And It Continues In Earnest, Part 4

The derangement never stops, folks.  This time we have yet another House Republican calling for impeachment because of "executive overreach" on gun control enforcement.

Rep. Trey Radel (R-Fla.) said Wednesday that "all options should be on the table" when asked about the possibility of Republicans initiating impeachment proceedings against President Obama.

In an interview with Florida political website The Shark Tank, the freshman lawmaker was asked about the possibility of impeaching the president for executive overreach. Citizens "have completely lost our checks and balances in this country," he said. "The Congress needs to hold the president accountable for the decisions that he’s making right now, and that's why, again, I would say that all options should be on the table.”

I say to Rep. Radel what I said to Rep. Stockman yesterday:  please proceed, gentlemen, preferably sooner.  Please, please do this before 2014.  It'll be awesome.

Meanwhile, the excellent Roy Edroso flags down this diatribe from winger blog Confederate Yankee:

Were an angry group of disenfranchised citizens to target in a strategic manner the substations leading to a city or geographic area—say, Albany, for example—they could put the area in the dark for as long as it took to bring the substations back online. Were they committed enough, and spread their attacks out over a wide enough area, perhaps mixing in a few tens of dozens of the residential transformers found every few hundred yards along city streets, they could overwhelm the utility companies ability to repair the damage being caused or law enforcement’s ability to stop them...

How many days with partial power or no power, how many nights in the dark, would it take before the local economy collapsed in the targeted area? Insurgents could cripple a city, region, or state, without ever firing a bullet at another human being. 

Progressives seeking to undermine the Constitution seem to think they hold all the cards. I would warn them that they are not remotely prepared for what will happen if they attempt to cross Constitutional boundaries and natural rights. 

It could be a cold, dark winter. 

Tread carefully.

But don't you dare call them the right wing Taliban, right?   FBI should be knocking on this clown's door any minute now.

StupidiNews!

• President Obama signed a number of executive orders and unveiled a list of legislative goals for Congress to tackle on gun safety, but any legislation faces near total GOP opposition.
• A group of America's CEOs, the Business Roundtable, is calling for Social Security and Medicare cuts and raising the eligibility age of both to 70.
• Islamist militants in Algeria are holding dozens of foreign energy workers hostage at a gas field in retaliation for the French escalation of ground forces in neighboring Mali.
• The FAA has officially grounded all US Boeing 787 Dreamliners after a rash of electrical fires in the planes.
• The federal court district of East Texas is back on top when it comes to patent trolling cases filed by foreign companies to attack US patent holders.

Last Call

Bobby Jindal is the latest governor to shift the tax burden away from the 1% to the middle class and poor, his latest scam to eliminate the state's income and corporate tax and nearly double the state's sales tax from 4 to 7 percent would end up raising taxes on the bottom 80% of Louisiana residents, and cutting them massively on businesses and the wealthy.

According to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Jindal’s plan will raise taxes on the bottom 80 percent of Louisianians, while cutting them for the richest 1 percent:

– The bottom 80 percent of Louisianans in the income distribution would see a tax increase from repealing the personal and corporate income taxes and replacing them with a higher sales tax.
– The poorest 20 percent of taxpayers, those with an average income of $12,000, would see an average tax increase of $395, or 3.4 percent of their income, if no low income tax relief mechanism is offered.
– The middle 20 percent, those with an average income of $43,000, would see an average tax increase of $534, or 1.2 percent of their income.
– The largest beneficiaries of the tax proposal would be the top 1 percent—a group with an average income of well over $1 million. Louisianans in the top 1 percent would see an average tax cut of $25,423, or 2.3 percent of their income under the plan described above.

Seems like a raw deal there for most folks, because it is.  All this "revenue-neutral" scheme does is transfer the burden of taxes from the wealthy to the poor.  It doesn't raise additional taxes for services to help the poor (that's what "revenue neutral" means), it just makes everything they buy cost more:  food, clothing, other essentials.  You know, because the poor aren't paying their fair share, it seems.  If the rich pay less in taxes, that frees up money for them to...what, exactly?  Stash in offshore accounts rather than go into the state's economy?

Meanwhile, taxes go up on the little people and of course they'll rebel, and Bobby will say 'Well poors, you can either pay your sales tax or I can cut it along with your programs.  Your choice."  because We Can't Afford Nice Things.

