#NRA owns GOP

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

#republican assholes #kansas city chiefs #Super Bowl parade shooting #gun reform #gun violence #gun crime #resist #the nra is a terrorist organization #nra owns GOP #MASS SHOOTING

[socialjusticeinamerica]

MAGAts shoot people for turning around in their driveways or knocking on their doors. They have been out of control for years now and need to be put in their place. We can not exist as a society if half the people think they can shoot anyone for any reason. This is why the Russians fund the the NRA, to destabilize the United States. The NRA and the GOP need to be removed from the political landscape.

#republican assholes #maga terrorist #nra owns gop #gun control #shooting #gun violence #gun crime #castle law bullshit #stand your ground bullshit

[rejectingrepublicans]

#republican assholes #political cartoon #nra blood money #mass shootings #nra owns gop

[republikkkanorcs]

#republican assholes #Rafael Eduardo Cruz #fuck the nra #the nra is a terrorist organization #nra owns gop

[willpollock]

America deserves better than gun-humping republicans [VIDEO] #Uvalde

America deserves better than gun-humping republicans [VIDEO] #Uvalde

Ronnie Reagan’s “Morning in America” was always a fake-marketing ploy to make republicans seem like “aw shucks” Average Joe America. It was the first Big Lie. Nixon was a crook. Reagan was a crook and a liar. Dubya is a war criminal. And don’t get me started on The Former Guy, who history will record as our most profoundly corrupt official in modern history. But why is “Morning in America” ruse…

View On WordPress

#beto o&039;rourke #chris murphy #cliff schecter #fat dracula #gop: guns over people #gun control #gun policy #guns over people #gunsense #nra #nra owns gop #ruben gallego #school shootings #Sen. Chris Murphy #steve kerr #ted cruz #uvalde #uvalde shooting

[tomorrowusa]

As ABC News reports, Tennessee Republicans are in full blown thoughts and prayers mode. It doesn’t get more stereotypically Republican than this.

Nashville school shooting updates: Governor says now's not time to talk legislation

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has called for prayers in the wake of Monday's deadly mass shooting at a Nashville elementary school, while noting that "there will be a time to talk about the legislation."

"I am calling on the people of Tennessee to pray. For the families of victims, for the Covenant family, for those courageous officers, for the family of the shooter, for those who are hurting and angry and confused," Lee, a Republican, said in a video address on Tuesday evening. "Prayer is the first thing we should do, but it's not the only thing."

GOP Gov. Lee says that prayer is “not the only thing”. The other thing of course is quietly reminding the NRA that Tennessee Republicans are sticking up for AR-15s at the expense of Tennessee schoolchildren.

NPR describes how Tennessee GOP gun culture helped the Covenant School shooter obtain a small arsenal.

How the Nashville shooter was able to legally buy 7 guns  

In the case of the Nashville shooting, police say the perpetrator was being treated for a mental health disorder, yet bought seven guns, including assault-style rifles, legally. Police say the shooter's parents thought their child should not have access, but Tennessee does not have a law to request guns are removed temporarily, commonly known as a red flag law. Democratic lawmakers have introduced that in the past, but Republicans didn't pass it.

The gerrymandered heavily GOP Tennessee legislature is where gun safety legislation goes to die – figuratively shot full of holes with assault rifles.

Republicans around the US in recent years have blamed mass shootings on mental illness. But when they had a chance to do something about guns and mental illness in Tennessee, they consciously chose to do nothing. 

For the GOP, action is never an option. Instead of making schools safer, they will fixate on far right culture war issues to juice up their gradually declining base.

#tennessee #nashville #the covenant school #school shootings #mass shootings #tennessee republicans #bill lee #culture wars – not public safety #fuck your thoughts and prayers #the gop is a wholly owned subsidiary of the NRA #clay jones

[wilwheaton]

The GOP wonders why young people (and others) don't want to vote for them. Some wise scribe assembled this list.

