GIN AND TACOS

I was going to post something to the following effect back in January but I didn't. I wish I had, as it might have made me look prescient.

This is going to be a long four-to-eight years. If you're on the bunker-dwelling fringe of the right, I can only imagine the extent to which you believe your own personal endtimes have arrived. The election of Obama must be seen by militiamen as an angry bull sees a waving red flag – liberal, black, "foreign-sounding" name, insufficiently Christian (or secretly Muslim), fan of the U.N., in favor of gun control legislation…well, it's no wonder that some of these people think we have elected the antichrist. When the left is out of power, they do two things: whine and scheme to get back in power. On the right, the preferred option of 99% of conservatives is to whine. The remaining 1% start loading the guns and picking targets.

During the Clinton years we had the Waco siege, Timothy McVeigh, the Olympic bombing (by a pro-life extremist), and a revitalization of the neo-Nazi and nationalist right. In the past year we've had a man go on a shooting spree to kill as many liberals as possible while another murdered three police officers because he was convinced that Obama was coming to take his guns away. Think it's unfair to pick out these "isolated" examples? Fine. Find me one example of a liberal snapping and rushing off to "kill as many conservatives as possible until the cops kill me." Go on. I'll wait.

Republicans get elected and the worst that happens to America is some shrill rhetoric, empty threats to move to Canada, and the occasional public protest.
online pharmacy amoxil best drugstore for you

Democrats get elected and the right instantly goes over the edge; we get Federal courthouse bombings and shooting sprees. These incidents, I'm afraid, won't be the only ones of their kind during the Obama years. I worry that we're going to have another Oklahoma City.
buy bactroban online buy bactroban no prescription

I worry that we're going to see more unhinged white guys who dabble in neo-Nazi circles snapping and going on shooting sprees. I worry that someone's going to take a shot at the President. I worry because I think all of these things are virtually assured to happen in the next four or eight years.

My Instaputz colleague BT opined that people like Glenn Beck and Wayne LaPierre of the NRA have blood on their hands as a result of their shameless scaremongering and willingness to fan the flames of far-right hysteria. I'm of two minds. On one hand, I think Mr. Pittsburgh Cop Killer was getting his paranoia from much harder sources than the mainstream media and the NRA – news reports indicate that he frequented white supremacist web haven Stormfront and numerous conspiracy fringe sites. I doubt that the plain ol' conservative right was strident enough for him.

On the other hand, it's not unreasonable to accuse the conservative punditry of irresponsibility at best and incitement at worst. Listen to Michelle Bachmann's insane ass:

And the real concern is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums.

Now, does that sound like a responsible thing for a Member of Congress to say when fully aware of the fact that there are extremists with a history of violence who are currently at the end of their psychological ropes? Is it responsible for Glenn Beck to make excuses for spree killers by pointing out that "political correctness" can drive any reasonable person to go on a rampage? Is it prudent for the FRC to blame "the secular media" or for Tom DeLay to blame the teaching of evolution for the Columbine killings?

The punditry seems to be of the opinion that domestic terrorism and spree shootings are the inevitable consequence of conservatives not getting what they want.
buy lipitor online buy lipitor no prescription

And in every case, liberals drive the individual in question to do it. Right wingers, of course, bear no responsibility for their constant, hysterical fearmongering and willful dissemenation of the kind of paranoid misinformation that pushes all of the militiaman buttons.

This is going to keep happening. If people like Bachmann and Beck had any decency they'd tell their meatheaded followers "We all hate Obama, but for god's sake, killing people isn't the answer you morons." I won't hold my breath. If anything they seem to get off on their own ability to incite people to violence.
online pharmacy doxycycline best drugstore for you

They understand that their audience already sees the world through the scope of a rifle; a Democrat in power is nothing but a great opportunity for turning words into "actions."

It began, as so many things do, with me being a dick.

Mike is related to a person who has become a champion of the vaccine-autism link, and when I discovered this I sent an email along the lines of "I mock this and hope you have fun chatting about this at family gatherings." What followed was a very interesting back-and-forth. I consider the vaccine-autism theory to be roughly on par with the 9-11 Was an Inside Job theory in the intellectual hierarchy.

