 percent of the kids studied were hurt and 18 of them died as a result of Mommy or Daddy needing some “down time,” the results showed.

If we ever wondered why kids seem to be more and more fucked up, this is probably a good place to start.

When you’re shooting your toddler up with cold medicine at age 2, pumping them full of Ritalin at age 5, slapping anti-depressants on them by age 10 and so forth, is it any wonder they see medicine as a cure all?

When it comes to real medical needs, I have no problem with meds. We’ve given The Midget cough syrup before when she’s sick and Mom has taught classrooms full of kids who really NEED Ritalin to stay focused. Totally understandable.  

However, as much as I like peace and quiet on a long car ride, I’m not going to install a Cryogenic chamber in the back of the Civic and use it to freeze dry my kid until we get to Milwaukee.

Instead, we find things that can help time on the ride to Gramma’s house pass easier.

We always have a car bag for The Midget: Snacks, water, books, toys and more go in there. When things get beyond the bag, we’ve got kid apps the Missus downloaded on to her iPhone. And yes, if The Midget gets tired, she actually falls asleep.

When she gets too twitchy or loud, we actually tell her to knock it off and there are consequences for failing to do so. It’s not that hard.

I’ve said this a million times before: Be a fucking parent.

And parenting doesn’t start by pushing a medicinal snooze button on your kids.

Friday Catblogging: The Chartres Street Shop Cat

I am a shitty photographer. I can't hold a camera still to save my life but I can point and shoot with the iPhone. This shot was taken before the knitting shop opened so there's a grate on the window impeding the view of this guest kitty. When the the grate is off the window, the shop cats are nowhere to be seen. Talk about ingrates...

Hole In The River

Life is hard in New Orleans right now between the recession, oil spill and hurricane season. It's harder still for my good friend, Mark. Mark's mother is terribly sick so he's been spending a lot of time at the hospital. Mark wrote a post about a recent hospital tour of duty with his mom that ripped my heart out. I don't cry easily or often but I wept after reading this.

It's particularly poignant when your last surviving parent is at death's door. The world is a lonelier place after the people that brought you into it aren't around any more. It doesn't matter if you saw them very often or even got along with them but it was always reassuring to know they were there.

I'd like to dedicate one of Neil Finn's best songs to Mark and his family; especially his sister Pam who has been their mother's primary caretaker.  Hole In The River is about family and mortality and while there's not a hole in the river around here there's one in the Gulf, alas.

Cross-posted at Adrastos.

Mac McClelland of Mother Jones To Speak At Rising Tide 5

It's shameless plug time again. This morning on behalf of Rising Tide, Oyster made this announcement:

Mac McClelland, human rights journalist for Mother Jones, has agreed to be keynote speaker for Rising Tide 5. We're thrilled to have McClelland at our conference, as she has written many of the most compelling stories about the oil gusher's effect on coastal communities.

Mac will be the first woman keynoter in Rising Tide history and we're delighted to have her. The Conference will be held August 28, 2010 at the Howlin' Wolf in New Orleans. For more information, click here.

They're Coming For You

I just got the chance to watch Rachel Maddow's amazing piece about the use of racially fueled scare tactics by wingnuts. She draws a line from George Wallace to Lester Maddox to Jesse Helms to Fox News. It's absolutely brilliant so I thought I'd share it with anyone who hasn't seen it already:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 

Kent Conrad's Proposed Solutions

Without offsets:

We enacted these tax cuts, there was no job creation, debt exploded, and only the wealthiest of the wealthy profited. So tell me, Mr. Fiscal Conservative Kent Conrad, why should we not let the tax cuts for the rich expire?

Allow me to speak for Kent here:

It's actually pretty simple. What's going to happen is we'll just cut the Department of Education, probably eliminate Social Security or raise the retirement age to 79 or so (since I once knew somebody who lived to be 97 and was perfectly healthy), and we'll make a 1600 SAT score mandatory for receiving food stamps.

We'll make sure nobody wounded in one of our AWESOME wars can get an aspirin without paying $700 for it, our cops and firefighters can use equipment from 50 years ago (they built things to last back then!) so long as it doesn't actively electrocute them, and the water mains around here should be good for another 120 years or so.

