The Story of A Succesfull Medium Sized Company

Imagine a small metalworking business that started shortly after WW1 somewhere in Germany. Metalworking, as in making forms for the ceramics industry that the little town is known for. The business grew in the time between wars, it survived WW2 and continued to grow well into the second half of the 20th century. At that time a new market for metal forms began to emerge – injection moulded plastics. The family owning the business latched onto that new market in an ideal way that capitalism is portrayed, by investing in developing new know-how to give them an edge over the competition. And they succeeded, making a name for their company in the business that became a synonym for high quality, albeit at a high price. As a regional employer, the family business had a good reputation too, with some people literally working there from finishing school until retirement and earning wages well above average. It was said that at the end of each fiscal year, the door opened for new modern machinery and a new workforce.

Then came an international giant housed in the USA, interested in the know-how. And since the family no longer had an interest in actually running the business, they sold it to this giant wholesale. The plant became a part of a branch in this corporation, a branch that specialized in injection moulding. Things did not go well from that time on, although it still took decades to become really apparent. For one the prices for customers remained high, but the quality began to drop due to cut corners.

The international corporation had no real interest in keeping the know-how and employment local, despite saying the opposite. The wages were undercut by increasing working hours so in real terms they de-facto stagnated. It was still worth it to work at the company, but it no longer was a job to envy someone and some people started to leave – and as it is, the best ones were the first to go. Attempts to unionize to counter the slow squeeze were crushed by threats to ship the jobs to Eastern Europe and China, something that should not work in Germany but it did. And then the jobs were slowly shipped to Eastern Europe and China anyway. The know-how however is not so easily transferred, and since replacement workforce was no longer educated on-site and the older force started to retire or just leave, it started to get lost.

Then came a worldwide recession. The corporation started to cut corners again by firing thousands of employees worldwide, all the while the CEO and shareholders were despite the crisis earning more than enough money to keep these people employed and still be filthy rich (the CEO alone earned more than 150 (corrected typo) times more than an ordinary employee). The employees finally got fed up and unionized, for what it was worth. As it turns out, it was too late.

After the recession was over, the whole corporation was bought by another international corporation, this time housed in Germany. Things started to look brighter for a very short time since German corporations actually treat their employees better than American ones. But optimism did not last long. The purchase was driven by a desire to own one specific part of the corporation, and injection moulding and manufacture of metal molds were not it. So to offset the immense costs of the purchase, the whole branch was sold off, to another international company housed in the USA.

The new corporate owners swore day and night that they really, really wanted to keep the local businesses and nobody needed to fear for their jobs. There were even articles in local newspapers about how they project to grow the locally employed workforce at the plant I am writing about to more than double, over 400. Yet somehow the number of employees and contracts for this specific plant continued to only go down all the way to 60. At 60 the count stopped and the plant was finally closed, probably because with that few employees it was no longer feasible to actually make money in this business, not to mention that the know-how it took to assemble for half a century was at this point irrevocably lost.

Imagine all that. I do not need to imagine it, I lived through a significant part of the end of that story and I just a few days ago learned how it ended.

Teacher’s Corner: Liar, liar, pants on fire

You know, I can deal with a lot of things. My colleagues declare that I have the patience of a Saint. I am extremely understanding. I don’t expect kids to be prefect and rule abiding. I would be a fucking hypocrite if I did, because while I was always a straight A student, I was never docile. My popularity with teachers therefore depended on whether they expected me to obey, or whether they expected me to learn.

So when a kid fucks up, I don’t take it personally. There’s just one thing that I absolutely cannot tolerate : bold faced lying.

Today I was a bit latish, though still on time. I see two of my 8th graders, let’s call them A and B, walk away from the school gate instead of inside, so I inform their tutor.

We also quickly change plans and I get to teach their class for the first two lessons. I start with a whole 6 kids. The tutor is pissed, another kid says “yeah, I saw them, and C, D and E, too”.

