Over at Tucker Carlson’s wingnut site, The Daily Caller, they picked up an article from the Charlotte Observer: “In North Carolina you can let your gun show”

With the Observer article ran a photo [below] of a man openly carrying a pistol: ‘Eric Shuford Jr., 67, of Cary typically keeps his Russian 9 mm Makarov sidearm with him from the time he wakes up . .’

But in Tucker’s online fishwrap, it came appended with a different image:

A shocking image, really, one to question the editor’s taste and sanity, to say nothing of his pro-gun activism. For that photo is maybe the most famous open-carry activist image of all time, burnished in our memories by violent history.

The woman there, Meleanie Hain, was an open-carry nut in Pennsylvania. She sued her local sheriff for a million bucks in part because of the emotional trauma she said she suffered when he revoked her permit to carry after the soccer game photos above became widely distributed. Another:

Most of the Hain brouhaha and 2nd amendment deification went down at the end of 2008. About a year later — stop me if you’ve heard this one before — in October of 2009, her unhinged husband came home and shot her dead. He then turned the beloved gun on himself, ending his life, too.

I remember it well. I wrote a post with my take on the paranoid psyches of the people involved: how the use of firepower as a crutch to lessen anxiety actually leaves you vulnerable. ‘If only Meleanie had seen that her paranoia was well-founded in the relationships she kept with paranoid gun nuts like her husband,’ one wonders. ‘If only she’d traded in her gun for some dignity and common sense . .’

Meanwhile, maybe the firearms freaks should leave her alone?

She was shot dead, Tucker.

For some background on the tragedy, click over to this previous post: El Paso Border Patrol agent fires into crowd of Juarez rock throwers, kills 14 year old

Well, the first lies have already been exposed in the tragic shooting and killing of Mexican teenager Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca. Stay tuned for more to follow.

Allegedly fearing for his life and surrounded by a “crowd” (as I wrote, above) of violent rock-throwers, the agent, patrolling in the culvert that forms the border between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, fired in self-defense and hit the 14 15 year-old’s head. Or so they said.

“Another agent arrived on his bicycle along the cement apron that forms the riverbank on the U.S. side,” [FBI agent Andrea] Simmons said in a release. “That agent detained a second subject, Augustin Alcaraz Reyes, but other subjects ran into Mexico and began to throw rocks at the agent.

“This agent, who had the second subject detained on the ground, gave verbal commands to the remaining subjects to stop and retreat,” Simmons said. “However, the subjects surrounded the agent and continued to throw rocks at him. The agent then fired his service weapon several times, striking one subject who later died.”

A Top 10 Rule for Post-Modern Life: Don’t foist a despicable lie upon the public that tomorrow’s cell phone clip will blow out of the water.

Looks like stone cold murder to me. Unless they suddenly want to add the boy, incidentally, had a bazooka in his hands.

That’s all I want to say about this today. One, it’s just too sad. Two, this is an international scandal worthy of weeks of discussion. Three, Americans don’t give a fuck. They are a hard-hearted people when it comes to the deaths and lives of Mexicans.

It’s not enough that we back the Israelis no matter what they do — now we’re gonna borrow their tactics, too?

Wait, I take that back. The Israelis wised up long ago and learned to use rubber bullets in confrontations with rock throwers. Well . . at least some of the time. Not us, no sir. For us, teens throwing rocks across the border fence-line constitutes a “deadly force” incident. By all means, go shoot one of them in the head:

Mexico asks for probe into teen’s shooting death by U.S. border agent
By Arthur Brice, CNN
June 8, 2010 — Updated 2129 GMT (0529 HKT)

(CNN) — The Mexican government is requesting a quick and transparent investigation into the fatal shooting by a U.S. Border Patrol agent of a Mexican teen in Ciudad Juarez on Monday night, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

The teen was shot during a rock-throwing incident, Mexican and U.S. officials said.

Mexico “reiterates that the use of firearms to repel a rock attack represents a disproportionate use of force, particularly coming from authorities who receive specialized training on the matter,” the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday in a news release . .

Monday night’s incident started around 6:30 p.m. when Customs and Border Protection Border Patrol agents responded to a report of a group of suspected illegal immigrants being smuggled into the United States near the Paso del Norte port of entry, FBI Special Agent Andrea Simmons said.

