Month: May 2014

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Gun Control Politics Texas

The Little Men With Big Guns Causing Huge Headaches in Texas

In Texas, little men with big guns need a law to authorized their little egos. But the good people of the state are speaking up for their right to peacefully assemble and eat at a restaurant without the unnecessary, legally justified intimidation of these little men and their little egos, and their big guns.

It would be an understatement to say that the tactics of gun rights activists have been backfiring of late. The showdown has taken place foremost in Texas, where in recent months groups such as Open Carry Texas have conducted provocative demonstrations in which armed men exercise their right under state law to carry semi-automatic rifles in public. No fewer than five national food and beverage chains have now told them to get rid of their guns or get lost, including Starbucks, Wendy’s, Applebees, Jack in the Box, and Chipotle.

And now Chili’s and Sonic have effectively joined the list: Two videos posted on YouTube on May 19 by the San Antonio chapter of Open Carry Texas—since removed from public view but obtained by Mother Jones—show its armed members being refused service at both restaurants. The two companies have not made official statements on open carry but have since indicated that they are reviewing their policies. [See update below.] From the nervous and angry reactions of some patrons to comments from some of the gun activists themselves, it’s not difficult to see why these spectacles haven’t been winning many people over.

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Gun Control Politics shooting

New Shooting Complements the NRA – 3 Year Old Shoots 18 Month Old in Head

So now, another senseless shooting. This time, a 3-year-old shoots an 18-month-old in the head. I guess the Republicans would say the 3-year-old had mental issues that need to be addressed.

In Payson, Arizona, a town just two hours northeast of Phoenix, a toddler accidentally shot his younger sibling in the head at a residence. According to the Payson Police Department, a 3-year-old boy found a gun in a home he was visiting with his family, then shot his 18-month-old sibling in the head.

At this point, the condition of the baby is not available.

The investigation is just beginning, according to AZFamily. 

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Politics racist Republican

Republicans Lose One Of Their Own – Racist Cliven Bundy Now an Independent

Photo by George Frey/Getty Images

I think this is the Republicans’ way of re-branding their party – getting rid of the racists… but, who will be left after all the racists are gone?

LAS VEGAS — Southern Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy no longer is a Republican. Bundy, who is embroiled in a dispute over grazing with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, has switched his affiliation to the Independent American Party.
He and his wife, Carol, signed registration forms to the cheers of supporters at an Independent American Party gathering in Las Vegas on Friday night.

The event was held to honor Bundy for what organizers called “his courage in standing up for state sovereignty.”

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Featured mass murders Politics sandyhook shooting

Gabby Giffords Again Urges Congress to Act on Gun Violence

Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly
Photo: AP

I am of course, a supporter of Gabby’s efforts to get something done on the issue of gun violence. But the fact is, she was a member of Congress, she got shot in the head and you would think that if nothing else caused the gun lovers in congress to act, seeing one of their own suffer would prompt them to do something. But Gabby’s calls for action from her former co-workers have fallen on deaf ears!

In a letter to her SuperPAC, Gabby once again begged Congress to do something to curb gun violence. “These mass shootings are too often followed by stories about the perpetrator’s history of severe mental illness,” Kelly wrote, “Thankfully, taking action on mental health and protecting women from gun violence are issues that Democrats and Republicans can agree on — despite the filibuster of expanded background checks last year.”

“Congress must stop hiding behind the excuse of politics and take up this issue to ensure the dangerously mentally ill don’t have easy access to guns and to protect women from gun death and intimidation,” she said.

Gabby is not giving up. And it is my hope that something will be done before the next mass murder happens. But then again, I’ve had this same hope after the last eight mass shootings.

Categories
Gun Control Politics

Fox News Guest Loses Job After Making Dumb Statement About UCSB Shooting on Fox

First, Robi Ludwig went on Fox News after the shooting in California and said that the mass shooting could have been caused by the shooter not being able to cope with his “homosexual impulses.”

Ludwig, a spokesperson for Coldwell Banker, apparently did not check with her employer before making that statements. After her appearance on the Fox, a concerned viewer shared Ludwig’s statement with Coldwell Banker. The viewer – Scott Wooledge – also asked, “I believe she is a spokesperson of yours, correct?”

Coldwell replied with this: “Dr. Robi’s comments on the tragedy in Santa Barbara do not represent the opinions of Coldwell Banker. Therefore at this time we feel it best to part ways with her as our lifestyle real estate correspondent.”

