Last Call For Gun Control

Molly Ball at The Atlantic looks over the repeated failure of gun control and comes up with some explanations:

When it comes to gun control, politicians have feared the NRA for decades. They've seen Democrats lose at every level, from president on down, in part because of the gun issue, and they saw their party make a comeback, particularly out west, when it started embracing gun rights instead.

The supposedly new-and-improved gun-control lobby was convinced that conventional wisdom was out of date. It set out to convince politicians that the landscape had changed. It had a less inflammatory message and more modest goals than the would-be gun-prohibitionists of the 1980s and '90s. It had a public that seemed galvanized by the shootings in Tucson and Aurora and Newtown, and polling data that seemed to show voters overwhelmingly supportive of its aims. The NRA's message and tactics, by contrast, seemed laughably antique and tone deaf. A vote for gun control, advocates claimed, wasn't just a safe vote; it was the only safe vote. Senators who voted against the federal gun-control bill were punished with ad campaigns and saw their approval ratings dip. For the first time, the terrible calculus of politics seemed to be on gun-control advocates' side.

But there was still one thing they needed to prove. They needed to prove that they could protect the lawmakers whom they coaxed out on a limb. On Tuesday, they failed that test. Future lawmakers facing similar votes aren't going to care about the particulars; they're going to look at John Morse and Angela Giron and think, That's going to be me. No thanks.

In the end, Americans just don't care about gun control.  That would require courage, courage to actually back politicians who want to pass it.  Courage to get involved.  Courage to do more than just buy pretty green nail polish because it's the same green as the Sandy Hook Elementary.

Instead we see what happens to the people who try to stand up to the gun lobby.  They have guns.  They're not shy about demonstrating they know exactly how to use them.  They have people who have the conviction to say "If necessary I will take your life to protect my own or my family and I will not hesitate."

How do you fight conviction like that with the politics and politicians we have now?

If you find out, let me know.  Because gun control is dead in this country, it has been since 2000, and may always be.

Remember Immigration Reform?

JM Ashby does over at Bob Cesca's place, and reminds us that it will still be 100% the GOP's fault when immigration reform fails to pass this year.

I can’t fault you for being optimistic, but if you really believed the Flying Monkey Caucus was going to allow comprehensive immigration to pass through the House, you’re sorely mistaken.

Congress is running out of time to pass immigration reform before the end of the year, and what few Republicans there are that favor reform are getting worried.

But the plan is to make you hate Obamacare more than bigot Republicans, so that Democratic voters stay home again and let the GOP win. It's all they have left.  They are counting on you refusing to punish them.

You can do something about that.  Remember, the House GOP has no time for immigration reform, but can make 41 votes to defund Obamacare.

The All-Alone Star State

Texas GOP Attorney General candidate Barry Smitherman:  Texas is not going to secede from the United States, but should the government in Washington collapse, we'll be increasingly ready to go it alone.  You know, just in case that happens.  Nudge nudge.

“Generally speaking, we have made great progress in becoming an independent nation, an ‘island nation’ if you will, and I think we want to continue down that path so that if the rest of the country falls apart, Texas can operate as a stand-alone entity with energy, food, water and roads as if we were a closed-loop system.”

Sounds like a theory we should test.  Kent Jones sums it up brilliantly:

So, to put this in terms of a romantic relationship: No, sweetheart, we're not breaking up, and I'm not talking about breaking up. However, I am going to put all my stuff in boxes and wait by the door because I'm expecting you to fail me any day now. Actually, I'm counting on it and will do everything I can to make that happen. And when it does, it'll be all your fault. But if there's one thing we are not talking about, it's breaking up.

Like I keep saying, methinks Texas doth protest too much about secession.  They sure seem to have a plan for it for a bunch of folks who have no intention of doing it.  Which, apparently, if you ask them about it, they will tell you.  At length.  About the plan they'll never use.  Nope.  Ever.

StupidiNews!

