Why the second amendment doesn't matter in the gun laws debate.

 

 

 

 

 No matter what side of the gun control debate someone happens to be on, whether its gun control advocates like VP Joe Biden, Diane Feinstein, Mayor Bloomberg, the courageous Gabby Giffords and her husband, or those on the other side who want no gun control at all, they all have one thing in common -- they have no idea what the second amendment is really all about,  why it's there, what it means,  the original intent of the Framers when they wrote it, or even what the words in the amendment actually mean.   They think they know, but they don't..

Whether its gun control proponents, even those who want to see a ban on weapons like the AR-15, or those who oppose any and all gun restrictions, both sides bring up the second amendment all the time,  either claiming that such and such gun law doesn't violate an individual's "second amendment rights",  or the other side claiming that it does. 

 Whether its conservative Texas senator Ted Cruz, or his nemesis on gun control Diane Feinstein all of them seem to agree or accept that the second amendment is guaranteeing an individual right to own a gun. They are  all completely wrong including journalists writing about the gun debate, who, as usual have no idea what they are writing about and are too lazy to find out.

 Perhaps Senator Cruz and Senator Feinstein, and everyone else on both sides of the gun control issue would be surprised to learn that in the first 224 years of the existence of the second amendment, the constitution it's part of, and the Supreme Court the constitution created, in every case, every Supreme Court in those 224 years without exception, when having to rule on whether the second amendment conferred an individual right to own a gun,  the majority ruled it did not. In every case. For 224 years.

The only Supreme Court to rule otherwise is the present court, or more precisely, the five so called conservative members of the court,  the court which gave us Citizens United which said a corporation is a person,  who much to the consternation of many  true conservative judges, overturned 224 years of Supreme Court precedent which said the second amendment had nothing to do with an individual right to own a gun and last year ruled that it did.

To lay claim to the charge that the ruling was probably the most corrupt and dishonest since the Dred Scott decision in 1859 is the fact that Justice Sam Alito, in his 5-4 majority opinion, invoked, not the constitution of the United States or the second amendment itself,  but Blackstone's Rights of Englishmen, a document not only not the constitution, but a document not even American in origin which was written 100 years before the United States was created.

Imagine the hue and cry of conservatives in and out of congress if five liberal justices had ruled the same way and based their decison on something other than the constitution. Conservatives in and out of congress would be screaming for the justices impeachment since conservatives are always complaining about "activist" judges who find rights in the constitution that aren't there. Which is exactly what the five current conservative Supreme Court justices did in their decision.

The reason every  Supreme Court in 224 years ruled that the second amendment had nothing to do with an individual right to own a gun, is because there is absolute proof beyond the slightest doubt, that the purpose of the second amendment, the intent of those who created it,   its very reason for existence, had nothing to do with someone's right to own a gun. And the true meaning of  the words in the second amendment, for those who understand the words,  reflect that.

While there is a mountain of proof that the second amendment's existence and purpose had nothing to do with an individual right to own a gun, and the true meaning of the amendment was not to confer any such right, you only have to know two facts about the second amendment to understand that.

First, the word "arms" does not mean guns.It didnt mean guns to the Framers who wrote the amendment in 1789, it  didnt mean guns in 789, it didn't mean guns in 1969 and it doesn't mean guns today.  It has never meant guns.  In fact the creation of the word "arms" predates the invention of the gun by more than 1,000 years and given that the amendment was carefully written and rewritten seven times ( and all seven versions can be seen in the Library of Congress) it is proof they chose their words carefully to make sure the amendment meant exactly what they intended.

The very word "arms" is derived from the word "army", which, as everyone knows, is an organized group of people whose purpose is to fight a war and engage in battle.Armies carry arms.

No one with even a passing understanding of the English language doesn't understand and agree,  when it is pointed out,  that there is a world of difference between "arms control" and "gun control". "Arms control" deals with weapons of war most often weapons possessed by governments and their proliferation. These "arms" include everything from fighter jets to chemical and biological weapons, to missiles, to bombs. "Arms control" has nothing to do with  individuals and their guns.

Similarly everyone knows there is a world of difference between a "gun dealer" and an  "arms dealer". You can't buy a Smith and Wesson, a Glock or a shotgun from an arms dealer. He would laugh at you. Conversely you can't buy what an arms dealer sells -- rocket propelled grenades, Katyusha rockets, rocket launchers, surface to air missiles, IED's,  and yes assault rifles and machine guns, at a gun store. . Arms dealers sell weapons of war, gun dealers sell guns. There is a world of difference.

And finally, the "arms race" between the United States and Soviet Union from the 1950's through the fall of Communism in the 80's, as everyone knows had nothing to do with which country had more people with guns in their closets. The "arms race" had to do with who had more nuclear warheds and  the ICBM's and long range bombers to deliver them..

Do not think for one second that those who wrote and ratified "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal"  or "we the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect Union" did not understand the difference between the word "guns" and "arms".The Framers understood the word "arms"  to mean exactly what it's always meant and means even today -- weapons and implements of war. Which is why it was chosen.

In 1789 when the Framers created the second amendment, "arms"   of course included muskets. But to the Framers it also meant cannon, cannon balls, powder, rockets, bayonets, even warships and forts. Because the whole point of the second amendment was to give individual states the constitutional right to raise and maintain their own well trained or "well regulated", armies and to have whatever weapons of war they wished.  Because the whole purpose of the second amendment was to enable the maintaing of state militias  who would be able to stand toe to toe with a federal army if it became "necessary for the security of a free state",  to protect the states from the possibility of a future president turned dictator trying to use a federal army to enforce his will.

This is crucial to understanding the purpose and meaning of the infringement clause and to understand why Justice Scalia, seeming to understand the constitutional mistake they made and the Pandora's Box they opened, immediately tried to backtrack on their decision by saying the right granted in the second amendment was not limitless. He could not have been more wrong. The amendment specifically states it is limitless and  in fact the amendment would be useless if it weren't limitless. The whole point of the amendment was to give the states the capacity to stand up to a federal army with the same weapons the federal army had.  For the states to be limited in what weapons -- "arms" they could have would make the whole purpose of the second amendment useless. But Scalia knew the chaos that would ensue if you applied that right, not to a state government, but to individuals.
 

