Where is the Common Sense Discussion on Gun Control from the Right?

Radical right is at it again distorting the facts about gun control

When over 60% of NRA members said something needs to be done with the semi-automatic rifles that in some cases can be converted in a short time to fully automatic and that no one needs clips over 15 bullets, you know something is wrong with the NRA.  Lo and behold Joe Scarborough, from Rep from the Florida Panhandle has the answer:

Scarborough: NRA is protecting gun manufacturers, not the Second Amendment

Jane C. Timm, @janestreet8:29 am on 01/11/2013 

“Can we just break through the BS?” Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough said on Friday’s Morning Joe. “This is not—for the NRA—about Second Amendment rights.”
Scarborough slammed the NRA for fear-mongering for profits in the wake of the Newtown shooting, which has many calling for gun control. 

“Justice Scalia clearly laid out in Heller what Second Amendements were and what they were not. The most Conservative justice on the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia, made it very clear: assault weapons are not protected by the Second Amendment.” 

Instead, Scarborough said, the NRA is protecting themselves and their wealthy gun manufacturers.

This is about gun manufacturers making millions and millions and millions of dollars. This is about retailers making millions and millions and millions of dollars. Do you know how much money these people have made over the slaughter of 20 innocents in Newtown? Do you know how much richer these rich gun manufacturers have gotten over the past month, and how the NRA uses that tragedy to gin up fears, and websites use that tragedy to gin up fears that they’re coming to take your guns away? Hey, they can’t take your guns away, we’ve got something called the Second Amendment in the Constitution of the United States. Justice Scalia said in 2009 they can’t come and take your guns away, you can have a handgun to protect your family. But after that, they can regulate guns.

Supporting an NRA that fights for manufacturers instead of rights will be terrible for Republicans, Scarborough explained. “If we’re going to fight all these common sense gun measures, then we are a Republican party that’s headed for extinction,” he said.

Now we know that the NRA is the lobbying group for gun and ammo manufacturers, they have the credibility of a gnat.  How much are they getting paid to lobby to come up with their dumb statements on gun control refusing to tell the truth about the meeting with Vice President Biden yesterday.  Instead the NRA comes out and continues to inflame the situation like Drudge comparing Obama to Hitler.  Seems they don't have the facts even then.  You want real facts, check out The Pink Flamingo which has an excellent article, It's Not the Second Amendment but the Technology, where the author has delved into the issue of gun control including the Wild West giving pertinent information that flies in the face of what the conservative pundits are saying.  Imagine that, the conservative pundits are lying once again.  This time it is on gun control.

General McChrystal went from a hero of the right to a goat overnight when he dared to take on "assault weapons" and why the military needs them but not individuals:

Retired General Stanley McChrystal expressed a desire for stricter gun control laws this morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. 

In light of NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg‘s upcoming appearance on her program, co-host Mika Brzezinski asked McChrystal for his thoughts on so-called “assault weapons.”
“I spent a career carrying typically either a M16, and later a M4 carbine,” the retired general explained. “An M4 carbine fires a .223 caliber round, which is 5.56 millimeters, at about 3,000 feet per second. When it hits a human body, the effects are devastating. It’s designed to do that. That’s what our soldiers ought to carry.” 

McChrystal retired in 2010 after a Rolling Stone profile quoted him and his staff mocking civilian government officials like Vice President Joe Biden. Prior to his resignation, he was the general of U.S. forces in Afghanistan; and before that he was Director of the Joint Staff.
However, echoing a sentiment held by many gun control advocates, McChrystal then said, “I personally don’t think there’s any need for that kind of weaponry on the streets and particularly around the schools in America. I believe that we’ve got to take a serious look. I understand everybody’s desire to have whatever they want, but we have to protect our children and our police, and we have to protect our population. And I think we have to take a very mature look at that.” 

Pressed for further thoughts, McChrystal added that, on gun control, “I think serious action is necessary. Sometimes we talk about very limited actions on the edges, and I just don’t think that’s enough.” 

Co-host Willie Geist then asked if McChrystal had a “message” for the National Rifle Association and the legislators who would oversee any new laws. 

The four-star general’s response: “I think we have to look at the situation in America. The number of people killed by firearms is extraordinary compared to other nations. I don’t think we’re a bloodthirsty culture, and we need to look at everything we can do to safeguard our people.”

Then there is the situation that Connecticut finds themselves in being surrounded by states with less strict gun control laws and you realize we need national gun laws no matter what the hard right is saying along with the NRA:

Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy explained that neighboring states’ gun laws undercut the restrictions in his state and called for standardized, federal gun laws. 

“We just need to close some loopholes, we need to make sure that guns can’t be sold at shows in Florida and Virginia and work their way up to Philadelphia, where 219 people get killed, or work their way up to Bridgeport and New Haven and Hartford and Stamford and Norwalk,” he said on Thursday’s Morning Joe. 

Gun rights advocates have regularly cited Connecticut’s strict gun laws as proof that gun control doesn’t work, but Malloy explained that if laws aren’t consistent, neither is the control.
“Those guns shouldn’t be coming up to our part of the country, we don’t allow the sale of many of those types of guns of our states but you can go to the places where no one’s doing the kind of checking, no one’s doing the background. Let’s do the common sense things.” 

Neighboring state’s laws are notorious for undercutting the laws in states with tough restrictions. A report in New York this summer found that states like Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida provided the bulk of the illegal guns seized in New York: of 8,793 guns seized in New York last year, just 1,595 of them were bought in the state. 

“These high capacity magazines they don’t make any sense, we don’t need those in our country, no one is going deer hunting with them, you don’t use that to protect your house, this has gotten crazy,” Malloy added. He also noted that mental health and the glorification of violence also needs to be addressed. 

Federal gun law is needed to really control gun purchases and should limit ammunition magazines and standardize gun restrictions. 

“Limit magazines under the assault weapons ban, which was allowed to go away, you couldn’t have had the clips that that young man took into the Sandy Hook schools, it would not have been possible, that’s a common sense example,” he said. 

“Close all loopholes—every gun purchase has to have the same rigor attached to it regardless of where it’s occurs in our country. Those are two things that would make a gigantic difference in the amount of violence that’s taking place in our urban environments and, yes, under these environments where someone goes in and shoots up a movie theater or shoots up a school,” Malloy said.

I have seen some of the scariest statements ever that border on treason and frankly should be called treason that encourage people to take to the streets to protect their guns from the Government.  President has been called Hitler and Stalin by some of the pundits.  These people frankly scare me with their rhetoric because there are some people out there who believe every word a Glenn Beck, Fox News, or Rush has to say that could end up harming innocent people.  I am convinced that the hard right has gone way over the top when I received this article by Chuck Baldwin in email this morning:

I have been writing this column for over a dozen years, and I can safely say the column I wrote last week, “My Line In The Sand Is Drawn Here,” produced more response than any column I have ever written–maybe more than any two or three columns combined. And what is even more noteworthy: unlike most columns, the responses to this column were at least 90% favorable. 

In last week’s column I said, “Throughout the United States, there are tens of millions of fully-armed citizens who are more than capable of defending themselves and their communities against any enemy–whether that enemy is an internal or external one. In fact, many millions of these citizens have been trained in the US armed forces. Firearms–especially semi-automatic rifles–in the hands of millions of American citizens is truly the only thing that stands between freedom and tyranny for the people of the United States. That Barack Obama and Dianne Feinstein want to disarm the American people should be considered an act of war against our liberties! In other words, ladies and gentlemen, this is a line in the sand that none of us can afford to ignore.”

