Political Stories of the Morning
Nov. 29th, 2010 01:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redneckgaijinJoseph Palermo explains why Obama deserves to be a one-term president:
He goes on to suggest that Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich run against Obama in 2012. I've got no use for Kucinich, but Dean turned out to be a pretty good chairman of the Democratic Party- it was his fifty-state strategy that put Obama in position to win in the first place. Unfortunately, my two preferences either disclaim any interest in running (Russ Feingold) or have too high a disapproval rating in the polls to win (Alan Grayson).
On to other things... I was thinking this morning that, with their release of hundreds of thousands of secret and confidential diplomatic messages and documents, Wikileaks might have gone too far.
Then rabidly bigoted far-right idiot Rep. Peter King (R-IA) called for Wikileaks to be declared a terrorist organization.
Yeah. If Peter King is against it, that's a good reason to be FOR it in my book. Go get 'em, Wikileaks.
And finally, several bills and proposals are being made for the upcoming Texas legislative session on the subject of gun rights.
Hm... the right to open carry with CCR license. Cool, makes sense to me, since it's damn difficult to conceal a firearm on your person in a Texas summer anyway.
Open carry without CCR permit... um, well, I'm for that too, so long as there are commonsense restrictions- check your gun at the door/gate for the courthouse, liquor store, bar, public event (sports or otherwise), that sort of thing.
Licensed carry on college campus... cool. Why not? Just keep 'em out of bars and massively attended public events.
"Constitutional" carry, i. e. no permit... um... I don't know about this one. It's nice in theory, but I think this should be licensed the same way a car is licensed. Prove you can hit the broad side of a barn first. (And no, I didn't always hold this belief. And you can own ten kazillion guns in your own home for all I care, but if you don't know basic gun safety I don't want you walking around other people with a loaded firearm on your hip or stuck down your waistband or whatever.)
A law exempting Texas-made, Texas-sold firearms and ammo from federal regulation... NO. Just because the maker only sells the weapons in Texas doesn't mean they're going to STAY in Texas. As soon as a buyer takes the gun across the state line, that's interstate commerce- and no way on Earth will such a law pass federal judicial review.
A law to include firearms and ammunition in the back-to-school sales tax holiday... WHAT THE FUCK? What goddamn school lists a Smith & Wesson next to crayons, napkins and a cigar box on its school supplies list? This is actually a bill, folks, filed by one Sid Miller, representative out of Stephenville... and Stephenville, I hope you're happy for electing a class A IDIOT to the legislature. Of COURSE he's a Republican- the party whence common sense has fled to escape the evil, corruption, bigotry and ideology.
Back to school guns... JESUS CHRIST.
We're told that corporate profits are the highest in sixty years. Yet at the state and local level we still face savage cutbacks in services while teachers, social workers, police officers and firefighters are being laid off. Public employees' unions (systematically vilified) have agreed to give up all manner of concessions in the form of "take backs" in their contracts, higher fees for health care, slashes in pensions, lay-offs, etc. And this is being done amidst the highest persistent unemployment since the Great Depression. This orchestrated contraction of the public sector at a time when the private sector has failed so miserably is the opposite direction we should be heading.
. . .
During his first twenty months in office Obama whittled away at his base. He lost the single-payer activists when he denied them a seat at the table even before the negotiations on health care reform began. He lost the peace movement when he caved in to the generals and escalated the war in Afghanistan with 30,000 more troops and a Bush-like open-ended commitment. He lost many environmentalists when he promoted fast-tracking deep water oil drilling and nuclear power to try to win over Lindsey Graham on a climate change bill. He lost homeowners who are underwater when he sided with Wall Street banks to allow the foreclosures to continue unabated. His lackadaisical approach to closing Guantanamo alienated civil libertarians. His Education Secretary's insistence on trashing teachers and their unions and calling for policies that would privatize public education pushed away public school teachers and many women who make up the Democratic base. His Press Secretary's belittling of the "professional left" was just the icing on the cake. . .
Meanwhile, FDR, Truman, JFK, and Lyndon Johnson are all rolling over in their graves at the spectacle of a "liberal" Democratic president appointing a "bi-partisan deficit commission" with one co-chair who serves on the board of directors of a Wall Street investment bank (the "Democrat"), and another co-chair who is a certified right-wing nut-job from Wyoming who calls Social Security "a milk cow with 310 million tits" (the Republican). . . Obama's choice of Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles is stupid politics from a supposedly smart administration.
He goes on to suggest that Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich run against Obama in 2012. I've got no use for Kucinich, but Dean turned out to be a pretty good chairman of the Democratic Party- it was his fifty-state strategy that put Obama in position to win in the first place. Unfortunately, my two preferences either disclaim any interest in running (Russ Feingold) or have too high a disapproval rating in the polls to win (Alan Grayson).
On to other things... I was thinking this morning that, with their release of hundreds of thousands of secret and confidential diplomatic messages and documents, Wikileaks might have gone too far.
Then rabidly bigoted far-right idiot Rep. Peter King (R-IA) called for Wikileaks to be declared a terrorist organization.
Yeah. If Peter King is against it, that's a good reason to be FOR it in my book. Go get 'em, Wikileaks.
And finally, several bills and proposals are being made for the upcoming Texas legislative session on the subject of gun rights.
Hm... the right to open carry with CCR license. Cool, makes sense to me, since it's damn difficult to conceal a firearm on your person in a Texas summer anyway.
Open carry without CCR permit... um, well, I'm for that too, so long as there are commonsense restrictions- check your gun at the door/gate for the courthouse, liquor store, bar, public event (sports or otherwise), that sort of thing.
Licensed carry on college campus... cool. Why not? Just keep 'em out of bars and massively attended public events.
"Constitutional" carry, i. e. no permit... um... I don't know about this one. It's nice in theory, but I think this should be licensed the same way a car is licensed. Prove you can hit the broad side of a barn first. (And no, I didn't always hold this belief. And you can own ten kazillion guns in your own home for all I care, but if you don't know basic gun safety I don't want you walking around other people with a loaded firearm on your hip or stuck down your waistband or whatever.)
A law exempting Texas-made, Texas-sold firearms and ammo from federal regulation... NO. Just because the maker only sells the weapons in Texas doesn't mean they're going to STAY in Texas. As soon as a buyer takes the gun across the state line, that's interstate commerce- and no way on Earth will such a law pass federal judicial review.
A law to include firearms and ammunition in the back-to-school sales tax holiday... WHAT THE FUCK? What goddamn school lists a Smith & Wesson next to crayons, napkins and a cigar box on its school supplies list? This is actually a bill, folks, filed by one Sid Miller, representative out of Stephenville... and Stephenville, I hope you're happy for electing a class A IDIOT to the legislature. Of COURSE he's a Republican- the party whence common sense has fled to escape the evil, corruption, bigotry and ideology.
Back to school guns... JESUS CHRIST.
