Child Murderer LaPierre Speaks Out

I told you so. The NRA's idea of safe, secure schools is to have more guns in the school. I knew Wayne LaPierre was going to say this. But what else would you expect from a mass murderer? He will not now, nor will he ever, accept responsibility for mad men running around with semi-automatic weapons, even though it is his fascist group which is most responsible for these guns being available to any young, white, fanatic, survivalist, home-schooled, deranged male who wants one. LaPierre is to the NRA what Goebbels was to the Third Reich...the propaganda minster who will bring down a reign of terror on any politician who dares to disagree with him. The gutless, castrated Republicans who sit in Congress won't dare challenge the Reich Minister for fear their heads will be handed to them on a plate. The NRA's power over the legislature and citizenry is all-encompassing; and until someone has the balls to stand up to this tyranny, our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness will always be subordinated by the right of gun nuts to buy AK-47s like they were candy bars. Everywhere I go now--the mall, my granddaughter's school, a basketball game, a restaurant--I look around warily, hoping some insane shooter isn't about to pull out an AR-15. Is this the America you want? It's not the one I want. But it IS the America LaPierre dreams of. LaPierre makes millions leading the NRA (Nuts with Rifles Association), but it is blood money. And he will burn in hell for it. Here's what the Reich Minister said today, "In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes—every minute of every day of every month of every year. Part of the problem in protecting schools, he also said, is the designation of gun-free school zones. The zones "tell every insane killer in America that schools are the safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk," he said. Can you believe this guy?? He wants schools to be "gun-friendly zones." Would you send your kid to such a school?? And he blames the media for gun violence. It is not the media which brings "an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless...and criminal cruelty into our homes"; it is GUNS that do this. Thousands more people die of accidental shootings in the home than burglars who are killed by homeowners during a home invasion. In fact, the instances of home invasions being stopped by a homeowner wielding a gun are so miniscule that they are statistically insignificant. I agree with New York mayor Bloomberg who said, "Their (the NRA's) press conference was a shameful evasion of the crisis facing our country," said Bloomberg. "Instead of offering solutions to a problem they have helped create, they offered a paranoid, dystopian vision of a more dangerous and violent America where everyone is armed and no place is safe."

Tennessee Rednecks Propose Arming Teachers

The Reupublican-controlled Tennessee legislature has actually introduced a bill to fund the arming of Tennessee teachers. That's right, these Neanderthals think that the answer to school gun violence is more guns. Can you imagine? The school marm will now solicit bullets instead of apples from her kids. And the children won't be distracted a bit by the loaded .45 in their teacher's desk drawer, right? Come to think of it, no responsible educator would have a loaded, accessible weapon in the classroom; that means he or she, if encountering a mass killer, would have to load his/her weapon...and by then it would be too late. The Tennessee Neanderthals don't understand that a weapon in the classroom is no deterrent to mad man killers. All it would do is turn the classroom into an armed gulag or an Old West saloon. No real learning can take place in such an atmosphere; maybe that's what the Tennessee Neanderthals really want--to keep our children uninformed about science, history and English so they will grow up to elect idiots to the Tennessee legislature.

