The NRA wants open carry in schools, churches and playgrounds … but for their own National convention?
“All guns on the convention floor will be nonoperational, with the firing pins removed, and any guns purchased during the NRA convention will have to be picked up at a Federal Firearms License dealer, near where the purchaser lives, and will require a legal identification.”
Hypocrites. 😦
The issue of Gay marriage is actually not very important to me. (Marriage is not important to me.)
But I do like to watch bigoted Tea Party types squirm. Love to see racists called out. Love it when regular voters want to ask Ted Cruz – “Do you hate Gays?” 🙂
Gallup polling confirms that the number of Americans who believe homosexuality is “morally acceptable” is at an all-time high at just under 60 percent, up from around 40 in the early 2000s. This support is even more pronounced among millennials.
Mike Pence just lobbed a grenade into the Republican presidential field.
The Indiana governor’s religious freedom law has ignited yet another controversial culture war debate that has Republican contenders juggling awkward questions about issues they would just as soon not touch.
This time around, the policy issue isn’t same-sex marriage — it’s about nondiscrimination laws and whether they should accompany Religious Freedom Restoration Acts like the one just passed in Indiana.
But regardless, Republicans are getting pummeled over gay rights issues of all sorts — and face the familiar dilemma of whether a conservative stance that makes for good politics in a GOP primary will hurt them in a general election. …
It will hurt the GOP long term. This is a losing issue. Jeb Bush, at least, should have backtracked already.
I can’t support this guy. He’s far, far too right wing for me.
Let’s Be Serious About Ted Cruz From The Start: He’s Too Extreme And Too Disliked To Win
He’s totally against same sex marriage. Extremely against a woman’s right to choose abortion.
FREEDOM for Cruz does not include those freedoms. I’m always astonished how politicians who speak most about “liberty” are so intolerant of anyone who’s not exactly like them.
He’s 100% for the NRA. His base is the Christian Right.
His main platform is to “kill Obamacare” (with no details on what would replace it) though he announced he may have to sign up for health care coverage through the Affordable Care Act. A hypocrite.
He’s not all bad.
• born in Calgary, Canada
• first Hispanic or Cuban American to serve as a U.S. Senator from Texas
• he’s a Constitutional expert
• very familiar with American Law. Believes in the rule of law.
• he’s outspoken, willing to speak against the Republican Party line. I admire that. No doubt his corporate paymasters consider him too much a loose cannon.
Why is that?
Many of the rich (Cheap-Labor Conservatives) like “cheap labour”.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Though former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich overstates a bit, his key points are true.
Click PLAY or watch a trailer for Robert Reich’s documentary on YouTube. Inequality for All.
I can’t see why any poor or under-employed person should vote for the Republican Party. The American Tea Party hates the poor. Despises any program that gives one dollar to the poor. Yet wants to waste hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in the Middle East.
I’m still trying to find a national American politician who’s a true fiscal conservative.
Films for Action – The Cheap-Labor Conservatives’ “Dirty Secret”: They Don’t Really Like Prosperity
FOX National News is the worst.
They care only for ratings. If you don’t like FOX News (unfair and unbalanced), boycott.
Selma is a 2014 American historical drama film …
It is based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches …
Selma has received universal acclaim from film critics. Praise has gone particularly to the film’s acting, cinematography, screenplay, and direction. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film currently holds a rating of 98% …
Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.
It’s an important movie. A good history lesson.
Martin Luther King Jr. emulated my personal hero Gandhi. Non-violent resistance. The best way for an oppressed minority to challenge a privileged majority.
It worked.
But as a film I found Selma average. Too preachy. The dialogue often not believable. The good guys too good, the bad guys too evil.
It might have been better as a documentary.
Instead it’s a Hollywood fiction based on a true story. I know not all the facts are exactly right. But John Lewis, being bludgeoned in this photo March 7, 1965, feels the film gets enough right. To him the film is true to the story.
Alabama Governor George Wallace was a prototype segregationist. During his final years, Wallace recanted his racist views and asked for forgiveness from African Americans.
I visited Alabama for the first time last year. Surprised and pleased to see no outward signs of overt racism.
Sooner or later the echos of American slavery will be entirely forgotten.
In the meantime, Selma is a reminder of how far we’ve come. And how far we have not come.
related – Neil Young – Southern Man
Wayne LaPierre is an extremist.
I’m pissed when he says things like this:
We know, in the world that surrounds us, there are terrorists and home invaders and drug cartels and car-jackers and knock-out gamers and rapers, haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping-mall killers, road-rage killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids, or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse the society that sustains us all. …
He lies. He exaggerates.
He lies exaggerates I assume, to help increase sales of firearms. He exaggerates for money.
