Category Archives: Current Events

This Confirmation Hearing Is Going To Be Good!

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Numerous Teapublicans have already stated that they will not support the nomination of former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense. Set aside for a moment that tradition dictates that a president has the right to choose whom he pleases for his cabinet, it’s going to be really entertaining to watch Teapublicans attack one of their own.

Why, you may ask, would they attack a Republican who is qualified for the position and share many of their own beliefs? A man who is a decorated war hero?

It seems that while still in the Senate, Hagel had a nasty habit of telling the truth a little too often. For example, he dared to say that our invasion of Iraq was all about oil – in contrast to the Bush administration’s official position that we were “bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East.” Hagel was also against the surge of troops in Iraq, fearing that so many troops might drag Iran into the war. Worse yet, Hagel is said to be “weak on Iran” because he opposed the Bush administration’s attempt to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

In doing so, Hagel said that, though he fully supports Israel, he swore to uphold the interests of the United States first.

How dare he take his oath of office so seriously? Didn’t he realize that Israelis and their Jewish-American supporters were watching? Didn’t he understand that his position could cost Teapublicans votes? Didn’t he know that the US is supposed to support everything the Israeli war hawks want, no matter how much it inflames the situation in the Middle East?

Whatever your position on the issues, the confirmation hearing is going to be fascinating. So pull up a chair and a bowl of popcorn and turn on C-Span. The Teapublican questioning of Hagel is going to be entertaining. Having watched Hagel for a number of years, I’m convinced he’ll give a lot better than he gets.

Gavel Envy?

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Ever notice Speaker of the House John Boehner’s enormous gavel?

The thing must be a foot and a half long and weigh a couple of pounds. Which leads me to wonder why would he choose to wield a gavel that looks like it belongs to a circus clown, or in a kangaroo court?  Certainly he must be compensating for something. The question is what? Lack of manhood? Lack of power?

Personally, I’m betting on both.

Boehner is on record as saying his job is the worst job in Congress. Given the fact that he doesn’t believe in compromise (he can’t even bring himself to say the word), it’s little wonder he finds the job so difficult. Yet, when he had the opportunity to hand his oversize gavel to someone else, his oversize ego wouldn’t let that happen. So here we are, back to 2010 all over again; a recalcitrant House majority with an uncompromising leader who says he will no longer negotiate with the president. What could possibly go wrong?

The 112th Congress finished with approval ratings hovering around 10 percent. With the Tea Party caucus and Boehner’s leadership, the 113th could reach zero.

The Worse-Than-Do-Nothing Congress.

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In 1948, President Harry Truman labeled the 80th Congress the “Do Nothing” Congress since it refused to pass most of the bills of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration and the Truman administration. Instead, it focused on passing a few bills to benefit big business.

Believe it or not, the recently ended 112th Congress was worse!

Not only was the 112th unproductive. It was counter-productive. At several points in the last two years, its approval rating among voters was 10 percent. That’s right, 10 percent! That makes it even more unpopular than communism which has an approval rating of 11 percent in the US.

Among the 112th’s few accomplishments was lowering the credit rating of the US government for the first time in history. By blustering and balking at raising the debt ceiling and threatening to pay debts that Congress had already spent, it nearly collapsed the world economy. And instead of focusing on creating jobs and improving the US economy, it spent most of its time trying to discredit President Obama.

It passed no bills to build infrastructure, to increase exports, to bring jobs back home from overseas, to reform immigration, to regulate the type of military-style weapons used in the Newtown massacre, or to bring fairness to our tax codes.

Indeed, the 112th passed the fewest bills ever.

The 112th rabidly talked of lowering the deficit and reducing the national debt, but it succeeded only in kicking the can down the road for 11 months. In doing so, it created an artificial “fiscal cliff” that nearly dragged us back into recession. Teapublicans in the 112th bragged that they didn’t know the meaning of compromise. Dominated by a rabid Tea Party caucus led by likely escaped mental patient Michele Bachmann, the 112th even refused to follow its own leadership.

Incredulously, it even refused to vote for financial aid for the victims of Hurricane Sandy! An inaction that prompted several of its national leaders to say that if you donate to GOP campaigns, you must be “out of your mind.”

So goodbye, 112th! You will be forgotten, but not missed.

UPDATE: Following its failure to negotiate a long-term solution for the “fiscal cliff,” Congress’ approval rate is now in the single digits. Understandably, Congress is less popular than head lice and cockroaches! 

“Fiscal Cliff” Bill Includes More Largess For Wall Street.

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Avoiding the “fiscal cliff” should have been a simple matter of extending the Bush tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans. After all, this was the central issue in the presidential campaign. But the GOP (Guardians Of Privilege) have never passed up an opportunity to take from the poor and give to the rich.

So buried in the bill are a few very expensive gifts for the rich and the powerful.

For example, Section 322 is a $9 billion provision that allows banks and multinational corporations to defer taxes when they engage in “active financing.” Their lobbyists claim it’s necessary to help them compete overseas. But critics say that it’s a merely another windfall that encourages the banks and manufacturers to create more jobs overseas.

