So, Rush Limbaugh took President Obama to task for
politicizing the recent massacre in Roseburg, Oregon.
He noted:
…the
people who spearhead things like this, like Obama, and whenever there are
elected Democrats, they run out there at the first sign of trouble and try to
politicize it in capitalize on it. That’s the right word. Why would anybody
want to capitalize on it? Who does? You need to ask yourself who is it trying
to capitalize on it? I can guarantee you the vast majority of them will have a
D– a capital D next to their name if they are on the ballot.
Why are they politicizing this? Why did Obama jump out in
front of a camera instantly, if not to shape the conversation? By attacking the
NRA and Congressional Republicans he was trying
to exculpate all of those who commit gun violence in the country. Like,
in Chicago, IL where they have very strict gun control laws.
It’s about shifting the blame, but especially about shifting
it away from the criminals who are committing the crimes. If most of the
criminals who commit the crimes belong to one particular group, the purpose of
the blame-shifting must be to exculpate them, even to save their reputation.
And yet, by not holding them responsible for their actions
and for saying that their actions merely expose the guilt of others, the
President is giving them license to do what they have been doing. He is making
their crimes into political gestures, actions that he can use to advance his
political agenda.
It’s about who is going to take the blame. Is the NRA
responsible for committing the gun crimes in America? Are Republican
congressmen guilty of pulling the triggers in Chicago, Philadelphia and
Baltimore? If not them, who?
While we are at it, we should allocate a portion of blame to
the civil libertarians who have wanted to make it nearly impossible to commit
psychotics to psychiatric hospitals involuntarily. We suspect that the Roseburg
shooter had serious psychiatric problems. Everyone who knew him thought so. And
yet, he needed far more treatment than could have been given with his or his
mother’s acceptance.
One suspects that those who oppose involuntary commitment did
not want to produce murder and mayhem across the country… from Aurora, CO to
Sandy Hook, CT to Tucson, AZ. Yet, when you promote a policy you are
responsible for the consequences, whether or not you expected them.
By blaming it all on guns and the NRA, Obama is also telling
policymakers that they bear no responsibility for the consequences of their
policy proposals. In this regard, looking at the state of the Middle East, he
must have been addressing himself.
Finally, Limbaugh made an even more salient point:
Obama
embarrassed for his country? Wants more gun control? The guy just cleared the
decks for Iran to get a freaking nuclear weapon and he’s embarrassed of this
country?
While he is leading a war against the NRA and Congressional
Republicans, Obama is funneling money to Iran, the better to allow it to buy
more, better guns. And he is allowing Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.
Obama is the one who should be embarrassed, but how do you
embarrass someone whose default mode is: shameless demagogue.
Obama is responsible for nothing. He will never be held accountable. The Republican Party keeps destroying America and keeps getting re-elected. Explain that to me. Valerie Jarrett tells Obama nothing is his fault, so it's the truth. Obama destroys his opponents, while offering no ideas himself. He is a demagogue. This will keep going on until he leaves office. More and more all the time. Lawlessness. No one will stand up to this guy. He might as well confiscate all the guns. I can't think of anything this Obama could possibly do that would lead people in his own party to oppose him. -$$$
ReplyDeleteA cute idea, mentioning Rush Limbaugh and President Obama and only calling one a shameless demagogue.
ReplyDeleteSomeday perhaps we'll find out that Obama has been in the pocket of the NRA all along, playing the good-cop, bad-cop routine to increase gun and ammo sales.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/09/04/gun-sales-new-legislation-sales/71703118/
Another recent article reminds us about Australia, but somehow Americans hava a paranoia gene that exceeds those descended from England's emptied prison cells.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/10/how-australia-and-britain-tackled-gun-violence.html
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WOULD IT WORK IN THE U.S.?
Following the theater shooting Aurora, Colorado, John Howard, the conservative former prime minister who enacted Australia's new gun laws, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times arguing that Australia could serve as a model for the U.S. when it comes to curbing gun violence. "Few Australians would deny that their country is safer today as a consequence of gun control," he wrote. But he admitted that there are very different cultural and legal circumstances in the United States:
Our challenges were different from America’s. Australia is an even more intensely urban society, with close to 60 percent of our people living in large cities. Our gun lobby isn’t as powerful or well-financed as the National Rifle Association in the United States. Australia, correctly in my view, does not have a Bill of Rights, so our legislatures have more say than America’s over many issues of individual rights, and our courts have less control. Also, we have no constitutional right to bear arms. (After all, the British granted us nationhood peacefully; the United States had to fight for it.)