• Three Afghan security personnel are dead as US and Afghan forces repelled a Taliban attack on the US consulate in Herat, Afghanistan on Thursday.
• Washington DC Mayor Vincent Gray has vetoed a bill that would have forced large retailers like Wal-Mart to pay a $12.50 an hour minimum "living" wage.
• A libertarian think tank says Congress needs to change the law to allow the entire Interstate Highway System to be transformed into toll roads.
• Geologists say there could be $1.5 trillion in oil under the Gulf of Mexico as more deep water rigs are being built each year.
• New measurements confirm that the Voyager 1 space probe has indeed left the solar system and is in interstellar space.

Last Call For Putin's Russian Reversal

I'll take "Vlad The Dudesplainer" in the NY Times for $1600, Alex.

RECENT events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.

Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again. 

The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades. 

No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization. 

This coming from the guy who, you know, actually murders opposing journalists and politicians, kills his own people in Chechnya, and criminalizes LGBTQ advocacy.  It continues on like this at some length, but the bottom line is that same anti-Obama coalition of libertarian dudebros and Worse Than Bush liberals have a new hero in a mass-murdering quasi fascist jackass, who basically really is actually guilty of all the things they accuse Obama of on a regular basis.  Still, you have to "admire" the guy if you hate yourself some Obama...

2) Putin's awful, the op-ed is trolling, but also a little taste of what it feels like to other country's citizens to be lectured at by US
— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 12, 2013

He still didn't call the President "Barry" enough times, so it means Dowd is still a better troll. 

What's A Quarter Of A Billion Among Friends?

Meanwhile, the Koch Brothers secretly raised and spent $250 million to influence the 2012 elections, and we're only now just finding this out a year or so after the fact.

The group, Freedom Partners, and its president, Marc Short, serve as an outlet for the ideas and funds of the mysterious Koch brothers, cutting checks as large as $63 million to groups promoting conservative causes, according to an IRS document to be filed shortly.

The 38-page IRS filing amounts to the Rosetta Stone of the vast web of conservative groups — some prominent, some obscure — that spend time, money and resources to influence public debate, especially over Obamacare.

The group has about 200 donors, each paying at least $100,000 in annual dues. It raised $256 million in the year after its creation in November 2011, the document shows. And it made grants of $236 million — meaning a totally unknown group was the largest sugar daddy for conservative groups in the last election, second in total spending only to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, which together spent about $300 million.

Short, a soft-spoken but ferociously conservative 43-year-old operative, provided us a draft of a forthcoming IRS filing that will soon be available to the public. Short, like most in the Koch empire, feels wealthy conservative activists such as Charles and David Koch get a bum rap from the media. So, Short wants to ease his groups and their cause out of the shadows.

“There’s a mystery around us that makes an interesting story,” Short said in an interview in his conference room. “There’s also a vilification that happens that gets exaggerated when your opposition thinks you’re secretive. Our members are proud to be part of [the organization].”

And thanks to Citizens United, they can buy as much of our political process as they want.  When $250 million isn't enough, they'll simply spend more in 2014 and 2016 until the entire country is under Tea Party control.  If you're wondering why nearly half of Americans think Obamacare has been repealed or overturned already and is no longer law, well, you might want to start with the kind of media coverage that $250 million can buy.

Woot Woot! It's The Sound Of The GOP Food Police!

The GOP loves to trash Michelle Obama over her advocacy of healthy food choices and exercise to get kids active and practicing good habits.  Republicans call it "food fascism" of course, that government has no business telling people what to eat. 

Unless you're on SNAP benefits, in which case your forfeit your rights as an American citizen and Republicans are happy to pass laws telling you what you should eat.

Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) on Tuesday proposed legislation that would require people using federal food stamps to buy only healthy food.

The Healthy Food Choices Act, H.R. 3073, reflects a long-standing criticism that the government's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) allows people to buy billions of dollars worth of junk food.

A 2012 study found that food stamps enable about $2 billion worth of junk food purchases each year, and that more than half of all SNAP benefits are used to buy sugary drinks.