Before I go into any details, let's be emphatic about two things up front to avoid wild accusations at the end: Mike was not arguing in favor of the vaccine-autism link and I was not arguing that autism is made up or nonexistent. Are we clear on that? Great.

What Mike argued is that a steady rise in cases of autism is cause for concern. While the vaccine link appears to have no empirical support (but plenty of Hollywood celebrity support!) there is a non-trivial increase in children with autism in the last decade and it requires an explanation. The existence of substantial statistical noise – which was my counter-argument and which I will describe momentarily – does not negate the potential existence of an underlying trend.
buy lipitor online www.parkviewortho.com/wp-content/languages/new/prescription/lipitor.html no prescription

My response was lengthy but centered around what I feel is a key semantic point: it's inaccurate, until solid evidence can be provided, to say that autism is on the rise. The diagnosis of autism is what is on the rise. I believe that the rise in diagnoses is as likely to be attributable to the following two factors as to a legitimate increase in the occurence of autism.

First, autism is relatively new in the context of medical issues. It hasn't been on the radar screen of the general public or the non-specialist medical community for more than a decade or two.

I doubt that many people had even heard the term prior to the mid-1990s. So I believe that one valid hypothesis is that doctors and parents, spurred by successful public awareness campaigns, now diagnose cases that would not have been diagnosed in 1970. To prove that autism is on the rise, someone needs to convince us that the kids diagnosed autistic today are not the same kids who were called "slow" or "learning disabled" or "retarded" prior to 1980.

Second, the downside of increased public awareness of the disease is the inevitable hypochondria and hysteria that set in with panicky parents. After 10001 Oprah segments about autism, some parents become convinced that their child has this new, fashionable disease and, seeking to fulfill their own martyr complex, shop around for a doctor who will agree. You may think this is a poor argument, but anecdotally I am convinced that it is some part of the increase. It exists. To what extent, I cannot say. But there are parents out there who operate like this. The hysteria can also affect well-intentioned school psychologists or medical professionals who practically fall all over themselves in a rush to diagnose autistic every child who stacks up his toys or fails to make eye contact for a few minutes. As prior experience with social panics about psychological illnesses (ADHD, depression, etc) has shown us, over-reaction leading to over-diagnosing is a legitimate concern.

Of course the "marketing" of a new medical problem often involves our friends in the pharmaceutical industry; drug companies are pushing autism diagnoses just like they pushed depression and ADHD. They've been pushing the idea of an "autism spectrum", i.e., not really autism but close enough that we can start prescribing drugs for it. Like doctors were encouraged to throw fistfulls of pills at people with even the mildest depression symptoms, they are now being encouraged to stick the autism label on any child whose behavior even hints at behavior outside of a narrowly-defined idea of normality. There is a widespread public perception that drug companies wouldn't get involved because autism treatments are non-pharmaceutical. That is false. More than 50% of children diagnosed autistic are put on antipsychotics, an incredibly powerful and expensive class of drugs, despite the fact that no medical evidence proves that drug treatments work.

If something really is causing more children to develop autism, I certainly hope that we discover what it is quickly. I have no doubts at all about the seriousness of the problem. Autism, depression, ADHD, and other mental illnesses are real and they are serious. However, the subjective nature of psychological disorders means that over-diagnosis is very easy. So before we get all twisted up about a rise in autism I think we should make sure that we are dealing with a rise in autism rather than a rise in diagnosing it.

What do you think? I'm afraid that I didn't do justice to the other person's argument here, but let's be clear about the fact that I consider it an entirely reasonable one.
buy strattera online www.parkviewortho.com/wp-content/languages/new/prescription/strattera.html no prescription

Given the amount of environmental contaminants and chemicals that end up in our bodies these days it is in no way inconceivable that something is causing autism and causing more of it than ever before.

Hopefully you've seen the video of Joe Samuel the Unlicensed Plumber War Correspondent Anti-Union Shill admitting in the midst of his speaking tour in opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act that he doesn't know jack shit about the Employee Free Choice Act. No? Maybe it's time to watch it. Oh, those gotcha questions! The man who thinks the American public doesn't deserve him was Shanghaied by some (licensed, real, not-on-welfare) plumbers who appear to have read the legislation in question, thus giving them an extraordinary advantage over the paid plant from an organization called "Americans for Prosperity."

