Today, President Biden signed nine bipartisan bills designed to improve veterans’ health care and to honor those who have served in our nation’s military. It was an upbeat hour in the midst of a storm gathering as the nation takes on both gun safety legislation and the events of January 6.
As Richard Hofstadter observed in "the Pseudo- Conservative Revolt" back in December 1954:
Unlike most of the liberal dissent of the past, the new dissent not only has no respect for non-conformism, but is based upon a relentless demand for conformity. It can most accurately be called pseudo-conservative — I borrow the term from the study of The Authoritarian Personality published five years ago by Theodore W. Adorno and his associates — because its exponents, although they believe themselves to be conservatives and usually employ the rhetoric of conservatism, show signs of a serious and restless dissatisfaction with American life, traditions and institutions. They have little in common with the temperate and compromising spirit of true conservatism in the classical sense of the word, and they are far from pleased with the dominant practical conservatism of the moment as it is represented by the Eisenhower Administration. Their political reactions express rather a profound if largely unconscious hatred of our society and its ways — a hatred which one would hesitate to impute to them if one did not have suggestive clinical evidence.
From clinical interviews and thematic apperception tests, Adorno and his co-workers found that their pseudo-conservative subjects, although given to a form of political expression that combines a curious mixture of largely conservative with occasional radical notions, succeed in concealing from themselves impulsive tendencies that, if released in action, would be very far from conservative. The pseudo-conservative, Adorno writes, shows “conventionality and authoritarian submissiveness” in his conscious thinking and “violence, anarchic impulses, and chaotic destructiveness in the unconscious sphere. . . . The pseudo conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.”
Way past time to call Rupert’s Fox what they are. The purveyor of our destruction. Fox is licensed as “entertainment,” yet they have “News” plastered all over their slimy operation. Flipping channels yesterday, I heard someone on Nicole Wallace’s show ask the seminal question - paraphrase - if they are entertainment, why do they have a seat at WH briefings, why are they treated as a legitimate news entity? It is a scam perpetuated on us all by Ronnie’s crew of thugs, deliberate and designed to destroy. No more “the most trusted man in America” type news reporting, just more Goebbels style blather. It has been a slow-growing cancer that is about to deal a fatal blow, with the acquiescence of most of the MSM.
As to the gun issue, republicans rule the fools. What will republicans accept? Why is that the question? I ask over and over…They worship anything but sanity these days. Even McConaughey’s impassioned plea does not suggest prohibiting the weapons of mass murder. Make no mistake, there are plenty of deranged 21+ disaffected out there. We all know that. Some care, some have proved that they don’t. They are vermin…
A week or so ago, at a gathering in recognition of National Wear Orange Day, a community resident and Stop Handgun Violence co-Founder concluded a riveting call for action by bellowing, “Those spineless members of Congress think you should have a license to hunt duck and deer, and when you hunt duck you are limited to 3 rounds, when you hunt deer, you are limited to 5 rounds, to protect the duck and deer populations. But when you want to hunt babies in an elementary school, have at it. No license, no limit on the number of rounds. If that isn’t the epitome of insane public policy, I don’t know what is.”
I post this remark because I am astonished I haven’t heard some version of it from inside the beltway.
I graduated from high school in a town in west Texas in May 1966. A classmate and I were headed to University of Texas in Austin, and we got a place together right across the street from the campus. He moved in the last week of July, and didn’t quit my summer job until the middle of August. “On August 1, 1966, after stabbing his mother and his wife to death the previous night, Charles Whitman, a Marine veteran, took [4] rifles [including a sniper’s rifle and a semi-automatic shotgun] and other weapons [and heaps of ammo] to the observation deck atop the Main Building [clock] tower at the University of Texas at Austin, and then opened fire indiscriminately on people on the surrounding campus and streets. Over the next 96 minutes he shot and killed 14 people, including an unborn child, and injured 31 other people. The incident ended when two policemen and a civilian reached Whitman and shot him dead. At the time, the attack was the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history.” (See,“University of Texas tower shooting”, Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_tower_shooting.) It’s a terrifying read.