1.) Your Reagan-era “trickle-down economics” strategy of tax breaks for billionaires that you continue to employ to this day has widened the gap between rich and poor so much that most of them will never be able to own a home, much less earn a living wage.

2.) You refuse to increase the federal minimum wage, which is still $7.25 an hour (since 2009). Even if it had just kept up with inflation, it would be $27 now. You’re forcing people of all ages but especially young people to work multiple jobs just to afford basic necessities.

3.) You fundamentally oppose and want to kill democracy; have done everything in your power to restrict access to the ballot box, particularly in areas with demographics that tend to vote Democratic (like young people and POC). You staged a fucking coup the last time you lost.

4.) You have abused your disproportionate senate control over the last three decades to pack the courts with religious extremists and idealogues, including SCOTUS—which has rolled back rights for women in ways that do nothing but kill more women and children and expand poverty.

5.) You refuse to enact common sense gun control laws to curb mass shootings like universal background checks and banning assault weapons; subjecting their entire generation to school shootings and drills that are traumatizing in and of themselves. You are owned by the NRA.

6.) You are unequivocally against combatting climate change to the extent that it’s as if you’ve made it your personal mission to ensure they inherit a planet that is beyond the point of no return in terms of remaining habitable for the human race beyond the next few generations.

7.) You oppose all programs that provide assistance to those who need it most. Your governors refused to expand Medicaid even during A PANDEMIC. You are against free school lunches, despite it being the only meal that millions of children can count on to actually receive each day

8.) You are banning books, defunding libraries, barring subject matter, and whitewashing history even more in a fascistic attempt to keep them ignorant of the systemic racism that this nation was literally founded upon and continues to this day in every action your party takes.

9.) You oppose universal healthcare and are still trying to repeal the ACA and rip healthcare from tens of millions of Americans and replace it with nothing. You are against lowering the cost of insulin and prescription drugs that millions need simply to LIVE/FUNCTION in society.

10.) You embrace white nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and other groups that are defined by their intractable racism, xenophobia, bigotry, and intolerance. You conspired with these groups on January 6th to try to overthrow the U.S. government via domestic terrorism that KILLED PEOPLE.

11.) You oppose every bill aimed at making life better for our nation’s youth; from education to extracurricular and financial/nutritional assistance programs. You say you want to “protect the children” while you elect/nominate pedophiles and attack trans youth and drag queens.

12.) You pretend to be offended by “anti-semitism” while literally supporting, electing, and speaking at events organized by Nazis. You pretend to hate “cancel culture” despite the fact that you invented it and it’s basically all you do.

13.) Every word you utter is a lie. You are the party of treason, hypocrisy, crime, and authoritarianism. You want to entrench rule by your aging minority because you know that you have nothing to offer young voters and they will never support you for all these reasons and more.

14.) You’re so hostile to even the notion of helping us overcome the mountain of debt that millions of us are forced to take on just to pay for our post K-12 education that you are suing to try to prevent a small fraction of us from getting even $10,000 in loan forgiveness.

15.) You opened the floodgates of money into politics via Citizens United; allowing our entire system of government to become a cesspool of corruption, crime, and greed. You are supposed to represent the American people whose taxes pay your salary but instead cater to rich donors.

16.) You respond to elected representatives standing in solidarity with their constituents to protest the ONGOING SLAUGHTER of children in schools via shootings by EXPELLING THEM FROM OFFICE & respond to your lack of popularity among young people by trying to raise the voting age.

17.) You impeach Democratic presidents over lying about a BJ but refuse to impeach (then vote twice to acquit) a guy whose entire “administration” was an international crime syndicate being run out of the WH who incited an insurrection to have you killed.

18.) You steal Supreme Court seats from democrats to prevent the only black POTUS we’ve ever had from appointing one and invent fake precedents that you later ignore all to take fundamental rights from Americans; and even your “legitimate” appointments consist of people like THIS (sub-thread refuting CJ Roberts criticisms of people attacking SCOTUS' legitimacy).

