The “Terror Gap”

Oh, god, liberals. Do not do this. I’m listening to Olbermann talk about legislators want to close the “terror gap” by making it hard for people on watch lists get guns.

And it’s making me agree with Lindsay Graham. How the fuck? He doesn’t believe in Miranda rights. He’s a nutjob.

But people on the mess that is the terror watch list should be able to buy guns.

I’m sorry, but those lists are a joke. They often contain actual terrorists, but there are too many stories of regular people finding themselves on those lists or people who just have the same or similar names of terrorists for us to be using those same lists to deny them their Constitutional rights.

And I am embarrassed by the smug on our side and the idiocy on the other.

Shape up, people.

John Rich Makes It Worse, Hilariously Worse

Um, yes. When you can’t resist ending your graceful explanation of a misunderstanding between friends with an insinuation that she’s a lying bitch, it kind of undermines the graceful explanation.

Not that I buy the graceful explanation, but at least it was one.

If Only All House Joint Resolutions Were This Exciting!

HJR1217 reads more like an adventure novel than a piece of legislation, and it’s especially exciting because it features a regular Tiny Cat Pants commenter, Mike Turner, who, in real life, is a hero. Shoot, read this shit:

WHEREAS, working well past his regular twenty-four hour shift this last weekend as unprecedented flooding swept through Davidson County, Captain Turner and his crew answered countless calls, as he personally was seen on television standing in dangerous flood waters using a make-shift raft to pluck an individual from the treetops on the banks of the flooding Cumberland River; and

WHEREAS, by putting his concern for this gentleman’s safety before his own well-being, Captain Turner saved a life with the heroic actions he demonstrated; and

WHEREAS, Captain Turner and the crafty firefighters were able to save the man by using a camping air mattress as a flotation device because they had run out of flotation devices as the result of the numerous evacuation and rescue calls they answered in the Nashville area

I repeat–he plucked a dude from the top of a tree and floated him out on an air mattress.

And I know Mike Turner is going to do some dumbass shit in the future that will require me to publicly harangue him, as is my way, but it will be difficult for me, knowing the magnitude of his awesomeness.

I mean, I’ll get over it, but it will be hard for me.

I’m really proud of you, Mike, and really proud to know you.

Edited to Add: Trace has the footage!

Insurance “Fun”

So, I called my insurance agent to see if State Farm would cover the cost of replacing my driveway.

They will not.

And they wouldn’t, even if I had flood insurance.

I asked her if I should get flood insurance and she explained it to me. As she was explaining it to me, I asked her, “So, what you’re saying is that you’ve spent the last three days telling people who thought they were insured how screwed they are?” and she, in a tired voice, said, “yes.”

Basically, flood insurance either pays for just your house or it pays for your house and the depreciated value of what’s in it. So, like, if a tornado hits my house and destroys my couch, my insurance will pay the cost of getting me a new couch comparable to my current couch, in this case, a crappy $600 couch that ended up not being crappy, but delightfully awesome. They would give me $600 for a couch.

If I had flood insurance and I lost my couch in a flood, I’d only get the depreciated value of my couch, which, considering that it’s an ancient $600 couch, would probably be $0.

So, unless you have a house full of stuff that appreciates in value–like, I don’t know, Civil War cannons (and, really, who wants to sit on a cannon and watch TV?)–you can have flood insurance and still end up losing everything in your house and not having a way to replace it.

That’s going to be terrible news for a lot of folks.

Anyway, so, yes, the driveway. It’s fucked. We’re broke. I’m stressed.

But at least it’s just the driveway.

Who Could Take My Mind off of This Stuff?

John Rich.  I don’t know whether to be grateful that he has managed to say something so shocking that it knocked the flood out of my brain for a second or just skip the grateful and go right to the flabbergasted.

At this point, he’s really almost cartoonish in his villainy.

Wright said she got hit over the head by the rumors in 2005 when confronted by country singer John Rich, half of the million-selling duo Big & Rich.

“John said, ‘Hey, you’ve got to hit this gay thing head on, you’re not gay, are you? If you are, people won’t have it. It’s sick, it’s deviant; it’s unacceptable to country music fans.’

“I lied, and I knew I had gone from not talking about it to ‘Now I’m a liar.’ ”

That last part breaks my heart, but who can blame her for lying when confronted with such aggressive assholery?

Tourists Forever in Our Hearts

I love that phrase so much–“tourists forever in our hearts.” We talk a lot of shit about tourists, but, yeah, one of the things about Nashville is that there’s always something you still wonder about, that you approach with that kind of joyous “What the fuck?!”

We are Not Just Nashville

Please don’t forget that it flooded all along our rivers. Many places you’ve never heard of, many places that don’t even have names, are in big, big trouble, too.