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Featured Politics shooting

Joe The Plumber to Families of Gun Violence – “your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights”

The famous Republican plumber, who is not a real plumber but definitely a real Republican, has a message for the families of those killed in what is slowly becoming this nation’s favorite passtime – mass shootings.

To the families of those killed, Joe says who gives a damn if you lost your child is gunned down? As long as you don’t touch my rights to carry a gun.

Okay, so he didn’t say it in those exact words, but here’s what he did say;

It’s a tragedy.

I am sorry you lost your child. I myself have a son and daughter and the one thing I never want to go through, is what you are going through now. But:

As harsh as this sounds – your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights.

Joe’s statement was made in an open letter he wrote to the families of those killed in gun violence. In his open letter, Joe summarizes the NRA’s position, that the guns are never the problem, something else is always to be blamed for mass shootings.

In the most recent mass shooting in California where one man massacred six people before killing himself, Joe, congressional Republicans and the NRA argues that a mental disorder was the culprit. They then insist that everything must be done to better monitor those with mental health issues, but whatever is done cannot include putting any restrictions or regulations on these people or their ability to get more guns.

Those restrictions or regulations they claim, would mean taking away everyone’s Second Amendment rights, you know, the right to be a well regulated melitia.

So protect their constitutional right to follow the Second Amendment, except that pesky part about being “well regulated.” That part… let’s just pretend it doesn’t exist.

Categories
Michelle Obama Politics

Republicans Attack First Lady’s Healthy Lunch Program for School Kids – Pure #Insanity

What’s messed up is having the First Lady of the United States placed in a position where she has to defend her efforts to make kids eat healthier. What is this world coming to, when eating healthy is now the wrong thing to do?

That is the new fight the Republicans are on. They have figured out a way to attack and undercut Michelle Obama’s efforts in her “Let’s Move” program. Their goal is to allow schools to opt out of the healthy lunch program the First Lady is pushing.

First lady Michelle Obama is answering Republicans in Congress who want to roll back healthier school meal standards.

At a roundtable at the White House this afternoon with nutrition experts and school administrators, Obama praised the new guidelines and disparaged Republican efforts to undercut them.

‘This is unacceptable,’ Obama said.

The event is an unusual move for the first lady, who has largely stayed away from policy fights since she lobbied for congressional passage of the child nutrition law that gave the U.S. Department of Agriculture the authority to make reforms to the school lunch program in 2010.

Sam Kass, director of Mrs. Obama’s Let’s Move initiative to combat childhood obesity, said a Republican bill that would allow schools to opt out of the standards is ‘a real assault’ on administration efforts to make foods healthier for kids.

Kass, who is a White House chef, said the event is an attempt to point out the successes of some schools that have implemented the standards, which were set by the Obama administration and Congress over the past several years.

School nutrition officials from across the country will speak about how well the standards are working in their schools.

‘She wants to have a conversation about what is really happening out in the country,’ as opposed to Washington, Kass said. ‘These standards are working.’

Categories
mass shooting Politics

More Mass Shootings, Same Old Non-Response from Congress

Photo: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

And this is the way things will be until we get a Congress brave enough to take on the NRA.

After the shooting at University of California, Santa Barbara on Friday, a rampage that left six students dead, many parents and politicians found the federal government’s past responses to similar tragedies to be one of the culprits. “Have we learned nothing?” Richard Martinez, father of one of the victims, said. “These things are going to continue until somebody does something, so where the hell is the leadership?”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Calif.) had a similar response on CBS’s Face the Nation. “Congress will be complicit if we fail to act.”

The statements felt familiar — we’ve heard similar exhortations for Congress to pass new gun legislation after many mass shootings. However, we also hear arguments for loosening gun restrictions, arguments that have proved far more successful. Since 13 people were killed at Columbine High School in 1999, Congress has passed one major law strengthening gun control in the aftermath of a mass shooting.

In other words, it doesn’t matter how many Americans lose their lives in senseless mass shootings, as long as Congress keep their jobs, everything’s okay.

Categories
Featured shooting

Texas – 10 Year Old Shoots 4 Year Old with Harmless Rifle

Here’s another of the many cases we show on this site where the guns apparently are never to be blamed. The NRA and their kind would have you believe that guns are harmless.

So in this story, the 10 yr old apparently took the bullet out of the harmless gun and threw it at his 4 year old cousin.

