UH OH: Facebook Submits Names Of Users Posing In Pictures With Guns To Homeland Security – NOT!

Posted by Mark NC on December 3, 2014 at 4:21 pm. 2 Comments :

America’s 2nd Amendment fanatics have been fuming for years that the fedril gobmint was plotting to confiscate their precious firearms. They have fretted over imaginary conspiracies hatched by President Obama to disarm the nation’s citizenry in order to render them incapable of rising up against the socialist tyranny that he was determined to impose. Well now they are shivering in their survivalist boots because of the latest revelation to be unveiled by the liberal media: “Facebook Submits Names Of Users Posing In Pictures With Guns To Homeland Security.”

Good Gawd Almighty. What ever will we do now? This terrifying development is an affront to freedom-loving patriots everywhere. Or, it would be if it were true. As it turns out, the whole scandalous affair was plucked from the pages of Empire News, an Internet publisher that describes itself as “a satirical and entertainment website.” The article that Empire posted made the alarming, but fake, declaration that…

“Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed rumors this morning that the company would be handing over names and photos of site users who have posted pictures of themselves with guns to the government. Democrat leaders applauded Facebook’s move, stating that it is important to know who has guns in America, especially since many of the weapons that they’d seen could very well be unregistered.

Perhaps what made the article believable was the made-up quote from Tea Party fave, Ted Cruz, who was pretend-quoted saying that “It’s right from the socialism 101 handbook […] That’s why in my campaign for president, my slogan is ‘less taxes, more guns!'” You have to give them credit for manufacturing such a authentic sounding Cruz-ism.

Despite the fictitious nature of the item, it was picked up by many NRA-theists across the InterTubes. Among the dupes were Gary G. Howell, a Republican member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, and Saul Anuzis, former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.

This is the sort of panicky blubbering that results in Ammosexuals falling for idiotic fables about the government buying billions of bullets for use against American patriots who try to oppose the coming dictatorship. Even Sarah Palin chirped in that this was a plot by the Feds to put down massive civil unrest. And it goes to show that crackpots who adhere to wildly extremist conspiracy theories will believe anything.

Just for the record, in the six years that Obama has been president there has not been a single bill passed by Congress to limit the rights of gun owners. Even though there were plenty of incidents that ought to have inspired such legislation (Gabby Giffords, the Newtown, CT murder of 20 schoolchildren, the Aurora, CO theater massacre, etc.), none were produced. The only bills relating to guns that Obama signed expanded the rights of gun enthusiasts in national parks.

Cold Dead Hands: Gun Nuts Demand 2nd Amendment Rights For Zombies

Posted by Mark NC on November 15, 2014 at 2:45 pm. 17 Comments :

Note: This is not a joke. Fox News is reporting that police in Buffalo, New York are collecting guns from the estates of deceased firearms registrants. And the ammosexual radicals are furious. The Fox story begins by stating that…

“A plan by police in Buffalo, N.Y., to begin confiscating the firearms of legal gun owners within days of their deaths is drawing fire from Second Amendment advocates.”

It seems like it should be unnecessary to point out that dead people cannot be “legal gun owners.” But that’s how Fox frames the issue. Even Charlton Heston conceded that his guns could be taken after he had died. The article goes on to quote Tom King, a gun rights group representative, claiming that the heirs are not told that, under the law, they can sell the weapons or apply to have them re-registered. However, there is no confirmation of that claim. In all likelihood the heirs must be told of their legal options and probably are.

King also asserts that the law is the latest example of authorities targeting law-abiding gun owners. Once again, dead people are not law-abiding gun owners, so the law cannot be targeting them. And the heirs, absent a registration in their name, are not in compliance with the law.

The Buffalo Police Department held a press conference to explain that the policy is intended to keep firearms out of the wrong hands. When a registered owner dies, the weapon often is not safely secured by surviving family members, if they even know that it exists. It is also not traceable in the event it is stolen or used in a crime.

A pro-gun website was quoted in the article as saying that this is “the camel’s nose under the tent to get at every firearm they can.” That is a typically paranoid response by gun nuts who seem to think that dead gun owners are a significant constituency of Americans whose constitutional rights must be protected. Let’s call them 2nd Amendment Zombies.