A suspect identified as Oscar Ivan Pineda Ayala was initially detained on the Rio Grande levy, said the FBI, which is leading the investigation.

“Another agent arrived on his bicycle along the cement apron that forms the riverbank on the U.S. side,” Simmons said in a release. “That agent detained a second subject, Augustin Alcaraz Reyes, but other subjects ran into Mexico and began to throw rocks at the agent.

“This agent, who had the second subject detained on the ground, gave verbal commands to the remaining subjects to stop and retreat,” Simmons said. “However, the subjects surrounded the agent and continued to throw rocks at him. The agent then fired his service weapon several times, striking one subject who later died” . .

Ciudad Juarez spokesman Sergio Belmonte identified the dead 14-year-old boy as secondary student Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereca.

Belmonte said Hernandez was shot in the head.

“The young man was not armed,” Belmonte said. “He did not have the physical size to threaten anyone. The aggression (by the U.S. agent) is evident.”

Ugh. So, will Arizonans form massive support demonstrations for the brave Border Patrol agent defending himself against the violent Mexican thug? Will they go on and on about how impossible it is to routinely enforce immigration laws when the immigrants are universally angry, armed and anti-American? Will they point out that even Mexican 14 year-olds are dangerous because that’s just the way those people are, y’know, down there?

Will the Israelis go out of their way to support the right of the United States and its Border Patrol agents to defend themselves? Especially in light of the well-known dangers being constantly smuggled into lands we’re obligated to provide security for? Will they see the teen’s rock-throwing as a shallow p.r. ploy to goad American agents into violence meant to embarrass the U.S.?

Will John McCain make a series of campaign commercials highlighting the incident, calling the courageous but overburdened Border Patrol “HEROES”, similar to our Iraqi soldiers? Will he then draw up a plan for a “SURGE” down at the border in order to get our people the personnel and support they need to “win” the immigration “war”? Will he ride the mess to victory in November and return to the Senate so we can see him on teevee every Sunday morning for another million years?

I dread the fall-out from this sad thing.

Sadly, it appears that Waveland, Mississippi, has become an early ground zero for the appearance of dead wildlife from the on-going BP disaster. While the vast quantities of oil that wash onto the barrier islands of Louisiana coat, poison and kill the precious biodiversity where it lays, in Waveland the sea life that once swam washes ashore.

While some of it may be naturally occurring, there’s little doubt that more of it resulted from what is probably the worst environmental disaster in America’s history.

I’ve lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast for 33 years. Never have I seen a sea turtle on the beach either dead or alive. Today I saw 2 dead sea turtles covered in oil just miles from my home in Waveland, MS.

. . 47 sea turtles on average are reported stranded along the upper Gulf Coast each May, based on a five-year average, officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday. The range is from 15 to 80 on the shores of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle in May each year.

But this month there have been 77 dead in Mississippi alone, said Moby Solangi with the Institute of Marine Mammals Studies in Gulfport. Most of these are the endangered Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle . .

“These are the only three we’ve seen alive in the past three weeks,” Solangi said.

Came across these shocking images amongst some viewer submitted Gulf of Mexico oil spill photos on the New York Times website. The two photos show thousands of little fish washed up dead in Waveland, Mississippi. The photos are credited to Sabrina Bradford.

According to first hand accounts oil has been spotted washing up in Waveland. One person writes on the Gulf Oil Spill Tracker that,”We walked along the beach just outside of the Silver Slipper Casino area and saw many dead fish, 2 cats and at least 5 trout and a quite large fish we could not identify. In addition we saw upwards of 20 dead baby crabs spread out along the beach. We were not able to locate any tar balls or residues of any type.”

The increase in dead sea animals ashore along with the lack of an obvious cause of death, like their being coated with toxic tar, may point to a less obvious but troubling culprit: suffocation by oil. Specifically, oxygen starvation caused by being enveloped in oil plumes.

An article in yesterday’s New York Times underscored the possibility. Because the oil originates deep undersea and because BP has aggressively used hundreds of thousands of gallons of dispersant to prevent the oil from coating the Gulf’s surface (and then being photographed, some say), the millions of gallons of oil stay submerged as tiny droplets that loosely aggregate into large plumes.

