Sad, that since the gun was used to slaughter 20 innocent children in Sandy Hook Elementary school, the AR-15 has become the weapon of choice among diehard Republicans.
The new found love for the Kids-killing gun, is apparent when it is offered as an award in contests held by Republican officials.
U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, who is running in a primary campaign for U.S. Senate, announced Friday he will give away a AR-15 weapon to a lucky supporter of his campaign.
“How would you like to start off 2014 with a brand new AR-15 for free?” reads a bold line in an email the congressman — who represents the 10th district in Georgia — sent his supporters, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
“You see, it’s no secret that the Democrats and liberal media would love to take away our guns and mandate every aspect of our lives, but I refuse to let them get away with that,” he wrote in the email, the newspaper reported. “In fact, today, I have some exciting news for you.”
The lucky winner must be 18 and pass a background check.
On his campaign website Broun said he decided to give away the weapon because “Barack Obama would like nothing more than to ban the AR-15 rifle.”
The contest ends on Feb. 27.
Broun is the second Republican in as many days who is offering an AR-15 weapon to a supporter as they gear up for a primary election.
South Carolina state Senator Lee Bright, who is challenging Sen. Lindsey Graham in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate, will award the weapon to “one lucky Second Amendment supporter” in a contest on his website.
I cannot figure out why this blowhard would thrust himself even more into the spotlight when he knows his closet is filled with skeletons.
Yes, I could be talking about any Republican official in this post. Go ahead, name one of them and I will tell you about their particular closet. This post however, is dedicated to none other than blowhard Mike Huckabee.
We all remember about a week ago when Huckabee felt the need, no, the urge to make a speech about the Republicans’ war on women, including his explanation of “Uncle Sugar”, women’s libido and of course, contraception? His entire speech was quite controversial, I’m sure you remembered it. Well as fate would have it, this same Huckabee guy – an outspoken opponent of women’s health especially where providing contraception is concerned – provided mandatory contraception to the women of Arkansas when he was governor.
Huffington Post described Huckabee’s change in position as an “epic flip-flop,” noting that Huckabee defended his view at the time, saying that “Religious employers are not required to comply with this policy. My position is, and always has been, that religious entities shouldn’t be forced to pay for contraception.”
Abortifacients were exempted in the Arkansas legislation, the Arkansas Times noted, but the law appears even more comprehensive than the ACA, mandating coverage under health policies issued by institutions with religious affiliations if they don’t exist primarily for that purpose and don’t primarily employ people of that religion, a standard most religiously-affiliated hospitals and schools do not meet.
Darion Marcus Aguilar, 19, of College Park, was identified as the gunman by police Sunday morning. He took a cab to the Columbia mall an hour before the shooting. Police have yet to establish a connection between the shooter and the victims.
HOWARD COUNTY POLICE VIA TWITTER
Maryland police have identified Darion Marcus Aguilar, 19, of College Park, Md., as the gunman in the horrifying mall shooting that killed two people and injured five Saturday.
Maryland police have identified the gunman who killed two people and injured five more in a horrifying mall shooting Saturday before killing himself.
“We may never be back to 100% normal but we are resilient,” said Howard County Police Chief William McMahon said in a press conference Sunday evening.
Darion Marcus Aguilar, 19, of College Park, Md., took a cab to the mall in Columbia at 10:15 a.m. Saturday and then killed Brianna Benlolo, 21, of College Park, and Tyler Johnson, 25, of Ellicott City, who worked at Zumiez, located on the second floor of the Mall in Columbia, above the food court, police said.
BALTIMORE SUN
Police have yet to make a connection between gunman Aguilar (pictured) and his two victims. Cops say he did not have a criminal history.
Police have yet to make a connection between the shooter and his two victims.
“There’s still some speculation that there has been some romantic involvement. We have not been able to establish that,” McMahon said.
These rumors have upset the victims’ families, he said.