Naturally, the right-wing media circus has come to the defense of this newly christened special interest group of Departed-Americans who are being discriminated against. The story is spreading fast to outlets like the Tea Party News Network, conspiracy king Alex Jones’ Infowars, and Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze.

This law is just common sense. It is no different than title rights to cars or houses or other similar property that cannot remain in the name of the deceased. Eventually all gun owners will die and, without enforcement of this statute, every gun would become unlicensed and untraceable. The fact that gun nuts are getting worked up over this demonstrates the extremism of their views. They don’t bother to spell out their alternative, which is apparently to allow the registrations to lapse and let thousands of guns go unaccounted for.

Therein lies the true agenda of the NRA-theists. They are already suggesting that, due to this law, 2nd Amendment “patriots” should decline to register their guns so that the feds won’t know about them when they die. Their worship of guns is so fanatical that it extends to the afterlife, and they will oppose any registration policy that interferes with the free distribution of guns to anyone who wants them, including criminals, the mentally ill, and terrorists (and, yes, the NRA has opposed legislation prohibiting gun purchases by those on the terrorist watch list).

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What’s next for these lunatics? If guns can remain registered to corpses, then why not allow new weapons purchases to be registered in the name of a recent migrant to the hereafter or a favorite departed uncle? Why not just register all your guns to Jesus? Maybe I shouldn’t give them any ideas.

Or as Dennis Hopper says in Land of the Dead: “Zombies, man…They creep me out.”

More Americans Died From Guns TODAY Than Ebola Ever

Posted by Mark NC on October 24, 2014 at 4:23 pm. 11 Comments :

Is it time to talk about the epidemic of guns yet?

With shootings in a Washington state high school and in Sacramento, California, the fatalities caused just by these events that the media chooses to sensationalize exceeds all of the fatalities in the U.S. from Ebola since that story began. And that’s not even counting the shootings that occur every day in communities across the country.

Nevertheless, our politicians and pundits continue to be obsessed with manufactured threats that have a more theatrical appeal, but are in reality a far smaller risk. The likelihood of any American being killed by Ebola or ISIL remains remote, but guns are killing innocent people everyday. The numbers are staggering. Over 30,000 Americans die by gunfire each year, and today’s news reminds us that way too many of the victims are children.

There is a good case to make that the NRA is more dangerous to Americans than Ebola ever was. So is tobacco, influenza, pollution, and lightening. In fact, you are even more likely to die by your own hand (39,000 annual suicides) than to be killed by Ebola. So whatever you do, don’t get on any plane that you are on.

Our representatives have to stop being cowed by the NRA whose sole mission is to lobby on behalf of gun manufacturers. The influence exercised by the NRA far outweighs their actual clout with the public at large. But they continue to hold our legislators hostage. They even have a role in preventing a comprehensive response to Ebola. It is the NRA that coerced members of Congress into blocking the confirmation of President Obama’s nominee for Surgeon General. Now that we need someone in that post, the obstruction continues to prevent it.

With the upcoming midterm elections there is an opportunity to reduce the NRA’s influence in Congress by voting out Republicans in the Senate. The American people need to recognize the importance of this election and resolve to participate and persuade others to do the same. Failing this we can expect the holocaust of gun victims to continue and spread long after the Ebola threat has been forgotten.

Sharia Law vs. The NRA: The Politics Of Beheading And Guns

Posted by Mark NC on September 27, 2014 at 1:39 pm. 6 Comments :

The news of a grisly murder in Oklahoma has once again brought out the panic peddlers who are always watching out for any gruesome event that they can exploit to advance their nightmare scenarios. While there is still a deficit of actual facts, knee-jerk Islamophobes leap forward to cast aspersions on people whom they regard as universally barbaric. Therefore, any chance to defame a Muslim is quickly pounced on and embellished in the most hostile manner. However, according to the Washington Post, all that is actually known about the murder at this time is that…

“A man who had just been fired by an Oklahoma City-area food processing plant allegedly severed the head of one of his former co-workers and attacked another before being shot by the company’s chief operating officer, according to police. […]

But the FBI, which is assisting in the investigation, has so far found no links to terrorism, the officials said. There was also no indication that Nolen was copying the beheadings of journalists in Syria by the Islamic State, the officials said, adding that they are treating this as an incident of workplace violence.”