Again, I can deal with it. It’s not like I didn’t occasionally skip lessons, especially when I knew that the actual teacher was sick. But at least I did it somewhat smarter. Like, WTF? You all got smartphones. When I was your age the Enterprise didn’t even have smartphones. Go hang out where I don’t have to see you.

But that’s not the worst. As I said, I did shit, too. But when I got caught, I knew I was in trouble and that I was going to suffer the consequences of my actions. Today, the merry troop shuffled in one after the other. I told them that we’d talk later. Near the end of the lesson their tutor came to inform them that they’d have to make up the missed time. One kid, C, exploded. He gets aggressive quick. That it wasn’t his fault! He’d missed the bus! He’d just came by bus, together with B! Yes, the attentive reader will have noticed a little problem here. I calmly asked him “Just yes or no, you say that at half past you were on a bus to school with B?” He indignantly informed me that yes, of course he was, I can ask B!

See, this is where I get angry. The lying, with indignation, with rage, with an aura of an innocent person suffering some terrible wrongs. B tried to back him up, claiming that no, I couldn’t have seen him, it wasn’t him! I said that well, all we need then was A telling us who it was I saw him with, but A had at least the good sense to shut up.

The real problem is that I already know that at least half the parents will choose believing their kids over the words of the teacher and a couple of classmates. In the end, I pity the kids, since none of them have the socioeconomic background to be a successful liar.

“The silent majority agrees with me”, gender critical edition

Open letters are a time honoured form of activism. They allow individuals to connect over a single and very specific issue and raise awareness for that cause. They are, of course, also problematic in a way, since they usually are initiated by people who already have some influence and publicity, because nobody publishes an open letter signed by 40 noobs with a blog and a 50 people Twitter account, so they’re usually a tool of academia, authors, or various kinds of celebrities. At least you need a couple of celebrities to boost your idea.

The latest round of “gender critical”, aka transphobic open letter seems to have suffered from a certain lack of celebrity endorsement, which is why they decided to simply sign the names of dead women to their cause. “Come on, Giliell”, I hear you say, “nobody would be that dishonest”. But go, look for yourselves: Here it is.

The letter itself is the usual transphobic whining about trans women taking things from cis women, like all those shiny Olympic medals trans women have so far failed to win. The novel “Detransition, Baby”, by Torres Peters, has been listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. The usual suspects are all up in arms because a literary prize that was founded to celebrate women’s often  undervalued contributions to fiction has dared to list a novel by a trans woman, and this is of course another instance of a “trans identified male” taking things from “biological women”, just like in sports. Only that of course they always try to base their bigotry on biology, claiming that anybody amab has intrinsic and immutable advantages over anybody afab. Does this mean they’re indirectly claiming that women cannot write and therefore need some protected prizes where they don’t have to compete with men?*

But let’s not get sidetracked from the incredible dishonesty of “the dead agree with me via ouija board”. Among the “supporters” of the letter you’ll find Emily Dickinson, Daphne du Maurier and Mary Anne Evans, aka George Elliot. Why they couldn’t get the Transphobe in Chief, the woman writer who publishes under her initials, a male pseudonym of a guy who tortured gay people, and who singlehandedly invented women back in the 1990s to sign their letter, I don’t know. Now, we all like to claim great woman of the past as our forbearers, brand ourselves as their heirs, but a simple fact is that we have no idea what their opinion on many things was or would have been. Who knows what Rosa Luxemburg would have thought about gay marriage? For a couple of other issues we do know their positions and they are horrible, especially with regards to race. Is it possible that these people would have agreed with them? Sure. Does that mean anything? Not unless you declare them infallible. Now, given that many transphobes are also terribly racist and homophobe, they probably consider that a feature, not a bug, since they happily outsource critical thinking.