TWITTER
Police say Aguilar (pictured) took a cab to the Mall in Columbia at 10:15 a.m. and then killed Brianna Benlolo, 21, and Tyler Johnson, 25.
Authorities searched Aguilar’s house and found a journal where he expressed general unhappiness with his life, according to McMahon.
Police have maintained a strong presence around the mall ever since the shooting. They are making sure patrons recover belongings they left behind and that grief counseling will be available to anyone who needs it.
Aguilar’s house in College Park, Md., on Sunday. Police said the gunman lived with his mother, and that they seized computers and documents from his home.
The mall will reopen 1 p.m. Monday with two memorials to honor the victims.
Police say that Aguilar unleashed terror in this “cornerstone of our community” after waiting in a “confined area” for an hour after arriving.
Five other people — one who was shot in the foot — were treated at a local hospital and released Saturday. Police said the gunman fired between six and eight shots with a 12-gauge shotgun he bought in December.
BRIANNA BENLOLO/FACEBOOK
Brianna Benlolo, 21, was one of two mall employees who were shot at the suburban Baltimore Mall in Columbia.
Police said the gunman lived with his mother, and that they seized computers and documents from his home. He had brought a backpack that was filled with two “unsophisticated” devices that appeared to be attempts to make homemade explosives, McMahon said.
He did not have a criminal history, McMahon said.
Aguilar was found with a large amount of ammunition on him. Police searched the mall overnight Saturday and determined there were no explosives.
FACEBOOK
Tyler Johnson, the 25-year-old victim in the Columbia mall shooting.
Police arrived at the sprawling mall only two minutes after the first 911 calls were placed at 11:15 a.m. and secured the shopping center by 1 p.m.
Benlolo’s grandfather, John Feins, said in a telephone interview from Florida that his granddaughter had a 2-year-old son and that the job at Zumiez was her first since she went back to work after her son’s birth.
Police talk in a parking lot outside the Mall in Columbia in Maryland, where a gunman killed two and injured five before taking his own life.
“She was all excited because she was the manager there,” he said.
He said he had spoken with his daughter, Brianna’s mother, earlier in the day, but didn’t know who the gunman was or whether the person knew his granddaughter.
“It’s senseless. It’s totally, totally senseless,” he said.
For example, the health care website was a dud in October and November, but as we speak, over 3 million people have signed up for health insurance through the portal and Medicaid, and the goal of signing up 7 million people by the end of March is eminently attainable. The Republican blahblahgosphere will say that not enough young, healthy people have signed up and that the death spiral will begin any time now, but since they’ve been wrong about everything related to the law (remember when the election of Scott Brown meant the end of the ACA?), why would we want to believe them now?
On immigration, the critics say that because there was no final bill last year that this was a failure for Obama. Not if we get a bill this year, and it’s looking more and more likely that we will. Not because it was a bad idea last year, but because the GOP has finally realized that they are national election toast of they don’t do something to help the Hispanic electorate that is running very quickly away from their party.
Likewise for the minimum wage, climate policy, appointees and foreign policy. In every one of these cases, the president won’t get Congress to sign on to his initiatives, but he’s laying the groundwork for later years or, most likely, for his successor who will most likely be a Democrat. At this point, Obama can do the most for this country by executive order and that’s what we’re likely to hear on Tuesday.
Most presidents, if they are remembered at all, are usually known for one or two major laws that transform the country. The ACA will be Obama’s main accomplishment, but I could see him also being remembered for the Consumer Protection Board and the president who saved the American automobile industry. Immigration would put him in the top ten lists of great ones. The right-wing knows this and that’s why their last-ditch efforts to derail anything Obama wants to do will be loud and scary. But that’s all they’ll be for years to come.
In the meantime, we are living through a trying time with a leader that history will remember fondly.
Sen. Charles Schumer says new legislation proposed in the name of Avonte Oquendo, the 14-year-old New York City boy who disappeared from his school and was found dead three months later, would fund voluntary tracking devices for children who have autism.
