The Bubble Genius Bob & Chez Show 1/17/13

Posted on 01/19/2013 at 6:02 pm by Bob Cesca

Lance Armstrong’s Confession; The Second Amendment is Obsolete; Second Amendment Written to Protect Slavery; President Obama’s Gun Control Proposals; Fighting the NRA Until We Win; Glenn Beck’s Grifter Theme Park; The EPA Deliberately Fumbled a Fracking Emergency; and much more. Brought to you by Bubble Genius and the BobCesca.com Amazon Link.

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Bubble Genius

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The Second Amendment

Posted on 01/19/2013 at 6:00 pm by JM Ashby


Artist – Dave Granlund

In other news, some states are taking up the call. Others? Not so much.

A new analysis from the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence finds that out of “more than 190 gun-related bills filed in statehouses between Jan. 1 and Jan. 15″ — in the aftermath of the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut — 114 bills strengthen gun regulations, while 67 weaken them.” The remainder are neutral.

And in related news, some people were accidentally shot at a gun show in North Carolina today. Darwin is up to his old tricks.

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Organizing for Action

Posted on 01/19/2013 at 4:00 pm by JM Ashby

It has been a busy news week which saw President Obama unveil a sweeping proposal for gun control and the Republicans completely and utterly caving (and I hate that word) on the debt ceiling, but this may have been the biggest news of the week considering its future implications.

via TPM

President Barack Obama on Friday announced that the remnants of his campaign organization will be reborn as a new political group called Organizing for Action, which will be able to accept unlimited donations.

“Together, we’ve made our communities stronger, we’ve fought for historic legislation, and we’ve brought more people than ever before into the political process,” Obama wrote in an email to supporters. “Organizing for Action will be a permanent commitment to this mission.”

News of the move was broken by The Los Angeles Times on Thursday, which reported that Organizing for Action would be set up as a 501(c)4 “social welfare” nonprofit organization, and that an official launch was set for Sunday, when thousands of former campaign staff and volunteers are expected to attend a daylong “Obama Campaign Legacy Conference” in Washington D.C. Obama will take the oath of office for his second term the same day.

It may be too early to speculate, but the implication, at least from my perspective, is that the president will be a significant proponent of progress far beyond the end of his second term in office.

Democratic presidents typically are, but this suggests a far larger role than any previous president has assumed because OFA will have far more power than any other Democratic PAC. And that is comforting to me because it reassures us that it will remain in the right hands.

It’s ironic to think that Organizing for Action, a hulking monstrosity by any conservative operative’s reckoning, will be an inadvertent creation of Citizens United. And in hindsight, those on the Left who called for unilateral disarmament in the face of unlimited corporate cash look even more foolish now than they already did.

The Right gained very little in 2012 by opening up the financial floodgates to Karl Rove following the Citizens United ruling, but the Left has gained a permanent, reliable ally.

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Unhinged Micro-Phallus Sufferer of the Day

Posted on 01/19/2013 at 2:00 pm by JM Ashby

We should be under no illusion for what leads to this kind of behavior.

Cindy Yorgason was in line at the J.C. Penney in Riverdale on Wednesday when she looked up and saw a shopper with “a large gun.”

Yorgason said the rifle was slung across the back of the man in front of her. When she looked closer, she saw that he also had extra ammunition clips and a sidearm in a holster on his right hip. [...]

On Thursday, 22-year-old Joseph Kelley identified himself as the man in Yorgason’s pictures. Kelley described himself as a firm believer in Second Amendment rights and said he decided to bring the guns to the store to demonstrate that they are not dangerous in the hands of law-abiding citizens. [...]

Kelley added that he carries weapons to protect children and other people from “criminals, cartels, drug lords” and other “evil men.”

Kelley was carrying an AR-15 and a loaded Glock pistol. Because you never know when you may have to confront a cartel, a drug lord, or an unspecified evildoer at your local J.C. Penny department store.

It’s only a matter of time until one of these over-compensating, Second Amendment exhibitionists is the victim of a shooting perpetrated by another equally unhinged person who was also just “exercising his rights.” And for sanity’s sake, let’s hope it doesn’t take place in a state with a “stand-your-ground” law.