My roomy got caught in the cross fire, but stayed put, crouched behind a parked vehicle, while
bullets flew above and around him. A hell of a way to start college. Many of the Texan college students and staff got their deer rifles and other weapons and trained them on the top of the tower, or the clock, or whatever. The Clock Tower was peppered with bullet holes. And, it did not engender any action to restrict arms; indeed, on the 50th Anniversary of the slaughter, Texas allowed students to brings guns onto university campuses and, in some cases, into classrooms and dorms. (See, “The loaded legacy of the UT Tower shooting”, Washington Post, July 31, 2016.)
In 1989, and I moved from Guam with my wife and kids to Sydney, and, around 1994, we all went down to Tasmania for a bit of chill, including a visit to the old Port Arthur Penal Colony ruins. It is a wonderfully bucolic place. But, “on Sunday 28 April 1996 a security guard, Ian Kingston, stood in the doorway of the Broad Arrow cafe at the historic site of Port Arthur in southern Tasmania. He stared at the body of a man lying on the floor, then looked up into the barrel of a semi-automatic rifle. He dived back out the door as Martin Bryant pulled the trigger. Bryant killed 12 people in 15 seconds. Bryant moved towards the gift shop in the next 75 seconds, killing another eight people.
“In little over half an hour the death toll would be 35, with 23 wounded. It became the worst single-person mass shooting in Australia’s history.... The gun was an AR-15 rifle with a 30-shot magazine. Bryant exchanged it for a semi-automatic .308 FN rifle he had stowed in the boot of his car. Both were then legal in Tasmania, which, with Queensland, had the loosest gun regulation in Australia and felt the tightest grip of the gun lobby. “Twelve days after the Port Arthur massacre, the [newly elected] Australian prime minister, John Howard, announced a sweeping package of gun reforms....
"Howard proposed each state and territory should ... enforce a firearm licensing and registration system requiring people to have a “genuine reason” for having a firearm, such as ... being a farmer. “Personal protection” would not count as a genuine reason. All states would also ban automatic and semi-automatic long guns. Howard also introduced a national gun buyback scheme for all weapons that did not comply, which ended up melting down more than 650,000 firearms at a cost of $350m. He produced polling at the meeting that showed the ideas behind the reforms had up to 90% support. If the states did not fall into line, he ... warned, they would hold a referendum and seize power for firearm registration from the states. They fell into line....” (See, “It took one massacre: how Australia embraced gun control after Port Arthur”, 14 Mar 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/15/it-took-one-massacre-how-australia-made-gun-control-happen-after-port-arthur.)
But, there is a critical other part to this success. The victory is not all political. The way was paved
by some dedicated people, critical among them, Rebecca Peters. “In 1996, while Australians
grappled with the horror that unfolded [at Port Arthur], Rebecca Peters was at the epicentre of
pushing for tougher gun laws”, as she recalled in an interview in April 2021. “As Australians confronted the shock of Port Arthur, the Coalition for Gun Control was primed and ready for the fight to toughen gun laws. To a large extent, this was because of Peters’s first project on volunteering with the organisation five years previously: she assessed its resources and priorities. Savvy, strategic, tireless and determined, Peters’s influence was transformative.
“In her early career as a journalist and radio producer, she had a strong social justice bent. Being
constantly confronted by nonsensical political decision making ... she asked herself how she could
take part in and better shape those decision-making conversations. Her answer was, become a
lawyer. So, she studied law while also working in the media .... During her first year at law school,
in 1991, there was a mass shooting in the inner west Sydney suburb of Strathfield. Seven people
were murdered. The furious community response to the Strathfield massacre made Peters curious
about the New South Wales gun laws. The laws she found were, at best, vague and patchy. ... Peters decided to write an article alerting people to the dire state of gun laws. It didn’t find its audience, but the process did put her in contact with Australia’s small gun control movement.
"At the time, the under-resourced volunteers dotted around the country couldn’t have realised that this new arrival would become the driving force of the law changes they’d wanted for so long. Once established, those uniform laws needed to ban all semi-automatic rifles, shotguns and assault weapons. The guns that were allowed had to be registered by their owners. And those owners, be they farmers, hunters, collectors or sportspeople, had to provide proof of their reasons to have a gun.
