Is the GOP about to be co-opted by the Democrats … again
It all starts with what could be described as a very simple act – the acceptance of a premise. As soon as one side accepts the premise of the other side, the other side has won. It simply becomes a matter of how bad the damage is.
In this case, the premise that seems to have been accepted by the “old ladies” of the GOP leadership is that some sort of federal “gun control” legislation is necessary because of “mass killings” and our “children”. From Ammoland:
You might think that with Republicans in control of the US House of Representatives there would be no way ANY gun control legislation could reach the floor.
But sadly we are already beginning to see so-called “conservative champions” folding to pressure from the anti-gun media to sell-out gun owners.
Former Vice Presidential candidate, Congressman Paul Ryan, has stated that he would support legislation that bans private sales at gun shows.
In the House, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, along with the help of Rep. Scott Rigell (VA), Patrick Meehan (PA) and others, have stated openly that they will work together with anti-gun Democrats from Maryland and New York to tighten restrictions on private firearms sales and expand background checks.
Possibly even more upsetting has been Senator Tom Coburn’s willingness to work alongside anti-gunner Chuck Schumer (NY) to propose “bi-partisan” anti-gun legislation in the Senate.
Make no mistake, so-called “expansion” of background checks is little more than a blatant attempt by anti-gunners to register all firearms and gun owners in America.
That is why Representatives Steve Stockman (TX-36) and Paul Broun (GA-10) have drafted a letter to Speaker Boehner and the Republican leadership urging them to require the support of the majority of Republican members in the House before bringing any anti-gun bills to the floor.
This so-called “Hastert Rule” would mean that 117 Republicans would have to support a particular bill before it had any chance of getting a floor vote, not just the support of the anti-gun elitist in leadership.
So the premise seems to have been accepted by the GOP leadership if this report is accurate. And, if it is accurate, then they’re going to try to fashion some sort of gun control legislation to address a problem that the type of gun control legislation they’ll propose won’t effect. What it will do, however, is create a new law that will put legal gunowners in criminal jeopardy if they desire to sell their firearms and don’t follow the new rules to a ‘t’ (and, my guess is the new rules will likely be mostly unenforceable – they’d only be enforced retroactively if a gun involved in a private sale that wasn’t “background checked” was used in a crime).
The criminals? Those who are likely to commit mass killings? Yeah, they’ll comply.
Meanwhile, if you believe that Congress has no right to “infringe” on 2nd Amendment rights, prepare to be sold down the river by the GOP. They’ve already accepted the need and the premise, it’s now just a matter of figuring out what the “compromise” will be. What should be clear, however, is that if anti-gun legislation does get passed, it will be your 2nd Amendment rights that will be compromised and the GOP will be complicit.
~McQ
State court says no to Bloomberg’s large soda ban
As it should:
A state judge on Monday stopped Mayor Michael Bloomberg‘s administration frombanning the sale of large sugary drinks at New York City restaurants and other venues, a major defeat for a mayor who has made public-health initiatives a cornerstone of his tenure.
The city is “enjoined and permanently restrained from implementing or enforcing the new regulations,” wrote New York Supreme Court Judge Milton Tingling, blocking the rules one day before they would have taken effect. The city’s chief counsel, Michael Cardozo, pledged to “appeal the ruling as soon as possible.”
In halting the drink rules, Judge Tingling noted that the incoming sugary drink regime was “fraught with arbitrary and capricious consequences” that would be difficult to enforce with consistency “even within a particular city block, much less the city as a whole.”
“The loopholes in this rule effectively defeat the stated purpose of the rule,” the judge wrote. (Read the full text of the ruling.)
Under a first-of-its-kind prohibition approved by the city Board of Health last year, establishments from restaurants to mobile food carts would have been prohibited from selling sugary drinks larger than 16 oz. After a three-month grace period, the city would have started fining violators $200 per sale.
So the nanny gets told “no”.
Does anyone really believe this will stop him?
~McQ
Sean Penn about Hugo Chavez: “I’ve lost a friend”
Hugo Chavez has assumed room temperature. I’ve always been taught it is bad manners to talk ill of the dead. In this case I’ll risk it. It is a huge boon for liberty and individual rights that Hugo is no longer at the helm of the shipwreck he’s made of his country and its economy.
