Tom Diaz

Archive for May, 2014|Monthly archive page

The Beatification of Saint Rahm Emanuel the Sometime Fierce Defender of the Innocent (When It Suits Him)

In bad manners, Bushmaster assault rifle, Concealed Carry, Ethics in Washington, Expendable Youth, Glock, Glock Semiautomatic pistols, Guns, Ignorance of History, Mexico, NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION, Obama, politics, Running Fire Fight, Semiautomatic assault rifles, The Great Stupid, The So-called "News Media", Washington Bureaucracy on May 30, 2014 at 4:49 pm
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In Nomine Gloria Mundi

 

Behold!

And so, it has begun, my children.

Midst thunder of drum and blast of  trumpet, the earthly corpus of Rahm Emanuel–political hit man, career politician, erstwhile firm plug athwart progress in the gun control pipeline–is being elevated while yet breathing to the Glorious Pantheon of Saints of the Gun Control Movement.

Behold!

Blessed by The Highest Priests and Priestesses of The Movement, Emanuel is raised up to Glory, swathed in Blinding Raiment of Mindless Adoration of the Fervidly Forgetful. Look away! Look away, sinner!

Hosanna! Hosanna in the Highest!

O, tremble ye Foundation Babies, for, yea verily, the slightest deviation in expression of True Belief and Adoration for He Who Dwells Among the Saints will dry up the honey from the rock. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth among the lepers of the Unfunded Great Ideas and the Deserving Grants Denied. Sing for your supper, O Babies, sing Hosanna, Hosanna!

As in the case of some select few before him–whom we could name, and yea might yet, but choose not to for the bye–the inconvenient facts of his past Blasphemous Trashing of Gun Control and Gun Control Activists shall be expunged, erased, sent down to the Eternal Fires of the Memory Hole.

Forgive him, for he has sinned most grievously.

Or not, as is your wont.

I personally choose not to. But, then, I can afford to. Now.

Rahm_Emanuel_Oval_Office_Barack_ObamaHere are the facts, as reported then by an ever-vigilant news media (not so much now, however):

This spring, President Obama promised Mexican President Felipe Calderon that he would work to deter gunrunning south of the border. Behind the scenes, White House officials were putting the brakes on a proposal to require gun dealers to report bulk sales of the high-powered semiautomatic rifles favored by drug cartels.

Justice Department officials had asked for White House approval to require thousands of gun dealers along the border to report the purchases to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. ATF investigators expected to get leads on suspected arms traffickers.

Senior law enforcement sources said the proposal from the ATF was held up by the White House in early summer. The sources, who asked to be anonymous because they were discussing internal deliberations, said that the effort was shelved by then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, a veteran of battles with the gun lobby during the Clinton administration.

The plan – which officials knew would be strongly opposed by the National Rifle Association – was perceived as too volatile just before midterm elections, the sources said.

Sari Horwitz and James V. Grimaldi, “White House delayed rule on guns to Mexico,” The Washington Post, December 18, 2010.

The Hill (8/26, Cusack, 21K) reports, “Gun-control supporters are expressing frustration with the White House and the Democratic-controlled Congress for not standing up to groups like the National Rifle Association.” Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), who “succeeded now White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in the lower chamber, told The Hill, ‘I can’t even get a hearing [on gun control issues].'” Quigley added, “I’m not blaming the Republicans. I’m blaming [Democratic] leadership and the administration.” The Hill adds the “gun-control community is among several factions on the left that are upset with the White House and Democratic leaders in Congress.”

“Gun Control Backers Frustrated With Democratic Leaders,” The Frontrunner, August 27, 2010.

In the past, national political leaders might have raised troubling questions about how such an unstable character could obtain easy access to high-powered weapons. They might have been even more motivated given that Poplawski’s cop-killing spree was part of a near epidemic of mass homicides that have left 58 people dead over the past month. Or given that Mexico’s insanely violent drug cartels are arming themselves with high-powered assault weapons purchased at U.S. gun stores and later smuggled south of the border. Yet many past champions of stricter gun-control measures are silent. These include top Obama White House officials who have squelched any talk within the administration about pushing further gun-control measures. “It’s weird,” says Peter Hamm, the communications director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “When you see people like [Attorney General] Eric Holder or Hillary Clinton or [White House chief of staff] Rahm Emanuel become muted on this issue, you feel like you want to call up a friend and say, ‘What’s up?’ ”

But Obama and top White House aides have all but abandoned the issue. Emanuel helped orchestrate passage of the original assault-weapons ban when he worked in the Clinton White House. Now he and other White House strategists have decided they can’t afford to tangle with the National Rifle Association at a time when they’re pushing other priorities, like economic renewal and health-care reform, say congressional officials who have raised the matter.

The word didn’t get through to everyone in the administration, resulting in mixed messages–and blowback from the NRA. In February, Holder called for restoring the federal ban on assault guns to help curb the flow of weapons to the Mexican cartels…Within days, White House aides instructed Justice officials to stop talking about the assault-weapons issue, according to congressional and administration officials who asked not to be identified because of political sensitivities.

Michael Isikoff and Suzanne Smalley, “Obama Gets Gun-Shy; Despite a recent spate of killings, the president and fellow Democrats choose not to wage war on assault weapons,” Newsweek, April 20, 2009.