I also wrote, “Make no mistake about it: to take away an American’s right to a semi-automatic rifle is to FULLY DISARM HIM. There is no Second Amendment; there is no right to keep and bear arms; there is no citizen militia; there is no liberty without the semi-automatic rifle!”
I concluded the column saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, whatever the consequences might be, and whatever anyone else does or doesn’t do, I am prepared to become an outlaw over this issue! I don’t know how to say it any plainer: I will not register my firearms, and I will not surrender my firearms. Period. End of story. It’s not just a saying with me: when my guns are outlawed, I will be an outlaw! 

“My line in the sand is drawn here! 

“Make no mistake about it: it is not just semi-automatic rifles that these gun grabbers are after. Ultimately, they want to take all of our guns. We either stop them now or there will be no stopping them at all.” 

See the column at: 

My Line In The Sand Is Drawn Here!

No one I have heard from the left is talking about going into someone's house and taking guns away.  They want to control the sale of new high powered semi-automatics that can be converted in short order to fully automatic, the large clips, and tighten up once again the background checks that Republicans loosened when they were in charge of the Congress under President Bush.  If you are not willing to have a comprehensive background check, then you shouldn't be buying a gun.  Having large magazine clips along with being able to buy the same armor/clothing of the police and military is also unnecessary.  The very idea of an armed guard to protect the Country flies in the face of facts.  You know those pesky things that get in the way of the hard right narrative.

When you think it cannot get any more insane, along comes Ohio with a school board voting to arm janitors.  Maybe I am naive but how does a janitor go up against someone with a semi-automatic who is out to kill?  That seems to be like bringing a knife to a gun fight where if you have the knife, you are going to lose.

There needs to be common sense brought to the gun control debate including background checks no matter who sells the gun and limiting magazines to 15 rounds which still gives target shooters what they need.  The very idea private sellers at gun shows don't have to do background checks make them worthless.  Time to stop any semi-automatic that can be turned into fully automatic quickly from being sold.  Once again people are looking for common sense gun laws not laws to take away guns from individuals no matter how much the hard right media repeats that narrative.    

President Barack Obama's Speech at Memorial Service at Newtown, CT

This excerpt from the President's speech which he wrote is asking the tough questions all of us have to be thinking.  If you are honest with yourself, you will agree that we are not doing enough to protect all our children across America.  Time our voices stopped being silent and became involved in taking our Country back to where you feel safe to go to church, send your kids to school, and walk in a mall.  Each of us has a part in making America safer.

Time we all start by contacting our elected representatives in Congress and State Government to tell them to support reasonable gun control.  It is way past time to act so TODAY is the beginning of a turn-around in the gun culture of America IMHO.  The video of the full speech is below these comments from the President that are an excerpt of the transcript of his speech:

"And in that way we come to realize that we bear responsibility for every child, because we’re counting on everybody else to help look after ours, that we’re all parents, that they are all our children. 

This is our first task, caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.

And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we’re meeting our obligations?

Can we honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep our children, all of them, safe from harm?  

Can we claim, as a nation, that we’re all together there, letting them know they are loved and teaching them to love in return? 

Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose? 

I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer’s no. We’re not doing enough. And we will have to change. Since I’ve been president, this is the fourth time we have come together to comfort a grieving community torn apart by mass shootings, fourth time we’ve hugged survivors, the fourth time we’ve consoled the families of victims. 

And in between, there have been an endless series of deadly shootings across the country, almost daily reports of victims, many of them children, in small towns and in big cities all across America, victims whose -- much of the time their only fault was being at the wrong place at the wrong time. 

We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.
We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society, but that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely we can do better than this."

When I watched this speech last night, I saw a President who was not only a President but a Father who did  not shy away from tackling the hard road ahead to get some common sense gun restrictions that most Americans agree need to happen.  The President took on the gun lobby and those in Congress who refuse to vote for any gun restriction legislation.  The task ahead is huge but I believe in my heart this President is up to that task and it is up to all of us to support him on sensible gun legislation.  The President spoke from his heart last night in this speech and has garnered respect of so many Americans:



Read the following and ask yourself why the Assault Weapons ban was allowed to expire and has not been reinstated:

What Law Enforcement Says About Assault Weapons  

Following several high-profile mass shootings and attacks on law enforcement involving military-style assault weapons, Congress enacted the federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1994. The ban expired on September 13, 2004 without any consideration or action by Congress, despite the pleas of law enforcement officials across the country. Today, our nation's police find themselves increasingly outgunned by criminals armed with sophisticated firearms and detachable, high-capacity ammuniton magazines (the manufacture of magazines holding more than 10 rounds was prohibited under the federal ban). The following timeline examines law enforcement's experience with assault weapons since the federal ban lapsed:
March 2, 2011—"There is no reason that a peaceful society based on the rule of law needs its citizenry armed with 30-round [ammunition] magazines," states Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck during a news conference." Such magazines transform a gun "into a weapon of mass death rather than a home protection-type device," Beck notes.
February 26, 2011—Referring to increasing seizures of semiautomatic assault weapons that are trafficked in from outside states,  Brockton (Massachusetts) Police Department Captain Emanuel Gomes says, "We're literally outgunned. You're talking about the kind of firepower that can go through vehicles, through vests, and that can literally go through a house."
January 16, 2011—After one of his officers is ambushed by a teenager wielding a semiautomatic AR-15 and fired at 26 times, Oklahoma City Police Chief Bill Citty tells The Oklahoman, "There are just more and more assault rifles out there, and it is becoming a bigger threat to law enforcement each day. They are outgunned."  Citty states that he sees "no practical reason" why a civilian would need an AR-15 or similiar military-style weapon.
Read More of the Timeline at CSGV.org

Have our members of Congress and State Legislatures not been listening to law enforcement since the Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004?  Yet, they listen to the gun lobby who helps fund their campaigns or horror of horrors, they get someone to run against them who is more pro-gun.  Absolutely despicable and time to vote them out in 2014 since they put gun ownership of high powered weapons and large clips over the safety of the American people all for their selfish interest.
We mourn with the parents, siblings, children who lost family members in this tragedy and pledge to get behind the elected officials who are set on making America safer.  We heard the President's call last night and time for all of us to act as One Nation Under God to right this ship called America.  We owe it to our children, grandchildren, and future generations to make America a safer Country.
God Bless President Obama and the United States of America as we begin the long road to return common sense policy to our Nation.  
God be with the families and friends who lost so much when a madman shot and killed 26 innocent teachers and young students at Sandy Hook.  Nothing can fill the void they are experiencing, but they need to know that they are in the hearts and prayers of all Americans.  We can honor their memory by passing reasonable gun legislation and start listening to law enforcement.

Time for All Americans to Join Together to Work on Sensible Gun Legislation

NRA Members are breaking from their leadership on what needs to be done for common sense gun control but will Pro-Gun members of Congress listen?  

This morning as I was viewing comments coming from the massacre of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT,  I was struck by the last sentence of this paragraph from Think Progress:

In the aftermath of the tragedy, gun safety advocates have called for Congress to vote on banning assault weapons and high capacity clips, closing terrorism loopholes, and requiring background checks for all gun sales. Yet the NRA has yet to issue a public statement about the elementary school shooting. One wonders if will listen to the views of its supporters, or continue to represent the business interests of gun manufacturers, once it does. 

Then there is also this about gun manufacturers:

Connecticut has a statewide ban on certain types of assault weapons, but in the decade since the expiration of the federal assault weapons ban, gun manufacturers have devised numerous ways to get around state bans like the one in Connecticut by making small alterations. 