Of course, there are those who feel differently about a man who had no respect for individual liberty, property or rights:
Sean Penn said in a statement to the Hollywood Reporter that “the people of the United States lost a friend it never knew it had. And poor people around the world lost a champion. I lost a friend I was blessed to have. My thoughts are with the family of President Chavez and the people of Venezuela.”
No one ever said our celebrities were particularly bright. I mean this is Sean Penn who tried to paddle around New Orleans in a row boat in the wake of Katrina to … well, one assumes to prove something. Instead he just became another problem for those actually doing rescue work.
So it’s not particularly surprising to see him, blinders firmly in place, saying silly stuff about Chavez. Chavez was a dictator, a tyrant, a bully, amoral, violent and singularly ideologically driven. And, in terms of how the world works economically, ignorant as a stump (a common condition for most socialists) – as is Penn.
Hugo Chavez was no “friend of the poor”. He simply used them, by giving them other people’s property, to provide himself with a power base.
With Chavez’s passing, perhaps Venezuela can now recover from the long national nightmare it has undergone during the Chavez years.
Here’s hoping.
~McQ
The law? Something for thee, not me
Or so says the executive branch in many, many cases.
In this particular case, the National Labor Relations Board, NLRB, has simply decided to ignore a ruling of a US Court of Appeals:
Only a few hours after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a decision that the National Labor Relations Board does not have a legal quorum to act, the board’s chairman, Mark Pearce, issued a press release announcing the board’s intent to ignore it.
The timing and content of Pearce’s statement show a board so fixated on serving the interests of organized labor it no longer knows its place nor weighs the consequences of its actions on the public interest. Although Pearce may believe that the president has the authority to make recess appointments over a three-day break in ongoing Senate sessions — or over lunch, for that matter — it is not the place of the NLRB chairman to disagree with a circuit court on a constitutional question that goes to the heart of the political appointment process and one in which he has a partisan interest.
The answer to that is to ignore the NLRB and anything it says, does or declares.
If they can play that game, so can we.
~McQ
Just think about it
When you hear all this nonsense coming out of DC about “spending cuts”, “savings”, sequestration or just about anything to do with budget, deficit or debt, who’s fault it is, etc. – even while they plan to kick it down the road, again – take it with a grain of … pie.
~McQ
Mexico wants tighter gun control in the US and the names of gun owners
Given Fast and Furious, I’d suggest that Mexico ask for the names of gun runners instead. We’d top that list with the names “Barack Obama” and “Eric Holder”. However:
On February 18th, Sentinel reported about a new law passed by Mexican legislators – a mandate for a formal request of our US Senate to create and share a gun registry of all commercial firearms in the border states with the Mexican government and police. Private gun ownership names and addresses would then be in the hands of the Mexican government and police that all agree are filled with corruption.
In the past, I’d unhesitatingly say, “yeah, not going to happen”. With this administration, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they tried to comply.
Mexican ambassador to the U.S., Eduardo Medina Mora, said he hopes the Newtown shooting “opens a window of opportunity for President Obama” to pass tighter gun control laws.”
“The Second Amendment and the regulations adopted in the U.S. is not, never was and never should be designed to arm foreign criminal groups,” the nervy ambassador said.
Mexican activists in Mexico City have passed in a petition with 54,000 signatures asking for tighter US gun control.
Of course they have – the murder and mayhem among their criminal class is out of control and epidemic and they need someone to blame. And, of course, this would provide a wonderful premise on which to clamp down on private ownership of firearms, Constitution be damned.
Of course realty says that, stipulated, even if they could and did do this, nothing would change:
George W. Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William and Mary, doubts tighter gun control laws in the U.S. will greatly affect violence in Mexico. Cartels, Grayson said, can easily find AK-47s and other assault weapons on the international market – places such as China, France, Brazil and Israel.
“The lion’s share of weapons used by cartels come from the United States, but having said that, if the Virgin of Guadeloupe were to stop the flow of weapons southward it would be a nuisance for the cartels but it certainly would not end the bloodshed,” Grayson said.
