A HOLLYWOOD ANSWER TO GUNS

Why didn’t we think of that?

We figured Hollywood would have the perfect answer to the gun control debate roaring after the worst mass shooting in the country in Las Vegas on Oct. 1.

“The murderous members of the NRA,” singer Nancy Sinatra tweeted, “should face a firing squad.”

So after 59 were killed by the shooter, she would have the estimated 5 million members of the National Rifle Association also taken out.

“Hi Nancy Sinatra,” conservative political commentator Dana Loesch tweeted in return, “hasn’t there been enough death for you? God bless.”

Before taking down her post, the singer had a Twitter exchange with another incredulous follower.

“[Your] violence is noted!” the user wrote. “Tweeting something vile. I’m not even a gun person but I don’t generalize about every [one] who has a gun as murderous.”

“I didn’t say every one,” Sinatra responded, “I said the ‘murderous members of the NRA.”

“Oh okay,” Washington Free Beacon staff writer Alex Griswold tweeted back, “Sinatra doesn’t want to execute every gun owner, just those in the NRA, no biggy.”

Whew, glad she cleared that one up.

He wears it well

One of the most vulnerable members of the U.S. Senate in the 2018 election was the least effective Democrat in advancing agenda items toward becoming law during the last Congress.

Joe Donnelly, who is in his first term after a 2012 upset win when his surprise Republican opponent, Richard Mourdock, referred to pregnancy from rape as “something that God intended,” was ranked 44th out of 44 members of his party during the 114th Congress, 2015-2016, according to the Center for Effective Lawmaking.

The center scores members based on 15 “indicators of effectiveness” such as the number of bills sponsored and how far they progressed toward becoming law. The more significant bills counted more, and the scores were adjusted based on criteria such as the member’s seniority and whether the lawmaker was in the majority party.

Trailing Donnelly among least effective Senate Democrats were Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, who retired this year, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Jeff Merkley of Oregon.

Apparently, Indiana’s junior senator wears the “least effective” tag well. According to the report, he was in the top three least effective senators in his party during the 113th Congress.

Perhaps emblematic of the party’s 2016 presidential results, former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida was the 185th least effective member of her party in the House among 193 members. The worst of the two Tennessee Democratic House members was Jim Cooper of Nashville, who ranked 177th out of 193.

The beat goes on

The supposedly unbiased major networks of ABC, CBS and NBC continue to show why so many Americans have turned away from the former big three during evening news shows.

In September, according to the Media Research Center, they gave President Donald Trump 92 percent negative coverage. If you can imagine, that’s worse than their 90 percent average since Inauguration Day.

Using six major topics of coverage (two-thirds of overall coverage on the administration), North Korea, immigration policy, post-hurricane disaster response, the NFL kneeling controversy, the attempt repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act and Cabinet officials using private jets, the report showed the Affordable Care Act activity and the private jet use had 100 percent negative coverage by all three networks.

Trump’s immigration policy had 96 percent negative coverage, and his North Korea dealings had 95 percent negative coverage. Despite the administration’s almost seamless assistance after hurricanes in Texas and Florida, his hurricane disaster response still received 86 percent negative coverage.

And, although a late-September CNN poll said more Americans believed NFL players who knelt during the national anthem were doing the wrong thing compared to those who thought it was right, the president scored his “best” mark with only 81 percent negative coverage.

Certainly no agenda here

We promise we’re not making this up, but an Amherst College offering this fall is a course in which students try to discern why women are becoming more conservative.

“Contemporary Debates: Women and Right-Wing Populism,” according to the course description, will “explore the consequences of neoliberalism, cultural conservatism, Islamophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiments for women of different social and economic strata as well as women’s divergent political responses.”

So, in the course description, you already know the instructor’s point of view: Women are becoming more conservative because they favor free-market capitalism, are anti-immigrant, are Islamophobic and, if we guessed, are pro-life and pro-traditional marriage.

The required texts include Susan Faludi’s “In the Dark Room” about a transgender individual who underwent sex reassignment surgery at the age of 76, Arlie Russell Hochschild’s “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right” about investigating the political choices of the conservative right, and Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” about a dystopian society that treats women as property of the state.

Not surprisingly, the course is being offered through the Massachusetts school’s Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies Department.