19.) You support mass incarceration even for innocuous offenses or execution by cop for POC while doing nothing but protect rich white criminals who engage in such things as tax fraud, money laundering, sex trafficking, rape/sexual assault, falsifying business records, etc.

20.) You are the reason we can’t pass:—Universal background checks—An assault weapons ban—The ‘For the People/Freedom to vote’ Act or John Lewis Voting Rights Act—The ERA & Equality Act—The Climate Action Now Act—The (Stopping) Violence Against Women Act—SCOTUS expansion.

21.) You do not seek office to govern, represent, or serve the American people. You seek power solely for its own sake so you can impose your narrow-minded puritanical will on others at the expense of their most fundamental rights and freedoms like voting and bodily autonomy.

22.) Ok, last one. You are trying to eliminate social security and Medicare that tens of millions of our parents rely on and paid into their entire lives. And you did everything to maximize preventable deaths from COVID leaving millions of us in mourning.

Source: https://imgur.com/gallery/e8DBZLH

#republicans are garbage #uspol

[mariacallous]

Recently, Planned Parenthood released a statement on the Oct. 7th attacks and the broader conflict between Israel and Palestine. Their statement condemned Hamas’s attacks on civilians, and specifically condemned sexual assaults committed against Israeli women during the violence. They also noted how thousands of Palestinian women and children had been killed in Israel’s counteroffensive, stated the need for Palestinian women to maintain access to reproductive and maternal healthcare, and condemned both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

The social media reaction to such a balanced and empathetic statement? Furious, unrelenting anger.

The statement was quote-tweeted thousands of times by social media users outraged by the statement. Planned Parenthood was accused of spreading Israeli propaganda, ignoring Palestinian deaths and fabricating rape claims, and enabling genocide. These outraged users aren’t conservatives who always oppose Planned Parenthood—they’re progressives furious that an organization they normally support put out a statement they hated. Now there are calls to end donations and Planned Parenthood staffers are fighting with donors. Their own employees, affiliates and organizers are making public statements against them.

This outcome was predictable to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of social media dynamics. And it raises an obvious question—why release a statement at all?

Metastatic social justice

It’s actually quite common for organizations and activists to get into hot water these days by addressing areas outside their expertise. Trans activists in Vancouver loudly insisted there can be no Trans Liberation without Palestinian Liberation, which caused pushback all over Canada. Two years ago, New York City’s Pride organizations courted controversy by excluding LGBT police officers from the city’s Pride parade in the name of racial justice. There are YIMBY housing organizations taking a stand on abortion rights and climate organizations demanding a Federal Job Guarantee.

There’s a common theme here. Organizations that appear to be single-issue advocacy groups are increasingly commenting and taking stances on issues outside of their narrow focus. Activism is becoming more global in nature—if you are an activist for one cause, you’re expected to speak up about all causes now. It’s not enough to ‘stay in your lane’, you need to be protesting and advocating for all forms of social justice. Pro-choice advocacy is now part of your racial justice non-profit. Jobs packages are in your environmental bills. Your LGBT organization has a stance on ‘Defund The Police’ and your housing group has a stance on Israel/Palestine. Social justice is metastasizing.

This phenomenon has happened on the right as well—see the NRA transitioning from being a somewhat non-partisan group to essentially being an arm of the GOP—but it’s especially striking in the current progressive movement. There’s a real sense in which NYC Pride is no longer an LGBT advocacy organization, but rather an overall progressive social justice organization. That may sound like an exaggeration, but they kicked out a gay organization (the Gay Officers Action League) to accommodate another form of social justice. It’s the internal logic behind a LGBT Pride march excluding LGBT people.

This also explains the online fury at Planned Parenthood. Their statement was thoughtful and balanced, but deviated from the dominant and overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian progressive narrative. Their donors expect them to advocate not just for progressive goals in women’s health, but progressive goals everywhere.

This type of activist mission creep risks stunting the progress on the core issues that social justice advocates care about.

