Well, it has happened again, as we all knew it would; another mass shooting in America, this time at a well-secured military facility in the nation’s capital. Twelve people killed this time, not including the gunman, at the Navy Yard in Washington DC. The New York Times reports:
At least 13 people, including one gunman, were killed, and the police were looking for other potential suspects, in a shooting Monday morning at a naval office building not far from Capitol Hill and the White House, police officials said.
One police officer was in surgery after being shot in an exchange of fire with a gunman, said Chief Cathy L. Lanier of the Metropolitan Police Department. The shootings took place at the Washington Navy Yard, in the southeast part of the city.
Senior law enforcement officials identified the gunman as Aaron Alexis, 34. He was identified through his fingerprints. As of Monday night, investigators were operating on the belief that Mr. Alexis acted alone, despite earlier statements from Washington law enforcement officials that there were two other gunmen.
Twitter has once again demonstrated that there is virtually nothing of any use to be said in the immediate aftermath of one of these attacks, at least not in 140 characters. The body count was still not yet confirmed before the first accusations and counter-accusations of blame and responsibility were being made. To this we can also add false flag theories and much more ungrounded speculation besides.
One of the few people to speak eloquently on the subject was the chief medical officer of the trauma centre responsible for treating several of the gunshot victims:
Something has to change. The tired old response of left-wingers demanding stricter gun control laws and being thwarted by the NRA, and right-wingers rallying behind the second amendment and bemoaning the society while doing nothing to improve it is no longer sufficient. There is a massive failure of imagination and political courage at all levels on the topic of gun violence in the United States.
Fourteen months since Aurora, Colorado. Nine months since Sandy Hook. And here we are again.
There has not been a “Patriot” Watch post on Semi-Partisan Sam for several months now, but this does not mean that America’s true patriots (ha) have been derelict in their duties. And by “duties”, I mean their habit of saying ever more outrageous things, associating themselves with thoroughly debunked ideologies and individuals, and generally causing embarrassment to mainstream conservatives who doesn’t necessarily view every implementation of an Obama policy as a call to reach for their muskets and tri-corner hats to march to Washington.
Honoring America…
Salon Magazine has been keeping tabs, and has published a list of what they call “seven crazy right wing statements” that took place in just the past seven days. It is not an edifying spectacle:
1. Ted Cruz: We need 100 more like Jesse Helms in the Senate
2. Glenn Beck: War is a progressive idea so I am now against it
3. Alex Jones: Globalist cyborgs are coming
4. Stuart Varney and Monica Crowley: EPA is trying to suffocate children
5. Minnesota archbishop: Satan is behind gay marriage
6. Texas GOP gov. candidate tweets that Wendy Davis is “too stupid to be governor.”
7. Internet advice from a nobody who wants to ruin perfect strangers’ lives: Dads, don’t educate your daughters!
Readers can delve into each of these gems at their own leisure; for the purposes of this entry I will focus on just one – Senator Ted Cruz’s unfortunate speech at a Heritage Foundation event honouring the late Senator Jesse Helms. Salon sums up Helms’ character and accomplishments thus:
For those who don’t remember, here are some of the fun-filled, wacky things Helms said and did:
He sang the confederate anthem “Dixie” in an elevator with Carol Moseley-Braun, the African-American senator from Illinois, and told Sen. Orrin Hatch in front of her that he was trying to make her cry.
He opposed integration, or “mixing of the races,” and called the University of North Carolina the “University of Negroes and Communists” because it was integrated.
He led a one-man, 16-day filibuster opposing the designation of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a holiday, and threatened to lead one to save South African apartheid.
More comically, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he seemed unable to absorb the fact that the North Korean president’s name was Kim Jong Il, not Kim Jong 2.
Unlike other like-minded Southern politicians Strom Thurmond and George Wallace, Helms never disavowed his racist, segregationist views even on his deathbed in 2008.
And this is the man that Ted Cruz chose to praise. In public.
Children, never meet your heroes. Never meet them, for you are bound to be disappointed. This blog has been an unabashed supporter of the likes of former Texas congressman Ron Paul and his son, Kentucky senator Rand Paul, for some time. Frankly, their libertarian, small government message and advocacy for the “real people” as opposed to the moneyed and powerful special interest and elites is a very attractive political quality, albeit one that is dulled somewhat by their obsession with gold and abolishing the Federal Reserve.
