What's Next?

Stinger missiles?

Another long, hot, hard, steamy sticky, unsuccessful day job hunting with the girlfriend is not what you'd call the best way to put me in a good mood, especially when I'm facing eviction and starvation in less than two weeks. So I was not in the mood to read something like this in the Huffington Post. I'd be out there with an AR-15 myself right now just on general principle, I've had such a horrible summer. Everything that has gone wrong in my life I can legitimately blame on Republicans and conservatives, including my unemployed status, my child support going up to pay for a so-called arrears that is the DOR's fault, my rent going up at the same time...

So suffice it to say that I'm in no fucking Goddamned mood to read about some fucking conservative assholes who think they can show up at a pro health care town hall presided over by the President of the United States with semi auto pistols and fully automatic AR 15's (standard issue in the US military, replacing the M16).

What's their excuse? "I did because I can."

Really? Really, you stupid fucks? Well, I can show up at a town hall hanging George Bush in effigy because the first amendment says I can. Does that mean I should?

Three points I'd like to make here, you gun-clutching yahoos:

1) What the fuck does your second amendment rights have to do with health care, except for the use of one necessitating the need for the other? Do you reasonably expect us to believe that you wingnuts aren't trying to take this intimidation tactic to the next level? Does this mean that we, too, can start bring guns to anti health care reform town hall debates because Tony Scalia & Co. also says we can? Or would that be too much like leveling the playing field?

2) You archly defend your gun rights from New Hampshire to Arizona and would raise bloody hell if you had your guns stripped from you as they ought to be (see #3). Yet people were thrown out of Bush's "Town Hall" meetings just for wearing anti Bush tee shirts or having anti Bush bumper stickers on their vehicles outside, or sometimes just for writing letters to the editor of progressive publications, which, once again, is covered as much by the first amendment as your right to bear arms at a peaceful forum is covered by the second amendment, only it's a lot more harmless.

3) To the Secret Service: Are we to believe that the rules don't automatically change when the President of the United States comes to town? Ordinarily, planes freely fly overhead but not when the Chief Executive is in town. There's a two mile-wide halo over the President's head no matter where he goes. It was that no-fly rule that kept the rescue choppers grounded in New Orleans 4 years ago while Bush was patting Brownie on the head for a heckuva job well done.

When the president is anywhere within a mile of the area, all people ought to be stripped of any weapons, period. How can there not be a federal law demanding that? Since when does the safety of our Commander in Chief, the leader of the free world, get trumped by local bylaws and loopholes? And how can you Treasury Dept. assholes lay any legitimate claim to protecting the president when these fucking yahoos can get well within a bullet's range of him?

We have to pass through metal detectors to walk into a court room, board a plane, get into a ball park, even to enter an inner city high school. But there's no weapons ban when a black president comes into town?

So what's next? Stinger missiles and ICBM's? How many more times should we court disaster and rely on the forbearance of a segment of society that has been responsible for 100% of the acts of domestic terrorism to which we've played horrified witness? And how would it make the Secret Service look if God forbid someone decided to cross the line? It'll look like this:

The Secret Service allowed people to bring loaded guns, including fully loaded automatic weapons... time and time and time again while the wingnuts who plainly had no business or logical rationale for bringing them anywhere near the president in the first place cited local and state bylaws. It'll look as if the Secret Service repeatedly courted disaster and put the Chief Executive in harm's way. It'll make people compare notes and realize that while we liberals didn't bring guns to Bush's carefully-picked Town Halls (a straw man argument if ever there was one), we were still kicked out over tee shirts, bumper stickers and letters to the editor.

It would be the biggest black eye in the history of the Treasury Dept., a wound that would never heal.

But if our government is following the letter of the law and has no choice but to respect these NRA asswipes' right to carry weapons, then why isn't there a law that temporarily suspends such rights to ensure the safety of the President?