Is it Francis or Francis the 1st?

What's this "Francis the First" business? I mean, we don't know for a fact that's there's gonna be any other Francii, right? He could turn out to be a crappy pope, or maybe he never even has any sons, or he has a son and doesn't name the kid after himself, but gives the kid a normal name like Fred or Tivo. So the next Pope would be Pope Tivo, not Pope Francis the 2nd. Right? It's not like they call the first pope Peter the 1st. It's just Peter, or "The Rock" as Jesus called him, cause Jesus could totally smell what was cooking.

as a present to you, here's an animated gif that might look better on a slow load

Mimes are unstable

They start off like this....





But then they end up like this...

It gets confusing for Americans when the German Commies denounce "Social Democracy"

Anyone confused enough to fall for the BS that Naziism was leftist because it was "national socialism" isn't going to get the nuances of Weimer Republic extremism, let alone have the patience to sit through three whole minutes of silent newsreel footage.

If you wanna blow up the minds of dittoheads, point them over to the Nazis' 1938 German Weapons Act. The Nazis, far from wanting to round up the guns in society, were actually strongly in favor of gun ownership by ordinary citizens. The Nazis loosened gun laws, ended registration of long-barreled firearms, stopped the regulation of ammunition, and even allowed private citizens to own machine guns.

Sound familiar? It's the NRA's agenda. Not that the NRA are Nazis, just that their talk about Hitler rounding up the guns in Germany is bullshit. Now, I'm sure Hitler did round up guns in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and France -- non-German nations that he invaded. But he never took over his own people by denying them gun rights. Rather, he demagogued the firearms regulation issue in order to manipulate the public over to his side.

Now, he did deny gun rights to people he vilified as non-German: Jews, Roma, Communists... Again, this is a rightwing tactic. How many times have you heard Republicans & conservatives snark that liberals aren't real Americans or argue that "McCain would've been starting his second term by now, if Obama hadn't gotten all those minority votes."

But this is more about keeping the bedazzled majority neurotically militarized, rather than wanting to avoid shooting it out with a "well-armed citizenry". Fantasies about apocalyptic shoot-outs with the evil elements of society are hallmarks of extremists--left and right. It happened in real life in Germany in 1919. The Marxist Spartan League and the rightwing predecessors of the Nazis actually did shoot it out in the streets of Berlin (which serves the Germans right for having unleashed Lenin & Leninism on Russia two years earlier). But the only people talking about taking arms against fellow citizens or against the government we have all elected are the people on the Right. The Alex Joneses and Wayne LaPierres and Ted Nugents of the world love talking about taking up guns against an oppressive government--which in reality would mean getting into firefights with the BATF, the FBI, and (I suppose) park rangers at Yosemite. The only arms us lefties fantasize about are the ones we'd like to hug our trees with.

Nope, when the wingnuts start comparing liberalism to fascism, it's the same old "Clint Eastwood vs. the chair" dynamic. Unable to sustain an honest argument, the super-conservatives have resorted once again to inventing a make-belief supervillain that they can feel comfortable about vanquishing, even if only in the privacy of their own imaginations.