Efforts to curb these purchases have been opposed by anti-hunger groups. But Roe said some states are already exploring ways to curb junk food purchases through the SNAP program, and argued that the federal government needs to take steps as well.

"Already, states like Wisconsin and South Carolina have shown interest in improving the healthfulness of choices in their SNAP programs," he said. "By giving SNAP recipients more nutritious choices, we can take a meaningful step towards ending hunger in America."

So no, Republicans have zero problem with actual government control of what you can buy to eat if they can use that power on those people.

Can't wait to see what big agra and the fast food giants do to this bill, too.  You know they're not going to sit buy and let Congress take $2 billion in yearly sales away from them.

StupidiNews!

• Heavy flooding in Colorado's Boulder County has claimed at least one life as flash floods wiped out several homes and structures near Jamestown.
• Some House Republicans are pushing for a UN Security Council resolution that brings up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on an international war crimes tribunal.
• Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov are continuing talks in Geneva over international control of Syria's chemical weapons.
• BlackBerry is pushing Ottawa over rules governing foreign acquisition of the Canadian tech firm.
• Cybersecurity experts are worried that Java will never fix major exploits in version 6 of the software, still widely used and unsupported by Oracle.

Last Call For The Colorado Shuffle

Tom Jensen over at Public Policy Polling is taking massive heat for this decision, and rightfully so:

We did a poll last weekend in Colorado Senate District 3 and found that voters intended to recall Angela Giron by a 12 point margin, 54/42. In a district that Barack Obama won by almost 20 points I figured there was no way that could be right and made a rare decision not to release the poll. It turns out we should have had more faith in our numbers because she was indeed recalled by 12 points.

Granted, the NRA had a best case scenario in the recall vote, but it's a vote they won by double digits.  Both Giron and Colorado State Senate President John Morse were sent packing.

The National Rifle Association, which donated about $360,000 to support the recalls, hailed Morse's loss, telling The Denver Post it "is proud to have stood with the men and women in Colorado who sent a clear message that their Second Amendment rights are not for sale."

But it wasn't just the NRA that warned Democrats about messing with gun rights.

Sen. Lois Tochtrop, an Adams County Democrat and longtime Second Amendment activist, opposed five of the seven gun bills initially introduced in the session, including a lightning-rod proposal by Morse.

That proposal would have assigned liability for assault-style weapon damages to manufacturers and sellers, but Morse killed it at the 11th-hour because he didn't have the votes to pass it through the Democratic-controlled Senate.

"I feel like all these gun bills have done — to quote the last words in the movie 'Tora! Tora! Tora!' — is to awaken a sleeping giant," Tochtrop said during the debate.  

And that's true.  All across the country, the NRA has crushed gun control laws and limited victories to Pyrrhic ones.  It's one thing to defeat somebody in an election, but to knock them off in a recall over legislation, well, Democrats were told that was un-American in Wisconsin.  Guess it's okay now.

Berger's Game

Well played troll card, NC GOP.  Well played, indeed.

A science fiction author who opposes equal rights for LGBT people and has a history of comparing Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler was appointed to a board of trustees overseeing North Carolina’s public television stations this week.

In a statement on Monday, UNC-TV announced that Republican state Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger had named Orson Scott Card to the UNC-TV Board of Trustees.

“We are pleased to welcome Mr. Card to the UNC-TV Board of Trustees,” Chairman Robb Teer said. “We are grateful for his willingness to serve and look forward to working with him to continue providing the people of our state with enriching, life-changing television in these challenging times.”

Card, the popular sci-fi author whose seminal tale "Ender's Game" is being made into a movie this holiday season also wrote this:

On foreign policy, Obama is already the dumbest president in American history, and there's so much competition for that title. Only the fact that Al Gore, John Kerry, and Joe Biden were never president leaves him in sole possession of the crown.

But that brings me to a little thought experiment that seized my imagination a few weeks ago and won't go away.