Was ending the Assault Weapons Ban in 2004 so manufacturers could make more money and put more of that money into the gun lobby headed by the NRA and GOA?  Is greed the answer to the high capacity clips they are selling because those clips could never be used for hunting -- there would be no deer left?  When I read the article last night about the gun culture surrounding Newtown, it sent chills up my spine.  Some of these gun owners scare the living daylights out of me.  It is one thing to use a shotgun and/or rifle to go hunting but it is another to have a high powered assault rifle with some holding clips up to 100.  As my son said this morning -- go after ammunition which is not protected by the 2nd amendment.

This headline shocked me last night, In Town at Ease With Its Firearms, Tightening Gun Rules Was Resisted, which described the gun culture of Newtown, CT:

People in the rural, hilly areas around Newtown, Conn., are used to gunfire. In one woodsy stretch, southeast of downtown, the Pequot Fish and Game Club and the Fairfield County Fish and Game Protective Association, where members can fish in ponds and hunt pheasant, lie within a mile of each other, and people who live nearby generally call them good neighbors. 

But in the last couple of years, residents began noticing loud, repeated gunfire, and even explosions, coming from new places. Near a trailer park. By a boat launch. Next to well-appointed houses. At 2:20 p.m. on one Wednesday last spring, multiple shots were reported in a wooded area on Cold Spring Road near South Main Street, right across the road from an elementary school. 

Yet recent efforts by the police chief and other town leaders to gain some control over the shooting and the weaponry turned into a tumultuous civic fight, with traditional hunters and discreet gun owners opposed by assault weapon enthusiasts, and a modest tolerance for bearing arms competing with the staunch views of a gun industry trade association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which has made Newtown its home. 

The place that witnessed one of the worst mass killings in United States history on Friday, leaving 20 schoolchildren and 8 adults dead, is a bucolic New England town comfortable with its firearms, and not an obvious arena for the nation’s debate over gun control. But the legislative battle right here shows how even the slightest attempts to impose restrictions on guns can run into withering resistance, made all the more pointed by the escalation in firepower. 

“Something needs to be done,” said Joel T. Faxon, a hunter and a member of the town’s police commission, who championed the shooting restrictions. “These are not normal guns, that people need. These are guns for an arsenal, and you get lunatics like this guy who goes into a school fully armed and protected to take return fire. We live in a town, not in a war.”  

Read More at NY Times  

There seems to be a common theme developing from this tragedy that is splitting hunters from the NRA and GOA gun lobby.  No one in this Country is trying to take someone's guns they use for hunting or defending their homes or even target shooting.  The majority of gun owners in a poll don't understand the big clips holding up to a hundred bullets any better then the non-gun owners.  My Dad had a shotgun and a rifle to go hunting.  Finally we are seeing a move to reinstate the assault weapons ban once again along with getting high capacity clips off the market:

Meanwhile, lawmakers plan to introduce a renewed ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. Advocates have also called on states to post their mental health records into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) and additional legislation requiring full background check on all gun transactions. Polls show that even NRA members back these reforms. 

Who are these 31 Senators who refused to go on Meet the Press?  I am still looking after being to 11 websites.  Will post an update when I find it out the names of the 31 Senators:

Yet, even as right-wing pundits continued to name gun control as a reason that the killer took so many lives, producers at NBC’s Meet the Press were unable to get a single pro-gun senator to appear on the show the Sunday after the tragedy. All 31 gun-loving senators who will have seats in the new Congress were invited, according to executive producer Betsy Fischer Martin. 

Think it can safely be said that Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) was one of them but he was on a hunting trip this weekend and reason for his unavailability.  The Senator told the Joe Scarborough show this morning that everything is on the table.  Envision this would have been a Teddy Roosevelt response by the Senator.  Called his office and thanked him for his comments on Morning Joe.  The aide I talked to was very nice -- you could tell he agreed with the Senator's stance.

Manchin’s comments followed Joe Scarborough’s declaration of support for gun safety. The former Florida Congressman received the NRA’s highest ratings over his four terms in Congress, but on Monday he opened Morning Joe with a monologue in which he admitted that the tragedy “changed everything.” Scarbrough called for a comprehensive approach that addresses what he called “the toxic brew of a violent popular culture, a growing mental health cris, and the proliferation of combat-styled weapons”:

SCARBOROUGH: I knew that day that the ideologies of my past career were no longer relevant to the future that I want, that I demand for my children. Friday changed everything. It must change everything. We all must begin anew and demand that Washington’s old way of doing business is no longer acceptable. Entertainment moguls don’t have an absolute right to glorify murder while spreading mayhem in young minds across america. And our Bill of Rights does not guarantee gun manufacturers the absolute right to sell military-styled, high-caliber, semi-automatic combat assault rifles with high-capacity magazines to whoever the hell they want. It is time for Congress to put children before deadly dogmas. It’s time for politicians to start focusing more on protecting our school yards than putting together their next fund-raiser.

Joe Manchin: Time to act on guns 

Posted by Rachel Weiner on December 17, 2012 at 8:40 am 

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), a conservative Democrat and National Rifle Association member, said Monday that after the shooting in Newtown, Conn., on Friday, it’s time to discuss new regulations on assault weapons.  

“I dont know anyone in the sporting or hunting arena that goes out with an assault rifle,” Manchin told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”  ”I don’t know anyone that needs 30 rounds in a clip to go hunting. I mean, these are things that need to be talked about.” 

Twenty children and six adults were killed Friday by a man firing a military-style semiautomatic weapon. The massacre, Manchin said, “changed the dialogue, and it should move beyond dialogue. We need action.” 

“Never before have we seen our babies slaughtered,” the senator said. “Anybody that’s a proud gun owner, anybody that’s a proud member of the NRA, we’re also proud parents. We’re also proud grandparents.” 

He said the gun lobby should be part of that conversation. Manchin got an “A” rating and an endorsement from the NRA in both the 2010 special election and 2012 general election. In a memorable campaign ad, he shot a copy of a cap-and-trade bill with a rifle.  

“I want to call all our friends in NRA, and sit down,” he said. “Bring them into it. They have to be at the table. We all have to.”  

On Twitter Monday morning, Manchin emphasized his desire for action:

Senator Joe Manchin@Sen_JoeManchin
This awful massacre has changed where we go from here. Our conversation should move beyond dialogue.
  17 Dec 12

Can truthfully say that former Florida Congressman Joe Scarborough speaks for me on the issue of gun control.  Believe there are a lot of us who have evolved on the issue over the years as we have seen what guns in the wrong hands can do.  Innocent people are getting killed every day but looks like this tragedy and murder of 20 innocent children is the tipping point with a majority of Americans to reinstate the Assault Weapons Ban and stop the sale of the large capacity clips for civilian use.  No civilian should have a military/law enforcement type weapon and magazine.

We are protected by our military including the National Guard which is the organized Constitutional militia.  We do not need a citizen militia -- same type of militia that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were members.  The unauthorized militia frankly scare me with their rhetoric against minorities.  Many of their websites remind you of Nazi's not Americans.  These sites give you the creeps when researching.

Then there is this from the morons of 'hate speech' who objected to the President's speech last night being carried when there was a Sunday Night Football game on the TV.  I am this huge football fan but I watched the President's speech and the Memorial Service on MSNBC which I thought was much more important to find out exactly what the President had to say.  These people couldn't just say they were mad that the President interrupted their viewing of the football game between the 49's and Patriots, they had to go off in using derogatory language against a sitting President.  How much of this language has been perpetrated by the hate emanating from conservative pundits and talk radio/TV?