The scientific work detailed in the article showed:
1). The plumes exist.
2). They are massive.
3). They are so oxygen-poor that they are capable of killing sea life in huge quantities.

Scientists Build Case for Undersea Plumes
By JUSTIN GILLIS
Published: May 28, 2010

. . The water samples they pulled up suggested that any oil in the plumes was highly diffuse — not even visible to the naked eye. But when several gallons of the water were forced through a fine filter, tiny black oil droplets appeared.

Even in that diffuse form, the plumes were having a drastic impact on the chemistry of the ocean, with dissolved oxygen levels plunging as each plume drifted through the sea.

That, Dr. Joye said, was most likely because bacteria were ramping up to consume the oil and gas — a good thing, over all, but it was creating a heavy demand for oxygen and other nutrients. Aside from the toxic effect of the oil, the declining oxygen was a potential threat to sea life. Slowly, as the Walton Smith and other boats worked the gulf this past week, the weird physics of a deep-water well blowout came into better focus.

We may be yet unaware of the oil’s terrible impact upon our ecosystems because it’s most evident within these lethal oxygen-less clouds, beneath the surface of the Gulf where nobody can detect it. No one outside a few hard-working scientists and their instruments . .

Oh, weren’t these people smart? Oh my. The Heritage Foundation:

And the Republican leaders:

REP. JOHN BOEHNER, R-OHIO, HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: “Democrats aren’t listening to the people. This bill is dead.”

There’s plenty of terrific gloating going on. And, with the pleasure of looking back and laughing, there comes a realization that some idiots seem to keep getting caught in the goat pen. Fred Barnes, for one. Fred Barnes particularly:

FRED BARNES, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, THE WEEKLY STANDARD: You know, scaling back Obamacare is a non-starter. Look, it is dead. It is dead in the House. It is dead in the Senate. I’m not sure it would have passed even before Brown. Nancy Pelosi was down to 218 votes and some of the more moderate Democrats were queasy.

But the whole thing is dead. Republicans aren’t going to help out on this. The Republican position is get that off the table. We will start anew.

This hilariously, pathetically dead-skunk-wrong declaration by the Executive Editor of the oh-so-serious-and-ultra-important Conservative Institution got me to wondering: just how goddamned stupid is Fred Barnes? Turns out there’s an answer to that, and the answer is this: extremely.

To make the point for himself, looking back, Fred can start with the healthcare effort which he obviously knew nothing about. He compounded that documented prescience by writing a post detailing how the political world got forever upended by Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts.

Barnes’ brilliant highlights of the New Political World, point by point:

Someone should have run and told Mitch McConnell he was the ‘new king of Capitol Hill’, he could have killed the dreaded legislation with a wave of his scepter. Or of some fabulous crimson-red right-wing fiat.

But Barnes’ insight is hardly limited to the dramas of recent law-making. Back in 2008, as the presidential campaigns came down to the wire, his genius similarly couldn’t hide.

The Huffington Post took an informal survey of 27 big-time ‘pundits’ on the probable results of the election. Hey, Fred — you’re a political expert who follows these things on a moment to moment basis, right? Who’s going to win it?

Election Predictions: Pundits Weigh In
The Huffington Post 11- 2-08

Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard editor
Winner: McCain
Electoral College: Obama 252 McCain 286 . .

Final tally: Obama 365, McCain 173. Pundits who predicted the poll leader, Obama, would win: 26. Barnes was the only one who ended up stunned by the Democratic blow-out. Mysteries.

So, he doesn’t understand Capitol Hill or campaigns. What about his fellow man, you ask? Perhaps he is the sort of man that knows men. Sadly, Barnes, given a year to get a handle on the election, couldn’t do any better at guessing who George W. Bush was — even after five years of junior’s presidency. For Fred, it made him a perfect candidate to write a lengthy biography of his fellow moron: “Rebel-in-Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush.”