And It Continues In Earnest, Part 3

If you thought the Birthers have wandered off into that good oblivion, you'd be wrong too.  This weekend the tinfoil hat morons are trying to do everything they can to find a way to stop Monday's inauguration and save America from a "foreign-born Muslim usurper".

Most Americans have moved on from earlier dalliances with denials of the president’s biography. National opinion polls have shown increases over the past three years in the percentage of Americans who agree that Obama was born in the United States and that he is a Christian. But a persistent minority — between a tenth and a fifth in most polls — still believe he is Muslim, foreign-born or a socialist.

Those voters tend to be vehement opponents of Obama, and on Inauguration Day, they will not be at the party — and they’re still searching for ways to have the president declared illegitimate.

“Let’s face it, this is a man very deep into an ideology that is not American,” says the Rev. Clenard Childress, a New Jersey minister and antiabortion activist who says black and white voters alike returned Obama to office “to feel better about ourselves and get the guilt of racism off us.”

Childress says it’s 50-50 that Obama is a Muslim who was born in Kenya: “But what I really care about is do we have the same values? Do you believe in the sanctity of life? Do you believe in marriage as being between man and woman? And this president does not.”

Gosh, what's different about this president?   At least one defender of the Obama administration has figured out the real issue with the birther idiocy.

Those who monitor anti-Obama movements say the inauguration will do nothing to quiet the rapids. “The rhetoric since the election has actually gotten more vicious,” says Kevin Davidson, better known as “Dr. Conspiracy,” his handle on his Web site, Obama Conspiracy Theories, which keeps tabs on those who declare Obama’s presidency illegitimate.

Davidson, a retired software developer in South Carolina, has been predicting for four years that hardcore anti-Obama agitation would dissipate, but it keeps going, driven, he believes, by anti-black sentiment. “I’ve seen more openly racist remarks since the election,” he says. “Before November, they were careful to control the racist language because they were trying to persuade people to vote against him. Now they sort of don’t care.”

Got it in one.  The lunatics aren't going away because the President is still black.  It's always been about race for millions of these bigoted fools.  And since these are the loons that control the GOP, expect impeachment to be on the menu before it's all said and done, as the President faces charges of Executive Leadership of the United States while Black.

Count on it.

And It Continues In Earnest, Part 2

Texas isn't about to let any county mountie in East Nowhere, Kentucky take the prize for the most unhinged response to gun control regs.  No sir, one Lone Star State Republican wants the state to not only refuse to enforce any federal firearms regulations at all, but to imprison anyone in the state who tries to enforce them.

State Rep. Steve Toth, a Republican, is looking to push his “Firearms Protection Act,” which would prevent any Congressional or Executive act banning or restricting so-called assault firearms and extended clips from affecting the state. In fact, any such action would be considered illegal, 1200 WOAI news of San Antonio, Texas, reported Tuesday.

Toth’s measure would make it a felony for federal officers to enforce any such ban in Texas, carrying the heavy punishment of a $50,000 fine and as many as five years in prison.

“If a federal official comes into the state of Texas to enforce the federal executive order, that person is subject to criminal prosecution,” Toth told the news station.

The lawmaker added that there needed to be a showdown between state and federal government over the Supremacy Clause, which dictates that federal law take precedence over state laws.

“It is our responsibility to push back when those laws are infringed by King Obama,” he said

Hey moron, nullification's been tried before.  Ask South Carolina what happened when it tried.   But these assholes want a rematch on the Civil War, well hey.

Let's see who wins that.

StupidiNews!

• After months of Republican delay, the House has passed the rest of the $50 billion Sandy relief measure, with a 241-180 vote.
• 18 human heads, misplaced medical specimens from Italy, turned up at Chicago's O'Hare Airport discovered by TSA officials.
• Japan's All Nippon Airways has grounded all of its new Boeing 787 Dreamliner planes after one was forced to make an emergency landing due to a battery fire Tuesday.
• McDonald's new McBaguette sandwich in France is debuting to solid reviews as the continuing EU recession drives more people to fast food offerings.
• Officials are reviewing how two US power plants were infected by a computer virus spread by a USB flash drive in November and December.

Last Call

The Washington Post's Sarah Kliff has a very sobering (if not outright depressing) piece about access to abortion in 2013. Here's a hint:  Seven out of eight women live in counties where there are no doctors providing abortion services.  That number is expected to get significantly worse.

