I have to run out to the store but I hear the Senate voted down the background check amendment, meaning that a majority of 54 voted for the background check amendment. I have to admit that I got this one wrong. I had a bout of irrational exuberance.
Talk away.
So, Manchin is too radical for Baucus. Heitkamp, Begich and Pryor. Does this vote change your opinion of last week where you thought the dam was breaking in the Senate? Four Democrats filibustering this is gross negligence.
Remember how happy we were when Begich and Heitkamp won? What a waste of energy.
I’m still happy they won, and it wasn’t a waste of energy. 🙂
The GOP did well to “ignore” (lulz) my advice as well. I thought they were gonna have to eat the loss and see the little thing pass. Instead they got Democrats to kill it for them. Impressive commitment under duress. Very lucky for the House as well.
This is pretty much exactly what happened after Columbine.
I don’t think its fair to say that Dems killed kill this. The NRA + repubs did it. All Republicans but two voted to uphold the filibuster. That means that even if every dem had voted to end debate, their motion would still have failed.
But it would have clearly failed because of a Republican filibuster. Now all the media are carefully telling us the bull “failed in the Senate”. Except for this Fuckhead Four the narrative would have had to be different.
What the media says does not control the campaign messages. As PBO just said 90% of Democrats voted with the American people while 90% of the GOTP voted against the American people they were elected to represent.
Absolutely pathetic. Didn’t think my opinion of the GOP could sink any lower, but it just happened.
My low expectations for this legislation weren’t low enough.
When it comes to our hopelessly dysfunctional Congress, one can never set one’s sights low enough, it seems.
Should have stuck with my original expectation that gun control is always off the table. Instead allowed myself to be slightly influenced by all the optimism being expressed by Democrats and liberals — they being the self-styled pragmatists and realists that never tire of calling me an idealist that lets the perfect get in the way of the good.
I felt that the Hapless Congress could still pass meaningless watered down legislation when “the people” demanded some sort of action, but now will have to revise even that naive view…
There has to be some penalty for voting for a filibuster if you’re a Democratic Senator. If they want to vote against the amendment fine, but voting to filibuster is ridiculous.
I tend to agree but it looks like the Repub filibuster would have been upheld even if every Dem had voted for cloture. So the Conservadem cowardice didn’t “matter”. And Begich isn’t even a conservadem, is he?. But as an Alaskan he can’t do anything but vote to hand out free weapons clips, apparently.
Chris Matthews announces the as 54-46 “but due to senate rules it needed sixty votes to pass.”
Why not “due to the Republican filibuster it needed 60 votes to pass”?
What is this some sort of political correctness? Don’t talk about Repug obstructionism. Pretend they are not holding the country hostage. Pretend their human.
Obama is on now hopefully he’ll be blunt.
Matthews was better than most reports that just said the bill “failed in the Senate”. CNN must have told us that at least a dozen times in 10 minutes. Why not “the bill was killed by a Republican filibuster”? You’re right: it is a kind of PC crap that makes it impolite for “journalists” to name the perps. So instead it must be “the Senate”, which keeps voters disgusted enough with the whole system to just not pay any more attention.
Obama won’t be able to be blunt even if he were inclined to: he has to protect the Fuckhead Four Dems who voted with the GOP.
Did you see Obama’s post vote speech in the Rose Garden? He was as blunt as I’ve ever seen him. And, angry too. Good. I’m darn angry too.
Yup. I miscalled that one big time.
I wish you’d been right but the NRA rules our world.
For now. But not forever. And hopefully not for much longer.
As long as I can remember and that goes all the way back to Nixon. Twenty dead elementary children was a PR nightmare for them (unlike the thirty-two dead college students at VA tech or all those dead and injured in other shooting massacres) because it raised gun control to an issue. But if they could beat it back after that horror, how can they lose anytime in the foreseeable future?
Because the tide is turning. The fact alone that this is a major issue after 20 years of stasis is a huge change in the political dynamic.
We may well look back on this moment as the high water mark for the NRA.
I’m watching the President now and he is certainly pissed. Calling out the Senators and the NRA.
Who cares? His anger isn’t going to move one single vote in the Senate. Nothing is going to move the GOP at all and the Dems who voted no represent states who hate Obama. We are going to get nothing done until the 2014 elections.
Obama would be better off focusing on what the executive branch can do without Congress and then campaigning like crazy to get the 2014 House back in Dem hands and push Reid hard to reform the Senate. He needs to call out the do nothing congress from now until Nov. 2014.
Im sick to death of Harry Reid. His weak leadership only encourages the Repugs to walk all over the majority.
Hey, you are giving pugs (the dog breed) a bad name with that epithet. They are kindly creatures, unlike the R’s.
The only thing that works is hammering Republicans until they break then hammering them more.
More effective, I think, to hammer the NRA until it breaks. No holds barred.
Can’t wait to hear what people thought of Obama’s statement.
What’s to talk about?
He’s pissed. He just got beat by the NRA. The victims’ families were over there crying. Biden was about to puke all over the White House lawn.
I can’t imagine anyone would ever accuse him of lacking passion on the issue. He just doesn’t have any leverage. And no, OFA obviously doesn’t count.
I just want to say that we started organizing before Christmas and got both of our Senators–King and Collins. And before people start throwing around the term “moderate” about those two or talk about Maine voting for Obama in ’12–this is definitely a pro-gun, pro-NRA state.
You have to try and pull the sensible NRA folks into your coalition. You have to listen and dialogue. You have to go almost underground because you will get hounded by the nuts. Anyway there was a lot of effort behind the result.