There are private corporate foundations to provide support for the arts, and really, who DOESN'T want to enjoy the kind of productions Pfizer would put on? Our universities can continue servicing Unilever in the academic equivalent of the tavern alley, because we certainly can't afford all that nonsense about higher education. Libraries? Please, I have the Internet, so you don't need books.

The widows and the orphans? They should have been more careful with their spouses and their parents, so as not to lose them so easily. Besides, we're a Christian nation, let the churches take care of them. BP's gonna take care of the Gulf cleanup. You say we're still hosed from Hurricane Katrina, but those people should have evacuated anyway, so we don't owe them.

There will be plenty of "offsets" found by systematically fucking over this country with a rusty chainsaw, and if you think it's going to be any more complicated than that, I have a new well-capping procedure with a made-for-TV theme song name I'd like to sell you. 

One of these days I want to be wrong about some of this shit, I really do.

A.

Lite Breit

From Album3 Also, what Driftglass said here and here. Breitbart would be just another wingnut with a website if the non Faux News media -- and the administration/political establishment -- didn't take him seriously...and it's not as if he's ever done a goddamned thing to earn that distinction.

Breitbart's Minions Plumb the Depths

For the love of the Killer Robot Christ. First Breitbart and his team of flying monkeys get a blameless woman fired over a doctored video about nothing. Now, now that the White House has apologized and Vilsack has apologized and pretty much everybody involved in this bullshit BUT Breitbart has apologized, one would think perhaps Big Government's legions of commenters would, you know, gently suggest to their host that he should take a long vacation and think about what he's done.

One would think that. One would be wrong:

And THAT, Ladies & Gentlemen, is what you call "governing" on the fly, off the cuff, by the seat of your pants, OJT, with training manual in hand.

And there's MUCH MORE where that came from, Folks...please, just remember this in NOVEMBER!

That's right. Not only is Shirley Sherrod a horrible racist who should have been fired, but Obama's White House is full of stupid, incompetent people for firing her! HAHAHAHA MORANS!

This story is a smoke screen to get the Dems little minds off the racial atrocity committed by Obama's thugs against Ms. Sherrod. Here is a rush to judgement, intimidated to resign, and racial prejudice by the first black president. Barry needs to get his bags packed and stop shoving his loyal sock puppets in front of the news because the "buck stops with Obama". America has reached the point in time where you all Dems need to stop defending an incompetent and ill-suited occupant of the white house.

Thugs! Probably CHICAGO thugs! With their urbanity and their thuggishness.

Remember the Keystone Kops? It needs to be updated to the Keystone Kenyan.

These clowns are spinning so fast they are becoming a blur. Just as when the cop arrested Professor Gates, they are so anxious to divide by race that they jump at any chance to do so.

They did exactly what we wanted them to do! BURN THEM!

Guys, should I ever find myself in this situation, I want you to come over to my house, bungee cord me to a chair, and talk sense to me. As much as I hate making mistakes or doing stupid shit, I would hate even more a comment section full of people who were all, "No, no, your calling somebody a goatfucker who demonstrably has no interest in goats just proves how AWESOME you are, girl. And your hair is sexy today. Don't think too hard, honey. It'll be okay." Who the fuck learns anything from that? Who does that help? 

The only thing that's changed over the years is the subtle shift in dialogue. There are a bunch of crazy white racists trying to prove that the black people are actually the racists... it's just the modern day, PC way of saying the N-word. Congratulations on your video editing and to all of you who think the video still implicates Sherrod as a racist.

Finally some sense.

A.

Print Journalism

There's no money there:

The New York Times Company reported on Thursday that its second-quarter profit declined 18 percent compared with results in the period a year earlier, when it recorded a tax benefit. On an operating basis, profit more than doubled.

Net income was $32 million, or 21 cents a share, compared with $39 million, or 27 cents a share, in the period a year earlier, when the company received the $37.7 million tax benefit. Operating profit rose to $60.8 million from $23.5 million, while earnings per share from continuing operations, which exclude severance costs and other one-time items, increased to 18 cents from 8 cents in the period a year earlier.

Circulation revenue grew, and a double-digit increase in digital advertising helped offset a decline in print advertising. The Times Company reported overall revenue of $589.6 million, a gain of 1.2 percent compared with sales in the period a year earlier. Revenue dropped 3.2 percent in the first quarter.

I'm pretty sure if First Draft ran this company, and our profits doubled, you would all be invited to the party ON THE MOON.

