Mayor Daley Pleads In Vain for Gun Control Questions at Chicago Press Conference

(Sorry, the video absolutely refuses to embed for some reason. It's worth clicking, believe me.)

This was edited down to a short bit of Mayor Daley appealing "Just one question?!? Please?" in the report that went out on air. But this raw excerpt shows so much more: Mayor Daley is holding a joint press conference with Representative Mike Quigley, D-Chicago 5th, the heir to the throne previously warmed by the butts of Rahm Emanuel, Rod Blagojevich and Dan "Rosty" Rostenkowski. The duo were presenting a petition demanding that Congress "Fix Gun Checks" by requiring background checks on every single firearm purchase nationwide . . . in other words, the complete prohibition of private sales. But that's not the really interesting part, nor is it Rep. Quigley's charming talking point, "With a 30-round clip, you're hunting people and that's all there is to it!"

No, the interesting part was Mayor Daley's near-meltdown as he realized that the reporters present didn't care about his anti-gun initiative and had really only shown up to pepper him with questions about their new leader, Lord Mayor Twinkletoes. He began asking for questions "about gun violence," then asking more forcefully, and ended up nearly pleading for someone, anyone, to tee up a gun control softball like the old days. Finally one reporter offered to ask a question about guns, and Da Mare was visibly relieved.

And then the reporter asked what he thought about the momentum in favor of right-to-carry legislation in Illinois this year.

Da Mare lost it at that point and went Full Daley. The furious squeaking of serial rhetorical questions was a sight to behold. It could not be clearer that Da Mare has no idea where the public is on this issue.

In case anyone wonders, I now present my own answers to Da Mare's rhetorical questions:

"Do you think in your community somebody should carry a concealed weapon?"
Yes.

"To your synagogue?"
If we had one, sure.

"To your daughter's school?"
Yes.

"Should they go to a park?"
Everybody should go to a park. Parks are nice.

"All out there, can anybody carry a gun where you live?"
No, but it's coming, and you and yours don't have enough dirty tricks left to stop it.

"Do you think that's the right thing to do?"
Yes, it is.

"Do you think America should be proud?"
Yes, I do.

"Welcome to America, carry a gun?"
Yes, although I don't mind if you want to limit that to law-abiding residents for now.

"I mean, if this should, you should be outraged about this!"
I thank you for your opinion.

"You're a journalist, you're a reporter!"
Well, one dabbles . . . sweet of you to say, though.

"You have a right to write anything!"
That's true. For instance, mustache ice cream is shorty-sicle elephant parade!

"This ought to be a headline, i-i-i-i-i-in your newspaper, asking people to appeal for common-sense gun laws."
On the Opinion page, of course. Right? I mean . . . that's what you meant, right, sir?

"I mean, not Mayor Daley, not Mayor Daley, this is their fight behind me, this is not Mayor Daley's fight, or Representative Quigley's . . . . . ."
That's the thing, Mayor. You are shedding allies for a reason; this is increasingly your fight. The public doesn't see this issue your way anymore, and you don't have the grip you once had on government or, clearly, media to steer public opinion for you. You would have to do a lot better than these tantrums from now on . . . . if you stay in the game.

Insert Emergency Blogmeet Content Title Here

Well, Tamara linked me after the Blogmeet in Indy yesterday, which forced me to look at the date of my last post here, so . . . here's some content. Not much, admittedly, but at least there's a picture! I mean, I didn't make it, but still . . . look how old-timey!

Truth be told, I sat at the other end of the table (late as usual) and spent most of my time trying to keep up with Roberta X's explanation of how she once discovered that flushing the toilets in a broadcasting station does, in fact, make it possible to stop the signal.

Yes, it was as cool as that sounds. Yes, you missed it. Unless you're Longhorn Jeff.

QOTD: Space Mercenary Edition

"You looked like you really wanted to blow it up, though."
"Someday--someday--shooting up a high-speed train will be the right thing to do. I can be patient."

Captain Tagon explains why he didn't blow up a train full of innocent people.

ISRA Annual Meeting at Rend Lake

Hooray! The wi-fi is alive again!

I'm sitting here next to Thirdpower from Days of Our Trailers in the legislative update session at the Illinois State Rifle Association's annual meetings. We're at the "resort" at Rend Lake a little bit south of Mt. Vernon, deep in the real southern Illinois. This is the part of Illinois that looks and sounds like Kentucky, except when you sit in a room full of people from northern and central Illinois.

Last night I rolled in with the whole family in the dark of the night and managed to get everyone to collapse more or less on or near a bed, so that was a win. This morning I got the boys up early and we headed out to the trails. We skipped out on the Personal Protection seminar (I've been to it before) and spent the time walking around the lake instead. We picked flowers for mom, watched deer and rabbits, found tracks and scat of deer, coyotes, turkeys and squirrels, and generally wasted a couple of hours in excellent style.

Now here we are in nearly-beautiful Conference Room A. It's not the most cheerful place, but the mood is light. Why?

