If you give up your right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be dismissed, warped, twisted and used against you by everyone on the Right from Wayne LaPierre (from today)--
In the midst of genuine grief, in an understandable passion, as millions of Americans searched for meaningful solutions, what do we find? Chris Murphy, Nancy Pelosi and more, cheered on by the national media, eager to blame the NRA and call for even more government control. They hate the NRA, they hate the Second Amendment, they have individual freedom.
-- to the NRA's enablers at The New York Times --
David Brooks wrote something terrible this week. This is not a surprise. The Times pays him handsomely to write snotty, unedited editions of David Brooks Understands The Little People on a regular basis. They will not fire him, not even for takes as dopey and casually nauseating as this one:So if you want to stop school shootings it’s not enough just to vent and march. It’s necessary to let people from Red America lead the way, and to show respect to gun owners at all points. There has to be trust and respect first. Then we can strike a compromise on guns as guns, and not some sacred cross in the culture war.I think we’ve all seen what bending over backwards to accommodate Red America looks like. It looks a lot like the bullet-ridden liescape we all now currently occupy. Does the Times care that they’re printing this dreck? Of course not. Quite the contrary, the Times seems very happy these days to secure the endorsements of pretentious (and spineless) conservative publications and high-end white nationalist pamphleteers alike, and they have adopted a siege mentality when it comes to any profane opposition...
Rep. Claudia Tenney, a Republican from New York, claimed in a radio interview Wednesday that “so many” people who commit mass murders “end up being Democrats.”...“I am fed up with the media and liberals attempting to politicize tragedies and demonize law-abiding gun owners and conservative Americans every time there is a horrible tragedy,” Tenney said in email statement to The Washington Post.
-- which precisely echoes the casual, reflexive, unhinged slander of Democrats that has become the every-day, all-occasion Mother Tongue of Republicans since at least the rise of Limbaugh and Gingrich a quarter of a century ago:
Mr. Gingrich's remarks were reminiscent of an interview he gave to The Associated Press just before the 1994 election in which he spoke of the widely publicized case in which two children had been drowned by their mother, Susan Smith."I think the mother killing her two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick society is getting and how much we have to have change," he said at the time. "I think people want to change, and the only way you can get change is to vote Republican."
I gave up my right to remain silent right around the time GOP turned their party over to scum like Gingrich, Limbaugh, Rove and Atwater.
And I've never missed it.
Behold, a Tip Jar!
12 comments:
For years the NRA claimed that we don't need more guns laws, just enforce the existing ones. After the Democrats essentially gave up, the NRA stared pushing to repeal the existing laws.
If the 2nd Amendment it's so sacred, then when does the "Well Regulated" part kick in?
OT, concerning BFD's We-Have-Mass-Shootings-Because-Liberals-Are-Too-Mean-To-REAL-AMERICANS(TM)-To-Reform-Laws, I just had to read a former co-workers recent essay detailing her Conversation-from-Environmentalism-into-Sensible-Energy-Policy (background: She left us to spend 5 years heading a pro-fracking, industry backed, oil and gas group and all it got her was a lousy Stanford teaching fellowship when she left after oil tanked in 2015) which argued the environment would be just fine if Environmentalist weren't so politically brainwashed that they were so mean to fossil fuel companies and...wait for it....REAL AMERICANS(TM)!
David [Fucking] Brooks has no right to tell people who are mad as hell to stop being mad as hell. He can afford to be calm and collected because he is so wealthy and sequestered that nothing truly awful can happen to him. His civility is a luxury. He only wants to talk about this shit in civilized terms because he lives a civilized life. His words are those of a man whose foremost experiences in life have happened inside his own rectum. He deserves to have his ass dragged every time someone hits PUBLISH on his behalf.
Drew Magary should stop holding back and tells us how he really feels. All this repression can't be doing his prostate any good.
(Which is to say, I keep forgetting how much fire he can be on when he's turned loose.)
I own guns.
I'm perfectly comfortable with heavy restrictions being placed on who is allowed to own guns if it means saving lives. Even if those restrictions meant it would be harder or more expensive for me to own a gun.
I'll bet cars would be a lot cheaper if companies weren't required to have airbags, crumple zones, seatbelts, turn signals, etc. But I'm still in favor of laws requiring those even though it means it's more expensive for me to buy a car. And I'm fine with laws that make it so people with DUIs and awful driving records can't drive, even though that's "restrictive".
Cars have a function that doesn't involve killing. Guns don't. I have my guns because they kill, they are tools for me to hunt and kill animals, that's what they do, that's all they do, is kill. Why wouldn't we regulate the ownership of something that's only job is killing as heavily or more than something whose job is transportation but can kill if handled incorrectly?
Remember the call to shoot FBI agents in the head because they wear flak jackets?
To see it coming with republicans. The crystal ball was our news media.
In May of 1885 This letter was sent.Yes, Wayne La Pierre was was with the NRA at the time. You may wonder after this letter how the GOP deserted their fox holes in this battle.
Dear Mr. Washington (NRA chairman),
I was outraged when, even in the wake of the Oklahoma City tragedy, Mr. Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of N.R.A., defended his attack on federal agents as “jack-booted thugs.” To attack Secret Service agents or A.T.F. people or any government law enforcement people as “wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms” wanting to “attack law abiding citizens” is a vicious slander on good people.
Al Whicher, who served on my [United States Secret Service] detail when I was Vice President and President, was killed in Oklahoma City. He was no Nazi. He was a kind man, a loving parent, a man dedicated to serving his country — and serve it well he did.
