The Political Junkie offers an outside-looking- in view of the US. Each day, we will highlight news and opinion pieces from around the world that are focused on US politics and policy. Agree or disagree with the opinions you will read but take a few minutes to see yourselves as others see you.
The Republican congressmen who use New York as a campaign ATM, but turn
a blind eye to suffering here must be held accountable, writes John
Avlon.
Slap a scarlet “S” on these callous conservatives. Sixty-seven members of Congress–all Republicans—voted against even $9 billion of Hurricane Sandy relief yesterday.
Remember their names, and hold them accountable.
A laborer empties debris from a home damaged by Superstorm Sandy on
January 4, 2013 in the Midland Beach area of the Staten Island borough
of New York City. More than two months after the storm, Congress passed
legislation that will provide $9.7 billion to cover insurance claims
filed by people whose homes were damaged or destroyed by Sandy. (John
Moore/Getty)
Twelve
of the scarlet 67 voted for Hurricane Katrina relief—which passed ten
days after that devastating Gulf Coast storm—but against Hurricane Sandy
relief 69 days after its landfall in the Northeast. Their names: Trent
Franks (AZ), Ed Royce (CA), Sam Graves (MO), Steve Pearce (NM), Steve
Chabot (OH), Jimmy Duncan (TN), Kenny Marchant (TX), Randy Neugebauer
(TX), Mac Thornberry (TX), Bob Goodlatte (VA), Tom Petri (WI), and Paul
Ryan (WI).
These
congressmen are content to use New York City and the tri-state area as
an ATM when they are looking for campaign funds, yet they willfully turn
a blind eye when hundreds of thousands of homes and small businesses
are damaged or destroyed and more than 100 Americans are dead.
Note
the name of last year’s vice presidential nominee and potential 2016
presidential candidate Paul Ryan on this list. Donors would do well to
ask him about this vote. The Texas delegation likewise asked for federal
funds when hurricanes have devastated their state, yet are ignoring
suffering in the Northeast. But then conservatives often become liberal
when an issue affects them personally. Just two years ago, Missouri
Congressman Sam Graves begged President Obama for an emergency declaration to deal with flooding in his district—now he is afflicted with convenient amnesia.
Officials challenge NRA’s claims about Israeli gun policies
AMY TEIBEL
JERUSALEM — The Associated Press
Far from the image of a heavily-armed population where ordinary
people have their own arsenals to repel attackers, Israel allows its
people to acquire firearms only if they can prove their professions or
places of residence put them in danger. The country relies on its
security services, not armed citizens, to prevent terror attacks.
Though
military service in Israel is compulsory, routine familiarity with
weapons does not carry over into civilian life. Israel has far fewer
private weapons per capita than the U.S., and while there have been
gangster shootouts on the streets from time to time, gun rampages
outside the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are unheard of.
The
National Rifle Association responded to the Dec. 14 killing of 20
first-graders and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school by
resisting calls for tighter gun control and calling for armed guards and
police at schools. On Sunday, the lobby's chief executive, Wayne
LaPierre, invoked his perception of the Israeli school security system
to back his proposal.
“Israel had a whole lot of school shootings
until they did one thing: They said, ‘We're going to stop it,’ and they
put armed security in every school and they have not had a problem since
then,” Mr. LaPierre said on the NBC News show Meet the Press.
PJ: Rational thought does exist in America as the following article proves. Sadly up until now, those thoughts have been mere whispers compared to the powerful shouts of the nation's gun lobbies who want guns...more and more guns...without regulations in place for their purchase, possession and use.
For decades gun advocates have distorted the Constitutional Second Amendment which simply states:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free
State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed."
Hmmmm...A WELL REGULATED MILITIA....
Hmmmm...the founding fathers wanted regulation of firearms...? Who would'a thunk it?
Slate Magazine
When Gun Nuts Write Gun Laws, Nuts Have Guns
We are living in the world the NRA has made.