“Peters could speak knowledgably to the media about the gun laws because she was writing her
law thesis on the New South Wales gun laws after Strathfield. Terrigal demonstrated one of the
laws’ greatest failings. In the beach town of Terrigal, about 95 kms north of Sydney, a man went ona shooting spree, killing six people. The murderer, Malcolm Baker was known to police as a violent man who owned guns. After Baker had a domestic dispute, the police raided his home to
pre-emptively confiscate his guns. The problem was, the NSW gun laws at the time didn’t require
that guns be registered....
“In the years after the Central Coast massacre, Peters and her colleagues at the Coalition for Gun
Control, laid out a game plan for the next mass shooting. So when Port Arthur occurred, the activity in that University room might have been frantic (engaging the media and politicians, producing pamphlets, managing the waves of people offering to help, and organising a massive rally to take place in Sydney) but it wasn’t chaotic. As part of Peters' review of the organisation’s strategies, she put together a shopping list of essential tasks: all Gun Coalition communications were made media-ready and easy for journalists to use. Any organisation that might have an interest in gun control – banking and police unions, medical associations, churches, women’s groups, charities – were contacted. At the time of Port Arthur, 350 of them were ready to react with a clear and unified voice demanding change.
“Then there was the tricky part: the specifics of the changes they were asking for. The list had to be short so the media could easily report it and politicians could more easily say yes to it. First and foremost: uniform gun laws across the country. But the Federal government could only regulate gun importation. Each State had its own laws around the purchase and use of guns. Luckily, most State governments at the time were of John Howard’s Liberal[*] party, so his election victory gave him great powers of persuasion, and to his eternal credit, he used them. [* It is only a large 'L' party. Its philosophy is not small ‘l’ liberal -- it is classical conservatism, which baffles many newcomers to Australia.)
“As Australia was deciding what to do after Port Arthur, many of the discussions were informed by well thought out documents and ideas from the Coalition of Gun Control. The group had already looked at every state’s gun laws, saw what worked and didn’t work, and fashioned a proposal for broadly acceptable national standards. This meant governments didn’t start from a place of ignorance. They had in front of them, an array of documents addressing all the main issues including the findings of the numerous, previous gun law enquiries whose recommendations had mostly been ignored. ... It prevented yet another dead-end enquiry being called.
“The closed-door backdrop to all this was intense, disproportionate pressure from the small but
powerful pro-gun lobby. But the grief and anger of the nation was so loud that the public good, in this case, won out. On May 10, 1996, just 12 days after the Port Arthur outrage, Australia's state
Fox and Tucker Carlson were co-conspirators for the insurrection. If they thought the former president and his cabal were innocent, they would be falling all over themselves to cover the hearings.
Awake because of a tornado warning that went off like a claxon on my phone about an hour ago so caught this as it posted. HCR, you need to go to bed earlier! I wish you had stopped at the bills signing. But I know you can’t. I predict nothing will be done. About guns, about the fascist takeover of the USA, about the mobster in chief wannabes who are using TFG as their Kevlar. They know how stupid and venal he is and they exploit it because the real scary guys are the pig-men who are in Congress, in governors’ mansions, head school boards, run state legislatures. And I just insulted pigs.
I beg to differ. I have gone along with this idea of a male ego trip about what it takes to be a cowboy hero long enough.
But with the continuous cowarduss of Republicans to take no action to protect ordinary citizens and their children, it seems obvious that they have have NO ideology and just reject the idea of federal regulations because they are afraid. They must be under some threat. Maybe it's a threat of exposure or violence against themselves. Whatever it is, they dare not support any work done by the Democrats. Who bought these senators? Who owns them? I want the names of their rapacious owners and the names of the businesses that support them all. We have to point fingers at them in public and expose them. They are socially retarded and should not influence anything other than dogs.