A.

Settled Down Like Rain

Today on Adrastos' obsession with the Jayhawks:

Ripping Yarn Of The Day

I almost called this the story of the day but then y'all would have thought that it was important when it's not.  Besides, Ripping Yarns was a great little British teevee series cooked up by Python's Michael Palin before he originated the genre of travel shows for people who hate travel shows...

Now where the hell was I? Oh yeah, this tale was spun by the legendarily quirky Bill Murray who explained why he did the voice of Garfield and I'm talking about the cat, not the assassinated President:

Murray reveals that he picked up Garfield's script and noted that it was written by one Joel Cohen. Mistakenly believing this to be the celebrated co-architect of dark comedies The Big Lebowski and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (rather than the creator of such gems as Evan Almighty and Daddy Day Camp, whose name has an additional "h"), Murray happily signed up. His mistake only became clear when he turned up to record his voiceover. Sample line: "I think I'm going to blow cat-chow chunks!"

"Finally, I went out to LA to record my lines," Murray tells GQ. "And usually when you're looping a movie, if it takes two days, that's a lot. I don't know if I should even tell this story, because it's kind of mean. What the hell? It's interesting.

"So I worked all day and kept going, 'That's the line? Well, I can't say that'. And you sit there and go, 'What can I say that will make this funny? And make it make sense?' And I worked. I was exhausted, soaked with sweat, and the lines got worse and worse. And I said, 'OK, you better show me the whole rest of the movie, so we can see what we're dealing with'.

"So I sat down and watched the whole thing, and I kept saying, 'Who the hell cut this thing? Who did this? What the fuck was Coen thinking?' And then they explained it to me: it wasn't written by that Joel Coen."

Anyone buying this? Me neither. Why? Murray also did the sequel. But this yarn is much more interesting than saying: "Are you kidding me? I did it for the money."

Of course, Bill Murray could read or even sing the Federal Register and make it sound hilarious:

How Did This Anniversary Get By Us?

To Kill A Mockingbird:

To Kill A Mockingbird was my lifeline. It changed my life when I read it. It completely changed the way I thought about my community. It changed my life every time I re-read it.

The reason I remember exactly how old I was when I got that book, and exactly when I got that book, is because the act of my mother giving me that book was the only honest conversation I ever had about racism. It was the only time I was ever allowed to acknowledge that the things I saw happening around me every day were wrong, that they were horrible, that there was something deeply troubling about the community I lived in. Because you did not talk about it. You did not talk about it. You did not talk about it.

But there was this book, this book, and in 1989, it was talking about racism when nothing else in my life was. And yes, in 1989, that was so, so important. It's still that important.

TKAM is a flawed book, and it is directed very clearly at white people. It has outdated ideas about race and deeply problematic images of black people. It has troubling tropes. It is a problem that it's considered to be the ultimate statement on racism, and there's no denying that TKAM's huge popularity is primarily due to it coming from a white mouthpiece and being directed primarily at a white community of readers. And I realize that this post is proving one of the strongest points you can make about the general public opinion of TKAM: that white people read it and then glorify it because they think it is the only book about racism they will ever need to read.

It's possible that if any other book about racism had been handed to me at that age, that book would have been the one that changed my life. But because To Kill a Mockingbird was and is the accepted manifesto on white people and racism, it was the one that wound up in my Easter basket. It was the one that was deemed an acceptable introduction for me as a young white girl--not Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, for example. Was it the right choice? No. The right choice would have been to have systematic representation of black literature in my schools and out of them, across the board. The right choice would have been To Kill A Mockingbird and any number of other wonderful books about racism.

Those things deserved to be talked about when we celebrate TKAM's 50th anniversary. And when we don't.

For Scout:

A.

Salt Of The Earth

I'm falling in love with the Spooners who are the farm couple at the center of the Sherrod controversy. It's nice to see some good old fashioned human decency in an increasingly tacky world:

Even though Athenae has killed journalism, newspapers still wonderful

via Daily Art Fixx, the paper sculpture of Nick Geogiou:

Georgiou’s work is inspired by “the death of the printed word/world, economic collapse, political and environmental uncertainty.

Georgiou states: “Books and newspapers are becoming artifacts of the 21st century. Whatever we used to read off paper, we’re now reading off digital screens. Our way of interacting with text is changing. My work is not only about the decline of the printed word in today’s society but its rebirth as art.”