If anyone has any doubt that the true meaning of the second amendment is to allow states to have whatever weapons of war they wished,  look at the National Guard today, the state military force that the "well regulated militia" which is the subject of the second amendment has morphed into.

Tank battalions from the Alabama National Guard fought in Iraq. So did  state National Guard units from just about every state in the Union. George W. Bush was a member of the Texas Air National Guard, which has it's own F-15 fighters which Bush and other members of the Guard were trained to fly. The "arms"  possessed by state National Guard units  is a direct result of the second amendment right of the states to have their own armies and all weapons of war they wish. And they do.

In order for the current conservative members of the court to make its constitutionally dishonest decision they had to abandon the cornerstone of conservative jurisprudence, the principle each of them at one time or another embraced as essential,  which is the principle of Original Intent which states that where the clear intent of the framers is clear it is that intent that is to be applied.

This is why former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Warren Burger, a conservative appointed by Richard Nixon said in 1990 that the idea that the second amendment had anything to do with an individual right to own a gun "is the subject of the biggest fraud -- I repeat the word fraud -- ever perpetrated by an interest group ( the NRA) on the American people in my lifetime".

And more recently, conservative judge Harvie Wilkinson III of the 4th Circuit US Court of Appeals in criticizing the Supreme Court's Heller decision that the second amendment applied to individuals said, " I prefer Fox News to CNN and the Washington Examiner to the Washington Post, but the decision of the majority read an ambiguous constitutional provision as creating a substantive right that the Court had never acknowledged in the more than two hundred years since the amendment’s enactment. The majority then used that same right to strike down a law passed by elected officials acting, rightly or wrongly, to preserve the safety of the citizenry.”

The only other thing one needs to know to understand the second amendment is what the words " the right to bear arms" really means and what those words meant to the Framers.

The words do not mean the right to use a gun as most people wrongly assume. It does not mean the right to use a gun to hunt, or to target shoot or to have a gun for  your own personal self-defense or to protect your livestock. Having a gun for those purposes was so basic to life in 1789 that to think the Framers spent three weeks debating it is preposterous. The term "to bear arms" as used and understood by the Framers in 1789 is a term that had a very specific meaning because the term "to bear arms" had only one true meaning in 1789. "To bear arms" meant to go to war.

 The little known fact which explodes most people's assumptions about the second amendment along with the current  Supreme Court ruling is that the original debate among the Framers that created the second amendmet was transcribed by a  stenographer in the room while the debate was taking place, transcribed  sometimes verbatim. It is a virtual certainty that most people who pontificate about the second amendment are not even aware this transcript exists much less having read it. And reading it settles once and for all what the intent of the amendment was and is. Because the idea of an individual right to own a gun is not even discussed.

The second amendment came into being when a representative from North Carolina stood up and offered a proposition that all  at the constitutional convention agreed with. The proposition was "the existence of a federal army is a threat to liberty".

The question was then put to the Framers at the convention of what to do about it. The first suggestion was an amendment which would ban the federal government from even having a standing army. This was deemed impractical and unsafe. The next proposition was to allow the government to raise an army but only on an ad hoc basis contingent on a 3/4 vote of congress. That was also rejected as being impractical. The solution finally agreed upon after three weeks of debate was to allow the states to have their own well drilled, well trained standing armies -- state militias with a clear command and control structure as opposed to the Minute Man type militias that existed in 1775.  So a well trained, "well regulated" militia armed with whatever weapons of war the state wished, militias that could go toe to toe with a federal army if needed,  was the solution decided upon and which became the second amendment, a states right to have an army and weapons of war and to go to war on their own behalf if neccessary. Those states having their own armies or militias, armed with weapons of war is why the Civil War lasted four years.

During the entire three week debate that created  the second amendment individual gun ownership was never even brought up. Which is why Chief Justice Warren Burger called the idea that the second amendment applied to an individual right to own a gun "the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the American people in my lifetime".

 Ultimately the reason why the second amendment doesn't matter in the current gun control debate is because  gun laws have always been a matter for local governments, not just states, but individual towns, cities, or villages. And what was suggested here some months ago,  that states and localities completely ignore last year's Supreme Court ruling and enact whatever gun laws they wish is just what is happening.Gun laws that work in Montana make no sense in New York. And vice versa. It is and always has been a local matter. And it is not likely, given Scalia's statement that the second amendment is not "limitless", that the Supreme Court would overturn any gun law on second amendment grounds.

New York enacted the toughest gun laws in the country and Colorado followed suit with their own new tough laws. On the other end of the spectrum, South Carolina is considering a law that will not require any gun permits at all, especially to carry concealed weapons.

And that's the way its been for 225 years -- gun laws not rights have always been decided by individual states and local governments. In the 1880's Wyatt Earp banned guns completely from Tombstone, Arizona and no one ever complained he violated their constitutional rights.

Its up to each individual locality to decide for themselves what gun laws work for them. The second amendment has nothing to do with it and never did. The federal government, if it so chooses could ban or regulate the sale of any weapon they wished to private individuals since it has jurisdiction over interstate commerce. And none of that would be unconstitutional.

In the end, with all the bombast and evocation of the second amendment on both sides, it won't affect gun laws anywhere. Legislatures and how they vote will be what matters. Justice Scalia's backtracking on the court ruling by saying the second amendment is not unlimited when in fact it specifically says it is unlimited indicates the court will uphold as constitutional almost any gun law or regulation a state or town or village wants to impose.

The rest is up to them.

Anniversary of Iraq war is also anniversary of news media's massive failures..