This is why I'm convinced that the political right is comprised almost entirely of morons. Let me explain.

It's not a sign of stupidity that Mr. Pretzelbacher knows little about the EFCA or current U.S. labor codes. I don't know much about them either. I'd almost certainly fail an impromptu quiz on this subject. No, the latent stupidity of the right is evidenced by the apparent fact that no one, as the corporate PACs and right-wing think tank operatives were preparing this series of public appearances by their hand-picked spokesperson, asked a question like, "Hey, did someone make sure that he's read the fucking thing before we send him out there?" It apparently occurred to no one that he might be asked a question or two about labor laws and therefore it might help if he prepared and practiced a few responses. How long would this have taken? An hour or two with a PR guy?

He was not asked about the minutiae of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act of 1930. The question put to Mr. Studebaker was: "Are you aware that the existing law has card check in it?" This is not an unreasonable question. A logical person might even expect it. Did anyone say "Samuel, how would you handle this question, one which you are almost assured of receiving?" Apparently not. It's possible, of course, that he was coached through answers but didn't retain any of them. That would lead one to ask, quite logically, if a person who could not retain a few pages' worth of information was the best choice as a spokesman.

Any way you slice this situation, it boils down to the fact that the people behind the scheme are seriously lacking in forethought and brainpower. The party of social Darwinism, ever advocating culling the weak from the herd, is in need of one of its own lectures. Perhaps it's time to point inward all that sermonizing about personal responsibility, prudence, and being smart enough to avoid making mistakes. In other words, the ideological right just needs to pretend it's a poor, black homeowner behind on her mortgage and then act naturally.

Over at the Putz my attention was directed to this news item in which Glenn Reynolds expresses his opinion about a bill in the Tennessee legislature to allow concealed firearms on campus. As an experienced educator, Glenn takes the only sensible position:

Yet UT-Knoxville law professor and Libertarian Instapundit blogger Glenn Reynolds said he supports Campfield’s bill. “I have a number of students who are licensed to carry weapons and I’d feel safer, not less safe, knowing that they are carrying on campus. I certainly would feel safer if some of my colleagues were armed, too,” he said.

Such a comment would lead me to question whether the speaker has ever stood in front of a classroom in his or her life.

buy amoxil online buy amoxil no prescription

Since Mr. Reynolds clearly has done so, I must proceed to questioning just how profoundly this person is retarded.

There I go throwing around that word again.

Sorry. I can think of none other to describe someone who has stood at the front of a giant public university lecture hall packed with 150 sleep-deprived, emotionally unbalanced, substance abusing, clinically depressed, and stressed out 20 year olds and thought, "You know what would make me feel safer? If they all had fucking guns."

It's important to absorb that point before moving on. He is arguing that if people carried loaded, concealed firearms around on campus it would be a less dangerous place.

"But a concealed carrier could have stopped the Virginia Tech shooter!" they say, cherry-picking a scenario that suits their argument. OK, let's grant that. Someone shoots the rampaging lunatic before he can kill more than a couple folks. 30 lives are saved. I wonder how, in a year-end accounting, those 30 lives would stack up against the – what, dozens? hundreds? not thousands, of course – of additional homicides that would take place by giving a huge, mentally unstable group of adolescents and young adults ready access to a loaded firearms at all times. Like, "My girlfriend dumped me, I failed Calc 242, and I've been awake for three days on peyote and playing Counter-Strike. I'm 19 and prone to irrational behavior befitting my inability to control my emotions.
buy zoloft online buy zoloft no prescription

If only I had a…wait, I do have a gun!" Of course, other concealed carriers could shoot this hypothetical person before he could go on a rampage, so Glenn is right: the campus would be safer excepting (and in his opinion, thanks to) the intermittent vigilante gun battles between unstable teenagers.

A historian and firearms enthusiast who I am pleased to know once waxed lyrical about the American Old West, which he considered to be a more polite and mannerly time. His argument was that with men constantly armed they were more civil to one another lest the six-shooters be called into action. This logic (or "logic") always amazed me. People were more polite to one another because they were afraid of insulting someone who was armed, and they were afraid because people who insulted one another regularly resolved their differences with guns. So it was a more polite and genteel time because people shot the living fuck out of one another in public in the not uncommon event of insults being traded, bets being welched upon, or the heroic intake of hard liquor made in the boiler tank of a locomotive.