A 10-year-old boy reportedly shot his 4-year-old cousin by accident with a rifle inside the girl’s home in Harris County, Texas on Saturday.

Harris County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Thomas Gililand told The Houston Chronicle that the boy discovered the rifle and discharged it at about noon on Saturday. According to Fox News’ Houston affiliate, when the boy discovered the rifle, he thought it was a toy and started playing with it. When it discharged, the bullet hit his cousin in her lower leg, according to Gililand.

The girl was taken by paramedics to a local hospital, according to Fox News’ Houston affiliate. The injury was considered serious but not life threatening.

Gililand also said the rifle was brought to the home by a relative the night before.

Categories
Politics

Happy Memorial Day – Veterans Group Calls Republican Senator “Dishonorable”

The Huffington Post is reporting that a highly bitter war of words has broken out between veterans organizations and the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs amid the brewing controversy over health care for former servicemen and servicewomen.

Late Friday afternoon before the Memorial Day weekend, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) penned an “open letter to America’s Veterans” in which he took several veterans service groups to task for being insufficiently critical of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki.

Burr accused the groups (with the exception of the American Legion) of being more invested in maintaining access to the secretary than with fixing a troubled health care system. He questioned why they haven’t called for a leadership change at the VA, and pointedly charged the groups’ leaders with not caring about the health and well-being of their members.

Burr’s letter was in response to the testimony that Shinseki and seven of these veteran service organizations (VSO) had given before his committee the week prior, concerning revelations and allegations of long wait times, bureaucratic malfeasance and insufficient care at the VA.

Not surprisingly, leaders at the veterans groups Burr named were not pleased with the letter.

In their own letter, Veterans of Foreign Wars responded to Burr by calling his letter a “monumental cheap-shot” and labeling it “one of the most dishonorable and grossly inappropriate acts that we’ve witnessed in more than forty years of involvement with the veteran community.” If the tone wasn’t clear, the group added that Burr’s conduct and allegations were “ugly and mean-spirited in every sense of the words and profoundly wrong, both logically and morally,” in addition to breaching “the standards of the United States Senate.”

Categories
Politics Terrorism

It’s Their Only Priority – Republicans File Suit to Raise Unlimited Funds

Don’t ever say you did not know what the Republicans’ main goal was. And for those of you who were fooled into thinking Republicans were looking out for your best interest, well I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

Last week, the RNC showed exactly what they’re after, and that is to raise an unlimited amount of cash without those pesky courts and their dumb limits.

The Republican National Committee on Friday sued the Federal Election Commission for the ability to raise unlimited cash from individual donors.

The central committee, chairman Reince Priebus and Louisiana Republicans filed a joint lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia asking for permission to set up an independent account that could raise and spend potentially enormous sums of money to help federal candidates. Under the current rules, the RNC may only accept $32,400 each year from donors, and local-level parties are capped at $10,000.

“The patchwork of limits on political speech undermines the First Amendment and puts high transparency, full-disclosure groups like the RNC on an unequal footing with other political entities,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement. “We are asking that political parties be treated equally under the law.”

Super PACs, which operate independently of the political parties or the candidates they support, can raise unlimited money from allies, including corporations and unions. The groups technically cannot coordinate their spending and strategy with their favored candidates, but seldom have they pushed a message that runs counter to the campaigns’ wishes.

While emphasizing that they do not want to accept money from corporations or unions as super PACs do, RNC officials said they want to have the same abilities to establish independent accounts that can buy ads, send campaign mail and make phone calls.

“In an era when independent-expenditure accounts can solicit unlimited contributions and spend enormous amounts to influence political races, political parties are constitutionally entitled to compete equally with them with their own independent campaign activity,” said James Bopp Jr., the lawsuit’s lead attorney.

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Featured

Dog Attacked Boy, Cat Saved Boy, Dog Gets Death Penalty

Remember the cat that saved a little boy who was being attacked by a vicious dog? Well it seems that the dog inadvertently got the death penalty for his attack on the kid. And Saturday was his last day on earth.

Sources at the Bakersfield animal shelter tell TMZ … Scrappy was euthanized at the end of a 10-day hold following the attack.  We’re told the dog was aggressive during his stay at the shelter, even trying to bite a couple of employees.

Scrappy was so ornery … we’re told he would try to attack staff even when they tried to give him food and water.

RIP Scrappy … you made a cat a hero.

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