The Democratic Party, a slow learner but educable, has dropped the subject of gun control and welcomed candidates opposed to parts or even all of the abortion rights agenda. This vindicates the candidate recruitment by Rep. Rahm Emanuel and Sen. Chuck Schumer, chairmen of the Democratic House and Senate campaign committees, respectively.

John H. Fund, “Elbow Rahm,” The American Spectator, December 2008 – January 2009.

And so, my little puppy-eyed ones, this is how you have been betrayed in Washington. Over and over and over again.  The career politicians, you see, know how to get themselves re-elected…in order that they can…get re-elected again.

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Now that St. Rahm is mayor of Chicago, he is all about some goofy idea to video-tape gun sales. When he could have been a force, he was not. And now, he is just pathetic.

rahm1O, ye of too much faith, trust me, there is much unknown and unspoken deep beneath these waters. The unknown knowns, so to speak. And there are many in Washington, Chicago, California, New York, yea, “all over this land,” who know this truth. But they dare not call it what it is. They have mortgages, too.

I shall perhaps return of a sunny day to the political dynamics emanating with awesome wind power from Chicago that underlie the amazing grace Emanuel enjoys among the foundation babies and nubbins who effect to be advocates for gun control, or “common sense gun safety measures” as they prefer to call it.

EllenAlberdingCouncilOnFoundations

Hint: Present at the Creation

 

 

 

 

 

▶ Comment

Flowers Are Not Gun Control, Lotus Eaters

In Guns, NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION, Running Fire Fight, The Great Stupid, The So-called "News Media" on May 25, 2014 at 10:36 pm

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I keep promising to let this issue go.

I so hate it with every fiber of my being.

Then another atrocity “shocks” America—really, you’re “shocked” again?—and the vapidly saccharine Facebook posts, the wise pundit chin-pulling, and the political navel lint fumbling starts up again. The morbid stupidity of it all lights my dwindling fire.
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It’s the guns, stupid.

I don’t know what most people who own guns do or want to do with them. I don’t really care.

I am sick of these self-righteous, self-justifying, gun-obsessed people. I am sick of their pathetic twaddle, which the relentless facts in America make increasingly absurd.

But, I am mostly, deeply, feverishly sick of all of the other Americans—all the noncombatants who vastly outnumber the gun nuts, but who only whine and wring their hands, and still won’t and don’t do one damned thing about it, until the specter of Gun Death touches them.

Then they ask questions that have been here for decades with stunningly obvious answers: When will it end? What can we do? What should we do?

I am sick of…you.

Just as I condemn cell-phoning and texting drivers as recklessly inchoate killers, so do I hold you in contempt. You are the ultimate shame of America.

Your passivity stands in contempt of the priceless life that you pretend to love in the stream of cute puppy dog and kitty cat pictures you post on “social media.”

Your inertia, your sickeningly passive reaction and your cloying sentiments—devoid of firm action—stand in contempt of the Creator and all that is good, whatever your creed.AR-140529706.jpg&maxW=640&maxH=480

I am sick of “ordinary” people, politicians, and journalists who “parachute in” to become instant experts. Yes, yes, they know or they can quickly find some answer other than the guns, which the problem is so obviously not. They are clever and they write well and they have “access” to the deepest thinkers. I am just as sick of those who plea ignorance. They just don’t know anything about guns. So what can they do?

What you, and they, and I—we—do know beyond the shadow of a doubt and to a moral certainty is that the United States of America is the only advanced country in the world in which literally anyone can go literally anywhere and kill lots of innocent people with a gun. Yes, it may happen occasionally in, say, Belgium.  But here, it happens over and over and over and over again. Weekly…bi-weekly.  Who cares?
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Why?

Why are you accepting this, you pathetic Lotus Eaters? Is it too tiring to get up off of your couches? Do you really not love your family and friends?

Let us give the well-paid professional liars at the NRA the benefit of the doubt and assume that the NRA has about 4 million members. This represents, at best, about one (1) percent of the 314 million people counted as Americans in 2012. One ‪percent!

You…yes, you, not the anonymous “they”… you are being led around by the nose by what? By a claque of fanatical nitwits. And yet, not only do you affect to be baffled and helpless, you allow your elected representatives to pretend to be powerless.

You, after all, are not a “single issue” person. And there’s so much other stuff on which you can squander your precious time, attention, and money. Like posting cute little kitty cat pictures.cj-starbucks

Again, giving gun ownership figures the benefit of the doubt, and placing them at about 70 million, gun owners represent at best about 22 percent of the population. Even if, even if in the face of our continuing slaughter, every single gun owner in America were adamantly against gun regulation—and let’s call it what it should be, gun control—the vast, vast majority of Americans who don’t own guns but who are just sitting around pulling lint out of their bellies while the slaughter goes on have no complaint.

So, unless you have shouldered your share of the burden and are doing something real, “folks,” please just STF up. open-carry-tools

Please have the decency to keep your pious mewling to yourself until it’s your turn to hold a media conference and blubber for the cameras about someone close to you.

Just keep on silently spinning spin the roulette wheel until it’s your child, your wife, your husband, your mother, your father, or your friend who gets killed with a gun.

As a famous Roman once said, I wash my hands of it.

Teddy bears, stacks of flowers, and tearful speeches are not a gun control policy.

And if you have no policy, sooner or later you get what you deserve, Sheeple.

 

 

 

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