Still, gun-control advocate Rebecca Peters, who campaigned to tighten Australia's gun laws, argues that the U.S. could take some cues from other countries' successful efforts to combat gun violence — such as banning assault weapons, expanding background checks, and increasing waiting periods — without implementing gun-control laws as strict as Australia's. "When you're talking about reducing motor vehicle accidents, you don't only rely on seat belts, you don't only on speed limits, you don't only rely on highway design, you don't only rely on motor vehicle standards, but you have a set of them," Peters told ABC News. "Similarly, they're a set of measures that together constitute regulation to prevent gun violence."
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Oh my goodness, a talk show host and a big bad special interest group are too much to our vaunted leader!!! Let's get rid of them both and save our democracy. "They are on the wrong side of history." Good lord our president is a shameless narcissist. Who fills him with these lies? Rush and Lapierre must be playing politics, while Obama is a king of principle. This is our president who is on the road somewhere campaigning or behind a microphone ever goddam day about something. It's ridiculous. By all means, let's enact gun laws that criminals won't follow. We'll be so much safer. Just like Obamacare was going to get rid of people without health insurance. Let's pass a gun law so we can find out what's in it. -$$$
ReplyDelete$$$: By all means, let's enact gun laws that criminals won't follow.
ReplyDeleteGreat logic! How about lets stop enacting laws against political corruption, since we know politicians won't follow them. Why make the president follow laws since he might just break them? Or against insider trading, since we know insiders can't help themselves. Did arresting Martha Stewart really help reduce insider trading?
If you want to call out Obama for shamelessness, how about refusing to prosecute a single banker after the 2008 economic meltdown.
On vigilant justice, I don't think shooting all the fraudulent Wallstreeters and investment bankers is going to restore our economy, but it would make the next generation of bankers a lot more boring.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/untouchables/
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/23/untouchables-wall-street-prosecutions-obama
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PBS' Frontline program on Tuesday night broadcast a new one-hour report on one of the greatest and most shameful failings of the Obama administration: the lack of even a single arrest or prosecution of any senior Wall Street banker for the systemic fraud that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis: a crisis from which millions of people around the world are still suffering. What this program particularly demonstrated was that the Obama justice department, in particular the Chief of its Criminal Division, Lanny Breuer, never even tried to hold the high-level criminals accountable.
What Obama justice officials did instead is exactly what they did in the face of high-level Bush era crimes of torture and warrantless eavesdropping: namely, acted to protect the most powerful factions in the society in the face of overwhelming evidence of serious criminality. Indeed, financial elites were not only vested with immunity for their fraud, but thrived as a result of it, even as ordinary Americans continue to suffer the effects of that crisis.
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But fortunately Obama hasn't taken away our guns, so we can take justice into our own hands after the next economic crisis, right?
Obama is the Goldman-Sachs president, Ares.
ReplyDeleteAres Olympus @October 3, 2015 at 10:34 PM:
ReplyDeleteYou attack someone's logic with no logic of your own. So what's the solution? Ban politics?
Gun control people are idiots. Certifiable. I can hardly suffer the well-meaning, well-intentioned ones anymore. They have no idea what they are talking about.
A firearm is an inanimate object. It cannot act on its own. It requires human agency. Let's stop pretending all will be well in the world once there are no more guns. Such a world will be far, far worse.
The American relationship with the gun is ingrained in our culture. It's here to stay. Try to take them away and you'll see carnage on a scale you've never witnessed before. I think I'm a pretty even-tempered, law-abiding citizen, at least for the most part. No government official will ever receive one of my firearms from me willingly. It's going to take brute force, which will be met commensurately. There are many like me. The Second Amendment is there for a reason, and it's the second one for a reason. The Constitution is not a cafeteria plan. I have a right to protect myself from people who mean ill. I have shown nothing to anyone, in any way, that demonstrates I am not fully competent to defend myself, and own a firearm. In the absence of mental incapacity, I should be left alone, and have access to purchase items for my personal protection (read: don't give me the bazooka bullshit). If my mental incapacity is to be questioned, I want to see credentials, empirical evidence of the societal threat, a fair process, and the assumption of goodwill. That's the reason we are allowed concealed carry in "shall issue" states.
