.
Courage:
TUCSON, Arizona (Reuters) – Former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, returning to the site of the shooting rampage where she was gravely wounded, on Wednesday urged senators to “be courageous” and support background checks for all gun buyers.
Standing just a few feet from where a gunman more than two years ago put a bullet through Giffords’ head and then opened fire on constituents, Giffords and husband Mark Kelly urged Arizona Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake, both Republicans, to support a universal background check system.
“Be bold. Be courageous. Be for background checks,” said Giffords, who is a Democrat. The shooting left her with speech difficulties, a pronounced limp and a partially paralyzed right arm, which she cradled in her left as she spoke. Six people were killed and 13 others wounded in the attack….
In the wake of an assault-rifle attack that left 26 people – including 20 elementary school children – dead at a Newtown, Connecticut, school in December, Giffords and Kelly founded a new group aimed at curbing gun violence and challenging the political clout of the well-funded gun lobby.
The group, Americans for Responsible Solutions, urges actions including a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and seeks to raise $20 million for the 2014 congressional elections, matching the National Rifle Association’s spending in last November’s election….
Dog-whistling, grandstanding gutlessness:
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) pushed back against efforts to limit the availability of assault weapons during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday by echoing the paranoia of the National Rifle Association and insisting that Americans would need access to AR-15s to protect themselves from “roaming gangs” during natural disasters….
GRAHAM: Let me give an example. That you have a lawless environment where you have a natural disaster or some catastrophic event and those things, unfortunately, do happen. And law and order breaks down because the police can’t travel, there’s no communication. And there are armed gangs roaming around neighborhoods. Can you envision a situation where if your home happens to be in the cross-hairs of this group that a better self-defense weapon may be a semiautomatic AR-15 versus a double-barrel shotgun?
HOLDER: I think we’re dealing there with a hypothetical in a world…
GRAHAM: Well, I’m afraid that world does exist. I think it existed in New Orleans, to some exist in Long Island, it could exist tomorrow if there’s a cyber attack against the country and the power grid goes down and the dams are released and chemical plants are discharges…
ThinkProgress has video at the link, if your stomach is strong enough. The only “armed gangs” I remember shooting innocent citizens post-Katrina were police officers, but then, I’m a DFH. Oh, and style points to Graham for conflating the recent scare talk about cyberspying with traditional Amurkin paranoia about Brown Thug Gangs with huge weapons, too also.
eric nny
She’s a hateful little thIng when backed into a corner, isn’t she? I wonder if in 20 years she’ll look back and determine at which point exactly she sold her soul.
eric nny
Ms. Graham, not Ms. Giffords that is…..
Wag
@eric nny:
Thanks for clarifying. The original snark was so obscure as to be invisible.
Patricia Kayden
There were violent gangs roaming around after Hurricane Sandy? Learn something new every day.
/snark
eric nny
@Wag:
My pleasure.
Schlemizel
@eric nny:
Granny Graham will not live another 20 years, old age will take her before that. And no, she is very unlikely to ever recognize the loss of her soul. My guess is the old sociopath will regret only one thing, not having been able to parley all this BS into the job of Senate Majority Leader.
Schlemizel
@Patricia Kayden:
I remember those violent gangs quiet clearly! They were roaming the halls of Congress trying to ensure the maximum amount of pain was suffered by not allowing Federal relief if possible or delaying it for their own amusement.
The Thin Black Duke
@Schlemizel: Well said, sir.
rm
We need to be armed because of Nat Turner. I am serious. White culture stil lives in fear of slave rebellions, and the murders of black refugees by self-appointed white “militia” during Katrina is just one example of it.
Linda Featheringill
@rm:
Absolutely.
I had forgotten Nat Turner but that’s the “threat.”
StarStorm
@eric nny:
@Schlemizel:
Mr. or Grandpa Graham, actually. Sen. Graham is an Old White Dude.
mai naem
The 2014 election cannot come soon enough, if for nothing else, so that I don’t have to listen to Miss Lindsay trying to prove his conservative whackjob manliness.
