Politicians Suck – Shall Not Be Questioned

Breaking Silence Over Gun Control

For the past week since the deal was announced, gun owners have been wondering “What do we get out of this? How is it a compromise if all we’re doing is ceding ground.”

After reading the proposed language, I’m surprised by how much of this looks to me like it’s aimed at Mexican drug cartels. So what you have here is a bunch of Republicans who are probably retiring or will soon announce they are retiring, who love themselves some “law and order,” who are using Uvaldi as an excuse to get a wish list to target the cartels.

There’s also a few cases where they are requiring action from states, which the feds cannot do. The state can literally refuse to pick up the phone and there’s nothing the feds can do about it. This is well-established precedent. So know we know what the GOP worms got out of this: some drug warriorin’. And what flag waving Republican doesn’t love that?

Just go read them trying to define “dating relationship.” Are you kidding me? At least they didn’t apply it retroactively, and limited the prohibition to 5 years, but you know what would have been nice? To do the same thing with all of the Lautenberg Amendment. There would have been a compromise. But no. This just takes. The concessions are only things law and order GOP swamp creatures care about.

This bill is garbage and should be opposed, and any Republican who votes for this needs to be tossed out on their asses in a primary if they aren’t retiring.

Politician Believe in Being Reelected

Kirsten Gillibrand now says she never really believe in the 2nd Amendment.

Now that she’s being called out for her hypocrisy, the presidential hopeful is spinning the policy shift as a “simple mistake.” “I didn’t do the right thing,” Gillibrand told CNN‘s Alisyn Camerota on “New Day” Wednesday. “I mean, I think someone who can’t recognize when they’re wrong is far more concerning if you can never admit when you’re wrong. And not only was I wrong, and not only should I have cared more about gun violence in other parts of my state or other parts of my country, I just didn’t.”

It’s easy. When she was a Congresswoman from upstate New York, it was beneficial to her politically to be pro-gun. When she became Senator of New York, it was beneficial for her to be anti-gun. What politicians never want to admit is that their views are fungible depending on political expedience. It goes back to the old Groucho line: â€œThose are my principles, and if you donâ€™t like them… well, I have others.â€

Even your favorite politician who tells you how much he loves the Second Amendment, in most cases, is telling you that because it’s politically expedient. Our great task is to make it politically expedient. There are true believers out there, but they are rare.

How Philadelphia Plans to Shut down Convenience Stores that Sell Beer

If you’re Councilwoman Bass, you’ll put them out of business by making them easier to rob.

A controversial bill under consideration would require liquor stores to pull down the bulletproof glass they currently use to protect their clerks. After all, liquor stores are often prime targets for robbery. The glass keeps clerks safe, at least to some extent, and now it needs to come down.

These store owners tend to be Korean, so the accusation is being thrown around that the motivation for this is straight up racism. These business technically operate as restaurants. Convenience stores can’t sell alcoholic beverages in Pennsylvania, so what some stores do is to have a limited menu of items, apply for a liquor license as a restaurant, and then sell takeout, which restaurants are allowed to do.

I covered this issue some time ago, about the double standards at work here, and was very proud to have the current Mayor of Philadelphia tell me to go eff myself. You sell 7% ABV beers to white hipsters and no one cares. Do the same in minority neighborhoods and the world is coming to and end and we must stop it. Hard for me to agree there’s no racial issues at work here. I get the concern over social problems, but last I checked, dealing drugs, public intoxication, and public urination (all mentioned by Councilwoman Bass) were all crimes. Maybe address those issues, rather than targeting people who run the stores and ultimately their customers, many of whom probably just want a beer at the end of a hard day like we all do.

It is absolutely beyond the pale that this Councilwoman would see people get shot and stabbed. She should be ashamed for even proposing this. I would argue that armor are arms, and a bill like this should be properly found unconstitutional under the 2nd Amendment.

This is Always What They Do

They end up in power with grand promises, and then make excuses for why they won’t pass the bill:

“The timing isn’t right.”

“We need a bigger majority to overcome a filibuster.”

“We think this is really more of a second term project.”

I could go on. The right time is when you have the majority. After 2018, who knows what will happen. Historically, we would expect the party in power to lose seats in the midterms. Practically, the prospect of the Dems taking the Senate seems remote, but that’s only because of the peculiarities of this particular election.

Now is the right time to get our bills passed. The SHARE Act has been introduced in the House, finally. Folks in Ryan’s district need to start turning up the heat, particularly.