Yet another payoff to Wall Street is Section 328 which extends tax-exempt financing for the area around the former World Trade Center for another year. Originally intended to help fund reconstruction following 9/11, much of the financing has been used to build luxury apartments, instead. It even helped finance the construction of Goldman Sachs’ new headquarters (as if they actually needed the help).

Of course, news of the bill’s passage sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average soaring. As a result, hedge fund managers and the other Wall Street executives can rest assured that they’ll be in line for seven figure bonuses again this year.

So congratulations, fellow taxpayers. Thanks to lobbyists and the GOP, we just gave the wealthy and the powerful a late Christmas gift.

And all we got in return was the shaft!

NRA Exposed!

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The National Rifle Association began as an organization dedicated to preserving hunting and to support target shooting as a wholesome activity for young people. Its origins go back to a time when our nation was largely rural and hunting was more than a sport. It was a way to put food on the family table.

That NRA no longer exists.

Today’s NRA is merely an ideological lobbying group for gun manufacturers. The NRA’s opposition to a proposed international arms treaty is proof. The United Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty is designed to control the illicit trade of small arms to international terrorist groups and drug cartels. The text of the proposed treaty reaffirms the right and responsibility of any State to control the transfer of conventional weapons within its territory.

The treaty would have no affect on the sale of guns in the US or our 2nd Amendment right to own guns.

Yet the NRA is vehemently opposed to the treaty. In an attempt to block it, the NRA leadership has lied to its membership, saying the treaty is a “stealth attempt to circumvent the 2nd Amendment.” The NRA claims that it will result in black-shirted thugs breaking in your doors in order to confiscate your guns. According to NRA leaders, the treaty is the first step in allowing the new black Hitler (Obama) to take away all of your freedoms.

You may ask, “Why would the NRA make such outrageous lies?”

The answer is simple. The proposed treaty could conceivably limit the sale of expensive assault weapons around the globe. Of course, that would be bad for the large gun manufacturers that pay the salaries of NRA leadership.

While that may seem cynical, it’s nothing compared to the arms industry following mass murders in the US. Rather than view events such as Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson, Aurora, and Newtown as tragedies, the gun industry sees them as opportunities. Each massacre results in dramatic increases in gun sales…particularly for the type of weapons used for the killings.

After Tucson, the sale of 9mm Glock handguns soared. After Aurora, the gun sales in Colorado spiked. And after Newtown, gun sales are off the charts. The makers of high-capacity magazines for AR-15 assault rifles sold 3.5 years worth of clips in just 3 days following the massacre! And in 2012, Ruger broke its annual sales record by early August.

With its sponsors cashing in on every tragedy, is it really any wonder the NRA’s answer to gun violence is for more people to buy guns? With so much money at stake, and so many assault rifles and semi-automatic handguns already in the hands of Americans, any form of common sense gun control will be nothing short of a miracle.

NRA Living In Fantasy World.

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Showing a willful failure to grasp reality, the NRA today called for armed guards at every school in America. It’s an attempt to set the way-back machine to the 19th century – a time when “justice” came from the end of a gun.

It simply doesn’t work in the 21st century.

Armed guards at schools won’t be able to deal with body armor-clad lunatics armed with semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines who have the element of surprise in their favor.

Arming teachers is an even worse idea. Teachers should be focused on one thing: educating our children. Untrained people with guns are more likely to add to the chaos of an attack than to end it. Of course, there’s also the question of access to guns. If the teachers keep guns readily available to use against a potential intruder, the guns are too likely to fall into the hands of inquisitive children. And if the guns are locked away in safes, they will be inaccessible when they’re needed most.

So in answer to Wayne LaPierre and the rest of his cowboy wannabes:  No, the answer to gun violence is not more guns. The only realistic answer is to diminish the paranoia that has led ordinary people to arm themselves against criminals, their neighbors, and their government. We also need to carefully limit access to those weapons that allow the criminally insane to shoot large numbers of innocent people easily and quickly without even having to stop to reload.

Who’s Really Behind Gun Violence?

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Certainly the NRA and other gun rights groups deserve a lot of the blame. Over the past 30 years, they’ve evolved from organizations intended to preserve hunting and to promote gun safety into lobbyists for gun manufacturers.

But the real blame for increased violence belongs to those who have fostered paranoia. Paranoia about crime. Paranoia about minorities and immigrants. Paranoia about a potential financial crisis. Paranoia about non-Christians. Paranoia about a world catastrophe. Even paranoia about our own government.

The loudmouths on Fox News Channel and right wing radio have convinced the weak-minded that non-white, welfare-abusing “takers” are out to get them and the fruits of their labor. In their little minds, Democrats and liberals are destroying the United States. They believe that our nation is headed toward bankruptcy and socialism or worse.

The result has been a dramatic spike in sales of “tactical” weapons (aka military-style assault rifles and shotguns) and semi-automatic handguns since 2009. There has also been a six-fold increase in non-Islamic domestic terrorist groups since 2009. And we now have thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of “preppers” who are stashing food, water, weapons and ammunition in preparation for what they consider the inevitable failure of our nation.