Rare Good News

In the wake of Shirley Sherrod's craven Vilsacking, I searched the interwebs for good news this morning and astonishinglly enough found some. The Guardian is reporting that "sources close to BP" are saying that Wayward Hayward will be out as CEO by October 1.

Actually, they quote the Times of Murdoch but I refuse to pay Rupert a shilling to read his site. Call me crazy but I'm not into subsidizing multi-billionaire media tycoons...

What Jack Stuef Said

You can only get played so many times before people stop blaming Andrew Breitbart and start blaming you:

Seriously? Fuck off. Fuck off. And try to remember for a second that you are called the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and not the National Association for Demonizing Random Black People Andrew Breitbart Baselessly Tells You to Demonize. Jesus Christ.

Later on, realizing what they had done to this poor, exemplary woman, the NAACP backtracked and released another statement, blaming their initial reaction on context. Yeah, no. You don’t get away with doing that. There was no reason in Breitbart’s original context for them to throw her under the bus. Maybe you have the responsibility to think first about what you are doing when you call people racists, NAACP. Certainly you have that responsibility if you want people to take you seriously the next time you call someone racist.

But the most depressing thing about all of this is that Tom Vilsack fired Shirley Sherrod. He fired her. Because of some dumb thing Breitbart vomited on his keyboard! He fired her!

You may remember Tom Vilsack-of-shit as the greatest failure of the 2008 presidential election. This castrato quickly realized that nobody liked him and almost immediately dropped out. But oh no, Tom had campaign debts! So Tom went around asking all the other candidates to pay off his debts in exchange for his endorsement. Hillary Clinton bit. And so, after groveling and kissing her feet, Tom Vilsack spent a year going around telling people how much he loved Hillary. God, he loved her so much! He baked pies for her! Yet somehow that stench of sack (Vil) success never brushed off on Hillary.

So it should be no surprise this man has no balls. He is a disgrace to the state of Iowa, where brave people legalized gay marriage because it was the right thing to do. And it is time for him to return to obscurity in his hometown of Mount Pleasant and enjoy his neighbors ignoring him.

I think I'm in love.

A.

The Great Deceiver

I'm baffled. Why does the MSM keep buying Andrew Breitbart's crapola? Film editing isn't some new fangled thing, it's been around since the days of DW Griffith. Breitbart dominated yesterday's political news cycle with a totally spurious story that got Shirley Sherrod fired by a panicky administration. I hope that Tom Vilsack finds his nutsack and rehires her pronto.

Clarence Thomas described his confirmation hearing as a "high tech lynching." He was wrong but the phrase is a powerful one that seems to apply in this instance. The 24 hour news cycle really sucks sometimes, y'all.

Nobody should ever believe a word that comes out of Breitbart's lying gob or accept as legitimate any video coming from him. This is what Fox News *always* does but shame on everyone else who got fished in by this shitbird.

The view from underneath the bus

via Salon, but Jealous also spun the same story on Maddow, and she didn't challenge it, which I found disappointing.

Said NAACP President Ben Jealous in the new statement:

With regard to the initial media coverage of the resignation of USDA Official Shirley Sherrod, we have come to the conclusion we were snookered by Fox News and Tea Party Activist Andrew Breitbart into believing she had harmed white farmers because of racial bias.

Having reviewed the full tape, spoken to Ms. Sherrod, and most importantly heard the testimony of the white farmers mentioned in this story, we now believe the organization that edited the documents did so with the intention of deceiving millions of Americans. 

<...>

This is the same Jealous who said Monday he was "appalled" by Sherrod's "abuse of power." Good for the NAACP for admitting a mistake.

No, not good. 

Because they admitted the wrong mistake. No one believes for one minute that Jealous, or Vilsack, and whoever in the administration allowed or ordered Vilsack to carry the ball on urging Sherrod to step down, was "snookered" or "hoodwinked."  No one at that level of political power listens to Fox or Breitbart and falls for it.  Fox News manipulating a story?  Andrew Breitbart lying? Gosh, who in the White House press office would expect that?

They made a bet on the response that was calculated to cause the least amount of damage, and now, in addition to losing big to the rabid assholes who started all this, they are throwing table scraps to the public and pretending they didn't do something cynical and paranoid and contrived at the expense of a public servant with a long career of civil rights advocacy who committed the grave error of speaking in public about a matter of moral complexity that happened a quarter of a century ago.

