Republicans - For God's Sake Stop It!

’I’d check the podium for onions’: 

Fox pundit questions Obama’s ‘raw’ emotions

President Barack Obama teared up as he announced his plan to use executive action to expand background checks for gun ownership. However, Fox News host Andrea Tantaros was more interested in theatrics than the substance of his speech.

During the announcement on Tuesday, Obama brusquely brushed away tears as he mentioned Chicago’s gun violence problems as an example of the need for tighter background checks.

However, the Fox panel was not buying it.

“The tears that he wiped away, again and again, you want that – I mean, we feel frightened about what’s going on with ISIS,” said Fox News co-host Melissa Francis.

And you are not frightened that 30 Americans are being killed every day? What is wrong with your heads? Were there 30 Americans killed by terrorists last year, 30 out of 10,000? That's 0.3%! Melissa is frightened of ISIS and completely ambivalent to the 99.7% who are killed in American activities like robbery, murder, and mass murder. Does that make any sense to you?

“He’s almost at the end of his term and you haven’t heard him go to Chicago and really speak out about this issue,” said co-host Andrea Tantaros.

At the end of October, Obama traveled to Chicago to discuss gun control and the importance of extending background checks. Between January 1, 2015 and May 30, 2015, there were 161 murders in 151 days in Chicago and 2,783 illegal guns recovered during that six-month period, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Tantaros said that she would “check that podium for like a raw onion or some No More Tears.”

Andrea, just because you are apparently incapable of feeling any emotions over the murder of children, doesn't mean the everyone else is faking it. If you were half as emotional over the death of innocent children as you are over the non-existent threat of losing your guns, you couldn't have made that crass remark. You ought to be ashamed.

Obama did not appear to be slicing onions on the podium, however. No More Tears is a Johnson & Johnson line of bath products designed to prevent babies from crying if they get soap in their eyes.

Tantaros and Fox News were not the only ones who weren’t impressed with Obama’s plan. A lot of the internet didn't seem to get the message, with presidential candidates, the National Rifle Association and gun owners alike taking to Twitter and getting all “up in arms.”

Ted Cruz ✔ @tedcruz
Fight back against @BarackObama's unconstitutional #2A executive actions! #ComeAndTakeIt https://www.tedcruz.org/l/second-amendment-rights/ … 

Gunning for 'drama-queen' Mr Cruz?

In the wake of Obama’s announcement, gun rights supporters began using the #comeandtakeit hashtag, which has its origins in the Battle of Gonzales in 1835, when Texas was part of Mexico.

Gun sales hit record highs in the lead-up to Obama's announcement, the Washington Post reported. While the gun lobby protests against stricter regulations, people’s fears that their continued ability to purchase such weapons is under threat leads to an upsurge in gun sales.

Tim Dickinson @7im
this is legit terrifying from Ted Cruz, holy hell 

Terrifying? It's terrifying that mentally ill people should be prevented from purchasing assault weapons? What's really terrifying, Mr Dickinson, is that you want them to have access to assault weapons!

Your 'terror' almost certainly comes from the fear that the government is going to take your guns away from you. That is stupid beyond belief! It's a lie that the NRA and gun manufacturers and merchants hype so that you will be opposed to a simple, innocuous executive order that will certainly save the lives of many people, including children. 

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and other Republican presidential candidates promised that, if elected, they would reverse any executive orders.

Carly Fiorina called for Obama to enforce existing gun laws. The former HP CEO has said those on the Terror Watch List should be able to buy guns. “If somebody is a suspected terrorist on a watch list, they can be indicted at any time, and once you’re indicted, you cannot own a firearm,” she told MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ following the San Bernardino attack.

NRA ✔ @NRA
No other organization in the world has done more to promote firearm safety than the  #NRA #2A  #Obamapresser
9:10 AM - 5 Jan 2016

If that's not the most ridiculous statement ever made on the planet, I don't know what is. Tell me you were not behind the Dickey Amendment that prevents the federal government from funding research into gun violence in America! How is that promoting safety? How is opposing an order to qualify all gun purchasers promoting safety. The blood of hundreds of thousands of Americans is on your hands - you could at least try to wash them once in a while.

The National Rifle Association boasted about its good work. The NRA's Chris W. Cox released a statement on Tuesday accusing Obama of attempting "to distract attention away from his lack of a coherent strategy to keep the American people safe from terrorist attack."

Paul Ryan ✔ @SpeakerRyan
My statement on President Obama's Executive Order to Undermine Second Amendment → http://spkrryan.us/1Sxzn1k  #2A 

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) issued a statement saying that Obama's word does not trump the Second Amendment.