It’s been almost 40 years since since the Supreme Court legalized abortion on Jan. 22, 1973, galvanizing people on both sides. Abortion clinics sprang up across the country. The National Right to Life Committee was founded. Opponents and proponents girded for an epic conflict.

But today, the battle is a slog of legislative fights and piecemeal regulations. Here, in a city where the battle over abortion was frequently and sometimes violently joined, combatants on both sides agree: They are dead-tired of the struggle over this clinic’s existence.

Claire Keyes, the longtime director of the Allegheny Reproductive Health Center, recalls thinking that the Supreme Court had settled the abortion argument, once and for all. “When I came into the clinic for the first time, the feeling that we had was this sense of giddiness,” she said. “Women had gained the right to control their own destiny.”

That was then.  This is now.

As the 40th anniversary of Roe approaches, Keyes is fearful about the future of abortion rights — and the clinic.

“It’s never been this frightening before,” she said. “I don’t know if we’re going to make it.”

A Pennsylvania law passed in 2011 requires surgical abortion clinics to become certified as ambulatory surgical centers and meet other rules.

Eight of Pennsylvania’s 22 surgical abortion providers failed to gain approval under the new law.
They can offer medical abortions, using a prescription drug, but not perform surgical procedures. To comply with the regulations, abortion clinics will need to install hospital-grade elevators and have a set number of parking spaces.

“Sometimes I think the regulations are what will actually get us, more than what we saw in the early years,” said Thompson, one of the clinic’s three doctors. He’s in his late 60s and isn’t sure who will take his place when he retires.

Pennsylvania had 50 providers of abortion care in 2008, an 11 percent decrease since 2005, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

With other clinics closing and the facility she spent three decades directing in jeopardy, Keyes now finds it difficult to find the optimism she has held for decades.

And at every turn, states are making abortion increasingly impossible for women to get, and increasingly impossible to provide.  Nobody seems to care much, frankly.  Republicans are passing rafts of abortion measures in state after state.

But frankly, the vast majority of women don't have access to abortions, not without an increasingly crazy maze of social shaming, expensive multiple trips, and assumption of mental incompetence that they are unable to make decisions about their own body.  The same "small government" types have no problem using the full power of the state to legislate morality.

Funny how that works.

And It Continues In Earnest

Obama Derangement Day continues as here in Kentucky, Jackson County Sheriff Denny Peyman says as Regent of the Known Universe, he simply won't enforce any gun ordinances the black guy wants to order.

Sheriff Peyman, 59, held a news conference Saturday afternoon at a restaurant in McKee to talk about his position on gun control. He said in a phone interview that it attracted more than 100 people.

Peyman, an Idaho native who came to Kentucky 15 years ago to work with high-risk children, said he is concerned that new gun control laws could lead to bans and even the confiscation of guns.

"American citizens already have given up too much power over guns," he said.

Peyman said citizens in his county need guns for defense.

"I'm for people defending themselves," he said. "There are some places in this county that takes me 45 minutes to get to. If they have a gun, they could do a better job of defending themselves than waiting for me."

Peyman acknowledged that the Kentucky State Police also patrols Jackson County, "but it often takes them a long time, too, to get to places here."

Asked what he thinks about doing away with AK-47s, Peyman said, "If they pull them off the market, what will they pull off next?"

Peyman is of course being considered a patriot for standing up to the tyranny of a Democrat, no Republican president would ever issue gun control regulations by executive...wait a minute.

The [George W.] Bush Administration declared a permanent ban today on almost all foreign-made semiautomatic assault rifles. Imports of the weapons have been suspended since spring.

The permanent ban affects all but 7 of the 50 models included in the spring suspension. It does not affect the far larger number of virtually identical weapons manufactured domestically, nor does it affect foreign-made semiautomatic weapons already in the United States.

Poppy Bush did that in 1989.  I'm sure this assault weapons ban by executive order caused a near civil war in the US.  Oh it didn't?

In the Presidential campaign last year Mr. Bush, a hunter and longtime member of the N.R.A., opposed to any bans on assault weapons. But a public outcry after a drifter armed with an AK-47 killed five schoolchildren in Stockton, Calif., in January helped convince others in the Administration that some limits were needed.

Huh.  Sounds familiar somehow.  And then the Assault Weapons ban lapsed and more schoolkids were gunned down, only this time, since we have a black President, we've got jagoff white Kentucky sheriffs acting like they know better.