As you noted "House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Representatives Jim Jordan (R-OH), Jim Banks (R-IN) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY) will lead the way in arguing that the committee is illegitimate and out of touch." These Trump water carriers will live in infamy. And I wonder, exactly how "out of touch" can an insurrection be? If it had succeeded, we'd be reliving the Reichstag almost 90 year later - with the further taint of kleptocracy. The insurrection deniers are the true enemies of the people.
The assault we are under as a country is no longer a threat it is real bare threads attacks. All the coordinating tactics the Republican Party is demanding of its devoted base have been in place for a very long time. It’s is the @GOP’s ‘Stealth Strategy’ . Our greatest weapon to fight back is Truth. Everyone of us knows it and we must use it. We must demand it and we must throw all our faith behind it. We are under attack and the GOP tells us how they operate within their ranks and it’s tactical measures. In the Art of War this provides us, their perceived enemy, the advantage. Now we must return this assault with our weapons of truth. It is our greatest super power. Start leaving post it truth bombs at the gas pumps the supermarket shelves on public garbage receptacles anywhere Americans consume. Start by leaving facts on the number of votes republicans cast to obstruct bills that work in our economic interests, bringing down gas prices or pharmaceutical costs, or veterans benefits, or gun violence legislations, or any bill already discussed here on this platform that Republicans voted against. Point out it’s not Biden creating their pain it is the Republican Party prolonging their Suffering. Leave the truth post it where it can be seen by anyone. We do not need heavy armor when we have the truth and we have the army of warriors willing to uphold it for the sake and well being of others and family to live in a democracy. Just like Ike said.
Sorry for my rant but action is now duly needed. Write a few Post It today with the roll call numbers and leave it at the Gas Pump on Gas Price Gouging HR7688 Yay 217/Nay 207 All Republicans VOTED AGAINST IT . Make them own the truth of their actions
What these political prostitutes—sorry to insult the older profession—do daily, hourly, is not even grandstanding from the sewers, it’s grandstanding from the depths of Hell.
TC speaks of “a relentless demand for conformity”.
Correct, yet it would be even more accurate to speak of these Putin-parroting totalitarians’ project as… institutionalized paranoia.
Urgent: stretchers, straitjackets and consignment to well-padded cells.
Panel 0n January 6 Commission - with Ben Jealous, Jamie Raskin, Elie Mystal, Kristen Doerer, Peter Montgomery and Marcus Batchelor - discussing a new series of videos giving a primer on the radical right-wing forces behind 1/6, as well as answering participants’ questions.
TAKE ACTION - How you can protect our democracy
Below you’ll find different activist tools to help you in the fight for the preservation of the peaceful transfer of power. Each tool has been designed to make it as easy as possible to let your local elected officials know how important this issue is to you and to help get a local resolution passed.
A man from Buffalo whose mother was murdered in the recent grocer store massacre testified before Congress this week. He pleaded for action to counter violent white supremacy. The Republican response was to list a handful of times that black people killed whites. They effectively told this grieving son that his mother’s life was nothing to them, that what really matters is white victimhood and the need for white men to reassert dominance and power by all means available. These Republicans reject federal power precisely because it can be used to restrain white patriarchal violence.
Margaret Mead wrote: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” The word THOUGHTFUL excludes the raving cult of liars and seditionists unmoved by the evidence which they regularly ignored through 2 impeachment trials, the horrifying mass murders by assault weapons, the Jan6 riot, and now the mountain of evidence of the planned fascist takeover of the government. We have to stop living in fear of these brainwashed bullies and bring back common sense and respect. I thought we would have had massive turnouts of voters in the primaries, but that has not happened.
As Richard Hofstadter observed in "the Pseudo- Conservative Revolt" back in December 1954:
Unlike most of the liberal dissent of the past, the new dissent not only has no respect for non-conformism, but is based upon a relentless demand for conformity. It can most accurately be called pseudo-conservative — I borrow the term from the study of The Authoritarian Personality published five years ago by Theodore W. Adorno and his associates — because its exponents, although they believe themselves to be conservatives and usually employ the rhetoric of conservatism, show signs of a serious and restless dissatisfaction with American life, traditions and institutions. They have little in common with the temperate and compromising spirit of true conservatism in the classical sense of the word, and they are far from pleased with the dominant practical conservatism of the moment as it is represented by the Eisenhower Administration. Their political reactions express rather a profound if largely unconscious hatred of our society and its ways — a hatred which one would hesitate to impute to them if one did not have suggestive clinical evidence.