Ah, the good old days. Hopefully they'll be here again soon, at least in Tennessee. As about half of the undergrads in a freshman/sophomore class are either totally devoid of life experience, drunk 19 hours daily, on drugs, being treated for depression, some combination thereof, or just plain ol' immature, I can think of no way to improve upon the situation except to introduce into it a lot of loaded guns. I mean, what could go wrong?

My students have been assigned this brief article written immediately after Joe Biden was chosen as Obama's running mate. The purpose is to initiate a discussion of Biden's colorful history and lack of "wow" appeal, neither of which were disqualifying because Obama didn't really need anything from a running mate. He was doing fine on his own. This contrasts with McCain, who needed a running mate to come on board and save his trainwreck of a campaign.
online pharmacy cipro best drugstore for you

That is, of course, too much to ask of any running mate. Obama had the luxury of picking whoever he wanted without worrying about what it would do to Save his campaign which didn't need saving.

Pretty standard stuff.

Now spend a few minutes reading the comments. I couldn't even get past the first dozen without my jaw locking in a permanently dropped position. It appears that the general public's analytical abilities regarding elections are as good as their math and geography skills.
buy Tadalafil generic buynoprescriptiononlinerxx.net over the counter

The reaction appears to be evenly split between right-wing fantasy and that overwhelming forced pessimism from liberals that made me want to punch everyone for the last three months of the election. The first comment:

I can't believe Obama made this choice. It is just so dumb. They needed to reach out to working class Whites, OK I accept that. Biden is going to help? I don't see it myself. They needed a hunter, a shooter, a drinker, a fighter and a worker. Who opposed abortion.

Need bold predictions? There were bold predictions:

Biden is a disastrous choice forced on Obama by AIPAC because of Obama's incurable wobbliness on the Israeli-Arab question, as in everything else…As the gaping void behind his JFK image becomes more and more visible to the American public, Obama is reduced to pandering to televangelists and Israel-firsters, thereby cementing his certain defeat.

Not defeat. Certain defeat. Cemented. And cement is indestructible.

He really is the Democrat's Vince Cable.
online pharmacy diflucan best drugstore for you

The wrong candidate has been chosen. Prepare for President McCain, the Dumocrats have gon' dun' it' agun.

Those considerations are only relevant should Obama win and at this moment he's trailing McCain. So the immediate task is how to deal with McCain.

Yes, he was formidable! Maybe we need someone with expertise:

I can say as a lifetime American, the things said about Biden in this article are 100% accurate, and were put quite mildly, to say the least. I'm hardly a rabid McCain fan, myself (I'm not even a Republican) — but if these two poor blokes are the best the Democratic Party has to offer, well…it's no wonder they've lost seven of the last ten U.S. presidential elections, with number 8 very possibly on the way.

I feel like I have lowered myself to write a post in which I consider internet comments to be representative of public opinion, but in scanning this thread I found myself instantly transported back to the first week of September. I remember clearly riding an escalator at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston and being told by a colleague that McCain just made his VP choice and…oh boy, Obama was in trouble. His choice of Biden, which had been made a week earlier, was bad. He was losing (or losing "badly" depending on who was speaking) and now McCain harnessed the talents of this young, sexy conservative superstar who was going to win over every Hillary Clinton supporter and help McCain expose Obama's shallow cult of personality and lack of intellectual substance. The sky was falling, President McCain was an inevitability, and one could hardly maintain balance between the gloating conservatives and the liberals looking for a quiet corner in which to commit suicide.

Remember all that? What the fuck was everyone thinking? I know people always view their own behavior more favorably in hindsight, but it would be interesting to make people reconcile their opinions at that time with the events of the subsequent two months.

I can't tell if people really are that dumb or if the emotional rollercoaster of following politics closely simply overwhelms good judgment. Internet comments may be where hope goes to die – hey, at least I didn't use YouTube comments – but I think it serves a purpose here. It can be pretty embarrassing to leave a written record of one's opinions, the wisdom of which will be analyzed after the fact. For most people, forgetting what they say almost immediately functions as a very effective defense mechanism against self-improvement.