So brimming with seductive intelligence and timeless enlightenment is it, it’s currently ranked #721,805 on Amazon.com. Go on, read it for yourself. Why not, when, if you’ve got a quarter in one of your pockets, you can pick up a couple dozen of Barnes’ hagiographies with the click of a button. And I mean brand spanking-new hardbacks, straight from Amazon:

A book by fey diet and exercise guru Richard Simmons, “Still Hungry After All These Years: My Story”, can be had for the same price, but only if it’s used. The new copies go for around $5. Richard is hanging in there at Amazon ranking #500,250, a couple hundred thousand slots higher than Fred.

Well, fine, Fred is no author either. He’s not exactly tapped into the culture, not keenly aware of what Americans are keen to devour.

Well, what does he know? Does he actually know anything at all? I have no idea what sort of actual intelligence Barnes has displayed, ever, anywhere, because I can’t find it. But I can tell you that he does seem to know how to be an obnoxious fucking prick.

For that assertion, I offer you his 2005 commentary on the Hurricane Katrina disaster. On a Fox News television set with fellow jerks Brit Hume and Charles Krauthammer, Barnes made clear his disgust with the irresponsible and predictable responses of the victims of the disaster:

Hey, Fred — don’t you have a house in Florida, or something? Yeah, I do, thanks for asking:

And now I will point out that Barnes’ Fox commentary was going on during the afternoon of August 29th, the same day that Katrina struck. So Fred was ripping the sure-to-be-greedy victims of the disaster while they were drowning by the dozens. The Superdome, where the nation’s live-feed lens witnessed the survivors’ mortal misery and desperation, the place that the Bush administration only bothered with days later, hadn’t even opened yet.

After the worst disaster in United States history, the terrible toll: 1,836 people dead, 705 missing, 90,000 square miles declared disaster areas, over $80 billion in losses, and Fred Barnes is a stupid asshole.

New Orleans, by contrast, continues to recover.

Just like they always say, liberals are the real racists. Witness the “moonbat” Bishop:

Monday, February 15, 2010
Amy Bishop Killed Minorities: Leftists Silent on ‘Racist’ Rampage . .

I just noticed something about the Amy Bishop case: Her victims were minorities. From left to right at the photo: Dr. Adriel Johnson Sr., Dr. Gopi Podila, and Dr. Maria Davis.

This is really something: . . add on top of this the fact that the premeditation included the planned killings of three non-white colleages and this really should be explosive for the radical multiculturalists . . perish the thought that Bishop’s motive could have been racism? Maybe Harvard-trained left-wing professors get a pass on that . .

Only with the hyperventilating, clueless right-wing is racism obvious absent intention. The same people who only hours earlier were going on about her leftist “obsession” with The One, Obama, are now saying she was a violent racist.

Also shot, in critical condition, fighting for their lives:

Joseph G. Leahy








Stephanie Monticciolo







Also shot, or injured, and released:

Luis Rogelio Cruz-Vera









The guy she allegedly sent pipe bombs to back at Harvard appears to be this guy:

Paul Rosenberg

And how many “racist” liberals would favor censure of the school president over implementation of policies reducing campus diversity?

Last fall Dr. Bishop was quoted as opposing the UAH administration’s policy requiring all freshmen to live on campus . .

The UAH Faculty Senate will consider a vote of censure against President Dr. David Williams next month because of issues surrounding the policy, which senators say makes UAH less affordable and less competitive.

“It will generate a different economic strata and diversity,” assistant professor of biology Dr. Amy Bishop said during last week’s faculty senate meeting.

Nonetheless, blogger Donald Douglas at American Power continues down this blind alley:

“AND MORE: See also the first-hand report from Professor Joseph Ng, a former UC Irvine student, who witnessed the murders. Ng confirms Amy Bishop’s premeditation and potentially racist motivations. Ng is a Chinese surname. I’ll need more information, but so far one-fourth of those at the tenure meeting were ethnic minorities.”

Douglas has posted pics of 3 of the “minorities” shot, Cruz-Vera is a fourth, and he’s about to quote the unscathed Ng, a fifth, who relates there were 11 people and Bishop at the meeting. Brilliant.

