Last Call

It's no secret that African-Americans are the most vocal supporters of gun control laws in the country and for good reason:  black men are six times more likely than white men to be victims of a gun-related crime, and eight times more likely to be the perpetrator.  As a black man, I find both statistics horrifying.

Little wonder then that the NRA in 2013 is depending on minority outreach to black neighborhoods.  The effort is lead by activists like Colion Noir, who makes this argument:



He basically saying that if there's any group that needs the protection of the Second Amendment and should be arming themselves, it's guys who look like me.  And yes, for hundreds of years, black folk have been victimized.  If this sounds familiar, it's because Noir is making a variation of NRA knucklehead Larry Ward's argument that "If slaves had owned guns, there wouldn't have been slavery". 

But the twist here is that Noir's bad guy is the federal government.  Throw that into the mix and you have the bog standard boilerplate of the GOP's outreach to black folk:  the government is enslaving you, it can't protect you, it has abandoned you, so you you rely on yourself.  This would have more impact if the actions of the GOP weren't to actively remove the government's ability to protect people by cutting law enforcement, cutting programs to assist the poor, cutting education dollars and teachers and school equipment, and slashing voting rights and gerrymandering the House.

Sad, really.  But that's the plan:  since white guys aren't selling guns to the shrinking black middle class, maybe black NRA spokesmen like Noir can.

You're just a customer, after all.

My Advice For The GOP

It's really simple.

Stop talking about rape.  Ever.  You only make it worse.

In criticizing controversial comments made by former Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin, a California GOP leader ceded Friday that pregnancies by rape are rare "because it's an act of violence, because the body is traumatized."

"That was an insensitive remark," Celeste Greig told the Daily Democrat. "I'm sure he regretted it. He should have come back and apologized."

Greig is president of the conservative California Republican Assembly, a GOP volunteer organization that Ronald Reagan coincidentally once called "the conscience of the Republican Party."

However, in shades of Akin, Greig then added: "Granted, the percentage of pregnancies due to rape is small because it's an act of violence, because the body is traumatized. I don't know what percentage of pregnancies are due to the violence of rape. Because of the trauma the body goes through, I don't know what percentage of pregnancy results from the act."

Granted, Ms, Greig, your ignorance of science, biology, and law makes you disturbingly unqualified to head pretty much any other organization other than a group of conservative Republican morons.

Republicans everywhere:  when you feel the need to give a "scientific" explanation for your staggeringly stupid, uninformed, and completely wrong beliefs in order to give yourselves more credibility, choose instead to keep your damn mouths shut.  You'll get more votes.

Here's another piece of advice:  rape is rape.  It's a horrific, destructive act.  Getting pregnant from rape is not a cool bonus prize from God, and the traumatic experience of rape does not cause a woman to not get pregnant.  Get those two things through your rebarred concrete skulls and your party might even survive another 10 years.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Venezuela's Vice President says that President Hugo Chavez's health has taken a significant turn for the worse, and that he is "fighting for his life" following cancer treatment.
• President Obama blasted Congressional Republicans in his weekly address, saying that the current sequestration cuts now in effect must be replaced by "smart" cuts and balanced reforms.
• House Republicans reportedly will introduce an immigration bill next week that will grant citizenship to undocumented immigrants only if they go to the back of the line through existing channels.
• The US State Department's initial report on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline indicates initial approval of the project as environmentally acceptable.
• A federal judge has cut Samsung's billion-dollar patent award to Apple nearly in half, and is ordering a new damages trial on appeal.