The Daily Sausage – Friday Edition

The Empire State Shooting, Congress Sucks, Yiddish Curses for Republican Jews, Todd Akin: 5 Year Old, Akin and the Big Picture: Senate Control, What’s the matter with Missouri, the Dangerous False Trade-off between Liberty and Security, Who Watches the (Poll) Watchers, and the GOP’s New Poster Boy: Chris The Baker.

Welcome to the Daily Sausage.

10 people have been shot with 2 fatalities after a disgruntled former employee opened fire after an altercation just outside the Empire State Building in New York City today.

The Daily Sausage extends it’s condolences to the victims and their families.

Now will Congress get off their collective asses and DO SOMETHING about the gun problem in this country?

Oh wait, I forgot. This is the worst, most unproductive Congress in the HISTORY of the United States, because half the country lost their goddamn minds because the other half elected a black guy President and then didn’t show up in 2010, leading to the mouth-breathing snake handlers electing a bunch of Know-Nothing extremists and grifters that would rather burn the playground down and steal everything that’s not nailed down than share it with everyone else, politically speaking. So no, I don’t expect Congress, which has a SINGLE DIGIT approval rating, to get off their asses and do anything remotely productive.

While we’re at it, have some Yiddish Curses for Republican Jews. There’s only one Republican Jew in Congress, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. There are 13 Senators (11 Democrats, 2 Independents) and 24 Representatives (23 Democrats, 1 Republican) for a total of 37 Jews, only one of whom is a Republican. Based on my purely anecdotal experience, that’s about right. After all, every culture has The Asshole, and Eric Cantor is ours. However, most of these are multipurpose for Republicans in general, although my personal favorite:

May your child give his Bar Mitzvah speech on the genius of Ayn Rand.

May require some tweaking.

Todd Akin, having thoroughly hoisted his own petard, retorted to Missouri Democrats that their best chance to beat him would be to demand that Senator Claire McCaskill step down. Shortly thereafter, Akin blew a raspberry and made a funny face, confirming that he is, in fact, a five year old in a fifty-something man’s body. This theory was originally proposed when Akin began using the “I’m Rubber and You’re Glue” defense, as well as the “I Know You Are But What Am I” gambit.

Here’s a good review on how Akin’s clusterfuck potentially changes the race for control of the Senate. Upside: it’s a little bit easier with Akin potentially dead in the water, but the complete pullout of GOP resources in Missouri could make competitive races in Massachusetts, Ohio, etc. more difficult.

Of course, the one question no one is asking is “What’s the matter with Missouri?”, which ultimately ends up being “What’s the matter with the United States?”.

Ultimately, it comes down to guns and abortion. The GOP cleaved off the last slice of Suburban/Rural White America that wasn’t already voting for them. Socially conservative Democrats who no longer had anything in common with the party they were voting for on a national level, and simply did it out of habit.

Of course, the limit to this strategy is what we’re seeing now: the GOP is dying. It’s become completely exclusionary to anyone under 30, non-White, non-Christian, and non-Male. It may take ten years for the party to finally die the death it so richly deserves, but they’re hemorrhaging voters faster than they can be replaced. There just aren’t as many old white people as there used to be.

The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf has a great article on the NYPD’s program of spying on Muslim Americans, and the dangerous and false trade-off between liberty and security. Long story short: the NYPD engaged in a multi-year program of spying on Muslim Americans in and out of their jurisdiction and didn’t generate a single lead. They generated tons of demographic data on where they lived, shopped, worked, and prayed. They infiltrated Muslim Student groups, put informants in mosques, and monitored sermons.

As Friedersdorf notes, there was no trade-off between Liberty and Security. There was just a loss of Liberty, with no additional Security.

This is why, last weekend, I joined my moderate and conservative friends in hating on the TSA. The TSA has a noble goal: screen millions upon millions of people for guns, knives, explosives, and other weapons to keep them from turning an airplane into a flying bomb. Unfortunately, they do it in the most ham-fisted way possible that does nothing to improve security, and everything to increase passenger annoyance.

Ultimately, that’s the decision we as a society make. How much security do we want to pay for in the currency of liberty?

Color Lines’ Brentin Moch has a tremendous article on the King Street Patriots “True The Vote” efforts across the country.

Here’s the key passage:

Even though no fraudulent votes were cast, Engelbrecht’s King Street Patriots lionized the ACORN tale and used it as a mobilizing tool to recruit hundreds of volunteers for 2009 Election Day poll watching, mostly in black and Latino districts.

This is straight up minority voter suppression and intimidation. Moreover, it’s part of the Right-Wing Psychosis where Democrats are never elected legitimately and always elected fraudulently by hordes of ignorant black voters or illegal immigrants looking for their government welfare checks.

Let’s say you have a person or group of people that don’t believe anything they’re told, even if it’s backed by provable facts. They create their own media, their own schools, their own separate society to ensure that nothing of the outside world gets in. They refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of democratically elected leaders, and insist long after the fact that those leaders are illegitimate for one of many easily disprovable reasons.

You could make a legitimate case that a person suffering from such delusions is obsessive and paranoid, and probably belongs to a cult or militia. I mean, some of that stuff is legitimate mental illness.

Here we just call it the Republican party.

And finally, in the long-standing (read: since 2008) tradition of picking people to be their “mascots”, such as Joe the Plumber (Note: not actually named Joe, not actually a plumber) or Bob The Builder (Note: may be a cartoon character), the GOP has settled on Chris “The Baker” McMurray, owner of “Crumb & Get It Cookie Company” in Radford, Virginia.

Unfortunately, much like the rest of the GOP’s mascots, it appears as though this one has a problem: he may have actually cut and run on the business he created.

According to the landlord, the business has been closed for months and the store owners, Chris and his wife Kelly, moved out of state and have not returned calls about money owed on the space.

Personally, I’d like to see the GOP embrace it’s true colors and introduce Charles and David The Plutocrats. The image of a pair of oversized mascot-style Koch Brothers wandering around Tampa fills me with glee.

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