Ultimately, he said, Mexico would do itself a favor by looking domestically for the roots of the drug war – fixes are badly needed to the country’s corrupt judicial system, military and police force.
But reality and facts have never before stopped a political agenda. Arms such as those the cartels use are readily available from dozens of international arms dealers. Screwing the rights of Americans to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment wouldn’t change that one iota.
And they know that. But, as pointed out the other day, this isn’t about facts. This is about a social and political agenda. In the case of such agendas, pretty much anything is considered fair, to include ignoring facts, science and the Constitution.
Let’s see if anything develops from this.
~McQ
Texas terrifies the left
If ever there was a load of crap on toast, it can be found today in Michael Lind’s atrocious piece in Salon.
He calls it “Southern Poverty Pimps”. I see a more apt name to be “Southern Cliches R Us”.
It is probably one of the more absurd attempts to make the economic success in Texas look bad that I’ve seen in quite some time. You would almost feel it was something Paul Krugman would hack out. One of my bets, concerning all the negative stereotypes Lind uses, is he’s rarely if ever been in the South.
For instance:
Needless to say, private sector unions that pool worker bargaining power are anathema to today’s suave metropolitan successors to the slave-owning plantocracy. The whole point of the Southern model of economic development is to create a non-union region from Virginia to Texas, to which companies can be induced to move from states with unionized workforces. Besides, unions engage in collective bargaining, in violation of the Southern ideal of employer-worker relations, in which the master gives orders and the fearful worker obeys without question.
Of course the fact that in the great North unions are losing members like water through a sieve would never see the light of day in a Lind expose, one assumes. That would run contradictory to his whole premise that the South has just shifted from racial slavery to economic slavery. No mention of the thousands upon thousands fleeing the horrible economic conditions of Blue states, no mention of Detroit, no mention of the rust belt. No mention of the urban blight found in Blue states or their failing economies.
You see, if the “Southern model”, aka the Red State Model” is allowed to exist, if it isn’t demonized and condemned, if all stops aren’t pulled out to include the usual racial and ethnic accusations the left loves to fling around, well, it might make people think that the Red States are on to something.
Of course, we already know they are, don’t we?
And so does Texas. You see, Texas’ success terrifies them.
Thus Lind’s pitiful attempt to use the divisive language of which the left is so fond. It couldn’t be that people actually are fine with their wages and tired of unions who take their money and really don’t produce much of anything but fat-cat union officials could it?
Heavens no.
It’s all about “economic slavery”.
~McQ
Assault gun ban: Not that science and facts will stop the left from pushing for it
Science and facts dont stand a chance against myth and ideology:
Justice Department researchers have concluded that an assault weapons ban is “unlikely to have an effect on gun violence,” but President Obama has not accepted their report as his administration’s official position.
“Since assault weapons are not a major contributor to US gun homicide and the existing stock of guns is large, an assault weapon ban is unlikely to have an impact on gun violence,” the DOJ’s National Institute for Justice explains in a January 4 report obtained by the National Rifle Association. “If coupled with a gun buyback and no exemptions then it could be effective.” That idea is also undermined by the acknowledgement that “a complete elimination of assault weapons would not have a large impact on gun homicides.”
The research in that report didn’t stop Obama denouncing “weapons of war” during his State of the Union speech on February 12.
We’ve pointed out any number of times that deaths by rifle, any sort of rifle, are less than 500 a year. Less that blunt objects – clubs, baseball bats, etc.
But that’s not going to stop these people. Facts are inconvenient truths, to borrow from the biggest myth maker of all – Al Gore.
There’s a reason for the desire for this ban. It’s a foot in the door. And, once they declare it’s not enough, the precedent is already set. As I mentioned on the podcast, the left is into incrementalism. They will incrementally sneak up on every freedom we have left. And, if they have their way, take them away. In the name of “safety” and “security”. And you know what Ben Franklin said about that.
~McQ
Benghazi – the most “transparent” administration ever
No attempt to actually be transparent and, apparently, feeling no need to pretend otherwise:
Sen. Richard Burr, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said that the CIA has “flatly refused” to give some Benghazi-related documents to the committee, which is conducting an investigation of the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on the State Department and CIA personnel and facilities in Benghazi, Libya.