The downsides of missions creep

The urge towards mission creep comes from a reasonable place. If you care so deeply that you spend your free time (or your career!) as an activist for a particular issue, the odds are that you also have strong feelings on many other issues. You’re also likely to live in a bubble of activists and people who think like you, and so your conversations professionally and socially may often center around all sorts of political issues. But as an activist it’s important to remember that most people you’re trying to reach are not like you and don’t think like you.

The typical voter is over 50 and does not have a college degree. They also don’t think about politics all that much. They are far, far away from the mindset of a typical activist. And when they do have political opinions, those opinions are far more varied and haphazard than a committed political partisan would guess. I think a few minutes scrolling the twitter feed of the American Voter Bot is invaluable to understand how voters think. This bot takes real voters and profiles them in brief tweets. While some look as expected—a Democrat who supports gun control, for instance—many look like this:

Most people are a confusing mix of demographic signals, issue positions and partisan identification, and they rarely fit squarely within one political tribe. That’s the danger of turning a single-issue advocacy group into a generalized progressive messaging group—you’ll end up alienating a far wider group of potential allies than you realize.

If Issue Group X declares loud progressive positions not just on Issue X but also on gun control, abortion, Palestine, Medicare For All, trans rights, free trade and school prayer, they won’t attract a large diverse group of people who care about Issue X. They’ll end up attracting a narrow slice of progressive activists who are ideologically pristine enough to agree with them on every issue.

The ultimate result of activist mission creep is that your issue ceases to be something that people across the ideological spectrum can work together on. It becomes coded as a red tribe vs blue tribe issue, gets swallowed by the general culture war, and progress grinds to a halt as partisan warfare starts.

The most likely outcome of Planned Parenthood voicing an opinion on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is not that they make any difference at all towards that conflict. It’s that they alienate their own supporters with differing views on Israel/Palestine. They’ve undercut their own ability to make progress on reproductive care and reproductive rights for no gain.

One thing at a time

None of this is to say that individuals shouldn’t care about many issues at once—they obviously should. And general purpose ideological organizations can and should tackle many policy areas. But it’s a poor strategy for single-issue groups to try to become general purpose organizations. There are real benefits to staying in your lane.

One example of a movement that has done a reasonable job at this is the pro-housing YIMBY movement. While there are some instances of YIMBY groups straying from their purpose, for the most part they’ve done a good job staying narrowly focused, and that that focus has allowed them great success.

YIMBYism is a far more ideologically diverse movement than many people realize. There are conservative YIMBYs, neoliberal YIMBYs, Democratic YIMBYs, libertarian YIMBYs, and many left or socialist YIMBYs (although in true socialist tradition, some want to break away from the YIMBY label and create a sub-label PHIMBY). This isn’t just a feel good story about how conservatives and liberals can be friends—this has a real impact on YIMBYs getting things done. It’s part of why you see both Republican and Democratic officials at the local level working towards YIMBY solutions in different cities, and why those solutions can often pass without bitter partisan warfare. It’s why the YIMBY Act in Congress had Republican and Democratic co-sponsors. It’s why YIMBYs are scoring victories in blue states like California and red states like Montana.

This sort of thing matters. YIMBYs are a big tent and they’re getting things done. It’s hard enough to make real change happen on a single policy or a single issue. Whole movements try for years and still sometimes fail. Single-issue groups trying to address every issue at once aren’t going to succeed. The urge towards mission creep is strong, and too many groups are weakening their core strengths to address problems they can’t solve. Single-issue organizations shouldn’t burden themselves with having the answer to every question, with having a stance on every issue, and with having to be all things to all people. It’s ok not to comment. It’s ok to stay in your lane and just work on one problem. It’s ok to try to change the world just one issue at a time.

[odinsblog]

Not that Republicans plan on funding mental health services anyway, but these last few civilian shootings have nothing to do with mental health. Somebody turned in a man’s driveway so he shot them. A Black child knocks on the wrong door, so the resident—who said that “seeing a Black person at his door scared him to death”—shot him! Teenage cheerleaders mistakenly get into the wrong car, he shoots them!

