Month: July 2012

Bill Kristol Breaks with the Republican Party on Guns, Says People Do Not Have a Right to Assault Rifles

Jon Ponder

art-ar-15-rifle

James Holmes was armed with an AR-15 semiautomatic assault weapon. He’d added a 100 bullet drum, which was theoretically capable of killing 50 or 60 people a minute. Police say the gun jammed, however, so Holmes switched to another gun that was less effective. Even so, he killed or wounded 70 people.

He also had a shotgun and two Glock handguns with him.

“All weapons he possessed, he possessed legally. All clips he possessed, he possessed legally. All ammunition he possessed, he possessed legally,” Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said last week.

Does the right to own assault weapons supersede the rights of Americans not to be mowed down in movie theaters? It does, according to the NRA, the entire Republican Party and some Democrats. For them, the right to bear arms trumps even the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

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Bloomberg Asks What Obama and Romney Propose to Do About Guns

Buck Banks

You know, soothing words are nice, but maybe it’s time that the two people who want to be President of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it, because this is obviously a problem across the country. And everybody always says, ‘Isn’t it tragic,’ and you know, we look for was the guy, as you said, maybe trying to recreate Batman. I mean, there are so many murders with guns every day, it’s just got to stop. And instead of the two people — President Obama and Governor Romney — talking in broad things about they want to make the world a better place, okay, tell us how. And this is a real problem. No matter where you stand on the Second Amendment, no matter where you stand on guns, we have a right to hear from both of them concretely, not just in generalities — specifically what are they going to do about guns?

— New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in an interview with the New York Observer, regarding the candidates’ responses to the massacre in Colorado early this morning.

Pres. Obama’s Top 50 Accomplishments

Jon Ponder

The fact that Washington Note writers Paul Glastris, Ryan Cooper, and Siyu Hu felt it was important to come up with a list of Pres. Obama’s top 50 accomplishments is emblematic of two countervailing political factors in the Obama era.

Taxes are the lowest they have been in 30 years, and the rate of spending growth is radically slower under Obama than it was under Big Government Republicans like Reagan and the Bushes.

First, it is demonstrates how adept the right wing message machine has become at rewriting history in real time as it happens. For example, Fox viewers are outraged at the “fact” that Obama has raised taxes while simultaneously accelerating government spending at a rate unparalleled in history.

Both of these two seemingly indisputable Fox News talking points are false. In fact, taxes are the lowest they have been in 30 years and spending growth is radically slower under Obama than it was under Big Government Republicans like the Bushes and Reagan. (Politifact: Obama has overseen “the lowest annual increases in spending of any president in 60 years.”)

But some of the responsibility for Republican propagandists’ success in distorting the president’s record lies with Obama, his top aides and, especially, the White House political shop. If Team Obama had been telling their story effectively all along, there would be no need for this list.

In any case, you’ll find the list of the president’s top 50 accomplishments at the Washington Note website. Here are the top 10:

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Republicans Kill Bill That Would End Tax Advantages for Shipping U.S. Jobs Overseas

Jon Ponder

Republicans in Congress prove once again that they are in power to push the interests of their corporate sponsors and billionaire benefactors, not their unemployed, about-to-be-foreclosed-upon constituents:

Senate Republicans on Thursday killed a measure backed by President Barack Obama that would encourage companies to bring overseas jobs back to the United States.

The measure being pressed by Obama’s Democratic allies is rich with political symbolism, but whether it would have had much practical impact on decisions by companies to “outsource” jobs to lower-wage countries is open to question.

Democrats brought the measure to the Senate floor in concert with political attacks on Mitt Romney, whose private equity firm, Bain Capital, promoted the practice of outsourcing jobs to countries like China and India.

The bill would forbid companies from deducting the expenses of moving workers or operations overseas from the U.S., and would offer a 20 percent credit for the costs of shifting workers back home.

Romney Explains Why He Won’t Release Tax Returns — The Obama Oppo!

Buck Banks

In the political environment that exists today, the opposition research of the Obama campaign is looking for anything they can use to distract from the failure of the president to reignite our economy. And I’m simply not enthusiastic about giving them hundreds or thousands of more pages to pick through, distort, and lie about.

— Mitt Romney, in an interview with National Review, reiterating that he won’t release tax returns for years beyond 2010 and 2011.