Friday Talking Points -- This Is Shameful

[ChrisWeigant]

Last week, America experienced a racist extremist shooting up a grocery store, in an effort to kill as many Black people as he could. This week, America had to once again watch as innocent schoolchildren age 10 or under were massacred for no reason whatsoever. This is who we are, and it is shameful.

It is not, however, who we want to be. The public wants more and tighter gun safety laws, by an overwhelming margin. But even in the wake of the horrors of yet another slaughter of innocents, most people who follow politics don't expect much of anything to change. No new laws will pass the Senate, or if something does manage to be worked out, it will be weak and watered-down and likely ineffective at stopping such outrages from regularly happening.

The Senate and the House are already on vacation, showing that they too know that any efforts to do anything meaningful are quite likely futile. This is not just shameful, it is an absolute disgrace.

But we're going to save all of those pent-up feelings for the talking points section of the program today. We're going to channel all this rage we feel into a rant on how Democrats should really talk about and approach and campaign on the fact that a lobby of extremists has highjacked our federal lawmakers into refusing to do anything to stop this senseless and never-ending slaughter.

Before we get to that (and to this week's awards), let's take a quick look at the other big political stories of the week. We're going to do so in abbreviated fashion, for obvious reasons.

The biggest story of the week was the primary results from the South, but before we get to all of these, we have two updates on previous primaries to mention:

The Oregon House race from the previous week was finally called, after overcoming technical errors with the ballots that prevented a quick tally. Progressive challenger Jamie McLeod-Skinner emerged victorious over incumbent Representative Kurt Schrader, whom she attacked with the (entirely justified) label: "the Joe Manchin of the House."

In Pennsylvania, a recount has officially begun for the race for the Republican nominee for Senate. Mehmet "Dr." Oz prematurely began calling himself the "presumptive nominee," since he's ahead by roughly 900 votes before the recount began.

That's it for the old news, here's the news that was made in this week's primary cycle:

Donald Trump got badly spanked in Georgia (on what Chris Christie notably called Trump's "vendetta tour" ), seeing the three statewide candidates he had endorsed over the Republican officeholders who refused to "find 11,780 votes" for him (and illegally throw the state for Trump) all go down in flames. Governor Brian Kemp, who has especially angered Trump, beat his challenger by a whopping 50-point margin. That's pretty embarrassing!

One Trump-backed candidate did win the Republican primary is ex-jock Herschel Walker. You can see why Trump likes him so much, just by reading his answer -- given a full two days after the slaughter happened -- of what the government's response should be:

What we need to do is look into how we can stop those things. You know, they talk about doing a disinformation, what about getting a department that could look at young men that's looking at women that [sic] looking at social media. What about doing that? Looking into things like that? If we can stop that that way?

Yeah, that's the ticket! We need a federal "Department Of Looking At Young Men That's Looking At Women That Looking At Social Media." Needless to say, the late-night comics had a field day with that one. No wonder his campaign has been keeping him away from the media!

One other Georgia race is worth mentioning, as Marjorie "Three Names" Taylor Greene easily won her primary, dashing the hopes of establishment Republicans to remove another embarrassment to the party (after successfully doing so with Madison Cawthorn).

Democratic news from the Georgia primaries: Stacey Abrams has secured her spot on the general election ticket, while in a member-versus-member Democratic race (made necessary due to redistricting), progressive Representative Lucy McBath beat the centrist Representative Carolyn Bourdeaux, chalking up another progressive win.

However, down in Texas, progressive candidate Jessica Cisneros may have fallen painfully just shy of successfully challenging another Blue Dog Democrat, Representative Henry Cuellar -- the only anti-abortion Democrat left in the House. As of this writing, Cuellar is only 175 votes ahead, so it may be a while before the official winner of this contest is announced.

Tuesday may have marked the end of the vaunted Bush dynasty, both in Texas and elsewhere, as George P. Bush (son of Jeb) lost badly in his attempt to secure the Republican nomination for Texas attorney general.

Amusing footnote: it seems that the new Texas laws designed to suppress the Democratic vote actually rejected more Republican votes than Democratic. Whoops!

Sarah Huckabee Sanders will continue her own family's dynasty, as she easily secured the GOP nomination for governor in Arkansas, meaning it is quite likely she'll be following in her own dad's footsteps.

In Alabama, the candidate Trump first endorsed and then unendorsed has forced a runoff election, meaning Mo Brooks may emerge from the shadow of Trump's rage after all. This isn't guaranteed, though, he's got a long way to go to win (he only pulled in roughly half the votes as the first-place finisher).