From clinical interviews and thematic apperception tests, Adorno and his co-workers found that their pseudo-conservative subjects, although given to a form of political expression that combines a curious mixture of largely conservative with occasional radical notions, succeed in concealing from themselves impulsive tendencies that, if released in action, would be very far from conservative. The pseudo-conservative, Adorno writes, shows “conventionality and authoritarian submissiveness” in his conscious thinking and “violence, anarchic impulses, and chaotic destructiveness in the unconscious sphere. . . . The pseudo conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.”
Way past time to call Rupert’s Fox what they are. The purveyor of our destruction. Fox is licensed as “entertainment,” yet they have “News” plastered all over their slimy operation. Flipping channels yesterday, I heard someone on Nicole Wallace’s show ask the seminal question - paraphrase - if they are entertainment, why do they have a seat at WH briefings, why are they treated as a legitimate news entity? It is a scam perpetuated on us all by Ronnie’s crew of thugs, deliberate and designed to destroy. No more “the most trusted man in America” type news reporting, just more Goebbels style blather. It has been a slow-growing cancer that is about to deal a fatal blow, with the acquiescence of most of the MSM.
As to the gun issue, republicans rule the fools. What will republicans accept? Why is that the question? I ask over and over…They worship anything but sanity these days. Even McConaughey’s impassioned plea does not suggest prohibiting the weapons of mass murder. Make no mistake, there are plenty of deranged 21+ disaffected out there. We all know that. Some care, some have proved that they don’t. They are vermin…
A week or so ago, at a gathering in recognition of National Wear Orange Day, a community resident and Stop Handgun Violence co-Founder concluded a riveting call for action by bellowing, “Those spineless members of Congress think you should have a license to hunt duck and deer, and when you hunt duck you are limited to 3 rounds, when you hunt deer, you are limited to 5 rounds, to protect the duck and deer populations. But when you want to hunt babies in an elementary school, have at it. No license, no limit on the number of rounds. If that isn’t the epitome of insane public policy, I don’t know what is.”
I post this remark because I am astonished I haven’t heard some version of it from inside the beltway.
I graduated from high school in a town in west Texas in May 1966. A classmate and I were headed to University of Texas in Austin, and we got a place together right across the street from the campus. He moved in the last week of July, and didn’t quit my summer job until the middle of August. “On August 1, 1966, after stabbing his mother and his wife to death the previous night, Charles Whitman, a Marine veteran, took [4] rifles [including a sniper’s rifle and a semi-automatic shotgun] and other weapons [and heaps of ammo] to the observation deck atop the Main Building [clock] tower at the University of Texas at Austin, and then opened fire indiscriminately on people on the surrounding campus and streets. Over the next 96 minutes he shot and killed 14 people, including an unborn child, and injured 31 other people. The incident ended when two policemen and a civilian reached Whitman and shot him dead. At the time, the attack was the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history.” (See,“University of Texas tower shooting”, Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_tower_shooting.) It’s a terrifying read.
My roomy got caught in the cross fire, but stayed put, crouched behind a parked vehicle, while
bullets flew above and around him. A hell of a way to start college. Many of the Texan college students and staff got their deer rifles and other weapons and trained them on the top of the tower, or the clock, or whatever. The Clock Tower was peppered with bullet holes. And, it did not engender any action to restrict arms; indeed, on the 50th Anniversary of the slaughter, Texas allowed students to brings guns onto university campuses and, in some cases, into classrooms and dorms. (See, “The loaded legacy of the UT Tower shooting”, Washington Post, July 31, 2016.)