The fact that the investigation is in the early stages has not prevented the Fear Merchants from going totally overboard with their hysteria. Undoubtedly Sen. Lindsey Graham, who warned that ISIL is on their way to America to “kill us all,” is probably thinking, “One down, 359,999,999 to go.” And the folks at Fox News are doing their part by boldly declaring in all caps that “SHARIA LAW IS COMING!!!”

Fox posted their warning on their community website, Fox Nation (See the acclaimed ebook Fox Nation vs. Reality to learn more). The alarmist story was sourced to the uber-rightist blog, The Daily Caller, which is run by Fox host Tucker Carlson. The exclamation about the coming of Sharia law was taken from the Facebook page of Alton Nolen, the suspect in the Oklahoma crime, but Fox doesn’t disclose that in their headline or their article. They leave it to appear that there is just some sort of impending doom that is approaching that will foretell the end of civilization as we know it.

The Daily Caller’s article was written by Patrick Howley, a disreputable hack who has confessed to unethical and unlawful tactics to smear his ideological foes. Howley includes ridiculous and irrelevant observations such as the fact that Nolen had a tattoo that read “as-salaamu ataikum,” a Muslim greeting meaning “peace be upon you.” Nolen also had a tattoo of Jesus and a pair of Christian praying hands. So what does that say about Christianity?

Of course, it is utterly absurd to imply that a murder, even if it is determined to be related to terrorism, suggests that Sharia law is about to be implemented in America. What happened in Oklahoma was a crime and will be treated as such. It will never be tolerated as lawful in this country under some warped interpretation of Islam. So even if there are additional crimes linked to terrorists, Sharia law is most definitely not coming to America.

If Americans are determined to be afraid of something, they may want to put this recent crime into perspective. In 2014 so far, there has been one beheading in the United States. Compare that to the more than 8,000 deaths by guns this year. [Estimate based on data from 2012]

That’s more than double the fatalities of 9/11. Which makes it all the more ludicrous that right-wingers are now clamoring for unwieldy and unwarranted measures to address their fantastical notions about domestic terrorism. They propose strengthening border security, spying on mosques, prohibiting immigration from Muslim countries, and even building concentration camps.

However, you will not hear any similar commitment to eradicating the true epidemic of deaths and injuries by guns. To the contrary, conservatives are pushing for more guns to be carried and for fewer restrictions on firearms. They are against regulations to keep guns out of the hands of felons or spousal abusers. They fight efforts to prohibit cop-killer bullets. They oppose smart-gun technology that would prevent unauthorized persons from using a firearm. They are even against laws that prohibit people on the terrorist watch list from purchasing guns.

Nevertheless, a single beheading, as horrific as it is, whips wingnuts into a frenzy, while 8,000 deaths, many of them children, doesn’t move them to lift a finger. This leads to a fundamental question that needs to be asked by the American people and the media: Who represents a bigger threat to the country, ISIL or the NRA?

How Screwball Conspiracy Theories Can Rescue America’s Economy

Posted by Mark NC on May 7, 2013 at 12:19 pm. 6 Comments :

For some time now there has been a delusional right-wing fear that President Obama and his socialist henchmen were plotting to confiscate every firearm in the nation and force the patriopathic gun-lovers of America into servitude. These NRA-theists are the weapons version of Birthers and Truthers, and since they believe that the government intends to seize their armories, I am calling them “Seizers.”

Setting aside the fact that there has been no effort to prevent any law-abiding citizen from exercising their right to keep and bear arms, the psychotic fervor that is present in these fanatics has been so emphatic that it has overflowed the banks of wingnuttery and flooded the media and even congress. One of the latest and looniest theories is that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been buying up bullets as part of a scheme to deplete the market so as to deprive citizens from having access to ammunition. That’s actually a softening of their prior theory wherein they thought that the DHS was preparing for warfare against a rebellious population.