In future primary news, a bombshell landed in Michigan as the state board responsible for authenticating the signatures on candidate petitions discovered a massive elections fraud attempt and chucked out almost 70,000 signatures as a direct result. This will keep half of the Republican candidates -- five of them, including two frontrunners -- off the primary ballot.

Trumpian footnotes to the week: Trump lost his bogus case in federal court and his appeal in state court, so it's looking more and more like he's going to have to sit for a deposition in his New York tax fraud case, which should provide some amusing moments (if the past is any prologue, when it comes to Trump depositions).

Trump this week reposted a "Truth" on his laughably inferior Twitter-clone social media site which called for "Civil War," and it was revealed that on January 6th Trump spoke approvingly of the violent mob after they chanted: "Hang Mike Pence!" Nothing like some more proof of what a downright dangerous person Trump truly is, eh?

And finally, according to Michael Cohen, Trump had a crippling fear of being pied in the face. Which we suppose is understandable, seeing as what a delight it would be for tens of millions of Americans to see someone hit Trump in the face with a pie at some point.





Before we get to the Democrats, we have two individuals who aren't technically eligible for this award who deserve mentioning nonetheless.

The first is Representative Liz Cheney, for the speech she gave while accepting a "Profile In Courage" award. She refuses to back down from warning the country about the dangerous path the Republican Party is taking, which is why she won the award in the first place. And she absolutely lit into Donald Trump in her speech (which is well worth watching, it's only a little over 10 minutes long):

[W]e face a threat we have never faced before: a former president attempting to unravel our constitutional republic. At this moment, we must all summon the courage to stand against that.... This sacred obligation to defend the peaceful transfer of power has been honored by every American president -- except one. The question for every one of us is, in this time of testing, will we do our duty? Will we defend our Constitution? Will we stand for truth? Will we put duty to our oath above partisan politics? Or will we look away from danger, ignore the threat, embrace the lies, and enable the liar?

The second person worth noting favorably this week was Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, who gave an emotional pre-game speech before a playoff game this week, right after the Uvalde shooting. Kerr's own father was killed by gunfire, so the issue is personal for him. Here's part of what he had to say:

When are we going to do something? I'm tired. I'm so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families that are out there. I'm tired of the moments of silence. Enough. There's 50 senators, right now, who refuse to vote on H.R. 8, which is a background check rule that the House passed.... There's a reason they won't vote on it: to hold on to power. I ask you, Mitch McConnell, and ask all of you senators who refuse to do anything about the violence, the school shootings, the supermarket shootings, I ask you: "Are you going to put your own desire for power ahead of the lives of our children, our elderly and our churchgoers?" Because that's what it looks like.

But this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week goes to two Democrats who did exactly the right thing in response to the massacre. They expressed their outrage in highly emotional terms. This is rare in Democrats, while being much more common in the Republican Party. But Democrats really should strive to do this sort of thing a lot more, because it is authentic and it resonates with the public in a way a well-reasoned white paper never can.

The first of these is Senator Chris Murphy, who was presiding over the Senate when the news broke. He turned over the gavel to someone else and took to the floor to make a heartfelt speech excoriating his fellow senators for their continued inaction:

Why do you spend all this time running for the United States Senate -- why do you go through all the hassle of getting this job, of putting yourself in a position of authority -- if your answer as the slaughter increases, as our kids run for their lives, [is that] we do nothing? What are we doing? Why are you here, if not to solve a problem as existential as this? I'm here on this floor to beg, to literally get down on my hands and knees and beg my colleagues: Find a path forward here. Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely.

When the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre happened in Newtown, Connecticut, Murphy was the sitting House member from that district, so this is an incredibly personal issue for him, and he has been championing gun control legislation ever since.

Our second MIDOTW goes to Beto O'Rourke, who is running to beat the current Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott. O'Rourke crashed a press conference (that all the sanctimonious Texas Republicans had thrown together to offer up all their meaningless "thoughts and prayers" ) in order to express his own heartfelt rage at their inaction. Here is part of what he said:

Governor Abbott, I have to say something. The time to stop the next shooting is right now and you are doing nothing. You said this was not predictable, this was totally predictable, and you choose not to do anything.