“I’ll update later, but it very well could be that Amy Bishop was disgruntled because ‘quota hires’ were denying her tenure. Perhaps the lady was ‘white trash’ and never quite broke out into the more supposedely (sic) refined strata of the faculty elite (or, more likely, they’re all like that). Boy, this just keeps getting worse for the radical leftists! See, ‘Former UCI Student Saw Faculty Shootings’:

We were 12 all together (including the shooter) sitting around an oval table in a modest size conference room . There were only one door to enter/exit. The shooter was a disgruntled faculty member who didn’t get tenured after several appeals and a law suit. About 30min into the meeting, she got up suddenly, took out a gun and started shooting at each one of us. She started with the one closest to her and went down the row shooting her targets in the head. Our chairman got it the worst as he was right next to her along with two others who died almost instantly.

That’s almost like an assembly line, Che Guevara-ish in fact, or Taliban-ish.

Posted by Donald Douglas at 11:34 AM”

Well, if she’s going to shoot every member in the faculty meeting, “like an assembly line,” she’s a racist. Thankfully, Joseph Ng wasn’t sitting any closer.

200,000 dead and counting, can’t believe I’ve typed that for the fourth or fifth time.

It’s beginning to look like one of the most savage, shocking disasters in all of history. A rival to the Indian Hurricane of 1839 and the Antioch Earthquake of 526.

How well did Glenn Beck ‘pundit’ reality?

To most people throughout Europe and the Americas, Christmas is a time of fun, gift-giving, and reflecting on the joy that “Peace On Earth, Goodwill Toward Men” could possibly be. Hard hearts being melted over the Yuletide season has been a staple of storytellers from Charles Dickens to Frank Capra, a theme enjoyed by Christians and non-Christians alike.

Real Christians hate that shit, of course, and think people who fail to show proper reverence for Jesus’ admittedly made-up birthday have no right to share in the fun, or even take the day off work that Christ paid for. Enter Real Christian Ron Lake of Nipomo, CA. He’s standing up for his Christian values by using his front yard to show that Jesus would bust a cap in Santa’s ass:

Controversial Christmas Display, Jesus versus Santa
Posted: Dec 17, 2009 10:26 PM PST
Updated: Dec 18, 2009 1:25 PM PST

NIPOMO – One Nipomo man’s holiday decorations has his neighbors banding together to get it removed.

The display is of Jesus and Santa, the two icons of Christmas. However, Jesus is holding a shotgun over the dead body of Santa Claus.

Neighbors want the display taken down citing that there are children in the neighborhood and they find it disturbing. “I know its freedom of speech, but it’s pretty disturbing and there are lots of children, that’s our main concern,” says neighbor Susana Cruz.

The artist, Ron Lake says that it represents the commercialism of Christmas.

Lake also says that his display it is a work of art and open to interpretation. “You can tell your kids and make it as if there’s a Santa Claus, and let them believe all that, but you can’t explain these things or ignore this thing. I don’t get it,” says Lake.

The controversial display went up on Monday, and since then multiple complaints have been filed with law enforcement trying to get the display removed.

Just outside of the chain link fence that separates the display from one of the main roads in Nipomo is a school bus stop.

Neighbors say children walking to the bus stop see the traditional nativity scene, or Santa soaring through the skies and kicking back on a Harley Davidson.

But then they stumble upon Jesus packing a double barrel shotgun bearing down on the Santa.

“Its private property, and everyone has the right to it, and I have the right to stand up and say I don’t like it either,” says Karen Clement who lives near the display.

“Christmas is not about Santa, its about Jesus, not the Jesus as the killer with the shotgun, but come on there’s a little humor here, a little tragedy here,” says Lake.

The display is up during the day, but Lake takes it down when the sun sets.

Of course, it’s just a joke. I think his original design was to show a flaming Santa in Hell being tortured by demons, but the Nipomo Fire Department interfered with his First Amendment rights.

See the earlier post, including the CBS News story and interview, here.

Indiana National Guardsman Lt. Col. Jim Gentry died a week ago Wednesday, November 25th. He was 52 years old.

A retired Indiana National Guard lieutenant colonel, Gentry was the commander of the 1st Battalion, 152nd Infantry, which, at about 600 soldiers strong, was in Iraq from February 2003 to February 2004.

This Indiana National Guard unit was responsible for protecting US civilians working for KBR at the Qarmat Ali water plant in Southern Iraq. Returning this water plant to full operation was essential to restoring Iraqi oil production and KBR had the contract to do that.

