Showing posts with label Lyndon Johnson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lyndon Johnson. Show all posts

Friday, June 8, 2018

Robert Kennedy shooting pulled NRA's chain


Typical NRA gun nut
Robert Kennedy was assassinated on June 5, 1968, and, while some have raised doubts recently about who the assassin was, Sirhan Sirhan is still the choice of most historians. John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King had been killed in 1963, all by guns. Bobby Kennedy had just won the California primary in the 1968 presidential election. Reactions were quick...
"President Lyndon B. Johnson called for a sweeping gun control law. Anti-gun protesters picketed the Washington headquarters of the National Rifle Association as public sentiment zeroed in on guns as a major problem."
Sirhan was 24 at the time and in the passageway through the kitchen, he shot Kennedy numerous times from a snub-nosed revolver. The presidential candidate was hit in his brain, his neck, and one shot grazed his forehead. Conspiracy theorists were abundant in a copycat of John Kennedy's killing. Journalist Jules Witcover, who was there with Bobby Kennedy at the Ambassador...
“His hour of political triumph became another hour of mindless tragedy in a nation that cannot or will not keep weapons of death from the hands of madmen who walk its streets.”

It was four months after Robert Kennedy's assassination and, having waning powers with Congress, primarily due to the Vietnam War, Johnson was able to pass a watered-down gun control bill. Key provisions like national registration of guns and licensing of owners was missing, thanks to the National Rifle Assn. lobbying. And then it happened...
"The 1968 bill marked the beginning of the NRA’s transformation from a gun enthusiast organization focused on marksmanship and gun safety to a political lobbying group focused on opposing gun control."
The gun nuts stumbled along for several years until Wayne LaPierre joined the NRA in 1977, becoming the head gun nut in 1991. It is LaPierre who has championed the 2nd Amendment crusade with success in convincing his gun hugging membership that the government wants to take away all their guns. The organization is responsible for keeping assault weapons on the street, which makes the NRA culpable for the 346 mass shootings in 2017 alone. Worse, there have been 23 school shootings in 2018, one a week, again thanks to LaPierre's proliferation of guns.

So, it was a combination of Bobby Kennedy's assassination and President Lyndon Johnson's determination to pass meaningful gun control legislation that prompted the bizarre demands of Wayne LaPierre's National Rifle Assn. today, an insistence that has caused the loss of thousands of innocent lives. With so much blood on their hands, you would think the NRA would be a leader in some form of responsible gun control. But it's not going to happen, and I am coming to the conclusion the only answer is to take away all guns and start over again.

Read more: The Shooting of Robert Kennedy and the Transformation of the NRA
                    The Biography of NRA Director Wayne LaPierre
                    Mass shootings in the U.S.: 346 mass shootings occurred in 2017
                    There has been, on average, 1 school shooting every week this year

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Trump's tantrums could start World War III


Daisy Girl
It was the "Peace Little Girl" political ad that gave the election to Lyndon Johnson in a landslide against Barry Goldwater, indicating that Goldwater could not be trusted with his finger on the switch that would unleash "the bomb." The idea was that the Arizona Senator's temperament was not stable enough for the presidency. Did you people who voted for Donald Trump even give this a thought? God knows, he's shown several signs of instability during the election.

Even after winning the Electoral College vote, Trump is steaming excessively over the fact that Hillary Clinton is ahead in the popular vote by over 2.3 million. He even says he would win the popular vote if they deducted the millions of illegal votes; which no one in his campaign can confirm. But that still didn't keep him from going...
"...a little berserk, publishing a series of bizarre tweets pushing back against accurate reporting the president-elect found inconvenient.
This. Is. Not. Normal."
The above, an observation from Steve Benen on MSNBC, who continues with his concern that Donald Trump has yet to mature for the presidency, with his inauguration fast approaching. Benen adds:
"If the pressures of the transition are causing Trump to flip out in response to accurate reporting, I shudder to think how unhinged he’ll be once he bears the burdens of an actual president."
Barry Goldwater would be aghast at the thought of Donald Trump as the next President of the U.S., wondering if his beloved Republican Party had gone mad. In 2016 Hillary used Monique Luiz, who did the original "Daisy Girl" ad and now living in Arizona at age 52, in a version of the original. It pointed out the same possibilities but apparently with no results. I can hardly wait until No. Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, pisses off Trump.

