All That Glitters Isn't Gold; In Newt's Case, He's Still Dull, White, & Old

Newt Gingrich sure has had a tough week!

First, poor ol' Newt was forced to apologize to Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan for calling Ryan's insane, screw-the-old-people budget "radical" (which it is), and explain to one enraged Teabagger after another how terribly sorry he is for his meany words, almost as terribly sorry that it all but ended his presidential ambitions, however petty & ridiculous it may have been.

And if that weren't bad enough, some gay (gasp!) activist and serial prankster Robert Erickson dumped a box of twinkling party glitter on Newt's signature square head and white coif, shouting "Feel the rainbow! Stop the hate!" at a Minneapolis book signing to protest his hypocritical, less-than-enlightened stance on gays and to prove glitter is a more cost-effective way to be shiny than running up huge bills at elitist jewelry stores like Tiffany's.

But for some reason Newt and that weird, alien lady next to him, better known as Callista, or wonderful wifey #3, did not appreciate being glitter-bombed by some flaming fruit cake with a messenger bag or a message.

The glitter bandit was quickly pushed out of the room by an event organizer or employee of the vehemently anti-gay Minnesota Family Council and given what seemed to be a very firm, and very creepy, talking-to by the gentleman in a suit, as the rattled, newly sparkling, but otherwise unharmed Gingriches brushed confetti out of their laps and respective white "hairstyles."

Wait, all they did was remove the dude from the room and sternly shove him towards the elevator? Wow, talk about progress! This time last year, he'd be getting his head stomped on a sidewalk.

Guess things really do get better!

But either way, Newt's creepy, right-wing handler wants to know, "Have we ever disturbed one of your events?"

Ummm, well, let's see, you're trying to pass a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages, stop gays from visiting their dying partners in hospitals, bar them from adopting children, or enjoying the same rights and privileges as straight couples, but other than that, you're right, you've never thrown assaulted gays with glitter!

Though, I'm sure Gabrielle Giffords would have much preferred being pumped with tiny scintillating pieces of confetti paper instead of those other things that typically load into 19mm Glocks.

Glitter: the best way to piss someone off without causing injury, death, or brain damage, just a sparkling shine and slightly irritated skin!

Besides, the clean up shouldn't be too bad. Something tells me Callista already volunteered to roll up a Tiffany's receipt and start snorting the glitter. That way, she can feel all sparkly on the inside, too!

Is That A Glock In Your Pocket Or Are You Just A Mentally Ill Misfit From Arizona?

Usually when something shocking and terrible happens, normal people come together to grieve, express their sorrow, and reflect on the unspeakable tragedy in a heartfelt way, if only for a fleeting moment.

Then there's Arizona's way.

After witnessing one of their own elected Representatives, Democrat Gabrielle Giffords, and 19 others brutally gunned down in Tuscon by a Glock-wielding, grammar obsessed madman, the decent guys 'n gals in  the parched, Mexican-free wasteland formerly known as Arizona had only one thought on their mind: How they could get one of dem awesome gunz, too!

Together they let out a collective, booming yipppeeeeeeeeeeee before hightailin' it to the nearest corner gun shop to get their own two proud 'merican hands on a bright shiny new Glock 19mm RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND!

It's true! Gun shops throughout Arizona simply cannot keep the beautiful, shiny pocket death machines like the one used by Jared Loughner on their shelves, as the entire state was muy impressed with the cool efficiency by which it murdered innocent people. Such ease! Such precision! Such power! Such chaos! Such bloodshed!

But with such beautiful, spontaneous death comes a deep, dark creeping fear that soon the big bad gubmint will come and take away all their precious portable people-killing pocket devices, and the good citizens of Arizona will be left with nothing but English-only words and phrases, not hollow point bullets, to hurl at their elected officials and Mexican enemies of freedom.

"When the election process took place, people were fearful they were going to lose access to tactical firearms with high capacity magazines, as has been the case in the past when Democrats took office," said Blake Mecham, national accounts manager for Browning and its subsidiary, Winchester.

"People were rushing out to buy guns, because they were worried [Obama] was going to take their guns away," criminal justice professor William J. Vizzard, said. "He didn't have a single proposal on the table for gun laws. It defies reason. It's a culture unto itself."

Yes, a wonderful, rich culture of endless funeral line processions and black-clothed grieving mothers wailing in agony.

