Democrats, Hollywood forging campaign linkage
If you have any questions regarding Hollywood’s close involvement with the democrats nationally you won’t be surprised to learn how closely the industry is linked the Left in American politics. Here’s further evidence of the linkage, and as you might expect, gun control is clearly on their agenda.
The Democratic National Committee and some members of Congress are turning to Hollywood for help with voter turnout and messaging ahead of the midterm elections and 2020 presidential campaign, quietly consulting with a group of actors, writers and producers in Los Angeles, according to Poliico.com.
DNC Chairman Tom Perez, several House members and other top elected officials have already met with the group, formed by members of the entertainment industry in the wake of the 2016 election, that participants liken to a TV writers’ room, complete with producers of such programs as “Veep.” The existence of the group and details of the meetings have not been previously reported.
The group has discussed targeted voter-registration programs with visiting Democrats, as well as the party’s framing of issues ranging from abortion rights to gun control. In one recent meeting, a Midwestern senator sought advice about how to discuss gun control with conservative-leaning voters in his or her state, multiple participants said.
However, participants in the group declined to identify the senator or other elected officials who have visited.
“We’re a messaging strike force, mostly around voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts,” said Mathew Littman, a former Joe Biden speechwriter who helped to organize the group with Stephanie Daily Smith, a political consultant based in Los Angeles.
European Union fines Facebook $122 million
It seems like Facebook is dealing with multiple problems these days, even as it cracks down on gun-related businesses.Europe’s love affair with Facebook may be coming to an end, The New York Times observed.
In July, the European Union’s (EU) powerful antitrust chief fined the social network 110 million euros, or about $122 million in US funds, for giving misleading statements during the company’s $19 billion acquisition of the internet messaging service WhatsApp in 2014.
The fine — one of the largest regulatory penalties against Facebook — comes days after Dutch and French privacy watchdogs ruled that the company had broken strict data protection rules. Other European countries, notably Germany, are clamping down on social media companies, according to various media reports.
The European Union’s antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, said that Facebook had told the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, that the social network would not combine the company’s data with that of WhatsApp, which has more than one billion users.
Yet last August, Facebook announced that it would begin sharing WhatsApp data with the rest of the company. That could allow it to gain an unfair advantage over rivals, by giving it access to greater amounts of data to help support its online advertising business.
Vestager said the fine is proportionate and serves as a deterrent. She said “the Commission must be able to take decisions about mergers’ effects on competition in full knowledge of accurate facts.”
AR-15 armed deputy ends ‘gator, teenage girl standoff
Most Floridians always know that alligators can be everywhere and anywhere.
So they shouldn’t be surprised at the report that a nine-foot alligator chased 15-year-old Jordan Broderick, forcing her to climb up a tree, in Florida’s Ocala National Forest on June 29, according to the Washington Post.
The girl and her family had come to enjoy the creek in the sweltering Florida heat.
But alligators came, as they have done for millions of years, to breed.
One gator in particular cut a path toward the girl floating on a raft, but she thought fast, scurrying up a tree branch hanging over the water. The alligator hissed and waited at the base of the tree.
“My daughter is stuck in a fricking tree and there are gators surrounding her. We can’t get her out. She’s just 15,” Jordan Broderick’s mother told a dispatcher in a frantic 911 call.
“Oh my God. Please hurry! Please hurry!” the mother pleaded near Astor, about 55 miles north of Orlando, on the recording provided to The Post by the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.
But a marine unit was about 20 minutes away, the dispatcher told the mother.
And sure enough, a deputy arrived, armed with an AR-15, dispatching the gator with a shot to the head.
Angry sow bear stars in videotaped encounter
You know how they say the worst possible situation you could be in is between an angry sow bear and her cubs?
Well, that’s sort of where two hunters found themselves one evening recently, during a hunt neither of them will likely be forgetting for a very long time.
Outdoorhub.com has the whole encounter on video.
Caleb Invidiata had his camera rolling to capture this gripping footage of a very angry mama bear attacking him and his friend Shannon Long on the first day of a five-day black bear hunt.
First, they just watched the bears do their thing, until the sow all of sudden looked straight up started to communicating with her cubs that it was time to go, and ambled away.
About five minutes later the mama bear returned.
In the video you see a shot from a GoPro at 0:24, you can see in that shot the dead fall that one hunter fell back into and the bear is jumping up onto trying to get its quarry.
Both hunters survived to share their experience with the website’s viewers.
CO county reports rising tide of CCWs
Boulder County, CO, saw an increase in concealed carry permit holders in 2017, and the sheriff’s office said it has already seen an increase again so far in 2018, The Denver Post reported.
In the report, the sheriff’s office said there are 8,304 active concealed carry weapons permit holders in the county, up from 7,752 in 2016.
More OK schoolsallow staff carry
Another rural Oklahoma school district will allow its employees to carry firearms this fall in an effort to keep students and staff from harm, according to the Tulsa World. The district may be the latest in the growing number of schools adopting policies that permit licensed and trained teachers and administrators to be armed during school hours.
Hartshorne Public Schools’ board of education approved allowing staff to carry firearms in June, but the policy comes with strings attached. Staff have to become Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training certified in order to carry. And the ability to carry is at Superintendent Jason Lindley’s discretion, according to board minutes.
