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“There were no coherent arguments as to why we wouldn't do this – it came down to politics,” Obama said.
Vowing to find ways to go around congress to impose greater gun control, Obama took special aim at those in the gun lobby who had criticised participation in the debate by the Sandy Hook victim families, and their facilitation by the White House.
“Are they serious?” he said. “Do we really think that thousands of families whose lives have been shattered by gun violence do not have a right to weigh in?”
A Connecticut Democrat Senator who has been working with the victim families, Richard Blumenthal, said after the Senate rout: “The world is watching the United States – and we will be held accountable.”
Excuse me, next time the US struts the world stage, claiming American exceptionalism, setting itself out as leader of the so-called free world, it risks being dismissed as a nation of idiots. It's too easy to defer to strong polling support for gun control and to just vent about the Senate and the House – after all, who elects them?
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/gutless-senate-bows-to-lobby-not-argument-20130418-2i21p.html#ixzz2QrKw9kVu
- By Gus Leonisky at 19 Apr 2013 - 9:08am
- Gus Leonisky's blog
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A sane man's contempt...
What is left to say?
A sane man's contempt for the United States Senate must now be certain and complete. Given the inertia on even the most modest legislative response to the mass murder of schoolchildren, those still credulous enough to believe that our governance is representative of popular will are either Barnum-sized suckers, or worse, tacit participants in tragedies soon to come. An entrenched collection of careerist incumbents, chosen and retained through their singular ability to gather cash from money troughs over six-year intervals – and the unrestrained ability of capital to keep those troughs constantly full – none of this is worthy of any intelligent citizen's respect or allegiance.
Never mind that the higher house of our bicameral farce is one in which 40% of the American population choses 60% of the representation; that millions of New Yorker or Texans, say, are represented and served to the same degree as thousands of Montanans. And never mind that the lower house has now been gerrymandered to a point where a majority of American votes are guaranteed to achieve a minority of the representation – ignore, for the sake of argument, the ridiculous and antiquated structural impediments to popular will ever achieving a popular outcome. Don't worry that mess. Just focus on the fucking money.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/18/senate-gun-control-fail-david-simon