It is, of course, also possible that those women would have told them to stuff it. It happens time again with modern authors who they suppose agree with their bigotry, like Margret Atwood. And after all, it is pretty unimportant. Those women are long dead, and while celebrities sure can help or hinder a cause, their opinion does not magically make a position right or wrong. Human rights are not determined by Grammy nominations or book prizes. There’s a hell lot of horrible people with book prizes or Nobel prizes. In the end that’s just an argument from second hand authority and you learn back in grade 10 that those are not actually arguments at all. By the end of the day it’s just another episode of transphobes (if you read the list you will indeed find familiar names) being terrible, and none of them sees any issue with this.

*Just to make this clear: I’m very fond of things like Women’s Prize for Fiction. We don’t have a level playing field and authors don’t get published by sole merit of their writing. Until we have a level playing field we do need Women’s Prizes, Black Literature Prizes, Queer Literature Prizes etc.

Maybe he should have grabbed her by the pussy instead?

By now you have probably heard of The Incident. Depending on whether you’re a decent human being or a Republican, the actual incident is that the White House tried to forcefully remove the mic of a journalist because they didn’t like what he said and then banned him from the White House, or the real incident is Jim Acosta “laying his hands” on a young intern (who is, by pure coincidence female, white, young and pretty).

Sarah Sanders has tweeted about it several times, stressing the “disrespect” towards the “young woman” and “young women” working in the administration, mimicking feminist language and concerns for the treatment of (young) (professional) women at the hands of older men.

She also shared a clip showing him making a “chopping motion” towards her arm. Only that the video came straight from Infowars (and we all know how much those people care about women) and has a few curious differences to the original:

The intern’s reach for the mic is slowed down, and the “chop” motion is accelerated. Here’s an annotated side by side comparison:

Further analysis: video is absolutely doctored. You can see the edit when the clips are side by side and slowed down to quarter speed. See for yourself:

 The dishonesty of the Trump Administration knows no limits, as shown again, but let me make one thing clear: Even if Acosta had made a “chopping motion” he wouldn’t be the one who’s wrong here. He was talking, she tried to physically remove the mic, very eager to please her betters. She was the one making aggressive moves towards him. And also: fuck you, white women who sell out on basically everybody to lick spittle and get the rewards of being the chill girls of the Trump Administration. You work hard to remove women’s* right to their own bodies. You work double time to disenfranchise black women. You work extra time to rip babies out of their mothers’ arms and lock them in cages. And you all work for a man who is proud of sexually assaulting women. You don’t get to talk about respectful treatment of women.
*and others capable of gestation.

Whom Will They Blame Next, Unicorns?

I have never watched Fox News when I was in USA, and of course I have no incentive to watch it now. However the stories that I read about it on the interwebs are truly bizarre.

This one trumps them all: Fox News host: ‘Anti-Semitism from the left’ is the real cause of hateful attacks on Jews

Where exactly does this “virulent anti-Semitism from the left” happen? Where do roam these elusive creatures, these leftist antisemites? Where exactly is the land of “fringe of the progressive side.”?

How come that someone spews such a weapon’s grade bullshit on air and is not immediately challenged for providing evidence for it? Any person who says such inane claptrap should be discredited and mercilessly mocked.

Nazis: All About Taking Guns Away.

Image credit: STILLFX.

Frances Swaggart, wife of Jimmy Swaggart, has been mouthing off about the recent marches for gun control and reform, and she doesn’t like it, no sir. Ms. Swaggart did pop up with some interesting reasoning, which she claims is historical fact:

“Hitler’s regime took away guns from the people in Germany and then he herded all of those who did not like it into box cars and shipped them to concentration camps where they were enslaved, beaten, raped and murdered,” she said. “The victims didn’t fire a shot in self defense because their guns had been taken away. That’s a fact.”

“And that’s why evil people want to take the guns away from law-abiding citizens here in the United States of America,” the host opined. “Everybody says, ‘Let’s get rid of the guns.’ It’s the worst decisions that could be ever made. Get rid of the guns. No! No! No! Put God back into the schools.”

