I Want to Have This Fight, Too
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday expressed dismay at reports President Obama would tap former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) for Secretary of Defense, calling it an "in your face" selection.
"I like Chuck Hagel. He served with distinction in Vietnam as an enlisted man — two Purple Hearts. But quite frankly Chuck Hagel is out of the mainstream of thinking on most issues regarding foreign policy," said Graham in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union."
"He has long severed his ties with the Republican party. This is an in your face nomination of the president to all of us who are supportive of Israel," he added. "I don't know what his management experience is in regards to the Pentagon or global if anyway, so I think it's an extremely controversial choice."
Reports Sunday said that Obama had decided to name Hagel to replace current Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta as early as Monday.
What's so amazing to me is that Graham, who used to be (I don't know if he still is) a reserve JAG officer, swore an oath when he joined the military. Here it is:
I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
Oddly enough, there is not one word in there about Israel. Maybe Graham isn't clear that we aren't nominating Chuck Hagel to be Israel's Secretary of Defense, but our own. That's how messed up this situation has become with us as Israel's client state. Senators can make completely asinine statements like the one above, and no one even flinches. Then, if you point out the overwhelming influence of the Israel lobby in the United States congress, you get tarred and feathered as an anti-Semite. And then they'll deny there is an Israel lobby.
So I want to have this fight. Let's let Graham and all the others go in front of a camera and proclaim to the world that their top consideration for the American Secretary of Defense is… his deference to foreign nation. Bring it on, Lindsey.
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The White House is weighing a far broader and more comprehensive approach to curbing the nation's gun violence than simply reinstating an expired ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, according to multiple people involved in the administration's discussions.
A working group led by Vice President Biden is seriously considering measures backed by key law enforcement leaders that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors, the sources said.
To sell such changes, the White House is developing strategies to work around the National Rifle Association that one source said could include rallying support from Wal-Mart and other gun retailers for measures that would benefit their businesses. White House aides have also been in regular contact with advisers to New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I), an outspoken gun-control advocate who could emerge as a powerful surrogate for the Obama administration's agenda.
The Biden group, formed last month after the massacre at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school that killed 20 children and six adults, plans to submit a package of recommendations to President Obama this month. Once Obama's proposals are set, he plans to lead a public-relations offensive to generate popular support.
"They are very clearly committed to looking at this issue comprehensively," said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, who has been involved in the discussions. The proposals under consideration, he added, are "a deeper exploration than just the assault-weapons ban."
It just shows you how insane our current gun climate is that any of these things is controversial at all. Meanwhile, some blue dogs are already breaking out the shiv.
BTW- is Heitkamp going to turn out to be Lieberman in a skirt? I remember this NPR interview right after the election and she was basically waffling on everything.
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WHO IS BARACK OBAMA RAPING TODAY, CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER?
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Remember how we took a break from talking about the fiscal cliff to talk about gun control laws? And then remember how Wayne LaPierre gave a press conference that will probably go down in history as the worst press conference in the history of press conferences? Oh, how we laughed and mocked! — until we got bored and started talking about the the fiscal cliff again.
Good times.
Welp, lucky for us, Marion Hammer has thrust the NRA back into news. Hammer, ex-president of the NRA and Kathy Geiss impersonator, gave a TV interview during which she compared gun control to racism.
Yes, seriously:
"And they even admit this is about banning the ugliest guns, it's about cosmetics and it has nothing to do about how a firearm works," host Ginny Simone said toward the end of the segment.
"Well, you know, banning people and things because of the way they look went out a long time ago," Hammer responded. "But here they are again. The color of a gun. The way it looks. It's just bad politics."
Guns have it pretty rough in this country, especially scary black guns. We should start with some common sense solutions — like increasing diversity in gun manufacturing. Maybe we should set some quotas.
This discrimination must end.
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Connecticut residents are outraged that a gun show will take place this weekend just 40 miles from Newtown, where 26 people were killed in a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School just weeks ago. The East Coast Firearms Show is being advertised as the "best of the best of vendors, offering 250 tables of antique and historical arms."
Local lawmakers say they wish the event had been cancelled, as had been similar shows across the state. "It seems insensitive to have the event continue," Stamford Mayor Michael Pavia told local reporters.
Since the shooting, several Connecticut newspapers have also apologized for publishingadvertisements for a gun show next to articles about the tragedy.
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Looks like the NYPD rape cops better step up their game because they have some competition! Whereas the NYPD keeps its lady citizens safe by raping them at gunpoint and or alternatively, when they are too drunk to consent, LA rape cops do it the old fashioned way: by threatening to put them in jail.
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.....But here's Joe Biden last week at the swearing in ceremony not devising new ways to torture, conspire to make war, or profiting from war and the carving up of oil fields, or outing a CIA operative, or suppressing climate science, or… oh, you get the point.
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Listening to John Boehner and House Republicans tell it, you'd think that the 2012 election was all about the American people voting to empower the GOP to obstruct the president's agenda at every turn. "The American people voted for divided government!" so that's what they'll get, by golly! They're just listening to the American people.
But according to the closing tallies of the 2012 election, the American people didn't vote for the "two sides" to come together and agree to meet Republicans halfway for a deal on a forcible rape-based economy.
Think Progress reports:
As of this writing, every single state except Hawai'i has finalized its vote totals for the 2012 House elections, and Democrats currently lead Republicans by 1,362,351 votes in the overall popular vote total. Democratic House candidates earned 49.15 percent of the popular vote, while Republicans earned only 48.03 percent — meaning that the American people preferred a unified Democratic Congress over the divided Congress it actually got by more than a full percentage point. Nevertheless, thanks largely to partisan gerrymandering, Republicans have a solid House majority in the incoming 113th Congress.
Either Republicans are tone deaf, or they just refuse to listen, but because they've gerrymandered themselves into majority power in the U.S. House of Representatives for the foreseeable future, they'll continue to cling to that power and intentionally misread the election. Because everyone knows the American people voted to butcher the safety net to give tax cuts to billionaires and corporations.
Republicans did not win a policy mandate equal to the president, laughable as they insist, and what power they do have, they've essentially stolen. They're not negotiating as equals, as much as they're negotiating as the various fringe minorities that constitute today's Republican party.
But you can't tell them that because they seem to be listening to some other America. An America where we're all billionaires and corporations, and we can never get enough pollution, or religion in public school. This America they're listening to, someone should check to see if it actually exists before we do what it tells us.
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