(Jeff Danzger’s website)
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For all the noisy triumphalism, the NRA isn’t really coming across as a bunch of winners — just whiners. Elspeth Reeves at the AtlanticWire reports “The NRA Convention Is Packed with Heat, Dip, and Sore Winners“:
The National Rifle Association just had an amazing victory in defeating a bill to require universal background checks on gun purchases — something it endorsed 15 years ago — and yet the speakers at its 142nd annual convention in Houston sounded awfully bitter. Several speakers devoted part of their speeches to media criticism, saying the big bad MSM had been mean to them. “Those in the media — yeah, you know who I’m talking about — they think they know better than we do, they think they’re msarter than us,” said Wayne LaPierre, the gun lobby’s executive vice president. “Some in the media try to turn us into the bad guys,” said Rick Perry, the gun toting Texas governor. “Acronyms,” Sarah Palin said, like MSNBC, CBS, ABC, “one day they will think themselves accursed that they were not in this fight with us.”
On Friday, the convention felt like a mini-CPAC, in that several potential presidential candidates took turns on the stage — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Perry — or appeared in video form, as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan did. Perhaps that explains the feeling of doom amid glorious triumph, because the gun legislation victory came just a few months after devastating electoral defeat…
Charles P. Pierce casts a cold eye at the new NRA president, James Porter:
…[A]s we careen through the rock-strewn wasteland of his mind, we are suddenly interrupted by the telltale sound of the kitty leaping free of the burlap.
Porter, 64, whose father was NRA president from 1959-1961, is part of the small, Birmingham, Ala., law firm of Porter, Porter & Hassinger. The firm’s website notes its expertise in defending gun manufacturers in lawsuits.
When they say it’s not about the money, it’s always about the money.
And even Politico (or, as Mr. Pierce calls it Tiger Beat on the Potomac) just isn’t feeling the love any more:
HOUSTON — The National Rifle Association has become, more than ever, part and parcel of the Republican Party…
The result is on display at this weekend’s NRA annual meeting here, where Democrats are glaringly absent from the roster of speakers…
This year, a host of potential 2016 Republican candidates pledged their fealty to the NRA. The keynote speaker at a Saturday night rally is Glenn Beck…
Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean was endorsed by the NRA in each of his six statewide runs for governor of Vermont, something he touted when he ran for president in 2004. As a kid, he won NRA medals for marksmanship. But he said the group lurched right in search of money and members, even as national Republicans realized after their losses last November that they need to work with Obama.
“The NRA has essentially decided, whether consciously or not, to vacuum up the detritus left from the tendency of the Republican leadership to move to the middle,” he said. “It almost sort of completes a journey for them from being a mainstream organization to sort of being the equivalent of the John Birch Society.”
raven
Not much coverage of the Nuge at this one?
NotMax
Open thread?
Perhaps the most simultaneously bleak and chilling quote read in a long time:
“Dictatorship is better for minorities.”
From this piece:
raven
@NotMax: And the trains run on time.
NotMax
@raven
Worst, most disagreeable train trip I ever experienced – bar none – was from Luxembourg to Geneva, on an Italian train in the dead of the winter of 1974.
Calouste
@NotMax: Must be the first time anyone has called Pakistan a democracy. It needs a bit more than just holding elections, like for example protecting minorities from the majority.
raven
@NotMax: I went from Munsani to Seoul on the train New Years eve. People had chickens, pigs and jars of winter kimchi! It was stankin!
El Cid
FWIW, Mussolini never got the trains to run on time. He did, however, get officials to say that the trains were running on time.
If there’s one thing dictators do pretty well it’s to tell officials what to say.
Schlemizel
We can try to dance on the grave of the NRA but I would prefer to wait until they had at least lost a fight before celebrating. They still win, they still hold enough electoral clout that politician fear crossing them. As long as they do that there will be no funeral for that diseased cesspool.
There is no reason to bury them when they are still winning.
raven
Mornin Joe BENGHAZI IMPEACHMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!
raven
@El Cid: Good point.
Schlemizel
@Calouste:
Minority protection is not a feature of a democracy. We have many great examples of that here in the US. And that is despite having a democracy specifically designed to make tyranny of the majority more difficult.
NotMax
@Calouste
Somewhat related.
danielx
The scary part is when you realize that Gun Owners of America (membership ~300,000) view the NRA as a bunch of compromising trimmers.
Linda Featheringill
Morning Joe can complain all he wants. It is my mere mortal opinion that the reelection of Obama by a healthy margin has made him pretty well impeachment proof.
But I could be wrong about that. The decline of fortunes experienced by Rush Limbaugh, an example of what DFHs can do when they REALLY get pissed off, might be just as influential.
I must admit that I’m not an unbiased observer. Sometimes I love Obama and sometimes I don’t but I always want him to have a successful presidency, followed by a long and happy life.