The DHS has explained repeatedly that they are not buying any more bullets than prior administrations and, in fact, their purchases have declined (from 148.3 million in fiscal 2010 to 103.2 million rounds in 2012). But that hasn’t stopped the Seizers from frantically squealing about the imaginary conspiracy. What really makes this notion epically inane is that in a free market the only thing panic buying would do is motivate the manufacturers to increase production to meet demand. And now Fox News has gotten around to reporting this simple economic reality. But not without editorializing it in a false and negative way:

The article interviews an employee of – get this – Stockpile Defense by the name of – not kidding here – Steve Warholic (I wish I could make up stuff this good). This article goes to great lengths to advance the conspiracy theories of the Seizers before eventually getting around to reporting a bit of truth. They lead off with with some familiar Fox fear mongering:

“Massive government purchases, including a plan by the Department of Homeland Security to buy more than 1 billion rounds of ammunition, have further stoked fears – and suspicions.”

However, later in the article they get to what is truly at issue:

“Ammunition manufacturers are reporting record profits and sales, with increases that number in the double and sometimes triple digits. Olin, which owns Winchester, reported last week the company’s first quarter earnings climbed 190 percent over the same period last year.”

There you have it. This whole escapade by the administration was actually an effort to enrich the weapons industry. They were probably in cahoots with the NRA the whole time. Consider this: Since we know that the NRA is not a grassroots organization of citizens, but rather a lobbying group for arms manufacturers, then they have an interest in pumping up sales for guns and ammo. And the Obama administration has been struggling with weak job growth even as the economy has been heating up. So they would welcome anything that puts more people back to work. Therefore, news like like this would benefit both Obama and the NRA:

“Ammunition manufacturers are struggling to make enough and have hundreds of millions of dollars in backorders. They’ve added hundreds of employees and equipment and increased overtime, and, in some cases, are running factories around the clock.”

It’s a win-win. And accomplished courtesy of crackpots who are easily persuaded that their world is falling apart and they must stockpile munitions to protect them from their ravenous neighbors and the jackbooted thugs they used to revere as first-responders.

This sort of economic stimulus could be replicated with any number of other conspiracy theories. Reaching back to some golden oldies, why not reprise the Birther craze, but this time add a profit component that would convince people that they need to get their own documents in order. That would create a demand for paper to print new birth certificates and spur hiring at Kinkos and other quick copy emporiums. Or how about priming the climate change “hoax” in conjunction with oil companies to jump start the sales of gas guzzlers and petroleum products.

With the abundance of lunatic conspiracy theorists out there we could bring unemployment down to 4% in no time if we manage these nut cases efficiently.

[Update] Apparently unsatisfied with the response they got to this article, Fox republished the exact same piece five days later. They are really pushing to make something of this clunker.

The Fox News Paranoid Conspiracy Follies And The Collapse Of Society

Posted by Mark NC on February 19, 2013 at 2:51 am. 11 Comments :

Last year there was a flurry of panicky hand-wringing by notorious conspiracy mongers like Alex Jones and the fruitcakes at WorldNetDaily and Newsmax. Reports that agencies of the federal government had purchased large caches of ammunition set the rumor peddlers tongues to wagging as they imagined brigades of Obama’s stormtroopers marching into the corn fields and trailer parks of rural America gunning down everything in their path.

This sickness infected much of the right-wing crackpot community and spread via chain letters and the blogs of Psycho Chicken Littles who were convinced by Glenn Beck that the End of Days was upon us. At the time, these ludicrous delusions were smacked down by more rational thinkers including those at PolitiFact. But the acutely deranged conservative mind is not an easy thing to assuage. And as a result the tales of doom persisted and are even now being retold by Fox News and its heralds.

The latest incarnation of this horror story is a rehashing of the news that the Department of Homeland Security had purchased more than a billion bullets. In the minds of the nutcases on the right, that is evidence that the DHS is plotting a response to some impending disaster scenario wherein they will be forced to kill every person in America five times. That is precisely what Mark Levin, Sean Hannity’s replacement for Sarah Palin, is terrorizing his radio listeners with:

“I’m going to tell you what I think is going on. I don’t think insurrection. Law enforcement and national security agencies — they play out multiple scenarios. They simulate multiple scenarios. I’ll tell you what I think they’re simulating: the collapse of our financial system, the collapse of our society and the potential for widespread violence, looting, killing in the streets, because that’s what happens when an economy collapses.”