Breitbart and Fox are scumbags and they deserve every bit of blame getting thrown at them for this. But come the fuck on, in what nine-dimensional, 12-steps-ahead, crystal-ball-PR-chess game did the Obama administration, the USDA, and the NAACP arrive at the decision that the correct first course of action, the very best first thing was to condemn and jettison Sherrod right off the bat?  In what universe does no one in the administration pause and consider that their actions will make them look like chumps and losers - again- to the people who put them in power? In what game book is that preferable when it's written across the sky in black smoke that everyone on the other side hates your guts anyway and no one over there will ever be convinced anything you do is right?

There'll be more statements, maybe an apology, maybe some attempt to walk part of this back.  I don't care what they do because none of it will bear any resemblance to the truth and it certainly won't look like winning. I am so weary of this shit.

And don't even get me started on the Washington Post story.

Traylor Trash?

The Monroe News Star is reporting that Bitter Vitter's Gooper foe, Chet Traylor may have some zipper issues of his own. But, hey, at least he doesn't pay:

State Rep. Noble Ellington, D-Winnsboro, said that Traylor was “significantly involved” in the cause of his divorce from Peggy McDowell, who later married Chet Traylor and became Peggy McDowell Traylor. <SNIP>

Traylor is also currently involved in a romantic relationship with Denise Lively, the estranged wife of his stepson, Ryan Ellington, the son of Noble Ellington.

Pasickie

Making people happy:

When the Popsicle Princesses arrive at the Time Out Chicago offices for an interview, they immediately hoist a picnic basket and distribute their wares—the Gloria Gaynor (whole blueberries, lemon zest and juiced berries), the Madonna (strawberry and basil syrup), the Kathleen Hanna (mango with a hit of cayenne)—to passersby in the foyer. “Would you like a pop?” they ask me. A hand-labeled, multicolored fruit pop made by two women wearing matching red gingham shirts and cutoffs? Only David Brooks is a big enough killjoy to refuse.

The Popsicle Princesses are Liz Wolferman and Emma Nolley, a renegade pair of 23-year-olds whose mission is to bring ice pops, made in batches of 30 and transported in that picnic basket on the back of a sometimes-functioning tricycle, to the streets. Their role model: the tamale guy. “We were just fed up with the laws of vending in Chicago,” says Nolley, “and we were like, You know what, those tamale guys are out there doing it, and we love that, and they go to the bar, run around, and everyone gets so excited. Can we do that, too?”

One of my favorite things to do is feed people. It's hard to be in a bad mood at a meeting when there are delicious cookies. People get bitchy when their blood sugar gets low and in a high-stress work environment, man, some days you just want a treat you don't have to stand in line for or figure out if you've got enough change in your pocket for or whatever. Plus, and this is the selfish part, baking and cooking give me a sense of accomplishment distinct from wrestling all day with a paragraph that just won't work.

A co-worker and I once, during a particularly bitching 18-hour day in which everybody in the office seemed to be about to blow a gasket, went out and bought two boxes of Dilly Bars at the Dairy Queen and distributed them around. We just couldn't take the crabbiness anymore and ice cream seemed the simplest thing to do. While it didn't solve anybody's marital disputes or make their financial problems disappear or help them meet their deadlines, it did, at the very least, make it hard to complain, as our mouths were full.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some farmer's market peaches as need making into a pie. That strawberry basil thing sounds amazing, too. NOM NOM NOM.

A.

Only Talking Sense

Holy crap, someone in Washington is talking sense about Afghanistan albeit off the record and to the British press:

The White House is revising its Afghanistan strategy to embrace the idea of negotiating with senior members of the Taliban through third parties – a policy to which it had previously been lukewarm.

Negotiating with the Taliban has long been advocated by Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, and the British and Pakistani governments, but resisted by Washington.

The Guardian has learned that while the American government is still officially resistant to the idea of talks with Taliban leaders, behind the scenes a shift is under way and Washington is encouraging Karzai to take a lead in such negotiations.

"There is a change of mindset in DC," a senior official in Washington said. "There is no military solution. That means you have to find something else. There was something missing."

That missing element was talks with the Taliban leadership, the official added.