“Take That "N....." Off The TV, We Wanna Watch Football!”: Idiots Respond To NBC Pre-Empting Sunday Night Football Timothy BurkeNBC pre-empted the first quarter of tonight's 49ers-Patriots game to show President Obama's speech at the Newtown memorial for victims of the Sandy Hook shooting. As you might expect, many football fans didn't take kindly to this. (So, too, some Bob's Burgers fans.) Here are those idiots, led by someone who claims to be a Division II football player in the state of Alabama. [Update: The Birmingham News reports he was a walk-on long snapper and is no longer on the team.

From Salon comes the five examples of the hard right and their not facing reality on guns -- same hard right that fosters the hatred against the President:

Here we offer five examples of the stunning lack of compassion and twisted logic expressed by right-wing leaders in response to a slaughter of children by the son of a gun enthusiast. 

1. Ann Coulter: Everybody should carry a concealed firearm.  The killings took place in the morning, and by 11:07 a.m., Ann Coulter, the publicity seeker whose big, bad mouth gives the little black dress a bad name, was touting concealed-carry laws as the answer to America’s massacre problem. Coulter’s first tweet on the subject came so soon after the killings, that there was no definitive count yet of the number of people who had perished: ”Only one policy has ever been shown to deter mass murder: concealed-carry laws. - bit.ly/VGDNBo”
Well, that seemed to do the trick for a woman who never found a tragedy she couldn’t exploit, for by 11:30, she tweeted this: “I’m on Hannity radio today, talking about the 1 public policy that provably reduces the incidence of, and deaths from, mass shootings.” 

And that, boys and girls, is how to work the Twitter machine for self-promotion on the backs of slaughtered children. 

It’s not the first time that Coulter has expressed her love for guns in the wake of murder. At a Florida church in 2007, I heard Coulter describe the assassination of a doctor who performed abortions as “a procedure performed on him with a rifle.” 

2. Mike Huckabee: Massacre the result of church-state separation.Apparently, former Arkansas governor and pastor Mike Huckabee thinks that if only the Constitution had been rewritten to allow for the mandatory worship of his God in public schools, the massacre would not have happened. It’s unclear from Huckabee’s remarks, made on the Fox News Channel’s Your World show (Huckabee also has his own show on the cable channel), whether he was saying that if only killer Adam Lanza had gotten religion during his public school education, he wouldn’t have killed, or if Huckabee was suggesting that God was punishing a public school for not allowing organized worship in the classroom. 

“We ask why there is violence in our schools but we have systematically removed God from our schools,” Huckabee told host Neil Cavuto. “Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”
Media Matters has the clip. 

3. Bryan Fischer: God let massacre happen in public school because he’s not wanted there. Bryan Fischer, the noxious radio-show host and spokesperson for the anti-gay hate group known as the American Family Association, put the blame for the massacre squarely on the Supreme Court, which outlawed organized public school prayer in 1962, as seen in this clip captured by Right Wing Watch. 

“I think God would say to us, ‘Hey, I’d be glad to protect your children, but you’ve got to invite me back into your world first,’” Fischer told his listeners. “‘I’m not gonna go where I’m not wanted; I am a gentleman.’” Fischer continued in his imagined voice of God. So much of a gentleman is Fischer’s God that the Almighty would await an invitation before rushing in to protect 20 children from being gunned down. Thank goodness the police and firefighters who responded were so terribly rude. 

4. Glenn Beck: Killings caused by soul problems. Taking to his Twitter stream, Glenn Beck was quick to tweet, at 12:24 p.m.: “Our communities are suffering and it is because of the ever expanding lack of self control & personal responsibility.” 

Tweeter Val Farrelly replied: “It’s nothing to do with self control and everything to do with a lack of gun control.” 

Another Beck gem about the shootings: “It is not the gun. It is the soul.” 

5. Louie Gohmert: If only Sandy Hook principal had an assault rifle, everyone would have been saved. Speaking to host Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, the Republican congressman from Texas let loose with this, as transcribed by the Huffington Post:

“Chris, I wish to God she had had an M4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out … and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids,” Gohmert said.

The M4 is the rifle favored by the U.S. military; you can view its specs on the site of its manufacturer, Colt. Yeah, that’ll fix everything.

This is only a sampling of what has been said by the hard right gun rights community.  Huckabee tried to walk his comments back but then I think made them worse on his show on Fox yesterday:

On Friday, Neil Cavuto asked me, “Where was God?” And I said that for 50 years, we’ve systematically attempted to have God removed from our schools, our public activities. But then at the moment we have a calamity, we wonder where He was. 

Well, the predictable left lit up the airwaves and blogosphere with a vile and vicious reaction and jumped to the conclusion that I said that if we had prayer in school, the shooting wouldn’t have happened. Well, I said nothing of the sort. 

It’s far more than just taking prayer or Bible reading out of the schools. It’s the fact that people sue a city so we aren’t confronted with a manger scene or a Christmas carol. That lawsuits are filed to remove a cross that’s a memorial to fallen soldiers. Churches and Christian-owned businesses are told to surrender their values under the edict of government orders to provide tax-funded abortions pills. We carefully and intentionally stop saying things are sinful. We call them ‘disorders.’ Sometimes, we even say they’re normal. And to get to where that we have to abandon bedrock moral truths, then we’ll ask well, where was God. 

And I respond that, as I see it, we’ve escorted him right out of our culture and we’ve marched him off the public square and then we express our surprise that a culture without him actually reflects what it’s become. As soon as the tragedy unfolded, I think God did show up. He showed up in the lives of teachers who put their lives between a gunman and their students. He showed up in policemen who rushed into the school not knowing if they would be met with a barrage of bullets. He showed up in the form of hugs and tears for children, parents and teachers who would live through the slaughter. He showed up at the overflowed church services where people lit candles and prayed. And he showed up at the White House where the president invoked His name and quoted from His book. And in a few days or weeks, we’ll probably ask God to excuse himself from view and we will announce, in our arrogant pride, that we’re now enlightened and educated and we’ve evolved beyond needing him. And somebody’s going to suggest that we pass a law to stop all this kind of thing. 

I might want to point out that we don’t have to pass a new law. There’s one that’s been around a while that works if we teach it and observe it: Thou shalt not kill. Oh, there are about nine others. But to tell you about ‘em would require bringing God back and we know how unacceptable that might be.

I don’t know… It seems to me that at a time like this, an ordained Baptist minister like Huckabee might be thinking more about reaching out and doing his best to comfort the afflicted. After all, some of those directly affected by this massacre might well be the kinds of people who don’t believe in having religion or religious symbols in a public square and support President Obama’s mandate that contraception be covered by health insurance. Instead, Huckabee is doubling down on his evangelizing – and sounding downright resentful while he's at it.  

Read More at Newshounds

The bottom line is that we can no longer put our heads in the sand and bow to the gun lobby by staying silent.  Too many people have been killed with legally obtained high powered guns with large magazines.  It is legal to buy a high powered rifle with large capacity gun magazines from a non-registered gun dealer and not have to have a background check or anything recorded.  Those rules put in place on gun/ammunition sales are only for registered gun dealers.  Even some of those have been watered down by the Republicans in Congress and in state legislatures over the years to where the rules are a joke.  The joke time is over and many Americans like me are demanding action out of their elected officials for common sense gun control.  

Karl Rove: The Debt-Ceiling Debate and 2012

This article talks about the debt ceiling outcome and how it is going to affect the political landscape going into the 2012 elections.  So nice to read an article that is not 'the sky is falling' as I have been seeing in comments on articles.  All kinds of name calling from the 'my way or no way' crowd of both parties.  These people must have had an easy life getting everything they wanted the way they want everything with no compromises as adults.  Acting like little kids starting with Obama who when they don't get all the want, picks up the ball and goes home.

