Outlaws:
You yourself said sarcastically about the GOA, "Join them in fighting against this bill that passed." You implied that there is nothing left to fight and the bill is now set in stone. Well it isn't. Passed the house and passed in the senate is not the same as being passed. But then again since you like to compromise so much, you probably also quit as soon as you get behind.
JohnBT knew that your nasty crack was directed at me and not at him. So did I. So does everyone else, I think, but in case anyone mistook your target I'll help: Outlaws was being nasty to me, not to anyone else. Okay now?
Please, I beg you, improve your vocabulary. At the very least please learn a word other than "sarcastic" to describe what
I'm doing. You have no idea how offensively dullwitted that word seems after it's repeated
ad nauseum. As you say, it's getting a bit old.
Try to distinguish at least among humorous, satirical, sardonic, ironic, and mocking.
No, in fact it's narrowminded of you to suggest that I was being "sarcastic" when I said "Join them in fighting against this bill that passed." And you miss the humor. Lighten up and show the world what a wonderful person you are beneath that crustiness.
Trying to explain a joke is like trying to explain a cold pancake, but this one is kind of cute. Bear with me and maybe you can get the humor. It actually gets funnier because of subsequent events.
On December 18, GOA brags about its
in with Sen. Tom Coburn, says that the Senate has adjourned, and vows its determination to continue fighting this bill once the Senate reconvenes in 2008.
On December 19, GOA's good buddy Sen. Tom Coburn turns out to have withdrawn his hold on the bill because his objections were met, at least in part through negotiations that involved the organization the GOA loves to hate: the NRA. In swift succession the bill passes the Senate and is carried to the House where it passes too, but the GOA doesn't know about any of this.
In Washington, DC, the gossip mill is so fast that anyone important who sneezes at the Virginia end of the Alrington Memorial Bridge can get thousands of
gezundheits before reaching the District end.
GOA tells you--and you, you delightful soul, believe along with thousands of other innocents--that it is thoroughly wired into Washington political circles. But GOA doesn't know what's going on about this bill it calls
The Veterans Disarmament Bill on the day it's happening. None of its good buddies, not even its real good good buddy Sen. Tom Coburn, gave it even a heads up to allow it to do anything
before the deals were done ... or even to save it from the embarrassment of looking like the South end of a horse moving North
while the deals were being done.
You and everyone else here might have heard at the same time GOA did, after the deals were done and the bill passed
twice.
That's
funny! It doesn't take too many smarts to figure out why it's funny and what it means about the GOA and all the stuff it has been feeding you that you believe and continue to believe despite all the evidence that you've bought a bill of goods.
A great many people here (including me) have been trying to tell you that for a long time, but you call us names and insult us. No problem: you're entitled to your fantasy life if it helps you get through the day. I don't care about that either way. What I care about when I'm in this forum is my role as a firearms owner. I have no interest in adolescent rumbles except as they affect that role. If GOA did
anything to help me I'd be beating the drum for it instead of laughing at it.
Now at last you should see why I and others have been laughing at it, but you don't. You continue to defend it despite the evidence of your own eyes. That's sad, of course, but it's also funny too.
I haven't finished my explanation of why all this is funny and why I laugh at the GOA even while I wish it would dry up and blow away instead of making the public think all gun owners are whackos who aren't stable enough to own guns.
Nevertheless one of the things that makes me laugh at GOA is that in 2002 it actually made Sarah Brady's son Scott Brady--the son of the founder of The Brady Campaign, stimulus for the notorious Brady Law, the enemy of all gun owners, and one of GOA's avowed enemies-- ... the GOA made her son ... Scott Brady, the son of
that Sarah Brady ... the GOA made him an Honorary Member of GOA! What an absolute whacko thing to do. It is so
funny that my jaw literally dropped when I first read the GOA announcement. And GOA still doesn't realize it's whacko or funny. It's relevant to what I'm saying.
