Gun Regulation

The Republican Party Losing Its Future By Refusing To Accept Their Shortcomings And Promote Change!

Ronald 71 Comments

The Republican Party is, obviously, suicidal, as it is taking the wrong and unpopular stand on so many issues:

Refusal to back any gun regulations, even after the Newtown Massacre, alienating many mothers and parents.

Refusal to move much on illegal immigration, alienating Hispanics and Latinos, and Asian Americans.

Refusal to stop attacks on women’s rights, alienating large numbers of educated, suburban and young women.

Refusal to stop the attack on Social Security and Medicare, alienating millions of people nearing retirement, and many senior citizens.

Refusal to recognize that gay rights and gay marriage are the future, and therefore, alienating both gays and lesbians and their supportive families and friends, while at the same time, many of these Republicans have been married more than once, and have no concept of “family values”.

Refusal to cooperate on creating a budget that will pass both houses, and face the reality that taxes will have to go up, even more so now that there is growing danger of war with North Korea and/or Iran.

Refusal to repudiate their own Tea Party extremists, who will destroy the party’s future, as they will defeat responsible conservatives, but be unable to win seats in the US Senate or the White House anytime soon. As it is, the Republicans could have won Senate seats in Nevada, Colorado and Delaware in 2010, and Indiana and Missouri in 2012, but Tea Party supporters promoted lunatic nominees over responsible conservatives, and because of that, the Democrats were able to gain seats and keep the majority!

The Republican Party is living in illusion, in denial, in a time warp, in a parallel universe, and they are allowing the evangelical right wing Christians and the radio talk show hosts and Fox News Channel to steer them so far to the right that the majority of the American people will repudiate them for the long run, until they finally get the message, that the nation is a centrist nation, unwilling to cater to right wing extremists!

Republicans Seem To Be Suicidal In Reluctance To Change Course

Ronald 37 Comments

The Republican Party is in its death throes more and more each week.

The country is no longer interested in their agenda, in their candidates, in their goals, and in their promotion of fear and hate!

The GOP has lost five of the last six popular vote totals for President, despite spending inordinate amounts of money, the most ever in 2012, due to the Citizens United case of the Supreme Court in 2010.

But they have elements that are destroying them from within like a cancer!

These destructive elements include:

The right wing conservative talk show hosts on radio and Fox News Channel, who are making massive amounts of money promoting hate, fear and division, and until the GOP tells Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham and their ilk to go somewhere, they will be going down the road to destruction!

The power of the National Rifle Association and Wayne La Pierre, and its campaign to defeat any candidate who wants any reasonable gun regulations, is going to cause the defeat of Senators and Congressmen, who are unwilling to sell their souls to this powerful pressure group!

The Tea Party Movement, which wants to wipe out Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and is furious at Republican Governors, including the latest convert on ObamaCare, Florida Governor Rick Scott, making it a total of seven Republican Governors who have decided to accept that program, has plans to run candidates against anyone who does not wish to support their desire to go back to the 19th century and wipe out all aspects of the welfare state, so Maine Senator Susan Collins is on a hit list, as is even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, for not being conservative enough! Do not forget that the Koch Brothers and other wealthy billionaires are the brains behind this movement, which is lower class populism gone wild, but they have the ability to harm the Republican Party establishment! And Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are the lead elements in this Tea Party uprising, who might cause the Republican Party to go down to defeat in many races, because of their loony libertarianism!

The right wing evangelical Christian movement, which will fight any move toward acceptance of gay rights and gay marriage, abortion rights, immigration reform, and gun regulation, as well as their desire to promote religion in the education curriculum, rejecting science and history, and promotion of a theocracy in states that have large numbers of their believers.

The “NeoCons”, Neoconservatives, who want more money spent on defense, advocate overseas military interventions, and glorify wars in the name of American capitalism and profits! They had power under George W. Bush, but are now trying to defeat Chuck Hagel for Defense Secretary.

And finally, the no tax increase crowd, led by Grover Norquist of Americans For Tax Reform, a group which is starting to see some Republicans abandon them, but not enough, and willing to back corporate loopholes and the wealthy, at the expense of the middle class and the poor, these two groups failing to understand that this elite has no concerns, except to back the establishment on Wall Street and in the corporate world, even at a time when corporate profits are soaring, and the stock market has doubled under Barack Obama!

These are the destructive elements in the Republican Party, and will cause its total dissolution very soon if the direction of the party is not changed to appeal to the moderate center, the tradition of the party under Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and YES, even in the time of Ronald Reagan, when moderates were still a major part of the party success, and Reagan a conservative but not an extremist, as these various elements of the party are in 2013!

