Joined
·
36,347 Posts
Like MauserboyM48 and the Energizer Bunny they never give up. And their desperation is driving them further into advocating Stalinist repression, banning not just the right to bear arms and defend yourself but now also the right to speak freely and broadcast your beliefs through the medium of an association with others of like mind, in this case the NRA.
New York Times
May 7, 2010
Editorial
The Gun Lobby’s Long Shadow While the rest of the nation comes to grips with fresh concerns about terrorism, domestic and foreign, Congress is wrapped up in the peculiar obsessions of the gun lobby — most of which are certain to make Americans less safe in their homes and on the streets.
Congress, for example, is cowering before the gun lobby insistence that even terrorist suspects who are placed on the “no-fly list” must not be denied the right to buy and bear arms. Suspects on that list purchased more than 1,100 weapons in the last six years, but Congress has never summoned the gumption to stop this trade in the name of public safety and political sanity.
Legislation to close this glaring threat continues to languish with little promise of enactment because a bipartisan mass of lawmakers fear retribution by the gun lobby’s campaign machine. Firsthand pleas this week from New York City’s mayor and police commissioner — testifying after the attempted Times Square bombing attributed to a suspect who was also carrying a legally obtained gun — showed no sign of budging a timorous Congress.
It is a sign of the gun lobby’s growing confidence that if feels free to keep up the pressure, public and private, after the near-disaster in New York. Normally, the lobby goes quiet for a decent interval after a particularly heinous crime occurs.
To the contrary, Senator John McCain and other members of the gun lobby’s cohort are pressing for legislation to strip local taxpayers in Washington of such basic gun controls as owner registration and a ban on semiautomatic battlefield rifles — laws already upheld by the courts. The gun lobby cued Congress to take another run at scuttling the city’s gun controls after previously using the issue to stymie the district’s hopes to at last have a full-fledged voting representative in the House.
If Capitol supporters of the National Rifle Association agenda dared to check reality outside their windows they would confront the district’s alarm over the four dead and five wounded citizens who fell six weeks ago in a spray of bullets from a semiautomatic weapon. Instead, the gun lobby aims at allowing residents to buy weapons and ammunition in lightly policed markets in Virginia and Maryland.
To protect its clout in the political arena, the gun lobby is challenging legislation needed to contain an expected flood of unregulated attack ads in this year’s federal elections. Corporations, unions and advocacy groups were given this laissez-faire spending freedom in a misguided decision by the Supreme Court. An urgent countermeasure to require public disclosure of these groups’ stealthy money sources and donors is being opposed “in its present form” by the N.R.A.
It would be folly for Congress to create disclosure exemptions for the N.R.A. or any other advocacy heavyweight by distinguishing them from corporate and union organizations under the bill. Disclosure would be rendered a joke by a flood of exemptions. Congress must hold the line and let the public in on the looming campaign machinations. It should not allow groups on the right or left to spend freely from the political shadows.
Meanwhile I have discoverd the real cause of this near disaster and how to prevent another. It will be a lot easier than the New York Times idea of trashing both the First and Second Amendments:
BAN FARMVILLE!
And ban all of Facebook while you are at it if you want to promote domestic tranquility.
http://www.sodahead.com
Times Square Car Bomber Played Farmville
Posted 2 days ago
I always knew there was something wrong with people who played Farmville on Facebook. There's something about obsessing over tomato crops and expanding property that just reeks of mass murder, and Shahzad Faisal supports my sweeping generalization.
If you haven't heard of Shahzad Faisal, he's the native of Pakistan and resident of Bridgeport, Connecticut that attempted to detonate a car bomb in Times Square. He is a husband, father of two, unemployed and, like most Americans, has his home in foreclosure. In a terrorist plot, Shahzad purchased a Nissan SUV for $1,300, filled it with homemade explosives and parked it in New York's Times Square. Luckily, the bomb failed to detonate because Shahzad bought the wrong fertilizer.