In his statement he pivoted from calling the congress shameful, to telling the American people we had to elect a better Congress. I got the feeling he was talking about the Dems as well since he made a point of mentioning them. He said that in speaking with those Senators who chose politics over the people–he didn’t hear one coherent argument against the background check legislation.
Well, so much for the old “90% support” factoid. Not in AR, AK, MT, or ND I guess. Or any other Red State, apparently. Was the main goal of the GOP today simply to defeat the hated Obama and hand him a big defeat, or did they actually fear the NRA on this issue despite the polls?
Anyway, on to immigration! This fab performance in Harry’s Place certainly augurs well for that little problem…
Kevin Drum put it pretty well, 90% of the people might support it, but 80% of the people don’t really care if it happens. No one who voted against gun control will pay a political price.
And that reminds me… Harry Reid! Dat filibuster! You pulling coward.
What’s more profitable- playing professional baseball where you only have to hit the ball thirty percent of the time to be a huge success, or being a professional pollster– putting out information re: “what the people want”, instead of just focusing on what the wealthy class wants/gets??
Actually, the average baseball player gets on base about 34% of the time as it is…
But point taken.
If we get another storm like Katrina or Sandy, everyone will forget about guns and today’s vote, I think.
I bet gun sales go up. Seems that no matter what happens gun sales go up.
I’m sorry but, as a foreigner, it is hard to see this photo of Newtown parents and not see America’s shame. Not this party or this Senator’s shame but America’s
How is it even tolerated that the families of shooting victims are treated this way? It’s uncivilised. Obviously it is tolerated. Not enough people rise up and stop it from happening. In no way would this be allowed in Britain or Australia or … I’m trying to think of where it would be allowed!? It would be unconscionable.
It seems to me that until America grasps just how abysmal this is, and sends those who would do this far off into the margins then it should be considered to have something wrong with it, to have broken with the norms of civilised nations, by the rest of us.
Yes, shunning might be appropriate.
Shunning would just encourage those who are the problem. They pride themselves on who hates them.
People in America live in a national security state; rising up like has happened in Spain, for example, is not a seriously considered option. Folks here are pretty hunkered down both because of fears of unemployment and fears of the violence of others.
The NRA is trying to export itself to Canada. And no doubt also to UK and Australia. If they succeed, you’ll have your turn at feeling the shame. You are just a stolen election and a terrorist attack away from it.
Please shun us. Try our politicians for war crimes. Issue ongoing travel advisories to our major cities. Advise tourists to our states to take out special medical insurance for acts of violence. Caution against eating our genetically modified food. Refuse to work alongside our election observers until we get our own in order. Really, make us feel like a pariah among Western democracies. Nothing else has worked.
I took this and ran with it here http://paulocanning.blogspot.com/2013/04/americas-shame-in-one-photo.html
They tried it in Australia and it failed. They would have zero chance here in the UK. I am not exaggerating when I saw that practically everyone here supports gun control.
I just recall that time when Americans would pretend to be Canadians. Remember that?
Plus it disgusts me, that picture and those crowing about it, and the wet American middle ground that allows this should at least know what the rest of the world thinks of them. Isn’t America the slightest bit concerned if we all see the country as packed full of violent nutters who could care less about parents of shooting victims?
The Second Amendment is a fetish that Americans wave around to ward off imaginary evil spirits. It’s also about jobs — manufacturing, distributing, marketing, and selling guns and bullets employ many people.
Indeed. It’s hard to convey just how awful this appears. I can only compare to other places where ‘culture’ or ‘history’ is also used to defend some abomination — and we don’t balk at cultural relativism there, do we?
“Isn’t America the slightest bit concerned if we all see the country as packed full of violent nutters who could care less about parents of shooting victims?”
The “America” you’re talking about doesn’t get out much and doesn’t care. By their definition life can’t be any better than in the US. They also aren’t going to hear what others in the world think because the corporate US “news” media controls most of the information and they aren’t going to pass that along. Self reflection and remorse are bad for ratings.
They live in their towns with evangelical churches and strip malls and live lives steeped in fear, ignorance and violence. Their main concern is getting home after feeling oppressed at work to take little Bobby to little league or catch the latest American Idol. They keep busy to “get ahead” so there is no time for introspection anyway.
They think you live in a country of communists that want to take control via forcing the US to cave into the UN and they hang onto their guns for the coming fight. They know all about the black helicopters.
Confront them to try to get some small bit of awareness from them and they push back with nationalistic jingoism. They won’t rest until they bring the US brand of freedom to the whole world – no matter how many children and other innocents get killed in the process. They’re comfortable with how the Iraq war went.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSssrirbaAE
USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!
USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!
I doubt it, since we get our way more often. Bush’s Poodle and all that.
For myself, I don’t care what the rest of the world thinks either. The second amendment is out of control. I can come to that conclusion alone.
Well, I’m angry and I’m altogether pissed. I’ve called my 2 GOP Senators twice in the last week and today their staff’s didn’t answer. Everything went straight to voice mail. Each of them is gonna hear from me tomorrow, as well as those 4 Dems who voted to uphold the filibuster. I’m also calling Harry Reid’s office and ask how he feels about his earlier refusal to do anything substantive about the filibuster rules.
Then I’m going to go to my State Democratic Party facebook page and start pushing for them to find a viable candidate to run for Chambliss’s seat, as well as find someone to run against my tea party Congressman. I’m not letting the gun lobby and the GOP win this war.
Awesome! You can do this. Ask your friends to help you.
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