 |
The National Rifle Association disarms. The once-powerful group has declared a Pyrrhic victory as the vast majority of state governments have declared gun shops "essential businesses" under stay-at-home orders.
The NRA views the COVID-19 pandemic as a threat to the Second Amendment because anti-gun zealots are hell-bent on denying Americans the right to defend their families and property against the anticipated hordes of sick, hungry and broke Americans ready to riot in the streets and towns all across the USA.
The NRA can take a bow.
Gun shops have been closed only in New York, Massachusetts and New Mexico.
California, Washington, Michigan and Vermont have inconsistent policies, according to the NRA.
It's business as usual for gun shops in the rest of the country.
COVID-19 though may trigger the beginning of the end for the NRA. The group has laid off 60 staffers over the past few weeks, according to Politico.
Those cutbacks are in part because the NRA had to cut its annual meeting gala, which generates millions of dollars, due to COVID-19.
The pandemic also forced the NRA to cancel fundraising events and a slew of programming.
A spokesperson said the NRA is making cuts just like any other non-profit due to the impact of the COVID-19 crisis.
The NRA though was more than just any other non-profit. The group once struck fear into the hearts of political opponents and set a large portion of the Republican agenda.
COVID-19 has cut the NRA down to size.
In a bit of irony, COVID-19 has raised the political stature of New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who has emerged as a powerful crisis manager during the pandemic.
Cuomo, an avid supporter of gun control, is not on the NRA's Christmas card list.
The DC press corps has long griped about the lack of regular press briefings, which were killed off by Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Her replacement, Stephanie Grisham, pitched a perfect game, holding zero briefings during her eight-month stint.
We don't expect the press corps to push new press secretary 31-year-old Kayleigh McEnany, who was Trump's campaign spokesperson, for regular briefings.
Why bother? She's an ardent Trump toady, who burst onto the national scene in 2012 after tweeting about Barack Obama's brother never emerging from his hut in Kenya, which was part of Trump's racist "birtherism" conspiracy.
She then defended her guy in the aftermath of the release of the "Access Hollywood" tape.
She said Trump's Access Hollywood comments were despicable, but he apologized for them.
Her take: Let’s just let bygones be bygones and forge ahead to Make America Great. That's just despicable.
More recently, McEnany defended Trump's lackluster handling of the coronavirus outbreak, saying on Fox News on Feb. 25, "We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here.”
Following the deaths of 14,000 Americans from COVID-19, McEnany joins the White House team.
She'll fit right in with that band of sycophants,
Social media are doing a lousy job removing false claims and misinformation from their sites, according to a survey released April 7 by Oxford University.
Twitter is especially behind the eight ball as about 60 percent of debunked false claims remained on its site without a warning label.
YouTube ranked next at 27 percent, followed by Facebook at 24 percent.
A spokesperson tried to explain away Twitter's poor performance, saying the service rolled out a new COVID-19 policy on March 19. The Oxford researchers used data on their January one.
Twitter is now "prioritizing the removal of content when it has a call to action that could potentially cause harm," said Katie Rosborough.
She said Twitter has now removed 1,100 tweets and challenged 1.5M potentially spammy COVID-19 accounts.
That's great, but what took you so long? Did it have to take a global pandemic to spur Twitter into action?
FIFA is expected to scrap its “FIFA Peace Prize-Football Unites the World” award at its December council meeting. That’s not enough... Big Oil is loaded with cash flowing from the Iran war. Wall Street wants to know how will it spend the windfall... More and more killers of journalists are escaping punishment.
Will White House press secretary Katie Zacharia remain on the job for two or three Scaramuccis?... President Trump reaches a new low with wicked deal to buy diesel from his puppet-master Vladimir Putin... Russian influence operations pump out more than 900 stories in impersonated western media outlets to undermine support for Ukraine.
Donald Trump is 100 percent correct that he has lousy PR but that's only because his policies stink and are hurting Americans... Will billionaires or civil society groups shape the future of AI regulations?... "Evidence in an Age of Doubt" is the timely theme of this year's investigative film festival put on by the 100Reporters group. 
WPP CEO Cindy Rose works to manage shareholder expectations ahead of the Oct. 29 release of financials. Don't expect a miracle turnaround... Kudos to Skydance chief David Ellison for keeping CNN CEO Mark Thompson on the job. Now he has to expend Thompson's contract... Vast majority of Americans want federal government to regulate AI. They obviously don't trust the "super intelligence" president to oversee AI.
Don’t believe what your eyes see and ears hear is the mantra of Donald Trump who claims his propaganda advertising designed to boost his fragile ego are “clearly not campaign ads”... Democratic National Committee steps up outreach to Jewish Americans as antisemitism rises and traditional support for Israel tanks. 
