The always funny and insightful Charles P. Pierce dissects Fla. Senator Marco Rubio’s performance at the CNN Town Hall on gun violence at Esquire Magazine:
“To be honest, I do give Marco Rubio a little credit for showing up to Wednesday night’s CNN town hall in Florida. Not as much credit as I give his senatorial counterpart, Bill Nelson, who complimented Rubio for his presence and then noted that Governor Rick Scott had not put in an appearance. Governor Bat Boy, of course, is expected to run against Nelson this fall, so that was a nice double-axel and Nelson stuck the landing.
Jake Tapper also gets points for keeping a difficult event largely on the rails. Granted, Rubio found the inevitable rake to step on when one of the survivors treed him on why he still takes contributions from the NRA, but he did cop to an evolving position on background checks and on whether we ought to raise the age limit on someone’s ability to buy an AR-15. As we often say around the shebeen, when a goat sings opera, you don’t worry much about whether he’s off-key.”…
(A “shebeen”, google told me, is an Irish ale house of some disreputable renown. Reading Pierce usually increases my vocabulary.)
“... Before we move on to Dana Loesch’s continuing contribution to national mayhem, we feel that we should educate folks a bit on the AR-15, the weapon of choice for all your high-end mass murderers. (Stephen Paddock had 14 of these bad boys in his suite when he opened fire on that country music crowd in Las Vegas.) It is often said that the “AR” in AR-15 stands for “assault rifle.” Au contraire, you elitist European-style socialist. The “AR” stands for “Armalite Rifle,” Armalite being the company that manufactures the weapon of choice for all your high-end mass murderers. As it happens, the AR-15 also was the weapon of choice for the Provisional IRA through most of the modern Troubles in Northern Ireland. It was so popular that it became a synonym for all violent resistance to British rule. (Google “Armalite and ballot box.”) This being Ireland and all, there even was a song about it.
Sing it with me now!
“”And it’s up in Crossmaglen that's were I long to be/
Lying in the dark with a Provo company /
A comrade on my left and another one on my right /
And a clip of ammunition for me little Armalite!'””
Now that’s market penetration.”
The rest of the article takes on Dana Loesch and should not be missed.
And, as Esquire is sans paywall, also enjoy Pierce’s take on drumpf at CPAC…
“So, this was the middle of my day on Friday. I got in my car just as the president* was beginning to address the adoring throng at CPAC. On Fridays, I tape my segment on Only A Game, the NPR sports show on which I crack wise with the great Bill Littlefield every week, so I listened to the president* all the way down to the station. I parked the car, walked three blocks, taped my segment, and walked back to the car, and…
Holy mother of Christ, he’s still talking!
It is far too little remarked upon that, when the president* takes the podium, the members of his audience are in for a longer exercise in self-love and prevarication than they might have expected when they walked in. This is generally because the president* departs from his prepared text for the purpose of reminding you (again) what a towering success he is.”
(It will not disappoint.)
;)