These are all boringly routine occurrences that happen every single day when you live in a society with other human beings.

The GOP and the NRA have cowardly gun nuts armed to the teeth and afraid of their own shadow.

Getting startled is not an excuse to murder someone.

Imagining the worst about a stranger isn’t an excuse to murder someone. Nobody is responsible for the fearful imaginations of trigger happy cowards.

These are cowards. Not “Patriots”. COWARDS. Cowards who love cosplaying that they’re living in some shoot ‘em up fantasy.

#politics #ralph yarl #guns #republicans #gun nuts #cowards #nra #kaylin gillis #payton washington #gun violence

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

The “well regulated militia” strikes again.

#gun violence #republican assholes #republican hypocrisy #mass shooting #fuck the nra #the nra is a terrorist organization #nra owns the gop

[socialjusticeinamerica]

#Tex-ass cops are cowards #corrupt big belly southern sheriffs #ACAB #Uvalde #mass shooting #school shooting #republican assholes #the nra is a terrorist organization #fuck the nra #nra owns gop #National Russia Association #assault weapons ban #AR-15 is for small dick Republicans #Greg Abbott and Ted Cruz will suck the Devil’s c-ck in Hell #guns are the leading cause of death for children

[soberscientistlife]

Active shooter drills would not ne necessary if Republicans would agree to ban assault rifles. The NRA owns the GOP.

[republikkkanorcs]

#fuck Putin #slava ukraini #republican assholes #traitor trump #maga morons #Russian collusion #Putin owns Trump #Putin owns gop #Putin funds the NRA

[ritchiepage2001newaccount]

WHY UNIVERSAL BACKGROUND CHECKS ARE JUST AS UNLIKELY AS EVER, UNFORTUNATELY

I'm a leftist (Libertarian-Socialist), who votes progressive, because I live under an "elected" government, and I had thought I had purged the MSNBC/CNN Nation from my friends list, but apparently not, as my timeline is just chock-full of media-driven hysteria over current events, so here's a primer:

"Liberals" who think their arguments are clever or relevant to the Second Amendment are exhausting.

They are not the left; they are just one half of the good cop/bad cop act of the corporate owned fire-hose of bullshit that is the corporate media, and corporate America's governing criminal cartel/duopoly.

Both cults "I like simple and ineffectual 'solutions', because they make me feel like I'm doing something, and I'm just stinky with fear."

There are over a hundred million legal gun owners, who some want to punish for somebody else's crime.

Well, there are some things to consider.

We've been a heavily armed country since 1621, and yet the epidemic of daily mass-shootings didn't begin until 20 April 1999 (Columbine), at a time when gun ownership was at an all-time low, and five years after Clinton's assault-weapons ban, so maybe guns aren't the variable.

Worth noting: One of the first things the "Pilgrims" did when they betrayed the Native Americans, was disarm "King Phillip" and his men.

Maybe, just maybe, dead school-children are the price of the neoliberalism practiced under the "Washington Consensus" of BOTH right-wing authoritarian parties since the 1980's? When your country offers you no prospects, and you become terrified of the future, what then? Fear can make unstable people do desperate things. Add to that a culture of celebrity, and what could possibly go wrong?

Another factor that goes completely unexamined, is the way Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill emptied our state hospitals onto our streets, and onto families ill-equipped to deal with the sometimes violent mentally ill.

Thank God, the "solution" is so simple…

Also, 84% of NRA members support universal background checks. The problem is, every time a bill comes up for a vote, Democrats add poison pill amendments guaranteeing defeat in the legislature (and the courts), and then they proceed to tell the TV cameras that "once again the GOP and the gun lobby have voted down background checks and defied the will of the people", or some such nonsense.

If you want to watch Dems sabotage universal background checks (while Republicans roll their eyes and face-palm) in real time, go here:

P.S. You can probably guess which one of these three groups I belong to (Hint: It's the one that's growing and actually decides elections):

LaborPartyNow!!!

P S The line, "You don't need 30 rounds to shoot a deer!" is not clever.

The Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting tools, toys for hobbyists (target shooting), or even weapons for self-defense.

It's about ARMS!!!

It's about the individual citizen's right to arms, so they'll be prepared to join a militia, not the other way around. ‘Well regulated’ at that time, simply meant, ‘efficient.’ In other words, in order for a muster to be efficient, civilians needed to be already armed.

So the "collective rights" argument has a couple of problems that make it quite unhinged from history and reality.

1) As I've mentioned above, Americans have always been relatively heavily armed. How did that happen in a collective rights paradigm?

2) Contrary to what you were probably taught in school, by the time of the Confederate artillery barrage on Fort Sumter, the war over slavery had already been going on for over six years, and was fought entirely by independent volunteer militia's. Fort Sumter was just the beginning of official involvement by government troops. How did that happen in a collective rights paradigm?

3) In what universe do government forces need to have their right to arms protected?

4) Since when do National Guard members keep National Guard arms (Hint: they're kept at the armory, and have been since colonial times)?

5) Obviously, "Liberals" are stupid.

Again: #LaborPartyNow!!!

P P S That was ENTIRELY the point of the first fruits of dissent, the 10 Amendments we've come to call the BILL OF RIGHTS (which have become a beacon to aspiring democrats all over the world), to protect INDIVIDUALS from the government they had just created. #TrueStory

[tomorrowusa]

« The cliché used to be that Democrats fell in love and Republicans fell in line. The reality, in recent years, has been that Democrats fall in line and Republicans fall apart. The Democratic Party’s establishment has held, even as the Republican Party’s establishment has buckled. »

— Ezra Klein at the New York Times.

The Democratic Party is larger but much more politically diffuse than the GOP. The differences in the internal composition of the Democratic Party sometimes remind people of the cliché about herding cats.

Republicans have been more likely to belong to groups which do things in more rigid lockstep – like fundamentalist churches and the NRA. And in this century they have their own national "news" outlet to make them adhere to the party line.

That typically lockstep approach by the GOP has caused the party mostly to unswervingly follow Trump into the wastelands of corrupt authoritarianism. Only a minuscule percentage of Republican office holders dares to publicly deviate from the MAGA path; the rest of the party has acted like political lemmings.

Democrats should continue to do more to put differences aside at least when it comes to winning elections. We can always go back to quibbling with each other during the election night victory celebrations.

#democrats #unity #republicans #rigid lockstep #donald trump #maga #ezra klein #election 2024

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Scott Dworkin at The Dworkin Report:

Last week the GOP-controlled Tennessee legislature passed a law allowing teachers to carry guns on school grounds, bucking recommendations from top education and school safety experts from across the country. We already ask more from our schoolteachers than we do from almost any other profession, and we give them just the bare minimum to do it. The answer to school shootings is not to ask our teachers to become armed bodyguards for our children. Republicans clearly haven’t thought this through. A teacher with a handgun would simply be no match for an attacker with an assault rifle. Even if they could somehow abandon their classroom in the middle of a school shooting, it’s hard to imagine they would be able to get to the scene in time. Even if they did, it’s unlikely their meager amount of training would be enough to stop the shooter.

In fact, research concludes “an armed teacher is more likely to impede responding law enforcement than to stop an active school shooter.” There’s also the very obvious possibility that a student could gain access to the gun, which makes our schools more dangerous, not safer. [...] We should not allow Republicans to act like students are safer because teachers can carry guns in school. We must call out these right-wing, NRA-owned politicians who lie and say more guns are the answer to gun violence. And in November, let’s vote these lunatics out. Until then, GOP lawmakers need to stop hiding behind their pro-gun blood money and take real steps to make our schools safer. Trying to turn a schoolteacher into Rambo is clearly not the solution for stopping school shootings, and it never will be.

Scott Dworkin is correct: arming teachers with guns is counterproductive policy that would NOT stop school shootings.

#Guns In Schools #Guns #Schools #Tennessee #School Shootings #Teachers #Tennessee SB1325