The only difference I am seeing in the rhetoric is the ideology involved.  It amazing to read some of the comments on Huffington Post AOL because you probably have the best cross section of right and left on that site.  Some of the comments are humorous while others make you shake your head and wonder what planet these people are from.  The one thing that is constant is that there are a lot more people on the site with common sense from both sides then either the far left or far right wants to admit.

There is another fact starting to enter into some posts and that is a general disgust with the way Obama has run the Government.  Those comments are coming from both sides as they think he is failing miserably and is spending too much time campaigning.  Some have even taken up he wastes too much money flying Air Force One around the Country so that is becoming a bi-partisan issue.  It did not go unnoticed by the left that he didn't get involved until near the end and then grandstanded in the WH Press Office.  You could have knocked me over with a feather when I started reading the left saying the same thing I was saying.  When you throw in that the Democrats didn't wanted to pass it in December so the Republicans would have shared ownership, you stand back and watch the posters get even madder at their leadership.

While getting to the point of raising the debt ceiling was nerve wracking, the aftermath has made me laugh.  You have people taking credit for what happened that opposed the debt ceiling threatening to primary people.  Do they realize on both sides how dumb they look?   Looks like some more from this article that can be tossed into the debate on some sites.  It is so funny now to toss out something and watch both far right and left sides attack -- you know then that the agreement was good as the common sense people understand.

Libertarians and Paulbots need to find new mantra for their posts as you can spot them in a NY minute.  Johnny Carson once described a NY minute as:  "it's the interval between a Manhattan traffic light turning green and the guy behind you honking his horn."

Rove has some good insights and understands a lot of things like budget cuts cannot happen unless Republicans control the Senate and the White House.  Democrats in the Senate won't even do a budget and Obama always has that phantom plan that is never seen.  Read in another article in the Wall Street Journal today from Senator Portman who thinks Obamacare is the reason the Democrats are not doing a budget because it would out the cost and how bad it is.  Looks the Wall Street Journal is getting back to where it was before Murdoch took it over -- back to a mix of business and their great editorial pages.

By Karl Rove
August 4, 2011

The Debt-Ceiling Debate and 2012

Neither party really won, but the GOP has a better case to take to the public.
After big events like Tuesday's debt-ceiling vote, Washington goes into overdrive to declare who won and who lost. But politics is more complex and less binary than that. In this case, neither party helped itself with the public during this struggle. 

But Democrats hurt themselves most of all. They made a huge strategic mistake by failing to raise the debt ceiling late last year when they still controlled Congress. 

Instead, Democrats tried to make the GOP complicit in their spending excesses. On Dec. 8, for example, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid explained his decision not to tackle the debt ceiling until the new GOP House took office by saying he wanted to "let the Republicans have some buy-in on the debt." This ended up giving the GOP months to leverage the debt ceiling into a battle over spending cuts. 

President Obama paid the highest price during this long confrontation. By the time he signed the debt ceiling, he had enraged his own party, issued demands that were routinely ignored, reinforced his reputation as being obsessed with raising taxes, and failed to produce a concrete plan of his own. 

At the start of last December, Mr. Obama's job approval rating in the weekly Gallup poll was 47% approve and 45% disapprove. Last week, it was 40% approve and 52% disapprove. If the election were held today, Mr. Obama and his party would be swamped. 

For Republicans, the outcome was far more positive. House Republicans adroitly shifted the debate's focus from how much to raise the debt ceiling to how much should spending be cut. They achieved this even while the other two centers of power in any legislative struggle—the Senate and the White House—remained in Democratic hands. 

In doing so, Republicans achieved roughly two-thirds of the spending cuts sought in the budget the House passed in April, cuts which would have gone nowhere in the Senate without the debt-ceiling battle. 

Both GOP congressional leaders emerged with enhanced reputations. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's weirdly convoluted proposal to allow the president to raise the debt ceiling by asking Congress for permission actually helped lubricate discussions at a critical moment. The House GOP needed the prospect of something worse to provoke greater unity in their ranks. And giving Senate Democrats the hope of a Republican proposal that provided a way out kept Democrats from solidifying behind their own proposal. 

John Boehner had the even more difficult task of fashioning a consensus among potentially fractious House Republicans after voluntarily giving up two of any House speaker's most potent tools—the blandishments of earmarks and spending increases or thinly veiled threats to jerk committee assignments or deny campaign assistance. Instead, Mr. Boehner used patient explanation of his proposal's merits and the policy realities. 

The main danger for Republicans is that while 76 of the 87 House GOP freshmen voted with Mr. Boehner, a substantial minority of GOP activists did not want the debt ceiling raised regardless of what the consequences were for the economy. A dispirited base could generate costly primaries and depress turnout. 

(snip)

Entitlement reform in the current political context can be achieved only by having a Republican Senate and a Republican president join the Republican House. This is not ideal, since reforms of this magnitude are better done in a bipartisan manner. But there doesn't appear to be any alternative. The crisis is real and the need for action overwhelming. 

And so the GOP must take its case to the people in 2012 in the hope of earning a mandate. The prospects for this are much better than they were before the debt-ceiling debate—a clash from which Mr. Obama and his party might not fully recover before the election. 

Read more at the article on WSJ.com on Wednesday, August 3, 2011.

If Republicans stay home because this debt ceiling was passed or are part of the faction led by DeMint and Palin who want to primary 'yes' voters, than those Republicans are just being stupid and hardheaded.  We will take the Allen West's and the James Langford's of the Congress any day of the week over the 'my way or no way' attitude.  Found it amusing that some members of the Republican Study Committee think it is too big now since a lot of people didn't vote their leadership position even though there was never a vote whether to support or not support the debt ceiling compromise.  Guess they should put out a sign:  No Common Sense wanted!

Reports of a Debt Compromise are Circulating this Morning

This article from John Podhoretz is very good of explanation of what is going on today about some of the Republicans we have in the Congress who will vote "NO" when they don't get 100% of what they want for their agenda.  I am still shocked that there are members of Congress and Tea Party leaders who actually thought we could take over the House, and we were going to bully our way into getting something passed immediately to roll back and cut the deficit when there was a Democrat Senate and a Democrat President. 

It takes two election cycles to make a real agenda change but these people are demanding it now or they will vote NO!  One of them, Bachmann wants to run for President on the Republican ticket -- we would suggest she would be better off with her mentor Ron Paul to run as Libertarians because being NO all the time is not what thinking Republicans are all about.  The best one is thinking the Balanced Budget Amendment is going to pass the Senate -- no way that is happening with this Senate.  Taking a vote on the BBA is one thing that should happen to set the stage for after 2012 but passing -- not in your wildest dreams. 

After reading this column by Podhoretz, all I could think is that he nailed it as he explains a lot of the difference between the common sense Republican conservatives where I belong and the 'my way or no way' crowd where you find Bachmann, DeMint, the Paul's, Lee (UT), and now Palin. 

Containment, Rollback, and the Debt Compromise 

John Podhoretz


07.31.2011 - 9:12 AM

As of now—Sunday morning—word is there’s a deal between the White House and Republicans on a deal to raise the debt ceiling. No tax increases. $1 trillion in immediate budget cuts. A required $1.5 trillion in cuts by November as designed by a bipartisan committee or (if the House and Senate do not agree on them) automatic cuts to Medicare (to scare Democrats) and Defense (to scare Republicans).

If the details are true, and the deal holds, it’s an astonishing achievement for the Right—the most significant conceptual shift in American politics since Bill Clinton​ announced his support for ending welfare in 1996. Without question, there are elements on the Right that will not see it this way—that will say the deal is a sellout, that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are craven, they are enablers, they are carrying Obama’s water. I’d like to suggest a political analogy from the past that might help explain why they are wrong and why they are being unjust to those who support a deal.