Unfortunately, upon retreat, Saddam loyalists sabotaged the plant by cutting open bags of sodium dichromate, a yellow-orange powered rust inhibitor, and spread it everywhere. Not being informed by KBR management what this powder was, soldiers and civilians alike took few precautions to protect themselves. People started experiencing symptoms of chronic nose bleeds, headaches, skins lesions. Even after countless complaints KBR did not test the substance and inform anyone as to the hazards. Click HERE for five short (18 min total) deposition testimony videos of KBR management putting their spin on why soldiers and civilians weren’t informed of the inherent health risks of this “yellow-orange” powder.

Gentry, even after being retired and diagnosed with cancer, led his soldiers with strength and dignity. He became an outspoken advocate demanding investigations and VA coverage for illnesses believed to have been caused by the toxic exposure…

A sombrero-sized h/t to mssparky.com for all their hard work…

Why would anybody want to hang around these people? “Elie Wiesel calls tea partyers’ signs ‘indecent and disgusting’.”

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————

ADD: Actual anti-semitism, much better. “Obama takes his orders from the Rothschilds.”

Liz Cheney’s scum, Limbaugh’s a practiced liar, and Lawrence O’Donnell suffers no assholes gladly.

Dissecting President Barack Obama’s recent visit to Dover, where he saluted America’s war dead on camera, right-wing radio personality Rush Limbaugh echoed the words of Elizabeth Cheney, falsely implying that President George W. Bush had done the same, but without the cameras.

“I don’t know why he went to Dover,” Cheney said during a Fox News radio interview on Thursday. “I think that it is clearly important for a commander in chief, whenever he can in whatever way possible, to pay tribute to our fallen soldiers, our fallen military folks. But I think, you know, what President Bush used to do is to do it without the cameras. And, um, I don’t understand, sort-of showing up with the White House press pool, with photographers, and asking family members if you can take pictures. That’s really hard for me to get my head around.”

“President Bush used to do it!” said Limbaugh, as though to imply that the former president would visit Dover to honor the war dead, much as President Obama did earlier this week. “Boy, we didn’t know it! She just told us something we didn’t know. Bush used to do it, but there were no cameras. He did it privately with the families.”

O’Donnell eviscerates the Cheneys:

My, how the clue-full and butt-butted have fallen.

Blue Texan at FireDogLake rightfully took Bush to task for never bothering to receive any (of the thousands of) war dead at Dover AFB during his administration, as Obama did yesterday.

That got a few wingnuts riled up. ‘You douchebags just love this scumbag and his phony p.r. machine,’ they seemed to say. ‘It’s a photo-op, nothing more.’

My goodness, doesn’t President Obama look grave and Commander-in-Chief-ish in the carefully cropped photos of him in Friday’s Sun editorial (“The true price of war,” Oct. 30) and the news article provided by Tribune Newspapers ( “Obama honors fallen soldiers at Dover base,” Oct. 30).

If I didn’t know he was a dangerous phony, I probably would have believed that he really cared.

Richard T. Seymour, Baltimore

Blogger Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive.net was a little more specific and dismissive:

FireDogLake Buttheads clueless about Bush and our war dead

I never cease to be amazed by the sorry haters on the left and their inability to understand the military, respect, dignity and the difference between a gesture and a heartfelt gesture. They are busy hating on George W because he failed to go to Dover and get photo-opped like our current Commander in Chief. Now first of all I will give Obama credit for gong to Dover, but as soon as it became a photo op it was cheapened as Matt noted. Anyone smell the stench of Axelrod and Emanuel? Well the brain-addled, land apes at FireDogLake are calling out the former CinC for not being so blatant. Admire their bile.

This is what a president does.

US President Barack Obama has paid his respects to 18 Americans killed in Afghanistan, the first time he has honoured the fallen in this way.

NPR notes that,

The dramatic image of a president on the tarmac was a portrait not witnessed in years.

Why?

Let me help you with that you pathetic, whiny little bitch. Turning a solemn occasion into a photo op that becomes about you is not respectful, it is sorry. President Bush knew that and chose to show his respect in private to the people who really matter, the Gold Star families.

…Blue Texan in…3…2…1…

…my response is: suck on this.