Republican, Louie Gohmert, in reply to Democratic calls for the banning of certain weapons of war asked the question, “Don’t you think we have hearts?”
No Louie. You have no hearts, no brains, no integrity, no truth, no honesty and no morals. Otherwise, the GOP is fine.
*****
This Sunday on This Week, I saw something I never thought I’d see. Democratic strategist Donna Brazile dressed down Chris Christie in public and showed how one of the most intelligent Republicans can abandon seemingly all claim to integrity in order to protect an indefensible position that has been adopted by his scurrilous party mates.
Donna came at Chis from a moral perspective, a position almost completely foreign to Christie. He understands morals but it seems, he also has the need to protect a party filled with men like Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan, Kevin McNally, Matt Gaetz and of course, Donald Trump, who have no interest in morality as long as they get what they want. In this case it’s keeping guns in the hands of fools who have neither the practical skill with the weapons nor the intellectual stability to control their actions with them.
Donna continued to drive home the immorality of the GOP gun position, along with the imbalance of trying to equate the right to own a gun to the right to live in a safe society, while Chris stumbled and stuttered, trying to interrupt or silence her. Despite Christie’s worst efforts, Braile was an out-of-control freight train that rolled over him as I have never seen him mauled. I’ve always liked Chris but maybe this time he got what he deserved.
*****
The point was legitimately also made on This Week, that for some inexplicable reason, people don’t vote on gun issues. This is incontrovertible, but it is hard to absorb and it is why I have continually lumped voting on gun control with voting on abortion, universal health care, education, prescription drug policy, immigration and any number of other issues that confront the American people.
The fact is, most issues that help the average American are mysteriously missing from any GOP legislation. They would also be missing from any GOP plan if the Republicans ever developed any kind of plan to run this country. The fact is that during the four years of the Trump administration nothing got done by the Republican congress except a bill to help major corporations and the very rich. The first thing that Biden did upon entering the Oval Office was, with the help of congress, pass a bill to help families that had been financially hit by the COVID plague and also pass an infrastructure bill that created jobs. Both of these have knocked the unemployment rate down to around 3%, an unheard of number under any GOP government.
*****
The biggest problem facing Biden and the Democrats right now is inflation. The reason why it’s so intractable is that the Republicans have recognized it as an election must and are shouting it to the hills while they are doing everything in their power to keep Biden from getting anything done about it. The reality is that inflation is a result of a surging economy. Sure, we never had any inflation during the Trump years. That’s because no one was making a decent living. Inflation is caused by people making more money so they have extra money to spend, causing them to buy more and thereby encouraging sellers to raise prices.
Sure, gas prices are too high but that’s only because American’s have more money to spend on gas. If we suddenly had a market crash and 5% of Americans lost their jobs and had no money for gas, you’d see those prices drop like rocks. Does anyone think that’s better for the country?
Sky high gas prices are the direct result of an industry that is poisoning the planet making one last stab at inflating their already egregious profits with, as always, no consideration for the damage they are doing to our health, our planet or our pocketbooks. For well over a century and a half the fossil fuel industry has turned gorgeous landscapes into deserts, poisoned our waterways and oceans, and filled our breathable air with smoke and deadly gasses. Then they started on the atmosphere with no thought or care about what they were doing to the planet we live on or the people who inhabit it. It’s time for Joe Biden to declare a national emergency and proclaim a ceiling on gas prices. It may not hold up in court, but it will take the courts half a year to stop it and make him a hero to the American people and that’s exactly the kind of semi-legitimate move that could just win the mid-term election for the Democrats.
*****
I watched Tom Rice a Republican congressman from South Carolina being interviewed on TV this week. He was one of the ten Republicans that voted to impeach Trump after 1/6. He is a staunch conservative who thinks Liz Cheney, another staunch conservative, would be a great Speaker of the House. He is what old-fashioned politicians consider a worthy opponent because he is a man of intelligence and moral integrity, the antithesis of men like Cruz, Jordan, McCarthy, McConnell and Meadows. He absolutely understands the difference between right and wrong and he is willing to act on that knowledge. He’s the kind of man I believe we need in congress even if 99% of his votes will go against what I believe in.
*****
Anthony Salvanto of CBS news has come up with a series of polls that are both illuminating and depressing regarding the gun controversy. For the first time ever, one the most interesting things they show is that school children list gun violence as among the things they fear most in school. This was for years a list that included bullying, 66%, social pressures,65%, and academic pressures, 61%, but never gun violence, which is now at 57%.
What’s even more unsettling is that 72% of those polled believe we can stop mass shootings if we really try. This pre-supposes that we currently don’t have enough interest in mass shootings to do anything about them. Of course, that opinion is strongly skewed by what party you back. 85% of Democrats, 73% of Independents and only 56% of Republicans believe this, while 44% of Republicans think we just must accept it. That’s, of course because they want the right to carry weapons of war.
We asked why this country has more mass shootings than any other civilized country. The largest opinion is the 54% that believe it’s because we have more available guns. After that comes mental health, violent movies and racial issues, all of which exist in most other countries.
So, what should we do about this? 81% of those polled would look for extensive background checks, 72% would look for stronger red flag laws and 62%, still more than half of all those polled, would ban assault weapons.
Even though most of those polled believed by a large margin that nothing will be done about gun safety, most of them were in favor of some kind of greater
controls.
And then we listen to the likes of Pat Toomey, ® Penn and we hear him brilliantly bullshit around everything, letting us know that nothing will ever be done by the GOP to control gun violence. If we want to protect our kids, we must get Toomey and those other Republicans out of office so they can no longer block votes to control guns.