Rand Paul Makes A Fool Of Himself In Response To The State Of The Union Speech Of President Obama!

Ronald 2 Comments

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul continues to amaze people with a head on their shoulders, as he is rapidly becoming a major embarrassment to his own father, former Texas Congressman Ron Paul, and to the Republican Party base, which he seems determined to destroy in his quest to become President!

Having already made clear when Hillary Clinton testified about Benghazi, Libya, that he would have fired Clinton if he were the President at the time, an amazing statement to make in the first place, now Rand Paul has responded to the State of the Union Address of Barack Obama, as well as the response of Florida Senator Marco Rubio for the Republican Party, as chosen by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner.

Paul told us he would not have allowed the use of drones against Anwar Al Awlaki, a declared terrorist of American citizenship who we know planned various terrorist attacks, and that somehow, he is going to stop the President from being the Commander in Chief of military affairs. One can disagree with what Obama did, but Paul has the gall to think that somehow he is going to stop the President from what are his powers under the Constitution?

Calling Obama a “King”, Paul makes clear that while the President should not have such power over the military, there should be absolutely no movement on gun regulation or safety in any form, portraying the government as the enemy of the Second Amendment, when all that is being asked is reasonable regulation, not the taking away of people’s rights to own guns, if they are mentally stable!

Paul also advocated massive cuts in spending, including in defense, which fits his image of being a modern day isolationist. Sure, there can be defense cuts, no question about it, and other cuts, but Paul fails to understand the threats this nation faces, and the massive problem of real harm to the poor, the sick, the disadvantaged, were we to pursue his drastic cuts, which almost no one in the Republican Party advocates, including Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, head of the House Budget Committee!

Rand Paul also said Barack Obama is Robin Hood, when we actually need Adam Smith, the author of THE WEALTH OF NATIONS, advocating “Laissez Faire” economics, an idea of the late 18th century, which is totally unrealistic in the modern world of the 21st century!

The major news networks failed to carry Rand Paul’s speech, which in itself is a commentary on how he stands in the minds of serious people. He and his Tea Party followers represent a viewpoint which, if enacted, which will not happen, will permanently eradicate the Republican Party as an alternative to the Democratic Party. If there is the desire to prevent what conservatives call a “one party state”, then they need to adapt to reality and stop sounding like and advocating loony ideas that take us back to the 19th century, when America was suffering through the Gilded Age of unregulated capitalism and a weak labor movement!

Sadly, we are likely to be plagued by a Rand Paul Presidential candidacy in 2016, which just might make the political circus of 2012 seem only like the preview of comedy entertainment!

Marco Rubio Response To State Of The Union Speech Of Barack Obama Comes Up Short!

Ronald 14 Comments

Florida Senator Marco Rubio presented the official GOP response to President Obama’s State of the Union Address last night.

As always, Senator Rubio comes across as charismatic, handsome, well spoken, and a pleasant personality.

But when it comes to substance, Rubio was wanting in many ways.

He hardly touched on foreign policy at all, spending most of his time condemning “big” government, claiming that it cannot solve people’s problems, forgetting that he is where he is because of help from government through student loan programs, which he pointed out he had just paid off finally after many years of payments.

Rubio failed to realize that it is government which provides so many opportunities and forms of assistance, including his mother’s Medicare and Social Security.

Rubio forgets that it was the interstate highway system, initiated by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, which has allowed the nation, and particularly Florida, to become a success story in growth of population and economic opportunity.

Rubio criticizes government, while making sure that he spends his career in government service, including the Florida legislature, where he spent a decade.

It is also ironic that Rubio and his party attack “big” government, when George W. Bush led the greatest expansion of government in four decades!

Rubio offered no hope for any solution to gun violence, and denied climate change, just as he has, earlier, questioned evolution, so he believes that science has no validity, while invoking religion, of course, all of the time, forgetting that we have a Constitution and Bill of Rights that promotes separation of church and state.

Rubio also shows bad math, as he claims Barack Obama has raised the national debt more than any President, which is not true, and fails to reflect the deep chasm we were in when he took the oath of office, the worst since 1933!

And his belief that often corrupt state governments, including his own state of Florida, can do a better job of operating safety net programs, is belied by the stark truth of just the opposite result!

So Marco Rubio gives a good speech, but the details come up short, if one is interested in reality!

But one thing Rubio accomplished is to make him more noticed as a leading Presidential possibility for his party in 2016!

