Imma post something today: Zombie-killing music.

Don't look so shocked; I still know the password to this place.

Anyway, Tam wants to know what song would come up on my iPod when I loose lead into zombie heads. In case anyone else is wondering, this is what an atheist listens to when he fantasizes about splattering zed-brains across chain-link:



Well, one atheist anyway . . . what can I say? Somebody's gonna cut you down, you filthy undead shamblers, and it might just be me. As my dad used to say, one of us is going to get hurt, and it might not be me.

Tam actually got it from Random Nuclear Strikes, who chose Ministry's Assimilate. And I really only decided to contribute mine after I listened to Breda's quirky, Icelandic death-pop selection.

Bad Idea, Ebert

I don't want to give the impression that I'm some kind of violent redneck, unless you want to talk about your fantasy of putting me into a "green re-education camp."

We are not going to be re-enacting the Cultural Revolution, here, goober. Nobody is going to try to load me on to a train or put my kids in a glorious farming collective camp. Even if the whole world turned upside down and anybody did try it, I'd kill them really, really, really dead.

I don't do a lot of internet chest-thumping, but something in this guy's plaintive wail touched me deep inside where my trigger-puller lives.

A "major victory" for gun control in Illinois? Let's think that one through.

SecondCityCop has a link to the Chicago Sun-Times' giddy piece on yesterday's defeat of concealed carry in Illinois, "Conceal-Carry bill fails in House," in which the Sun-Times' Springfield Bureau Chief, Dave McKinney, calls the vote a "major win" for gun control advocates.

SCC made several great points about the article, but those are their points and I'll let you read them over there. What interested me about the article was the assertion of "a big win." I don't see it.

Let's think about where gun control advocates in Illinois used to be and where they are today. I remember a very different situation until recently. Years ago, Mayor Daley's staff would write an annual package of 10-12 severe gun control bills--one-gun-a-month, state permits for gun shops to be granted or withheld on a whim, bans on everything from "assault weapons" to .50 caliber rifles to shotguns, bans on manufacturing "assault weapons" that would have prohibited Armalite and Les Baer from even manufacturing AR-15 rifles for the military or police . . . and would have made it a felony for a police officer or a serviceman to possess his issued M4 or M16 rifle in Illinois, even on duty (that law did allow for an "affirmative defense," at least.) Gun rights advocates spent every spring and fall scrambling to defend against all these bills and often 20-30 "minor" bills. Victories for gun rights consisted of language cleverly slipped into ostensibly anti-gun bills.

Then came a different spirit. The NRA and the ISRA and Guns Save Life and the Second Amendment Sisters and CORE and the new kid, Illinoiscarry.com, began to work together and coordinate their efforts more and more. There were turf battles and misunderstandings, but people were beginning to see results, too. The annual "lobby day" was rechristened "IGOLD" and exploded, growing into an annual event in which thousands of Illinois gun owners flood into the capitol building in Springfield and lobby for their rights en masse. Then came Heller v. D.C., and too quickly to be believed, McDonald v. Chicago. It's hard for a lot of people, I think, to really call up memories of what it was like in those not-so-long-ago days, but I remember it. It was depressing. We celebrated when we had years where we didn't lose any rights; keeping the status quo was a major win for us.

Now, let's look at 2011. What has changed in the past few years? Well, we're no longer playing defense. Our side is the one demanding change now; a year in which we have to settle for the status quo is "a big win" for gun control. If we don't engineer an overwhelming victory against long odds, creating a supermajority in both the House and the Senate and then overriding a veto, it's perceived as a loss. The expectations have changed massively; people now expect David to dominate Goliath and make him like it. And what does it look like from their point of view? Luckily, I've made a list:

• First, the roles are reversed: the anti-gun side has been reduced to playing defense, and they're giddy about stopping right-to-carry legislation they used to laugh off without thinking much of it.
• Second, have you noticed what you're not hearing out of Illinois this year? No assault weapons bans, no magazine bans? They were running all those bills this year, too . . . . but they came too close to losing on RTC and decided to let them all go by the wayside so that they could spend all their time stopping RTC.
• Third . . . what did it take to make that "big win" happen? It doesn't seem like Governor Quinn's threat of a veto actually did very much, despite the hype. Legislators are talking instead about personal phone calls from Mayor Daley, who frankly still has the power to "lobby" legislators by threatening the state jobs, city jobs, county jobs, patronage and other perks they hold so dear. Of course, Daley has 10 days left as Mayor of Chicago, so unless Rahm is just as powerful from the start as Daley is after 22 years as Mayor, that's the last time they can play that particular trump.
• Fourth and finally, when the dust settles, they may very well have stopped the bill from becoming law. But we won everything but the big prize: we changed the status quo, showed that RTC is a real issue in Illinois and that it's closer to passage than anyone believed, and we're going to end up with a list of every legislator who didn't vote for the bill, along with video footage of quite a few standing up on the floor of the House telling lies in the floor debate. They're like desperate criminals who've managed to retreat into the bank vault they were trying to cut open. We can't get them immediately, but they have nowhere to go, no idea what to do, and they left their tools out here for us to use. It's a matter of time.

On the one hand, excuses don't pay the bills, and it's true that we failed to win the war yesterday. On the other hand, we've won a lot of battles this year that not everyone recognizes, and it cost the other side dearly to get that "big win" in this one battle. Governor Quinn and Speaker Madigan have thrown away whatever good will they had remaining from downstate Democrat legislators after dragging them along on civil unions, the end of the death penalty in Illinois, and a massive income tax increase (full disclosure: I'm personally all for gay marriage and taking the power of life and death out of the hands of Illinois courts, but those issues are going to be poison pills forced down the throats of those Democrat legislators from downstate districts.) Several members of the Black Caucus, especially Rep. Monique Davis, have thrown away a chance to show that they're not completely in thrall to the Democratic leadership, and some very good organizers on Chicago's south side have taken notice. They held on, but they're in big trouble.