I feel sorry for Gabby Giffords for the shooting etc. but I am getting a little bit annoyed reading about Giffords’ bravery. She wasn’t all that brave when she was in an elected position where she could make a difference. She’s a Blue Dawg who voted against Pelosi in 2011. And, yeah, she was in a tough purple district, almost always a top GOP targeted seat.
Ben Cisco
Miz Lindsey, she gon’ be mighty perturbed when the Tea Party turns her out after she done lavished all her attentions on them. Madder than a wet hen, she be.
Hill Dweller
Why was Sen. Cruz ranting about the gheys during the Brennan filibuster?
Ben Cisco
@Hill Dweller: In their minds, ranting about the gheys is just like Jell-O – there’s ALWAYS time for it.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@rm:
This. This right here.
Cheryl from Maryland
@StarStorm: Thank you. Female should not be a standard meme for opprobrium.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m getting very tired of all the ham-handed feminizing of Senator Graham. He may or may not be gay, but unless the specific context is his hypocrisy on same-sex equal rights, his own sexuality is and should be irrelevant. There are many reasons to oppose him on most issues, including guns and taxes, and just being a Republican. It doesn’t advance either our arguments or our progressive principles to call him “Granny Graham” or “Miss Lindsey.” And as a woman, I am fucking offended by the constant implications that femaleness is somehow laughable or shameful. Just knock it off, please.
AlladinsLamp
An excellent argument for the use of drones over American soils, Mrs. Graham.
Culture of Truth
Graham also said there were armed gangs roving Long Island after the hurricane, so he needed an AR-15.
NorthLeft12
Senator Graham must have watched “Live Free and Die Hard” recently.
If more bystanders were walking around with AR-15s in that movie I am sure that things would have turned out much better.
Culture of Truth
As I recall, Holder said he didn’t think more people with machine guns was a pressing need in the wake of Katrina. Graham looked like he might faint. In his face you could the prospect of poor hungry, thirsty desperate black people all but required heavy artillery.
Schlemizel
@StarStorm:
You’re right, it is bigoted of us to call her ‘granny’ when she takes the time to present as a man. I swear I’ll start feeling bad about this just as soon as the bomb throwers on the right stop calling all Dem men fags and Dem women dykes.
vtr
The GOP sounds more and more as though it was endorsing the arguments of the paranoid preppers, rather than the remotely possible needs of citizens for self-protection, and of hunters.
Emma
@SiubhanDuinne: Thank you. It’s infuriating.
the lost puppy
So how long before the right and Fox News starts demonizing Gabby Giffords?
1 . . . 2 . . .3 . . .
Suffern ACE
@vtr: they are. That said, having lived through Sandy and the riots, burnings, and rapes, I can only say that I was hoping that people would start looting so that we’d reach that magic tipping point so they’d send in the drones.
PeakVT
@the lost puppy: They haven’t been demonizing her?
mai naem
@the lost puppy: Well, at least they won’t be changing her party affiliation like they do with Repubs who embarrass them.
NotMax
If
then we’ve got a lot more vital problems to address (including evacuations on a mass scale) than some random looters (who, BTW, are not immune from the drowning, asphyxiation or domicile destruction you envision).
Jeebus, Sen. Graham, why not go all the way out on that limb and posit multiple mushroom clouds from power plants**?
*(a) the system (both the west of Rockies grand grid and the east of Rockies grand grid) has automatic trips that kick in as disruption spreads to mitigate and try to isolate irreversible damage, and (b) why then do you block Obama’s calls for funding of investment in smarter grids. Also, dams being “released” – spewing a set amount of water per minute into the spillways (until manual shut-off valves can be accessed) is not anywhere close to dams being breached, the damage scenario you seem to mean to imply.
**Which cannot explode as a nuclear bomb does, but when did physics or facts ever get in the way of fearmongers?
Anya
People, we’re supposed to be liberals. WTF are you doing? Just because you believe the loathsome Graham is a closet case does not make it right to refer to him as miss Lindsey. Stop that shit. You’re insulting both gays and women when you indulge in your adolescent fantasies about manly men and girly girls?