So Ares, what you're really saying is that human beings cannot be trusted with firearms. That's your politics. Just be straight about it. And if you say human beings can't be trusted with guns, think of all the things they shouldn't be trusted with. And start enacting those policies. Quite frankly, by extension, I don't think a lot of these looney mass shooters can be trusted with video game consoles and violent video games. Should we ban those, too? Oooooohhhhh, but that's free speech, which is the First Amendment. It trumps all the others, right? Okay, since we're going in order, why should I care about someone else's right to prevent search and seizure? What does that have to do with me? I have nothing to hide. But what if the government comes after me, and I don't have anything to hide? With the scope of today's federal laws, they'll find something.
You assume that a firearm is a bad thing in and of itself. That's preposterous. Let me know how that works out for ya when you hear "The police are only minutes away."
As for the Obama and his shamelessness thing, where is the equivalence between prosecuting financiers and an individual right to keep and bear arms? What the hell are you talking about, man? The Obama Justice Department could've prosecuted all the corrupt, horrible financiers they wanted to once they got into office. How many did the prosecute, Ares? How many? And you favor taking away firearm ownership from law-abiding citizens? You have no conception of justice.
And by the way, Obama doesn't care about laws. And insider trading is a notoriously difficult crime to prosecute.
Do you own a firearm, Ares? I've got a sense that you like economic crises. It fulfills your beliefs about your fellow human beings, and gives you something to bitch about. After all, you're just waiting for the world financial system to implode, right? Pretty dark thing to wish for...
IAC, that's a long reply.
ReplyDeleteI don't know where the political middle ground is on gun control. What's most curious to me is that some people apparently feel safer with guns, and other people feel safer without guns.
No, I've never owned a gun, best I can do is BB-gun target practice with my brother as a teen, and it wasn't that exciting to me.
Its hard for me to imagine conditions where I could use a gun to protect myself or someone else. The standard heroic picture is seeing a mad man in a public place using a semiautomatic weapon taking down people left a right, and heroic me pulls out my conceal and carry and taking him out with one shot, and not hitting anyone else.
There was a shooting in my neighborhood a few weeks ago, first time in my lifetime, a thief walked into an unlocked home shot an old man twice without word or warning, once in the arm and the leg, perhaps didn't want murder charges? He then took the man's wallet and fled. The old man was lucky, and how did the theif know the man lived alone? What if someone else was home, and grabbed a gun, what would have happened?
So if you were also in that house and very quiet, you could have shot the thief dead. I wonder how many shots it takes to stop a person from shooting back? And what if the thief had a bullet proof vest? What if you miss?
Or perhaps if you surprise him from behind and while holding up the gun, ready to shoot, tell him leave. But what if there's a second thief somewhere close? Perhaps even looking in the window or around the doorway, and another gun ready?
Its messy business to consider all the possibilities, and to feel confident with the ability to kill over the possibility of being killed or escalating a situation and getting someone else killed. I can imagine most thiefs are cowards, and might back down as soon as any sign of resistance, but you never know.
Mostly I'd feel safer by the ability to talk, without threatening a thief with instant death. But drugs are another matter, and I can imagine many criminals are either on drugs, or in a painful withdrawal for a lack of drugs, and such people might do drastic things.
Anyway on "gun control", I'll let the experts work things out. I heard my Senator Klobuchar was interested in sponsoring some bill. What does she support?
http://www.ontheissues.org/Domestic/Amy_Klobuchar_Gun_Control.htm
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* I did favor extending the ban on assault weapons. Unfortunately, we didn’t prevail.
Voted YES on banning high-capacity magazines of over 10 bullets.
Congressional Summary:
•The term 'large capacity ammunition feeding device' means a magazine or similar device that has an overall capacity of more than 10 rounds of ammunition
•It shall be unlawful for a person to import, sell, manufacture, or possess a large capacity ammunition feeding device.
•Shall not apply to the possession of any large capacity ammunition feeding device otherwise lawfully possessed before 2013.
•Shall not apply to qualified or retired law enforcement officers.
Reference: Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act; Bill S.Amdt. 714 to S. 649 ; vote number 13-SV103 on Apr 17, 2013
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yes, I know, such "regulations" will harm poor people, and tens or hundreds of dollars to purchase costs, and poor people will die because they are unable to defend themselves.
We need guns to be cheap enough that everyone can afford to defend themselves. Never force a father choose between feeding his family and feeding his weapons.