 

 

 

 

When trying to assemble a collection of the news media's finest moments, other than Edward R. Murrow's standing up to Joe McCarthy, Walter Cronkite's broadcast calling Vietnam a stalemate and a war we couldn't win, and Woodward and Bernstein's historic Watergate reporting, the news media over the last 15 years, especially in times when it's needed most, doesn't have much to be proud of.

Over the last 15 years, beginning with the All Monica All the Time coverage by the cable networks of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, self-serving news coverage which gave the Republican majority the belief there was hay to be made in impeaching Clinton, there has been a lot for the news media to be ashamed of. And none more devastating then their collective abdication of responsibility, incompetence and spineless, fearful reporting in the promoting and selling of Bush administration lies when it came to the run up to the war in Iraq.

That George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice and others in the Bush administration told outright, bald faced unequivocal lies both to the American public and privately to members of congress to gather support for the war in Iraq is now a part of history and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. Senator Bill Nelson, a former astronaut revealed two years ago, that in a private meeting with civilian administration defense department officials, he had been told that Saddam Hussein had drones capable of hitting the east coast of the United States with a chemical attack. That was not only an outright lie, but there was in fact an Air Force intelligence assessment of Sadaam's drones and that intelligence report stated they were made of wood, did not have a range of more than 300 miles and had no capacity to launch any kind of missile. We also know Dick Cheney lied to House Majority Leader Dick Armey to get him to change his opposition to the Iraq invasion, telling him Sadaam had developed miniaturization technology that could result in a nuclear suitcase bomb.

That the news media never questioned a word anyone from the Bush administration said, never demanded proof, never even asked for it, never considered there could be two sides, and ignored all the credible evidence that flew in the face of the Bush-Cheney lie machine is also now a part of history. And is why, even today, the worst collection of journalists, especially on cable news, that the country has ever had continues to deserve our contempt.

Leading the charge of journalistic incompetence and malfeasance was the New York Times who were duped by Dick Cheney worse than a first year journalist for a high school newspaper but have nothing but their own low journalistic standards to blame.

As everyone knows by now, Dick Cheney's office, through Scooter Libby, fed the gullible and ambitious Judith Miller, a reporter for the Times, a series of false "facts" that she swallowed like a trained seal, and with the thumbs up from her equally journalistically irresponsible Washington Bureau chief Jill Abramson (who incredibly was promoted and is now the Executive editor of the Times) wrote articles about Sadaam's WMD that were published on the front pages of the NY Times, all of which turned out to be false and published by the Times without a shred of proof.

Cheney and Bush then used the Times front page spoon fed reporting as if it were the product of the Times independent reporting which confirmed their claims and used that to bolster the case for war. Without a word of protest from the Times. This was not only a massive failure on the part of Miller and on the Times editors but journalistic incompetence and malfeasance.

Anyone who has ever seen All the President's Men, knows that at the Washington Post during the Watergate investigation, Ben Bradlee's journalistic standards required that Woodward and Bernstein get corroboration from three independent sources before the Washington Post would publish a Watergate story. The New York Times published front page stories asserting the existence of WMD by Sadaam Hussein, written by Miller, spoon fed to her by Dick Cheney justifying the case for the first preemptive war in American history without trying to get a single independent source to corroborate what Miller was being told.

On the contrary, there were sources who plainly contradicted what Cheney and Bush were pushing, no less a credible source than Hans Blix, the UN weapons inspector who had spent time in Iraq and was absolutely convinced that Sadaam did not have any biological or chemical weapons and no capability at all to make a nuclear weapon.

Republican conservatives at the time mocked Blix, dismissed him, and ridiculed him while the NY Times, and cable news' Wolf Blitzer at CNN and others stood around with their hands in their pockets and behaved like sycophants, afraid, as they always are, to speak out or present contrary information if they think they might pay a price. It was during an interview with Blitzer on CNN that Condoleeza Rice told Blitzer "we can't afford to see the smoking gun turn into a mushroom cloud". Blitzer let the statement stand without even an iota of skepticism or demanding any proof.

Then of course there were the radio stations in Texas and other Red states who, taking a leaf from the Nazi propaganda effort, organized the mass burning of Dixie Chicks CD's because of their public statements against the war, statements which gave massive heartburn to their propaganda swallowing listeners who believed every lie the Bush Adminstration told, including Cheney's lie to a VFW gathering in which he said " there is absolutely no doubt that Sadaam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction". When Cheney made that statement he did not have one single peice of intelligence from any intelligence agency that would have allowed him to make that statement.

Yet even today, MSNBC's Chris Jansing either out of sheer ignorance, dishonesty, or perhaps unable to come to terms with her own complicity in the lies she helped disseminate,  talked about how "faulty intelligence led to the war in Iraq" when today  it is well known that no intelligence ever gave the Bush administration a shred of proof that Sadaam had WMD and in fact even warned the White House about statements it was making because there was no evidence of WMD in Iraq

In a recent interview on MSNBC marking the anniversary of the Iraq invasion, congresswoman and Iraq war vet Tammy Duckworth said that she wished there had been a more reasoned and a more honest discussion about going to war in Iraq before the invasion (hard to do when Red State war mongers who belonged to the coalition of the willing to hold the coats of those who had to fight were burning Dixie Chicks CD's and convulsing like Holy Rollers over going to war). But the primary reason there was not an honest discussion and a reasoned debate over going to war was completely the fault of the news media, those at MSNBC, Fox, CNN, the New York Times and those who followed their leads.

Those media outlets made it impossible to have an honest discussion about going to war, an honest discussion about the "evidence" and more to the point, the lack of it. They dutifully kept their mouths shut except to cheerlead for the war, followed the Bush administration lead and refused to question or raise a doubt while the Republican and conservative cheerleaders for the war were branding anyone who opposed the war or even questioned it as "unpatriotic".

And those who quivered the most, who were most afraid of that label and who buckled under were the news media, people Wolf Blitzer at CNN who got real tough with Anthony Weiner over a photo of him in his underwear but was an administration puppy dog when it came to the lead up to the war in Iraq. Management at MSNBC, wasn't much better, and then there was of course, Judith Miller and the New York Times.

