GUN CONTROL: Political gamble Dems must take

Students like these started it all

A confused and uninformed public has welcomed gun rights political candidates for years, but after the recent wave of shootings, has apparently at least somewhat come to their senses. Let's see now, they muse, which is best, the right of a gun nut to carry his weapons anywhere he or she wishes, or the right of innocent individuals, especially children, to live? Even the lowest double-digit IQ should have chosen the latter, but National Rifle Assn. head Wayne LaPierre has drummed the rights of these ringed-nose followers and the sacredness of the 2nd Amendment into the public for years now.

The new trend becomes obvious with the rash of mass shootings, including the killing of 17 students and staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida six months ago. Here's an example of one candidate's message, Philip Levine, in Florida’s Democratic gubernatorial primary...

“I’m running for governor because I’m a parent who will not stop at anything until we make our gun laws stronger and our children safe.”

To illustrate the difference in attitudes, the number of political candidate ads for gun control has risen from only 559 in 2014 to 18,416 in 2018, a phenomenal jump that would indicate that these contenders are no longer running scared of the NRA. In the races covered there were 57,500 anti-gun-control spots so far, mostly by Republicans. In the Senate, Democrats are picking the gun rights candidates to oppose, although that branch still leans toward gun control opposition. Two-thirds of the American public now wants stronger gun control, and with a Democratic Congress, who knows.

QAnon's strange beginnings

Ever heard of the 4chan site? I hadn't either until I also heard of QAnon, which came up in some research I was doing on Alex Jones. It is described as being "one of the most extreme message boards on the internet," and after viewing it, I would agree, but also adding, downright weird. You can post messages to its board. and people reply like any other social media site, except half of what I read I don't understand but then, I didn't really spend the time. It all started with a small-time YouTube video creator and two moderators of the 4chan website who...

"banded together and plucked out of obscurity an anonymous and cryptic post from the many conspiracy theories that populated the website's [4chan] message board."

They ended up with...

"a Reddit community, a business and an entire mythology based off the 4chan posts of 'Q,' the pseudonym of a person claiming to be a high-ranking military officer."

Some think the mysterious three are doing it just for money, but others believe they are really "Q." Here is another viewpoint...

"QAnon is a convoluted conspiracy theory with no apparent foundation in reality. The heart of it asserts that for the last year the anonymous “Q” has taken to the fringe internet message boards of 4chan and 8chan to leak intelligence about Trump’s top-secret war with a cabal of criminals run by politicians like Hillary Clinton and the Hollywood elite. There is no evidence for these claims."

Read the rest of the NBC coverage here. It looks like one more of those conspiracy theories that you must decide, do I just dump it or take it for what it's worth and make it what I want to? This one does look like it could have longevity. 

Even more on QAnon and 4chan tomorrow

Tomorrow I will share some research I've done on the 4chan site which is responsible for promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey snubs gun control again

Doug Ducey, Governor of Arizona, isn't the brightest politician in the pack, and he has been considered a worse governor than Jan Brewer, if that's possible, but he made a recent move that may just cost him even more votes in November, based on recent progressive moves in Arizona. The liberals are waking up here, tired of living under the conservative mantle of a bunch of gun nuts who love their firearms more than they do the lives of their children. My gut would tell me these are the same people who drown their kids daily in backyard pools.

Ducey was invited to debate gun violence and school safety at a town hall invitation from March for Our Lives Arizona. All other gubernatorial candidates will be there. Jordan Harb, March for Our Lives Arizona director said...

"Ken Bennett [GOP candidate] clearly does not agree with anything we propose, yet he is still willing to have this conversation with our community. I think, ultimately, this shows how much of a coward Doug Ducey is."

Well, we knew how dumb our governor was, now we confirmed that he is a coward. Not sure if this is the way Harb meant it, but Ducey's cowardice stems from his connection to the National Rifle Assn. who heartily endorsed him in his 2014 run for the office. The Arizona gun nuts took it from there and helped put him in the Gov's seat. The question is, as November draws closer, and the NRA slides further into oblivion when it comes to their power, will Ducey, plus the rest of the gun nut candidates across the U.S., abandon the group for greener pastures, which really aren't there.

Is the Conspiracy theory QAnon's explosion on Internet out of control?

This question of 'who is Q" cannot be answered until we know what QAnon is, and so far that is a mystery that only Q knows. As one reporter commented, since it, “first crawled out of the Internet’s churning goo, the theory has metastasised.” In its gooey slime, it has added Donald Trump to the conundrum. Q followers, who call themselves bakers, follow a path of conspiracy theories called "breadcrumbs," basically believing "the US government has been secretly investigating Democrats and the Justice Department will soon reveal compromising information about Hillary Clinton."

The above, alone, would surely seem to associate QAnon with Donald Trump and his attacks on the Democratic establishment. The whole thing got its start on "the 4chan internet forum titled “Calm Before the Storm.” The page link here has a video of a follower that amassed a lot of information if you are willing to spend an hour with it. The narrator emphasizes that QAnon is neither religious nor political and has its followers such as Rosanne Barr and Curt Schilling. At Trump's Florida rally, signs read  “We are Q,” another “WHERE WE GO ONE WE GO ALL.”

Sarah Sanders commented...

“The president condemns and denounces any group that would incite violence against another individual and certainly doesn't support groups that would promote that type of behavior.”

It's hard to tell if she knows something we don't or this is just another of her air-head statements.

In Arizona, the home of conspiracy theories, Q falsely claimed an abandoned homeless encampment in Tucson was a child sex trafficking camp even after local authorities investigated and found no evidence to support the claim. Another incident, unexplained, in June, an armed Q follower blocked an entrance to the Hoover Dam with his vehicle. But this statement from a NY Times reporter tops them all, commenting on conspiracy theories that are usually about evil cabals manipulating world events...

QAnon, by contrast, “is a conspiracy theory in which the good guys - in this case, Trump and his allies - are in charge."

 Michelle Goldberg should just go back under her rock.

There will be more on QAnon.

NRA "mission" a blatant oxymoron

The mission of the National Rifle Assn. (NRA), whether they want to admit it or not, most likely not, is to put as many guns on the street as possible. They can deny this all they want, but over the years it has been clearly established that Wayne LaPierre's NRA works for gun manufacturer's not its 5 million or so membership. These poor slobs eat up LaPierre's rhetoric, passing it around like facts, which most aren't, while gun makers drool over profits. Their stated mission is to protect the 2nd Amendment and the rights of gun nuts. Simply analyzed, it is a glaring oxymoron.

They just filed a claim in New York against Governor Andrew Cuomo that his "blacklisting" is "jeopardizing" their mission. No doubt they did not define their mission as "to put as many guns on the street as possible," which would seem to me to invalidate the charges to begin with. If they chose that flowery crap about the 2nd Amendment, although this may be true, it is not the real meaning about their existence. It is to sell more and more guns and LaPierre and the NRA will never be satisfied until every house in America is armed from a handgun to an AR-15. God help us!

You'll see more on QAnon tomorrow

It seems appropriate to cover this mysterious subject more since there are so many connections between it and Donald Trump, and I do that in my first blog post tomorrow. I would like to see your comments.