In 1989, and I moved from Guam with my wife and kids to Sydney, and, around 1994, we all went down to Tasmania for a bit of chill, including a visit to the old Port Arthur Penal Colony ruins. It is a wonderfully bucolic place. But, “on Sunday 28 April 1996 a security guard, Ian Kingston, stood in the doorway of the Broad Arrow cafe at the historic site of Port Arthur in southern Tasmania. He stared at the body of a man lying on the floor, then looked up into the barrel of a semi-automatic rifle. He dived back out the door as Martin Bryant pulled the trigger. Bryant killed 12 people in 15 seconds. Bryant moved towards the gift shop in the next 75 seconds, killing another eight people.
“In little over half an hour the death toll would be 35, with 23 wounded. It became the worst single-person mass shooting in Australia’s history.... The gun was an AR-15 rifle with a 30-shot magazine. Bryant exchanged it for a semi-automatic .308 FN rifle he had stowed in the boot of his car. Both were then legal in Tasmania, which, with Queensland, had the loosest gun regulation in Australia and felt the tightest grip of the gun lobby. “Twelve days after the Port Arthur massacre, the [newly elected] Australian prime minister, John Howard, announced a sweeping package of gun reforms....
"Howard proposed each state and territory should ... enforce a firearm licensing and registration system requiring people to have a “genuine reason” for having a firearm, such as ... being a farmer. “Personal protection” would not count as a genuine reason. All states would also ban automatic and semi-automatic long guns. Howard also introduced a national gun buyback scheme for all weapons that did not comply, which ended up melting down more than 650,000 firearms at a cost of $350m. He produced polling at the meeting that showed the ideas behind the reforms had up to 90% support. If the states did not fall into line, he ... warned, they would hold a referendum and seize power for firearm registration from the states. They fell into line....” (See, “It took one massacre: how Australia embraced gun control after Port Arthur”, 14 Mar 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/15/it-took-one-massacre-how-australia-made-gun-control-happen-after-port-arthur.)
But, there is a critical other part to this success. The victory is not all political. The way was paved
by some dedicated people, critical among them, Rebecca Peters. “In 1996, while Australians
grappled with the horror that unfolded [at Port Arthur], Rebecca Peters was at the epicentre of
pushing for tougher gun laws”, as she recalled in an interview in April 2021. “As Australians confronted the shock of Port Arthur, the Coalition for Gun Control was primed and ready for the fight to toughen gun laws. To a large extent, this was because of Peters’s first project on volunteering with the organisation five years previously: she assessed its resources and priorities. Savvy, strategic, tireless and determined, Peters’s influence was transformative.
“In her early career as a journalist and radio producer, she had a strong social justice bent. Being
constantly confronted by nonsensical political decision making ... she asked herself how she could
take part in and better shape those decision-making conversations. Her answer was, become a
lawyer. So, she studied law while also working in the media .... During her first year at law school,
in 1991, there was a mass shooting in the inner west Sydney suburb of Strathfield. Seven people
were murdered. The furious community response to the Strathfield massacre made Peters curious
about the New South Wales gun laws. The laws she found were, at best, vague and patchy. ... Peters decided to write an article alerting people to the dire state of gun laws. It didn’t find its audience, but the process did put her in contact with Australia’s small gun control movement.
"At the time, the under-resourced volunteers dotted around the country couldn’t have realised that this new arrival would become the driving force of the law changes they’d wanted for so long. Once established, those uniform laws needed to ban all semi-automatic rifles, shotguns and assault weapons. The guns that were allowed had to be registered by their owners. And those owners, be they farmers, hunters, collectors or sportspeople, had to provide proof of their reasons to have a gun.
“Peters could speak knowledgably to the media about the gun laws because she was writing her
law thesis on the New South Wales gun laws after Strathfield. Terrigal demonstrated one of the
laws’ greatest failings. In the beach town of Terrigal, about 95 kms north of Sydney, a man went ona shooting spree, killing six people. The murderer, Malcolm Baker was known to police as a violent man who owned guns. After Baker had a domestic dispute, the police raided his home to
pre-emptively confiscate his guns. The problem was, the NSW gun laws at the time didn’t require
that guns be registered....