When staff members start carrying next school year, they’ll be among a few in Oklahoma. Okay Public Schools also allows its teachers to carry firearms.
Hartshorne’s decision comes amid a nationwide debate about how to keep students safe in the event of a mass shooting. Some have advocated arming teachers like Hartshorne is doing. Others have advocated for more gun control. For the small Pittsburg County district, it wasn’t an easy decision, Lindley said. It was something the district weighed for two years.
Lindley said mass shootings across the country were what prompted the district to institute the policy.
“We don’t think it’s something that could happen in Hartshorne, but we can’t rely on that,” Lindley said.
He said the rural location of the school district was a key factor in the decisions to allow firearms, noting that urban school districts have armed police departments of their own and large local law enforcement agencies nearby.
The lack of a heavy law enforcement presence leaves teachers, with a firearm, as the last line of defense, Lindley said.
The cost as well as the availability of qualified law enforcement personnel available as first responders in emergency situations is a critical consideration across the country, which leads otherwise reluctant officials to opt for armed teachers.
Anti-gunners seek gun shows closure
Gun control advocates in California led by the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence in July urged the Cow Palace Board of Directors to stop hosting gun shows, citing prior gun convictions of the show’s organizers and a possible link between the company and last year’s mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed 58 people.
The shooter in that incident is accused of illegally purchasing bullets from vendors that he connected with at gun shows in Las Vegas and in Phoenix. The advocates said that the shows may have been operated by Crossroads of the West, the company currently working on a three-year contract with the state-owned Cow Palace.
“The dates and locations of those gun shows correspond to gun shows held by Crossroads of the West,” said Ruth Borenstein, an organizer with the San Francisco chapter of the Brady Campaign.
Illinois county votes sanctuary
The Tazewell County, IL, Board on voted in late June to approve a resolution making Tazewell a Second Amendment sanctuary county, and to place a referendum in the November 2018 ballot that would replace Tazewell County’s elected auditor with a county appointed one.
According to the Washington Times, before proceeding to agenda items, the board invited comments from members of the public and Tazewell County employees.
“Upon taking your elected positions on the Tazewell County Board, you took an oath of office to uphold the Constitution,” said Steve Dennis of Pekin in an address to the board members. “Please don’t let people who are against this resolution prevent you from doing the right thing. The egregious attempt by Springfield politicians to override the Second Amendment is why we need the Tazewell County Board to pass this resolution..”
OR county to vote on pro-gun question
Petitioners collected enough signatures to place a pro-Second Amendment measure on the November ballot in Klamath County, OR, the Associated Press and Herald and News reported.
The media said the measure — if passed — would create an ordinance making it illegal for the county to infringe on a person’s right to bear arms. The ordinance would direct the sheriff to determine if any such laws were in violation.
Supporters of the measure collected 1,382 valid signatures, 11 more than required. It was proposed by Timothy Harris of Sprague River.
Texas FFL indicted for alleged violations
An El Paso, TX, gun dealer has been indicted for allegedly selling firearms or ammunition to someone who could not legally possess either, according to a report at KVIA News.
The report said Jacob Salgado, 31, proprietor at Canutillo Gun Shop, is facing two counts of sales to a prohibited person, two more counts of “aiding and abetting” firearms or ammunition possession by a felon, another two counts of aiding and abetting providing false information on a federal Form 4473 and two counts of failure to keep proper records.
According to the story, the indictment alleges that on May 29 and June 11 of this year, the suspect “helped firearms purchaser in making a false declaration on ATF Form 4473.”
Oregon won’t vote on ‘assault weapon’ ban ballot question
An initiative campaign to ban so-called “assault rifles” in Oregon died after the state Supreme Court ruled that the ballot title was misleading and needed to be changed and referred it to the state Attorney General’s office.
That essentially made it impossible for backers of the measure to gather the required petition signatures by the initiative’s qualification deadline.
Known as IP43, the measure was referred to by Beaver State gun rights activists as the “gun confiscation ballot measure.” The Oregon Firearms Federation (OFF) noted on its website that backers of the initiative “had hoped to exploit fear and ignorance to ban virtually all firearms by labeling everything an ‘assault weapon.’”
The measure sought to ban the sale of so-called “assault weapons” and magazines that hold more than ten cartridges. It would also have required current owners of such firearms to register them within 120 days, or face criminal charges. Otherwise, guns could also be surrendered or permanently rendered inoperable.
This doesn’t mean Oregon gun owners are out of the woods, just yet, OFF cautioned.
“Given the billionaires who fund the gun grabbers we know there will be no shortage of attacks in the future,” the group predicted.
Oregonians also will not be voting on IP44, a proposal to require safe storage of firearms, which was withdrawn by sponsors earlier because they were unable to obtain the required number of signatures to qualify it for the November ballot. By the time the Oregon Supreme Court dismissed a suit challenging the IP44 ruling, there wasn’t enough signature-gathering time.
With the campaign against semi-auto modern sporting rifles dead on the south side of the Columbia River, that leaves only the campaign for an anti-gun initiative in neighboring Washington State alive in the Pacific Northwest.
