Cheney Tells NRA Kerry Will Target Guns
Speech an Effort to Regain Momentum Lost in Dispute Over Assault Weapons
By Mike Allen, Washington Post Staff Writer

Vice President Cheney worked to mend White House relations with gun activists yesterday by warning a National Rifle Association convention in Pittsburgh that Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) would roll back rights of gun makers and users.

”John Kerry’s approach to the Second Amendment has been to regulate, regulate and regulate some more,” Cheney said.

The NRA worked enthusiastically for President Bush in 2000, but the group disagrees with his willingness to sign an extension to the 1994 ban on military-style assault weapons, which is set to expire in September.

Some of the group’s 4 million members, concerned about personal freedoms of all kinds, have also complained about the USA Patriot Act, which makes it easier for the Justice Department conduct surveillance on suspected terrorists, and oppose additional restrictions that have been imposed on air travelers since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The Bush campaign is scrambling to be sure it can count on NRA muscle again this year, especially as some of the states in which hunting is most popular are also swing states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. …

Quoting selectively from past Kerry remarks about the NRA, Cheney said Bush is the only one of the two candidates who ”has shown you respect, earned your vote, and appreciates your support.” …

A Kerry campaign statement responding to Cheney’s speech said the senator ”is a lifelong hunter, supports the Second Amendment and will defend hunting rights.” … Kerry also supports closing a loophole that allows people to evade background checks by buying weapons at gun shows, and would ban the ammunition known as ”cop-killer bullets.” …

NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said in a telephone interview that while the group has differences with Bush, most members “still consider him a friend.” LaPierre said Kerry is ”probably the most anti-Second Amendment candidate in the country’s history,” and would ”go after every semi-automatic firearm in the country.” … The NRA estimates that the nation has 80 million hunters.

Lord knows how important semi-automatic weapons are to hunters. After we have your machine guns, we’re going to steal your granade launchers, too.

I often wonder what NRA members think of Iraq, where every male over the age of 10 owns a semi-automatic weapon. The poster child for the freedom to defend yourself from tyranny. Oh, wait, they’re hunting us. mjh

I added a gallery of photos of protest statements I’ve observed. Send me yours. mjh

Rooftop Revolt – By the People (link to page one for the full story behind this Revolt)

U.S. National Debt Clock

The estimated population of the United States is 293,816,528 so each citizen’s share of this debt is $24,428.18.

The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $1.98 billion per day since September 30, 2003!

FactCheck.org Bush Ad Is ”Troubling” Indeed

The President’s ad recycles bogus claims, then tells only part of the story about Kerry’s position on tax breaks for couples and children.

Summary

A Bush Cheney ’04 ad released April 1 repeats several misleading claims that FactCheck.org has de-bunked before. It also adds something new, saying Kerry repeatedly opposed tax breaks for married couples and families — breaks that Kerry has repeatedly and consistently said he would preserve. …

Overall, Bush’s ad strives to give the impression Kerry plans a massive tax increase on middle-income people, the exact opposite of what Kerry says he’d do.

FactCheck.org Treasury Tax Expert to Bush: Clinton’s Increase WASN’T The Biggest.
Study published by Bush’s Treasury Department contradicts Bush’s campaign.

Summary

In speeches and fundraising appeals the Bush campaign keeps making a distorted claim that Clinton ‘s 1993 tax increase — supported by Kerry — was ”the biggest in history.”

Republicans have been repeating this gross overstatement for more than a decade, but now there’s less justification for it than ever. The GOP claim is contradicted by a study published last year by the Office of Tax Analysis of Bush’s own Treasury Department. …

A tax increase in 1942 boosted federal revenues by 71%, for example, as the US geared up for war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Measured in inflation-adjusted 1992 dollars, Roosevelt’s wartime increase amounted to $73 billion a year, while Clinton’s increase averaged $35 billion a year (average for the first two years.)

The study said that inflation-adjusted ”constant dollars” is probably only the second -best measure of the size of a tax increase. ”The single best measure for most purposes is probably the revenue effect as a percentage of GDP.” That’s Gross Domestic Product, the way we gauge the size of the economy. Clinton’s tax increase isn’t the biggest by that ”best” measure, either. In the period since 1968, the study said, ”the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 was the biggest increase.” That was the tax increase signed by Ronald Reagan, rescinding some of the effects of his huge tax cut passed the year before.

That 1982 tax increase only slightly exceeded Clinton’s in inflation-adjusted dollars ($37 billion a year vs.. $32 billion) but it was much bigger in relation to the size of the economy. The ’82 increase amounted to 4.6% of GDP (average for the first two years) while Clinton’s was 2.7%.