Obama is, by character and preference, a dictator. He hates the very idea of compromise; he demonizes his critics and despises even his own toadies in the liberal press. He circumvented Congress as soon as he got into office by appointing "czars" who didn't need Senate approval. His own party hasn't passed a budget ever in the Senate.

In other words, Obama already acts as if the Constitution were just for show. Like Augustus, he pretends to govern within its framework, but in fact he treats it with contempt.

How far might he take his dictatorial disposition? Is there any plausible way for him to remain as president for life, like the dictators he so admires and envies in Russia, China, and the Muslim world?

Of course the NC GOP was going to put him in charge of the state's public TV.  The guy's grasp of politics is only slightly less realistic than his dystopian sci-fi.

So if you're a North Carolina taxpayer and public TV watcher, do you boycott PBS over Card, or continue to donate knowing that public TV needs the money?

Science Textbooks, Now With Less Of That Science Stuff

The Lone Star State needs not your "science" in science textbooks for school, nay, for it is mighty Texas!  Look upon its works and despair!  Especially, if, you know, you like science.  Check it out as the fundies on Texas's state school board of education wants the following "disclaimers" on all that pesky science crap:

– called for the inclusion of “‘creation science’ based on Biblical principles”

– asserted that “no transitional fossils have been discovered”

– insisted that there is no evidence for a human influence on the carbon cycle

– claimed that there is no evidence about the effect of climate change on species diversity

– promoted a book touting “intelligent design” creationism as a reliable source of scientific information

– denied that recombination and genetic drift are evolutionary mechanisms

– mischaracterized experiments on the peppered moth as “discredited” and as “fabrication[s]“

Depressing.  But not as depressing as this:

In terms of textbook standards, as Texas goes, so goes the nation. The state “is one of the nation’s biggest buyers of textbooks” and publishers are often “reluctant to produce different versions of the same material,” and therefore create books in line with Texas’ standards.

You know, Texas education standards like this:

For years, members of the Texas Board of Education have tried, with various degrees of success, to overhaul the state’s textbook standards, “pushing for inclusion of more…Confederate glorification,” re-naming the Atlantic slave trade the “Atlantic Triangle Trade,” and prioritizing “a suggestion that the anti-communist witch-hunt by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s may have been justified.” A recent review of the books has also found a consistent pattern of negative portrayals of Muslims and Islam.

The victors get to write the history books, as they say.  Literally.

StupidiNews!

• NYC's Tuesday mayoral primary contest is down to Joe Lhota on the GOP side and Bill de Blasio and former city comptroller Bill Thompson on the Dems side, with Weiner and Quinn gone.
• Tropical Storm Gabrielle is taking aim at Bermuda, with her brother Humberto following through the late Atlantic hurricane season.
• Washington State officials are asking Congress to change federal rules to allow the state's pot shops to take credit cards, as cash-only stores would be tempting robbery targets.
• The latest shakeup of the 30 companies that comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Average finds Nike, Goldman Sachs, and Visa are in, HP, Alcoa, and Bank of America are out.
• After a major online backlash from developers and volume customers, Microsoft is reversing its decision not to make Windows 8.1 available early to TechNet subscribers.

Last Call For Lightning Diplomacy

With Syria now agreeing to come clean on chemical weapons and to sign the Chemical Weapons Ban treaty, Ezra Klein predicts a White House win. What a difference a day makes.

Assad is now agreeing to preserve and strengthen that norm. He’s agreeing to sign the treaty banning chemical weapons — a treaty Syria has been one of the lone holdouts against. He’s creating a situation in which it would be almost impossible for him to use chemical weapons in the future, as doing so would break his promises to the global community, invite an immediate American response, and embarrass Russia.

This is, in many ways, a better outcome than the White House could have hoped for. Punishing Syria may or may not have actually reinforced the norm against chemical weapons — particularly if the strikes went bad and the American people punished members of Congress who voted for them. But Syria joining the treaty against chemical weapons definitely, almost definitionally, reinforces the ban.