Maybe the worst of it is, after all the lies they reported as facts have now been proved to be just that,  and is a matter of history,  and how mainstream journalism was complicit in shaping dishonest policy and dispensing propaganda, when it comes to mainstream journalism and the lack of competence and integrity with which they do their jobs, nothing has changed.

 Happy anniversary.

The top 21 conservative contributions to America.

 

 

 

 

Now that the CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference is in full swing it seemed like a good idea to review the contributions made by conservatism to America , the American way of life, and American values as defined by the Founders. So as a public service to those who may speakl at CPAC and want to remind those gathered there of how valuable conservatism has been,  here are the top 20 conservative contributions to America, those that have had the most impact on the country and life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

1. They opposed independence from Great Britain and the revolution in 1776.

 Conservatives in the colonies at the time were known as Tories. They were completely against the Revolution and independence from Great Britain. In fact most of them thought those crazy radical liberals like Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, Adams, Paine and the others in New York,Pennsylvania and Boston were going to ruin everything and many of them defected to the British.

2. They created and insisted on the institution of slavery and the total subjugation of Africans kidnapped and brought to America against their will be made part of the Constitution.

3. They started and fought a Civil War in which over 600,000 were killed,  hoping to destroy the country so they could keep the institution of slavery.

4. For more than 100 years after the Civil War including following the Civil Rights Act of 1964, conservatives, especially southern conservatives, did everything in their power to deprive African Americans of their rights, including lynchings, beatings, burning crosses on the lawns of African-Americans, and having the police beat them with clubs.

5. Conservatives opposed women's right to vote.

6. Conservatives were responsible for Prohibition, the constitutional amendment that outlawed alcohol and is credited with turning organized crime into an enterprise bigger than U.S. Steel and made Al Capone a star.

7. Conservatives vigorously opposed the Equal Rights Amendment which  guaranteed women's equality in all areas of life.  Their argument against the amendment was that if the Equal Rights Amendment passed women would have to use the same public rest rooms as men ( no kidding).

 8. Conservatives believed global warming is a myth and since 1968 have opposed all legislation protecting the environment including the emission of greenhouse gases and mocked as "tree huggers" those trying to clean it up.

 9. A conservative president and administration were responsible for what became known as Watergate, the worst abuse of power,   undermining and disregarding of the constitution and American liberty and constitutional rights in American history. Every member of the Nixon administration went to prison including the Director of the FBI, two attorneys general, two White House chiefs of staff, two White House counsels and most of their subordinates.

10. In 1981 President Ronald Reagan, conservatism's biggest hero, is the one who gave Sadaam Hussein his chemical and biological weapons including anthrax starter kits.

 11. In 1981 the Reagan Administration voted for a UN resolution condemning Israel for sending fighter jets into Iraq and destroying Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor.

 12. In 1982 Reagan, called by conservatives The Great Communicator, communicated nothing when Saddam used his chemical weapons against his own people and killed 60,000 civilians.

 13. In 1998 the conservative Republican majority in congress impeached President Bill Clinton, only the second time in American history a president had been impeached, and used Clinton's dalliance with Monica Lewinsky and lying about it as the reason. At the same time the House voted to impeach Clinton, conservative Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was found to be cheating on his own wife with his own administrative assistant. He was replaced by conservative Robert Livingston who resigned  two day later when it was revealed he also had been cheating on his wife. It was also revealed during the impeachment proceedings that conservative Republican Henry Hyde, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee that voted to impeach Clinton, had not only been cheating on his wife he also had cheated on the woman he was cheating with,  telling her he wasn't married.

14. In 2001, a newly elected conservative president, George W. Bush decided the Clinton administration had been wrong in treating terrorism and Al-Qaeda as the biggest threats to U.S. national security, demoted Richard Clarke, head of White House anti-terrorism, dismissed terrorism as a threat, ignored frantic warnings by George Tenant at CIA that intelligence showed the country was about to be hit with a terrorist attack, was told on August 6, 2001 that Al-Qaeda was going to hijack U.S. airliners as part of the attack and did absolutely nothing. In addition, the assistant director of the FBI testified that then attorney general in John Ashcroft, had told him early on in the administration that he didn't want to hear any more about terrorism.

15. The same conservative president and a conservative dominated congress lied the country into a war in Iraq by falsely claiming that Sadaam had a nuclear weapons capability even though they knew he didn't. They also cut taxes at the same time they took the country to war,  blowing a $1 trillion hole in the balanced budget and zero deficit they inherited.

16. The Bush Administration and a conservative congress  passed economic policies in 2002 that led the country into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

17. In 2009 conservtives fought tooth and nail against health care reform. At a Republican presidential debate in 2012, the conservative audience cheered the idea of letting someone without health insurance die.

 18. While complaing that healthcare reform was government interference in to the private lives of Americans,  conservative dominated states passed laws forcing women to have vaginal ultrasounds and witnessing them before they could have an abortion.

 19. In Texas, in 2010, patriotic conservatives on the Texas school board voted to dump Thomas Jefferson from Texas school curriculum on political philosophy because of Jefferson's vocal and well documented contempt for the Christian church which made it impossible for them to teach that the country was founded on Christian values.Conservatives decided Jefferson had to go.

 20. In 2012, while trying to pass laws to prevent or restrict abortion, conservatives also tried to  pass laws opposing contraception which, in case they didn't seem to know can make abortion unnecessary.

21. In 2013, conservative members of congress who identify themselves as Right to Life have opposed a ban on privately owned assault weapons.

With CPAC now in its second day, conservative speakers should feel free to use any or all of these conservative contributions as talking points to illustrate what can be accomplished in the future.

In David Brinkley's recent biography of Walter Cronkite, Brinkley writes about how Cronkite when covering the 1964 presidential elections privately viewed the conservatism of Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and his supporters as being closer to fascism then democracy. It's not hard to understand why.