Repent sinners – the end is near. Never mind that in the past four years, since George W. Bush actually did come within a hair’s breadth of collapsing the economy, America’s financial state has recovered nearly everything it had lost. The stock market is higher today than it was before the crash. Housing markets are heating up. Unemployment, though still uncomfortably high, is three points lower than its recessionary peak. None of that, however, has any impact on the FoxPods who are stubbornly certain that we are on the brink of disaster.

What makes this particularly idiotic is that the DHS has fully explained the ammunition purchases and that explanation was even reported by Fox News in a wire story from the Associated Press:

“Federal solicitations to buy the bullets are known as ‘strategic sourcing contracts,’ which help the government get a low price for a big purchase, says Peggy Dixon, spokeswoman for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Ga . The training center and others like it run by the Homeland Security Department use as many as 15 million rounds every year, mostly on shooting ranges and in training exercises.”

The story goes on to note that these munitions were to be used by “more than 90 federal agencies and 70,000 agents.” In addition they are also used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal government’s second largest criminal investigative agency. But this exceedingly reasonable explanation didn’t deter Fox from advancing an utterly insane conspiracy theory. It’s what they do and, dammit, they do it pretty well.

[And for good measure…] Sarah Palin couldn’t resist the urge to make an ass of herself:

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Paranoid Gun Nuts Go Wild

Posted by Mark NC on December 6, 2012 at 10:48 pm. 9 Comments :

The Second Amendment Solutions crowd has been spoiling for a fight with the Obama administration for years. The President nearly outsmarted them in his first term with a wily strategy of doing nothing about guns except for loosening restrictions in federal parks.

However, that tactic did not fool these Bravehearts. They knew that the real plot was to lay low until the second term and then confiscate anything with a trigger. At least that’s the theory of sweaty-palmed freaks like NRA boss Wayne LaPierre and gun rights evangelist John Snyder. This week on Fox News Snyder weaved a tale of firearms confiscation that would drive Ted Nugent into the fetal position under his bed. And of course, Fox Nation published it as their top headline:

The inquiry in the headline as to whether Obama is bypassing congress on guns is based on – well, nothing at all. There have been no statements from the White House, no bills drafted in Congress, no leaked memos, not even any Capital whispers or pillow talk. This entire wannabe controversy was hatched by Snyder and his assertion that he has confidential sources who have revealed the plot to him. He told Shannon Bream on Fox News that…

“There is a move by the gun grabbers in congress to try to ban semi-automatic firearms or certain semi-automatic firearms, but they probably will not get very far with this proposal because there simply is not public support for it. So the gun grabbers probably would then rely on their boy in the White House to use executive order in this way to try to ban them to keep law-abiding citizens to be able to obtain these firearms for legitimate purposes.”

Snyder could not offer a single shred of evidence that any of that was true. Although I’m sure he was sincere about his racist characterization of the President as the “boy in the White House.” It’s one thing for some goon on the InterTubes to make wildly unsupported claims about conspiracies to violate the Constitution, but for Fox News to invite him on the air for a “serious” discussion is irresponsible and a breach of journalistic ethics. Therefore, it was the perfect story for Fox. And Bream was all too happy to shed any facade of reportorial dignity when she closed the interview by saying…

“Well the White House each time this gun issue has come up has said that the President and the White House have no intention at all of depriving Americans of their second amendment rights, but we know that there’s also a U.N. treaty that the U.S. has now evolved in negotiating and hammering out that would also deal with gun rights so we’ll keep a close eye on what you’ve tagged and on that treaty as well.”

Apparently it wasn’t enough to give a platform to a nutjob spewing inane conspiracy theories, Bream had to sweeten the pot by connecting it to another paranoid plot that is also patently untrue. When all is said and done, it is curious why anyone would care much about this. Because even without their guns, right-wingers have plenty of firepower they are able to aim at the President. Later the same day, Fox Nation posted this article featuring Sure-Shot Cheney:

For some reason, the emotionally stunted editors at Fox can’t seem to reference Obama without there being some horrific and bloody threat to his life injected into it.

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