Sixteen Republicans take a step to the left...for now.
By louisehartmann
On Thursday, the Senate voted to begin debate on gun-control. The vote marked the first time gun legislation will be argued in the upper chamber since the 1990's. The final vote to begin debate was 68 to 31, with 16 Republicans crossing the isle to allow arguments to proceed. There were some surprising names in the list of “yea” votes, like Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia. All three senators have an “A” or “A+” rating from the NRA.
Just the fact that a debate has been allowed is historic, after years of Republicans blocking any and all discussion on gun control, the vote is far from a guarantee that new legislation will make it to the President's desk. In fact, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, “the hard work starts now.” Senators fighting to enact commonsense gun laws still have to overcome a vote to end debate, and face a vote on the actual proposed legislation.
Families of the victims of the Newtown, Connecticut shooting have been pushing lawmakers all week to allow a vote on gun-control, and their efforts were monumental in getting many republicans to stand with democrats in Thursday's vote. There is still a long way to go before commonsense gun legislation becomes law, but it appears that the 20 children of Newtown, the others that died with them, and the more than 3,000 victims of gun violence since may all finally get the vote they deserve.
Comments
#2
♞Knights in White Satan♘..oh, that's "Satin"...excuse me. Yeah, whatever you call what they are doing it ain't pretty...eeevvvvillll! I've heard a few stories about certain high level politicians doing some, well...."Satanic" things.
Have you noticed how the news stories on TV kept playing the shaky camera clips (reminded me of The Blair Witch movie) of the emergency workers, and others, trying to remove that fence. I thought that it was pretty odd that they'd play the clips over and over and over again...but then I thought...how else would they hypnotize people and maximize freaking people out. Pay no attention to those men behind the curtain, Dorothy, while they loot our Social programs.
It was understandable that there would be shaky camera scenes but to play them over and over again like that seems to suggest that someone was purposely trying to psyche people out. Remember 911? They did the same thing...until the images of planes hitting and buildings collapsing and, at the same time, associating it with some evil boogey men terrorists that did this to us was deeply seared into our brains. The one of many glitches that some people picked up on was the fact that a British TV station anchor woman reported the collapse of Building #7 20 minutes before it actually collapsed. Strange, huh?!
When you consider that the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the Pentagon, had once seriously considered carrying out Operation Northwoods in order to psyche Americans into supporting an American invasion of Cuba and that FDR had purposely hoodwinked Americans into going to war against the Japanese & Germans, then you have to consider that these people may be the evil that is behind these false flags. And if you know the stories of the USS Lusitania, the USS Maine exploding in Havana waters, and all of the other dirty tricks our so-called leaders have done to get us to go to war, you just have to extrapolate what you know to what will happen, or what has just happened.
We know that the FBI entraps people...uses them as patsies...gets them to do things that they would not ordinarily be able to do without help...so they provide that help...the dummy explosives...or maybe even real ones...and then they arrest them and then take the credit for fighting terrorism. Are they really protecting us by fooling us with these self-serving underhanded tricks..feeding us lies..so we stop objecting loudly to throwing our tax dollars at them? Are they not being used to distract us from other extremely important issues...like this Chained CPI scam they are about to force on us?
#3
Quote DAnnemarc: No I don't think they want to invade N Korea, just ensure their budget isn't cut; and if possible, have justifiable cause to restrict public gatherings in the future. For our own protection of course. Restricting public gatherings is essential for totalitarianism!
Yes, you are probably right! The US may not really want to risk irking China or Russia to the extent that they might get involved. The US is already stretched and can't really afford another war..and especially most likely won't be able to get China, et al, to pay for them like they have in the past. China is going after the gold...they've had enough of the "funny money" (the US dollar). And since Cyprus is selling off all their depositor's gold..China is buying it all up.
When empires crumble and can no longer push around other countries, they turn to pushing around their own people... even more so than when they are bullying other countries. Their attitude is: "Goddam it! We gotta kill someone!" "We can no longer get China to pay for our wars...I know..let's starve our own population...just for kicks!"