The American rethink comes in the aftermath of the departure last month of General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan.

Barack Obama, apparently frustrated at the way the war is going, has reminded his national security advisers that while he was on the election campaign trail in 2008, he had advocated talking to America's enemies.

It's about frakking time. That war is clearly unwinnable in the classic sense: the best that can be hoped for is that the Taliban won't overrun the country. No central Afghan government has ever controlled the entire country and none ever will, it's topographically impossible. Geography is destiny: there will be always be rebels in the hills shooting down at the government in places like Colombia and Afghanistan.

I'm glad that Obama is reviving his strongly stated campaign position that to make peace anywhere in the world one must talk to one's adversaries. One reason the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is all process and no peace is that both sides want to dictate who they'll negotiate with. You cannot pick your negotiating partners. If Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern and the loyalists and nationalists were able to end the Troubles in Northern Ireland, anything is possible. Northern Ireland should have been Blair's legacy BUT unfortunately for all concerned Iraq defined his government.

British Prime Minister David (Call me Dave) Cameron will be meeting with Obama this week and will surely have his back on this point. It's time to start winding things down in Afghanistan and if we need to use General Petraeus' surge thingee as cover, so be it. I'm glad that after years of nonsense, tentative moves towards a more sensible policy are being made. It's time for us to go.

Wow, I Feel Whiter Already

Not that I made a habit of hanging out in Homer Township, but I sure as hell won't be going there anytime soon:

The leaders of Homer Township—in Will County, in the southwest suburbs—have brought a little bit of Arizona to the metro Chicago area, passing a resolution declaring English as their official language. As Fox News Chicago reports, township clerk Steve Balich, a resolution backer, admits that Homer doesn’t even have an immigrant "problem," but "you have to start somewhere and so we’re starting here.” He hopes other places will learn about the resolution and “have the courage to stand up and do the same thing.”

Fox reports that Balich is “very active” in the Tea Party movement. A look at the Homer/Lockport Tea Party’s website suggests that Balich might want to start there with enforcing the new resolution.

On the front page are the typos “preevering” and “thhe”—as in, "Preerving Our Freedom - Picnic Rally," and "Glenn Beck at thhe Sears Centre." On the right side of the page, a hyperlink takes you to the “Illinois General Assemble.” Inexplicable, inconsistent usage of upper-case letters, such as “To be Updated,” possibly demands its own resolution.

A.

Gonna Git Yer Guns

The NRA and its "evolving" mission:

Do you want to continue to sell guns to criminals, terrorists, and those not of sound mind through the gun show loophole -- unlike 69% of NRA members and 85% of non-NRA gun owners who support a simple background check at gun shows to prevent this insanity?

And look. This is a membership organization, and eventually the membership bears responsibility for what it does and what it stands for. LaPierre is an asshole who isn't interested in advancing the rights of gun owners as much as he's interested in jerking himself off at the Republican National Convention every four years, but let's not let the members of the NRA off the hook here. They're the ones who can actually change things.

Gun safety and reasonable restrictions on gun ownership do more to protect gun owners than knee-jerkingly whining about the Constitution every goddamn time somebody wants to buy his third Uzi without a waiting period. That kind of shit doesn't quite drum up the contributions the way yelling about Obama's roving Black Panther squads of gun grabbers does, but hey, it all depends on what you really want.

A.

Taxed Enough Already

If only someone would let those hardworking rich people off the hook once in a while:

Imprisoned former media baron Conrad M. Black is fighting a $71 million bill from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, which says from 1998 to 2003 he filed no tax returns and paid absolutely nothing on $120 million in taxable income.

In a previously unreported lawsuit in U.S. Tax Court, Black, now serving a six-and-a-half-year-sentence in a Florida federal prison, is challenging the IRS' demands and asserting the income in question wasn't taxable in the U.S.

Black is not the only convicted former top official of Hollinger being pursued by the IRS. The agency says F. David Radler, publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times for most of Hollinger's ownership, also failed to file returns for the same years, paid zip on $111 million in taxable income and owes $66 million. After admitting fraud and testifying against Black, Radler drew a 29-month sentence but was released after just 10 months. Now running a small newspaper company in Canada, Radler also is fighting the IRS in his lawsuit just filed in Tax Court.

It's a good thing they haven't gone Galt or we'd all be really sorry now. 

A.