I'm betting the FBI says you don't, son.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/01/14/2475649/kentucky-sheriff-says-he-wont.html#storylink=cpy

And It Begins In Earnest

Even before the President announces the steps he plans to take to tighten up gun regulations through authority Congress has already given the executive branch to use, at least one Republican in Congress is threatening immediate impeachment proceedings should the President try.

Please proceed, Rep. Stockman.

The conservative discord in the wake of the Newtown, Conn. massacre went up another octave on Monday when Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) threatened to file articles of impeachment if President Obama uses an executive order to try to reduce gun violence.

“The White House’s recent announcement they will use executive orders and executive actions to infringe on our constitutionally-protected right to keep and bear arms is an unconstitutional and unconscionable attack on the very founding principles of this republic,” Stockman said in a statement. “I will seek to thwart this action by any means necessary, including but not limited to eliminating funding for implementation, defunding the White House, and even filing articles of impeachment."

Go for it, skippy.  Shut down the government.  Defund the implementation for the entire executive branch while you're at it.  Turn your absolute derangement against President Obama into something that lays off tens of thousands of people, shuts down national parks, and delays tax refunds and government checks.  You do that.

Then watch what happens to you.  You want to open the Clinton Payback Playbook?  By all means, that worked out so well for you in the 90's, guys.

StupdINews!

• Lance Armstrong has reportedly admitted to doping to increase his cycling performance several times in an interview with Oprah Winfrey airing Thursday night.
• An abused 12-year-old boy has been found guilty of second degree murder in the shooting death of his Neo-Nazi father.
• As Vice President Biden delivers his task force recommendations on gun control to the President today, some in Congress want to take a closer look at online ammunition sellers.
• Computer giant Dell is looking at a leveraged buyout by private equity firms as the company looks to go private, 25 years after being the stock market's tech darling.
• A Java software vulnerability discovered in 2011 has been at the heart of a five-year campaign to infect PCs around the world.

Pulling The Trigger On The Economic Hostage

If Politico is right on the GOP being ready to start tossing bodies out the window to prove they're serious (I know, I know, the WIN THE MORNING crew is rarely so, but let's work through the scenario) then President Obama's victory will be total.

House Republicans are seriously entertaining dramatic steps, including default or shutting down the government, to force President Barack Obama to finally cut spending by the end of March.

The idea of allowing the country to default by refusing to increase the debt limit is getting more widespread and serious traction among House Republicans than people realize, though GOP leaders think shutting down the government is the much more likely outcome of the spending fights this winter.

 “I think it is possible that we would shut down the government to make sure President Obama understands that we’re serious,” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state told us. “We always talk about whether or not we’re going to kick the can down the road. I think the mood is that we’ve come to the end of the road.”

The GOP has done this before.  Obama didn't bite then, he's not going to bite now.  The House GOP is pushing the only leverage they think they have:  the Tea Party nutjobs going crazy.

Republican leadership officials, in a series of private meetings and conversations this past week, warned that the White House, much less the broader public, doesn’t understand how hard it will be to talk restive conservatives off the fiscal ledge. To the vast majority of House Republicans, it is far riskier long term to pile up new debt than it is to test the market and economic reaction of default or closing down the government.

GOP officials said more than half of their members are prepared to allow default unless Obama agrees to dramatic cuts he has repeatedly said he opposes. Many more members, including some party leaders, are prepared to shut down the government to make their point. House Speaker John Boehner “may need a shutdown just to get it out of their system,” said a top GOP leadership adviser. “We might need to do that for member-management purposes — so they have an endgame and can show their constituents they’re fighting.”

This is an absolute bluff.  Wall Street and the hedge fund titans will never allow the GOP to blow up the markets like this.  The second President Obama goes on TV and says that the GOP is forcing hundreds of thousands of government employees to be laid off, national parks to close, the markets to sink and Social Security checks to be late, the Republicans lose just like they did in 1995-96.  The real effort behind this story is to make the President blink.  He won't.

Republicans are betting that shutting down the government in order to force massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare is a winning hand?  It'll never happen.  But the GOP is convinced the threat of this alone will make Democrats panic and give in...an even worse idea.  Meanwhile, they are sure they will get those sequestration cuts.

GOP officials said 90 percent of their members are prepared to allow the cuts to take effect, rather than compromise, based on their preliminary head counts. This seems like the most likely outcome right now.