The Ryan budget: fiscal conservatives or fiscal fakes?

The hypocrisy of Republicans and tea party conservatives and their representatives in Congress when it comes to deficit reduction has now hit new lows especially with Paul Ryan's absurd budget which is based on the repeal of Obamacare, something worth doing but only if it's replaced with a public option and nothing that will happen with the present make up of congress.

This exercise in futility is brought to you by the same representatives in Congress who in the name of fiscal conservatism and deficit reduction were prepared to allow the United States to default on its debt for the first time in its history, an unconstitutional act that could have been labeled treason had Obama or the Democrats had the backbone or political savvy to do so. Had they called their bluff there wouldn't even be a sequester now.

Republicans and Tea Party conservatives have embraced the sequester which as everyone knows by now was a foolish compromise by Obama who didn't know how to stand up to Republicans on the debt ceiling and so made an offer he expected the Republicans to refuse . They didn't.

Knowing he has outgamed Obama which Republicans always seem to do, John Boehner has said he will entertain no other solutions to reducing the deficit that includes more revenue, even if increasing revenue doesn't mean higher tax rates only closing corporate loopholes. The point isn't deficit reduction, it's gamesmanship.

In the end, as the Ryan budget which is predicated on the repeal of Obamacare shows, these are not really fiscal conservatives, but fiscal fakes and have been since the days of the Bush administration when it was solely Republican policies that caused all the problems in the first place. Ryan himself has admitted his budget isn't a serious one that could ever be adopted, but a political statement. Ryan acknowledges his party lost the election but asks, " are we supposed to give up our principles because we lost the election? Are we supposed to stop believing in what we believe in"? The answer is no, youre supposed to acknowledge that the majority of the country rejected your princples and do not believe in what you believe in so stop trying to cram it down everyone's throat.

What Ryan nor anyone else in the Republican party want to acknowledge is that the Republicans inherited a balanced budget and a zero deficit from Bill Clinton in 2001 but it didnt take long for them to destroy it. The first $1 trillion hole Republicans blew in the balanced budget and what originally caused the deficit, was the decison by a Republican dominated goverment that for the first time in American history took the country to war and cut taxes at the same time. Republicans wanted the war but didnt want to have to pay for it. And they didnt. Ideology first because they always want to cut taxes, and fiscal responsiblity last.

What is at issue for Republicans now  is not how to solve a problem, something they have proved incapable of doing, but how to use the sequester to further Republican and conservative ideology, an ideology that has been nothing but a disaster for the United States in every aspect of life since the beginning of the Republic whenever Republicans or conservatives have had the votes to implement their ideology. It has been the defeat of conservatism from the time of the Revolution to the present that has allowed the United States to get where it is. Unfortunately there are few liberals and Democrats who know how to hoist conservatives on their own petard and instead have been relying on conservatives to do or say something stupid which Democrats can then turn into victories.

As for the sequester and so called deficit reduction and cutting spending, the proof of Tea Party and Republican hypocrisy is that the states that  most Tea Party conservatives represent like Idaho, Kansas,  and others receive much more in federal money then they pay out in federal income taxes. Its federal tax money from more prosperous states like New York,Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and California, that for the most part go to finance the federal programs and subsidies in these so called conservative Red states.

Conversely, states like New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and California, get far less back from the federal government then they pay in federal income taxes.

So here is the solution for the Tea Party Republican conservatives in Congress who want to cut spending without producing additional revenue and who want to claim they are not liars and hypocrites: sign a pledge and sponsor bills that make it federal law that no state can accept one dollar more in federal money that exceeds the amount in federal taxes their states send to the federal government less their share of defense and non- discretionary spending. Not a dime more. For anything.

Then, if these Red states don't like the reduction in services -- money for health, education, infrastructure or law enforcement --  because of the cut in the revenue they receive from the federal government, let them raise taxes in their own states to pay for it. Or do without them.

The money the federal government can save by not giving these conservative states any federal money after taking out their share for national defense and other non-discretionary spending,can go directly to deficit reduction.

Any Republican representative who wont make such a pledge or sponsor or vote for such a bill should be branded a liar and a hypocrite, along with the constituents and members of the Tea Party in the states and districts they represent.

Democrats should try and introduce such a deficit reduction bill, then use it against any Republican who wont support it. That might put an end to the gamesmanship involved in conservative budget policies that are more about "do what we say, not what we do".

Why the sequester is all Obama's fault.

 

 

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It seems almost everyone ( but not all) thinks the sequester scheduled to go into effect March 1 is a bad thing. And maybe it is. But those condemning the sequester the loudest have been Barrack Obama and the Democrats.

 

Obama has been going into overdrive in his town hall meetings ( and when it comes to Obama and town hall meetings that's saying something) pointing out how the Republicans are being obstinate and refusing to compromise or meet him half way to forge an agreement to avoid the sequester. And all of that is true. Except there wouldn't be a sequester in the first place if it wasn't for Obama, and his own negligence, incompetence and his once again, failures of leadership in his not dealing with the debt ceiling when he could have, when the Democrats controlled both houses of congress and they could have done what they wanted with no Republican roadblocks. If he had, all this would have been avoided.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the sequester was all Obama's idea, not the Republicans. And the cuts are Obama's cuts. You can blame Republicans all you want for their Draconian, almost medieval ideas about everything,their political dishonesty, ineptitude, and putting politics over everything and all that would be true, but it is Obama's inability to be a leader, to take it to the Republicans and instead instituted this sequester that is the heart of the problem.

The sequester was Obama's response to the Republicans holding the country hostage over the debt ceiling in 2011. The Republicans threatened to let the country go into default on its debts for the first time in its history by not raising the debt ceiling unless Obama agreed to budget cuts they would accept, and then and only then would they be willing to raise the debt ceiling, something the Republican congress did eight times without batting an eye when Bush was president.

