Miguel calls the head of Mom’s Demand Action the plastic gardener, noting her background as a PR professional. The question isn’t so much whether she has a PR background, but whether she’s a political hack. Shannon Watts doesn’t look like the same kind of hack as Donna Dees-Thomases, who was a closely tied to the Clintons and the media. It’s the fact that Dees-Thomases was a political hack that destroyed the narrative. Someone with a PR background can still be a stay-at-home mom from New Jersey or Indiana, but to suggest someone with close ties to the Clinton Administration is just some ordinary, concerned stay-at-home mom defies credulity. The question with Shannon Watts is who she is politically, and not so much what she did in her professional life, and I’m not sure any of the cases I’ve seen against Watts paint her to be connected at the same level as Dees-Thomases.
Category: Anti-Gun Folks
OFA Out with Rallies in Pennsylvania Again
It looks like the Obama machine is trying to distract from the list of scandals piling up, and they are out to rally for gun control again. They’ve got several events in Southeast PA, specifically geared to drive photo ops for press.
If you’re in Rep. Pat Meehan’s district, why not give his office a call on that day and let the staff know that pro-gun voters turn out when it matters – at the polls. The number for the office to be protested is (610) 690-7323.
I’m curious if the turnout will be similar to this Illinois anti-gun rally.
UPDATE: Adding two more SE Pennsylvania events.
Project Much?
I normally don’t publish letters to the editor, because most of them don’t often have any particular insight, and are often factually challenged. Every once in a while though, I have to make an exception. Because this guy was apparently a raging sociopath of a four year old, apparently the rest of us aren’t responsible enough to teach gun safety to our children.
Five-year-olds today are no more mature than I was, and the NRA thinks that’s the ideal time to begin teaching children about guns.
You gotta be kidding me.
I’m pretty sure as a five year old I knew not to hurt other children. Also, no one is talking about handing guns, BB or otherwise, to five year olds and telling them to go to town. But five is not too soon to talk to kids about gun safety. In fact, if you have guns in the house, you have a responsibility to teach your kids to be safe around them.
Taking My Rights Won’t Bring Anyone Back
The Washington Post ran a story over the weekend lamenting that Sandy Hook didn’t change anything on guns, with this bit of grief porn. I don’t know how I’d react if I lost a kid, but I can be pretty sure I’m not going to involve anyone else in my grief, and damned sure I’m not going to let anyone write stories about it. I generally tend to view such external and public displays as fundamentally selfish. That might be harsh, but that’s just how I view it. Newsbusters Tim Graham has more on this story, and notes:
The other politically interesting part of this story was how the distraught parents are molded and shaped by P.R. consultants to say the market-tested things so they can win.
Yeah, I also don’t see myself hiring a PR firm if I ever lose a kid either.
h/t The Gun Wire for the Newsbusters link.
Rich People Try to Silence You Peon Gun Owners
Sportsman blogger Jim Braaten posted something that caught my attention today:
WTF? Ken Burns you just lost a follower and supporter. MT @kenburns: Today we launch StopTheNRA.com to do just that.
— Jim Braaten (@jim7226) June 5, 2013
I find it interesting that a site promoted by a New Yorker who is wealthy partly due to his films that show on taxpayer-funded public television is also funded by rich New York venture capitalists (with a California partner who founded the website promoting their efforts) who are using it to promote the political organization of a New York City billionaire is demanding that the ability of little voters who don’t have as much money as they do to organize, communicate, and take action be “stopped.”
Being a native of so-called flyover country, I get so sick of these self-important rich assholes from the coasts assuming that they can “stop” my political activities, “stop” my personal associations, and “stop” me from having a voice in my government. There is nothing about gun ownership that they aren’t ready to mock and attack, including hunting. In fact, the website’s biggest attack features on NRA’s actual statements and online presence in recent days are actually targeted to NRABlog, a site that has nothing to do with the politics of the debate at all. For them, the only motivation is to completely “stop” your way of life and “stop” your ability to participate in government the same way they do.
Jumping the Shark
I think the Simpsons jumped the shark a while ago, and I haven’t watched it for a long time. Now here’s another reason not to consume their product. I can have a sense of humor when our side gets satirized well, but most of the time the cultural elite try to satirize gun owners, it ends up not being funny at all. I’ve had a phrase going through my head lately “Let their hate unite us.”
How’s That SAFE Act Working Out?
It always blows my mind when our opponents point to the horrors of violent crime in cities with very restrictive gun laws. What more could we do gun law wise than is currently being done in New York City? Isn’t this basically an admission that gun control doesn’t work? Is the SAFE act really making anyone safer? Sometimes I don’t think they honestly believe their own BS, but crime seems like a good argument for turning a fear and loathing of firearms into policy.
Another MAIG Mayor Arrested
Carrboro, NC mayor Mark Chilton, a member of Mike Bloomberg’s group of criminal mayors, was arrested yesterday for trying to shut down the state capitol because he doesn’t like some of the bills being passed by officials elected by the people of North Carolina.