Schumer (D-N.Y.), accompanied by Avonte’s mother and grandmother, Sunday to announce “Avonte’s Law.” The legislation would create a program that provides tracking devices and expands support services for families with autistic children.
Schumer says it would be similar to a federal program that tracks seniors who have Alzheimer’s disease. The $10 million in funds would go to police departments, which would hand out the devices to parents who request them.
“It will help put parents at ease, save precious lives,” Schumer told reporters, including 1010 WINS’ Glenn Schuck. “Avonte’s Law will allow his memory to live on while helping to prevent more children with autism from going missing.
“The technology will allow parents of all children with autism, no matter how much or how little money they have, to enjoy the benefits of a high-tech solution to an age-old problem.”
Avonte’s mother and grandmother weren’t ready to speak to reporters, but their lawyer, David Perecman, told WCBS 880′s Monica Miller that a tracking system would be a fitting tribute to the teen.
“The goal today, because we can’t go back in time, is to make sure … never again,” Perecman said. “And this will help.”
A two-month saga ended today in Fort Worth, Texas when a hospital deactivated the ventilator that was keeping a brain-dead pregnant woman alive. Officials at John Peter Smith Hopsital did so on the order of a judge, who sided with the woman’s family.
Marlise Munoz had been attached to a ventilator that was keeping her heart and lungs working since late November, when her husband found her unconscious in their kitchen. Doctors declared Munoz brain-dead and her family insisted that she did not wish to be kept alive artificially, but Texas law stated that the hospital had to keep her body working because she was carrying a fetus.
The fetus, at 14 weeks, was not viable. But Texas’ draconian laws and views regarding how to handle pregnancies meant that Munoz and her family had to endure a situation they had no interest in being a part of. “May Marlise Munoz finally rest in peace, and her family find the strength to complete what has been an unbearably long and arduous journey,” said the family’s lawyers in a statement.
VATICAN CITY – Two white doves that were released by children standing alongside Pope Francis as a peace gesture have been attacked by other birds.
As tens of thousands of people watched in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, a seagull and a large black crow swept down on the doves right after they were set free from an open window of the Apostolic Palace.
One dove lost some feathers as it broke free from the gull. But the crow pecked repeatedly at the other dove.
It was not clear what happened to the doves as they flew off.
While speaking at the window beforehand, Francis had appealed for peace inUkraine, where anti-government protesters have died.
On Friday, a Gmail outage led to widespread panic and confusion across the globe. That same day, an apparently unrelated glitch also caused thousands of emails to end up in the inbox of some guy named David S. Peck. (A Hotmail user, it should be noted.)
Here’s what happened: users who searched “Gmail” were led to a results page with a link that said “Email.” Clicking that link created a new email with Peck’s address – dsp559@hotmail.com — already filled in. A tipster pointed this out to TechCrunch, who then tracked down the owner of the email address: David S. Peck of Fresno, Calif. They gave him a call to see just how badly this bizarre glitch was affecting him.
“I’ve been getting thousands of no-subject, blank emails,” Peck told TechCrunch. “500 of them come every hour, I can’t stop them.”
The deluge got so extreme that Peck began missing important messages because he couldn’t delete the unwanted emails fast enough. Most were blank, but some contained messages like “who is this?” or “why are you sending me these emails?”
On Friday night, Google said this glitch was unrelated to the Gmail outage, and offered the following statement:
Due to a technical glitch, some email addresses on public webpages appeared too prominently in search results. We’ve fixed the issue and are sorry for any inconvenience caused.
Hillary Clinton has not yet declared that she is running for president in 2016, but already the Republican jokers have began their attacks.
This attack though, takes the cake. Somehow, Republican presidential wannabe candidate Senator Rand Paul is suggesting that the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal should give Americans pause when it comes to evaluating the Clinton legacy — and, by extension, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s potential presidential campaign.
Paul’s wife, Kelley, made similar remarks in a Vogue profile last year, and her husband agreed with her Sunday in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Rand Paul said the scandal is about more than just infidelity and lying to the American people, but also as “predatory behavior” from the former president.