But it seems that every time a seemingly viable libertarian-leaning politician emerges on the scene, they manage to torpedo themselves by doing something terribly naive, untoward or downright foolish. In the case of Paul Sr. we had the racist articles in the Ron Paul Newsletter, and in the case of Ted Cruz, the latest rising libertarian star, we now have recorded video footage of him praising an unrepentant racist and segregationist politician for going to Washington D.C. and “saying crazy things”.
Rachel Maddow does a good a job as any of expressing revulsion at Cruz’s decision to praise Helms in such a way:
With the Republican Party today, it always seems to be one step forward followed by two steps back. There were initially hopes after the 2012 election that the GOP might revise its stance on immigration reform so as to avoid demographic suicide in the coming decades, but this was swiftly followed by derogatory talk of latino “wetbacks” and children with “calves the size of cantaloupes” (from hauling drugs across the border, apparently) coming from elected Republican lawmakers.
Similarly, with the (at least partial) discrediting of the big-government, big-spending, deficits-be-damned, hawkish neo-conservative wing of the Republican party, it seemed as though an influx of new voices (such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio) might lead the GOP to a more appealing, sustainable stance in favour of protecting the rights of the average person rather than the moneyed special interest. One step forward. But, of course, this was followed by lots of shrieking about the unstoppable tide of Obamaist socialism in America, and coddling up to birthers and out-and-out racists. Two steps back.
Not enough people for the GOP to win a national majority again.
Most of the reasons that this stance is so attractive to Republicans in the short term but so decisively in the medium to long terms have already been covered on this blog and elsewhere. But one angle that perhaps has not been discussed enough is the off-putting effect that these unsavoury positions have on younger voters. We have already seen the GOP reduce their opposition to gay marriage in light of its growing approval, seeming inevitability and support among young people.
Senators Cruz et al. would do well to remember that young people are also, generally speaking, not great fans of racism, segregation or Jim Crow laws, and that speaking at events honouring dead politicians who unabashedly supported all of these things is terrible, terrible PR for the party among new and future voters.
I beg the GOP, as someone who is naturally conservative and libertarian, and would have voted Republican in a previous age – courting the fringe as you are doing now is not worth the damage you are doing to the country, the two-party system or your own future political prospects.
The headline seemed too implausible, too sensationalist to be true, but you can’t make stuff like this up – Sarah Palin called on people to “bomb Obamacare” as her political action committee released their latest anti health reform advertisement:
Palin rails against Obamacare in her usual eloquent, measured tones.
The 2+ minute long video is available to view on YouTube here:
I comprehensively “refudiated” Sarah Palin’s “death panel” claims on this blog a year ago, as did every other sentient person on the internet, so there is no need to cover this old territory. So where to start with this latest deliberately provocative outburst by the half-term governor from Alaska?
Perhaps with the fact that the GOP-led House of Representatives has now voted 40 times to repeal ObamaCare, each time in the full knowledge that the repeal would never pass the Democratic-held Senate, let alone be signed by President Obama.
Or maybe the fact that Obamacare (or the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, to use the correct title) is President Obama’s signature domestic legislative accomplishment, he campaigned on a platform of health reform in 2008 and won re-election by a significant popular and electoral college majority in 2012 after having brought it to fruition.
Nor has the “grassroots tsunami” against the bill, invoked by Senator Rand Paul, materialised in any meaningful way. Polls continue to show the American public divided in support of the word Obamacare itself (a testimony to Republican misinformation and scare tactics), but broadly supportive of the various measures contained within the bill.
And so apparently the only recourse left to Palin and her legion of fact-averse followers is to dust off the violent, revolutionary rhetoric as though Obama were King George reincarnate.
I make no apology for always assuming the worst about Sarah Palin’s motives, so my theory for this bizarre use of phrasing in her appeal for a popular revolt against Obamacare is that she deliberately used the word “bomb” in the knowledge that the fiftieth anniversary of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was fast approaching, hoping to get a rise out of offended liberals who would then accuse her of race-baiting or racial insensitivity, allowing her to play her patented Palin Persecution Card and receive even more unearned air time.
If you think that this is a harsh accusation to level against someone, recall that Palin has accused the president of the United States of “palling around with terrorists”, treason and a litany of other crimes and misdemeanors. Accusing Palin of being a sneaky, calculating, insensitive charlatan is pretty mild by comparison.
First we had this…
First we had the gun sights over Democratic-held congressional districts that Sarah Palin’s PAC was targeting in the 2010 midterms. Looking at this action in isolation, I can understand and forgive; showing literal targets over parts of the map that Republicans want to target politically does not seem unreasonable or violent to me, and I felt that the left-wing furore and attempts to link the imagery to the Gabrielle Giffords shooting in Arizona were craven and opportunistic.