Friday, June 27, 2014

FORMER SEN. HOWARD BAKER ONE OF A KIND

Former Sen. Howard Baker
Howard Baker, a Tennessee Republican who was first elected to the Senate in 1966 and served as its leader from 1981 to 1985 has died. He was 88. It may be just another passing politician to many but to those who know politics, it was the last of the great negotiators from a Congress that has evolved into a bunch of incompetent do-nothing deadbeats. Their only concern is to get reelected, the country be damned. Baker got regularly elected over four decades because he worked for the people of Tennessee and the American public, not for himself. President Obama called him the "Great Conciliator" because he could walk across the aisle and make a deal. Others of the same ilk who come to mind are Lyndon Johnson and Everett Dirksen. But can you name one person in Congress today who would put his or her country before their job? I think not.

Monday, January 28, 2013

Obama gets tough in opening second term


 
 
Mitch McConnell doing Obama
It looks like the President is tired of taking the crap that the Republicans have been dishing out for the last 4 years.  It started with a comment by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in October of 2011.  He said: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”   He wasn’t, and McConnell turns out to be the idiot he looked like for the last four years.  He and House Speaker John Boehner, since the GOP took over the house in 2010, have spewed a non-stop diatribe of what a failure Barack Obama had been.  They were wrong and the American people knew it.
 
And because the Republicans were trounced last November in the elections, Boehner now is taking a new approach.  He is saying that “Obama’sfocus is to annihilate the Republican Party.”  Actually, Obama doesn’t have to do anything.  The GOP, led by the Tea Party, is doing that all on their own without any help.  The remark from Boehner made at a Ripon Society luncheon was confirmed by the Speaker’s spokesperson.  Even with a Republican majority in the House that can block the President’s legislation, it is obvious that this gang of obstructionists is running scared, as they should be.
 
David Gergen, who has advised four Presidents, said: “Years from now, historians are likely to look back upon Barack Obama's second inaugural address as a rich treasure trove for understanding his presidency and possibly the course of American politics.”  It’s the sort of thing you say about a great President.  Another interesting comment by Gergen was that not only was Obama more confident, but that he was also “liberated.”  Gergen thinks that refers to the comfort of a second term and not having to run again, as well as showing that Republicans are not willing to compromise.  Either way it is very promising.
 
Obama’s inauguration speech reminds us of Lyndon Johnson’s brand of liberalism and the Great Society.  It is a welcome return to values that espouse equality with the emphasis off the wealthy and now directed at middle America, lower income brackets and the needy.  Another famous Mitch McConnell comment following Obama’s speech was: “The era of liberalism is back.”  How fitting that it comes at a time when we must pass new laws on gun control, comprehensive immigration reform and improving the environment.  The President also plans to work on his 2010 Obamacare.
 
Gergen says, “He emerged as an unapologetic, unabashed liberal -- just what the left has long wanted him to be and exactly what the right has feared.”     
 
Pulitzer Prize winner Historian Gary Willis writes about Lincoln’s maneuvering of the Declaration of Independence into the “founding creed of the country.”  In it, Lincoln says, we are all created equal, which was mirrored by Martin Luther King 100 years later in 1963, and what President Obama was talking about when referring to the declaration as our “founding creed.”  Gergen maintains that Obama has made equal opportunity the “central goal of his presidency.”  He adds that the GOP expected a plea for partisanship but received something of an ultimatum to cooperate, or else.
 
The question is whether Americans support Barack Obama in what he wants to accomplish in his second term.  According to a CNN/ORCInternational survey released Jan. 22, the percentage of those believing global warming is a fact resulting from cars, power plants and factories has doubled to 49%.  On immigration, 53% want a path for illegal immigrants to legal residents compared to 43% who want to deport them. Today, 51% favor all or most of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) with 44% opposed to all or most of it.  Is there any doubt why the President would demand cooperation from Republicans?
 

 

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