After security ejected O'Rourke from the press conference, he continued his remarks outside:

[Beto] O'Rourke continued his remarks outside of the event. He railed against Abbott for not funding mental health care services for Texans and for not expanding Medicaid, which could in turn expand mental health care access.

He further slammed the Republican for his opposition to red-flag laws, safe storage laws and bans on assault-style weapons.

"This 18-year-old, who just turned 18, bought an AR-15 and took it into an elementary school and shot kids in the face and killed them. Why are we letting this happen in this country? Why is this happening in this state, year after year, city after city?" O'Rourke shouted. "This is on all of us if we do not do something, and I am going to do something. I'm not alone."

This is what genuine emotion and outrage looks like, and sometimes that is exactly what is needed to break through -- some righteous and heartfelt emotion. If a politician can't get emotional and outraged after the needless slaughter of innocent schoolchildren, then something is very wrong, to put this another way. Both Murphy and O'Rourke captured what millions of Americans were feeling this week, which is why they are the winners of this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week awards.

[Beto O'Rourke is a private citizen and a political candidate, and our blanket policy is not to provide links to campaign websites, so you'll have to search his contact information for yourself. But you can congratulate Senator Chris Murphy on his Senate contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





Senator Joe Manchin deserves at least a (Dis-)Honorable Mention this week, for a pair of statements he made after the shooting. Here's the story of what he had to say:

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said Tuesday he would do "anything I can" to help pass what he called "common sense" legislation to address gun violence in the wake of a horrific shooting in Texas, where at least 19 kids and two teachers died when a gunman opened fire at an elementary school.

"It makes no sense at all why we can't do common sense things and try to prevent some of this from happening. It's all just unbelievable how we've gotten as a society that someone could be that deranged and this sick," Manchin lamented.

But when asked if he would support eliminating the filibuster in order to overcome unified Republican opposition to such legislation, Manchin, a staunch filibuster advocate, reiterated that he would not go that far.

"The filibuster is the only thing that prevents us from total insanity," Manchin told reporters, repeating an argument he has made on other issues, including on voting rights. The senator has emphasized the importance of protecting the input of the minority in the Senate.

"You would think there would be enough common sense" in the Senate to pass gun control legislation without nuking the filibuster, Manchin added.

You would think... but you'd be wrong. And the "total insanity" is to believe such obvious nonsense in the first place.

But we have to look beyond the massacre of innocents this week for our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. Because we have yet another item for the "With Democrats Like These, Who Needs Republicans?" file:

Delaware Gov. John Carney on Tuesday vetoed a bill to legalize possession of up to one ounce of marijuana by adults for recreational use.

In vetoing the measure, Carney reiterated his previously expressed concerns about legalizing recreational pot -- concerns that did not dissuade fellow Democrats from pushing the legislation through the General Assembly.

"I recognize the positive effect marijuana can have for people with certain health conditions, and for that reason, I continue to support the medical marijuana industry in Delaware," Carney said in returning the bill to the state House. "I supported decriminalization of marijuana because I agree that individuals should not be imprisoned solely for the possession and private use of a small amount of marijuana -- and today, thanks to Delaware's decriminalization law, they are not.

"That said, I do not believe that promoting or expanding the use of recreational marijuana is in the best interests of the state of Delaware, especially our young people. Questions about the long-term health and economic impacts of recreational marijuana use, as well as serious law enforcement concerns, remain unresolved."

It looks like overriding his veto isn't going to be possible, either, so the citizens of Delaware will just have to wait until they get a better governor before they can join the other states who have ended the War On Weed.

Thanks for nothing, Governor. You've more than earned this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week.

[Contact Delaware Governor John Carney on his official contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 664 (5/27/22)

It's another one of those weeks where we just have to vent our rage in a rant rather than provide enumerated talking points. Yesterday, we admitted that we feel rather powerless to change anything, since we've all become so used to seeing slaughter after massacre after mass killing. But this shouldn't be the "new normal," and we really should be able to change things, so today we had to let our own outrage flow.



How Democrats should talk about gun safety laws

I am sick and tired of seeing young children's lives sacrificed on the altar of the Second Amendment. I am sick and tired of hearing about parents who have lost their 10-year-old to gun violence. And I am more than sick and tired, I am outraged at the Republicans in Congress who refuse to consider changing anything because the extremist gun lobby pays them not to. This is an absolute outrage, it is shameful and indefensible, and the vast majority of the people of this country agree.

It's right there in the amendment, in the three words that somehow the extremist gun lobby always seems to skip over: "a well regulated Militia". The Founding Fathers put it right there in the text -- "well regulated". What does well-regulated mean? It means regulating -- passing rules. Passing laws. Laws which confine this right well within a militia. Why do all the extremists ignore this part of the amendment?

Republicans like to pretend that they are "originalists." This is supposed to mean that the Constitution can only be interpreted by considering what the original intent was at the time it was adopted. You know what? I am fine with that, I really am. Let's interpret the Second Amendment that way! Let's even ignore the "well regulated Militia" part, as the gun extremists want us to. Let's say that people are allowed to own guns without any exception or infringement. Great! What that means is that everyone in America should be free to own as many guns as they wish. Except, of course, we've got to only interpret that through the eyes of the authors of the Bill of Rights in the eighteenth century. You know what that means? Everyone is free to own as many flintlock rifles or muskets as they wish.

I don't have any problem with that at all. I bet nobody else would either. You know how long it takes to reload a flintlock? A long time -- several minutes, in some cases. It's a complicated process, with multiple steps. And there's no guarantee it will fire correctly after you get done, either -- look up the original meaning of "flash in the pan" for proof. Some muskets can be reloaded slightly faster, but even the fastest, most experienced shooter could only reload and fire maybe four or five times a minute, at best. An inexperienced user might get off only two shots per minute, if that.

That -- and only that -- is what the people who wrote the Second Amendment were talking about. That was their "original intent." So I'm fine with making such weapons available to all. Anyone using such a weapon can get their first shot off -- which will probably miss, these guns were astoundingly inaccurate -- and then they'll have to spend the time to manually reload it with powder and shot. While the person is in the midst of this complicated process, they will not be firing off 40 or 50 more shots. They can be tackled. They can be restrained. They can easily be killed by a law enforcement officer with a more-powerful modern weapon. So I'm fine with allowing people to own all the flintlocks they want.

That, again, was the original intent of the Second Amendment. Nothing more. But hewing to original intent means we cannot ignore the "well regulated Militia" phrase. Modern America does indeed have a well-regulated militia. It is called the National Guard. Everyone is free to join, if they measure up to the physical standards required. The right to do so has never been infringed by Congress. Want to exercise your right to bear arms? Join the Guard. They'll even pay you to do so!

The Second Amendment demands the militia to be well-regulated. This means any other group with delusions of grandeur calling themselves a "militia" are simply not constitutional, period. And the original intent of the authors of the Second Amendment had nothing to do with private citizens bearing arms outside a well-regulated militia. So Congress can regulate that too, since such a right isn't even mentioned.

This is what the American people so desperately want to see. The polling numbers on this stuff are just off the charts. In a country where the two political sides can't seem to agree on anything, the public agrees that new gun safety laws should be passed to try to prevent the mass slaughtering of children from being the "new normal."

A poll taken just after the senseless massacre of innocents in Uvalde, Texas proves this. You know what the American people want Congress to do?

They want background checks to be required on all gun sales, period -- with absolutely no loopholes. An unbelievable 88 percent of the public wants to see this happen.

They want to prevent people who have been reported as dangerous to law enforcement by mental health professionals not to have access to guns -- again, over eight-in-ten Americans want to see this happen, because who could possibly be against such a commonsense rule?

Three-fourths of the public wants to see a national database of all gun sales created and maintained by the federal government.

Two-thirds of the public wants a ban on so-called "assault" weapons. These are weapons of war, not hunting rifles. Look at any advertisement the gun manufacturers run -- it is obvious what these weapons are designed and intended to do. The only ones who should have access to such weapons are those in the "well regulated Militia," period -- and they should not be able to take them home at the end of the day. Part of regulating the militia means such weapons need to be under the control of the militia.

The public gets all of this. And in politics today, those numbers are astounding. Eighty-eight percent of the public probably wouldn't even agree that the sky is blue if you told them one political party or the other swore that it wasn't. But that's precisely how many Americans want universal background checks with absolutely no loopholes.

Democrats need to stop being so frightened of this issue. With numbers like that, it is a wonder that they don't make it the centerpiece of every political campaign. The Republicans are bought and paid for by the extremist gun lobby. The Democrats, on the other hand, are terrified of the ads the extremist gun lobby might run against them -- which is almost even worse than the paid-off Republicans.

Republicans have absolutely fetishized guns, for their own political gain. They take Christmas photos with their entire family -- down to the smallest of their children -- brandishing semi-automatic rifles and other weapons of war. They pose with guns in their television ads. They feed the extremist gun fetishists by such propagandistic techniques. They proudly speak at the convention of the extremist gun lobby, mere days and a couple hundred miles from the most recent slaughter of innocents -- a slaughter this extremist group has fought so hard to make possible.

This is disgusting and shameful, and it is high time Democrats stood up and said so. It is high time for Democrats to point out that a photo of an eight-year-old pointing an AR-15 at the camera is not what Christmas is supposed to be all about. It is borderline child abuse, and Democrats need to start saying so. Photos like these are why we have to watch the funerals of other eight-year-olds, plain and simple. Republicans are -- quite obviously and quite publicly -- grooming their own young children to be extremist gun fetishists. There's really no other way to put it.

Republicans are fighting against all these commonsense measures. They are fighting hard to keep the loopholes in the background checks intact. They don't want background checks to be universal. Why? How does that make any sense? They want terrorists to have easy access to high-powered guns? That is precisely what these loopholes allow for. That is why I say the gun lobby is extremist, because that is an insanely extreme position to take.

And somehow they want the public to think of them as being "pro-life." That is absurd, when they fight for the right of people to kill as many innocent lives as technically possible.

Don't believe me? This week alone, the Republicans in the Senate filibustered a bill which would have tried to address the issue of domestic terrorists. Remember back when 9/11 happened, when Republicans would call anybody who didn't want to take any measure possible against terrorists "un-American" or "traitors" or even worse names? Yeah, all that has changed. Now Republicans refuse to vote for an anti-terrorism bill. This is shameful, and Democrats need to point it out at the tops of their lungs. How can the Republican Party get away with being pro-terrorist? Have they really sunk that low?

Republicans are fighting hard to allow mentally disturbed people -- people mental health professionals consider dangerous and report to the authorities -- to not only keep all the guns they've already amassed but also to be able to buy more of them if they wish. That is disgraceful. It is beyond dangerous. And yet, that is precisely what Republicans are fighting hard for.

Republicans counter with soporific feel-good suggestions to "improve mental health treatment" in this country. These are the same Republicans who gut their states' budget for mental health treatment and won't even allow Medicaid expansion in their states (which would bring in millions and millions of dollars in mental health aid). They are stone-cold hypocrites when they try to somehow be the champions of mental health treatment after slashing the budget for such treatment, and it is high time someone pointed this out.

Republicans are even against the sale of "ghost guns" -- kits to make guns that have no serial number and are not even able to be traced. This hamstrings law enforcement -- just ask any cop on the beat. And yet Republicans are fighting hard to keep the pipeline of untraceable weapons flowing to the public.

Nobody in their right mind would allow private individuals to possess or use hand grenades. Or missiles. Or nuclear weapons. Because that would be insane. Weapons of war should be limited to those trained in their use, and they should be controlled by the state, period. It's easy to see why, and the American public gets that. But for some reason the extremists want full access to the guns of war to all. They want everyone -- even a disturbed 18-year-old -- to be able to own and use the same weapon a soldier is issued. That is just as insane, and the public overwhelmingly agrees.

The only way any of this is going to change is if the public starts treating this issue as a prime consideration when they enter the ballot box. And the only way that is going to happen is if the Democratic Party makes it a honkin' big deal in every single political campaign. Vote out the extremists who are fighting hard for deranged terrorists to buy even more guns without any background check at all. Vote out the extremists who refuse to read the first part of the Second Amendment and refuse to understand what it meant to the people who actually wrote it. Vote out extremists who care more about profits for the sellers of death machines more than they care about the lives of innocent elementary school children.

I am sick and tired of the status quo. I am sick and tired of Congress being held hostage by the extremist gun lobby. I am sick and tired of seeing politicians unable to pass laws that 75-to-90 percent of the public wants to see passed. I am ashamed that more people in America have died from guns since 1975 than every soldier who died in every war America has ever fought in from the American Revolution forward. That is shameful. It is not right.

And you know what? I am not the only one. There are millions more Americans who feel exactly the same as I do.

This is a disgrace, it is shameful, and it only happens here in America. The rest of the world considers us barbarians, and rightly so. It has to stop. It has to end. Because I refuse to believe that this "new normal" where innocent children are offered up on the altar of a misreading of the Second Amendment is all that is politically possible.

We are better than this. Or we should be, at any rate.




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

[alwaysinasnit]

1. k&r for visibility

[dchill]

2. K&R.