By Tom Scocca So this is what Wayne LaPierre came up with,
with a week to reflect on the news that a law-abiding gun owner's
legally purchased rifle, in the hands of her firearm-trained son, had
been used to slaughter 20 kids: more guns, more law-abiding gun owners,
more more more lead-spraying death machinery, more killing to stop the
killers until all the killers have been killed. Only when we have
eliminated the threat of "gun-free school zones," the danger and horror
of children going through a school day unsurrounded by the implements of
death, will we all feel safe.
PJ: The NRA's answer to gun violence= more guns. The Head of NRA says,
"Only ‘Good Guy’ With A Gun Can Stop ‘Bad Guy’ With A Gun" So....in the recent altercation at the Florida pizza shop* where the guy with the gun (which he obtained legally) shot the unarmed guy because the unarmed guy was complaining about the wait time for his pizza...Could the NRA please tell mewhich one was the good guy?
Well, someone is. Since this summer, the anonymous creator of the Twitter feed @GunDeaths
has been doing his best to compile those statistics, tweeting every
reported death he can find. He was inspired, he told us in a phone
interview, by the Aurora, Colo., shootings and simply wanted to call
daily attention to the toll that guns take. Now Slate is partnering with @GunDeaths to create this interactive feature, “Gun Deaths in America Since Newtown.”
PJ: What a pathetic reaction by some in America: arm teachers...provide tiny children with bullet proof backpacks...more guns not fewer.... Will children eventually have to wear full bodyarmor? Will teachers have to carry their assigned weapons or face disciplinary action? Will everyone in America soon be outfitted with combat gear to go the the cinema? This last Sunday, in Florida*, a man complained about the slow service at a pizza take away. Another man took action and shot the unarmed man...twice. The shooter had no history of mental illness and was carrying his weapon legally. Is this what gun enthusiasts want? What if a teacher took matters of disagreement with...anyone...into their own hands and used their (required) gun to deal with the altercation? Is this the safe world that America wants for their children? *http://www.wtsp.com/news/article/287565/8/Man-shoots-victim-twice-in-local-Pizza-shop
The Independent
Newtown massacre: US races to stock up on weapons ahead of potential new federal ban
Rather than recoiling from the gun, Americans are emptying stores of ‘sporting rifles’ while online prices soar
David Usborne
It is a sad tradition in America that each mass shooting is followed
by a surge in gun sales, in part because people calculate they need more
firepower to protect themselves. That explains why the days since last
Friday have also seen a surge in sales of special backpacks for school
children lined with bullet-proof material. Their manufacturers allege
they work well as shields in classroom firefights.
Now, however,
there is the added fear among gun enthusiasts that new restrictions are
around the corner and they had better get the weapons they covet before
it’s too late.
So now we have it: what appears to be hard, irrefutable evidence of Rupert Murdoch's
ultimate and most audacious attempt – thwarted, thankfully, by
circumstance – to hijack America's democratic institutions on a scale
equal to his success in kidnapping and corrupting the essential
democratic institutions of Great Britain through money, influence and
wholesale abuse of the privileges of a free press.
In the American instance, Murdoch's goal seems to have been nothing less than using his media empire – notably Fox News – to stealthily recruit, bankroll and support the presidential candidacy of General David Petraeus in the 2012 election.
Thus
in the spring of 2011 – less than 10 weeks before Murdoch's centrality
to the hacking and politician-buying scandal enveloping his British
newspapers was definitively revealed – Fox News' inventor and president,
Roger Ailes, dispatched an emissary to Afghanistan to urge Petraeus to
turn down President Obama's expected offer to become CIA director and,
instead, run for the Republican nomination for president, with promises
of being bankrolled by Murdoch. Ailes himself would resign as president
of Fox News and run the campaign, according to the conversation between
Petraeus and the emissary, K T McFarland, a Fox News on-air defense
"analyst" and former spear carrier for national security principals in
three Republican administrations.
Is America’s popular culture the cause? This is highly unlikely, as
largely the same culture exists in other rich countries. Youth in
England and Wales, for example, are exposed to virtually identical
cultural influences as in the United States. Yet the rate of gun
homicide there is a tiny fraction of ours. The Japanese are at the
cutting edge of the world of video games. Yet their gun homicide rate is
close to zero! Why? Britain has tough gun laws. Japan has perhaps the
tightest regulation of guns in the industrialized world.
