Respectfully Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
When it comes to the Second Amendment and guns, it seems that President Obama can’t make anyone happy. Ever since Obama announced his candidacy for the Presidency, the NRA has screamed that Obama will be taking away the guns. This scare tactic continued when Obama defeated John McCain for the Presidency. Just what has Barack Obama done to make the NRA and gun owners frightened for their guns? The simple answer to this question is nothing. The head of the National Rifle Association, Mr. Wayne LaPierre actually admitted recently that Obama has done nothing to attack gun owner’s rights to bear arms, but claims Obama’s inaction against guns is actually a conspiracy to take away guns!! ‘ “[The Obama campaign] will say gun owners — they’ll say they left them alone,” LaPierre told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Friday. “In public, he’ll remind us that he’s put off calls from his party to renew the Clinton [assault weapons] ban, he hasn’t pushed for new gun control laws… The president will offer the Second Amendment lip service and hit the campaign trail saying he’s actually been good for the Second Amendment.” “But it’s a big fat stinking lie!” the NRA leader exclaimed. “It’s all part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and destroy the Second Amendment in our country.” ‘ Raw Story
Now, before anyone thinks I am making this stuff up, the linked site includes a video clip wherein Mr. LaPierre verbalizes this alleged reverse conspiracy. Mr. LaPierre makes a point of throwing in the necessary names of alleged liberal co-conspirators to rev up his base. ‘ “Sotomayor, Kagan, Fast & Furious, the United Nations, executive orders. Those are the facts we face today… President Obama and his cohorts, yeah, they’re going to deny their conspiracy to fool gun owners. Some in the liberal media, they are already probably blogging about it. But we don’t care because the lying, conniving Obama crowd can kiss our Constitution!” ‘
The lying, conniving Obama crowd as Mr. LaPierre labels them has not done anything to harm the Second Amendment rights that the NRA claims to be at risk. I was interested in the last few words of LaPierre’s quotation above. The phrase “kiss our Constitution” appears to lay claim that the NRA and its followers own the Constitution and its protections. I could have sworn that my law school Constitutional professors taught me that the Constitution protects all citizens, but maybe I heard them wrong. But, I digress.
As the Raw Story article suggests, President Obama has actually taken heat from his own supporters over his alleged conspiracy to not take away the guns. NPR Does Mr. LaPierre provide any evidence of this bizarre claim? None that I could find. Maybe you will have better luck than me in finding evidence of presidential actions to hide President Obama’s intentions and/or actions of stealing legal guns from their owners.
I have to admit that if you read the comments section of the NPR article that details how the Left is disappointed with Obama’s inaction on gun control, you will read almost nothing except gun owners claiming that Obama’s words of inaction are actually code words that the End is Near and the Sky is Falling for gun owners! Just what will it take gun owners to ask Mr. LaPierre for evidence of his wild claims? I, for one would love to hear his answer to that question. I understand that candidate and President Obama may have stayed away from the 2nd Amendment issues for political reasons, but where is the evidence of this alleged conspiracy? I would think Fox News would be sending Bill O’Reilly’s reporters all over the country to uncover such a heinous conspiracy.
If Mr. Obama has not written any executive orders or supported additional legislative steps to control or take away guns since he has become President, just what is the basis for these wild claims? I realize that the NRA has a financial interest in getting gun owners scared into buying more guns, but are there other, underlying reasons why the gun owners are frightened so easily, when the facts do not support the NRA’s claims?
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
Additional sources: Gun Owners of America; NRA-ILA; Pajamas Media;
Otteray Scribe:
When I was in college most of the liberals were against Atomic energy because of environmental concerns.
Funny how that has worked out isnt it.
I am 100% sure the man would rather have his son.
And maybe Ron Jacobson* who works for Peabody Coal and has health insurance and a job is glad he has his daughter Emma who had cancer and is now in remission because he has health care and a steady paycheck.
*Ron Jacobson is a fictional character used to explain the obvious.
Slarti:
the fallacy of the stimulus? Now you are making me laugh. The only fallacy of the stimulus is that the entire idea is a fallacy.