Popularity Of Barack Obama And Hillary Clinton At High, Along With Stock Market, As February Begins!

Ronald 36 Comments

As Hillary Clinton leaves the State Department, after four successful and accomplished years as Secretary of State, her public opinion rating is at an all time high, 67 percent. She goes off to a well deserved rest, and a possible run for President in 2016, with the Republican Party hoping she will not run, as they know very well that they would have an extremely difficult time defeating her, if she was the Democratic Presidential nominee!

As Hillary leaves in triumph, our President, Barack Obama, has reached a peak of popularity, now reaching 60 percent, and his agenda, including gun regulation and immigration reform at the forefront, along with the continued creation of jobs and a hoped for budget deal in the next few months, is making him look at his strongest point since he was first elected in 2008.

The Republican Party is floundering badly, and all we see are Tea Party radicals, including Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas makes fools of themselves, and also witness Senator John McCain of Arizona and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina go on the attack against a former colleague, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who they once were friends with, as he seeks to bring a new direction in the Pentagon. Their vindictiveness and nastiness is appalling, and diminishes both Senators immensely!

The Republican Party is mired in 26 percent support, and while they complain about the economy, a readjusted set of results for November and December shows greater growth in jobs than expected, and housing starts are up, and the stock market just today went over 14,000 in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the highest since October 2007!

So the Democrats, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton have a lot to be proud of, while the Republicans are demonstrating they have learned nothing from their defeat.. Their future is gloomy, until and when they realize that they must repudiate the Tea Party Movement and the extreme right wing.

The country is rapidly becoming more “Blue”, and once Arizona, Texas and Georgia become so, which seems inevitable by the next decade, the Republican Party will be unable to recover and gain government control and win the White House.

This country is not what they wish it to be–Southern, rural, white, and old. Instead, the Atlantic and Pacific Coastlines and the Great Lakes Region, urban and suburban areas, diverse population of all races, and young, and also women, are the future, and they are going “Blue” by leaps and bounds!

The Truth About Presidential Executive Orders From 1893-2013

Ronald 3 Comments

New statistics have emerged regarding the use of Presidential executive orders, now being hotly contested because President Barack Obama is issuing 23 such orders on gun regulation, in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Massacre.

All Presidents from Grover Cleveland’s second term through Obama’s first term are covered in assessing how much these Presidents utilized executive orders. Thanks to New York Magazine for these statistics.

So for conservatives and Republicans, they can be excited to point out that Franklin D. Roosevelt, who they hate, issued, by far, the most executive orders. But of course, FDR presided during the Great Depression and World War II, the greatest crises since the Civil War, and, of course, FDR also served three complete terms and started a fourth before dying in office.

But after FDR, one discovers that Herbert Hoover was a close second in the four years of his term, having to deal with the Great Depression erupting in his first year in office. Of course, some conservatives think of Hoover as a progressive, but that is a major misunderstanding in fact!

Woodrow Wilson comes a close third, and this makes conservatives feel justified that it is Democrats, such as FDR and Wilson, who are the biggest “villains” on executive orders.

But then, how does one explain that below Wilson are Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, not much behind Wilson, but adored by conservatives? And next is William Howard Taft, considered a conservative when Chief Justice of the Supreme Court a decade after his Presidency. These three Presidents are Republicans, imagine that!

The list continues in order as follows:

Theodore Roosevelt
Harry Truman
Jimmy Carter
John F. Kennedy
Gerald Ford
Lyndon B. Johnson
Richard Nixon
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Ronald Reagan
Bill Clinton
George H. W. Bush
William McKinley
George W. Bush
Barack Obama
Grover Cleveland

Hey, wait a minute here! Obama is next to last of these 21 Presidents? How is that possible, after the rhetoric employed by Republicans such as Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky? Could it be that Paul does not know the facts, and does not know history very well? You know the answer!

And executive orders have become quite rare after Truman, so were most utilized by the eight Presidents from TR through Truman.

In other words, Barack Obama has NOT abused the executive orders authority, and has hardly used it, and Republicans TR, Taft, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover all used it an amazing amount of times!

But do conservatives really care to know the truth? Again, the answer is obvious!

Rand Paul Revives “Nullification” From The Pre Civil War Years

Ronald 16 Comments

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, obviously planning to run for President in 2016, is throwing down the gauntlet to President Obama, stating that he believes that the President is acting as if he is a King or monarch, and saying that any executive orders that the President issues on guns will be “nullified” by Congress.