“In the years after the Central Coast massacre, Peters and her colleagues at the Coalition for Gun
Control, laid out a game plan for the next mass shooting. So when Port Arthur occurred, the activity in that University room might have been frantic (engaging the media and politicians, producing pamphlets, managing the waves of people offering to help, and organising a massive rally to take place in Sydney) but it wasn’t chaotic. As part of Peters' review of the organisation’s strategies, she put together a shopping list of essential tasks: all Gun Coalition communications were made media-ready and easy for journalists to use. Any organisation that might have an interest in gun control – banking and police unions, medical associations, churches, women’s groups, charities – were contacted. At the time of Port Arthur, 350 of them were ready to react with a clear and unified voice demanding change.
“Then there was the tricky part: the specifics of the changes they were asking for. The list had to be short so the media could easily report it and politicians could more easily say yes to it. First and foremost: uniform gun laws across the country. But the Federal government could only regulate gun importation. Each State had its own laws around the purchase and use of guns. Luckily, most State governments at the time were of John Howard’s Liberal[*] party, so his election victory gave him great powers of persuasion, and to his eternal credit, he used them. [* It is only a large 'L' party. Its philosophy is not small ‘l’ liberal -- it is classical conservatism, which baffles many newcomers to Australia.)
“As Australia was deciding what to do after Port Arthur, many of the discussions were informed by well thought out documents and ideas from the Coalition of Gun Control. The group had already looked at every state’s gun laws, saw what worked and didn’t work, and fashioned a proposal for broadly acceptable national standards. This meant governments didn’t start from a place of ignorance. They had in front of them, an array of documents addressing all the main issues including the findings of the numerous, previous gun law enquiries whose recommendations had mostly been ignored. ... It prevented yet another dead-end enquiry being called.
“The closed-door backdrop to all this was intense, disproportionate pressure from the small but
powerful pro-gun lobby. But the grief and anger of the nation was so loud that the public good, in this case, won out. On May 10, 1996, just 12 days after the Port Arthur outrage, Australia's state
and federal governments agreed to make their gun laws uniform. (See, “Port Arthur and the battle for tougher gun laws”, 8 April 2021, University of Sydney News & Opinion, https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2021/04/08/port-arthur-and-the-battle-for-tougher-gun-laws.html)
Also see, “Other Countries Had Mass Shootings. Then They Changed Their Gun Laws”, May 25,
2022, New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/world/europe/gun-laws-australia-britain.html.
Surely there is a Rebecca Peters in America somewhere. I suspect she's already friends with Heather.
Fox and Tucker Carlson were co-conspirators for the insurrection. If they thought the former president and his cabal were innocent, they would be falling all over themselves to cover the hearings.
The one who was grandstanding was the pseudo-reporter from Newsmax.
Awake because of a tornado warning that went off like a claxon on my phone about an hour ago so caught this as it posted. HCR, you need to go to bed earlier! I wish you had stopped at the bills signing. But I know you can’t. I predict nothing will be done. About guns, about the fascist takeover of the USA, about the mobster in chief wannabes who are using TFG as their Kevlar. They know how stupid and venal he is and they exploit it because the real scary guys are the pig-men who are in Congress, in governors’ mansions, head school boards, run state legislatures. And I just insulted pigs.
Mathew McConaughey On Gun Reform: 'We Are In A Window Of Opportunity'
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v6EQ0d3r6Rk
*******
Politics Girl, Leigh McGowan - "We’re done.”
https://youtu.be/yMwCixv1D6g
I beg to differ. I have gone along with this idea of a male ego trip about what it takes to be a cowboy hero long enough.
But with the continuous cowarduss of Republicans to take no action to protect ordinary citizens and their children, it seems obvious that they have have NO ideology and just reject the idea of federal regulations because they are afraid. They must be under some threat. Maybe it's a threat of exposure or violence against themselves. Whatever it is, they dare not support any work done by the Democrats. Who bought these senators? Who owns them? I want the names of their rapacious owners and the names of the businesses that support them all. We have to point fingers at them in public and expose them. They are socially retarded and should not influence anything other than dogs.
