Effort isn't over, says President Obama; GOP maneuver on anti-gun violence bill condemned

President Obama tells the American people that we can still bring about meaningful changes that reduce gun violence. Speak out, says White House, as shocked Newtown families express disbelief at Republican filibuster.

GOP Blocks Background-Check Bill from Vote; Bill Has Majority Support

Update: Obama’s Fury over Failure of the Background Check Bill in Seven Lines

Anti-massacre bill scuttled in its entirety, as President Obama rails against a shameful day

"A woman in the Senate gallery shouted "shame on you" at the members below, but she, like the Newtown families, Gabrielle Giffords, and 90% of the country were ignored, " writes Steve Bennen.

The weakened and modest background check bill was defeated with the minority of 46 senators defeating a majority of 54 senators on a vote in the U.S. Senate on the Manchin-Toomey compromise amendment.

A typical day in the world's greatest deliberative body in the world's greatest democracy. "The good news? Our political system is still way better than North Korea’s," writes Jonathan Chait.

The American people and American families enjoy the status of  irrelevance when it comes to the machinations of the Republican Party.

"I’m going to speak plainly and honest about what’s happened here. Because the American people are trying to figure out how can something have 90% support and yet not happen, " said President Obama in an angry address.

"They (the GOP) need to be ashamed of themselves," Ms. Patricia Maisch (survivor of the mass shooting in Tucson) said as she was being escorted from the Capitol. "They have no souls. They have no compassion."

In Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin voted for letting the popular initiative come to a vote; Sen. Ron Johnson voted to block it.

Sen. Ron Johnson Should See This—Newtown Mother Speaks to Nation in Weekly Presidential Address

Madison's Police Chief Couper (ret) on Newtown

A.J. Muste [1885-1967]

Strongly recommend reading David Couper's thoughts.

Intro:

"I have restrained myself from commenting on the Newtown tragedy until I have had some time to listen and think. And what has come into my mind in my life experiences as both police officer, sociologist and pastor is a number of thoughts and images(.)"

I think Couper's contributions to spreading love over his career, what I read as radical pacifism, into the world will live on, perhaps unparalleled from law enforcement. The relevancy to Newtown is obvious.

But peace seems alien to our political culture.

I do not see, virtually anywhere outside of the narrow sphere of progressive writers, the accusation that GOP politicians are engaging in a massive deception sustained by hate. Plenty of examples in Wisconsin. Lies and hate lead to tragedy.

Commitment to truth seems alien to our political culture.

Next April, we have a state Supreme Court race coming up, a race for the top appellate court that above all ought to decide what the law is, without regard to the station of any litigant.

Fidelity to the rule of law, and a candid job description of what a supreme court justice ought to be have been virtually absent from Wisconsin's supreme court races, with two recent exceptions.

We have an opening for peace, truth and the rule of law becoming part of our politics, perhaps given a push by the sickness.

America's Teachers—Makers, Not Takers

Americans come together to oppose
Gov. Scott Walker and the Koch brothers
 - March 12, Madison, Wisconsin [Photo: Leon]

Make that heroes, teachers are heroes.

Paul Ryan, Scott Walker (and Mitt Romney as well) and the rightwing stand mute as their political glory, flying under the banners of liberty, the NRA, ALEC/Koch brothers/Bradley and the Tea Party, now aim to silently rig our democracy, or be doomed as a political force.

Maybe they're quiet because they know they went a little too far in demonizing those who called for peace and the common good as unAmerican the last 20 years.

Now, check out the BradBlog to see the shooting gallery America has become.

As the LGBTQ Americans fight for rights, the blacks and browns fight for their right to vote, women fight for their rights to choose, and a major political party—the Republican Party and its sick ally, the Tea Party—pile on the hate to their diminishing white majority, to the point of demonizing even teachers, there are consequences.

Of course, James Dobson blames marriage equality, civil rights and a woman's rights to choose as the causes of the massacre of children.

Horrifying acts are the "consequences," in Dobson's world as Americans unwisely stand up for each others' rights.

The GOP continues demonizing the other, while glorifying guns and the Volk common man, the real Americans; so the religious right points to disfavored human beings, less-than human in the eyes of its chosen metaphysical power looking over the 'real America'.