In the wake of the effective Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe after the second world war, the fall of China to Mao, and North Korea’s invasion of South Korea, American anti-Communism split into two camps. One camp actively advocated what was called “rollback”—the application of military force to force the Soviets and their clients to retreat from the countries they had overrun. The other camp supported the doctrine of “containment,” which argued for quarantining Communism within the countries that had fallen under Soviet domination and remaining in a state of cold war with the Soviets and their proxies.

Both rollback and containment had as their goal the defeat of the Soviet Union and world Communism. But the strategies were different. The rollbackers said the peril was so imminent the failure to effect the change immediately would lead to the inevitably victory of the Communists. The containment advocates said we did not have the means to roll back Communism militarily, but if we held the line, over time Communism would self-destruct owing to its evil, its impracticality, and its inability to compete with the free peoples of the West.

(snip)

The supporters of rollback were uninterested in the political reality of that moment. They believed the U.S. was locked in a titanic moral struggle literally between the forces of evil and the forces of good, and anything less than the commitment of all available resources to win the battle was a form of surrender. They were morally in the right, but practically in the wrong.

Today those who oppose raising the debt ceiling on the grounds that we need to solve the debt crisis immediately or we will be destroyed by it are the direct descendants of those who supported rollback.

Everyone on the Right agrees that the U.S. is on an unsustainable fiscal path that must be altered. The difference comes down to the acceptance of political realities. Just as the United States could not effect rollback in the late 1940s (or any time thereafter), so too the Right and the Republican Party cannot effect a revolutionary change of course on July 31, 2011 with the Senate and the White House in liberal Democratic hands. The strategy, like containment, must have a longer time horizon, though it has the same goal: Ending the entitlement state before it swallows up the rest of the country.

The conceptual triumph of the Right is evident in two elements of the supposed deal. Take the fact that there are no new tax hikes. It was only 12 days ago that Barack Obama​ warned House Majority Leader Eric Cantor not to “call my bluff” and said he would go to “the American people on this.” He did; his poll numbers tanked. The “balanced approach” he advocated backfired on him even though he and his people continued to claim it had overwhelming popular support.

Now take the fact that in exchange for an increase in the debt ceiling of $2.5 trillion, there will be corresponding dollar-for-dollar cuts. That establishes a new budgetary precedent, a rational and sound one, on the question of the national debt ceiling, one that will restrain presidents of both parties as we go forward.

So who are Obama and the Democrats in my analogy? They are the accommodationists of the early 1950s (and their progeny throughout the Cold War) who declared that the anti-Communist right was a hornet’s nest of crazy people who would ignite a war and get us all blown up. They wanted peace and harmony and cordial relations with the Soviets and their proxies just as the accommodationists today want to put their heads in the sand and refuse to face the moral and political and fiscal threat emanating from the entitlement state. Whereas the rollbackers were wrong strategically but right morally, the accommodationists were wrong strategically and wrong morally.

But those who advocated containment were right strategically and right morally. And their descendants are right to support the debt-ceiling deal. 

Excerpt:  Read More at Commentary Magazine

This article is filled with common sense.  We didn't get in this deficit over night and it is not going to fixed overnight.  There is little difference between the approach of the ones on the right and the ones on the left who put their own idiology first with their 'my way or no way' approach.  There are times you have no choice but to compromise to start the process of reaching your eventual goal of a balanced budget and no deficit.  Look what happened when Democrats controlled the House and Senate in big numbers along with the White House.  They rammed through the bills with no hearings as you had to pass the bills in some cases to learn what was in them. 

We just came through two years of that mentality but now some of the right think they can do the same thing.  They are not facing reality of the situation and frankly don't seem to care.  Both parties have to work together to solve the debt ceiling problem and the runaway deficit spending that started after 9/11.  The deficit spending took off big time after the Democrats took over the Congress in 2007 but we hadn't seen anything yet when they not only kept the Congress but elected Obama and grew their numbers to the point Republicans had a small voice.  There was no compromise, just runaway spending to repay their donors and allies and institute their socialist agenda.

Still haven't recovered from members of the Tea Party and the Palin letter threatening to primary Republicans like Lt Col Allen West and others on the afternoon of the vote on the Boehner bill.  Not a peep about defeating Democrats.  That seems to be a non-starter with the Tea Party leaders who are more concerned about making sure Republicans who don't follow what they want face primary opponents from the 'my way or no way' crowd while not saying a word about going after Democrats.  Is the goal of the Paulbots and Libertarians to take over the Republican Party along with the Congress?  We will have more on that in a later post as some research is already out there and more to come.

Republicans far out number the Ron Paul/Libertarian Tea Party members especially when you take away the Republican activists from some Tea Parties in TX and FL.    Those none Paul/Libertarian people are now being heard in the halls of Congress as they are calling and writing their Reps and Senators to get on board and solve this debt ceiling crises.  They are not willing to take a chance on what might happen.  The dire warnings are there.  You could compare it to a tornado or hurricane warning when they tell people to evacuate or go underground.  Sometimes it hits in different places or is not as deadly as they predict but along comes a major hit and some people are not prepared because they have convinced themselves it is not going to happen.  It is called not facing reality. 

Don't think you want to play around with default of the United States anymore than you do with a tornado or hurricane headed your way.  That would be foolish and why a compromise needs worked out -- no side is going to come out with everything they wanted but frankly that is what happens in negotiations.  Ever buy a house -- chances of you getting the price you offer unless it is full price is slim to none. 

It is time for Republicans who do not get out and demostrate, carry signs, or shout down members of Congress to be heard even more in the halls of Congress.  These are the people who work and pay the income tax who were dubbed the 'Silent Majority' a long time ago.  We will throw in some of the Independents who left after the 'my way or no way' crowd took over in their area.  Those common sense Republicans are being heard loud and clear -- negotiate, compromise to get the best deal possible, and then look to the future to elect more Republicans in the Senate and a common sense Republican in the White House to get the deficit under control and down to zero with making responsible cuts over a period of time.

You don't pay your House off in seven months after you buy it unless you strike it rich, so what makes anyone think we can cut all the deficit in seven months especially with our economy being so weak. 

Dr. Coburn (R-OK) has a plan he released, BACK IN BLACK, outlining thousands of detailed budget options within every federal department and nearly every major program that, if taken together, would result in savings of more than $9 trillion over the next decade.  Will all those cuts pass Congress, most likely not but Dr. Coburn will keep coming back and getting them a little at a time.  He understands how it works that you start small and then it grows.  He doesn't expect everything to happen over night but in the next decade.  That makes sense versus "I want it NOW" mentality.

This common sense Republican Conservative is proud to stand on the side of Dr. Coburn who understands to get what is best for America, that it it necessary in some cases to reach across the aisle and jointly work together to get the best results.  He is attacked from the far left and far right on many occasions.  Heard him called a RINO, sell out, traitor, for starters but words don't bother him and he keeps moving the ball forward a little at a time.

Cong Tom Cole (R-OK) Praises Budget Agreement

Congressman Cole is from the 4th District of Oklahoma with Norman, Moore, Lawton, Ada, and Ardmore as the primary cities in the district along with Tinker AFB in Midwest City and Fort Sill in Lawton. Military from both bases especially Fort Sill are always going on deployment.

Couldn't believe it when Obama said he would veto and Reid said he would vote against pay for our military if we had a Government shutdown. Tom Cole knows the struggle the people of his district who are in the military already go through to make ends meet. The thought of not paying our military was met by most Oklahomans with pure disdain for Obama and Reid.

