I am PRO-Second Amendment

4 American diplomats were killed by terrorists in Benghazi, Libya and the GOP screamed bloody murder for months. Congress is still holding hearings.

One terrorist on a plane tried to set off a bomb hidden in his shoe, now everyone has to remove their shoes before boarding a plane.

Oakland, Calif.: A former student at a Christian college fatally shoots seven people and injures three in April 2012;
Aurora, Colo.: Lone gunman kills 12 and injures 58 at a July 2012 screening of “The Dark Knight;"
College Station Texas: 3 people killed 4 injured;
Oak Creek, Wis.: A white supremacist shoots six people and a responding policeman at a Sikh temple before shooting himself in the head in August 2012;
Portland, Ore.: A masked gunman opens fire in a crowded mall killing two and seriously injuring a third before turning the gun on himself. Cops say killer’s assault weapon jammed, preventing further carnage.

20 six and seven year old American schoolchildren were killed by a single gunman and the GOP silence is deafening.

Where are the hearings Mister Speaker?

Where is the legislation to prevent more unnecessary loss of life caused by guns?

I am pro-Second Amendment. I believe anyone who wants to own a musket (holding one shot and taking three minutes to reload) can have one. Everything else necessarily requires responsible legislation.

Matthew 26:52 NIV “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword."

A Few Facts

1. There are more Private Sector jobs today than there were the day Obama was elected president. In fact, corporate profits have been at or above pre-recession levels since the beginning of 2010.
2. Republican governors across the country have been laying off millions of our nation's most valuable human resources: teachers, firefighters, police officers, and many others. This is why, even with more Private Sector jobs today than when Obama took office, our nation's unemployment rate is at a shameful 8.2 percent.
3. Republican governors claim they had no choice but to fire those public employees because they were trying to fix their states' budgets. What they won't mention is this fact: Accepting an infusion from the federal government to tide them over while the private sector was shedding jobs by the millions and diminishing their revenue base would have helped their budgets get under control without having to sacrifice all those jobs.
4. While those same Republican Governors turned down federal help House Republicans fought tooth and nail to make the federal aid so small it wouldn't have had any impact at all.
5. Democrats have successfully led this country out of a near depression in spite of Republican obstructionism at every turn. The Obama administration did that in part by saving the American Auto Industry that Mitt Romney said he would have let go bankrupt.
6. Corporations have no patriotic incentive to use their profits to put Americans to work.They are currently sitting on over 1.9 trillion dollars instead of using it to pay their workers a living wage so they can afford to buy more things, creating more demand and by extension, creating a real need to hire more workers.
7. The country cannot enjoy a robust economy if the predominance of the nation's wealth is being hoarded in bank accounts by the Private Sector and not put back into circulation into the economy that allowed them to make it.
8. Public Sector hiring can return a troubled economy back to full stability, as history proves.

These facts are edited directly from Jill W. Klausen's blog and can be found in context and in original form at the link provided.

Speaking the Truth and Wanting an Answer

Being slightly paranoid I struggle with putting my thoughts out in the open which is why I am not as consistent as I might be with this blog. That being said, this is therapeutic and I will be writing more often beginning August of this year. I am reminded of the Cyril Conway quote I posted last November, "Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self."

Sean Hannity says there is no racist rhetoric, no racist signs at any tea party meetings/rallies. He is either partially blind or outright lying. The NAACP calls on tea party leaders to lead, and openly denounce the racist signs and speeches and until yesterday all they have done is issue denials. Maybe this is why Mark Williams felt emboldened and with all the subtlety of an elephant post some of the most racist writing I have read since reading some Klan propaganda. Mark Skoda, one of the founders of the National Tea Party Federation, called for rebuke and removal of Mark Williams and over the weekend, the federation held a conference call and decided to boot both Williams and Tea Party Express from the “TEA Party movement”. Not that this really means anything because while there is the TEA Party Express (“coloreds signed a letter to President Lincoln asking for the repeal of the Emancipation Proclamation because they know their place”), the TEA Party Nation (who want to reinstate literacy tests for voting), the TEA Party Patriots, the Tea Party (of Florida which is an actual registered political party) and the National TEA Party Federation (too much racism to add between parentheses) none are affiliated with the others. They are not cohesive, unified or organized to the point that anyone has any authority to rebuke, remove or ‘boot’ anyone. This is news; Civil rights and civility in discourse matters. Truth and clarity matter.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano appeared on local radio in Mobile, AL to assure listeners of the Obama Administration's concern over the gulf oil spill. She assured the listeners that she had been in close contact with Gov. Barbour. Haley Barbour is governor of Mississippi. Ooops, Secretary Napolitano misspoke but this isn’t news.

Speaking about the developing Manhattan Mosque former half-governor Sarah Palin tweets “Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate” and as tempted as I am to discuss the qualifying adjective “peaceful” this isn’t news either.

Leftwing sites and blogs that give the former half-governor more than a satirical faragraf are not contributing to the education of it’s readers any more than people who post talking points, platitudes and pithy one liners via social media. As read recently on Facebook, “The 10 most dangerous words in English are, “Hi, I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”” ... Um ... yeah, thanks for the contribution.

Back to some news that we can use.

Tax cuts don’t pay for themselves. The ‘born-again’ so-called deficit hawks seem to have forgotten this economic fact. The Sr. Bush called this Voodoo economics. After years of surplus Jr. cut taxes for the wealthiest among us. This coupled with Medicare pt. B, two misguided wars and a huge Wall Street bailout led to an enormous deficit and the largest recession since the Great Depression. When the Republicans were in power they spent money without consideration of future generations. Now that there is a Democrat in the White House they have seen the light and wont even vote to extend unemployment benefits unless it is paid for. Now personally I don’t have a problem with that argument except for the clear hypocrisy. Republican leaders say the people on unemployment just need to go get a job, never mind the fact that there is only one job for every five of the unemployed. Republican leaders also say people on unemployment are lazy and won’t look for work as long as they receive a check from the government for doing nothing never mind the fact that they worked, paid into this insurance and must look for work to qualify for benefits. The fact remains that these people who through no fault of their own are unemployed would wind up costing more if ignored.

The plain and simple of it is this:

· Republican leaders want us to believe that the Bush tax cuts which added to the deficit twice before if extended wouldn’t now.

· Republican leaders want us to believe that the $33 billion cost of reauthorizing unemployment benefits cannot be added to the deficit but a reauthorization of the tax cuts, which will cost $678 billion, is o.k.

· Republican leaders want us to believe they want to decrease the deficit but won’t say what programs they would cut to do so.

· Republican leaders think that we will be satisfied by telling us, “We are going to balance the budget,” and “We need to make sure that as we look at all that we are spending in Washington D.C.,” and “We need to live within our means,” and “We need to go back to the exact same agenda” (that got us into the mess that we are currently in)

Republican leaders must think we are stupid.

We refuse to accept as an answer some form of the question reiterated. We are going to balance the budget by balancing the budget is not an answer. Because I said so is not an answer. We are not children and we will not put you in office simply because you say you can do a better job.

I applaud David Gregory for his valiant attempts to get our leaders to answer the questions we all have.