Ignorant Virgin: Branson relates NRA to the Vietnam war

Time to take a stand against the NRA - Richard's Blog - Virgin.com

See it for yourself with the link above, but below is the text of Richard Branson's relation of the Vietnam War to the US gun rights, training and education group:

"LBJ LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?”

During our days at Student magazine, this is what we used to chant outside of the US Embassy in an attempt to persuade the then President, Lyndon B. Johnson, to bring an end to the Vietnam War. Thankfully our generation succeeded, proving that grassroots action really can make a difference.

Today young people in the US need to ask how many more kids are going to be killed before politicians see sense and introduce a ban on assault weapons. If the youth of 1968 could help stop a dreadful war, then the youth of today can demand an end to the killing of innocent children and stand up to the National Rifle Association.

NRA NRA, how many kids have you killed today?

 

No matter how successful or wealthy you become, it doesn't entitle you to behave as if you have all subjects grasped so fully that you snap that kind of commentary out there. Or, it shouldn't. This is a good example of uninformed activism -- and from a damned clever, driven, persistent and able businessman and a generally likable guy. 

He connects his putrid turn of phrase to assault weapons, but the rhetoric is already of the deep end by that point.

It is too bad an adventurous fellow as he cannot fathom a difference between gun owners and crazy people, and that the NRA is the primary, sturdy group standing between ignorance like his and the confiscation of guns from just about everyone in the US. 

He ought to read more of what the left of America has said before he assumes it is the NRA that encourages killing of innocents. But he won't, since he doesn't need to to be party to their attacks on the members of the NRA. He's rich, therefore he's right.

 

- jR, aka AirFarceOne (follow me on Twitter!)

Media fascism in Oregon: if we can't keep you from reporting, we'll attack you

What I quote and link here looks like a fine example of what I regard as MEDIA FASCISM. It's a war, low and thuggish, with words. Cynical, insincere, knee-jerk, insulting, unfounded, and bitter words.

As the FreedomWorks writer, Jeff Reynolds, opens his post: "This is not a story about policy or legislation. This is a story about journalism, and the all too cozy relationship between 'reporters' and the public officials they're supposed to hold accountable."

 Various media outlets -- blogs and mainstream media -- are shown trying to marginalize a writer mostly to maintain a status quo that suits them, and to mock . 

I'd call it unprofessional, but that's laughable. It is shameful. It shows us, once against, that today the one group it's OK to discriminate against is non-Democrats. As evidenced by clumsy work by the Oregonian and some blogs, it is OK to skew the truth against Republicans, conservatives, Tea Party activists, Constitutionalists, and traditionalists. It doesn't matter what the facts involved are.

Explains Jeff (my emphases): there was "a coordinated smear campaign has been waged by blogs, mainstream news outlets and national columnists against the [citizen] reporter who verified and reported the story. I was famously labeled "the most irrelevant man in Oregon politics" by the progressive blog, Blue Oregon, in a story critical of the original report. Of course, four subsequent stories have been devoted to Mr. Irrelevant by that site - along with a news story in the Oregonian, two columns in the Oregonian (one of which was corrected and then retracted)."

 Do the world a favor: Don't accept as insurmountable fact the problem that most "journalism" today is ruled by a poorly educated, biased, unobjective, agenda-touting pack of needy, acceptance-craving, insular leftists. I refuse to. I refuse to believe that the Information Age that is soaking us in will not recover from information overload, or disinformation overload.  

MEDIA is no longer practicing, with regularity, the work of journalism, certainly not objective reporting without editorializing in what should be "hard news" stories. Here's a very good example of that. 

Read the article here. 

- jR, aka AirFarceOne (follow me on Twitter!)