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NRA: Jovan Belcher’s Girlfriend Would Be Alive If She Had A Gun. Well, They Had 8.

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National Rifle Association (NRA) CEO Wayne LaPierre claims that Jovan Belcher‘s girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, would be alive today if she only had had her own gun. LaPierre is dead wrong: there were eight guns in the Belcher-Perkins house. So much for NRA bull.

“The one thing missing in that equation is that woman owning a gun so she could have saved her life from that murderer,” LaPierre told USA TODAY Sports, talking about Kasandra Perkins and Jovan Belcher.

Belcher, of course, is the Kansas City Chiefs linebacker who shot to death Kasandra Perkins, who was just 22-years old, Saturday, December 1, then shot himself to death minutes later.

The couple had a three-month old infant.

“Owning guns is a mainstream part of American culture and it’s growing every day. My God, there’s nothing more mainstream in this country than 100 million Americans who own firearms,” LaPierre says.

Which is utterly pathetic.

Guns shouldn’t be considered part of “culture.” Guns are designed to do one thing, one thing only, and to do it very well: kill. If LaPierre wants to promote guns as “culture,” he’s promoting a gun culture, which is equivalent to a culture of death. So much for the “pro-life” radical right, which isn’t truly pro-life, but pro-birth. And the moment a child is out of the womb, they’re on their own. Like three-month old Zoey Michelle, Kasandra Perkins’ daughter who will now be raised by her grandmother.

“According to Kansas City police, Belcher owned multiple guns, and they were in the house,” USA TODAY reports. “In addition, Sports Illustrated has reported that Perkins went to shooting ranges with Belcher.”

Jack Dickey at Deadspin writes, “Jovan Belcher and Kasandra Perkins kept ‘about eight guns’ in their house and liked to go shooting together, according to a new report from Sports Illustrated.”

So, Wayne LaPierre and the NRA are full of it.

“The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence reminds us that since 1968, when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, over one million people have been killed with guns in the United States,” Daniel Kaufmann at the Brookings Institution, one of the most-respected think tanks in the world, reports. “On average, almost 100,000 people in the United States are shot or killed with a gun annually.”

Noting that “there appears to be substantial evidence that removing guns saves lives,” Kaufmann writes that the Brady Campaign “indicates that 94 percent of gun-related suicides would not occur had no guns been present. Since keeping a firearm at home increases the risk of homicide by a factor of three, it is not surprising that guns are more likely to raise the risk of injury than to confer protection. In fact, they claim that every year there are only about 200 legally justified self-defense homicides by private citizens.”

Kaufmann’s article, written just after the Aurora, Colorado, massacre in July at the midnight premiere of “The Dark Night,” addresses all those arguments gun advocates like to try to use to derail the only sane argument: guns kill.

Making Wayne LaPierre even more full of it.

And he’s using the murder-suicide of a popular sports figure to advance a falsehood.

Disgusting.

“So here are some statistics,” Amy Davidson at the New Yorker writes. “According to the Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice, ‘The data are clear: More incidents of murder-suicide occur with guns than with any other weapon. … In 591 murder-suicides, 92 percent were committed with a gun. States with less restrictive gun control laws have as much as eight times the rate of murder-suicides as those with the most restrictive gun control laws.’ Another study found that the mere presence of a gun in the house increased the chance that domestic violence would escalate to murder six fold’.”

But at least some NFL players have learned from this tragic event.

“At least seven NFL players have turned their guns into their respective team’s security following the murder-suicide involving Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher earlier this month, Sports Illustrated’s Peter King reported on ‘Football Night in America’ on Sunday,” ESPN reports.

According to the report, at least one player handed over multiple firearms, telling his team’s personnel that he didn’t trust himself with the guns.

Yeah.

Pretty sure football is far more mainstream than guns.

Let’s see LaPierre, and the NRA, fight that.

 

Via: Doktor Zoom at Wonkette

Image composed from Wikimedia Commons

 

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‘What First Amendment?’: 140 EPA Workers Suspended After Opposing Trump Agenda

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Roughly 140 Environmental Protection Agency employees have been placed on administrative leave after signing a letter warning of political interference in the agency’s work—prompting critics to accuse the Trump administration of ignoring their First Amendment rights.

Calling the letter “a remarkable rebuke of the agency’s political leadership,” The New York Times reported on Monday that more than 270 EPA employees had signed the public letter “denouncing what they described as the Trump administration’s efforts to politicize, dismantle and sideline the main federal agency tasked with protecting the environment and public health.”

On Thursday, the Times reported that 144 workers had been suspended, other news outlets put the number at 139.

In that public letter, signatories said they are joining in “solidarity with employees across the federal government in opposing this administration’s policies,” and that they “stand together in dissent against the current administration’s focus on harmful deregulation, mischaracterization of previous EPA actions, and disregard for scientific expertise.”

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They detailed their five primary concerns, including, “Undermining public trust,” “Ignoring scientific consensus to benefit polluters,” “Reversing EPA’s progress in America’s most vulnerable communities,” “Dismantling the Office of Research and Development,” and “Promoting a culture of fear, forcing staff to choose between their livelihood and well-being.”

On Thursday, the 140 or so employees who allegedly had signed the letter with their official titles received emails saying they had been placed on leave for two weeks “pending an administrative investigation,” The New York Times reported.

“The Environmental Protection Agency has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November,” Brigit Hirsch, an EPA spokesperson, said in a statement, according to Bloomberg Law News.