The smart thing to have done, the leadership thing to have done, certainly what I would have done, is call the Republicans bluff, and even label their threat to default a violation of the constitution which states " the debt of the United States shall not be questioned", and call their intentions treasonous.

How long do you think the Republicans would have stood up against that kind of attack? How long do you think they would have gone on trying to defend themselves against being traitors to the United States and the constitution? How many polls do you think the news organizations would have done asking the American people if they thought the Republicans forcing the country to default on its debts was treason against the country and the constitution?

But instead of calling the Republicans bluff and daring them to cause the United States to default and holding it hostage to raise the debt ceiling, (calling them "budget terrorists" would have done nicely also) Obama did what he does more than any president in history -- he caved in and initiated the Draconian budget cuts in the sequester as a way of bribing the Republicans to raise the debt ceiling and prevent default, something they should have done anyway. Republicans 1, Obama 0.

We heard from Jay Carney the other day that the sequester proposed by Obama was never supposed to go into effect. They why did he propose it and agree to it in the first place? To play games with the Republicans? When it comes to gamesmanship Obama and the Democrats come out on the losing end every time, mainly because there are no Democrats in leadership positions or Democratic strategists that really know how to play the game or take it to the Republicans. They think they do but they don't (see the recent fiasco with Harry Reid backing off his original intention to get rid of the filibuster, then compromised with McConnell on something way less, only to see the Republicans spit in Reid's face and use the filibuster against Hagel only days after he backed down on the filibuster and capitulated to McConnell).

So Obama proposed a series of deep budget cuts that he thought the Republicans would never agree to as a way of playing a political game by thinking he was tricking the Republicans with a bribe to get out from under Republican threats to default on the U.S.debt and now Obama's back is to the wall because the Republicans seem ready to accept Obama's bribe and let the sequester go into effect.

In other words, Obama didn't have the backbone to call the Republicans bluff on default and the debt ceiling , but Republicans seem very willing to call Obama's bluff on the sequester and blame him for it and now Obama and Democrats are crying foul.

Had Obama called the Republican bluff on the debt ceiling in 2011, called their intention to let the country default treasonous, he would have been holding all the cards. Either the Republicans would have backed down and there would now be no sequester, or had they followed through on their threat and caused a default and all that came with it, it would have been a major campaign issue in 2012 and the Democrats would have assuredly retaken the House and now controlled all three branches of government, and in that case there wouldn't be any sequester either.

Democratic groups like MoveOn, The DCCC and others keep sending out dishonest emails asking people to sign petitions blaming the Republicans for the sequester that was initiated and crafted by Obama ignoring the fact that Obama was grossly negligent in not dealing with the debt ceiling and the budget in his first term when he had a huge congressional majority, and now they act like he had nothing to do with it.

This is what happens when dishonest politics grips both parties. The email from the DCCC showed a picture of Obama and the words " Have His Back. Sign your name".

If Obama had had the country's back, if he had been a leader and was able to see down the road more than 6 inches in front of his face, if he had dealt with the debt ceiling when he had the chance or if he had called the Republican bluff in 2011 instead of caving in, if he didn't offer a compromise he had no intention of wanting to honor in the first place, none of this would be happening. Its all the fault of a lack of leadership by Obama and the sooner Democrats admit it the better. Blaming Republicans for accepting cuts Obama proposed because Obama is now yelling, "but wait, you weren't supposed to accept this, I was only kidding", is not going to work. In a recent town hall meeting Obama said, "these cuts are not fair, not smart and will hurt the economy". He also said, "we can't afford the reckless sequester". He forgot to add, "and it was all my idea".

The Democratic groups who are now complaining about the sequester and Republican refusal to compromise and what it might do, should wise up that they are complicit in this also by supporting a president who has not been 1 /10th of what they pretended he would be, and still doing nothing about it, which would be to pressure Democrats in leadership positions to do something they have been incapable of doing in the past -- get tough with Republicans. And force Obama to use his backbone or get one, instead of asking rank and file Democrats to sign petitions that are supposed to be a substitute for one.

McCain, Graham, and phony Republican outrage over Benghazi.

 

 

 

 

 

The Hagel nomination has been held up by Republicans and one of the excuses that has emerged for holding it up,  especially by the two most outspoken Republicans opposing Hagel, John McCain and Lindsay Graham, are their assertions that they aren't getting the whole truth behind what happened at Benghazi. Over on the House side we saw the vein popping Republican Congressman Dana Rorharabacher make a fool of himself as he often does, during a recent House hearing on Benghazi by comparing the initial administration explanation of the attack at Benghazi to Watergate, the scandal that almost destroyed Rorharbacher's party when a Republican president, every White House aide including two White House chiefs of staff, a number of White House counsels and two Republican attornys general along with a Republican appointed Director of the FBI were all found guilty of multiple felonies including obstruction of justice, and who subverted the U.S. constitution with abuses of power never before seen in the U.S. government and were sentenced to prison.  To Rorharbacher, Susan Rice's initial statements on Sunday morning TV talk shows  repeating  initial information  given to her  by intelligence agencies  that proved to be incorrect, was the same thing.

The outrage expressed and continuing to be expressed by Republicans and their stated desire to get to the bottom of what happened over the deaths of four Americans is as phony and hollow as Rorharbacher's analogy. Because the facts show it's not the deaths of four Americans in a terrorist attack that really matter to any of them. Those deaths are nothing more than political fodder and smoke screen for Republicans to use against a Democratic administration and a Defense Secretary nominee who, as a Republican,  bucked the party over the war in Iraq. 

Republicans have hammered away at the same questions about Benghazi and have used them in part as an excuse to hold up the confirmation of Hagel as Defense Secretary, their childish  way of poking a stick in the eye of the Obama Administration and Hagel himself.  Graham and McCain claim they want to know why there wasn't more protection at the embassy in Benghazi and claim they are outraged that the deaths of four Americans were, accordingt to them,  the result of Obama Administration State Department negligence.  And, they claim, they want answers.