The data
in social science are rarely this clear. They strongly suggest that we
have so much more gun violence than other countries because we have far
more permissive laws than others regarding the sale and possession of
guns. With 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States has 50
percent of the guns.
There is clear evidence that tightening
laws — even in highly individualistic countries with long traditions of
gun ownership — can reduce gun violence. In Australia, after a 1996 ban
on all automatic and semiautomatic weapons — a real ban, not like the one we enacted in 1994 with 600-plus exceptions — gun-related homicides dropped 59 percent over the next decade. The rate of suicide by firearm plummeted 65 percent.
(Almost 20,000 Americans die each year using guns to commit suicide — a
method that is much more successful than other forms of suicide.)
IN the harrowing aftermath of the school shooting in Connecticut, one
thought wells in my mind: Why can’t we regulate guns as seriously as we
do cars? *
So let’s treat firearms rationally as the center of a public health
crisis that claims one life every 20 minutes. The United States
realistically isn’t going to ban guns, but we can take steps to reduce
the carnage.
American schoolchildren are protected by building codes that govern
stairways and windows. School buses must meet safety standards, and the
bus drivers have to pass tests. Cafeteria food is regulated for safety.
The only things we seem lax about are the things most likely to kill.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has five pages of regulations about ladders, while federal authorities shrug at serious curbs on firearms. Ladders kill around 300 Americans a year, and guns 30,000.
PJ: After the election, I watched and read so many pieces that outlined the end of the crazy in the GOP that I was a bit skeptical. Isn't this what pundits said in 2008?
Sadly, many republicans have drifted into a frightening universe that is so far right and so far wrong that the entertainment value of American politics has left me. I am saddened by the hatred and misinformation that surfaces on Fox News and fright-talk radio on a daily basis. I am shocked at the bigotry and vitriol that is evidenced by today's conservative talkers. Dear readers, the US is not drifting into communisim as the rantings of the hate-filled Sarah Palin insisted in her role as a Fox News expert said the other day. There is no need to "take your country back!" from other Americans as the right-wing chants since the election of President Obama. There is no boogie man waiting to control every American citizen holded up in the White House. There is no reality to back up the fear of "Sharia Law" that so many on the right postulate. Susan Rice did not cause the greatest scandal since Watergate as Senator John McCain insists. And no, the UN is not lying in wait to take over the US.
I do hope that sanity will eventually prevail but I'll not hold my breath. There is too much unfounded fear and hatred circulating. A fear and hatred that has been manufactured by a right-wing that has lost perspective; a right-wing that believes unfounded propaganda; a right-wing that is nursed with a steady diet of misinformation and lies; a right-wing that refuses to accept fact vs the fiction that feeds it. The party that once supported science and education is now the party that disputes both.
Cruelty, fear, cowardice, xenophobia
and disrespect invaded the inner sanctum of the U.S. government
this week, bringing embarrassment and dishonor to what was once
the greatest deliberative body in the world: the U.S. Senate.
On Dec. 4, former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, an 89-
year-old Republican whose right arm was shattered in combat
during World War II, was wheeled into the Senate chamber by his
wife to rally support for a United Nations treaty that should
have been entirely unobjectionable.
The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities, negotiated under President George W. Bush and
signed by more than 150 nations, takes a stand against
“discrimination on the basis of disability” and in favor of
“respect for inherent dignity.” It’s a largely symbolic
document with implementation language that consists mostly of a
weak recommendation for “due consideration” of its lofty aims.
Even so, with U.S. leadership, it could promote compassion for
the disabled in dozens of countries where they are cruelly
shunned.
Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who long ago
discredited himself as a serious person by championing junk
science on climate change, said on the Senate floor, “This
unelected bureaucratic body would pass recommendations that
would be forced upon the United States if we were a signatory.”
That’s completely false. Not a single clause or phrase in
the treaty impinges on national sovereignty, unless one believes
-- as some xenophobic neo-isolationists do -- that the UN itself
is a threat to the U.S.