Um…how in the hell do you even address this level of wrong? I, uh, can’t even figure out where to start. Perhaps with this: if everyone was armed, maybe the time to go on a nazi shooting spree would have been before the herding into box cars? No, I just can’t do this, it all seems terribly frivolous to even address this monstrous falsity in the face of such evil. I certainly know where the evil lies in this country, and that’s with christian conservatives, who keep falling further off the cliff of lunacy. Dangerous lunacy. Unfortunately, there’s more of this, but even reading it makes me feel sick. You can read the rest at RawStory.

Vaccinations Are…Population Control!!1!1

The Inner Rodney Howard-Browne, aka Belphegor.

Rodney Howard-Browne, that Master of Conspiratorial Idiocy, has actually dialed down the rhetoric a bit for this latest round of “look what shit I can make people swallow!”

“The dogs want war,” Howard-Browne said. “Our American men and women are being used as cannon fodder for the globalist agenda. We’re not in Afghanistan because we’re killing terrorists. The ISIS bases are in 49 states in America that the CIA brings them and trains them here and then ships them out to the areas of the world where they want there to be conflict. They are all trained here. Osama bin Laden worked for the CIA, so does Anderson Cooper. Work that one out.”

Pretty sure most dogs don’t want war at all. Attention, playtime, food, bones to chew, a nice place to sleep, that’s dogs all over. If you want to talk people, well, it’s people like the Tiny Tyrant who are slavering for yet more war. Donny and his puppet Pence can’t talk about those wonderful nukes enough. They are the morons who think you can settle all things with more war, and hey, why have a military if you aren’t going to use it?

Of course Afghanistan is fucking sham, the whole damn thing is, most people are well aware of that one, Rodney. 49 states? Oh, guess that awful island of evil isn’t included anymore, what with the issuing of birth certificates and stuff. Bin Laden is dead, and when he was alive, it could not be said that he had any regard for uStates. Pretty sure he wouldn’t want to be stuck in a secret CIA den somewhere. Damn, that Anderson Cooper must be one busy person! I can’t imagine how he fits all that into his schedule. Really, since you’re pushing the idea that the CIA does everyone’s thinking for them (there’s an insult and a half), I’d think everyone ought to be giving you a healthy side-eye, Rodney. “Hey, what better way to get people to not believe we’re behind everything – hey, Rodney, get on that right away!” Ooooh, conspiracy. It’s really easy, cooking this shit up, but it can’t be healthy, being so obsessed with it.

Howard-Browne claimed that vaccines are really just an eugenicist effort to impose population control on the world by sterilizing people and giving them diseases, vowing that he’ll “go Old Testament” if anyone ever tries to forcibly vaccinate him.

If vaccines sterilised people, we wouldn’t have the current massive population. If vaccines sterilised people, I would not have had such a difficult time when I started seeking sterilisation.

“There was talk about five years ago, they were going to stop people by the side of the road and give them forced vaccinations,” he said. “Let them try. I have a couple of injections for them and it’s going to be the size of a .45, I can promise you right now. Somebody said, ‘But you’re a Christian.’ Yeah, I am, but I’ll go Old Testament for a half an hour, it’s not a problem.”

:Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha: :hahahahahee: :Thud: No, there was never talk of vaccination stops, let alone forced ones. Going by your age, Rodney, you were duly vaccinated as a child, like I was. Yep, you’re 56, I’m 59, so that was all taken care of long days ago. You should be grateful, polio is nasty. Yes, yes, you’re a christian alright, declaring your intent to murder over a vapourous fantasy.

RWW has the story, and two videos.

Sunday Facepalm.

Archloon Larry Klayman has decided to start a petition, to appoint himself as special counsel, so he can imprison those evil Clintons and Pres. Obama, too. Naturally, this will fix all the ills. Here’s a very small excerpt from the nonsense petition*:

ONLY A SPECIAL COUNSEL CAN INVESTIGATE AND BRING STRONG CRIMINAL CHARGES OVER THESE SCANDALS AND I AM THE PERSON TO DO THIS. IN ALL MODESTLY, I AM THE ONLY LAWYER WHO HAS THE GUTS TO FINALLY BRING THE CLINTONS AND OBAMA AND HIS FELLOW CRIMINALS TO JUSTICE, INDICT THEM AND HAVE THEM THROWN IN PRISON FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES, WHICH IS WHERE THEY BELONG.