They point to requests to the State Department for more protection for the Benghazi embassy that were ignored, and warnings of potential threats in a part of the world that was clearly dangerous and filled with anti-American sentiment. They accuse the State Department and the Obama Administration of fudging, of hiding, of not being honest about what happened that night, about trying to dodge responsibility and engineering a cover up. As recently as tody's Sunday morning talk shows, McCain was saying he hasnt gotten the answers to crucial questions.  And Republicans, headed by McCain and Graham accuse the State Department and the Obama Administration of doing nothing, of not heeding the warnings and therefore  being responsible for the deaths of four Americans by not responding adequately to the threats.

We know what Lindsay Graham, John McCain, Dana Rorharabacher and other Republicans have demanded to know and are still demanding to know about Benghazi in their self-righteous anger, according to them,  over the deaths of the four Americans.But  here is what Lindsay Graham, Dana Rorharabacher, John McCain, Mitch McConnell and other Republicans in the House and Senate didn't want to know.

They didn't want to know 12 years ago, why George W. Bush, the president from their own party, and Condoleeza Rice, his national security advisor ignored nine months of terrorist warnings from every intelligence service in the United States, including warnings from the outgoing president, outgoing National Security advisor, the directors of the FBI and CIA, and  their own White House head of anti-terrorism that the United States was going to be attacked by Al-Qaeda who represented the biggest threat to U.S. national security in the world.

 

 Republicans didn't want to know why one month before the 911 attack, on August 6, 2001, Bush was given an intelligence report that not only told him Al-Qaeda was going to conduct a terrorist attack against the United States within the United States, but that intelligence agencies had observed Al-Qaeda operatives who were already  in the United States and were in New York City conducting surveillance on New York office buildings. Even more damning,  the intelligence report told Bush that Al-Qaeda's plan of attack involved the hijacking of U.S. airliners.

 

McCain, Graham, McConnell, Rorharbacher or any other Republican didn't want to know why Bush ignored these warnings and did nothing, why he didn't act on these intelligence reports and the dire warnings that were being received as a result of intercepts of Al-Qaeda chatter, chatter that Richard Clarke said had spiked to the highest level in 20 years.   They also didn't want to know why Bush ignored dire warnings in August of 2001 from the CIA  that these interecepts indicated an attack was imminent and in the words of one CIA translation, was going to be "spectacular".

 Lindsay Graham, John McCain, Dana Rorharbacher and others didn't want to know back in 2002 why, when Richard Clarke testified that the threat of an Al-Qaeda attack was so great and so  imminent   that he and CIA director George Tenant were "running around the White House like men with their hair on fire" trying to get Condoleeza Rice and Bush to do something and that not only did Bush and Rice do nothing, Bush refused to even see  or even talk to them while he was on vacation in Crawford at Rice did nothing.

Neither Lindsay Graham, John McCain, Dana Rorharbacher or any other Republican ever  wanted to know why.  And they never asked.

None of them wanted to know why a Republican president ignored warnings for 9 months that resulted in the worst attack on American soil and the greatest loss of life on American soil at the hands of a foreign enemy in American history. None of them wanted to know how  the worst case of gross, even criminal negligence in regards to the national security of the United States in the country's history committed by a president of the United States could have happened. None threatened to hold up  a single nomination or piece of legislation until they were given the answers. None demanded an explanation as to why Bush and Rice ignored all those  warnings for nine months when they clearly could have prevented the 911 attacks has they been taken seriously. None of them demanded accountability for 3,000 Americans killed at the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon.  But now they are demanding accountability for four.

Last week for the first time in American history, a cabinet confirmation was filibustered by Republicans, keeping the country from having a Secretary of Defense for the next ten days and forcing Hagel, who is in no danger of not being confirmed,  to miss an important meeting with his European counterparts in Belgium and they used Benghazi as the excuse. It was also payback to Hagel for having the gall to attack Bush for lying the country into war in Iraq, lying about the yellow cake Sadaam was supposedly importing from Africa, and using the 911 attacks that Bush could prevented,  as the dishonest excuse to go to war in Iraq.

Unlike McCain who was caught lying through his teeth about the progress  of the war and the  security situation in Iraq during what was revealed to be a completely phony photo op in Baghdad designed to show that the insurgency had been quelled at a time when the insurgents were still out of control, Hagel tore into Bush over his lying the country into the war, was proved right and made fools and marionettes out of McCain, Lindsay Graham and every other Republican. This is their payback for Hagel telling the truth when Republicans were  trying to hide it. That these actions by McCain and Graham  hurts the United States doesn't really matter to them. For Repblicans  its usually party before country. And politics before policy. And payback before anything else. Their silence over Bush's failures in the 911 attacks show it.

When it comes to phony Republican outrage over anything,whether it's  phony Republican morality, phony Republican patriotism,  phony Republican concern over the economy, it;'s never what they say that   matters, only what they do. And when it came to the gross negligence of a Republican administration in the worst attack on American soil by a foreign enemy in our history,  one that cost the lives of 3000 Americans, and then a phony war that cost another 5,000 lives with tens of thousands of injuries,  John McCain,Lindsay Graham and all their Republican cohorts sat in a corner and never said a word. But now they want answers from a Democratic administration over the deaths of four Americans at an foreign embassy and what they are trying to call a cover up. Something Republicans know a great deal about.

On Sunday on Meet the Press, McCain and David Gregory engaged in what almost became a shouting match when Gregory asked questions that pointed out the absurdity of McCain's inquest, namely the idea that there was a cover up with regards to Benghazi.  Gregory repeatedly asked,
"cover up of what"? to which McCain repeatedly answered, " don't you care about the deaths of four Americans, David"?

If demanding accountablity from a president and his administration in the deaths of four Americans at the hands of terrorists is the standard McCain is using, then McCain, Graham, and every other Republican joining in on the Benghazi inquest,when it comes to the deaths of Americans at the hands of terrorists didnt care very much about the 3,000 who were killed Sept.11,2001 when those deaths were  the result of gross negligence by a president of their own party.