Check this guy out at the 07:09 mark in this linked video from western Pennsylvania extolling the American volk during the 2008 presidential campaign:

"It's the common man. It's the common man. He's (Obama) never lived the life. He's grown up in cities in his own entire life. This is country. This is God's country. He's never seen it. He can't relate with us. We're the back-bone of this country; we hard-working, blue-collar workers that keep this country running. He talks like he know us; he doesn't know us."

Most of these idiots are not organized. The SPLC does keep taps of the ones who are organized. Check out the Google ad above you might see; might read asking the reader if she wishes to secede from the Union, at Liberty.com. [See also G. Pascal Zachary's The Will to Secede in In These Times]

The point here is that by demonizing teachers, demonizing anyone for political purposes, hateful disease-filled minds will act.

We ought to endlessly remind ourselves of the words of Ralph McGill: "It is an old, old story. It is one repeated over and over again in history. When the wolves of hate are loosed on one people, then no one is safe." (Atlanta Constitution, Oct. 13, 1958)

The next time the GOP provides itself as a ready vehicle to relay hate; to inflict its "toxic brand of political fundamentalism -- heartless and historically unprecedented," as Paul Fanlund points out, -- it ought to consider that dividing Americans and stoking hate among people will sow a harvest.

Solidarity, community and free association have always been the better route. Even Ronald Reagan acclaimed the importance of, "... restoring one of the most elemental human rights—the right to belong to a free trade union."

Solidarity, human rights, community and unions—the opposite of paranoid, delusional mad dog minds who must be stopped.

Obama: We will have to change

President Obama at vigil, Sunday night

“Newtown, you are not alone”

Grew up on WW II movies.

Recall parents telling us how—imperfectly but with common effort—people joined the war effort against the fascists.

Dramatization, rhetoric and culture matter.

A couple of old quotes follow; and some of President Obama's words tonight. Think they matter.

Sometimes you need the help of other people ... more than anything else ... but you have to let them get close enough to help.
- I don't want any help.
I found when I was deeply troubled ... that I needed people very badly. People want to be needed. I found that out, too.
(Lewis Gilbert, Sink the Bismarck, 1960)

Anything can happen in a war. Slap in the middle of absolute insanity people pull out the most extraordinary resources: ingenuity, courage, self-sacrifice. Pity we can't meet the problems of peace in the same way, isn't it?
(J. Lee Thompson, Guns of Navarone, 1961)

On caring for our children

“It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right,” Obama said, asking: “Can we truly say, as a nation, that we are meeting our obligations? Can we honestly say that we are doing enough to keep our children — all of them — safe from harm?”

Mr. Obama asked whether the nation is doing enough to give all children a chance at a good life with “happiness and with purpose.” “If we are honest with ourselves, the answer is no,” he said. “We are not doing enough, and we will have to change.” (Landler, Baker. NYT)

On Guns, Hate and Fear—The Common Effort

National rally for peace; D.C., October 2003

Update: I recommend Richard Falk's column on the massacre, as typical an analysis springing from reason and empathy. Writes Falk: "No amount of tears, however genuine, can make our children and citizens safer in the future, and even gestures of gun control seem likely, if treated as solutions rather than palliatives, are likely to be no more than a spit in a national ocean of sanctioned violence." 
---
I know many people who own guns.

And I can guarantee to a moral certainty none of these people would cause harm in the course of firing guns.

Had a spirited conversation in 2008 with a friend who advocates a complete ban on guns in America.

Still, I believe such policy is wrong.

One problem with gun control is the lack of an accompanying discussion of criminal sanctions. Do we really want to make criminals out of people who own guns?

No.

The answer to the mindless menace of violence—including especially the prison-industrial complex—is to organize a society based upon rights, love and peace.

Not exactly a new idea, but one that American politics systemically suppresses—attempts to think and imagine are seen as needed to be stricken from discourse as 'socialist,' 'European,' 'radical,' any term connoting something alien and scary.

Hate and dehumanization have consequences. In the words of RFK:

I have saved this one opportunity to speak briefly to you about this mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by his assassin's bullet. ... We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort.

We learn to share only a common fear - only a common desire to retreat from each other - only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force.

But we can perhaps remember - even if only for a time - that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek - as we do - nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

- RFK, April 5, 1968