Moreover, the vast majority of gun sales and paranoid activity has taken place in the Southern US, mostly since the election of our first black president.

Coincidence? I think not.

With Each Mass Shooting, The NRA Has More Blood On Its Hands.

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The National Rifle Association is fond of saying that increased gun ownership reduces gun violence. Indeed, on the day of the Newtown tragedy, the lead story on the NRA website was headed “More Guns, Less Crime in Virginia.” The story quoted statistics from a Virginia Commonwealth professor that show gun sales in Virginia have climbed 73 percent since 2006, while the number of violent crimes involving guns have dropped by 27 percent over the same period.

Assuming those numbers are accurate, they don’t provide a true picture of gun violence in the United States. In 2007, the US ranked number one in gun ownership with 88.8 guns per hundred people. The next closest country was Serbia with 58.2 guns per hundred people. Our closest neighbor, Canada, ranked 13 with only 30.8 per hundred. And Mexico ranked 42nd with 15 guns per hundred people.

If more guns equals less gun violence as the NRA suggests, why then do we rank among the world’s leaders for gun violence, with more gun deaths than every European nation and Canada?

In the last decade approximately 270,000 people were shot and killed in the US. Moreover, according to FBI statistics, 8,583 of 12,664 murder victims in 2011 were killed by firearms.

True, gun deaths in the US have been dropping since the 1980s and 90s when crack cocaine turned our cities into virtual war zones, but the US has few peers when it comes to gun ownership or gun violence.

We have the NRA to thank for that.

Since the 1980s, the NRA has spent millions for lobbyists to liberalize gun laws. It has rewritten conceal and carry laws making it easier to carry a concealed weapon. It helped end the Clinton-era ban on assault weapons. It has mounted legal challenges to every single gun control law. It has fought background checks and gun registration. It has helped promote ever more lethal guns and ammunition. It has even pushed to legalize silencers for “hunting.”

One has to ask the question, who are the NRA members planning on hunting?

Is It Finally Time To Talk About Guns?

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Every time there is a mass shooting, the National Rifle Association, Fox News Channel, right wing radio loudmouths and the GOP say, “Now is not the time to talk about gun control.” They claim that doing so would be disrespectful to the victims.

Seriously? Talking about measures to prevent more victims is disrespectful?

Given that we’ve just experienced yet another mass shooting, this time in an elementary school, I think any reasonable person will now admit that the time to talk about guns is finally here! When small children, teachers and school administrators are targeted, we must finally examine the role of guns in a civilized society.

To start the conversation, allow me to make a few observations:

1 – Outside our military, no one in the US needs a military-style assault rifle. These weapons have no purpose other than to kill people.

2 – Almost no one needs to carry a handgun. Handguns are virtually useless as a means of defense. If an attacker is armed, and has his weapon drawn, it’s already too late to draw your own weapon. Moreover, if you’re carrying a handgun, you may be all too tempted to use it; in a fit of anger; in a personal crisis; or in a moment of fear.

3 – Guns in the home are only useful for defense if they are readily accessible. However, if they are easily available for the adults who own them, they are also available to children in the home.

4 – Guns are far too easily obtained by the criminally insane. Any non-felon can walk into a gun shop and purchase as many guns and as much ammunition as he can afford. The only regulation is that the buyer pass a quick background check. Worse yet, anyone can purchase guns and ammunition at one of thousands of gun shows without any restriction at all! (40 percent of guns are purchased this way.) It’s time to change the gun show exemption.

5 – A national registry of the owners of handguns and assault weapons is not a threat to anyone’s freedom, except those intent on causing harm. There are far too many guns in the hands of US citizens for any “black-shirted anti-second amendment thugs” to take them away from us. The benefits of being able to quickly and easily track guns used in the commission of a crime far outweighs any potential inconvenience to the gun owners.

6 – Dramatically reducing the sale of handguns, assault weapons and large capacity magazines will eventually be rewarded with fewer mass shootings. It may take a while, but it will gradually take these weapons of choice out of the hands of the criminally insane.

As important as reducing the availability of weapons that have no purpose other than to kill people is the need to moderate our national paranoia. Despite claims by the far right, the UN is not going to take away our freedoms. And given our enormous military budget, we have no one to fear but ourselves.

Congratulations, Teapublicans. You won…for now.

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By threatening to filibuster her nomination, Teapublican Senators John “McNasty” McCain and Lindsey Graham forced UN Ambassador Susan Rice to withdraw her name from consideration as the replacement for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

But before you begin your celebration, consider this: Rice isn’t the only one to lose.

Since Rice is the person most qualified to lead US foreign policy, our entire nation loses. Moreover, since she is a woman of color, you have further damaged the Teapublican brand with the very people who cost your candidate the presidency in last month’s elections. You have proven, once again, that you are more interested in partisan politics than fairness and doing what’s best for our country.

So go ahead, Teapublicans. Keep up your bullying. Keep pushing the interests of the wealthy and multinational corporations over those of ordinary people. Keep attacking women, gays and minorities.

You may enjoy a small victory today. But you’re not going to like your party’s future.