Motley Moose – Archive

From the White House – Weekly Address

In his weekly address, President Obama honors the memory of the 26 innocent children and educators who were taken from us a year ago in Newton, Connecticut.

When the gun control bill failed, my first reaction was “How will the left blame this on Obama?”

Despite speeches, a lobbying effort, and a tough response, Only 55 Senators supported the bill (Reid switched his vote so he could bring it up again).

The recent fights have lead a number of pundits, from Ezra Klein to Joan Walsh, to admit the bully pulpit sometimes does not work. (See: Jedi Mind Meld).

Then comes Maureen Dowd, in a column that I saw thanks to a tweet from a Democratic candidate for NYS Senate who agrees with her assertion. The gun control bill failed because of Obama, and only Obama.

He doesn’t know how to ‘govern” or “lead” and he needs to be more like Michael Douglas in The American President…seriously.

Unfortunately a number of people are tweeting her column, saying how it’s insightful and how they agree.

This Thursday the US Senate will take up gun safety legislation. So far, several Senators have threatened to stop any and all legislation.

Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas, Marco Rubio of Florida and Jerry Moran of Kansas, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Jim Risch and Mike Crapo of Idaho, Dan Coats of Indiana and Pat Roberts of Kansas.

Gabby Giffords wrote a piece denouncing the cowardice and ignorance of these Senators. I think she’s run out of patience:

But lately I’m not feeling too patient toward senators and representatives who are listening to the misinformation that’s out there about universal background checks instead of to their constituents, and saying they may not support common sense solutions to ending gun violence.

So this is brief provocation rather than a proper essay, and I truly hope to inspire some contrary points rather than nods of assent. Without going into the emotional question about assault weapons after Newtown, or indeed concealed hand guns etc, I’m just querying a suggestion – often put – that rifles are essential to US life because so many rely on hunting.

Tendentious one sided image of a Moose Hunter to get y’all riled up

So here’s a comment I put on Orange which I hope you will (pardon the pun) shoot down, or at least discuss in animated (but always civil) terms.

Ya all know them roolz.  

This is the first time I’ve copied over an entire article of mine, and I’m probably infringing my own copyright, but I think this is an important discussion and I can only join in here.

In the wake of the terrible events of last Friday in Newtown, which left 27 dead-20 of them young schoolchildren-social media such as Twitter and Facebook played a key role in communicating the shocking news and expressing an international sense of outrage and grief. But they also spread misinformation and misapprehensions just as quickly. The gunman was initially misidentified, and his murdered mother was erroneously connected to Sandy Hook Elementray School. But while these errors of fact were soon corrected, a deeper misunderstanding took hold over the following few days as a shattered nation tried to understand an inexplicable tragedy.

Writing is seen on a home in Newtown, Connecticut on Dec. 17, 2012. The two funerals on Monday ushered in what will be a week of memorial services and burials for the 20 children and six adults massacred when gunman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown last Friday. (Eric Thayer/Reuters, via Landov)

An uncorroborated rumor about the gunman, Adam Lanza, suggested that he suffered from Asperger’s syndrome-a now out-of-use term for a higher-functioning form of autism. By Saturday, a blog post by Lisa Long-“I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother: A Mom’s Perspective On The Mental Illness Conversation In America”-had gone viral, been retweeted hundreds of thousands of times, and republished on Gawker, Britain’s Daily Mail, and on the Huffington Post. Long, the mother of a 13-year-old with behavioral problems, argued, “It’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness.”