(credit to Bob for “micro-phallus sufferer”)

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Buy This Book!

Posted on 01/19/2013 at 1:59 pm by Bob Cesca

K.C. Boyd’s Being Christian A Novel is a fantastic read, especially if you’re into witnessing the seedy underworld of far-right Christian conservatism.

Boyd dramatizes a lot of familiar stories (think Ted Haggard, etc) through her evangelical protagonist Christian Hillcox, the founder of a Texas megachurch.

The Amazon links for both the paperback and the Kindle.

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Quote of the Morning

Posted on 01/19/2013 at 11:33 am by Bob Cesca

“As for Armstrong, I’m afraid I cannot muster much anger about the actual use of what he correctly calls “performance enhancers”. If everyone is cheating, in some ways, no one is. And the ubiquity of performance enhancers in the sport when he was at its helm means he was competing against chemically-enhanced equals. He still won. Those drugs take human performance to new levels, but they do not abolish core and real athletic prowess, focus, and psychological grit. I’ve long believed in ending prohibition in sports on performance enhancers – because they are everywhere and unstoppable. We should rather have tests that ensure equality of enhancement. We could also have drug-free football, for example, alongside the steroidal monstrosities of the NFL. Fans might even prefer to watch human beings play the game again, rather than herds of steroidal human cattle, slowly turning their brains to mush.” Andrew Sullivan

I’m glad to see I’m not alone on these points. While I watched the confession last night, I couldn’t help but to feel vindicated in my view that all of the visibility of doping in cycling and all of the subsequent angst is due to almost exclusively to cycling’s transparency and increasingly strict testing requirements. Period. If other sports, like football, were as diligent in policing drugs as cycling, there would surely be many more Lance Armstrongs spanning most of major league sports — baseball being a rare and refreshing exception.

Yes, Lance cheated then lied and bullied his way through many, many years of competition. But don’t think for a second that professional cyclists are any more corrupt that your favorite athletes.

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Winter Fundraising Drive, Last Day!

Posted on 01/19/2013 at 10:08 am by Bob Cesca

[Scroll down for the latest posts.] It’s your last chance to click the jolly candy-like button before it returns to its finely crafted velveteen box. Your generous contributions help us to maintain the site, so if you’d like to contribute to the effort, go ahead and shove some folding money into the tip jar.

The top five most generous contributors will receive free one-year subscriptions to the Bob & Chez Show After Party.



Thanks so much!

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Breaking News! The NRA Lied!

Posted on 01/19/2013 at 8:11 am by Bob Cesca

That NRA video accusing the president of sending his daughters to a school that features 11 armed security guards? It’s a lie. Shocker, I know!

Buzzfeed:

But a fact-check by the Washington Post found that not to be the case. The Post called the school, Sidwell Friends, where Obama’s daughters attend and asked if the school had armed guards. The school responded that none of their 11 security members carry any firearms.

Whoops! The downside here is that it’s already out there and, as the saying goes, a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on.

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Morning Awesome

Posted on 01/19/2013 at 6:00 am by Bob Cesca

MST3K Saturday – “The Sword and the Dragon”

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Gun Culture

Posted on 01/18/2013 at 8:00 pm by JM Ashby


Artist – David Fitzsimmons

In other news, former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was indicted on 21 charges of corruption, bribery, and fraud today.

Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was indicted Friday on charges that he used his office for personal gain, accepting payoffs, free trips and gratuities from contractors while the city was struggling to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

The charges range from accepting bribes, to accepting building materials for his family business, payoffs, and free private jet services.

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Winter Fundraising Drive, Day Six

Posted on 01/18/2013 at 7:50 pm by Bob Cesca

[Scroll down for the latest posts.] After tomorrow, the jolly candy-like button will go back in its velveteen box. Meanwhile, we’re gaining on our fundraising goal for this quarter, but we still have a long way to go. Your generous contributions help us to maintain the site, so if you’d like to contribute to the effort, click the jolly candy-like PayPal button below and toss some cash into the tip jar.

