NRA

So many of us on the left have said that we will see the crazies come back out now that we got a Democratic President. I’m talking the real whack jobs, the ones that make you think of Timothy McVeigh, or Richard Poplawski:

A gunman wearing a bulletproof vest and "lying in wait" opened fire on officers responding to a domestic disturbance call Saturday, killing three of them and turning a quiet Pittsburgh street into a battlefield, police said.

Police Chief Nate Harper said the motive for the shooting isn't clear, but friends said the gunman recently had been upset about losing his job and feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.

I’m sure everyone has already read about it, and seen the very interesting connections being made between people like Beck and Bachmann with this guy. If not, then I suggest you stop right here and go on over to Crooks and Liars, where Dave Neiwert has an excellent piece up. Interesting enough, Dave has a book getting ready to be released which is on this very subject.

Of course this has put the right into full defense. Here’s Malkin:

You killed all the innocent people at the Binghamton immigration center.

You killed these police officers.

It’s all your fault.

And it doesn’t stop with her. “Jammie Wearing Fool” has really put the “fool” in their name:

At Balloon Juice, John Cole offers this subtle analysis, calling it Glenn Beck's America. I suppose when those four cops were murdered in Oakland we should have called it what, Jesse Jackson's America? Barack Obama's America? Ron Dellums' America?

What a way to inject some racism into this tragedy.

This is the exact point I want to touch on. Remember last year when that loon went into a Tennessee church and started shooting up people? Turns out the church was rather liberal, and the guy was a big reader of O’Reilly and Hannity.

Or how about the guy who was sending those fake anthrax letters to big name liberals, like Keith Olbermann and the New York Times? He was a “huge” fan of people like Coulter and Malkin. He admitted it! But that put the right into this same defense mode.

What gets me is how the wingnuts feel they can’t take any blame for this. In an ideal world, that would be true, but this world is far from ideal. And let’s take a second and think of how many times we hear of our words having “bad effects”. For example – when we held debates on the Iraq war and people on the left called for an end to the war, somehow our words were used as "recruiting tools for the terrorists”.  Isn’t that interesting how some blog or politician saying something here, can influence people to do bad things half a world away, yet, people saying things here on our airwaves and in our media have no effect on people here at home.

There’s are far more examples of this. Kind of like the old wingnut notion that “if we teach sex education to our children, then they will be out doing it like rabbits”, even if the kids are only a couple of years from being able to serve in the military.

My whole point is that words do have effects, especially when you have people like Poplawski out there. And you got people like Glenn Beck, whose main goal is to instill fear into these people. I posted perfect proof of that just a few days ago, when Beck was saying that Obama was leading us to fascism (a liberal fascist?), while playing Nazi footage in the background. His little head sticking up in front of the big screen, leaving you with an awesome sense of an Orwellian time.

People love to be scared. That’s no secret. Think of roller coasters, horror movies and extreme sports. So the right has become vampires feeding on that fear, or the adrenaline rush associated with it. They do it all in the name of the sacred rating, even if that rating means votes.

“BARACK OBAMA’S COMING TO TAKE YOUR GUNS”

Did anyone thing otherwise?

The United States said on Wednesday it opposed setting firm targets for greenhouse gas cuts at a G8 summit but offered reassurance that its plan for fighting climate change would not undermine U.N. efforts.

President George W. Bush told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that he had a "strong desire" to work with her on greenhouse gas cuts beyond 2012 even though he has resisted her appeals for agreement at the June 6-8 summit in Germany.

Police and protesters clashed near the summit venue on the Baltic coast as G8 leaders gathered for a meeting likely to be dominated by issues including climate change, missile defences and Russia's frosty relations with its partners.

Well Bush, that certainly won't make those tree hugging liberals happy - like the NRA:

Nobody loves a loser. Repudiated at the polls last November, President George W. Bush is now being dissed by the National Rifle Association, his once faithful ally. More surprising still, the issue sundering the former friends is one new to the gun-rights organization: conservation.

"The Bush administration has placed more emphasis on oil and gas than access rights for hunters," complained Ronald Schmeits, an NRA vice president, to the Washington Post. The NRA's 4.2 million members increasingly find themselves locked out of prime wildlife areas, not by jackbooted federal bureaucrats but by the oil and gas industry. "Gun rights are still number one," said Schmeits, "but there will be more time and effort spent on this issue as we move forward."

The NRA has long considered it anathema to agree on much of anything with environmentalists, to whom it has imputed antigun and antihunting stands (falsely, in the case of the Sierra Club). For example, the NRA supported Bush's efforts to overturn the Clinton-era "roadless rule," even though it protected a huge swath of game-rich public land from logging, mining, and other development. It also backed extreme anti-environmental (but pro-gun-rights) politicians like former senator Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and former representative Richard Pombo (R-Calif.).

In recent years, however, polls have shown substantial majorities of hunters and fishers increasingly opposed to the Bush administration's policies on public lands and wildlife. In addition, environmental groups like the Sierra Club have been reaching out to hunters and anglers, and that effort may be paying off. "When the NRA starts talking like the Sierra Club," wrote Bob Marshall, outdoors editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, "you know good times have arrived for fish, wildlife--and generations of sportsmen to come."

A vast majority of this country wants something done about global warming. Even big corporate CEO's are working to get more done and want the government to increase regulations. Just Bush and his extremist neo-con buddies want to ignore the problem. It just proves they care nothing about the planet, which also means they care nothing about life.

Should this organization really have such an influence in our politics?

The National Rifle Association is urging the Bush administration to withdraw its support of a bill that would prohibit suspected terrorists from buying firearms.

Backed by the Justice Department, the measure would give the attorney general the discretion to block gun sales, licenses or permits to terror suspects.

In a letter this week to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, NRA executive director Chris Cox said the bill, offered last week by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., "would allow arbitrary denial of Second Amendment rights based on mere 'suspicions' of a terrorist threat."

We get called "terrorist sympathizers" for complaining about torture and the removal of Habeas. What the hell is this? These people think those suspects should have guns (and yes - they are suspects). How can the Republicans defend this? So you don't get a right to a speedy trial, yet you do get the right to a gun? I missed the part where one constitutional right trumps the other.

I think the Republicans should be asked if they will denounce this stance by the NRA. If the ACLU went out and said that terrorism suspects had a right to bear arms, then they would be branded as terrorists themselves. Something is very wrong here.