Why so serious?

A long-time friend once gave me grief for being so serious on this blog when in real life – person to person – I made him laugh more often than not. 

I’ll let you in on a secret:  I think I write better when I feel passionate about something. When something pisses me off I’m on a tear. It could be politicians that treat the public like children. It could be the media withholding important facts.

Or it could be handicap parking abusers. Yank my chain and I’ll fire back.    

Sometimes I write just because I need to work something out. It’s a way to exercise my thinking, to explore in a different way something puzzling me, or because some quirk of human behavior has drawn my attention. Most often it’s because something – some bullshit – is being foisted on all of us as “the truth” when it’s anything but. 

I hate being lied to. I hate it even more when some smug talking head spews propaganda as fact. My ultimate hatred is for those who think we’re all too stupid to know the difference. 

A perfect example came up the other day. 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that wizened old crone still on the Supreme Court, attacked the Second Amendment right to bear arms as inapplicable today.  She claimed it was written when many states had no armed forces to protect their citizens; it merely encouraged the growth of armed militias to fill the void. Because that need changed over time, according to her there really wasn’t an unfettered right for ordinary citizens to “keep and bear arms” (own guns) anymore.  

This is the type of stuff that makes me nuts.  What a crock of bullshit.

The real backstory behind that part of the Second Amendment so loathed by the left – in the context of the time it was written, not long after the American Revolution – is quite different.  It was intended to protect the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms should they ever need to confront a tyrannical government again. 

Which is what many people think we’re moving toward – a tyrannical government that increasingly rides roughshod over the rights of the citizens. 

Of course, the idea that someday there might be armed resistance to heavy-handed government control scares the crap out of the far left.  As well it should. 

Why else do you think the left is so obsessed with “domestic terrorists” and banning certain types of weapons?  Why are politicians on the left now trying to claw back military gear provided to local law enforcement agencies? They’re worried.

And that’s precisely why the right to keep and bear arms was written into the Second Amendment – to keep government from overstepping its bounds.    

Another example was when Bernie Sanders said climate change caused terrorism.  As someone else online noted, it’s hard to decide what’s more disturbing: that he said something so stupid, or that the audience didn’t immediately break out in uproarious laughter. 

The other night Obama linked the jihad-inspired terrorist shootings in San Bernardino with the need for serious gun control legislation.  Now I’ve come to expect Obama to be a shameless whore when it comes to advancing his agenda, but this was a new low. 

Rather than comfort and assure a public trying to come to grips with the worst terrorist attack on our soil since 9/11, Obama took the opportunity to take a shot at Republicans who he said were “even” opposed to keeping guns out of the hands of people on the no-fly list. 

As if people on the no-fly list were responsible for killing 14 people, which, he failed to add intentionally I’m sure, these two weren’t.  Small detail, huh? 

What’s worse, Obama knows full well that the no-fly list is a joke; however, he thinks most people don’t know that, and he’s probably right.  In reality, the no-fly list has little to do with stopping terrorists. The two San Bernardino terrorist murderers weren’t on the no-fly list, nor were any of the other more recent perpetrators of Islamic terrorism here such as the Tsarnaev brothers.

However, I was, once. 

One time I wasn’t allowed to check in online. I could check in for my wife online and print her boarding pass at home, but I had to get my boarding pass at the airport.  I was told then I was apparently on some no-fly list by mistake. Sorry for the inconvenience.   

But that’s why Republicans resist using the no-fly list as something meaningful. Because your name shows up on a no-fly list doesn’t mean a thing. I’m proof.

It’s about as substantive as the TSA agents who let investigators pass through their screenings with packed items clearly resembling bombs or guns almost 95% of the time. 

Yet the same type of crack TSA agents pulled my carry-on bag offline for hand check because they thought my boxed shaving soap might be a yogurt I was trying to smuggle onto the plane. Maybe that's what put me briefly on the no-fly list: possible yogurt-armed hijacker.    

Loretta Lynch also hit my piss-off button this past week when she said she would prosecute speech that “edges toward violence” against Muslims.  Later she said she was “not sure” what ideology drove the San Bernardino terrorists to massacre 14 innocent people.  

Double bullshit.    

First you can’t have someone running the DOJ who would prosecute anyone for exercising their right to free speech. I know all the fans of political correctness applaud her desire to make saying something “hurtful” a prosecutable offense, but this is insane. Something that “edges toward violence” against Muslims is not even close to meeting the standard for restricting free speech. 

As a lawyer she should know that, especially as the Attorney General of the United States. 

Then there’s the waffling on what ideology the shooters were following.  This after it was shown that one of them tweeted her allegiance to the ISIS leader as they were about to slaughter 14 innocent people at an office holiday party.  

Okay, Sherlock, they were radical Muslims, armed to the teeth with weapons they had modified for auto fire and to accept high-capacity magazine, made pipe bombs using an Al Qaeda and ISIS design, were in contact with other Muslim terrorists, trashed their computer hard drive and phones to hide evidence, and along the way tweeted allegiance to ISIS before they started shooting.    

Got a clue?  And Loretta Lynch is still “not sure” why they did it? 

So what makes someone say something so demonstrably out of line with the law?  Or to so consciously avoid the facts? 

Well consider the Obama Administration narrative that there’s no such thing as a Muslim terrorist – there are Muslims and there are terrorists, but there are no Muslim terrorists.  It’s wrong to blame an entire group of people for the actions of a few.    

Unless of course it’s a solitary white abortion-obsessed lunatic who shoots up a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado.  Then he represents all gun owners. 

Sometimes the bullshit gets flung so much that it’s almost overwhelming.

I wish I could make jokes about all this.  Honestly I do. 

But bullshit is bullshit.  And I’ll keep calling it out.