My Conversation With Gun Nut Regarding Newtown

I've had an ongoing debate with my gun-nut neighbor, and, incredibly, the slaughter of 20 Newtown children has not changed his mind. Here's how it went Saturday morning: ME: "After what just happened you can't possibly object to the ban of assault weapons." GUN NUT: "I can and do. If the government can ban assault weapons, what's next--hand guns?" ME: "The old slippery slope argument, huh? The same logic you right-wingers use to ban gay marriage. If gays can marry, what's next--legalization of bestiality? What does one have to do with the other?" GUN NUT: "The Second Amendment protects my rights to own any gun I want." ME: "The Second Amendment refers to militias, citizen armies, not private citizens. And there were no assault weapons in the 18th century." GUN NUT: "What if someone breaks into my home, and I don't have a gun?" ME: "Statistics show that it is 1000 times more likely that someone in your own family will accidentally kill himself with your gun, than it is that you will kill a home invader. It is also 10,000 times more likely that a deranged or unbalanced person will get a hold of your gun and kill innocent people, than it is that your home will be invaded." GUN NUT: "I don't care what the stats say." ME: "But don't you have any compassion for those poor children who were slaughtered at that school in Connecticut? We've sent men to the moon and invented a polio vaccine. Surely we can protect the most innocent and vulnerable among us." GUN NUT: "Not if it means banning weapons." ME: "So, your right to have an assault weapon is more important than a child's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?" GUN NUT: "It's guns that gave us that right." ME: "Huh? What kind of logic is that?" GUN NUT: "Without guns we can't protect ourselves from mad men like the one who shot up that school." ME: "You mean the children should have been armed?" GUN NUT: "No, but the faculty and administration could have been" ME: "Are you insane? That's not civilization, that's the wild west." And so it goes. Gun nuts and the NRA now have the blood of children on their hands. Columbine, Aurora, Portland, Atlanta, Virginia Tech, Milwaukee, Newtown. The bodies are piling up, and there is no end in sight.

Time For Costas Critics To SHUT UP

"Costas should commentate on football games and SHUT UP about gun control." Those were the words of Laura Ingraham, an evil right-wing witch with the soulless eyes of a snake and a viper's heart. She attacked NBC sportscaster Bob Costas for having the temerity to speak up and express his antipathy towards America's gun culture and the ready availability and abundance of guns in this country. But Costas was right...here we go again. The Portland mall shootings a couple days ago were just the latest in a long line of random killings. The response to which has been yawns and shrugs from the right wing. Apparently conservatives are content with this kind of America, where anyone, anyhwere at anytime can be gunned down for no reason. The Portland shooter had an AR-15, a military weapon that is illegal to own. How did he get it? No one seems to know or care. The NRA cares not whit about the victims, and the right wing says these things are going to happen. The problem is they happen over and over. Every week there is news of some random killing. Someone needs to do something, and Costas had the courage to speak up. The GOP is really the party of death. If they don't kill you with gun violence, they will deny you critical health care. If they don't kill you by cutting Medicare and Social Security, they will starve you to death by eliminating food stamps. If you don't die in their electric chairs, they will round you up and deport you. If you didn't die in Iraq, you may not survive Afghanistan. When will one of these shooters hunt down Laura Ingraham...PLEASE!

Another Republican Bites The Dust

Republican Jim DeMint resigned from the Senate today, and I started blowing up balloons, pouring the booze, and breaking out the noisemakers until I realized that he's from South Carolina, where it's as likely he'll be replaced by a Democrat as it is that Rush Limbaugh will join the ACLU. The South Carolina governor, Nikki Hailey, will simply appoint another right-wing extremist who will make us wish for the good old days when DeMint was in the Senate. DeMint resigned to head up the Heritage Foundation, a "right-wing think tank." This oxymoronic term is right up there with jumbo shrimp, Army intelligence, open secret, and Hell's Angels. There is no such thing as a conservative intellectual, and right-wing "think tanks" are nothing more than gatherings of quasi-fascists construing outlandish justifications for making the rich richer and the poor poorer. One Republican nut job, upon hearing of DeMint's resignation, said, "No Senator has fought harder for liberty and freedom than Jim DeMint." Horse manure. DeMint spent his entire time in the Senate fighting against our liberties--to breathe clean air and drink fresh water, to be free of random gun violence, to die with dignity, to have a meager income in old age to be free of starvation, to have women do what they wish with their own bodies, to be free of economic oppression, to be free of unnecessary war, to be free to collectively bargain for better wages, and to have the liberty of speaking freely in public places. DeMint's version of freedom is only this--the freedom of corporations to pollute, to control, to buy politicians and elections, to oppress workers, and pay no taxes while making huge profits. That's not engendering freedom; that's catering to plutocratic self-interest. Good-bye, DeMint...and go fuck yourself.