The top five most generous contributors will receive free one-year subscriptions to the Bob & Chez Show After Party.



Thanks so much!

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What Could Go Wrong?

Posted on 01/18/2013 at 6:30 pm by JM Ashby

What could go wrong when an armed guard hired by an elementary school leaves his gun in the bathroom?

An armed guard at a Lapeer, Mich., charter school — hired in the wake of the Newtown massacre — made a “breach of security” this week when he left his gun unattended in the bathroom “for a few moments,” Chatfield School Director Matt Young told the Flint Journal. The gun was unloaded.

Young said in a statement, according to the paper: “The school has put additional security procedures in place that follow local law enforcement practices and guidelines. At no time was any student involved in this breach of protocol. We will continue to work on improving school security.”

The gun wasn’t loaded and a child didn’t pick it up this time, but what about next time? Tell me again why a gun has any place in an elementary school.

If I were a local parent, I would be enraged.

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TSA Removing Naked Body Scanners From Airports

Posted on 01/18/2013 at 5:00 pm by JM Ashby

Good news for frequent fliers — the TSA is removing the remaining so-called naked body scanners manufactured under the unfortunate moniker of Rapiscan.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration will remove airport body scanners that privacy advocates likened to strip searches after OSI Systems Inc. (OSIS) couldn’t write software to make passenger images less revealing.

TSA will end a $5 million contract with OSI’s Rapiscan unit for the software after Administrator John Pistole concluded the company couldn’t meet a congressional deadline to produce generic passenger images, agency officials said in interviews.

The agency removed 76 of the machines from busier U.S. airports last year. It will now get rid of the remaining 174 Rapiscan machines, with the company absorbing the cost, said Karen Shelton Waters, the agency’s assistant administrator for acquisitions

The peep-show scanners will be replaced by machines manufactured by L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. (LLL) that do not produce explicit full frontal photographs.

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You Say Jump. We Say How High?

Posted on 01/18/2013 at 3:30 pm by JM Ashby

The NRA says jump and gun nuts say “how many guns should we buy?”

How about all of them?

No, really — gun stores are running out of guns to sell.

“We were just swamped in here as soon as he got off the news,” manager Bill Loane of Pasadena Pawn & Gun in Maryland said of the reaction to Obama’s gun proposals. “People were just pouring through the door.” [...]

The AR-15-style rifle, which is among the most popular firearm models in America, came to wider attention after Adam Lanza used one in Newtown. Fearing a ban, Loane said, his customers are paying unprecedented prices for the few guns still available.

“I just sold a lower model one the other day for $2,195 over the phone,” Loane said of a gun that a few months ago might have gone for about $1,200. “The guy had to have it. He didn’t even see the gun.”

David Stone said his Dong’s Sporting & Reloading Goods in Tulsa, Okla., was packed wall-to-wall all day on Wednesday. Stone said buyers barely paused during what he described as a “buying frenzy” to listen to the president speak over a local reporter’s iPhone.

“We’re having people call on the phone,” Stone said. “I’m the only store in Oklahoma from what customers are telling me that has AR-15s.”

If it were gasoline, there would be outrage over price gouging, but since we’re talking about our beloved rifles, no one cares. They’ll pay any price for that sweet metal because the NRA and Fox News told them the president is going to confiscate their guns.

If they weren’t so selfish and irresponsible I’d say the gun lobby were geniuses for figuring out how to dupe their loyal customers into buying anything they tell them to without any tangible reason to do so.

The firearms industry has been scaremongering over confiscation for decades. And it works. All the NRA has to say is jump, and gun nuts will trip over themselves stampeding toward the nearest gun store.

Suckers.

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“We Must Pay Our Bills”

Posted on 01/18/2013 at 2:00 pm by JM Ashby

According to this statement from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the GOP is planning to release their debt-ceiling hostage but they will also reserve the right to take another in three months.

We must pay our bills and responsibly budget for our future. Next week, we will authorize a three month temporary debt limit increase to give the Senate and House time to pass a budget.

I can’t discern what their endgame is because from my perspective this is a clear signal that they aren’t willing to actually default on our national debt.