The Vietnam Analogy By PAUL KRUGMAN, NYTimes

Vietnam shook the nation’s confidence not just because we lost, but because our leaders didn’t tell us the truth. Last September Gen. Anthony Zinni spoke of ”Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies,” and asked his audience of military officers, ”Is it happening again?” Sure enough, the parallels are proliferating. Gulf of Tonkin attack, meet nonexistent W.M.D. and Al Qaeda links. ”Hearts and minds,” meet ”welcome us as liberators.” ”Light at the end of the tunnel,” meet ”turned the corner.” Vietnamization, meet the new Iraqi Army. … Remember the domino theory?

And there’s one more parallel: Nixonian politics is back.

What we remember now is Watergate. But equally serious were Nixon’s efforts to suppress dissent, like the ”Tell It to Hanoi” rallies, where critics of the Vietnam War were accused of undermining the soldiers and encouraging the enemy. On Tuesday George Bush did a meta-Nixon: he declared that anyone who draws analogies between Iraq and Vietnam undermines the soldiers and encourages the enemy.

The Gun Group: N.R.A. Opens an All-Out Drive for Bush and Its Views By JAMES DAO, NYTimes

When the National Rifle Association opens its annual meeting here on Friday, it will do more than celebrate hunting, weaponry and the Second Amendment. It will also kick off a vigorous campaign to whip up support among its nearly four million members for President Bush’s re-election.

Before tens of thousands of gun owners at the Pittsburgh Convention Center, the association’s leadership plans to label Mr. Bush’s likely Democratic opponent, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, as a liberal threat to gun ownership. It is a message they will repeat again and again until Election Day, using the Internet, mailings, television advertising and their formidable nationwide network of gun clubs.

”What you see in John Kerry,” Wayne LaPierre, the association’s executive vice president said in an interview this week, ”is a politician that spent his life voting against the Second Amendment. What I see is the same thing I saw in Michael Dukakis and Al Gore. It’s an elitist arrogance.”

[I’d call it ”elitist arrogance” to believe you know exactly what the founders (and Jesus) think. mjh]

It is no accident, N.R.A. officials said, that this year’s convention is being held in Pittsburgh. Two-thirds of the attendees are expected to come from within a 100-mile radius that spans three battleground states: Pennsylvania, which voted for Mr. Gore in 2000, and Ohio and West Virginia, which voted for Mr. Bush.

”These are states where the N.R.A. can make a difference,” said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Keystone Poll at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa.

At the convention, the association also plans to unveil plans for an N.R.A. news company that would produce programs for the Internet, radio and possibly television, Mr. LaPierre said. A daily Internet news talk show featuring a conservative host will begin broadcasting online on Friday. The association hopes to announce acquisition of a radio station within two months, he said. …

The president has said he would sign legislation renewing the 1994 law that bans 19 types of semiautomatic weapons. That almost certainly will not happen this year because of opposition to the legislation in the Republican-controlled House. Many conservatives consider the bill a deep infringement of their rights under the Second Amendment, which they contend gives individual Americans the right to own firearms.

”Gun owners who know the issues know that Bush is all talk,” said Angel Shamaya, executive director of KeepAndBearArms.com, which is encouraging gun owners to vote for anyone but Mr. Bush. ”He’s turned out to be a phony in so many ways, I’m embarrassed I voted for him in 2000.”

The Bush campaign has begun trying to mend fences with gun groups by meeting with members and appointing liaisons to the groups in almost every state. A 27,000 member Sportsmen for Bush group has reactivated. And the president met with leaders of the N.R.A. and an array of hunting and fishing groups at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., last week.

But the White House’s biggest move has been to dispatch Vice President Dick Cheney, a popular figure among gun owners, to the convention, where he will deliver the keynote speech on Saturday …

Clearly, the Bush administration values the rifle association’s help. At last year’s N.R.A. convention in Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush, the president’s brother, told members, ”If it were not for your active involvement, it is safe to say that my brother would not have been elected president.” …

For its part, the rifle association will try to paint Mr. Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran who says he has been a lifelong hunter, as a Kennedy-style liberal who supports strong gun restrictions — a “gun grabber,” in the group’s lingo. …

Mr. Kerry intend[s] to present himself as “a lifelong hunter and gun owner” who believes in protecting the Second Amendment but also supports “common sense” laws restricting military-style assault weapons and requiring gun-safety locks.

If you want to own a gun, you can have a gun. If you want to own 100 guns, you can have 100 guns. The awful liberals don’t really care. But, if you want an assault rifle, bazooka, grenade-launcher, flame-thrower, if your entire life revolves around lead and steel, if you believe you are free and it’s because you own a gun, you may need to have your head examined. mjh