• Chicago is on its heels. Their new ordinance is clearly a ploy to undo McDonald, and according to Don Moran of the ISRA, the clauses that criminalize firing ranges and training in the city have created a bottleneck. There may be a hundred thousand Chicagoans who want to own firearms, and there are tens of thousands who do legally own firearms that were registered prior to 1982--but they need training to get the new Chicago Firearms Permit, too, and where can they get it? There aren't enough trainers (because the ordinance defines the qualifications in a way designed to exclude many trainers) and if you could find them, there aren't enough lanes on ranges in the state to get the training done in a reasonable amount of time. That's the bad news. The good news is that judges can figure this stuff out, too, and my impression (Mr. Moran didn't say this, so don't blame him) is that this is just another reason this ordinance is so vulnerable.
• Mayor Daley is on his way out . . . . and who will replace him? Nobody here will hazard much of a guess, and it's not likely to be a gun blogger. But replacing Daley, the man to whom all favors are owed, has to mean Chicago clout flying all directions. No matter what many candidates say publicly, it's hard to believe that they're privately planning to hitch their wagons to the Brady Campaign Against Success and continue Daley's crusade without his power or connections. Even if someone does want to try it, who can really replace Daley? The only name I've heard with the reputation and personality to remind people of either Mayor Daley is Rahm Emanuel, but he's essentially the Jody Weis of City Hall. Weis is the Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, yes, but his police force hates him with a passion. He's a fed from the FBI, they say (J-Fed, to be specific) and he's never "been the police." He doesn't understand their department or policing in general, and Chicago cops figure he's there to take the department apart and clamp down on any cop who gets out of line. They don't trust him a bit, and on Emanuel's first day as Mayor, he'd have the same situation at City Hall, except that the people distrusting him and talking about this outsider from Washington are people with real power in Chicago. His job would be survival from day one. Others have a better chance of winning than Emanuel, but none of them look like The New Daley.
• Statewide, Governor Quinn is in trouble. He hasn't lost yet, but he's a little behind and, more importantly, not showing any signs that he's going to get things moving any time soon. Democrats, even Chicago Democrats, are starting to get in touch with ISRA and NRA leaders and ask how they can get right with Illinois gun owners. Votes for concealed carry are piling up in the legislature; we're likely looking at enough votes to pass a bill right now, but not enough to overcome a veto (Governor Quinn has promised to veto any carry bill, while Republican Bill Brady has promised to sign it--I'm just saying.)

Nine Eleven Two Thousand Ten

Well, it's September 11th again, and nine years after the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the unknown third target, the big news is the fight over a mosque to be built in Manhattan (sometimes called the "Ground Zero Death to America Mosque and Terrorism School" by people who don't have enough real problems to get worked up about in their own lives.) The latest zany turn in the fight over whether people have the right to buy a building and use it for lawful religious purposes is the national furor over whether a deranged mustache in Florida, acting through its human puppet-avatar, has the right to burn a pile of Qurans (or possibly Korans.)

I'm not writing about this because I think there's anyone who might read it today who will say "Really? I hadn't heard about that!" It's all anyone is talking about today. I'm just recording that fact here so that, in the next few years, I can check a hypothesis. I think once the Mad Mustache gives up on book-burning (at least book-burning that makes terrorists angry) and the Westboro Baptist Nutty-Butter Church of Crazy burns an even bigger pile of books while chanting and holding up signs (such as "God Hates Everybody" and "What Does It Take to Get Martyred in This Country, Anyway?) the whole thing will die down. I think the mosque will get built, and the world will turn, and it'll probably turn out to be just another "community center." And I think that once that happens, the whole furor will be more or less forgotten by most Americans. Maybe by me, too, with the damage 24-hour news and internets have done to my precious, irreplaceable attention span. I just want to have a record here so that on future 9/11 anniversaries I can look back and remember that in 2010, we gave up on the idea of commemorating the attack that killed thousands of innocent Americans in one day, made us question everything we had assumed we knew about our own lives, and launched two wars. In 2010, we decided 9/11 was a good day for trivial bullshit, and I can't even pretend to be above it all because my own blatherings are recorded in my own archive in the post prior to this one.

At the very least, no matter how far I got sucked into the triviality and foolishness, even if I bought the hype just a little, let the record reflect in my defense that I managed to remember the real reason today matters in time to be a little ashamed.

Roots?

I've been ignoring the Koran-burning honyocks in Florida for the most part, but this morning the preacher wannabe was on one news show or another and I heard him say "We've got to get America back to our roots!"

Uh . . .

Buh . . . .

But . . . you're a book-burning weirdo. You're a walking fascist joke. Anything you say about America's roots is bound to be laughable and wrong. You, as a human being, are laughable and wrong. You don't get back to your roots by repeating the shameful things people did in your nation's past and trying to erase the good and the right.

11 Regrettable Tattoos: Reddit Users Share Their Worst (PHOTOS)

I love the plaintive wail that the victim here "couldn't see into the future" when he got the tattoo. When did he get it, that soviet communism was only later to be revealed as a bad idea "in the future?" 1918? How old is this guy?



Seriously, if you're walking around with a hammer and sickle tattooed permanently on your body and you think the only reason people give you grief about it is this crazy new Tea Party movement thing, you've missed the point. Again.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost