Hey thanks everybody! I appreciate the feedback.

Nice to know others are concerned about this. If those reps don't want to meet with the families, why can't they just come out and say so? Why the cowardice? If they're gonna take a stand like THAT, at least they could own up to it. Stand by what they did. Maybe, waaaaay deep down, even some of them think what they did is probably not cool? Otherwise stand up and claim it.

I want to know who they are. I want to know who feels it necessary to refuse even to meet with these parents? Refusing means they're doing something actively, not passively. I think about these grieving Americans a lot. Now they have to go through their first Fathers Day without their precious children. A few had to endure their first Mothers Day last month, without their mothers. It's beyond imagining. You have to be pretty damn hard-hearted actively to refuse even just to meet with them - even if only to re-state condolences or something. But to refuse to meet with them...

Sorry, I'm just kinda hung up on that one. Don't know why I feel so affronted by that whole idea, much less the harsh, calculated reality of it, but I am, dammit. Deeply so. I can't imagine turning one's back in this case. This sorta transcends - with GREAT apologies to the many, many multiples of gun-violence deaths in this country - whose losses are an equally profound loss to us all. I guess it's because most of the victims of Sandy Hook were very young children, so this one stood out in the national mind. But I'm stuck on the statistic we had earlier this year, where for a stretch of three or four consecutive months, it was akin to having a 9/11 every month: some three THOUSAND people per month were dying directly because of gun violence. I think the numbers have slackened since, but they still mount up by the day.

Sadly, we don't seem able to do anything to stop it - or heck, even slow it down. But beyond that, aside from that, Dear God, where's the simple human compassion? The simple human decency. The simple, basic, oh-so-plain and uncomplicated wish to reach out and connect with another human being in pain? Is fucking politics that important? Is a fucking damn ideology so much more important?

Sheesh.

I hope this post will stand. Because there's some information that I want to know.

Today's the six-month anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting.

Connecticut Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty ( https://www.facebook.com/EstyforCongress ) was on Rachel Maddow's show, and stated that there were 70-some-odd colleagues of hers in the House of Reps who REFUSED to meet with the Sandy Hook families.

I want to know who they are. I want their names. I want their districts. I want to know who these cowardly weasels are. Democratic reps or GOP. Don't care. I want to know who they are. I want them unmasked and forced out into the sunlight in the open, in the public square.

Not sure how to find out, so I figure maybe I should start it up - here. I posted on her Facebook page, asking. I just called her office in DC and asked, too. And the staffer didn't know - and also had not heard a request like this before, at least not today.

I'm wondering if anyone here is interested? If we could start a drumbeat about this? Anyone else want to know who these cowards are, who refuse to meet with or face these families and hear them out? Or have most of us just moved on to something else and forgotten?

I STILL think MY right - AND YOURS - not to be massacred by these hand-held weapons of mass destruction, or the people who use them, FAR OUTWEIGHS their right to own and use them. I'm not completely convinced that "right" even covers these Devil-weapons and mow-down machines. Still do. Probably stronger now than even immediately after it happened.

Okay. Done. Thank you for hearing me out. Now flame away.

(Reposted from Politics 2013 forum - http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251311458)

A most elegant post, sir.

Can't say I disagree.

"I am on one side of this, the only side a person who opposes the most reactionary elements of our political culture can be on in the present situation."

GREAT quote!

I hope this post will stand. Because there's some information that I want to know.

Today's the six-month anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting.

Connecticut Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty ( https://www.facebook.com/EstyforCongress ) was on Rachel Maddow's show, and stated that there were 70-some-odd colleagues of hers in the House of Reps who REFUSED to meet with the Sandy Hook families.

I want to know who they are. I want their names. I want their districts. I want to know who these cowardly weasels are. Democratic reps or GOP. Don't care. I want to know who they are. I want them unmasked and forced out into the sunlight in the open, in the public square.

Not sure how to find out, so I figure maybe I should start it up - here. I posted on her Facebook page, asking. I just called her office in DC and asked, too. And the staffer didn't know - and also had not heard a request like this before, at least not today.

I'm wondering if anyone here is interested? If we could start a drumbeat about this? Anyone else want to know who these cowards are, who refuse to meet with or face these families and hear them out? Or have most of us just moved on to something else and forgotten?

I STILL think MY right - AND YOURS - not to be massacred by these hand-held weapons of mass destruction, or the people who use them, FAR OUTWEIGHS their right to own and use them. I'm not completely convinced that "right" even covers these Devil-weapons and mow-down machines. Still do. Probably stronger now than even immediately after it happened.

Okay. Done. Thank you for hearing me out. Now flame away.

Definitely. "Holy crap, look at the dough those guys made!"

That's EXACTLY what they thought, followed immediately by "and look how they got away with it. Come. Let us study, and learn, and follow suit!"

"The NSA has been spying on Americans for the last sixty years..."

Consider (from Wikipedia):
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States, the first African American to hold the office. Wikipedia
Born: August 4, 1961 (age 51), Honolulu, HI

The NSA has been spying on Americans for longer than Barack Obama has even existed.

Yeah, I know - I know - somehow it's still his fault ...

Funny - Randi Rhodes was talking about this today. How the lines between big business and government are so blurred as to be non-existent by now. How it's rarely mentioned while everyone is fulminating about the NSA - the distressing scope of those allowed access to all this classified and highly-sensitive info - are, invariably, CONTRACTORS. Business. Corporations. The private sector. Over and over in the coverage of this I've heard references to these jobs have been outsourced. Privatized. Probably with a contract bid so low it's like taking a big piece of Swiss cheese with you to wrap around you for warmth as you go climbing Mt. McKinley. No accountability - it's once-removed into private industry. If the government were running this directly, there'd ostensibly be SOME public accountability (although bush/cheney certainly left that one in shreds with their no-bid contract orgy to their friends in banking and business and industry).

This is what happens when you cut back government services - and therefore capabillities, and accountabilities - in order to let the unfettered free market rule. When you say "gummnt BAAAAAAD! NO gummnt!" Then you have no oversight, no curbing or checking of - or restrictions on - rapacious, marauder, robber-baron behavior. You get Pirates on Parade. It's not "privatizing," it's more like "PIRATIZING." Unrestrained. And look what can happen. Did ANYBODY have any sort of leash on these reckless thieving corporate vultures and vampires or were they left to run amok without ANY supervision? And we should just trust 'em to do the "right thing"? Leave 'em on the "honor system" - when in actuality, they have none, and their only "honor" is how much money they can make, or steal? After all, who oversees this, if government contracts out all these government jobs? Are the contractors beholden to the taxpayers then? Answerable to us taxpayers then? Have any of them been questioned or investigated for the laissez-faire piracy and free-wheeling highway robbery during bush/cheney?

As my late mother-in-law used to say: "they don't suck it out of their thumbs."

That kid evidently heard the toxic talk in a laissez-faire environment, where it wasn't an outrage, wasn't objected to, wasn't corrected, no penalties imposed for having done so, no effort to discourage. Something he was used to hearing, perhaps? Seems as though the kid learned to be comfortable with it. Perhaps it occurred a LOT in that household. Just speculation, mind you.

But it seems to me when you use offensive terms so flagrantly (it's one of the names he uses in his frickin' games??????), either you're accustomed to hearing it around you that you're inured to it and you're used to not giving it a second thought, or you're just an asshole who likes to stir things up and you're going for shock value. Either way, it's indicative of how he was brought up, at least to me.

Very disappointing. We can already see how well the status quo has worked out.

And there he is, not wanting to rock the boat.

Well, then, how will things ever change or improve or evolve? Have we, in effect, given the military brass a get-out-of-jail-free card because we have to protect their precious chain-of-command at all costs? Especially considering just how frickin' LONG this has been 100% male-dominated?

Mighty uncomfortable with this.

Well, then, I guess he'd know how I feel about him. In no uncertain terms.

When I first heard the statistics for gun-related killings - "like a 9/11 every month"

I was just dumbfounded! But yeah. The numbers worked out to an average 3,000 gun-related killings per month. Approximately the number of victims in the 2001 World Trade Center attack. Stunning.