Several weeks ago skeptical parties on the left were criticizing the president for supposedly giving up his leverage to win the battle over taxes while ignoring the debt ceiling, but it seems clear now that all he really had to do was go on national TV and explain to the American public — and some sitting congresscritters — what the debt ceiling really is. And this line from Eric Cantor that we “must pay our bills” is the giveaway.

From the president’s remarks on the debt ceiling this week

This is a matter of congress authorizes spending. They order me to spend. They tell me you need to fund our defense department at such an such a level. You need to send out social security checks. You need to make sure that you’re paying to care for our veterans. They lay all this out for me, because they have the spending power. And so I am required by law to go ahead and pay these bills. Separately, they also have to authorize a raising of the debt ceiling in order to make sure those bills are paid.

So what congress can’t do is tell me to spend X and then say we’re not going to give you the authority to go ahead and pay the bills.

It’s not as easy to tell your constituents that you don’t want to pay our bills as it is to claim that you’re blocking the authorization of new spending.

To fully realize how big of a turnaround this is, recall the GOP’s weekly address delivered by Senator Orrin Hatch on December 1st wherein he accused the president of asking for “unlimited unchecked authority to borrow from the Chinese.”

Are the Republicans going to pass a three month extension of “unlimited unchecked authority to borrow from the Chinese,” or was that a bunch of bullroar?

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Subscribe to the Bob & Chez Show After Party!

Posted on 01/18/2013 at 11:59 am by Bob Cesca

Join the After Party. Only $6 per month!
If you’re already a member, go on in.

This week: Sandy Hook Truthers; Wackaloons Harass Sandy Hook Hero; Ridiculous InfoWars Conspiracy Theorists; False Flags; Ghost Douches; Republican Birthers; Business Profits Way Up on Obama’s Watch; Arnold Schwarzenegger on Gun Control; Chez on Django Unchained; Depiction Does Not Mean Endorsement; Golden Globes in Review; Jennifer Lawrence; Lena Dunham and Mumblecore; More on Lance Armstrong’s Confession; Celebrities and PEDs; Hunter S. Thompson’s Daily Routine; and much more!

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Quote of the Morning

Posted on 01/18/2013 at 9:16 am by Bob Cesca

“Who the hell needs armor-piercing bullets except you guys in battle? For the life of me, I don’t know why the hell people have to have assault weapons.” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to soldiers at the U.S. Army Garrison Vicenza in northern Italy

I can answer this one for the secretary. They need armor-piercing bullets and assault weapons because, 1) they’re paranoid, and 2) they have small penises, or 3) both.

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One Huge Problem with the Republican Party

Posted on 01/18/2013 at 8:26 am by Bob Cesca

This:

House Republicans need to stop talking about rape.

That’s the message GOP lawmakers got here Wednesday evening from Kellyanne Conway, a top GOP pollster.

Conway dispensed the stern advice as part of a polling presentation she made alongside fellow GOP pollsters David Winston — an adviser to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) — and Dave Sackett. The comment was described by several sources in the room.

Conway said rape is a “four-letter word,” and Republicans simply need to stop talking about it in their races for office.

The Republicans need to be told by a pollster to stop talking about RAPE! When your party needs to be instructed to not diminish the horrors of rape, you’re way, way, way beyond seriousness.

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The Daily Banter Mail Bag is Piloting the Black Helicopters

Posted on 01/18/2013 at 7:19 am by Bob Cesca

This week’s questions:

1) What do you think the chances are of President Obama getting an assault weapons ban through Congress?
– SR

2) First it was the 9/11 truthers, then the birthers, then the Sandy Hook truthers, and now in case you haven’t heard there’s the T’eo truthers, who have all kinds of weird beliefs about what was really behind the Notre Dame player scandal. What’s going on, are we living in a new golden age of conspiracy theories?
– Trish

3) Okay so Lance Armstrong is admitting he doped. Why should I care?
– Brian

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Morning Awesome

Posted on 01/18/2013 at 6:00 am by Bob Cesca

Lucinda Williams & Elvis Costello – “Wild Horses” Live

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