Now, there are obstacles between here and there. The White House wants to see this ratified in the UN Security Council and subject to tough international monitoring, and Russia says that means forswearing force against Syria. And there’s always the chance that Assad’s spokesman pops up tomorrow with a press release that says, simply, “syke!”

But the White House shouldn’t work too hard to set the bar high here. If Assad is willing to sign the treaty and stop using chemical weapons, they should declare victory. It’s a better outcome than they could have hoped for. And they might get it without firing a single shot.

Almost like President Obama knows what he's doing.  More on the President's speech tomorrow.

[UPDATE, Wed morning]  The President's speech last night was the case we've heard before:  somebody has to handle Syria, and that somebody has to be us.  I remain unconvinced, as does pretty much the rest of the country, but the President is going to follow through on the Russian disposal angle for Asaad, and frankly the old Churchill adage remains apt: "'Jaw, jaw' is better than 'war, war.'"  I trust the President to continue diplomacy and to find a way to make this work.

If it doesn't, well, that's another discussion for another day.

So Three Schmucks Head To Egypt...

...and I wish I had a really great joke to go along with that opening, but sadly that's the headline to this story of GOP dipsticks Michele Bachmann, Louie Gohmert, and Steve King actually going to Egypt.  To have a press conference.  Where they announced their plans to undermine US foreign policy for all the entire world to see last weekend.

Tea party-backed Representatives Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Steve King (R-IA) on Saturday held a press conference in Egypt to thank the country’s military for overthrowing the elected government, and at one point even seemed to suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood had been behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

“Together, we’ve gone through suffering. Together, the United States and Egypt, have dealt with the same enemy,” Bachmann explained. “It’s a common enemy, and it’s an enemy called terrorism.”

“We want to make sure that you have the Apache helicopters, the F-16s, the equipment that you have so bravely used to capture terrorists and to take care of this menace that’s on your border,” she continued. “Many of you have asked, do we understand who the enemy is? We can speak for ourselves. We do.”

“We have seen the threat that the Muslim Brotherhood has posed here for the people in Egypt. We have seen the threat that the Muslim Brotherhood has posed around the world. We stand against this great evil. We are not for them. We remember who caused 9/11 in America. We remember who it was that killed 3,000 brave Americans. We have not forgotten.”

So yes, if you're keeping score, these three clowns 1) went to a foreign capital in order to criticize the President, 2) promised the Egyptian military an increase in military aid after staging a coup, the exact opposite of stated US policy,  and 3) blamed Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood for 9/11.

This is actually breathtakingly awful, it should be illegal, and it should get all three of these jackasses tossed from the House.  But hey, they're Republicans attacking the President, so nobody will care.

George Of The Bungle

Nobody could have predicted that George Zimmerman was going to remain a powder keg after his acquittal.  Nope.  Not a single person saw this coming.

Lake Mary police say they were called around 2:30 p.m. to the Sprucewood Road home of Shellie Zimmerman's parents, David and Machelle Dean.

According to Lake Mary Police Chief Steve Bracknell, Shellie Zimmerman called 911 claiming George Zimmerman had a gun and was making threats.

"He’s in his car and he continually has his hand on his gun and he keeps saying 'step closer' and he’s just threatening all of us," Shellie Zimmerman said in the 911 call, adding that George Zimmerman was "trying to shut the garage door" on her.

"He punched my dad in the nose my dad has a mark on the nose. I saw his glasses were on the floor," Shellie Zimmerman said in the call. He then accosted my father then took my iPad out of my hands. He then smashed it and cut it with a pocketknife, and there is a Lake Mary city worker across the street that I believe saw all of it."

The victims were not speaking to police and waited for their attorney to arrive before leaving just after 4 p.m. George Zimmerman is cooperating and is clam, according to police. Police say George Zimmerman is now accusing Shellie Zimmerman of being the aggressor in the conflict and the investigation is ongoing.

Can't wait for the conspiracy theories on that one.   Zimmerman's wife isn't pressing charges, so, of course George walks again.

Karma is a funny thing, George.