I lived through Nixon and Spiro the Angry Crook. I lived through Raygun and Bush the First. I lived through Bush the Idiot and the Dark Lord. During DUHbya’s Reign of Error, I was told “Get over it!” Way back in ‘68, the conservative line was “America: Love it or Leave it!” I’ll be a touch nicer to you than you were to me: don’t go if you can just calm down a bit. Otherwise, “Get over it!”
During all those dark, miserable years, I never thought America was actually doomed by the idiots in charge or the goons they commanded. You are welcome to despise Obama and the majority that elected him. You are not welcome to incite panic and bloodshed. Calm down. Get over it.
“This isn’t a free country anymore,” [opined Charlie Domenici, owner, Charlie’s Sporting Goods – open late today, come on in for our Loss of Freedom Sale!]
Until 2006, the president had the power to install a director of the firearms bureau without Congressional approval. But under pressure from gun lobbyists, Congress changed the law that year to require Senate confirmation. Since then, the Senate has failed to confirm any nominee by either President George W. Bush or Mr. Obama as senators who support gun rights have used their powers to delay nomination votes.
“Reince Priebus”? Isn’t he the pasty kid in Slytherin? The most important outcome of 2010 was setting up Republicans to stack the deck in as many states as they can.
Earlier this week, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus endorsed a Republican plan to rig the next presidential election to make it nearly impossible for the Democratic candidate to win the White House, no matter who the American people vote for. The election-rigging plan, which would allocate electoral votes by congressional district rather than by states as a whole in a handful of states that consistently vote for Democratic presidential candidates, would have allowed Mitt Romney to narrowly win the Electoral College last November despite losing the popular vote by nearly four points.
On Monday, seven Pennsylvania Republican state representatives introduced a bill to make this vote-rigging scheme a reality in their state. Under their bill, the winner of Pennsylvania as a whole will receive only 2 of the state’s 20 electoral votes, while “[e]ach of the remaining presidential electors shall be elected in the presidential elector’s congressional district.”
Pennsylvania is a blue state that voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in every single presidential race for the last two decades, so implementing the GOP election-rigging plan in Pennsylvania would make it much harder for a Democrat to be elected to the White House.
Obama’s proposals are moderation incarnate. By international standards, they are very cautious. The president did not call for registering all guns or confiscating assault weapons. He strongly endorsed the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment right to bear arms. He is operating within a broad consensus about what is possible and what can work.
“There will be pundits and politicians and special interest lobbyists, publicly warning of a tyrannical all-out assault on liberty” to “gin up fear or higher ratings or revenue for themselves.” Obama said that Americans have a responsibility to fight back against such smear campaigns…
“The only way we will be able to change is if their audience, their constituents, their membership says, this time must be different, that this time we must do something to protect our communities and our kids.” — President Obama
“Technically speaking, it’s more like fascism. Socialism is where the government owns the means of production. In fascism, the government doesn’t own the means of production, but they do control it, and that’s what’s happening with our healthcare programs and these reforms.” — Whole Foods CEO and self-professed libertarian John Mackey