Are the Oregon militia members too dangerous to laugh at?

I often succumb to the temptation to mock, or relay the mocking by others, of the efforts of the extreme right wing fanatics who speak with such a loud voice in US politics. Matt Taibbi, while also laughing at the antics of the armed people who have taken over a remote wildlife refuge in Oregon as a stand against government tyranny, addresses the question as to whether this is a good thing.
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The presidential candidates’ religious affiliations

Religion is playing a major role in this year’s Republican primary race, as it generally does in almost every recent election. Nancy T. Ammerman studies the role of religion in politics and has catalogued the religious affiliations of the various candidates and their degrees of dedication to taking past in formal religious observances.
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The Republican reaction to Obama’s gun control measures

Needless to say, there has been a lot of negative reaction from the Republican party and Fox News to president Obama’s modest proposals to curb gun violence. Part of the reason is that they and others are in thrall of the gun lobby. But part of it is undoubtedly because they simply hate Obama and have gone all out to discredit him and oppose anything that he advocates, unless it benefits the oligarchy. This time they focused their ire and poured scorn on, of all things, the tear that he shed when talking about the deaths of elementary school children in Newtown.
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Donald Trump’s shtick

Donald Trump continues to maintain his large lead nationally and in New Hampshire while trailing Ted Cruz slightly in Iowa. Trump’s sustained success since July, despite all the pundits’ repeated predictions that he would soon fade, has created a minor cottage industry of attempts to understand how he does it. One factor is undoubtedly the massive media coverage he continues to generate even as the major media begin to wonder if they are responsible for his success and have been complicit in creating a monster.
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This revolution is becoming a shambles

The armed group led by the sons of Cliven Bundy that came all the way from Nevada and other distant places and has taken over a remote wildlife refuge in rural Oregon near the small town of Burns in the hopes of starting some kind of uprising against the federal government seem to be running into opposition from the very people whom they claim to be protecting from tyranny, the local population. Those people are fed up.
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Democrats take on the gun lobby

Two days ago, president Obama laid out a new set of orders that he has issued on gun control. Here are the details of the measures. Since Congress is largely the captive of the NRA and refuses to countenance imposing even the slightest restrictions on gun availability, he has decided to implement them using executive orders. Although the measures are modest and reasonable, as could have been predicted, Republicans, the gun lobby, and others who think that there should be no restrictions at all are having a fit and denouncing Obama’s executive orders as more signs of his dictatorial tendencies and the first step in a plan to strip all Americans of their guns.
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