Month: May 2013
Why an Angry Obama Is a Good Thing
During the chaotic week of the Boston bomb attacks, Barack Obama finally did something a lot of people had been waiting for: He got angry. In public. In the Rose Garden. It happened after the Senate had shamefully failed to pass a bill, favored by the overwhelming majority of Americans, requiring background checks for gun purchasers … To which I say, Bring it on, Mr. President. Obama’s anger served a larger purpose. It was directed at the plague affecting–no, paralyzing–our public life: the ability of well-funded extremist groups to thwart the will of the overwhelming majority. This is a problem that goes well beyond the gun issue.
— Joe Klein, writing in Time.
GOP Senator Says Background Checks Failed in Senate, Despite 90% Public Support, Because Republicans Want the President to Appear to Have No ‘Juice’
Two years ago, an al Qaeda spokesman encouraged jihadists in the United States to take advantage of the gaping loopholes in America’s gun laws and buy weapons at gun shows where there are no background checks.
“You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check and mostly likely without having to show an identification card,” Adam Gadahn advised al Qaeda followers in a video, before ending on an ominous note. “So what are you waiting for?”
Because of this, the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School and other attacks by crazed gunmen, polls show that tightening background checks to include all commercial gun sales is very popular, as high as 90 percent among all Americans and nearly that high among Republicans, gun owners and even among “members” of the NRA, the gun lobby’s marketing and lobby group.
So why did all but four Republicans vote against a bill to strengthen background checks? The bill’s tea-party sponsor, Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, told the editorial board of a Pennsylvania newspaper that his fellow Republicans voted against the bill, not on its merits, but in order to make the U.S. president appear weak and ineffectual so that he will have little influence over the outcome of the midterm congressional elections next year:
Dumb and Duncan
The South Carolina Republican says statistics is traitors.
He says they only help stockbrokers and corporate raiders.
He says that government numbers
Just make us dimmer and dumber,
So let’s get rid of all them durn economic indicators!
Ted Talks POTUS?
A couple of Hispanic candidates would make the news,
Though the likely ones have some whack-job views.
Still, Rubio we’d prefer
Over a rabid McCarthy-er.
Can you seriously imagine a President Ted Cruz?