There are a few Republicans who oppose this bill but they seem to forget that a Government shutdown would affect millions of people who through no fault of their own wouldn't get paid including our military since Obama was going to veto a continuing spending measure that included their pay. Some of these people want their social issues to be primary just like some in Oklahoma. The new cuts $80 billion from the Obama FY11 budget but that still is not enough for some of the far right. Guess if both the far right and far left oppose the bill, it must be pretty good.

If we had more Congressman like Tom Cole and others, we would be better off. He has a ton of 'Common Sense' and understands that he is a Republican but once elected represents every member of his district not just Republicans. For that he is sometimes a target of Oklahoma social conservatives even though he is pro-life because he puts our military and our economy first. Cong Dan Boren (D-OK) votes for his Oklahoma District but gets attacked by the far left for not following Pelosi.

Cole Praises Budget AgreementApril 9, 2011

House, Senate Agree to Largest Spending Cut in American History
WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Congressman Tom Cole (OK-4) released the following statement after Congress approved a temporary funding measure to avert a government shutdown and agreed to pass a long-term bill to cut almost $80 billion below President Obama's 2011 budget request -- the largest spending cut in American history:

"When this agreement is approved next week, it could mark the point at which we begin turning our economy around. Republicans set out to obtain necessary spending cuts and ended up achieving cuts that are truly historic and significant -- without allowing a government shutdown or compromising important principles.

"A government shutdown would bring real hardship to our military families, and passing one more temporary measure to prevent that is the right thing to do. It's unfortunate that Senate Democrats have dragged this process out so long, but the important thing is that we achieve real deficit reductions.

"I look forward to voting for this agreement to cut $79 billion next week and moving on to pass a 2012 budget that cuts trillions."

It is time for Republicans at the national level along with the states level to put social issues on the back burner as Congress and State Legislatures work to get their budgets back in line with more responsible government. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels took a hit for saying social issues belong on the back burner to getting our Country turned around financially. He was right but he got clobbered by those social conservatives who speak the loudest.

When you have people from both sides who are too far left or right, it creates an attitude of 'my way or no way!' You cannot run Government like that -- it didn't work under the total Democrat domination for four years and unfortunately the Republicans grew Government on their watch before that with more and more social programs that should be in the community not paid for by Congress.

All you have to do is read how the social conservatives are treating our Speaker of the Oklahoma house to understand that a lot of social conservatives including at the National level have no regard for anyone who doesn't share their views and ideas. Social conservatives are mad at the new Speaker Steele who made the decision that getting our economy back on track, our education system made accountable, and our infrastructure fixed as priorities.

In Oklahoma their large amount of 'social' bills submitted add nothing to our economy, education, or infrastructure but take up valuable time in the Oklahoma Legislature when bills that affect all of us need to be heard. The OK House submitted over 1,200 bills which is ludicrous -- a good portion of those social conservative bills. A lot of their bills they rammed through the Legislature in the past have been overturned in the Courts as they overstepped.

It is a small group of Oklahoma social conservative Representatives and people who yell the loudest about social issues trump everything. We are seeing the same thing at the National level out of another small group that don't seem to understand taking over the House doesn't mean ramming their agenda through the Congress. We control one House but they expect social issues to take the front and center stage including being willing to shut down government and not pay our active duty military to get their points across. I call that selfish and self-centered. Same attitude I had with the Democrats ramming their bills through the Congress the last four years. Don't like that mentality from either side.



Excerpt from The Oklahoman yesterday shows that some of the national people sound just like our Oklahoma social conservatives that are quick to point out only their ideas are correct and everyone else does not need to be heard. I thought that Speaker Steele summed it up very well in this article:

Steele knew he would be a target at the meeting. Some in the group agreed with those who went in December to Bartlesville to protest a House Republican caucus meeting. They didn't like comments Steele had made in which he said he would try to keep the Republican-controlled House focused on bills that would improve the state's business economy. Social conservatives interpreted his comments to mean bills dealing with their concerns would be placed on the back shelf.

Asked if he has been frustrated this session, Steele said he doesn't like when people allow emotions or personalities to get in the way of having a civilized and rational discussion of ideas.

Steele said he likes the book, “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart,” which looks at the trend of Americans spending more time with people who have similar beliefs.

“When we only interact with people who think and talk just like we do, we tend to think that we're the only ones who are right and everybody else is wrong,” Steele said.

Excerpt: Read more Oklahoma.com

The bottom line is that 435 members of the House and 100 members of the Senate need to work together to get our Country back on the right track with lowering the deficits every year until we have common sense budgets that are restored to the Government. They can start by quit hiring so many Government employees to run new self-serving programs.

Some Democrats and Republicans need reminded they work for 'We the People' and that means all the people not just one ideological group. Follow the Constitution and quit trying to make the Constitution a living document which is a pet project of most liberals and a few conservatives. It serves us as well today as it did when it was written.

Every member of Congress should have this boldly displayed in their office:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."



Joe Scarborough: Hold bad political actors accountable

The former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough from the Florida Panhandle nailed it. Joe came into office with the 1994 Republican takeover of the Congress and served for three terms as he had committed to do when he signed on to the Contract with America. I agree with him when he says he never understood the venom aimed at him  because he was a conservative in Congress and would bet holds the same principles he held then. The venom and the vitriol has increased with both sides of the 'my way or no way' crowd -- left and right who represent a small portion of both parties, but their voices seem to be the loudest.

Several conservative websites have continually attacked Scarborough as not being conservative enough but I personally think he speaks with common sense that comes from being from the Florida Panhandle not some big city of the east coast.  Because he doesn't follow the conservative agenda 100%, he is attacked and called names.  Seems to be what some do best on the far right or left.

If I had the opportunity to have lunch with one person from all the cable news channels, it would be Joe Scarborough. Believe he has been unfairly demonized by some of the far right conservatives who seem to be angry all the time just like the far left that is angry all the time. Their agendas are different but their over the top rhetoric is the same.

Tonight the victims of the tragedy in Arizona will be remembered in a Memorial Service where President Obama, Governor Brewer, and Attorney General Holder will be in attendance. Things haven't always been rosy between Gov Brewer and the Administration but tonight is a coming together to honor those who were killed and injured in an attack by one lone man and politics has been put on the back burner. Governor Brewer has been a leader in bringing the people of Arizona together during this tragedy and many have seen a softer side to the Governor they never saw during the heated debates on immigration.

From accounts of people who were in class with the shooter, he should have been in a mental hospital not on the streets of Tucson. If someone needs to be held accountable, place the blame on the people who knew he was mentally unstable but even then they never could have imagined he would have done something like this. Plus you cannot commit someone without their will if they have not broken any laws. The gun didn't shoot the people, a deranged person using a gun killed them. More gun laws would not have changed the outcome.

This is a tragedy that doesn't need political blame assigned as the shooter seems to be pretty far out there in his readings and his rants which are hard to understand. What should have happened, didn't stop the political class, pundits, and even a local Sheriff from assigning blame before the facts were known which started a firestorm with the right answering the critics in some overheated rhetoric themselves. This over the top rhetoric didn't start because of this tragedy, it has been in full force for people to see for a long time.

The problem we see is that the political discourse has gone into the gutter even more since 2000 with all the shouting both on Fox News by some of the pundits and on MSNBC News from the other side. Between some of the hosts on both cable outlets and their guests, shouting and trashing people has become the name of the game. Is it for ratings or do they always talk like that? We hope it is only for ratings because if it is not, then maybe they should attend anger management classes.   In some ways reminds us of the 60's and all the anger and shouting that went on with the protests but then some these pundits are from that era or others are sons and daughters of the angry anti-war protestors.