The Ancient Randonneur
@eric nny: Yeah I got that. Why is it funny that Graham is a “woman”? Sounds sexist too me. Emasculate him if you want but why use language that refers to him as a woman? I have two daughters who have more guts and grit than most of the boys their age.
Graham is a gutless little punk AND he doesn’t measure to most of the women who are important to me.
Kay
There’s a whole school of thought that says people who have social ties, live in community with others, do better in natural (or other) disasters. It makes sense to me, that what one really needs in a situation like that is not defense against enemies but instead allies. Other people.
We have a rental property behind us, the tenants change a lot. It went to foreclosure and then was sold to someone out of state. It’s basically a fancy trailer on a slab. We also have a lot of tornado warnings, more and more, I think it’s climate change. In any event, the former tenant was this nice person, single parent, two middle school aged girls. She’d come over and sit in our basement every time there was a tornado warning. They”d be at the door, drenched, usually, carrying their cat, then they’d just tromp down the stairs and wait until the “all clear”. Now we have this awful person, he put up “no trespassing” signs to stop kids from cutting thru his yard (which isn’t really “done” here the elementary school is two blocks away and there’s a constant stream of kids) he calls the police every time people park on the street. He’s just mean. So I don’t know if I’m letting him use the basement this spring and summer, should he need a basement. Frankly, he gives me the creeps.
Anya
how are guns supposed to help with chemicals?
the lost puppy
@Anya: Personally, I think it is fair to paint these right-wing closet-cases and all other moralizing republican hypocrites with their own nasty-minded brushes.
Litlebritdifrnt
@vtr:
Strangely enough the ad at the bottom of this post on my puter says “FEMA banned this video” and if you click through it is a mini disaster flick with a voice over by a guy selling a survivalist course.
StarStorm
@Schlemizel:
Ah, I apologize then, as I had made my comment under the assumption that you honestly mistook Sen. Graham as a woman by his name.
As you have made it clear, you are deliberately feminizing him in an attempt to belittle and insult him. Thank you for the clarification.
Honestly, I prefered “curiously oblivious” as opposed to “giant douchebag”.
Anya
@the lost puppy: how’s calling him Ms Graham or granny showcasing republican hypocrites? In fact it showcases the hypocrites who claim to be liberals but use female atributes as a pejorative. Fuck that shit.
Rafer Janders
@Schlemizel:
Try to be better than them, will you? Set a good example. Make society a little bit broader-minded, inch by inch, by striving for something better. “I’m just doing what the hateful bigots do” isn’t really the best defense.
Amir Khalid
Sabah update. Here is a selection of news from Google. Some random highlights:
In Manila, President Benigno Aquino III, son of former president Corazon Aquino, is hinting that his predecessor Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, daughter of former president Ramon Macapagal, may have tacitly encouraged Jamalul Kiram III and his family to invade Sabah.
It appears that the Sultan of Sulu didn’t actually want Sabah; all he really wanted from Malaysia was more money. And who can blame him? For a measly five thousand ringgit a year, you can’t even rent an apartment in Manila.
Malaysian forces are conducting mopping-up ops in the three areas where there had been fighting with the Royal Army of Sulu. Unconfirmed reports of 50 or more invaders killed in action.
The pretender Sultan of Sulu to whom the Sabah invaders are loyal, Jamalul Kiram III, has offered a ceasefire. Malaysian PM Najib Abdul Razak is holding out for unconditional surrender and all weapons to be turned over to Malaysian forces.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has called for peace talks between Malaysia and Sulu. (Small problem: the latter hasn’t been a sovereign nation in well over a century.)
On Presidential orders, the Phiippines National Bureau of Investigation is investigating Filipino citizen Jamalul Kiram III with a view to charging him with incitement to war. And then, he and members of his family might be extradited to Malaysia to face more charges, possibly including murder.
The two main Muslim militant groups in Mindanao province, the Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (a Monty Python gag come to life, I tell ya) are both distancing themselves from this half-arsed “invasion”. Malaysia is brokering negotiations between them and Manila; I guess neither faction is keen on getting snookered from KL.