I can’t imagine any other reason to overstate the way he does.
LaPierre’s central message: Owning a gun is the solution. The world is a scary place. There are bad guys everywhere threatening you and your family, and the only thing they’re afraid of is a gun in your hands.
Tragically, a record number of Americans subscribe to some version of this mythology, with 63 percent (67 percent of men polled and 58 percent of women) believing that guns truly do make them safer. The public’s confidence in firearms, however, is woefully misguided: The evidence overwhelmingly shows that guns leave everybody less safe, including their owners. …
The Myth of the Good Guy With a Gun
Politico – The Myth Behind Defensive Gun Ownership
The NRA is wrong: Owning a gun is far more likely to harm you than protect you.
I agree with LaPierre on a couple of things. He supports:
• Increasing funds for a stricter and more efficient mental health system, and reform of civil commitment laws to facilitate institutionalization of the mentally ill when necessary.
• Creating a computerized universal mental health registry of those adjudicated to be incompetent to help limit gun sales to the mentally ill.
It’s deflection, I’m assuming. Taking those positions makes no sense relative to his other positions.
He’s totally against the government regulating firearms, even though they are dangerous. (More Americans American children and youth are now killed by weapons than motor vehicle accidents.) … But totally for the government regulating mental health. Because the mentally ill are dangerous. 🙂
related
• Two Decades of Paranoid Pronouncements by the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre
Chief Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg:
If there was one decision I would overrule, it would be Citizens United.
I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays … far from what our democracy is supposed to be. …
Citizens United was a terrible ruling. Most people asked to think about the issue for 10 seconds conclude that it’s a bad idea.
An ABC–Washington Post poll conducted February 4–8, 2010, showed that 80% of those surveyed opposed (and 65% strongly opposed) the Citizens United ruling, which the poll described as saying “corporations and unions can spend as much money as they want to help political candidates win elections“.
wikipedia – criticisms of Citizen’s United
So why do so many politicians, especially Republicans, support Citizens United?
Because they can only get elected with money handed them by corporate lobbyists.
I don’t see how U.S. politicians can get out of this trap. They must sell their souls to corporations in order to get elected. 😦
American Sniper is a 2014 American action and drama film directed by Clint Eastwood …
It is based on Chris Kyle’s autobiography American Sniper …
The film stars Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller …
I’ve enjoyed all the Clint Eastwood directed movies, so assumed I’d like this one.
I did. Most people do.
It wasn’t as good as Unforgiven (1992) or Million Dollar Baby (2004), but I’d recommend you see it. Unless you have an aversion to violent films.
American Sniper received positive response from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a “Certified Fresh” rating of 73%, based on 203 reviews from critics …
Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.
The highlight by far was Bradley Cooper. His performance is subtle and nuanced, unlike the movie which is very Eastwood. Too many cliche lines and story points.
It’s a Hollywood movie based on a true story. Not a documentary.
I don’t find the criticism I’ve read at all valid.
(It is fair to point out that Kyle was inspired after terrorists from Yemen and Saudi Arabia attacked the USA. Yet he was sent instead to fight in Iraq. Saddam Hussein didn’t want anything to do with Bin Laden.)
War is Hell. I’m against war. I wish Kyle had stayed home. If he had been Canadian, he would have. Canada did not join in the coalition of the willing, one of the smartest decisions ever for my nation.
If you don’t like snipers. Don’t like war. Blame Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, not Chris Kyle. He was simply following the orders of his President.
American Sniper is as much an anti-war film as one glorifying war.
I did find it surprising that Eastwood included one scene: Kyle pointing an (unloaded) gun at his wife, in jest. And then setting the weapon carelessly on a ledge with his children in the room. To me it foreshadowed something was going to happen.
Perhaps that scene was in the script. But Eastwood didn’t change it. It seemed unlikely to me that a firearms expert like Chris Kyle would be so nonchalant with weapons in his family home.
__
I wasn’t surprised to learn that the real Chris Kyle suffered mentally. I wasn’t surprised to learn he had died from gun fire.
“Live by the sword, die by the sword.”
If you spend enough time around firearms, you stand a higher percentage chance of accident, suicide or murder than if you don’t.
Eddie Ray Routh, then 25, shot and killed Chris Kyle, 38, and his friend Chad Littlefield on Feb. 2, 2013, at a shooting range in Erath County, Texas. Kyle often took veterans, such as Routh, out on shooting ranges to work with them and help them cope with PTSD and related problems.
This punk is the sad ending to a sad story. 😦
Ted Nugent is an angry, profane extremist. Why does any politician want to associate with this guy?
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Ron Noe’s response: “Might be some sort of fever…”
He threatened to kill himself if Obama won a second term. Whatever happened with that?
Rick McCharles 