“The letter, addressed to EPA head Lee Zeldin, alleged the agency has used its communication platforms to ‘promote misinformation and overtly partisan rhetoric,'” Bloomberg added. “One example the signatories cited was a March statement laying out the administration’s deregulatory agenda, in which Zeldin referred to ‘the climate change religion.'”

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Nicole Cantello, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 704, called the move “blatant retaliation,” The Hill reported.

“We don’t swear an oath to the Trump administration, we swear an oath to the Constitution and so we don’t feel like we violated that oath or that we did anything wrong by signing this letter,” she said.

Cantello, on social media, wrote that EPA workers “have the right to freedom of speech, just like every other American.”

Addressing EPA Administrator Zeldin directly, she said: “See you in court.”

Some denounced the administration’s move.

Attorney Mark Zaid, who handles national security and whistleblower cases, wrote: “Apparently retaliation has already begun. This is what defines this Administration.”

He also offered to “provide pro bono consultation to examine current situation.”

The New York Times’ Trip Gabriel asked, “What First Amendment?”

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Image of Lee Zeldin via Shutterstock

 

 

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‘Stop Talking’: Johnson Suggests Jeffries Is Lying in Marathon Budget Speech

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House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in an apparent attempt to prevent the Republican Speaker, Mike Johnson, from passing President Donald Trump’s massive budget bill in the dead of night, has been delivering a speech on the floor for over six hours, and may break the record of 8 hours and 32 minutes set in 2021 by then GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

Speaker Johnson reportedly allowed minimal time for debate on what Trump calls his “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” which cuts Medicaid by about $1 trillion, and forces cuts to Medicare and SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, by hundreds of billions of dollars while carving out tax breaks that largely favor the wealthy. An estimated 17 million people could lose insurance as a result of the legislation.

Once Leader Jeffries concludes his remarks—which he began around 5 AM—Johnson will put the bill to a final vote, and he’s anxious to get the legislation to the President’s desk before Trump’s arbitrary July 4 deadline.

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“What is contemplated in this one big, ugly bill is wrong,” Leader Jeffries said, as NBC News reported. “It’s dangerous, and it’s cruel, and cruelty should not be either the objective or the outcome of legislation that we consider here in the United States House of Representatives.”

Jeffries also called it “cruel” to cut Medicaid.

“Republicans are trying to take a chain saw to Social Security, a chain saw to Medicare, a chain saw to Medicaid, a chain saw to the health care of the American people, a chain saw to nutritional assistance for hungry children, a chain saw to farm country and a chain saw to vulnerable Americans,” Jeffries added.

Speaker Johnson, speaking to reporters, appeared displeased.

“If Hakeem will stop talking, we’ll, we’ll get the job done for the American people,” Johnson, using the Democratic Leader’s first name, told reporters.

“It takes a lot longer to build a lie than to tell the truth,” Johnson claimed. “So he’s really spinning a long tale in there, but we’re excited. The people will see the effect of this bill—the extraordinary legislation.”

Johnson offered no evidence to support his accusation.

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“It’s going to get the economy humming again, really, at a record pace, and it will help every American,” he added.

“So the sooner we can get to it, the sooner the Democrats will stop talking, we’ll get this bill done for the people, and we’re really excited about it.”

Critics blasted Speaker Johnson.

Walter Kimbrough, a three-time HBCU president, responded by posting a meme quoting the famous historian Alexis de Tocqueville, that reads: “It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Special Place in Hell’: Top Dem Slams ‘Cult’ of ‘People Who Take Food Away’ From Kids

 

Image via Reuters 

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Democratic Strategist Warns Trump Could Try to Impose Martial Law Before 2026 Midterms

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Well-known veteran Democratic strategist James Carville is out with a second dire warning about President Donald Trump and the 2026 midterm elections.

Earlier this week, Carville, a political consultant and strategist since the 1970s and now a political commentator, warned that Trump might try to rig the 2026 elections in one way or another—including, he suggested, by possibly trying to cancel them.

On Wednesday night, he offered up another possibility: martial law.

On NewsNation (video below), Carville predicted a “Democratic blowout” in this November’s gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, and that President Trump will be forced to see the writing on the wall.

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“I think he’s gonna read the election,” Carville said. “And I think he’s going to see this big, beautiful bill, is about 25 points underwater. It’s going to be 30 points underwater,” Carville added, referring to the Republican budget bill that guts Medicaid and Medicare, and is likely to pass the House and head to Trump’s desk for a July 4 signing.

“He’s going to see a massive defeat coming, and he’s going to try to do anything he can to extricate himself in that defeat,” Carville warned.

“And I would not put it at all past him to try to call martial law or declare that there’s some kind of national emergency in the country, or anything like that, because the hoofprints are coming, you can hear ’em, and they’re gonna get a shellacking in November of ’26.”

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Mediaite noted that “Bill O’Reilly and Stephen A. Smith also joined the panel discussion, with O’Reilly mocking Carville’s mention of ‘martial law,’ calling it a ‘scare tactic’ and arguing the economy will dictate the midterms.”

On Tuesday, Carville spoke about Trump with former CNN journalist Jim Acosta.

“I don’t put anything past him, nothing,” Carville warned. “To try to call the election off, to do anything he can. He can think of things like that that we can’t because we’re not accustomed to thinking like that.”

“You know people come up to me all the time and say, ‘James. I’m really scared,’” Carville told Acosta on “The Jim Acosta Show.”

“I said, ‘you should be, you have every reason to be scared. Don’t kid yourself,’” Carville added.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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