Are you for real? What kind of bullshit are you spouting now? It may work in a faculty lounge where all the liberal professors are falling over themselves to get tenure so they dont have to do shit for the rest of their lives, but please:
“Use of this fallacy brands one as either unable to think rationally or dishonest – which are you?”.
I would not have thought you would be that intellectually dishonest.
Bron, I fucking live here and it is enough to make you throw up to see the environment despoiled like this. This country only gets 4.5% of its electrical energy needs met from this desecration. These mountains and streams that took millions of years to form will NEVER come back.
The giant machines used by Peabody Coal and others take hundreds of jobs. BTW, what about the little boy who was killed by the four ton boulder that came bounding down the hill in the middle of the night, crashed through the side of the house, crushing the child in his bed. The giant rock was dislodged from its fifty million year old resting place by one of those giant trucks. I am sure the child’s father would much rather have his job with the big coal company than his child back.
Otteray Scribe:
interesting link. How much cheaper is it to do open cutting vs traditional deep mines? Are these coal mines or some other type?
Why is a 3″ fish worth more than a miner? Or a mayfly for that matter?
Apparently not all of the voices of Appalachia are being heard on that website you link to.
Seems to me there should be some sort of compromise between the rich land holders who want their pristine environment and the working people who need a job to survive.
We have the same shit going on here in Virginia, most of the rich in some of the counties about 40 miles west of DC dont want any development at all so they can hunt foxes. The rest of the people do want development because it will bring jobs and increase their property values.
Biff and Muffy always seem to be on the environmental bandwagon when their fox hunting is in jeopardy and can afford big donations to local politicians to keep it that way. They also play the environment card with the press and have lavish fund raisers to fight developers, spending your own money on that type of thing is just so gauche.
I am always entertained by liberals who are for the working man and against big corporations. Most of them are rich white guys who want to keep their hunting grounds from being spoiled by the prols they profess to represent.
Slarti:
The EPA came about in the 70’s when people were starting to think about clean air and water. There were areas of this country that literally had river fires because of the pollution. People started cleaning up before the EPA had teeth.
My grandfather used to tell me when he was a young man in the 20’s you blew your nose and your handkerchief was black from the soot of the coal stoves. Technology cleaned that up long before the EPA came into existence.
So I am not so sure you can say the EPA did much of any thing except jump on a bandwagon that was already rolling. Which goes to my contention that an educated and enlightened public will effect change far more quickly than any government bureaucracy.
Bron said, “Even with the EPA we have pollution so how effective are they?”
You are committing the same fallacy that you (and many others) have used when arguing about the stimulus. Use of this fallacy brands one as either unable to think rationally or dishonest – which are you? To evaluate the effectiveness of the EPA (or the stimulus or anything), we must compare it to what would have happened WITHOUT the EPA (something which can never be more than a thought experiment or simulation and analysis…). There is no evidence (at least I’m betting you can’t find any…) that pollution would have been lessened if the EPA never existed and plenty of evidence that our air, water, and land are cleaner because of the EPA. It comes down to this, Bron: either you think it is okay for someone to put poison in you family’s drinking water (which is idiotic, to say the least…) or you are a hypocrite (since you seem to think it is okay to pollute other people’s drinking water).
OS,
Great link and great response.
By the way, how are you doing?
The intention of the Ffederal Clean Water Act is to eliminate additional water pollution, not to allow Appalachian headwater streams to be buried beneath mining waste. But in 2002, the George W. Bush Administration reclassified mining waste as permissible “fill material” under section 404 of the Clean Water Act (CWA). That created the loophole allowing the dumping of mountaintop removal waste into streams. This change has allowed the extreme acceleration of mountaintop removal mining. In the words of U.S. District Judge Charles H. Haden II:
“When valley fills are permitted in intermittent and perennial streams, they destroy those stream segments. The normal flow and gradient of the stream is now buried under millions of cubic yards of excess spoil waste material, an extremely adverse effect. If there were fish, they cannot migrate. If there is any life form that cannot acclimate to life deep in a rubble pile, it is eliminated. No effect on related environmental values is more adverse than obliteration. Under a valley fill, the water quantity of the stream becomes zero. Because there is no stream, there is no water quality.”
http://appvoices.org/end-mountaintop-removal/ecology/
Bron, keep digging. Anyone who is paying attention knows this is going on. The Leaf River case is a very famous pollution and environmental disaster case. Anyone not living in a cave in Uzbekistan knows about mountaintop removal. And so forth. Those pollutants do not just go away. They get in the ground water and in the soil where they are absorbed by food plants. And in the air we breathe.