Journalism Prof Misfires on NRA Speech Claims
It would seem that journalism professor Chris Swindell has forgotten the elementary lesson we all learned that one should be able to answer the 5 Ws when reporting a story. Sure, he asserted the Who, and he made some dubious claims about the What and Why. But, he didn’t include the When, Where–you know, the actual evidence for his claims.
Here it is. The NRA advocates armed rebellion against the duly elected government of the United States of America. That’s treason, and it’s worthy of the firing squad.
I’m sure most of you have read this article by now since it was linked on Drudge, but I have to admit that I’m floored the Charleston Gazette opted to run it since claims like this aren’t backed up by any kinds of quotes or speech references. It’s devoid of facts, but makes outlandish claims while citing zero evidence for much of his piece. In the few areas where he does reference some kind of “fact,” it is misconstrued beyond even what even other liberals will claim, or as far as I can tell in one reference, completely falsified.
The closest Swindell comes to actually citing any sort of “evidence,” he completely misconstrues the case beyond even what Media Matters was willing to do. He references Jim Porter’s speech where he made the comment that in the South, plenty of people still call the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression. He made the comment as a joke in discussing the fact that the NRA was founded in New York, where he was speaking in 2012. (See what I did there? I answered who, where, when, why, and what. That lesson is free of charge, Chris Swindell.) Swindell falsifies the “fact” and claims that it was an entire speech about the Civil War. No, it wasn’t. In fact, Porter, in one throw away line during a speech that briefly mentioned the history of the NRA, was making light of something that is actually true in some areas. I didn’t even live in the old south that was most involved in the Civil War, and I heard people call it the War of Northern Aggression.
At another point in Swindell’s article, he says:
To turn the song lyric they so love to quote back on them, “We’ll put a boot in your —, it’s the American way.”
I know this sounds petty, but where they hell is the evidence that any NRA leader quoted that song at Annual Meeting or any other event? I was there, and I don’t recall hearing it. I searched for it, and I can’t find any references for Wayne LaPierre or Jim Porter quoting from the song. In fact, the singer responsible for the song from which that lyric is lifted is a Democrat who openly supports Obama’s policies. (Toby Keith was once hired to play an NRA convention 5 years prior to his declaration of support for Obama. That puts Keith outside of the mainstream of even other Oklahoma Democrats since not even the Democratic elected official to DC would support Obama.)
But back to the point of the post, there’s no actual evidence that I can find that this lyric was quoted. The evidence shows that Jim Porter did not actually deliver an entire speech on the Civil War while only calling it the War of Northern Aggression. And there are no actual quotes referenced that back up Swindell’s claim that it’s time to kill NRA members with assaults from tanks, jets, and missiles while putting the rest of us up in front of a firing squad.
Now, I get that the Charleston Gazette probably ran this piece because they knew exactly the kind of response it would get. I mean, come on; who isn’t going to click on an article by a journalism professor who advocates killing 5 million Americans for having different political views? But maybe I’m naïve when I think that even such link bait should at least follow the most elementary of journalistic principles. Apparently the editors of the Gazette and the journalism department of Marshall University don’t agree and believe that facts are optional in their reports.
All Ricin, All the Time
Fox is on it. So is NBC News. Throw in the WaPo and the Wall Street Journal too. Even the Montreal Gazette. It’s a big story, no matter how you cut the deck. A lot of folks are skeptical, but for me it’s just a matter of incentives and math. I don’t believe this is an intentional setup, and would be very surprised to find MAIG was this stupid, or that it was someone on their side who has a beef with Bloomberg. Disgruntled employee, it could be, but again, I doubt it. Disgruntled employees tend to get caught quickly.
I’d be very surprised MAIG ginned this all up, as some have speculated. The wider a fabrication is, the more likely someone is to talk, or blow the whistle, and now you have the NYPD and FBI involved in the case. Bloomberg also isn’t stupid enough to risk all his credibility on a move like this, so it’s likely the action of a deranged, lone wolf. Actually, it’s not just credibility on the line, with the FBI involved, it would come with criminal charges if this were a hoax.
The next speculation is that it’s an anti-gun person trying to make our side look bad. The math would suggest that on any side of a political battle, you will have some small percentage of kooks, whack jobs, and sociopathic nuts. I don’t know why it’s hard to believe someone who believes in gun rights couldn’t do something like this, when you consider we’re dealing with tens of millions of people who share that political viewpoint. The number of people dedicated to the gun control viewpoint is vanishingly small in comparison. It’s not that I don’t believe the whakadoodles on their side couldn’t do something like this, but the fact that gun control is mostly astroturf, and that doesn’t play well for our odds. It’s just not that hard for me to believe that some sociopath who got a bug up his ass about Bloomberg’s organization decided to poop in the punch bowl and do something like this. We have a huge number of people who agree with us on the issue, and it’s just a fact that some of them, however small, are going to be crazy, impulsive, and willing to do something rash. That needn’t reflect badly on the millions of the rest of us who aren’t, though the media is certainly going to try.