When police caught up to him, he was boarding a flight at JFK to Dubai.
DOWN WITH FARMVILLE!
New York Times
May 7, 2010
Editorial
The Gun Lobby’s Long Shadow While the rest of the nation comes to grips with fresh concerns about terrorism, domestic and foreign, Congress is wrapped up in the peculiar obsessions of the gun lobby — most of which are certain to make Americans less safe in their homes and on the streets.
Congress, for example, is cowering before the gun lobby insistence that even terrorist suspects who are placed on the “no-fly list” must not be denied the right to buy and bear arms. Suspects on that list purchased more than 1,100 weapons in the last six years, but Congress has never summoned the gumption to stop this trade in the name of public safety and political sanity.
Legislation to close this glaring threat continues to languish with little promise of enactment because a bipartisan mass of lawmakers fear retribution by the gun lobby’s campaign machine. Firsthand pleas this week from New York City’s mayor and police commissioner — testifying after the attempted Times Square bombing attributed to a suspect who was also carrying a legally obtained gun — showed no sign of budging a timorous Congress.
It is a sign of the gun lobby’s growing confidence that if feels free to keep up the pressure, public and private, after the near-disaster in New York. Normally, the lobby goes quiet for a decent interval after a particularly heinous crime occurs.
To the contrary, Senator John McCain and other members of the gun lobby’s cohort are pressing for legislation to strip local taxpayers in Washington of such basic gun controls as owner registration and a ban on semiautomatic battlefield rifles — laws already upheld by the courts. The gun lobby cued Congress to take another run at scuttling the city’s gun controls after previously using the issue to stymie the district’s hopes to at last have a full-fledged voting representative in the House.
If Capitol supporters of the National Rifle Association agenda dared to check reality outside their windows they would confront the district’s alarm over the four dead and five wounded citizens who fell six weeks ago in a spray of bullets from a semiautomatic weapon. Instead, the gun lobby aims at allowing residents to buy weapons and ammunition in lightly policed markets in Virginia and Maryland.
To protect its clout in the political arena, the gun lobby is challenging legislation needed to contain an expected flood of unregulated attack ads in this year’s federal elections. Corporations, unions and advocacy groups were given this laissez-faire spending freedom in a misguided decision by the Supreme Court. An urgent countermeasure to require public disclosure of these groups’ stealthy money sources and donors is being opposed “in its present form” by the N.R.A.
It would be folly for Congress to create disclosure exemptions for the N.R.A. or any other advocacy heavyweight by distinguishing them from corporate and union organizations under the bill. Disclosure would be rendered a joke by a flood of exemptions. Congress must hold the line and let the public in on the looming campaign machinations. It should not allow groups on the right or left to spend freely from the political shadows.
Meanwhile I have discoverd the real cause of this near disaster and how to prevent another. It will be a lot easier than the New York Times idea of trashing both the First and Second Amendments:
BAN FARMVILLE!
And ban all of Facebook while you are at it if you want to promote domestic tranquility.
http://www.sodahead.com
Times Square Car Bomber Played Farmville
Posted 2 days ago
I always knew there was something wrong with people who played Farmville on Facebook. There's something about obsessing over tomato crops and expanding property that just reeks of mass murder, and Shahzad Faisal supports my sweeping generalization.
If you haven't heard of Shahzad Faisal, he's the native of Pakistan and resident of Bridgeport, Connecticut that attempted to detonate a car bomb in Times Square. He is a husband, father of two, unemployed and, like most Americans, has his home in foreclosure. In a terrorist plot, Shahzad purchased a Nissan SUV for $1,300, filled it with homemade explosives and parked it in New York's Times Square. Luckily, the bomb failed to detonate because Shahzad bought the wrong fertilizer.
When police caught up to him, he was boarding a flight at JFK to Dubai.
DOWN WITH FARMVILLE!