Political fallout: ahead of general elections due here by late June, opposition coalition is hinting that Najib’s Barisan Nasional was asleep in the guard shack when the invasion happened. In reply, the mainstream media here is suggesting that the vigrous police and military response to it makes Najib’s family jewels look bigger to Malaysian voters.
gene108
I really, really wish one day, when a right-winger is talking about all the hypothetical things that gun control/safety laws would entail, a reporter would point out that they are just making shit up and the likelihood of their far fetched ideas happening is pretty small.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: Well said. Thank you.
Patricia Kayden
@Culture of Truth: Did he cite to any news articles to back up his claim?
I’m not surprised of the claims that after Hurricane Katrina there were violent gangs of Black folks roaming around. That’s par for the course for the usual racists. I am surprised of similar claims regarding Hurricane Sandy since that would suggest violent gangs of White folks. Didn’t know that Repubs would acknowledge that such White folks exist — especially when there are no news accounts of such White folks existing in the context of Hurricane Sandy.
Melissa
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes.
I’ve had enough of these insults. It’s both gay bashing and demeaning to women.
PeakVT
@Amir Khalid: The pretender Sultan of Sulu to whom the Sabah invaders are loyal…
That is something I could never understand.
PeakVT
@Patricia Kayden: Big city = blah people in racists’ minds.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne:
@Anya:
Well said. I hate it when Balloon Juice starts sounding like the mouth-breathing neocons on Washington Post comment threads.
=======
Second: I wonder if Graham’s constant “All Benghazi (and other craziness), all the time” rhetoric might come back to haunt him in 2014.
Yes, it’s helping him now with his GOP base, and might help him fend off a Tea Party challenge. Might.
However: there have to be a lot of SC Democratic voters who put up with Graham on the theory he’s the best Republican they’re going to get in statewide office.
He’s putting a finger in their eye, 24/7, gleefully.
I am wondering if perhaps Steve Colbert’s sister, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, could mount a credible Senate campaign against Graham, should she lose this year’s race for the SC congressional seat (vacated by Tim Scott).
A fantasy, yes, but it would be superb if Lindsey Graham got taken out from his left, by someone who actually is a pragmatic business person.
Somebody used to vote for Ernest Hollings. Time to find those voters again.
catperson
@SiubhanDuinne:
This.
Thank you.
catclub
@Hill Dweller: Why does a dog lick his balls?
handsmile
@SiubhanDuinne: , @Anya:
Points very well taken. (and I admit to being guilty of it myself)
So for Graham invectives, I guess we’re back to “Huckleberry.” (though I will be much less sympathetic to appeals from Twain and/or Hanna-Barbera fans)
Del
@Melissa: you know the best thing I’ve ever found when fighting against homophobic mysoginists? Insult their sexuality. No, seriously, these assholes want to attack me for loving my wife and daring to even exist, I’m perfectly fine with hitting them where it hurts. In an ideal world we could “be the better person”, we don’t live there. Future generations will hopefully recoil in horror at our discourse but until then fuck it, I’m all for fighting dirty.
Amir Khalid
@PeakVT:
I don’t know that this pretender is a more rightful sultan than the others, but his supporters are indeed intensely loyalto him. The king who said L’état, c’est moi wasn’t just being full of himself; he was stating an equation, king = country. Us Malays, Sulus included, still have that strong feudal strain in our political culture.
Europeans were like this too, back when kings had all the real power, and indeed for centuries after their kings started losing it. It takes that long for that feudal feeling to fade.
Elizabelle
@Kay:
Interesting link on social connectedness (in this case, the Chicago Heatwave).
And how appalling to have such a tenant as neighbor. I wonder what his story is.
opie jeanne
@Litlebritdifrnt: I’ve been seeing that video ad too. I wonder if they know about my friend, the survivalist.
Roger Moore
@opie jeanne:
They don’t know anything about you except that you read a political site that talks about guns and survival stuff occasionally. They don’t even seem to know that the discussion is all done in a tone of snark and mockery. I think everyone here gets those ads, and the ones about FEMA coffins. Though frankly, if those FEMA things are coffins, their size tells me they’re not designed for ordinary humans. So is FEMA planning on an invasion by giant mutants or will it be aliens?
