Here we go again

A guy wishes we could let some of the Tucson dust settle before we begin what I suppose will need to be an epic defense of rights guaranteed by Amendment Two.

Not that our adversaries will take a deep breath and do a bit of thinking . The most usual of suspects, Carolyn McCarthy,  is on the home stretch to orgasm with her new opportunity to decide what sorts of rights should be sacrificed in the wake of the Tucson madness. Right now.

Good politics, there, Congresswoman. Your plan to get your new bill filed today or tomorrow represents a sterling example of trying to draft carefully thought-out legislation.

And then, in the same Politico report,  there's:

Pennsylvania Rep. Robert Brady, a Democrat from Philadelphia, told CNN that he also plans to take legislative action. He will introduce a bill that would make it a crime for anyone to use language or symbols that could be seen as threatening or violent against a federal official, including a member of Congress.


Which is ill-advised unless we decide we must indict a certain high federal official for promulgating a symbol of death -- officially defined as such by federal authorities --  from and in the White House.

Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/craxxi/3287463155/

Tucson

1. The shooter had no political philosophy in any meaningful sense of the term. He was an emotional pimple and finally squeezed himself. The consequences are tragic.

2. The blaming of the gun is not so much muted as delayed.  The media is still in its obligatory "Oh, how 'horrific' stage."

3. This is useful. Without  the minute-by-minute expressions of  ratings-building abject grief, we proles might think it only mildly annoying that the guy murdered  a little girl, an apparently unobjectionable political operative, a judge, and three old folks.

4.  Our opinion leaders will get around to the full-force horror of the armed citizen, per se,  before too many more hours have passed.

Stay tuned.

Hi Ho, HI Ho

Off to the first 2011 loophole, a little c. 100-table production in sovereign state of Minnesota.  No big personal agenda for this one other than a bit of good-ol'-boy comradeship and junk-box snooping.

' course, I'll be strapping on the money belt. A fellow never knows when he'll run across another $850 Python.

Actually, I do need some small stuff -- pilots for the old Pacific trimmer,  a magazine release mechanism for a Winchester 69, a better magazine spring for the Marlin 38. I can hear it now, "Rotsa ruck, Jim."

Do I hope too highly that there's an issue 1911 frame, preferably Colt? Those lonesome slides and barrels are starting to get on my nerves.   Finding one would be  the neatest brazen act of loopholism I can think of.

EDIT: Nada.

G'day, Mate. Have a House on Me

The Down-Under bankers seem to be following the U.S. mortgage model. Y'all can afford any kind of McMansion you want. Trust me. After all, I'm a banker.

To achieve that modest goal of palaces for peons, they've come up with a clever new trick to (a) make would-be borrowers feel richer than they are and (b) to make their ugly (that is, unpayable) mortgages look like AAA investments.

To do so they're telling potential borrowers, "You don't really pay the rent you pay.  It's really part of your savings account, so we'll loan you more."

(The link takes you to a longish explanation of Canberra's latest whim, and, like Mythbusters, it should carry a preview line, "Caution, Economics content." But it's still worth the read for anyone interested in money as Charmin.)