NRA Decapitated after Failing to Think of Some Sort of Self-Defense Method

Gun group unable to identify any way to stand up to government tyranny

July 30: NRA’s head removed … White Dudes for Harris … Biden SCOTUS plan falls short … Israel’s religious rape apologists …

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NRA then-CEO Wayne LaPierre, seen here not at the moment misappropriating NRA funds because he’s busy the American Conservative Union on Feb. 24, 2017. (Photo / Creative Commons.)

A defenseless National Rifle Association (NRA) had its longtime leader ousted yesterday, after the gun-rights group failed to mount any sort of action to defend itself from the government.

A New York State judge yesterday ruled that Wayne LaPierre could no longer serve as CEO of the NRA, and would be banned from the position for a decade.

The historic group used to focus on teaching kids how not to blow their friends’ elbows off, but then shifted its focus to self-defense. In recent decades, the NRA has served gunmakers by suggesting that guns are the way to make homes safe against non-existent crime waves and to hold off a tyrannical government.

But yesterday, the NRA appeared unable to protect itself from the government actually removing its head.

Instead of finding some sort of weapon that might be useful combating the tyrannical government, the NRA consistently resorted to deploying lawyers. When those lawyers failed, the NRA at no point attempted to mount any other sort of defense, let alone one that involved some type of individually carried instrument that might be useful for holding off a tyrannical government.

LaPierre was removed from the NRA after a jury earlier this year found that LaPierre and another NRA leader took millions of dollars donated to the NRA by NRA members who support the organization because it defends their right to have guns in the home to prevent people from taking their money. Wouldn’t want someone taking their money, would we?!?

There’s no evidence that the NRA ever stood its ground against LaPierre’s multi-million-dollar home invasion. LaPierre’s looting of the NRA is a poetic allegory for the fun fact that more people are in danger from people inside their home or social circles than the minuscule number of predators Hollywood and the NRA would have you believe control our streets.¹

E Pluribus for Harris Unum for Harris

She’s not even the official presidential nominee yet, but Vice President Kamala Harris yesterday solved racism.

A Zoom gathering called White Dudes for Harris drew tens of thousands of participants. The historic event is believed to be the first time the force of white men gathering in common cause last night was harnessed for good rather than evil.

Typically, white men uniting has led to the creation of organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Third Reich, the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, slave markets, slave-catching posses, slavery-endorsing Supreme Courts, conspiracies to cover up church sexual abuse, conspiracies to cover up pro/college athletic sexual abuse, conspiracies to cover up media sexual abuse, the Moral Majority, the National Prayer Breakfast, Americans for Tax Reform, Fox News, and Duck Dynasty.

The White Men for Harris Zoom call fundraiser last night totally co-opted but in a good way the successful Black Women for Harris fundraising call last week. 

Last night’s cultural appropriation financially appropriated $3.5 million. Participating stars included Marks Ruffalo and Hamill and Jeff Bridges, who played off his most famous role, saying “I’m white, I’m a dude, and I’m for Harris,” which also a subtle nod to the importance of hiring writers. Also there were Gov. Roy Cooper (D-NC), who just took his name out of contention for vice president; Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who would never take his name out of contention for vice president; former House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), and other non-stars such as Josh Gad and Sean Astin.

Despite the understandable fear with which one might approach anything titled “White Men for [Insert Terrifying Noun Here],” this group and its, uh, sister organization, White Women for Harris, came together for something other than themselves. And they did it with the blessing of the Black Women for Harris who got the ball rolling last week and were inevitably deemed much less interesting than White Dudes for Harris.

A majority of white voters have supported Donald Trump in his two campaigns, which led to the Dobbs ruling that says even white people don’t have a right to abortion.² Polls show white voters continue to support further reducing their legal rights by supporting Republicans who now have their eyes on IVF and contraception, leading to the imminent creation of Voters of Color for White Voters with Brains and its fellow non-profit, White Voters with Brains for Black Voters of Color to Save Us All from Ourselves Yet Again.

The Flaw(s) in Biden’s Supreme Court Plan

Pres. Joe Biden yesterday rolled out his plan for getting people to think he has a plan to deal with the right-wing, corporatist, radical Supreme Court.

The plan’s plan includes several measures that are much more popular than most of the Supreme Court, which is now dominated by religious zealots who accept as Gospal everything but legal precedent and the U.S. Constitution.

In an op-ed yesterday, Biden asked Congress to enact the following changes:

• Impose 18-year term limits on Supreme Court justices

• Set Supreme Court appointments at once every two years.

• Enact a binding code of Supreme Court conduct.

• Amend the Constitution to say that it applies to presidents.