But there is no comparable popular imagery relating to a bomb. We don’t talk about bombing a goal that we want to accomplish in the way that we might talk about targeting a goal or an aspiration. The word “bomb” has connotations only of violence and terrorism.
Sarah Palin, of course, does not wish for any literal bombs to be detonated in opposition to Obamacare, and would doubtless be horrified and appalled if one of her supporters were to read her words too literally and actually start blowing things up. But she is quite happy to use a charged, loaded word – a word associated only with war and terrorism – in relation to the US healthcare debate, to ensure that her fading political voice gains more prominence.
It doesn’t make Palin a terrorist supporter. But it does reveal her to be a shrewd, conniving, opportunistic and (still) dangerous political presence, willing to say and do almost anything to demonstrate her opposition to President Obama’s policies and legislative accomplishments.
Andrew Sullivan, having followed an interesting, winding analytical road since his return from vacation, has finally arrived at the right answer with regard to Syria, together with the right reasons for expressing the idea. He is completely correct that the correct forum for handling and mediating international issues such as violations of agreements on the non-use of chemical weapons is something that must rest with international forums, in this case the United Nations. For too long the UN has been able to sit back and wash its hands of responsibility for the evil going on in the world – no more. The US and UK should no longer bear the greatest burden of keeping the peace and preventing humanitarian disasters, paying in blood and treasure. Sullivan is also correct, of course, about the need for democracy to function correctly when it comes to making war. Grave decisions such as this should always rest with the people through their elected representatives in Parliament or Congress, and not the executive (the branch of government most likely to itch for war, as we have seen in the past and see today). I must admit that I was a little surprised initially to see Sullivan and other commentators referring to the proposed limited strikes as “war” at all, given the fact that the US has not technically been at war since WW2, and it has become commonplace to think that the “good” countries have the God-given right to lob a few missiles at misbehaving “bad” countries to bring them into line, and have this as viewed as something less than war. It would certainly be considered war if such an attack were perpetrated against us. My instincts still tell me that Obama has painted himself too deep into a corner to back down at this point – he would appear weak, irritating his liberal supporters and earning the mockery of his conservative opponents (even those who would want him to back down), and therefore I see my prescription for limited military strikes focusing solely on the upper echelons of the Syrian military leadership remains the best course of action if we want to avoid igniting the powder keg. But I fear that Mr. Obama has other, more ambitious ideas entirely.
The next couple of weeks will be full of surprises, twists and turns, as this country debates in its Congress and media and living rooms whether to launch another war in the Middle East. But I think it’s fair to offer a preliminary assessment of where the wind is blowing. Obama’s case for war is disintegrating fast. And his insistence on a new war – against much of the world and 60 percent of Americans – is easily his biggest misjudgment since taking office. His options now are not whether to go to war or not, but simply whether he has the strength and sense to stand down and save his second term before it is too late.
Here’s what we know now for sure already: even if the president were somehow to get a majority in House and Senate for entering into Syria’s vortex of sectarian violence, it will…
The concept of a “Free War” with the tab picked up by Middle-Eastern “allies” such as Saudi Arabia is never a good idea, as blogger Jonathan Turley eloquently points out. Reading this piece made me think back to Rachel Maddow’s excellent book “Drift”, in which she discusses the various ways that it has become easier for America to slide into wars around the country with less and less political debate or oversight to authorise the action. One of the key points that Maddow makes is the fact that because recent wars have been kept off the books, budget wise, the American public is much more likely to support a war when there will be no additional taxation demanded of them to fund it – thus enabling the warmongers Dick Cheney and George W Bush. Kerry’s attempt to sell military action in Syria based on the nebulous idea that Arab countries might pay part or all of the cost is just a continuation of this same trend – trying to coax people into supporting a heavy-handed, militaristic foreign policy entailing lots of foreign wars with the promise that it will not cost them anything.
This week Secretary of State John Kerry became the Sham-Wow man for the latest war by the United States. Here is how a Sham-War pitch works. Kerry announced that the Arab countries will pay for our entire war if we invade Syria. That’s right, we can simply rent out U.S. personnel like mercenaries for Saudi Arabia and Gulf nations. First we have Nancy Pelosi explaining the war literally in five-year-old terms and now John Kerry doing his imitation of Offer “Vince” Shlomi.
Semi-Partisan Politics 