Before 2000 and the popularity of  24-hour cable news and news shows (use the term lightly), we had President Clinton following the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, blame right wing talk radio for the tragedy not mentioning it was the anniversary of Waco and that McVeigh was a nutcase.  Clinton didn't wait for facts but struck out against the right for political reasons.   That started a downhill slide that picked up steam following the election in 2000 and discourse returning to the 60's level which we hated then.

Why can't people just disagree on the opponent's agenda without shouting and trying to keep the other person from talking? What went on at Town Halls and at some rallies was absolutely disgusting. The shouting so a member of Congress couldn't speak was reprehensible, but then the attacks by the left by the SEIU and others at rallies on attendees, like what happened in St. Louis, was even more reprehensible. We never thought using gun references in campaigns was necessary. We honestly didn't see the map or hear the words about 'lock and load' or see the Gov Manchin ad as we were too busy being involved on our blogs and in campaigns that were positive. 

One thing we do know is that the rhetoric has gone over the top from both sides and keeps getting worse not better. Some of it has been instigated by some pundits with their comments and shouting. Doesn't mean you cannot disagree -- it is American to be part of the loyal opposition but we don't need to shout and toss out things we know are not true as facts. We have a right as the old saying goes to 'agree to disagree' as members of the opposition or even in our own party. No one deserves to be shouted down period. Been on the receiving end of being cussed out and threatened when I dared to disagree with some Party people -- that was mild then to what it is today.

When President Clinton blamed talk radio for the Murrah Bombing which turned a huge tragedy into a political plus for Clinton. It was wrong then and wrong today.  The idea of  'never let a tragedy go to waste' was one of the worst comments that became associated with Clinton and Rahm Emanuel.

We thought rhetoric for this shooting and placing of blame was starting to settle down with thoughts turning to honoring the victims tonight. Sarah Palin released a video this morning on the day of the mourning of the victims with her video titled: Sarah Palin: America's Enduring Strength which we 'wrongly' assumed was going to be about how people are handling this tragedy from a positive standpoint. Instead Palin used the term "Blood Libel" in this video to aim at her critics. We doubt she understands the meaning of the term but someone on her staff should do some research before she speaks. We feel this video was inappropriate to be released today or any other day.  We are not alone as emails and phone calls have been flying.  Until she released this video, we intended to not cover her and the snarky comments but this video was over the top especially today. 

A leader in a time of tragedy works to bring people together as we have seen from Speaker of the House John Boehner, Governor Jan Brewer, and President Obama for starters.

While the 10-15% of Republicans who are loyal Palin supporters no matter what she says will defend her, a lot of Republicans, if my small sample is any indication, are appalled at this video. In fact one of her strongest supporters I know doesn't support her after this video, with her poor timing, and most likely not understanding history of the term before using the term.

In fairness, Palin wasn't the first person to use the term 'Blood Libel' in the discussion of this tragedy. We first saw the term used in an oped headline 'Notable: The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel' by Glenn Reynolds in the Wall Street Journal. We wondered then at the term 'Blood Libel' being used because of its historical meaning dating back to the darkest days of anti-semitism in history.

We think the following sums it up the best:

Alvin S. Felzenberg 9/11 Commission Spokesman, Book Author and Professor :

Palin's comments will not detract in the least from the president's remarks. She had an opportunity to rise above the stereotypical portrait of her we have come to know well the past two years and to re-introduce herself to people who might have given her a hearing. Her career, both as a politician and as a celebrity, is over. Someone other than Glenn Bleck needs to tell her.

Disclosure: This from someone who just two days ago in this space called upon her critics to lay off Palin and who still believes it unfair to seek to establish causation between what Palin said on the campaign trail and the Arizona tragedy.  (Source:  Politico)

This article from Joe Scarborough we believe sets the right tone and hope that people from both sides take to heart what he is saying and lower the rhetoric:

Hold bad political actors accountable
Joe Scarborough
January 11, 2011

Every Sunday morning starts the same way: I go to Starbucks, pick up The New York Times and dive in.

Every Sunday morning, that is, except for the one that just passed. When I went to the coffee shop, I passed the newspaper rack without a glance. I simply couldn’t bear to look.

The day before, my wife, Susan, had rushed into our apartment, shaking and with both fists clenched. Through tears, she told me about the shootings at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’s meeting at a parking lot in Tucson, Ariz.

“So help me, God” were the first words of an outburst that included many harsh words for politicians and talk show hosts — public figures whose invective had turned politics into a rhetorical killing field. For Susan and me, the attack hit too close to home.

I woke up Sunday morning knowing that at least six good Americans in Arizona didn’t. For the first time in years, I didn’t want to absorb any more bad news. Not yet, at least. I broke my daily routine, avoiding the newsstands and Sunday news shows. I bought my coffee, checked up on my parents and sat there alone.

I’ve long since lost count of the number of town hall meetings, supermarket conversations and other personal interactions I’ve had with the voters in my district. As I sat there, I replayed almost all of them in my mind. Being close to the people, knowing them and hearing them defined who I was as a public servant.

I don’t know her, but I do know Giffords felt the same way.

Sunday morning was also a time to reflect on the rage that has gripped our political system over the past two decades. Often that anger was directed at President Barack Obama, President George W. Bush or, in my day as a congressman, President Bill Clinton. And sometimes that rage was directed toward me.

I never really understood how someone with a strong conservative voting record like mine could incur the wrath of fringe characters enraged that I wasn’t conservative enough. But I soon learned that, for some, blind hatred for government is all the motivation they need.

I also thought about what I had seen just days before on the floor of the House. As outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi handed over the gavel to new Speaker John Boehner, she made sure everyone appreciated the symbolism: It represented the peaceful transfer of power that makes our democracy special.

Saturday afternoon, that peace was shattered.

We don’t know yet if politics moved the gunman to action, but I do know that politics doesn’t belong anywhere near our reaction to it.

We can’t yet understand what led a domestic terrorist to try to assassinate a good congresswoman and kill so many others.

But we do know that we can’t afford to miss this warning. No one should give a free pass to talk show hosts and their political guests who have spent the past several years spreading hate speech in search of big ratings, political contributions and book sales.

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As I have said for years now, such hateful words have consequences. As Giffords presciently warned less than a year ago, so does the violent imagery that has infected our politics.

This feedback loop of hate speech has created an angry environment that inspires the most troubled.

In that loop lives a talk show host who called this president a racist, another who called the last president a fascist, a congresswoman who urges her constituents to be armed and dangerous and a national figure who told her followers to “reload” against her political enemies.

Too many dismiss these extreme eruptions as crass commercial calculations. Saturday taught us that we have to hold bad political actors accountable. It is a shared responsibility. Those with the loudest megaphones have to understand the audience and the actions they risk provoking. Those on the listening end have to know that in America, philosophical differences and personal violence can never overlap.

Many of my friends fear the worst in days to come. They remember how America has endured turbulent periods when political violence became the norm.

The rage of the 1960s led to the killings of leaders like the Kennedys and Martin Luther King Jr. In the early 1980s, John Lennon, Ronald Reagan and the pope were all shot within a few months of one another. We can only pray that the Arizona massacre was an isolated incident.

But like Rep. Giffords, I remain an optimist. I believe good people on the right and left will begin to call on their political leaders and cable news cheerleaders to start showing restraint. They will ask them to actually try to talk to political opponents with whom they disagree.

More reasonable rhetoric might not land them book contracts or improve TV ratings. But I’d rather see sales suffer because we’ve erred on the side of calm and compassion than because even the most avid consumers of news awaken one day unable to bear any more heartbreaking headlines.

A guest columnist for POLITICO, Joe Scarborough hosts “Morning Joe” on MSNBC and represented Florida’s 1st Congressional District in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001.

Read more on the subject at: Politico

Note: My bold in the article.