Showing posts with label Congress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Congress. Show all posts

25 July, 2015

Obama Late to the Party on Gun-Control ?


Here's Piers Morgan on Barack Obama's 'frustration' with his failure to pass 'sufficient common-sense gun-safety-laws.'
Well, I just think it's too little, too late.  Y'know, the president's been in office now, er nearly eight years; He's had plenty of time to prioritise gun-violence in America, and it's only very recently that we've heard him talk this way.
Really ?  Seems to me that the president has been out there time and time again, after one mass shooting after another, decrying gun-violence, and urging Congress to work with him across party-lines, only for the Republicans (and some Democrats) in Congress to consistently block any efforts at gun-control.

But, perhaps not quite, memory being what it is after all.  Looking over a review the Guardian did on Obama's responses to mass-shooting on his watch, tells a slightly different story, with Obama only really pushing for action in the last two or three years.  So Piers may have a point after all.



As for what it will take for actual meaningful change in US gun-laws ?  Well probably a complete sweep of the Congress for one, on such a scale, that will only come about when the underlying culture changes.  And can we hope for such change as the millennials take over ?  Well...don't count on it.


Here's one more poll-result, I just have to include because it's so utterly bonkers.


Story after story in the media of gun-owners accidentally shooting themselves or their loved ones, of children accessing guns and blowing their brains out.  Never mind the increased risk of suicide.  But Americans actually believe having a gun in the house increases their safety.  This is the kind of crazy that decades of propaganda from the NRA has wrought, and with which Barack Obama has to battle.

24 April, 2015

Press-release on TPP Fast-track Deal

Via Gaius Publius, more information on the fast-track deal for TPP (and other trade-deals ?) currently being rushed through Congress, from individuals far better informed and less sweary than myself: https://www.citizen.org/documents/press-release-fast-track-introduced-april-2015.pdf.

I skimmed it myself, but it does amongst other things seems to indicate that this abdication of responsibility by the US Congress on trade-deals could continue at least through the next presidency if not into the one after that, as indicated on her show recently by Rachel Maddow.  Hillary still seems oddly quiet on the whole thing, huh ?

17 April, 2015

Tyranny !

So...how is the Republican-led 114th Congress currently fighting back against the evil tyranny of the Muslim Marxist Kenyan Dictator-in-chief, that libtard Demoncrat Barack Hussein Obama ?  Oh that's right, by not doing their job.

Never mind the usual bullshit of obstructing or holding up Obama's executive nominees, such as with current nominee to be Attorney General, Loretta Lynch whose confirmation has been held up for five months now as Republicans try to tie the confirmation into a variety of completely unrelated issues.

No, I'm talking about things like exercising their constitutionally established powers 'to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations' or 'to declare War.'  With the former, we have TPP, an agreement that would (probably unconstitutionally) restrict the government's ability to regulate international trade and commerce, and for which Barack Obama requested 'fast-track authorization' in which Congress would have no ability to make any changes or amendments to said deal.  And for the latter, we have the ongoing war against ISIS, one of many undeclared and likely illegal wars in which the United States is currently engaged.  A war for which Barack Obama has previously claimed he doesn't need any new authorisation, and yet for which he was eventually cowed into requesting authorisation from Congress.  So, how are we doing ?

What say you Congress on preventing the evil dictator from wresting trade-making decisions away from you ?


Why, no problem at all Mister Obama.  Please take that onerous burden from our hands.
WASHINGTON — Key congressional leaders agreed on Thursday on legislation to give President Obama special authority to finish negotiating one of the world’s largest trade accords, opening a rare battle that aligns the president with Republicans against a broad coalition of Democrats.
In what is sure to be one of the toughest fights of Mr. Obama’s last 19 months in office, the “fast track” bill allowing the White House to pursue its planned Pacific trade deal also heralds a divisive fight within the Democratic Party, one that could spill into the 2016 presidential campaign.
... 
It would give Congress the power to vote on the more encompassing 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership once it is completed, but would deny lawmakers the chance to amend what would be the largest trade deal since the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994, which President Bill Clinton pushed through Congress despite opposition from labor and other Democratic constituencies.

What about war then ?  After all the stink the Republicans in Congress made about the proposed deal with Iran, you'd think there's no chance at all they wouldn't take advantage of Obama handing them on a silver platter a chance to have their say officially on the war with ISIS.




But remember, Obama is a TYRANT !  And it is imperative that you vote Republican in the next elections so that we can TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK !

What a fucking joke.