As even the slightly left and prestigious National Journal observed many years ago, “The main reason Larry Klayman is exasperating to many people across the ideological spectrum is that he ignores the rules of partisan combat that define Washington. Many political operatives have come to realize that Klayman is impossible to sway, because he seeks no Establishment credentials, and has none to protect.” The National Journal, Louis Jacabson, (June 29, 2002), Number 26.

I, LARRY KLAYMAN, AM THE RIGHT MAN TO FINALLY BRING THE CLINTONS AND OBAMAS AND THEIR CRIMINAL COLLABORATORS TO JUSTICE AND FOR THIS REASON, PLEASE SIGN THE ENCLOSED PETITION TO URGE PRESIDENT TRUMP AND HIS JUSTICE DEPARTMENT TO APPOINT ME TO THIS POST.

Years ago, my friend Alan Keyes, when he was running for president, said I would be his Attorney General if he was elected. Now, it’s time for me to be a real Attorney General and have President Trump direct the Justice Department to appoint me as special counsel, who would have all the powers of the Attorney General in these criminal matters.

TIME IS SHORT AND OUR SYSTEM OF JUSTICE AND OUR FREEDOMS HANG IN THE BALANCE.

God bless you and your loved ones as we seek to preserve the heritage of our Founding Fathers and the Republic for which they stood and died for.

[*The original has the all caps in bold, I removed this, for everyone’s sake as well as my own.] Now, anyone remotely familiar with Klayman won’t be at all surprised by this latest bit of grandstanding. If there was some sort of award for worst lawyer ever, Klayman would sweep it every time. Apparently, I was in the mood for a bit of self torture, because I wandered over and had a look at the whole mess. As I was skimming some of the comments by signers, I came across this one:

The American people want the swamp cleaned up! This would be a great start!!!

Right there is a beautiful illustration of Trumpholes in a nutshell. I’m pretty sure there was a loudmouthed idiot who kept making declarations about draining a swamp, who was that, oh yes, Trump. That would be one of the reasons idiots like the above person voted for the Tiny Tyrant. It’s quite obvious that’s not going to happen, the swamp is just gonna grow and grow and grow, and devour everyone. Except the filthy rich, who will get richer. Instead of realizing they went for the pig in a poke, they grasp at lunacy like Klayman’s pointless petition.

Winter arrived early here, and it’s cold and bleak. It’s not a good time to be reminded of the profound depth of stupidity Trumpholes embrace with enthusiasm. It’s a pity brain transplants aren’t a thing. Even zombie brains would be better.

There’s video and links at RWW, if you wish.

What Consequence?

UN Ambassador Nikki Haley on Face the Nation.

“I think that is what it is,” Ambassador Haley said. “President Trump still knows that they meddled, President Putin knows that they meddled, but he is never going to admit to it and that’s all that happened.”

Dickerson tried to pin down the Trump appointee on what consequences Russia will face.

“Not just Russia, any country needs to know that there are consequences when they get involved in our elections,” Haley claimed, without citing interference by any other country or listing consequences.

Right. So everyone knows Trump is a liar. Everyone knows Putin is a liar. “There are consequences!” Really? What consequences? We have an illegal idiot with delusions of grandeur sitting in the white house, who apparently, cannot be ousted, even though there are near countless legal reasons to do so. What has happened to Russia, outside of Trump wanting to hand Putin whatever the fuck he wants? Some consequence.

Full story and video here.

When Words Come Back To Bite Your Ass.

In this photo taken April 21, 2010, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, speaks about financial reform at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. In a letter circulated by Hatch Thursday, March 3, 2011. CREDIT: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak.