Patricia Kayden
“even as national Republicans realized after their losses last November that they need to work with Obama.”
Huh? Which national Republicans are trying to work with President Obama?
Linda Featheringill
The gun produced by 3-D printing:
From a practical viewpoint, this is most likely a single use weapon that needs to have smaller ammunition [like .22 for example] and may have poor accuracy. It is a gun for shooting someone up close and personal.
Is this right?
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: The wife got some yummy kimchee, from Costco. I forgot what the word is, but Korean has a word for making kimchee for the winter.
Back then Korea was very poor, and pretty much a dictatorship.
Xenos
@Linda Featheringill: It is a zip gun, I think. How many time do you feel like firing a gun with a plastic barrel and firing pin?
So of course it is the perfect weapon to fend of the po-po or the FBI, right? Or even a tough guy with a knife (given that you are likely to miss)?
It is useless for any other purpose other than up-close assassination attempts. And it even sucks for that.
Calouste
@Schlemizel: I’ll repeat myself, because I apparently wasn’t clear: being a democracy requires a bit more than just holding elections.
The US has been making some progress towards becoming a democracy since the 1960s, but it will be at least a few more decades before they get there. They’ll need to get rid of gerrymandering, voter suppression and other shenanigans, the highly undemocratic Senate and the dangerous levels of media concentration first.
Linda Featheringill
@Calouste:
“US democracy” is a work in progress. A long term project, apparently.
El Cid
@Linda Featheringill: At present 3D printed guns seem a sure way to get would-be militia / survivalist / ‘patriot’ movement heroes to blow their fingers and hands off, because the more of them there are, the higher the likelihood of home-manufacturing imperfections.
Pro-tip: this was one of the impulses behind mass manufacturing in the first place.
Bruce S
The thing that was most telling and disturbing about the NRA convention wasn’t the gun nuttery but the long, long laundry list of wing-nut beefs, paranoias and hallucinations. They are the ugly head of the most pathological elements poisoning our politics. It was a rogue’s gallery with all of the trappings of a hate group. They need to be destroyed – one would hope that the crackpot “leadership” might actually trigger a revolt by a section of their membership leaving in droves, but doesn’t look like that’s happening.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA:Yea, In mean we really were still at war.
OzarkHillbilly
@Bruce S:
Our only hope is that this wakes up the sane 2/3s of America into pressing their congress critter for meaningful action. Mind you, I’m not holding my breath. So many of them are too busy working 2 or 3 jobs just to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table, and the rest are relaxing at their gun free country clubs so they don’t think it affects them.
Steve M.
The NRA can’t seem triumphant, because the myth that keeps the NRA on full alert is the myth of imminent absolute fascist tyranny and/or imminent chaos emanating from the evil crime-ridden urban ghettos and marching on the heartland to get your blond daughter. Every small arsenal possessed by an NRA member in a zero-crime exurb is needed, you see, for defense. No aggression involved — no, sirree.
PeorgieTirebiter
Got to love Palin as Henry V.
Bulworth
@PeorgieTirebiter: So, one day we tyranny lovers will rue the day when we supported gun background checks at gun shows, all the while background checks were being conducted across the country on people buying guns at stores.
Mike in NC
A drone strike to take out the NRA leadership and would-be GOP candidates for 2016 would be a twofer.
jimmiraybob
Sort of?
At least the early JBS didn’t have the political clout to actually undermine government and clear the path to arm a fired-up insurrectional wing ready to fight the tyranny of not liking the results of an election or the tyranny of having to find common ground with citizens that they despise or the tyranny of oppressive paranoid fantasies.
Bruce S
@PeorgieTirebiter:
Great Catch! I was trying to figure out that weird locution coming from the crazy lady in a tee-shirt talking to a bunch of wingnuts.
RaflW
My hope, and we can help with this, is that the Democrats will see how much the NRA is, indeed, an arm of right-wing Republicanism (the only kind allowed these days) and hold no real advantage for Democrats other than a feble hope of blunting attacks come election time.
But the right will savage Dems no matter what, and even a 100% pro-NRA voting record won’t help dems.
So ignore their insane rantings and go ahead and vote against any NRA position. Dems who toe the NRA line will still be treated like shit by the NRA in the ’14 and ’16 cycles. I guaran-damn-tee it.
Julia Grey
Wait….She’s giving the St. Crispin’s Day speech in May, on the bloody battlefield of the NRA Convention?
A long way from Agincourt, wouldn’t you say?
This is a perfect example of the crap we’re always getting from over-confident ignorami like Palin… historical disproportion with a nice glaze of Shakespearean desecration.
ETA: I see someone else noticed the plagiarism well before I did.
johnny aquitard
@NotMax: I once flew from Freetown to Banjul. Baskets of dried fish, a chicken or two in a sack, and a live goat trussed up and stuffed into an overhead compartment, which couldn’t close fully so the goat was able to stick his head out and bleat at me every few minutes.