As you noted "House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Representatives Jim Jordan (R-OH), Jim Banks (R-IN) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY) will lead the way in arguing that the committee is illegitimate and out of touch." These Trump water carriers will live in infamy. And I wonder, exactly how "out of touch" can an insurrection be? If it had succeeded, we'd be reliving the Reichstag almost 90 year later - with the further taint of kleptocracy. The insurrection deniers are the true enemies of the people.
The assault we are under as a country is no longer a threat it is real bare threads attacks. All the coordinating tactics the Republican Party is demanding of its devoted base have been in place for a very long time. It’s is the @GOP’s ‘Stealth Strategy’ . Our greatest weapon to fight back is Truth. Everyone of us knows it and we must use it. We must demand it and we must throw all our faith behind it. We are under attack and the GOP tells us how they operate within their ranks and it’s tactical measures. In the Art of War this provides us, their perceived enemy, the advantage. Now we must return this assault with our weapons of truth. It is our greatest super power. Start leaving post it truth bombs at the gas pumps the supermarket shelves on public garbage receptacles anywhere Americans consume. Start by leaving facts on the number of votes republicans cast to obstruct bills that work in our economic interests, bringing down gas prices or pharmaceutical costs, or veterans benefits, or gun violence legislations, or any bill already discussed here on this platform that Republicans voted against. Point out it’s not Biden creating their pain it is the Republican Party prolonging their Suffering. Leave the truth post it where it can be seen by anyone. We do not need heavy armor when we have the truth and we have the army of warriors willing to uphold it for the sake and well being of others and family to live in a democracy. Just like Ike said.
Sorry for my rant but action is now duly needed. Write a few Post It today with the roll call numbers and leave it at the Gas Pump on Gas Price Gouging HR7688 Yay 217/Nay 207 All Republicans VOTED AGAINST IT . Make them own the truth of their actions
Grandstanding?
What these political prostitutes—sorry to insult the older profession—do daily, hourly, is not even grandstanding from the sewers, it’s grandstanding from the depths of Hell.
TC speaks of “a relentless demand for conformity”.
Correct, yet it would be even more accurate to speak of these Putin-parroting totalitarians’ project as… institutionalized paranoia.
Urgent: stretchers, straitjackets and consignment to well-padded cells.
All too good for them.
JUNE 7, 2022 - People For The American Way - replay:
What to Expect from the January 6th Hearings
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qSGIBpTfOo0&feature=emb_imp_woyt
Panel 0n January 6 Commission - with Ben Jealous, Jamie Raskin, Elie Mystal, Kristen Doerer, Peter Montgomery and Marcus Batchelor - discussing a new series of videos giving a primer on the radical right-wing forces behind 1/6, as well as answering participants’ questions.
TAKE ACTION - How you can protect our democracy
Below you’ll find different activist tools to help you in the fight for the preservation of the peaceful transfer of power. Each tool has been designed to make it as easy as possible to let your local elected officials know how important this issue is to you and to help get a local resolution passed.
https://www.rightwinginsurrection.org/action-center/take-action-activists
A man from Buffalo whose mother was murdered in the recent grocer store massacre testified before Congress this week. He pleaded for action to counter violent white supremacy. The Republican response was to list a handful of times that black people killed whites. They effectively told this grieving son that his mother’s life was nothing to them, that what really matters is white victimhood and the need for white men to reassert dominance and power by all means available. These Republicans reject federal power precisely because it can be used to restrain white patriarchal violence.
Margaret Mead wrote: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” The word THOUGHTFUL excludes the raving cult of liars and seditionists unmoved by the evidence which they regularly ignored through 2 impeachment trials, the horrifying mass murders by assault weapons, the Jan6 riot, and now the mountain of evidence of the planned fascist takeover of the government. We have to stop living in fear of these brainwashed bullies and bring back common sense and respect. I thought we would have had massive turnouts of voters in the primaries, but that has not happened.
Two Professors Found What Creates a Mass Shooter. Will Politicians Pay Attention?
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/27/stopping-mass-shooters-q-a-00035762
On Long Island
https://www.longislandpress.com/2022/06/03/15-year-old-is-sixth-teen-to-threaten-a-long-island-school-in-one-week-cops-say/?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_recirculation&spot_im_redirect_source=pitc