PJ: If my staunch republican father was alive today, he would deride this conservative publication, claiming incorrectly that it had changed into a liberal publication. I mention that only because there are a lot of American conservatives who will do the same. When the facts or opinions deviate from their own, they claim fowl and bias. The assessment that The Econmist has turned liberal would, of course, be incorrect. The Economist remains a very conservative magazine. What my father and many of today's republicans would have missed is that the magazine always tries to give rational voice to issues, even if that voice deviates from the strict talking points of America's conservative movement. Perhaps it's time to put partisan bickering aside and work together? Heavy sigh.
Right now, members of the GOP are beating the conspiracy drums with respect to what happened in Benghazi and claiming some far-fetched cover-up conspiracies in the process. Senators such as McCain and Graham have repeatedly demanded that the administration release information. Why then have they skipped security briefings in order to hold press conferences to claim that they are not being briefed? Another heavy sigh. It's all very sordid and sad and unfortuneately the norm in Washington, D.C.
The Economist
Susan Rice
Benghazi-gate gets even more ludicrous
Nov 15th 2012, 14:18 by M.S.
REPUBLICAN senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham devoted an appearance at the Washington Ideas Forum on Wednesday to vowing to filibuster
if Susan Rice, the current UN ambassador, is nominated to replace
Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. They're apparently ticked off
over her statements on talk shows on September 15th about the Benghazi
attacks. Barack Obama got pretty incensed about this at his press conference later in the day, and Kevin Drum argues he was right to be incensed.
As Mr Drum says, everything Ms Rice said on September 15th was in fact
the judgment at that moment of American intelligence agencies, and she
relayed that judgment accurately. The only thing that was even arguably
wrong in those intelligence assessments was the claim that there had
been a copycat protest over those anti-Muslim YouTube videos in
Benghazi; intelligence agencies didn't start calling this into question
until some time later. "Berating Rice, who had nothing to do with
Benghazi aside from representing the administration on these talk shows,
is nuts," Mr Drum writes. "The intelligence community was wrong about
one relatively unimportant fact, and Rice passed along that mistake.
That's it. There's no coverup, no conspiracy, no incompetence, no
scandal."
Divided States of America Notes on the Decline of a Great Nation
By SPIEGEL Staff
The United States is frittering away its role as a model for the
rest of the world. The political system is plagued by an absurd level
of hatred, the economy is stagnating and the infrastructure is falling
into a miserable state of disrepair. On this election eve, many
Americans are losing faith in their country's future.
In the show, the audience reacts with shock, just as a real-life
American audience would. But the truth is that America has transformed
itself into a land of limited opportunities. In fact, that was the way
SPIEGEL referred to the United States in a 1979 cover story, when the US
economy had been hard-hit by the oil crisis.
But today's crisis is far more comprehensive, extending to the
social, political and spiritual realms. The worst thing about it is that
the country still refuses to engage in any debate over the reasons for
its decline. It seems as if many Americans today no longer want to talk
about how they can strengthen their union. Criticism is seen as a
betrayal of America's greatness.
But that notion of greatness leaves much to be desired. Other numbers
can be readily added to those rattled off by the protagonist in
Sorkin's "The Newsroom," and the results are sobering. For instance, the
United States is no longer among the world's top 10 countries when it
comes to the state of its infrastructure. In fact, it spends less than
Europe to maintain its roads and bridges, tunnels, train stations and
airports.
According to the US Federal Highway Administration, one in four of
the more than 600,000 bridges in the world's richest country are either
"inadequate" or outdated. According to some studies, the United States
would have to invest some $225 billion a year between now and 2050 to
regain an adequate, modern infrastructure. That's 60 percent more than
it invests today.
A Lack of Strength
It isn't hard to predict that this won't happen. The hatred of big
government has reached a level in the United States that threatens the
country's very existence. Americans everywhere may vow allegiance to the
nation and its proud Stars and Stripes, but when it comes time to pay
the bills and distribute costs, and when solidarity is needed, all sense
of community evaporates.