Okay, now back to the mainstream.
I haven't explained all the humor in just the events of those two days. You need to do some work on your own. But it gets funnier still.
We've already touched on the events of Tuesday, December 18, and Wednesday, December 19. On Thursday, December 20, Gun Owners of America explained why it had fallen on its face so embarrassingly: it was
stabbed in the back by its good buddies--like good buddy Sen. Tom Coburn--who were
outsmarted:
Gun Owners of America and its supporters took a knife in the back yesterday, as Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) out-smarted his congressional opposition into agreeing on a so-called "compromise" on HR 2640 -- a bill which now goes to the President's desk.
Surely you realize that GOA has just publicly attacked its "friends" in the Congress and said they were dumb too. This is GOA's way to build bridges: burning them by attempting to undercut and embarrass them. Don't you see the humor? It's like watching a Three Stooges movie. Everytime you think they can't be any stupider they surprise you. Sorry: not you. Me and lots of others who observe this slapstick with disbelief.
Then ... and then ... in that same announcement calling its friends dumb backstabbers GOA asks its members for $10 in addition to their membership fee so it can send mail to gun owners to solicit more members: "If you add $10 to your membership renewal this year, we can reach new gun owners in the mail and tell them about GOA." (GOA is soliciting contributions just like that awful NRA solicits contributions and it's bad to solicit contributions.)
Nope, I wasn't being sarcastic. I was reporting. I wish I had the imagination to create such an absurd organization but I don't. In fact GOA can continue to fight the bill by demanding that the President veto it. I thought GOA would do so, and for all I know it is doing so. I think that GOA insulted him last year or the year before, but it's hard for me to keep track of all those details.
Okay, now the absolute funniest part of all this. GOA, its satellites such as NRAwol, RMGO, JPFO, and other "no compromise" groups mustered all their might to fight this bill. They blustered, they rabble roused, they threatened, they fought, they pressured, they exerted all their power and you know what? They had
none. Zip. Zero. Nada. Nothing.
The proof of GOA powerlessness is that it got blown away in less than a day. It didn't stop the bill from passing in either house. Fast. Like the wind. All those "no compromise" groups that have been talking tough and getting you to believe that they had muscle and power on the national level don't have any at all. None. And they never will.
That's funny. It's also funny that you don't know the difference between a bill that has passed and when it's signed into law by the President, but that's sad too. Passed the house and passed in the senate
is the same as being passed.
Outlaws, something serious now. Not only do I compromise but I welcome every opportunity to compromise. I compromise every single day and I profit by it. You don't understand compromise. You think it's giving in. It isn't. It's negotiating with other people so you get what's important to you in return for what isn't important to you. When it's done well everybody is happy with the deal: nobody feels resentful. And when it's done very well, those people return for more negotiations because they learn to trust that you won't zap them, take them for a ride, or however you want to phrase it. I don't like "total victory" in my daily life: when the other side doesn't get something of what it wants, it won't come back for more compromises, but it might come back to zap
you when it gets the chance. Then the other side gets "total victory." Not a good way to live. And, besides, it's most unprofitable. What's most profitable is a succession of negotiations that result in even more than you would have demanded at the beginning if you were a demanding kind of guy. Read what others here are trying to explain when they say that
compromise is not a dirty word. It's what successful adults do in order to be successful, and it's how mature people behave towards one other. We're not a bunch of adolescents in a high school rumble between warring gangs.
By the way, don't for a minute interpret willingness to negotiate and compromise as weakness or fearfulness. 'Taint the same at all. Strong men bend. They don't break. As far as I can tell, the NRA does it just about as well as I've seen it done. Now the idea is for this bill to be seen as a good compromise for both sides. That's the way to get to the next negotiations. One thing we
all want--both sides--is for bad people not to kill good people. Let's keep that in mind.
I just reread Deavis' big message above. Good stuff, better than I've done. But mine is funnier.
One of them is lying-lying.