Too Progressive

Following up on a story I posted yesterday about the NRA reportedly hiring and deploying spies to sabotage work of sensible gun law organizations like The Brady Campaign, looks like the story has made it’s way into the MSM, and rightfully so:

Also, Brady Campaign President Paul Helmke addressed the reports yesterday afternoon on the Brady Blog. The story is also addressed on The Brady Campaign’s home page.

An investigative report uncovered that a volunteer activist in the gun violence prevention movement was, in actuality, spying on the movement for more than ten years for the National Rifle Association. She spied on and betrayed victims of gun violence who were active in the movement, and the NRA paid her to do it.

Brady President Paul Helmke wrote in his blog “When the National Rifle Association asks its members for their next contribution, they might want to disclose how much of that money will be spent to spy on gun violence victims and their families.”

Clearly they don’t have enough to do with their time or their money, since they’re apparently hiring “spies” to “penetrate” organizations such as The Brady Campaign and other organizations which work to pass sensible gun laws (you know, the kind that would keep assault weapons and rocket launchers and machine guns out of the hands of people who CLEARLY shouldn’t have them.  (Read also: Virginia Tech).

This is the story of two Marys. Both are in their early 60s, heavyset, with curly reddish hair. But for years they have worked on opposite ends of the same issues. Mary McFate is an advocate of environmental causes and a prominent activist within the gun control movement. For more than a decade, she volunteered for various gun violence prevention organizations, serving on the boards of anti-gun outfits, helping state groups coordinate their activities, lobbying in Washington for gun control legislation, and regularly attending strategy and organizing meetings.

Mary Lou Sapone, by contrast, is a self-described “research consultant,” who for decades has covertly infiltrated citizens groups for private security firms hired by corporations that are targeted by activist campaigns. For some time, Sapone also worked for the National Rifle Association.

But these two Marys share a lot in common—a Mother Jones investigation has found that McFate and Sapone are, in fact, the same person. And this discovery has caused the leaders of gun violence prevention organizations to conclude that for years they have been penetrated—at the highest levels—by the NRA or other pro-gun parties. “It raises the question,” says Paul Helmke, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, “of what did she find out and what did they want her to find out.”

To all of those paranoid Republican bloggers whining and moaning because of some snub they have fabricated in their minds by Obama upon the wounded American troops in Germany, please shut the hell up.

Not like it’s a big surprise or anything.  David Donnelly, Director of Campaign Money Watch does make an excellent point, though:

According to the group’s analysis, 124 fundraisers have raised money for both Bush and McCain. These former Pioneers and Rangers have raised a minimum of $25.95 million for McCain’s presidential campaign, the analysis found.

“Senator McCain has been working hard to distance himself from an unpopular president, but he is relying on the same network of big money donors and fundraisers in his run for the White House,” said David Donnelly, Director of Campaign Money Watch. “Given that McCain and Bush have both pulled water from the same well, it’s hard to see how he would pursue policies other than those that have handsomely rewarded Bush’s donors over the past eight years.”

“I am an illiterate that has to rely on my wife.” - John McCain

[h/t NLS]

It’s supposed to be funny.  It’s supposed to be witty.  It sometimes plays on the dimwitted people it’s making fun of.  That having been said, can everyone (especially Democrats, because we’re smarter than this) please cease with the calls for boycotts and chemical warfare against The New Yorker over a satirical image (pictured right) that appears on the cover of the magazine’s current issue.  Please?  Seriously, when I first heard about the “mass outrage” over this, the first thing I thought of was the woman (seen below) who stood in front of McPherson Square metro last Summer protesting after an article in The Onion claimed that the U.S. planned to re-hang Saddam Hussein.  Are you all really that dimwitted?

Potential Republican VP Eric Cantor continues his assault on all things that make sense by once again calling for offshore drilling.

“If we in America demonstrate that we are serious about unleashing our energy resources, we will send a significant signal to the global markets that the supply issue will be addressed . . . ,” Cantor said during a news conference at a local gas station.

Cantor said more drilling in the United States will send a signal to the global markets that the U.S. is not so dependent on foreign sources of oil.

Cantor stood in front of the Village Exxon station at Three Chopt and Patterson Avenues to make his plea. He was joined by two other Republican officials, Del. William R. Janis of Henrico County and Henrico Sheriff Mike Wade, and by John Cox, who owns an Ashland trucking company.

Cantor went on to declare that drilling should be party of an energy “plan”that also includes, what else, “clean coal.”  Haha.

So not only is he using oxymoron’s like “clean coal” but he’s also advocating that we pursue an energy “plan” that pretty much everyone agrees won’t have any affect on gas prices what so ever.

Mr. Cantor, how about we invest more resources into real alternative forms of clean energy rather than some fictional BS?