US election 2012: the inside track on Obama's victory and Romney's defeat
As the dust settles and the president gets back to work, we are starting to learn what really happened on the campaign trail
By Tom McCarthy
After the election come the backgrounders – thousands of words of
meticulously reported (or briefed) explanations of what went miserably
wrong or miraculously right. As some of the campaign's richer inside
scenes and better kept secrets, here are some of the highlights...
The real blow to Republicans may be not that they failed to take the White House, but that they did not lose more heavily
Nov 10th 2012 | from the print edition
Face the facts
Republican pessimism is more than a PR headache. Put simply, it is
hard for a party to win national elections in a country that it seems to
dislike. Mr Romney’s campaign slogan was “Believe in America”. But too
many on his side believe in a version of America from which displeasing
facts or arguments are ruthlessly excluded. Todd Akin did not implode as
a Senate candidate because of his stern opposition to abortion even in
cases of rape or incest: many Republicans in Congress share those views.
His downfall came because in trying to deny that his principles
involved a trade-off with compassion for rape victims he came up with
the unscientific myth that the bodies of women subjected to rape can
shut down a pregnancy.
It was a telling moment of denial, much like the comforting myth that
there is no such thing as climate change or, if there is, that humans
are not involved. Ensconced in a parallel world of conservative news
sources and conservative arguments, all manner of comforting alternative
visions of reality surfaced during the 2012 election. Many, like Mr
Akin’s outburst, involved avoiding having to think about unwelcome
things (often basic science or economics). It became a nostrum among
rank-and-file Republicans that mainstream opinion polls are biased and
should be ignored, for instance, and that voter fraud is rampant and
explains much of the Democrats’ inner-city support. Both conspiracies
sounded a lot like ways of wishing the other side away.
Thoughtful Republicans are not oblivious to the dangers that they
face. Optimists hope that new leaders will emerge to lead their movement
rapidly towards greater realism, and greater cheeriness. If not,
electoral defeats far more severe than those inflicted this time will
surely impose such changes. Republicans may look back and wish the
reckoning had started sooner. Economist.com/blogs/lexington
“We
may have battled fiercely, but it’s only because we love this country
deeply and we care so strongly about its future. The Romney family has
chosen to give back to America through public service and that is the
legacy that we honor and applaud tonight. In the weeks ahead, I also
look forward to sitting down with Governor Romney to talk about where we
can work together to move this country forward.” — President Barack Obama
“The
nation, as you know, is at a critical point. At a time like this, we
can’t risk partisan bickering and political posturing. Our leaders have
to reach across the aisle to do the people’s work ... I so wish that I
had been able to fulfill your hopes to lead the country in a different
direction, but the nation chose another leader. And so Ann and I join
with you to earnestly pray for him and for this great nation.” — Governor Mitt Romney
THE
above paragraphs are taken from the victory and concessions speeches of
the two men who ran America’s most divisive and expensive elections in
over 100 years.
It was bitterly fought, through three debates,
calling each other’s bluff and coining new phrases like “Romneysia” and
“Obamabaloney”.
The Daily Star Mitt Romney’s reality check leaves him shell-shocked
The same disregard for reality has been the hallmark not only of the
Republican campaign but of the entire Republican Party in recent times.
When the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued a report in October showing
that the national unemployment rate remained “essentially unchanged” at
7.9 percent, Republican operatives sought to discredit the highly
respected BLS. When polls showed that Romney was falling behind
President Barack Obama, they sought to discredit the polls. When the
non-partisan Congressional Research Service reported that a Republican
tax plan would do nothing to foster economic growth, Republican Senators
muscled the CRS into withdrawing its report.
These refusals to accept matters of plain fact reflect a still wider
pattern. Increasingly, the Republican Party, once a fairly normal
political party, has granted itself a license to live in an alternate
reality – a world in which George W. Bush did find the weapons of mass
destruction that he had thought were in Iraq; tax cuts eliminate budget
deficits; Obama is not only a Muslim but was born in Kenya and thus
should be disqualified from the presidency; and global warming is a hoax
concocted by a cabal of socialist scientists. (The Democrats, for their
part, have had one foot in the camp of unreality as well.)