Sen. Burr made the assertion last week at the confirmation hearing for John Brennan, whom President Barack Obama has nominated to be director of the CIA. Brennan currently serves as the president’s counterterrorism adviser.
“Mr. Brennan, as you know, the committee’s conducting a thorough inquiry into the attacks in Benghazi, Libya,” Sen. Burr said. “In the course of this investigation, the CIA has repeatedly delayed and in some cases flatly refused to provide documents to this committee.”
None of the other members of the committee contradicted Burr’s assertion.
Of course not. That’s because it is a fact.
Not that the administration much cares. It has found that “flatly refusing” works. “What does it matter now?” is the new attitude.
And that’s despite the usual promises:
At the time of the Benghazi terrorist attacks, Gen. David Petraeus was director of the CIA. When Petraeus appeared at his confirmation hearing in the Senate intelligence committee on June 23, 2011, Chairman Dianne Feinstein asked him a set of questions that the committee routinely asks those nominated to run the CIA. At John Brennan’s confirmation hearing on Feb. 7, Feinstein asked Brennan exactly the same questions.
Feinstein asked Petreaus, “Do you agree to provide documents or any other materials requested by the committee in order for it to carry out its oversight and legislative responsibilities?”
“Yes, I do,” said Petreaus.
“Will you ensure that the CIA and its officials provide such materials to the committee when requested?” asked Feinstein.
“I will,” said Petreaus.
“Do you agree to inform and fully brief to the fullest extent possible all members of this committee of intelligence activities and covert actions rather than only the chairman and vice chairman?” asked Feinstein.
“Yes, I do,” said Petraeus.
And later:
Last week, John Brennan was equally direct in answering these questions.
Feinstein asked Brennan, “Do you agree to provide documents or any other materials requested by the committee in order for it to carry out its oversight and legislative responsibilities?”
“Yes, all documents that come under my authority as director of CIA, I absolutely will,” said Brennan.
“Will you ensure that the CIA and its officials provide such materials to the committee when requested?” asked Feinstein.
“Yes,” said Brennan.
“Do you agree to inform and fully brief to the fullest extent possible all members of this committee of intelligence activities and covert actions rather than only the chairman and vice chairman?” asked Feinstein.
“Yes, I will endeavor to do that,” said Brennan.
Later in the same hearing, however, when Burr asked Brennan about the documents Burr said the CIA was refusing to give to the committee, Brennan qualified his answer—leaving open the possibility that as CIA director there may be occasions when he would decline to provide documents to the committee.
And the circus continues. Love the line, he ‘qualified his answer’. He shored up his lie is more like it.
Given the last election, though, we’ve got the very government we deserve. Inept, unqualified, mordant, bickering party members whose first allegiance isn’t to their country, but instead to their party. Why anyone would trust them with running a dog kennel much less a national government is beyond me. But we have.
Behold the result.
~McQ
Speaking of the lies we were fed …
By the likes of Krugman and the Democrats, here’s a little more proof:
The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday quietly raised the 10-year cost of ObamaCare’s insurance subsidies offered via the health law’s exchanges by $233 billion, according to a Congressional Budget Office review of its latest spending forecast.
The CBO’s new baseline estimate shows that ObamaCare subsidies offered through the insurance exchanges — which are supposed to be up and running by next January — will total more than $1 trillion through 2022, up from $814 billion over those same years in its budget forecast made a year ago. That’s an increase of nearly 29%.
29% and they’re not even off the ground yet. Anyone have any doubt whatsoever that this is likely a lowball estimate at this point? Are we aware of the trend we always see when “costs” are discussed by governments and political parties?
Note too that they play games with the CBO (which is limited to forecasting 10 years out and also hasn’t been very accurate about much of anything – see debt forecasts over the last decade).
The politicians mostly fabricate whatever they think is palatable to the gullible public, sell them with the CBO’s false data and then, when it is found out that it was all bollocks, they say, ‘oh well, too late now, it’s the law”.
Well here’s my feeling about that. If the “law” doesn’t live up to their hype – if it ends up being massively more than they claimed (you know like 29%) then there’s a fairly simple rule that should be followed.
It – the law – should be automatically repealed.
~McQ