That amendment is Biden’s response to the Supreme Court ruling that presidenting is so hard for Donald Trump that he should get special accommodations excusing him for breaking the law while he’s president. Biden’s amendment would clarify that laws apply to presidents, too.

Sorry, wait.

Biden writes that the amendment “would make clear that there is no immunity for crimes a former president committed while in office.” [Emphasis added for are-you-shitting-me?]

In other words, Biden is letting stand the made-up concept that presidents are above the law while in office. He would alter the Constitution to add the not-there-anywhere-for-248-years concept of presidential immunity. 

Hell, making former presidents liable just gives current ones incentive to never hold an election that might render them former. Which they could legally do because Biden’s amendment doesn’t say the law applies to current presidents.

Another problem with Biden’s plan: Term limits are a double-edged sword. Remember how the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made everyone sad except merch vendors? Under Biden’s plan she would’ve been off the court nine years earlier. (I know, I know, then Pres. Barack Obama could’ve appointed her successor, but that, too, is arbitrary and will go the other way just as often as Republicans steal the presidency.)

Biden justifies his radical changes by citing their popular support (ruh-roes), support by conservatives (ruh-roes), and the current justices playing footsy with right-wing billionaires. That, and a host of recent rulings wildly out of step with the law, the Constitution, precedent, and the brains of people who live in this country.

Biden writes:

“If a future president incites a violent mob to storm the Capitol and stop the peaceful transfer of power — like we saw on Jan. 6, 2021 — there may be no legal consequences.”

Oh noes! That sounds scary! What pray tell might that utterly hypothetical situation be like, because my meager imagination simply isn’t up to the task of conceiving the like of no legal consequences for inciting a mob to storm the Capitol!

We know Biden’s plan isn’t to reform the court because there’s no way Congress will pass it. Which means he’s introducing it for political reasons. Which is fine! Maybe even good!

But impossibility isn’t the only flaw in Biden’s plan. Despite calling his own plan “bold,” Biden missed many a thing of actual boldness. For one thing, Biden didn’t name a single one of the justices allegedly so transgressive that we need to change the entire system to deal with them.

Neither Biden nor the Democratic Party establishment have rallied behind Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) articles of impeachment for billionaire fave Justice Clarence Thomas. There’s no reason to think a “binding” code of conduct will be more effective than impeachment, when even outraged Democrats won’t back the latter.

There’s other shit Biden could’ve proposed:

• Make confirmation-hearing perjury punishable by significant jail time. 

• Reform the vetting process by absolutely totally 100%ally throwing it in the fucking trash.

Democrats continue to trust the system in which the FBI — controlled by the president — “vets” the nominee, knowing that any FBI agent who comes up with something real will spend the rest of their career running background checks on White House au pairs.

The entire system is incentivized to turn up as little dirt on judicial nominees as was turned up by the “vetting” of Brett Kavanaugh. The FBI literally sent tips about him to then-Pres. Donald Trump. Real reform would ensure that the confirmation process is ugly as shit, the way the founders liked their politics, to pre-emptively scare the shit out of history’s Kavanaughs so that they prevent their own nominations with a few discreet words in Pres. George W. Bush’s fellow frat-boy ear.

Politics is supposed to be brutal. Presidents and members of Congress go through long processes in which both sides are supposed to go through the other side’s trash. As I’ve written before about the non-existent oppo on Buttigieg, it doesn’t happen.

So imagine how doesn’t it doesn’t happen for Supreme Court justices. 

After the ugly confirmation process for Thomas — which was ugly because he did and said ugly things — there were calls to reform the Senate’s system. But the goal of that reform was to avoid having people find out ugly things nominees did.

But it wasn’t just Thomas lying about what he did to Anita Hill and others. He also lied about things he literally wrote down on paper. When he couldn’t flat-out lie about having written shit, Thomas lied about his current self’s position on those past views, which his future self immediately undistanced himself from and had violent makeup sex with.

The only consequences for Thomas were positive: Conservative adoration/money/fake friendship. No impeachment hearing. No perjury charges. No reason for future nominees to treat Thomas’s perjury as anything but a road map to the high court.

In fact, Democrats continued to vote for lying Republican nominees. Look who voted for Chief Justice John Roberts. Or, to put it in today’s far more savage terminology, look who normalized Roberts:

• Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE)

• Late Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI)

• Ex-Sen. Mitch Landrieu (D-LA), now dealing with infrastructure for Biden

• Ex-Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT)

• Late Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT)

• Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)

• Ex-Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), now head of NASA

• Ex-Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR)

• Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)

As Biden also writes:

“I have overseen more Supreme Court nominations as senator, vice president and president than anyone living today.”

Um. Congrats? Or as the kids say, weird flex!