Because nothing says good business like some good old-fashioned carnage!

“Whenever there is a huge event, especially when it’s close to home, people do tend to run out and buy something to protect their family,” said Don Gallardo, a manager at Arizona Shooter’s World in Phoenix, who said that the number of people signing up for the store’s concealed weapons class doubled over the weekend. 

Greg Wolff, the owner of two Arizona gun shops, told his manager to get ready for a stampede of new customers after Jared Loughner opened fire at a Tucson shopping center on Jan. 8.

Wolff was right. Instead of hurting sales, the massacre had the $499 semi-automatic pistols -- popular with police, sport shooters and gangsters -- flying out the doors of his Glockmeister stores in Mesa and Phoenix.

“We’re at double our volume over what we usually do,” Wolff said two days after the shooting spree. “When something like this happens people get worried that the government is going to ban stuff.”

Wolff called the shooting “horrible.” Nonetheless, it has created a surge of publicity for the gun, he said.

“It’s in the news now. I’m sure the Green Bay Packers are selling all kinds of jerseys today as well,” he said. “I just think our state embraces guns.”

OMG, like totes same thing! One is a fun game people like to play and watch when getting wasted at the local bar, where full grown men lay sprawled and splattered on the ground. The other is football.

“It’s one of the greatest guns made in the history of the world,” said Wolff, whose two stores sell Glock-made weapons almost exclusively.

Which is only fitting for the greatest country God ever made in the history of the world...So he could pump 30 continuous rounds into it.

Mwhahahahaha, dumb mortal little Glock-suckers! God doesn't Retreat...or Reload!

Glenn Beck's Fake Tears & Sarah Palin's Dumb Tweets Don't Kill People (Just Brain Cells); Crazy People With Semiautomatic Weapons Do!

Usually when a young 20-something man goes on a bloody shooting rampage, killing a whole bunch of innocent people, everyone is equally shocked and stunned and horrified, and nobody ever, in a million years, saw it coming. 

Not so with Jared Loughner, the deranged 22-year-old lunatic who shot Arizona's popular Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords point blank in the head, killed six others, including a little 9 year-old-girl, and injured 19 more in a tragic massacre outside a Tuscon Safeway during a 'Congress On Your Corner' meet 'n greet on Saturday.

Basically, everyone who met the dude was absolutely convinced it was only a matter of time before he went out and shot a bunch of people. The only question really was when.

This is what most people who knew this kid for the past few years are saying: he was a freaky loner who scared the bejesus out of anyone with a pulse. Which means everyone outside of Dick Cheney was pretty much convinced this guy was a ticking time bomb just waiting to explode, probably sooner than later, all over Arizona.

Now while the residents of Arizona may have been concerned about Jared Loughner, the state of Arizona was never really going to try to help him or anything because c'mon he wasn't a dirty Mexican or anything. And also personal responsibility! And fix your own damn mental health problems! This is America Arizona, after all!

What Arizona was willing to do however, was help this more-likely-than-not mentally unstable young man purchase his semi automatic murder weapon of choice (a Glock 9mm), as well as the 30+ shot extended magazine clip for extra flesh 'n bone rippin' fun!

Until one of those very same bullets he purchased legally and with little effort actually pierced the flesh of an innocent person, or in this case, like 20 innocent people.

“I was getting concerned about the safety of the students and the school,” said algebra instructor Ben McGahee, who took to glancing out of the corner of his eye when he was writing on the board for fear that Mr. Loughner might do something. “I was afraid he was going to pull out a weapon.”

A student in the class, Lynda Sorenson, 52, wrote an e-mail to a friend expressing her concerns.
“We do have one student in the class who was disruptive today, I’m not certain yet if he was on drugs (as one person surmised) or disturbed. He scares me a bit,” Ms. Sorenson wrote in an e-mail in June that was forwarded Sunday to The New York Times.

“The teacher tried to throw him out and he refused to go, so I talked to the teacher afterward. Hopefully he will be out of class very soon, and not come back with an automatic weapon.”

Mr. Loughner’s behavior grew so troubling that he was told he could no longer attend the school, and he appeared, given his various Internet postings, to find a sense of community in some of the more paranoid corners of the Internet.