So please proceed, Tea Party nutjobs.  We just might get the House back after all.

You Don't Speak For Me This Time, Ma'am

I can no longer say that I don't regularly expect posts like this from Digby.  Every single time President Obama butts heads with the GOP, she screams NOW IS WHEN OBAMA WILL SELL US OUT ON SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE except he hasn't.  But it's always this time, this time she swears that the rotten crypto-conservative bastard is going to leave everyone under 60 in the streets with rags and dying by the thousands once they're too old to work anymore, forced to eat catfood and scrape by on fumes or just dead on the streets like vermin.  It's been the same song since 2009.

This battle is no different.

I'm sure the White House believes this and it's possible they will stare down the GOP this time on the debt ceiling and the GOP will back down. But after all that's come before the GOP has every reason to believe it will be the White House that blinks. We all do. It's almost impossible for me to believe that they will allow Armageddon (for real, this time, honest) to happen on their watch.

No.  Not all of us think the White House is going to blink, Digby.  Some of us have seen the President come out of battle after battle with the GOP having actually accomplished something, and we think the President will win again this time.

But as I wrote earlier, the truth is they're being very cute about all this and I don't think this is the play at all. It's not a coincidence that the sequester can was kicked down the road to ripen right after the debt ceiling. It means that while we are all watching the debt-ceiling showdown at the OK Corral, it's entirely possible the real negotiation will be happening on the separate sequester track. And that's unlikely to end well for the people. These wingnuts are hungry --- they feel they got robbed in the last go-round and they believe they were promised some major spending cuts in the next one. 

They always feel they were robbed.  They've felt robbed since November 2008.  Hell, some of us have felt robbed since much earlier in 2008, frankly.  The funny thing is, Digby never seems to think the President is intelligent enough to see the completely obvious GOP play here, and yet every time the President gets the better of John Boehner and his nihilistic friends.

Giving the President credit, well, that would be silly.  She can't do that, she has a narrative to cover.

It's a good thing for the country if the White House is able to stop this ongoing debt ceiling hostage situation. And maybe the Republicans want to stop it too, who knows? For all we know, Biden and McConnell prayed at the portraits of Tip 'n Ronnie and worked it all out in advance. Certainly it can't have entirely escaped the GOP leadership that they are playing with fire. But my read on the House crackpots is that they really want to make the President cry Uncle after that last one. Whether they have the nerve to cause an economic earthquake in order to do that is another question but I honestly don't know that they care whether anyone "blames" them. Their voters will support their actions. 

Gosh, if only the same could be said of our side.  Because like it or not, the results of voting in America these days is a binary outcome in a world full of grey.  Either the Democrat wins, or the Republican wins.  Choose.  Because if you haven't noticed, the President won in November.  We're acting like there's nothing we can do about the GOP in Congress.  There is, that would require us going after them at the local, state, and national level.

But it's much easier to blame Obama than to work for it.

You don't speak for me, Digby.  And I doubt in the future you ever will.

StupidiNews!

• Saudi Arabia is defending the death of a Sri Lankan maid, executed by beheading for allowing an infant in her care to die.
• The Obama administration is expected to announce a comprehensive immigration plan quickly, perhaps at the State of the Union address on February 12.
• The remaining $50 billion in aid for Northeastern states slammed by Hurricane Sandy faces an uncertain fate in the House as they take up the votes this week.
• 'Argo', 'Les Mis' and 'Homeland' were the big winners at Sunday's Golden Globes, 'Lincoln' only received one award out of seven nominations.
• MIT President Rafael Reif is calling for "thorough analysis" of the university's involvement in the suicide of Reddit co-founder and digital activist Aaron Swartz.

Last Call

Last week I mentioned that Illinois lawmakers were going to take up authorizing same-sex marriage, and that the plan had the blessing of state GOP chair Pat Brady, who said that the "true conservative position" is in favor of same-sex marriage.  Unfortunately, the vote never materialized as Republicans went bonkers and were able to scuttle the plan.

That of course, was last week.  This week, Illinois Republicans want Pat Brady destroyed and thrown out of the party leadership as Brady has a full-fledged revolt on his hands.

State GOP Chairman Pat Brady faces growing calls for his resignation, at a time when some Illinois Republicans are rethinking the party’s image and stance on social issues, following a dismal showing in November’s elections.

