Tag: gutless

Piers Morgan addresses our gutless fake president

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This is the end of his article:

❝ These mass shootings have to stop, and the best way to start the process is to stop those committing them from being able to buy their tools of their terror.

So it’s time you grew a pair President Trump, stand up to the NRA and do what REALLY needs to be done.

❝ As you said today, you banned bump fire stock after the Las Vegas massacre.

Now you must go much further.

That means a ban on assault weapons, a ban on high-capacity magazines, and the introduction of mandatory background checks on all gun purchases.

❝ Do it now, or stand condemned as a coward.

And here’s the link to the beginning.

SCOTUS hides from civil rights — refuses to rule on gay marriage

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The Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for an immediate expansion of same-sex marriage by unexpectedly and tersely turning away appeals from five states seeking to prohibit gay and lesbian unions. The court’s order effectively makes gay marriage legal now in 30 states.

Without comment, the justices brought to an end delays in same-sex marriages in five states- Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin…

Couples in six other states – Colorado, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming – should be able to get married in short order. Those states would be bound by the same appellate rulings that were put on hold pending the Supreme Court’s review.

Evan Wolfson, president of Freedom to Marry, called on the high court to “finish the job.” Wolfson said the court’s “delay in affirming the freedom to marry nationwide prolongs the patchwork of state-to-state discrimination and the harms and indignity that the denial of marriage still inflicts on too many couples in too many places.”

Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, an opponent of same-sex marriage, said blah, blah, blah!

James Esseks of the American Civil Liberties Union said he believes the court will quickly take up a case if an appeals court upholds state bans.

It takes just four of the nine justices to vote to hear a case, but it takes a majority of at least five for an eventual ruling. Monday’s opaque order did not indicate how the justices voted on whether to hear the appeals.

Most important, the SCOTUS non-ruling lets all the Circuit rulings overturning homophobic state law stand – and extends it automatically to the other states within each circuit. Otherwise, the Supreme Court is as adept as Congress or the White House at avoiding the demonstration of leadership on any critical question.

We are an obedient nation led by cowards.

Independent review says NSA program is illegal and should end

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An independent executive branch board has concluded that the National Security Agency’s long-running program to collect billions of Americans’ phone records is illegal and should end.

In a strongly worded report to be issued today, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board said that the statute upon which the program was based, Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, “does not provide an adequate basis to support this program…”

The board’s conclusion goes further than President Obama…The board had shared its conclusions with Obama in the days leading up to his speech…

The divided panel also concluded that the program raises serious threats to civil liberties, has shown limited value in countering terrorism and is not sustainable from a policy perspective.

“We have not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which the telephone records program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation,” said the report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. “Moreover, we are aware of no instance in which the program directly contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist attack.”

The politicians and pundits who say otherwise are liars, egregious and gutless, fools dedicated to Cold War ideology.

RTFA for beaucoup details, analysis – albeit as stodgy as expected.

From Obama to Mike Rogers, the conformity of cowards who prefer Overlords to oversight, continues as freely under John Brennan as it did in the CIA under Allen Dulles. From liberals to anal retentive conservatives, allegiance to anything-but-liberty is their only solution to the fear ruling their political lives as thoroughly as their dedication to corporate wealth.

Republican economist says GOP caused the economic collapse

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David Stockman, who was a young right-wing Congressman, back in the 1970’s and then served as Ronald Reagan’s OMB director, explains that the entire economic mess that the United States is in today is the fault of his party, the GOP.

Stockman…says he was more right than he ever could have imagined thirty years ago. The GOP — under Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and two Bushes — destroyed the economy. Maybe forever.

Stockman points to…the extraordinary growth of our public debt. In 1970 it was just 40 percent of gross domestic product, or about $425 billion. When it reaches $18 trillion, it will be 40 times greater than in 1970. This debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.

In 1981, traditional Republicans supported tax cuts, matched by spending cuts, to offset the way inflation was pushing many taxpayers into higher brackets and to spur investment. The Reagan administration’s hastily prepared fiscal blueprint, however, was no match for the primordial forces — the welfare state and the warfare state — that drive the federal spending machine.

Soon, the neocons were pushing the military budget skyward. And the Republicans on Capitol Hill who were supposed to cut spending exempted from the knife most of the domestic budget — entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects. But in the end it was a new cadre of ideological tax-cutters who killed the Republicans’ fiscal religion.

President Obama inherited the mess left by the GOP and its bluedog Democratic buddies. But, I have to say, that he helped undermine his own Presidency,and ended any chance for a serious change in course, by not allowing Congressional liberals expose what the GOP did. I suppose the Democrats were afraid that names like Chuck Schumer – who did his own part to undo the economy through his slavish devotion to Wall Street – might come up so the Democrats decided to let bygones be bygones.

Republicans plus the truly gutless Blue Dog Democrats are building a legacy. Future generations will get to pick up the tab.

Obama brought us a lot of change on individual issues, workplace issues, equal opportunity issues – involving women – even if he’s a wimp on LGBT civil rights. He’s not had the integrity to challenge his own party to change the way they do business.

And the Democrats haven’t had the backbone to step away from business as usual in Congress and foreign policy. Israel, the Pentagon, the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower decided to challenge before he left office – in 1961 – still rule. No one in the hallowed American middle-of-the-road paid any attention.

Result? Our nation is solidly on the way to becoming second-rate.