“One of the workplace laws and rules that I think are good is that bosses shouldn’t prey on young interns in their office,” Paul said. “And I think really the media seems to have given President Clinton a pass on this. He took advantage of a girl that was 20 years old and an intern in his office. There is no excuse for that, and it is predatory behavior.”
Paul said the episode undercuts Democrats’ allegations of a GOP “war on women” and should color people’s perceptions of the Clintons. He added that “sometimes it’s hard to separate” Bill and Hillary Clinton.
“And then they have the gall to stand up and say Republicans are having a war on women?” Paul said rhetorically. “So yes, I think it’s a factor. It’s not Hillary’s fault, but it is a factor in judging Bill Clinton and history.”
The midterm elections are fast approaching… okay, so it’s still January. But the midterms are coming this year, and with that knowledge, Republicans are quickly realizing… again, that their outreach to voting groups should go beyond rich white men.
Mike Huckabee began that outreach last week trying to convince women that Republicans are their friends. And today, Rand Paul picked up where Huckabee left off. Of course, Huckabee’s conclusion that Republicans don’t have a war on woman and Paul’s misguided understanding that women are doing just fine thank you, are both wrong. But they will keep saying it because they don’t have a clue, and the midterm election is almost here.
“The whole thing of the ‘war on women,’ I sort of laughingly say, ‘Yeah, there might have been – but the women are winning it,'” the Republican senator from Kentucky said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He said women have made great strides and, as an example, now make up more than half the students at medical and law schools.
“I think women are doing very well, and I’m proud of how far we’ve come,” the potential 2016 presidential candidate continued.
“And I think some of the victimology and all of this other stuff is trumped up. We don’t get to any good policy by playing some sort of charade that somehow one party doesn’t care about women or one party is not in favor of women advancing, or other people advancing.”
As the GOP gears up for the 2014 midterms, some in the party have acknowledged that Republican candidates could do better when it comes to talking about women’s issues.
“Some of our members just aren’t as sensitive as they ought to be.” House Speaker John Boehner said last month, when asked about efforts by the House GOP campaign arm to improve how candidates appeal to female voters.
CNN’s chief political correspondent, Candy Crowley, pressed Paul on whether the issue is a “matter of words and tone.”
“Somewhat,” Paul said. “I think also a lot of the debates we have in Washington and in the public, generally, are dumbed down. They’re characterized and we get to the point where we’re talking about stuff and throwing stuff back and forth, and we are never getting to the truth.”
An internal White House assessment concludes that President Obama must distance himself from a recalcitrant Congress after being badly damaged last year by legislative failures, a government shutdown and his own missteps.
Obama has said that his fraught relationship with Congress, especially after Republicans won the House in 2010, complicated his ability to promote his agenda. But for the first time, following what many allies view as a lost year, the White House is reorganizing itself to support a more executive-focused presidency and inviting the rest of the government to help.
The new approach comes after weeks of internal White House debate over a single question: What went wrong in 2013? The answers will help determine the outline of the State of the Union address Obama will deliver Tuesday evening, as well as how he pursues a meaningful legacy in the remainder of his term.
Last year began with the fresh-start ambitions of his second inauguration but ended in a long trail of mistakes, international embarrassments and missed legislative opportunities that sapped Obama’s credibility with the public.
Senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer outlined the lessons learned in a three-page memo that Obama discussed with his Cabinet in recent weeks, according to several administration officials who have read the document.
Among its conclusions is that Obama, a former state legislator and U.S. senator, too often governed more like a prime minister than a president. In a parliamentary system, a prime minister is elected by lawmakers and thus beholden to them in ways a president is not.
As a result, Washington veterans have been brought into the West Wing to emphasize an executive style of governing that aims to sidestep Congress more often. A central ambition of Obama’s presidency — to change the way Washington works — has effectively been discarded as a distraction in a time of hardening partisanship.