I take it back; this could be the stupidest statement ever made on this planet. Background checks are mandatory in most gun purchases now; how is extending that to all gun purchases any different? If the existing policy of background checks does not undermine the 2nd Amendment, how can extending it do that? That's completely irrational!

There have been 147 gun-related deaths in the US in the first five days of 2016. None of them were committed by terrorists! Americans need to stop worrying about militant Islam and start worrying about the terrorist who lives on your street, the one who will walk into a school this month or next month and murder your children. That is a far, far more likely event than any serious Muslim attack.

America will never be defeated by Islam through any military assault. Islam is patient. Islam is watching America destroy itself from within. Islam will wait until America explodes in insane violence and then just walk in and take it.

The arguments made by 'outraged' Republicans are hyperbolic, inflammatory, and often have nothing to do with the executive order. Too many Republicans cannot bring themselves to speak the truth - they are political cowards; dishonest, disingenuous cowards. And most of these people will call themselves Christians. There is nothing remotely Christian in any of the quotes above; so please stop selling yourselves as such. You are not Christians, and you make me sick!

The Hyperbolic Media in America is Thoroughly Dishonest

Ted Cruz mercilessly skewered by Seth Meyers 

in amazing late-night interview

Please understand that I am neither Republican nor Democrat, I am not a Ted Cruz fan nor am I a Cruz detractor. My motivation, as it usually is, is to identify what is true, which is not something one can take for granted when watching media reports these days. Hyperbole reigns supreme in the media, especially since the advent of the internet where there is so much competition for attention.

In my own blog posts, I look for more emphatic headlines, otherwise no-one will read my blog. But I have a problem - I am hindered by scruples from headlining something that is not supported in the blog post. Salon.com is not, apparently, so encumbered. For that matter, Zergnet.com and Time.com, which linked to the Salon page, don't seem overly concerned about honesty in headlining either.

Please watch the "skewering" and then we will examine what you just watched.

COLIN GORENSTEIN, Salon

In surprisingly testy interview, late night host grills GOP senator on video of him scaring a 3-year-old girl 

Ted Cruz and Seth Meyers on "Late Night with Seth Meyers" (Credit: NBC)

Last Monday, a video went viral of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) yelling at a child at a New Hampshire speech that the world was on fire. The 3-year-old, who appeared to be in the arms of her mother at the time, asked aloud “The world is on fire?!” To which, the senator responded with urgency, “Yes! Your world is on fire!”

Would you seriously consider that "yelling"? If you do your spouse must walk around on egg-shells all day.

Turns out, Cruz’s account of that whole debacle was a bit different. A bit different from what? He joined Seth Meyers — a New Hampshire native, incidentally — on “Late Night” Tuesday to set the record straight.

“In the last 24 hours there have been 50 media stories that say ‘Cruz terrifies little girl’ and by the end of it I was Freddy Krueger and had the finger nails — I mean it was terrible,” Cruz said.

“Now the funny thing is, it’s not true,” Cruz continued. He paraphrased a conversation he had with the daughter’s mother after the fact who, in Cruz’s words, was “so upset” by all these stories. Especially since her daughter didn’t seem to be shaken by the encounter with the finger-wagging Republican. “My daughter was incredibly happy,” he recalls her saying.

The video clip cuts off after Cruz says to the little girl, "Yes, your world is on fire." Consequently, it did not show Cruz's next statement to the girl that, "your Mommy and I are going to put that fire out." Whereupon the girl decided that Cruz was a fireman and the world was not lost.

Meyers quipped that he thought with all the “world is on fire” talk that Cruz might be finally coming around on the topic of global warming. Nope. Cruz, we learn, is still a firm nonbeliever.

The definition of 'skewered' is to 'criticize sharply or ridicule'. Did you hear Seth Meyers ridicule or sharply criticize Cruz? If you did, please let me know where in the video it is because I missed it.

Cruz's position on global warming is a discussion for another day, but Meyers in no way ridiculed him for it. He gave him the opportunity to ridicule himself which he fully took advantage of, but it was his doing not Meyers'. 

So, in summary, I saw nothing that could be described as 'merciless', or 'skewering', or 'testy', nor did I find the interview the least bit 'amazing'. It was entertaining. Meyers was quite humorous, quick-witted, and good-natured. But the media headlines were completely dishonest and completely lacking in journalistic integrity. Such reporting does nothing to improve the near hysterical bi-partisanship in American politics these days.