CNN coverage of Carnival ship return,biggest waste of news resources in history.

CNN covered live, exclusively and interminably for 9 consecutive hours,the return of the Carnival cruise ship Triumph which had become disabled at sea, until it docked in Mobile Alabama at approximately 11 p.m. eastern.

Nine hours on CNN of nothing but watching a big cruise ship being towed by tug boats at between 3 and 5 mph after  it had been disabled for 4 days by a fire that had wiped out the ships electricity and engines.

CNN and its journalists treated the event like it was the Titanic instead of what it really was - a titanic inconvenience and nothing more, for those on board and nothing short of a man bites dog story for the rest of the country. How unimportant was it? You couldn't find the story about the ship finally docking on the front page of the NY Times. You had to go to the travel section to find the story, which is where it belonged.

No one was killed. No one was injured. No one was sick. No one was in any danger of any of those things happening. It was not a tsunami. It was not an earthquake. It was not a natural disaster of any kind. It was not the cruise ship that went aground and tipped over on its side in Greece putting people at great risk and necessitating dramatic sea rescues.

It 4200 people aboard a large cruise ship who went through enormous inconvenience for 5 days without electricity aboard a cruise ship, and thanks to CNN because many though not all, the toilets weren't we working, we know they had to poop in biohazard bags. It's not known if reporting that fell under CNN's journalistic guidelines of the public having a right to know, the need to know, or ought to know.

But that and other things, none of which had anyone in any danger is what CNN thought worthy of 9 consecutive hours of live coverage by all their correspondents and for some reason known probably known only to her college roommate, necessitated a trip by Erin Burnette and Martin Savage flying to Mobile to be on the dock with a camera crew when the ship came in.

CNN seemed to think that this ship coming in would be their ship coming in as far ratings are concerned, but they are liable to be disappointed. It was one of the biggest bores in the history of television news which is saying something when you consider the low level of journalism you get on a daily basis on all the cable news channels.

It finally degenerated into a kind of desperate comedy when coverage spilled over into CNN's pretentiously named Situation Room, and Wolf Blitzer did his best to try and turn it into something serious when anyone could see it wasn't.

Blitzer kept repeating that this was a "dramatic and very serious news story" only to be constantly rebuked by Dr. Sanjay Gupta, maybe the one real journalist CNN has who doesn't compromise his integrity one iota, when Blitzer kept asking  leading questions hoping for breathless answers from Gupta concerning the seriousness and danger of disease aboard the ship. Unfortunately Blitzer didn't get what he wanted from Gupta who simply told him there was no danger of disease at all because of the conditions. Blitzer tried again reminding Gupta of the perceptions out there that this is a dangerous situation with the potential to spread disease and Gupta said he understood that there might be those perceptions but that the perceptions were wrong and that there was no danger of disease. Blitzer, undaunted, tried again pointing out that the mother of one of the passengers was bringing antibiotics to give her daughter when she got off the ship. Gupta said, really bad idea, since you don't do that if someone isn't really sick.

CNN kept trying to tug at our heartstrings and empathy and the deplorable conditions those on the ship had to endure by talking about how families and loved ones hadn't been able to hear from those on the ship for two whole days because of no cell phone service and the internet being knocked out,ignoring the fact that they were on a cruise and out to sea where presumably there aren't a lot of cell phone towers so no one would have gotten a cell phone call from them anyway.

Erin Burnette who breathlessly made it to the scene of of the docking in Mobile Alabama, on the scene, helped pass the time of waiting for the ship to dock by asking a former Carnival crew member if the crew, any crew on a cruise ship was really ready to handle a fire on board the ship. Her voice was hopeful, full of anticipation that he would say "no" no one could be prepared for anything like this, and she would finally have something newsworthy to justify all this attention. But her hopes were dashed when he said, " the crew is absolutely ready to handle a fire and this kind of situation. They are sailors first, they are well trained, and they know exactly what to do in a situation like this".

Clearly disappointed she thanked him and moved on to how terrible it must have been not to have internet for days and not be able to send videos or text messages to loved ones.

There was another attempt to try and justify this idiotic expenditure of resources when Martin Savage, interviewing a passenger getting off the ship after it docked, tried to compare their experience with Katrina. The passenger clearly thought Savage was nuts and would have none of it. "Two different things, two entirely different things. We were on vacation here to have a good time, we were on a cruise ship. In Katrina's case it was people's homes that were destroyed, their whole lives that were affected". Not to mention 1500 people who died, not exactly the same as 4000 people who had to poop in a biohazard bag.

After this latest passenger interview dashed Savage's hopes of comparing a cruise ship inconvenience to Hurricane Katrina, Erin Burnette kept hope alive pointing out that there had to be people who were "absolutely frightened". But she couldn't find any. And no one she interviewed said they were frightened.

Another passenger getting off the ship, this one interviewed by Martin Savage, was asked, "what was the lowest point for you"? You could literally see the blood drain out of Savage and Burnett's face when he said, " there really wasn't any". Savage and Burnett looked at each other briefly and shared a "now what?" moment.

Their last desperate shot at trying to justify 9+ hours of continuous coverage came when Burnette used the well known underhanded dishonest journalistic trick of trying to create a controversy and get an answer to something that has no bearing on reality by saying to a passenger, " there are some passengers are really angry about what happened. What do you say to that"?

Journalists always like to say "some say", when asking a question when no one at all has said it but them, but they don't want to say it's them saying it so they say "some say". But in this case this passenger left Burnette holding the proverbial biohazard bag when he said, "the crew was wonderful, they couldn't have done a better job. It was a little inconvenient, but the crew was wonderful, many of them going without sleep and doing all they could. We werent angry at all".

 It was an end to a long and grueling day for CNN and it was hard to say who went through more grief and who had the more trying time, the passengers on board the Triumph, or CNN. Based on the expressions on the faces and the demeanor of the passengers and the journalists for CNN, it seems to be CNN.