I think advertising that he’s part of the problem is meant to bolster his authority on the issue, since he sat on the Senate for the equivalent of two of his proposed Supreme Court 18-year terms. How long was Biden in the Senate? The guy he replaced was named J. Caleb Boggs. That’s right, Biden was in the Senate so long his predecessor was an obviously fictional character created by Mark Twain.

Point being, Biden should know better than anyone how inadequate the confirmation process — and Democratic opposition — have been. 

Hell, he’s never even fully reckoned with is own treatment of Anita Hill, who had the whatever’s-tougher-and-braver-than-balls to testify about Thomas.

As Judiciary Committee chair, Biden allowed senators to attack Hill repeatedly for coming forward with her obviously true account of Thomas’s sexual harassment. 

Biden later called Hill to not-apologize in 2019, telling The View he said he was “sorry she was treated the way she was treated” by, um, treaters, I guess?

This Senate confirmation process that Democrats are not reforming has given us a theocratic Supreme Court. Were any nominees grilled, or even lightly flambéed, about their theocratic views? 

Biden’s plan’s plan isn’t to overhaul the areas where Democrats have fallen down, it’s to create new rules that will make it easier for Democrats not to have to stand up. And, perhaps worst of all, Biden’s plan’s plan doesn’t address the fundamental problem here.

Under Biden’s suggestions, a MAGA electorate will still get us a MAGA Supreme Court. The real and possibly only fix here is politics.

But Democrats continue to support the ideological infrastructure at the heart of the problem: Enabling made-up president immunity, enabling theocracy, worshipping corporate predators, embracing unity instead of the bare-knuckle process that made past Democrats heroes for generations.

The founders gave Democrats all they need, the only thing they need, to have prevented this Supreme Court and to change it in the future: Politics.

The problem isn’t a lack of existing remedies, it’s the reluctance of Biden and his fellow-thinkers to use them.

Venezuela’s (Stolen?) Election Unites Nations in Condemnation, Impotence

Exit polls in Venezuela show that incumbent Pres. Nicolás Maduro lost Sunday’s election, which he has now won. Exit polls were conducted independently, while entrance poll results were counted by Maduro’s folks, who were biased for Maduro and against math.

Maduro’s vote-counters and vote-not-counters say he got a convenient 51% to Edmundo González’s 44%. The centrist party of González claims they got most of the voting records, which show him getting twice as many votes as Maduro, which is sadly only a majority in non-Maduro arithmetic.

Thousands of Venezuelans have come out to protest the allegedly fake results. International condemnation has been swift, as well. Protests are expected to continue today.

The U.S. National Security Council called on Maduro to release the full tabulation so that if there was illegal tampering with the results, Attorney General Merrick Garland can file charges in 2027.

Israel’s Religious Right Rallies for Rape

Dozens of devout conservative Israelis attacked Israeli soldiers yesterday in a violent protest seeking to make rape legal.

At least nine Israeli military reservists are accused of abusing a suspected Hamas fighter in Israeli custody. The reservists are so committed to peace in the region that they allegedly interrogated the fighter intensely enough that he was hospitalized with anal injuries that left him unable to walk.

Interrogations are often directed at the subject’s anus during professional, effective investigations, according to torture experts.

Moved by their love of Yahweh and their conservative, law-and-order ideals, some members of Parliament and other protesters yesterday attacked two of their own army bases where the reservists have been held. The goal of the religious right’s pro-rape faciton was to ensure that the accused reservists are not subject to the democratic legal process, because the reservists were only acting to defend Israel’s status as the only Middle Eastern state that has a democratic legal process.

The protesters were not arrested after breaking into the army base because they’re religious conservatives and not a dangerous cohort such as peaceful college students.

Three Quickies

• Some polling shit you can shoot in your veins. Chaser.

• Kamala Harris’s campaign says she opposes a fracking ban. That could help her in Pennsylvania, which pollsters keep telling us love spiking their groundwater with fracking chemicals. Nationally, opposing a fracking ban will help Harris prevent buildup of excess excitement for her campaign.

• Former Pres. Donald Trump can’t decide whether he’ll demonstrate his decisiveness better by debating Vice President Kamala Harris or not debating her. In a Fox interview last night, he walked back his previous commitment to debate her, which was a walkback of his previous pullout of the one scheduled debate. Now Trump says he’ll “probably” debate but “can also make a case for not.” One thing that won’t be a problem if he does decide to debate: Finding her. Harris has set up her new campaign headquarters and residence together, rent-free, in Trump’s capacious head.

TCB

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Go get ‘em, kids.

1. Having a gun in your home increases the odds someone in your home will get hurt and the likelihood that you’re living with a douche who believes Hollywood crime stories are real life.

2. Which doesn’t mean they don’t still have greater access to abortion, obvi.