Mr Stagger Lee
@Patricia Kayden: I remember the internets back then screaming how the SuperDome was Rape central, and how a group of brave white men were protecting white women, from hoards of mongrel raiders, you know the usual cheap pulp fiction Stormfront material.
Mike in NC
Somebody tell this asshole that it was a grade Z movie starring Bruce Willis.
Tone in DC
And when Amy Goodman (and others) went down there to see about those rumors and what was actually going on… they found some very foul bathrooms in the stadium, and a lack of food and water. Otherwise, crickets.
Southern Beale
I think this story needs to get more attention:
Cancer Treatment Centers of America advertises in Tennessee all the time. It’s a private, for-profit healthcare company. I’m sure we can expect more crappy care and cooking the books as the “private sector shiny! Sparkly!” crew gets louder.
I linked to a story about British cancer survival rates in this post from last week where it was pointed out that the NIH reports EVERY SINGLE CANCER CASE. I the U.S., how many cancer patients don’t even receive treatment? And how many go to private companies liek CTCA which cook the books to make their success rate look better?
DonT
@StarStorm:
no dude does as much pearl clutching as Granny Graham
DonT
@Suffern ACE:
I was thinking the same. If all these “armed gangs” are mobile and the police etc are not – and that’s all so hypothetical – Eric Holder can send the drones and allow Randian Paul to do the pilot thing.
calliope jane
@mai naem: Yes, she didn’t vote for Pelosi, but she voted for John Lewis instead. Hell, I’d vote for John Lewis, I can’t begrudge her that vote nor that method of dealing with the crazies down here. .
I’m in her district, have met her many times, and volunteered, but with that– she held numerous town halls on passing Obamacare. Town halls that scared me, but she never ever waivered. I didn’t agree with her on everything, but she was (is) always open to discussion.
Elizabelle
@calliope jane:
That is so good to hear about Gabrielle Giffords.
Mnemosyne
@eric nny:
Lindsey Graham is a man. Sorry, you don’t get to push him off to my team just because he’s gay. You guys are stuck with him.
Mnemosyne
@Schlemizel:
Again, sorry, dude, but you don’t get to shove your problem men over to my side and try to make them my problem. I’m sorry you’re embarrassed that Graham is a man, but you’re stuck with him and you don’t get to pretend his fake-machismo issues have nothing to do with you. Nut up.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
This, also, too. Why is it that when there’s an embarrassing man, men always want to shove him out of their boat and claim he’s not really a man, he’s one of those horrible woman creatures?
dance around in your bones
Lindsey Graham must be living in a Mad Max world in his own head. Gotta be ready to take on those bikers!
Ignore any evidence to the contrary. Grip that gun with your cold dead fingers.
piratedan
@mai naem: she may have voted against Nancy Smash but she was on the right side of just about every issue, including ACA even while her office was being targeted and the vitriol against her in the district the local wingnuttery was palpable (i.e. attacks on her offices and don’t ever ready the comments section of the local rag) which made the assassination attempt seem plausible.
StarStorm
@Mnemosyne:
And of course, there’s the ever wonderful association of male homosexuality with femininity.
Paul in KY
Said this in another thread a couple weeks ago, but Rep. Gifford was most decidely not for gun control before that maniac almost killed her & murdered her constituents.
I would like her to address her former views & see why it took her almost being killed to change her views. Would also like her to address whether or not her being out of the running-for-reelection-game influenced her change of heart.
She was a real bluedog back then.
Mnemosyne
@Paul in KY:
Her brain injuries are pretty profound — she’s doing miraculously well for someone with a brain injury that serious in that location, but I’m honestly not sure she would have the ability to articulate what you want her to.
Maybe Mark Kelly would be the better person to ask that question of since I’m pretty sure his gun views were similar to hers prior to the shooting.
Paul in KY
@NotMax: Sounds like he’s been reading his illustrated Hunger Games novel guide again. I know he so wishes he could be a Senator in Panem.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: Thank you for the info, Amir.
Paul in KY
@Mnemosyne: Good point. Hopefully Mr. Kirk will address these at some point in future.
I am glad she is pushing for this. Just want this public figure or her spokesperson to address her previously diametrically opposed views.