Courtesy of National Memo:
Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) probably should have seen this coming when he decided to lie to the mother of a heroic mass-shooting victim.
Mayors Against Illegal Guns has released a new ad attacking Flake for his double-talk on expanding gun sale background checks. The spot features Caren Teves, whose son Alex was shot and killed shielding his fiancée during the Aurora, Colorado movie-theater shooting in July, 2012. Teves later wrote a letter to Senator Flake urging him to support a tougher gun laws, to which Flake replied “strengthening background checks is something we agree on.”
Shortly thereafter, Flake voted against the Manchin-Toomey bill to expand background checks to cover all commercial gun sales.
“The issue isn’t just background checks, it’s keeping your promise,” Teves says in the ad. “Senator Flake didn’t.”
After Flake voted against the Toomey-Manchin compromise, his approval rating plunged to an abysmal 32 percent, leading Public Policy Polling to declare him America’s least popular senator (for his part, Flake described his current standing among Arizonans as “somewhere just below pond scum”). The intense public pressure led Flake to publicly suggest that he could reconsider his opposition, although he has since shown no public signs of doing so.
I am very happy to turn my attention back to this issue of background checks and tighter restrictions on gun ownership after this last week of non-scandalous scandals, however, at the risk of sounding like a Debbie Downer, I don't think anything is going to happen on this until AFTER the 2013 election.
Especially since the Republicans are being pressured to avoid bringing any new legislation forward, and instead to keep beating the scandal drums in the hopes of damaging the President, reducing voter turnout, and smearing Hillary Clinton.
In my estimation the ONLY way we will see Washington functioning properly again is to get as many Republicans out of there as humanly possible. Which is why ads like this are very important, and I hope the people of Arizona, and everywhere, are paying close attention.
I think Republicans are going to be in for a real shock in the fact they will lose many elections this next go around. They have done nothing to include the blacks and brown citizens of our nation.
ReplyDeleteAnd, all they do is obstruct as to President Obama and their going after Hillary Clinton isn't going to work either.
They already lost to President Obama (second term) and cannot get over it. Idiots and racists!!!
The GOP has done nothing for the white citizens either, except take away our unions, turn our states into havens for energy companies wanting to foul our land and water and air, and try to tax our pensions and take away our health care.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, Obama's DOE, headed by a guy who is int he pocket of big energy, just approved a second port for the export of gracked natural gas, in Freeport. Can the TransCanada pipeline be far behind? This is the most disappointing thing to me about Obama. We do not need to be exporting this crap at the expense of our air and water, and he allows it anyway.
The miserable bastard is aptly named anyway.
ReplyDeleteLast night, S.E.Cupp, a Republican spokesperson, appeared on Bill Maher's show and said that the number of mass shootings have gone down. She had a point. According to this poll from USA Today, there were over 30 incidents in 2006, 2008 and 2009. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/21/mass-shootings-domestic-violence-nra/1937041/
ReplyDeleteHowever, Mother Jones keeps score differently. Their chart shows number of people injured and number of people kill in mass shootings each year. The year, 2012 had twice as many incidents as took place in 1999 (Columbine) and 2007 (Virginia Tech). An incident can be a disgruntled worker who shoots his boss in the workplace vs. a mass shooting in a Sikh temple, a movie theater, a school or on an Arizona street corner. Let's be clear about the fact that more people are dying or are injured in mass shootings.
How many people are killed due to guns:
2011: 31940 people died from gun injuries
2010 31,328 people
2009 31,177 people
2007 31,224 people
2004 29,569 people
All of these "scandal" investigations are the GOP's way to scare their base in hopes of getting them out to vote in 2014.
ReplyDeleteAll of these so-called scandal "investigations" are the GOP's way to scare their base in hopes the right wingers will come out to vote in 2014.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of graduation speakers...
ReplyDeleteThe First Lady at MLK Academic Magnet High School, Nashville
Pure and utter joy shines on that young lady's face. Her First lady is in the house.
http://theobamadiary.com/2013/05/18/the-first-lady-at-mlk-academic-magnet-high-school-nashville/
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/17/18323842-majority-of-colorado-sheriffs-file-suit-against-new-gun-laws?lite
ReplyDeleteIt has happened again: Three teens raped a 12 year old girl at gunpoint and post video on Facebook
ReplyDeleteThis time it happened in Chicago
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-3-teens-posted-taped-sex-assaults-of-girl-12-on-facebook-20130517,0,4873584.story
Three teenagers face sex assault charges after they raped a 12-year-old girl at gunpoint and posted a video of the December attacks on Facebook, prosecutors said.
Scandale Fritz, 16, Kenneth Brown, 15, and Justin Applewhite, 16, were all ordered held in lieu of $900,000 bail in a hearing today before Criminal Court Judge James Brown, said Cook County state's attorney spokeswoman Tandra Simonton. The three were charged as adults.
The assaults took place about 3:30 p.m. Dec. 15 in Fritz's home in the 400 block of West 60th Place in the Englewood neighborhood, according to Chicago police records.
The girl had gone to Fritz's house on 60th Place that afternoon to talk to him, and when she went inside, she saw Brown, with a gun in his pocket, prosecutors said. Fritz took the girl downstairs in the house and after she declined his demands for sex, he raped and sodomized her, prosecutors said.
Brown and Applewhite came down to the basement, and Fritz demanded the girl have sex with the other two boys, prosecutors said. At first, the girl refused, but she saw that Brown had a gun in his pocket, and so they sexually assaulted her and forced her to perform sex acts on them.
Fritz videotaped the sex acts, including Brown holding a gun during sex, and all three of the boys shouting gang slogans, prosecutors said. All three of the boys are visible in the video, with Fritz entering the frame when he turns the camera toward himself.
The day after the assaults, the girl told someone about the attacks, and a police report was made and the girl was treated and examined at a hospital. On Dec. 17, the video was posted on Brown's Facebook page, and then on all three boys' Facebook pages, prosecutors said.
Fritz admitted to investigators he made the tape, prosecutors said.
All their ads are very well done. Short, concise and to the point. This one even more so because it uses Flake's own words vs. Flake's cowardly vote.
ReplyDeleteThe obstruction will, unfortunately, be pushed back with these non scandal meme's they're drumming up, but the majority of people are for the background checks.
Going against the will of the people isn't politically savvy. This issue isn't going away, and the will of the majority will prevail in the end.
Betraying a grieving parent while breaking a promise won't go in his favor.