They’ll wake up in China!
And shame on me for being shocked, but really I am.
The RNC has a new ad criticizing President Obama for “a string of defeats” in Congress. As they catalogue those defeats, they show the President with one of the Newtown mothers, Nicole Hockley.
So the Republican Party is blaming President Obama for the failure to pass gun reform!
From “A Shameful Day in the Senate,” Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast:
“Every strong political movement, besotted with the fragrance of its own power, hits the point of overreach, and the pro-gun movement hit that point yesterday in the morally repulsive Senate vote on the background-checks bill. We all know the old cliché that the National Rifle Association has power because its members vote on the guns issue, while gun-control people aren’t zealots. Well, Wayne LaPierre and 46 craven senators, that ‘majority’ of the Senate, have just created millions of zealots, and as furious as I am, I’m also strangely at peace, because I’m more confident than ever that the NRA will never, ever be stronger in Washington than it was yesterday.
“You cannot oppose the will of 90 percent of the public and expect no consequences. You can’t have people saying what Rand Paul said, that monstrous comment of his about Newtown parents being “props,” and think that you haven’t offended and infuriated millions of people. You can’t introduce amendments that encourage more interstate transfer of weapons and give it the way-beyond-Orwellian name ‘safe communities’ act and think that karma will never come back around on you. And you can’t sneer at the parents of dead 6-year-olds and expect that God isn’t watching and taking notes.
“Sickening. The whole thing. The four cowardly Democrats, too. Max Baucus, Mark Begich, Mark Pryor, and Heidi Heitkamp. Heitkamp won’t face her voters again for five years. Baucus has been around long enough to be able to be bigger than this. Begich and Pryor, who face reelection next year, have the least lame excuses of all, but they are cowards too. They have to know they did the wrong thing. If Joe Manchin could do what he did—and trust me, I’m from West Virginia, and I know Joe, and our families knew each other, and the whole thing. If Manchin could do what he did, from a state every bit as tough on this issue as theirs, these four pygmies really have to be ashamed of themselves.”
Poll after poll shows that 90% or more of Americans support universal background checks for gun purchases. And that includes solid majorities of NRA members and Republicans. Yet even this, the most popular and least controversial of gun reforms, seems doomed, unable to get out of the Democrat-controlled Senate, let alone the GOP House.
Sahil Kapur writes today at Talking Points Memo:
“Politically, Democratic leaders are in a lose-lose predicament. If they somehow squeeze background checks through the Senate (it’ll still have to pass the House), their vulnerable members will face the wrath of the NRA. If the legislation fails, leaders will anger and demoralize their liberal base, which is demanding meaningful action on guns.”
It seems to me that if this legislation fails, the anger and despair and frustration will rightly extend well beyond the liberal base. Background checks are not just a liberal cause, they are supported all across the political spectrum.
Kapur names four Dem senators who won’t vote for background checks because they are up for re-election in 2014: Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Max Baucus of Montana. I hope they lose their seats — they don’t deserve the extraordinary honor and power of being a senator.
Jewish tradition says that if you save one life, you save the whole world. I can’t imagine that universal background checks won’t save at least one life. If I lost my Senate seat, but knew that I’d saved a life because of my vote, I’d consider that an excellent trade-off and be proud and at peace for the rest of my life. And, given the lop-sided polling, I believe these senators can do the right thing and win in 2014 anyway.
It may be inevitable that crazies like Adam Lanza will do us harm, but it’s not inevitable that cowards will lead us.
Rand Paul is fighting in the Senate to give full constitutional rights to fertilized eggs. Yet at the same time, he’s going to filibuster any gun legislation Harry Reid brings to the Senate floor, legislation that might save the lives of, you know, actual already-born children like those killed in Newtown.
Marco Rubio, fearing that he might be out-maneuvered for 2016, just jumped on the filibuster bandwagon with Paul, along with Ted Cruz and Mike Lee.
“Not to give me a vote on this [the assault weapons ban] would be a major betrayal of trust.”
California Senator Dianne Feinstein speaking about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
“Spineless pols spit on the graves of Newtown victims by not pushing for assault weapons ban,” Mike Lupica, New York Daily News
From “How the White House silenced gun control groups,” Reid J. Epstein, Politico:
“President Barack Obama’s gun control agenda is looking more doomed by the day, but gun control advocates still haven’t said a word to complain.
“That’s no accident.
“The White House knew its post-Newtown effort would require bringing key gun control groups into the fold. So the White House offered a simple arrangement: the groups could have access and involvement, but they’d have to offer silence and support in exchange.
“The implied rules, according to conversations with many of those involved: No infighting. No second-guessing in the press. Support whatever the president and Vice President Joe Biden propose. And most of all, don’t make waves or get ahead of the White House.”
In the first election to national office since Newtown, Robin Kelly has defeated Debbie Halvorson in the Dem primary for Jessie Jackson, Jr.’s House seat. Winning the Dem primary in Chicago means you will win the general, so Kelly is going to Congress.
Kelly had been graded “F” by the NRA, while Debbie Halvorson had an “A” rating.
Mike Bloomberg’s super PAC Independence USA ran over $2 million in ads supporting Kelly, and gun control was really the only issue in the race.
“You’re safe now; your parents love you.”
Officer William Chapman to a little girl he found at Sandy Hook Elementary School breathing and with a slight pulse, as he carried her to an ambulance. She did not survive.
From “Reliving Horror and Faint Hope at Massacre Site,” Ray Rivera, NYT
FL Sen. Marco Rubio said on Fox News today that Congress won‘t have time for gun legislation in this term.
I thought if Newtown didn’t change things, then nothing will. So now I think nothing will.
What we need is for gun owners and non-gun owners to come together and align themselves against the nut jobs who don’t just want appropriate weapons to hunt or protect themselves or shoot for fun at a range, but want military arsenals to fight the government.
Embattled Farmers 