In 1993, I attended the wake for A.T.F. agent Steve Willis, another dedicated officer who did his duty. I can assure you that this honorable man, killed by weird cultists, was no Nazi.
John Magaw, who used to head the U.S.S.S. and now heads A.T.F., is one of the most principled, decent men I have ever known. He would be the last to condone the kind of illegal behavior your ugly letter charges. The same is true for the F.B.I.’s able Director Louis Freeh. I appointed Mr. Freeh to the Federal Bench. His integrity and honor are beyond question.
Both John Magaw and Judge Freeh were in office when I was President. They both now serve in the current administration. They both have badges. Neither of them would ever give the government’s “go ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law abiding citizens.” (Your words)
I am a gun owner and an avid hunter. Over the years I have agreed with most of N.R.A.’s objectives, particularly your educational and training efforts, and your fundamental stance in favor of owning guns.
However, your broadside against Federal agents deeply offends my own sense of decency and honor; and it offends my concept of service to country. It indirectly slanders a wide array of government law enforcement officials, who are out there, day and night, laying their lives on the line for all of us.
You have not repudiated Mr. LaPierre’s unwarranted attack. Therefore, I resign as a Life Member of N.R.A., said resignation to be effective upon your receipt of this letter. Please remove my name from your membership list.
Sincerely,
[signed] George HW Bush
I've used mine a couple of times, but the statute of limitations has run out on that shit...
-Doug in Oakland
Flashback
from youtude (copy/ paste to your brower to get there)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6imFvSua3Kg
Not quite the NRA created blood sucking robot vampire from ISIS.
At this point, my opinion is that the best thing the US could do would be to emulate Australia and New Zealand and essentially outlaw all semiautomatic firearms - both rifles & pistols. Quit fucking around the edges with details on magazine capacity, folding stocks, etc. And offer buybacks for those 10s of millions (maybe close to 100 million) firearms that fit that category. Seriously, I've hunted most of my life, and I have family members that are/were police and military. We're not strangers to guns, far from it. Ammosexuals that think they need a 30-round .223 or 7.63 autoloader for hunting or self defense are just indulging in self-masturbatory hero-fantasy bullshit.
Don't fucking tell me that you can't go hunting (or defend your house/self) if you're limited to only bolt/pump/revolver action firearms. Are those semiauto assault rifles fun to shoot? Hell yes. But so is a full auto Uzi, and the power of a .50 BMG Barrett is awesome. Don't need those in private hands either. I'll happily give up my Sig if its outlawed. And fuck the NRA.
To butcher a turn of phrase from Mr. Cohen...Like podcasting, it would appear, based on the GQ piece (not to mention the work of Esquire's Mr. Pierce) that a wee bit of a change is coming to print media in the USA.
Which is a good thing.
Unfortunately, Driftglass and Bluegal will forever be the Ramones of said change - known to be the catalyst by those in the know but forever unknown by the wider world who would never venture into either a mid-'70's CBGB's or a current day Cornfield.
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Maybe a paragraph was formatted incorrectly, but I found this post confusing. For some reason, I thought you were citing different people Wayne LaPierre had attacked in his CPAC address. "Wayne LaPierre attacked David Brooks and some random Republican?" I wondered.
Good post and comments. I could go on & on, but...
Among many other things, one truly aggravating thing about "all of this" shithole junk is that the INSTANT a mass murder happens at a school, a movie theatre, a Town Hall, an outdoor concert, on some random street corner, during a baseball game, in an office building, etc, etc - there is an IMMEDIATE response from the rightwing - trolls, bots, dittoeheaded douchebag shitholes, "pundits," talking heads, politicians, "religious leaders," etc - insisting that: a) we NEED MOAR GUNZ, and b) somehow it's all the fault of horrid LIEbruls anyway, and, of course, c) hideious libruls are doing that awful shuck and jive of "politicizing this sad event."
And then somehow the national convo turns to "discussing" this shitholed nonsense with these NRA-bought-off-ghouls AS IF their POV has some sort of "merit." No, they have no ground to stand on, and there is NO MERIT to one stinking shitholed word that comes outta their nasty rotten Nazi shitholes.
Aggravating!
I don't own a tv and rarely listen to what passes for "nooz" on the radio but nonetheless I see the tvs in my gym and there they all are: yabbering away as if these shitholes with their shithole gasbagging should be engaged in what passes for a "serious discussion."
UGH. And of course, it's all because the nasty libruls aren't "nice" to conservatives or something. UGH.
I don't know where this ends, but it's leading us down a very very bad and destructive pathway.
If Government was the parents of the Republican party and all its strains of anarchy and the behavior of a child growing up. Never having to submit to the Adult because either a spoiled life of wealth or a mental disorder never addressed.
But the manner in which the GOP uses its own specific media for its own separate and more equal advancement.
Daddy government would take away the brats governing power tools it misuses it media toys and make them sit in the corner for a while at least.
But Gov't is not the daddy. The American voters are as close to a parent to direct these delinquent republicans in the right direction.
If you look at the NRA's HQ building. On the wall is the NRA's separate written version of the 2nd Amendment.
It is very different than the 2nd Amendment in our constitution. Yet, the NRA lackeys blab of their patriotic vigilance to defend our founding fathers gift of the 2nd Amendment which they do not defend.
But hey, they catapult the propaganda and those dehydrating brains in the desert drink the NRA sand hoping to quench the thirst. Unlike Jim Jones who had to provide real liquids for his followers to drink.
When the mirage wears off in their minds and reality returns to some degree. The thirst is greater that ignoring the reality vs the mirage. It is much easier living in the mirage and less frightening.
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