There are a number of problems about this assertion by Rand Paul.

By bringing up “nullification”, he is forgetting that the Civil War was fought over precisely that issue, the concept of states rights, that a state could nullify laws or actions of the federal government. And that viewpoint lost the war!

Also, what does Rand Paul think he is going to do, other than “grandstand” to win the support of the extreme right wing in the Republican Party? There is no way that he or the Congress could “nullify” Presidential actions, particularly with a divided Congress and a Democratic controlled Senate.

Of course, Paul or someone else could move to impeach the President, and that could actually happen on totally flimsy grounds in the Republican controlled House of Representatives. But the ability to remove the President is less than zero, as without more than 45 Republicans in the US Senate, and the impossibility of gaining 67 votes for conviction and removal, all that Paul is doing is roaring like a “paper tiger”, making a lot of noise, gaining a lot of publicity, none of it flattering, and only stirring up further polarization and conflict.

Rand Paul, as many realize, is a nightmare, who will plague the Republican race for President in 2016; will never become the nominee of the party; and were he to do so, he would take the party and its future down with him.

Face the facts: Rand Paul is nutty, whacky, loony, and his libertarian and isolationist views will never carry the day in a national election!

The National Rifle Association Vs. The American People!

Ronald 17 Comments

The National Rifle Association and a percentage of its membership have declared war on American safety and security by their vicious campaign against any new gun regulations in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Massacre! But Barack Obama and Joe Biden have come up with a series of legislative ideas and executive orders that will challenge the NRA’s dominance on this issue!

The American people want action, and Pew Research Polls prove that as shown below:

85 percent want background checks for private and gun show sales.
80 percent want people with mental disorder to be prevented from purchasing guns.
67 percent want a federal data base to track gun sales.
58 percent want a ban on semi automatic weapons.
55 percent want a ban on assault style weapons.
54 percent want a ban on high capacity magazines.
53 percent want a ban on online sale of ammunition.

So the American people overwhelmingly support sensible gun control measures, and the NRA is fighting against this tide, and is using its power with Republicans to prevent any action.

But the Republican Party, if it continues this unwillingness to recognize the threat to all of us by lack of regulation, and instead backs wing nuts like Alex Jones, and continues to support the NRA, and lets Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and others like him to become the image of the party on this matter, they will suffer heavily at the polls in future elections!

The “New” Generation Of Democrats: Led By Andrew Cuomo Of New York And Martin O’Malley Of Maryland!

Ronald Leave a comment

As the next Presidential term begins in a few days, the focus has been on Vice President Joe Biden and outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as the two most likely front runners for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2016.

While certainly that is possible, it is also conceivable that a “New Generation” of leadership may be emerging to contest their front runner status, and just might be the alternative to either Biden or Clinton.

Two Northeastern Governors have likely plans to announce for President, and both are working very hard to establish their credentials in similar fields of endeavor.

These two gentlemen are New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley.

Both have become leaders in promoting gay rights and gay marriage in their states, and both have taken leadership in the area of gun regulations in wake of the Sandy Hook Massacre in Connecticut.

Both are very bright, articulate leaders of the future, whether or not they enter the contest for the Presidency, and both have extensive executive experience in public office.

Both will certainly be heard from in the future, and will be discussed regularly over time on this blog! So stay tuned!

The Growing Role Of Vice President Joe Biden

Ronald Leave a comment

Any thought that Vice President Joe Biden, who was a major factor in the successes of the first Obama term and in his reelection efforts, might start to “disappear” after the election is effectively dormant!

Biden has been asked by President Barack Obama to head a team to come up with some kind of plan for gun regulation, which does not take away the Second Amendment, but shows a level of responsibility to protect the American people from gun maniacs, who are now able to buy large magazines of bullets and assault rifles without any regulation. If anything, the killing of volunteer firefighters outside Rochester, New York, by a crazed murderer, only adds to the tragedy of what happened in Newtown, Connecticut, and earlier this year in Colorado and too many other places, the mass death or wounding of innocent people!

But also, Biden is working behind the scenes to try to come up with a deal to avoid the “Fiscal Cliff”, and he is highly respected by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, and more importantly, Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, as well as House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio.

There is no guarantee that Biden will have a magic potion on the issue of gun control or the “Fiscal Cliff”. But the point is that he is in the game, always willing and able to help the President and the nation, and this cannot but help his potential, and likely, candidacy for the Presidency in 2016.

Biden is a man of energy, who acts much younger than his age of 70, and should not be dismissed as the heir to Barack Obama in 2016!