Snuffy Pfleger suspended again? I'll believe it when I see it--again.

So the good monsignor Michael "Snuffy" Pfleger has apparently been suspended by Cardinal George . . . again. Second City Cop dared to go there with a post entitled "You're Pfired!" That kind of punning takes . . . . well, it certainly takes something.

Personally, I find that I haven't really changed my outlook since the last time Cardinal George suspended Snuffy; back in 2008 I wondered, "Seriously, Cardinal George, what does it take?"

The list hasn't changed much, because Pfleger hasn't changed much:

"Theoretically, is there an act Pfleger could commit that would shame the Catholic church and the archdiocese of Chicago enough that they'd decide to cut him loose?

• We know injecting the church into elections, thus at least theoretically jeopardizing their tax-exempt status in any just world, isn't enough.
• We know that praising bigots like Louis Farrakhan from the pulpit isn't enough.
• We know that publicly lying repeatedly in his official capacity as a priest isn't enough.
• We know that threatening to "snuff out" John Riggio wasn't enough.

So, just for my own idle curiosity, what would it take? Does he actually have to start assaulting people physicall--or would that be tolerated, too?"

It remains to be seen whether mentioning that you won't take a job in a high school is on that list, too. We'll see whether this suspension is any more "permanent" than the last one.

Second City Cop hits the "Only Ones" attitude between the eyes

Hmm . . . . Second City Cop hit a nerve with the President of the Fraternal Order of Police, and it looks like they're going to bicker in public for a bit. That would normally be something I might read about with interest, but wouldn't make the front page here . . . except that the issue they've decided to debate about is right-to-carry. Specifically, SCC noted a few days ago that the Fop is nearly the lone holdout among major law enforcement organizations. The political appointees in charge of the Chicago Police Department are opposed to the Family and Personal Protection Act, of course, and the political appointee in charge of the Illinois State Police is unlikely to go beyond keeping the ISP quiet and staying neutral on the issue, but there are four other major law enforcement organizations in this state, and they're all in favor. Why, SCC wondered, doesn't the FOP poll its members and, if they're in favor, come out in favor of right-to-carry?

FOP President Mike Shields responded that the Chicago FOP is neutral (which I hadn't realized. . . I've always considered them to be opposed to RTC, but maybe that's my mistake?) and that he saw no reason to lose focus on pensions and money and the like. The FOP, after all, is a labor union before it's anything else.

SCC isn't buying that, but I'll let them explain why:

What better way to start making a name for yourself than uniting behind something that's already legal in 48 other states and tracks with the Constitution of the FOP in being good Americans. Oh wait, you've already decided the police are better than the citizens we serve. We quote:

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"Chicago Police Officers already have that right"
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That certainly seems to run contrary to the FOP Constitution. We aren't better than the citizens we serve. We are entrusted with certain duties and privileges to ensure domestic tranquility and help preserve the rights of all citizens. Driving a wedge between the public and the police will serve to undermine your stated agenda to protect benefits, wages and pensions by alienating those whose support we need to pass legislation, but we suppose you missed that.

Well said! The rest is worth reading, especially if you find the swirling currents of Chicago PD internal politics as interesting as I do. Read the whole thing.

Illinois Speaker Mike Madigan: (217-782-5350) CALL NOW! LINES ARE OPEN!

If you want to see Illinois become a shall-issue, right-to-carry state this year, it's time to call your Representative in the Illinois House. If you're not sure who that is, you can type your address in here and find out who's your Representative and what his/her phone numbers are. Might as well call the Springfield offices; they should be back in town.

Done with that? Good. Now I'm going to ask you to do something that might seem odd: Call Mike Madigan and tell him you expect a fair vote on HB148 and you hope he'll vote for it.
Now, you might be scratching your head right now at the idea that Mike Madigan, Speaker of the House since 1983, leader of Illinois Democrats, father of Lisa Madigan, halfway-adopted-brother of Dick Daley, should be urged to vote for a right-to-carry bill. But please do it anyway. Remember that we don't actually need Madigan to vote for the bill (though that would help, Mike, if you're reading this) but we do need to show him that there's a true grassroots movement after this bill that will remember if he at least makes sure we get a fair floor vote, up or down.
If you aren't done with that because you're not sure of Mike Madigan's phone number, check the title again.

Got that done, too? Congratulations, you are now a hardcore grassroots activist willing to do more than 90% of gun owners can be bothered to do. Wanna buck for the top percentile? Call Glenn Poshard at Southern Illinois University and tell him to quit trying to kill right-to-carry in Illinois over his turf battle. Poshard is currently leading a group of college administrators lobbying to have the entire bill scuttled unless it makes it a felony to possess a firearm anywhere on campus; if you've ever taken a drive through Carbondale or Champaign, you know we're not just talking about the quad here. I know you'll all be polite and cheerful, but firm. Some of you may decide to mention that if Mr. Poshard doesn't call off the dogs, then even when we win right-to-carry, the fight won't be over for him, because I for one would become a near-full-time "Campus Carry" advocate in that event.

When you're trying to kill the carry bill that Chicago police unions want to see passed, you're so far out of touch that you might be out of sight.

Actually, I DO know what day it is . . .

It's my little sister's birthday . . . and her husband's birthday was a couple of days ago . . . . and their second daughter will be born soon.

They're kind of springy people.

Happy birthday, kiddo!