But those bad old government regulations keep getting in the way of profits, so congress keeps cutting the EPA budget so they have fewer and fewer inspectors.
So I dont think corporations would run wild without the EPA if the press would do its job and there were effective laws to address large events like you mentioned.
http://www.tftptf.com/
this is a link to site for marines who spent time at camp lejune between june1957 and march 1987
wonderful place to visit, just don’t drink the water.
Otteray Scribe:
If people figured out who was doing that kind of polluting, I think they would pay a price in the market place.
I dont hear about these incidents on the nightly news unless they are huge or a fire is involved.
So yes I think companies who are poor corporate actors will pay a price if people know about what they are doing. I dont buy BP gas because of the Gulf oil spill. How many other people have done the same?
So I dont think corporations would run wild without the EPA if the press would do its job and there were effective laws to address large events like you mentioned.
Even with the EPA we have pollution so how effective are they?
Bron1, October 12, 2011 at 7:46 pm
Harry Nevus, GED:
Have you thought about having that removed?
But I do understand that at some point in a watershed any pollutants become diluted. So that it does not effect that many people relatively speaking. Heavier pollutants will settle out into the stream bottom.
Part of the effectiveness of a poison is the concentration.
I think they must not have explained watersheds to you in your GED program.
——————————————————
fishies love those shiny wittle toxic bits at the bottom……mmmmmm…tasty…
Also, if the environment as a whole is cleaner or safer, it is due to the efforts of the EPA. If industry had their way, they would be able to dump whatever they wanted into the environment.
But yeah, let’s do away with that bad old EPA because it hinders industry.
Bron, my point was that you made an indefensible statement when you wrote, “At this point would you want to be the guy that killed a bunch of fish and polluted a river? The market would crucify you.”
Obviously, the marked did not crucify any of those people. You changed the subject by talking about people losing jobs. Nowhere in any of that was anything said about jobs. You were the one who brought up the market crucifying the polluters, which has not and will not happen.
In the meantime, we have more pollution. You not only cannot fish in those waters, you don’t even want to wade in them, let alone getting drinking water from them.
Bron,
the internet has done little to educate Republicans that Obama was really born in the United States and is not a Muslim.
Otteray Scribe:
Yes and your point is? You get rid of all that industry and where do people work? All those “green jobs” Obama created?
I don’t see you complaining about farmers polluting the environment with chicken and hog waste and insectides and herbacides. At some point you cannot engage in human activity without polluting.
Engage the court system, that is what it is there for.
The country is a good deal cleaner than it was 50 years ago, but then we had more industry too.
Harry Nevus, GED:
Have you thought about having that removed?
But I do understand that at some point in a watershed any pollutants become diluted. So that it does not effect that many people relatively speaking. Heavier pollutants will settle out into the stream bottom.
Part of the effectiveness of a poison is the concentration.
I think they must not have explained watersheds to you in your GED program.
“If GP pollutes my favorite trout stream its only me and a relative handful of people who care. So maybe that is the only way to make them act properly.”
Is there a polite way to say “That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve heard today.”?
Since streams run to rivers, which run to lakes, it might have made more sense to say “my favorite pond,” but even that’s fucking dumb.
Your statement is the epitome of letting corporations shit in everybody’s buckwheat, while everybody fights back one at a time.
Why do we need police or fire departments. If somebody burns your house down, its only you and a relative handful of people who care.
If you’re really that isolated, insulated, and anesthetized; why do you spend so much effort trying to recruit the rest of us into living in cocoons?