In 1986, when Muhammad Ali Jr. was 14 years old, his father, the greatest boxer alive, picked up the teen for a visit.
“We got in the car, and I said I needed to stop for something to eat,” Ali Jr. recalls. “By the time I came back out, he was gone.”
Ali Jr. called his father’s new wife, Lonnie, and said, “Daddy left me up here. I don’t know why he left me.” She said she’d tell him as soon as he arrived home.
“He turned the car around and came back to pick me up,” Ali Jr. says. “I said, ‘Daddy, why did you leave me?’ He said, ‘I kind of forgot you were in the car.’ ”
Ali Jr. remembers it sadly, the moment when his dad’s Parkinson’s became apparent.
“That was the first time I actually realized something was wrong with him,” he said.
Now 41, nearly destitute and living in the dangerous Chicago neighborhood of West Englewood, Ali Jr. fears his father has now forgotten him for good — and the boxing great’s wife, Lonnie, is keeping him from even saying a proper goodbye.
“If I saw my father right now, I’d say I love you, I miss you, and I want you to see your grandkids,” says Muhammad Jr., who lives in a two-bedroom hovel he shares with his wife, Shaakira, and two children, Ameera, 6, and Shakera, 5.
“I wished before my dad got really sick, I could have had that father-son relationship, but that’s impossible now. I wish I could have made up for lost time. But it doesn’t break my heart anymore. It’s been broken so many times I’m used to it by now.”
Muhammad Jr. was born in 1972 in Philadelphia to Ali, then 30, and actress Belinda Boyd, who was 17. Muhammad Jr. can’t remember ever enjoying a family meal together. Mostly, his grandparents raised him, as his father was busy boxing and his mom was acting in films.
He grew up with three sisters — Maryum and twins Jamillah and Rasheda — but when they were infants, Ali began an affair with Veronica Porsche, who became his second wife in 1977.
The kids still saw their dad, and Junior fondly remembers those days as an extended family.
“My father used to do magic tricks. He’d have a handkerchief that he’d make into a cane; he’d then make it disappear. His card tricks were really good. He was such a comical person. My father liked to wear masks and scare people. He liked to have people on the edge of their seats.
“We used to go to Pennsylvania where he had a training camp, and he’d do tricks on stage. We all went. It was all the family, including my stepsisters Leila and Hana. We’d get on the Bluebird Winnebago bus and go up to see him,” Muhammad Jr. says.
“We stayed in log cabins, ride horses, watch him train, jump ropes and eat all the time as a family. He had a great cook.
“But I never went to any boxing matches apart from one when he fought Leon Spinks, and I just remember he kept on smiling even though he was getting hit a lot.
“He never wanted me to be a fighter. He said, ‘Don’t get into it if you don’t know what you’re doing, as it’s dangerous.’
“I used to see him all the time when I was a child. He made sure he was there, would get all the siblings together, and never kept us a secret from each other. I was proud of my daddy. Fame and fortune meant nothing, I just saw him as my daddy.”
But being Muhammad Ali Jr. had its pitfalls. Although his dad was conquering the world for a third time in 1978, his son was battling on the playground.
“You may think having Muhammad Ali as your dad is great, but I had problems. People wanted to pick fights. School was hell. They wanted to see if I was like my father. I’d get bullied all the time. Girls would only get with me because of my father, not because of me. Nothing was as it seemed. I didn’t know who really loved me. People just used me so they could get a glimpse of my dad. Some people didn’t like it that my dad was black or didn’t go to war. We had to fight all his battles.
“It meant my grandparents sheltered me a lot. Dad didn’t know, as he wasn’t around every day. I felt in some ways like I never had a childhood.
“I’d say my father was good and bad. The reason I say that is because my father never really spent time with me. Whenever we had time, he spent it with his daughters rather than me. Even in the only picture I have of all the family together, they’re all wrapped close, and I’m far out to the left. I felt like the outcast. I still do,” Muhammad Jr. sobs.
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