Toomey Cozy With Gun Control Crowd

We spent years trying to get rid of Arlen Spector,Â and now Pat Toomey being Arlen reborn is probably a best case scenario for guns:

The big question now is whether we’ve lost Toomey for good on the gun issue, or whether he’s just going to play both sides like his predecessor did. If Toomey is intent on being anti-gun, I can have a Democrat do that job just as well as a Republican. Just sayin, Pat.

“Served”: I Do Not Think That Means What You Think it Means

Kathleen Kane has finally, after pressure from her own party’s Governor, and pretty much every other Dem in the state, chosen to resign:Â â€œI have been honored to serve the people of Pennsylvania and I wish them health and safety in all their days.â€ I doubt Josh Shapiro, the Dem candidate for AG in 2016 (who is promising to somehow implement bans on rifle transfers a la handguns in the commonwealth), is going to want the fresh stench of Kathleen Kane’s trashed career wafting over his campaign.

It’s worthwhile to keep in mind that Attorney General is a good stepping stone for Governor, and Bloomberg made his significant investment in Kane in part because he had high hopes that she was a winner, and it would be nice to have a friend in the Governor’s mansion. It is not without considerable snickering that I’ve watched her come apart at the seams.

Twilight of a Republic?

Sebastian expressed his amusement over the news that a Clinton staffer was offered an immunity deal as part of the email brouhaha. I can’t say I didn’t feel some schadenfreude when I heard the news, but I’ve had time to think it over since. And now I’m actually a little worried. This upsÂ the ante for Ms. Clinton. SomeoneÂ on her team believes not only that a crime occurred (Pagliano has already invoked his 5th amendment rights in testimony before Congress), but that there is a substantial risk the FBI can prove he himself was involved. The thing is, though, the FBI would only offer immunity if they believed he can tee up someone bigger. There aren’t a whole lot of bigger frogs in the pond, though. Ms. Clinton is very close to a scenario where she either becomes president or suffers a catastrophic disgrace when the whole mishandling of classified information scandal crashes down on her inner circle, and herself.

That worries me, if there is no graceful exit option for her. The underlings now have one – negotiate a deal with the FBI (while they still can, anyway). But that’s not available to the head of the organization. Neither is resigning to avoid prosecution. Accepting a pardon from this or a future non-Clinton administration is barely an option, I suppose, but it still leaves her “brand” badly tarnished. I don’t really want to see what Ms. Clinton might do on deadly ground (to quote Sun Tzu).

Run, Mike, Run

While I can’t say as I’d vote for the man, I heartily encourage Michael Bloomberg to run for president as an Independent.Â Especially if he’s going to self-fund. All of my political enemies should have an expensive and impossible hobby.

One Mention of Guns in State of the Union

After an enthusiastic day of promoting this #EmptyChair hash tag, President Obama makes one mention of “gun violence” in the State of the Union, and never even bothers to mention or explain the empty chair symbolism. If anyone was playing along with the drinking game, you could have gone all the way to double shots of Everclear for your “drink” and still only gotten a minor buzz. I was surprised.

I was surprised by how much of the SOTU was about him. He needed a third arm for all the time he spent patting himself on the back. I don’t know if the gun control folks ever feel like chumps, but if you don’t, you should, because you are. He doesn’t care about your cause. He doesn’t care about your loss. This is all about him, and you’ve been played.

Other people’s political capital

From an LA Times piece, we get the following quote on why President Obama is looking into unilateral executive action on gun control:

“If this succeeds, it will save lives. If it fails legally, the cost is only political,” [Senator Christopher] Murphy [D-Conn] said. “When youâ€™re talking about weighing lives saved versus political capital lost, itâ€™s a no-brainer.â€

What Senator Murphy says about political capital is true – the cost of this effortÂ will be counted in political capital. What he’s not saying is that it’s not the President’s political capital that will pay; it’s the political capital of the Democratic party. The President has spent a lot of political capital over the past 7 years, but very little of it has been his own. It’s been the capital of the Democratic party. And by gambling with the Democratic political capital, he’s been able to force the Republicans to match, raise, or fold. If he wins, he gets the credit (and the capital). If he loses, well, it’s all someone else’s fault. Which is a neat trick. I’mÂ stillÂ a little surprised that the congressional Dems are willing to let him draw on their capital to put his name on successes, but leave Congress the failures. The last few years, sticking Congress with the failures means sticking the Republicans with it, admittedly, but still.

This is another one of his Heads I win, tails You lose gambits. He’s going to try, and if it doesn’t work, then it’s the work of The Enemy, who wants Dead Babies.Which makes sense for his future aspirations (global talking head), but is yet another drip of corrosive in the mechanism of politics. AprÃ¨s moi le dÃ©luge, indeed.