At a meeting in early October at the college’s northwest campus, where he attended classes, Mr. Loughner said he would withdraw. Three days later, the college sent him a letter telling him that if he wanted to return, he would need to undergo a mental health evaluation. “After this event, there was no further college contact with Loughner,” the college said in a statement.

Not surprisingly, the media has been falling over themselves trying to figure out what on God's green earth could have sparked Jared Lee Loughner to turn from your everyday run-of-the-mill weirdo into a paranoid schizophrenic/raging bloodthirsty madman obsessed with grammar and currency who shoots elected officials and nine-year-old girls with semiautomatic weapons in front of grocery stores.

When Bryce Tierney first heard about the Tucson massacre, he had a sickening feeling: “They hadn’t released the name, but I said, ‘Holy shit, I think it’s Jared that did it.’” Tierney tells Mother Jones in an exclusive interview that Loughner held a years-long grudge against Giffords and had repeatedly derided her as a “fake.

Since hearing of the rampage, Tierney has been trying to figure out why Loughner did what he allegedly did. "More chaos, maybe," he says. "I think the reason he did it was mainly to just promote chaos. He wanted the media to freak out about this whole thing. He wanted exactly what's happening. He wants all of that."

Tierney thinks that Loughner's mindset was like the Joker in the most recent Batman movie: "He fucks things up to fuck shit up, there's no rhyme or reason, he wants to watch the world burn. He probably wanted to take everyone out of their monotonous lives: 'Another Saturday, going to go get groceries'—to take people out of these norms that he thought society had trapped us in."

Of course, the problem with trying to understand the incomprehensible behavior of an obviously deranged man is that genuine craziness like Loughner's rejects easy classification and defies explanation. So accusing Sarah Palin and assorted other rifle-totin' Teabaggers of somehow inspiring or fostering this type of action is sort of like blaming birthday clowns for John Wayne Gacy or Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors for Jeffrey Dahmer.

Sure, it doesn't help that public figures like Sarah Palin put up interactive maps with gun crosshairs targeting political rivals, like Gabrielle Giffords for instance, and constantly remind America "Don't Retreat, Reload." But even if we were to ban all the Sarah Palins and Glenn Becks in the world, crazy is still crazy. And in America, a person like Loughner may be too crazy for community college but certainly not too crazy to waltz into a store and waltz out with a semiautomatic weapon.

One of the talking points about the Tucson shooting is that the gun used is “just the same as the one police use”, and that’s true – the Glock 9mm pistol is a common police sidearm. But, police carry it with a 15 shot clip, not the 30+ shot extended magazine Loughner used. By the definition of the assault weapon ban, it’s an assault gun with that extended mag.

And since Arizona essentially has no gun laws, there was nothing to stop a lunatic like Loughner from purchasing a gun, loading it, driving to the local Tuscon Safeway and opening fire on a crowd of unarmed men, woman, and children.

Perhaps, instead of asking the likes of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, the Tea Party and the entire Fox News team to refrain from open hatred and violent inflammatory rhetoric, we would be much better served considering enacting barriers to the purchase of semi-automatic weapons by obviously insane people.

Because if there's one thing America has collectively agreed upon at this point, it is that restricting our freedom to say meany things to one another is a helluva lot easier and more desirable than restricting our favoritest freedom to acquire powerful firearms to use on one another.

Apparently, many in our great nation, and in Arizona particularly, believe that registering firearms, requiring competency evaluations, or mandating that all gun sales be accompanied by a note from a mental health professional certifying mental stability is waaaaaay too much of a burden than say, the occasional senseless slaughter of innocent people and nine-year-old girls.

Good thing Arizona Governor Jan Brewer understands that the good people of America would much prefer to have the occasional mass killing than reasonable restrictions on the rights of crazy people to buy guns.

What Gov. Brewer is upset about, however isn't the selling of a semi-automatic assault weapon to a crazy person or even her state's terrible negligence when it comes to caring for the mentally ill, since they are pathetic losers who nobody likes anyway.

No, no what really grinds ol' Jan Brewer's gears is the fact that Loughner is not a Mexican, because everyone knows Mexicans are terrible criminals responsible for every unspeakable act of violence, everywhere.

Had Loughner been Mexican or even so much as looked even slightly Mexicanish, this whole tragedy would never have happened.

Dude would have been (legally!) harassed and detained so many times, he probably wouldn't even have made it to the damn Safeway.

Most Mexicans can't. Why else would they call it Safeway?

Duh!