#4
Palindromedary ~ Strange that you should mention the waving camera shots. I have often wondered about the steady panning of the Zapruder film. Obviously the fatal shot was fired within a short range of the camera man. Even with a tripod, how does a cameraman pan so steady with a close by shotgun blast and his President's head exploding in his view finder? Where is the human instinctual response? Why hasn't anyone brought this matter up before? I have always wondered. Any comments?
#5
Excellent observation..DAnnemarc! One would think that most people would jerk or something when "surprised" by such a "shocking" event as the President of the United States having his head blown off. There was a possible gunman on, or behind the grassy knoll, or one inside the gutter. One thing for darn sure...Oswald was a patsy...I believe he worked for the CIA and they just set him up to take the fall. Just like OBL worked for the CIA..even up to the day of 911, and possibly helped to set up the Neocon false flag operation, or perhaps even after. For all we know, OBL is sipping martinis in the Bahamas, since, allegedly, his body...or someone's body was dumped in the ocean there is just no way of knowing. And as that Zapruder film was played over and over again, hypnotically, along with the suggestion that Oswald was the lone-gunman...most people swallowed the whole thing.
Here's an interesting web site that shows that the rifle that authorities found in the Texas Book Depository, although connected to Oswald who allegedly bought it through mail order, was not in any condition to be accurate enough to hit a target. The Army tested it and found the sights needed to be shimmed and even then was not very accurate. Even when they used the metal sights they found it was very inaccurate and not repeatable. Oswald had no traces of gunpowder on his face, hands or arms as shown through various tests.
http://22november1963.org.uk/oswald-rifle-and-paraffin-tests
#6
Quote Michael Hudson interviewed by Paul Jay, The Real News Network:
JAY: Now, President Obama in this budget proposal wants to raise taxes on the wealthy, he says. Anyone over making more than $1 million he wants to pay, I think, a minimum of 30 percent tax. Is that something?
HUDSON: Yes. It’s a fraud. It’s doubletalk. Rich people don’t make income if they help it. To paraphrase Leona Helmsley, income is for the little people. Rich people make capital gains.
So they fill out your tax returns, they don’t say that they’re earning income. They report capital gains, taxed at a much lower rate. So what Obama is doing is flimflam. The Congressional Budget Office has shown that the wealthy people get most of their rise in net worth by capital gains, not income. He’s not making a peep about that.JAY: The other argument I guess you hear from Obama supporters is that he’s dealing with a Republican-controlled House. I think the New York Times headline of the coverage of this was President Obama’s budget meant to engage the Republicans. So this is more about the politics than about the economics.
HUDSON: When they say “engage the Republicans,” this means that Mr. Obama realizes that as a follower of Rubinomics – Robert Rubin at Citibank – that he’s going to do something that most Democrats don’t like, He’s advocating a policy that most voters don’t like. So he’s trying to blame it on the Republicans. He’s “engaging” them simply in order to put the blame on them.JAY: Just quickly dig into this CPI chained cost of living. Why are people criticizing this, and what does it mean?
HUDSON: It’s not really a cost of living index. It’s a “cost of lower living standards” index. Yves Smith calls it the catfood index.
Here’s what it does. Suppose that you have to switch away from eating steak or eating meat or eating fish to eating canned tuna fish or canned beans. That’s considered a price reduction.If living standards are ground down and down because people are poor, then the government can say, “Because you’re getting poorer and poorer, your living standards have declined, so we don’t have to pay you so much to live.” This is no longer a price index. This is an index of declining living standards. Poverty will cascade downward, and so will the chained CPI. This gives new means to the working class being put in chains.
The starting point for Obama’s budget “reform” is to find the path of least resistance in screwing Social Security recipients, how can we pay them less to pay our campaign contributors, the 1%, more? They start by putting the class war back in business. They sugar-coat it by calling it a price index instead of a catfood index or declining living standards index. This is the politics of deception.
http://michael-hudson.com/2013/04/obamas-catfood-reform/
There are so many more excellent points in this interview that I'd like to quote them all but it is better if you just go there and read it yourself.
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Palindromedary ~ No I don't think they want to invade N Korea, just ensure their budget isn't cut; and if possible, have justifiable cause to restrict public gatherings in the future. For our own protection of course. Restricting public gatherings is essential for totalitarianism!