With all the secrecy and other slimy moves in the ramming through of the Fuck You Care Plan, an interesting op-ed has surfaced, from Orrin Hatch. It certainly highlights the ongoing hypocrisy of rethuglicans, and why you can never trust anything they might say, and certainly not what they might do.

In short, in less than a week, Senate Republicans are considering ramming through a major piece of legislation that the public has not seen and will not be able to respond to, and they’re using a method specifically designed to circumvent any mechanism the Constitution allows the Senate’s minority party to stop it.

But don’t take it from me: Take it from Republican Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who agitated fiercely against the Senate Democrats’ rumored plan to pass Obamacare through reconciliation in 2010.

“This use of reconciliation to jam through this legislation, against the will of the American people, would be unprecedented in scope,” Hatch wrote in a 2010 Washington Post op-ed titled “Reconciliation on health care would be an assault to the democratic process.” “And the havoc wrought would threaten our system of checks and balances, corrode the legislative process, degrade our system of government and damage the prospects of bipartisanship.”

In the op-ed, Hatch details exactly how reconciliation allows a majority party to abuse parliamentary power, and why it’s inappropriate for health care. “It sharply limits debate and amendments to a mere 20 hours and would allow passage with only 51 votes (as opposed to the 60 needed to overcome a procedural hurdle),” he wrote. “But the Constitution intends the opposite process, especially for a bill that would affect one-sixth of the American economy.”

Now, of course, Hatch is all for the terrible process, and defends the secrecy on the basis it won’t give democrats a chance to criticise, because as we all now know, criticism is just the worst thing ever.

According to Hatch, holding public hearings on Senate Republicans’ Obamacare replacement plan would be useless, because those hearings would only give Democrats opportunity for criticism.

“We have zero cooperation from the Democrats,” he told reporters. “So getting it in public gives them a chance to get up and scream.”

When it was Obamacare on the table, Hatch was a staunch proponent of bipartisanship, arguing in an open letter to Obama that “our nation expects us to solve this challenge in an open, honest and bipartisan manner.” He added that “the American people deserve an open and vigorous dialogue on this critical legislation and the use of this process would be a clear signal that Washington continues to ignore their voices.”

Think Progress has the full embarrassing story. Well, it would be embarrassing to anyone except a rethuglican.

Not Dead Does Not Equal Healthy.

Jim Cooke.

Mike Huckabee is once again wearing his folksy, backwoods preacher coat in an attempt to defend the Tiny Tyrant. It’s one helluva bad attempt, I’ll say that much. “The Tiny Tyrant has kept America Alive!”

“Donald Trump is kind of like a doctor who sometimes has a rather gruff bedside manner,” Huckabee said. “Nobody’s going to argue that point.”

Oh, I could argue that point. I imagine lots of people could, and would argue that point. If you want a more accurate comparison, how about: Trump is kind of like that old dodderer of a small town doctor, stuck in the past, with no notion of how to treat people in a modern and effective manner? Personally, I think even that descriptor is too kind. The reality is more akin to ‘con man fakes being doctor, kills half the town before caught’.

“He can be crude and he can come across sometimes less than people think, but, by golly, the patient is alive and I’d rather have this president, who gets things done, than one who comes in, he’s nice and he’s polite and he smiles, but my family member dies in the hospital bed,” Huckabee added. “America needs to say two words to Donald Trump: Thank you.”

Gets things done? What, exactly, has the Tiny Tyrant done? Rolled back every regulation he could, ensuring mass pollution will once again take over. Making sure all working people are fucked into the ground. Destroyed the slight healthcare people had. Arresting and deporting citizens for no good reason. Being a stone cold killer when it comes to those seeking refuge. Screamed exhortations of bigotry, hate, guns, and violence, to the point that “America” is now a splintery mess, with mass shootings taking place every. single. day. People being attacked and murdered for no reason other than irrational bigotry every. single. day. Made sure to engorge his already bulging pockets. Spreading his filthy disease of corrupt criminality.