Conservative groups and activists pounced on Brady shortly after he released a statement last week offering his “full support” of a bill before the General Assembly that would legalize same-sex marriage.

But now the public demands for his ouster are coming from party leaders themselves.

“Pat Brady is a total disgrace,” said Bobbie Peterson, a Republican state central committeewoman from Beecher, Ill.

“He’s a pretty face for TV. He can speak well. Period,” Peterson said. “But what’s coming out of his mouth is not what the Illinois Republican party is about.”

It’s unclear whether the party bosses opposing Brady have enough votes to oust him. But even those who stop short of asking for his resignation plan to take him to the woodshed for neglecting to notify party bosses before he publicly contradicted the party’s platform plank on gay marriage.

“I was shocked,” said State Sen. Jim Oberweis, a committeeman from west suburban Sugar Grove who has asked Brady to resign.“Very surprised. Did not expect that and didn’t know why he would have done that.”

Now don't get me wrong, Pat Brady is still a Republican.  But he's the first to figure out that maybe, just maybe, the institutionalized bigotry and intolerance of the GOP platform may be a huge reason as to why the state is completely dominated by Democrats.  And if you're wondering "Gosh, why aren't more Republicans taking a stand against this kind of hatred" look no further than the Illinois GOP doing everything they can to rid themselves of somebody who thinks that in America equality should be the law of the land.

But equality is "not what the Illinois Republican party is about."  Might want to keep that in mind.

Bang-Bang Play

Once again, if you want to know why the NRA is screaming about "Obama taking your guns away" let's understand that they are the largest gun and ammo manufacturer's lobby in the country, and they are accomplishing their goals: raising membership, and selling more guns and ammo.

“Obama wants to take everybody’s guns away,” said Bob Daziel, who stood in line with hundreds on Saturday to get into the Crossroads of The West event in Daly City, California. “So they’re down here buying ammo, buying guns, they’re getting ready for the next revolution.”

Organizers told KGO-TV they were surprised at the record turnout, believing it to be spurred on by the recent discussions headed by Vice President Joe Biden regarding gun safety.

“It was constructive dialogue,” said Bob Templeton, the event’s president, who attended the meetings this week between Biden and members of the firearms industry. “But I think they had their minds made up when they came in the meeting.”

Templeton said his organization’s stance echoed that of the National Rifle Association: “Further restrictions on the Second Amendment are not on the table for discussion.”

Biden is expected to deliver recommendations to President Barack Obama on Jan. 15.

“That’s why we all need to get them now before they take them away,” said Jayleen Heres, who bought an AR-15 assault rifle — the same weapon used in last month’s mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut. “I have three more at home. This is the fourth.”

Meanwhile, lines at the show for everything from firearms to ammunition swelled throughout the day. Templeton said he expected the latter to sell out before the show concludes on Sunday.

“I’m like the hundredth [person] in line right now,” said another attendee, Frank Andtetta. “There’s like more than 500 people on line to get ammunition.” 

These are people who are convinced that government troops are going to search everyone in America's homes and take their weapons and ammunition.  They believe that they must buy more now so that they can be prepared to shoot and kill anyone who tries to do this.  They believe that basically everyone in their family must be armed and trained to use these weapons to defend themselves, to shoot and kill if necessary.

They believe a revolution is coming, where patriots like themselves will be forced to take those weapons and ammunition and shoot and kill their fellow Americans.  And they freely admit their willingness to do this if they feel they have the right to use that ultimate sanction.

It's ridiculous, and yet millions of Americans are doing this right now, and have been stockpiling firearms and ammo for the last four years (and some long before that).

The vast majority of these folks will never fire a shot in anger.  But some will.  And it's going to be a bloody time in our history.  I'm not frightened about our government.  I'm frightened of these people believing they are above it.

Oh, and speaking of buying at a gun show, the other reason why gun shows are stocked to the gills and attract record numbers of buyers is the loophole that buying a gun at a gun show means no background check necessary if you're not selling as a registered dealer.  (You do have to do a spot background check if you are.)  But then after all, we're dealing with people who think there should be no background checks at all, because they don't work.  That's a bit like saying "driver's licenses don't prevent all auto fatalities, let's get rid of them."

So yeah, felons, criminals, nutjobs, can walk into a gun show like this and buy all the "second hand" guns they want to.  There's no regulation of private sales like this.  But we can't regulate firearms, nope.