Thank you? I don’t fucking think so. All the Tiny Tyrant gets from me is: FUCK YOU, AND GET THE FUCK OUT, YOU FUCKING IDIOT.

Via Raw Story.

Sunday Facepalm.

“Obama, he’s a piece of shit. I told him to suck on my machine gun. Hey Hillary [Clinton], you might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch.”

“I have obviously failed to galvanize and prod, if not shame enough Americans to be ever vigilant not to let a Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel like the ACORN community organizer gangster Barack Hussein Obama to weasel his way into the top office of authority in the United States of America,” Nugent said.

Ted Nugent, doucheweasel extraordinaire, has recently found a way to foist himself into the public eye again, by now claiming he’s oh so over all the hateful rhetoric, like that quoted above. Nothing about actually shaking up the ol’ brain cells and experiencing even fractional enlightenment, no. This is just a tone thing – “we must be civil!” Yeah. Anyone experienced in discussions, on or off line, knows that you can use all the ‘nice’ words, and be a hundred times more poisonous than someone who peppers their discussions with ‘fuck’ or ‘Jesus Christ!’. Claiming that Black people are intellectually inferior, you have [shoddy] evidence, and really, all you want is for someone to listen to you, and no, of course you aren’t a bigot, that’s no different from Nugent’s “subhuman mongrel”.  Just a difference in icing on a shit cake.

A day or two ago, Nugent noisily claimed to have seen the light, after republicans were shot at (boy, those gun fondlers, they love their guns, but are ever so shocked when they are used against people they happen to like), and that he would stop with hateful rhetoric, because … well, because he doesn’t want anymore republicans shot. When I first saw the headline, a skeptical eyebrow rose, nothing more. Of course, the washed up asshole simply can’t keep his mouth shut, now that he’s found a way to get peoples’ attention once again, no matter how briefly. Ted decided to show up on Fox and Friends, his pal Trump’s favourite show.

“Let me make it perfectly clear, I have never projected hate,” Nugent insisted. “When I said that about sucking on my machine gun, that was a direct response to the liberal Democrats — Obama and Clinton, et al — [trying] to ban certain types of firearms, violating their oath to the Constitution and the Second Amendment.”

“That was a metaphor and nobody is too stupid not to know that,” he continued. “The left is so dishonest that they misrepresented that, and make it perfectly clear with my Fox & Friends, I have never threatened anybody. I have never hinted at violence.”

Right. Never, ever even so much as hinted at violence. Calls to decapitate people in November (If Obama was re-elected), mentions of nooses, lynchings, guns, and more. Not at all hinting at violence. Well, on some planet anyway, not this one. It’s much too late to play saint, Ted.

“I am reaching out across the aisle, and I am saying we must unite to bring no violence, no harm to any of our fellow Americans,” he opined. “I have always been civil. Again, during the outrage of a rock and roll performance, machine gun references have been made but nobody could possibly think I want anybody’s lips near my machine gun.”

Nugent complained that there had been no signs of civility from “the left.”

Interesting notion of civility Ted has, it certainly wouldn’t meet my definition. Anyroad, surface civility is to no point when your head is still full bigoted, poisonous hate. As for his whole “hey, outrage!” defense, I’m rather reminded of the Twinkie defense. “Hey, I was all lost in the music man, I mistook the machine gun for my guitar!” Christ, cheap and contemptible, as always.

“They’re still going to burn down buildings if they disagree with your speech, and turn over cars and attack people if they don’t agree with you,” he remarked.

“I think that’s all something we needed to hear right now,” Fox News host Abby Huntsman concluded.

It is? Pretty sure I didn’t need to hear that, because it’s yet another clod of stupid, lobbed aimlessly into a crowd. I don’t know about anyone else, but I have not been getting so gosh darn worked up I’m out and about committing arson, tipping cars, or attacking people.

If you want it, there’s video at Raw Story.