Category: Congress sucks

  • Cummings: Gun laws hinder BATFE’s border ops

    Elijah Cummings, a Democrat representative from Maryland – the State that only issues Concealed Carry Weapons licenses when you can prove that you’re in imminent danger – told a forum that the real problem with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is not that they supplied Mexican cartels with thousands of weapons to fight the Mexican government, it’s that US gun laws are too lax;

    Michael Bouchard, a retired ATF assistant director, said one of the ways his former agency strives to prevent crimes is by “disrupting and dismantling large and small firearms trafficking schemes, which put guns into the hands of violent criminals.”

    “Unfortunately, criminals bent on acquiring guns can be very clever in the methods that they use to circumvent the law and avoid detection,” he said. “ATF and law enforcement must continually adjust to the criminal’s changing tactics and develop new strategies and tactics of their own.”

    Apparently, criminals are so clever that they can stare at ATF agents and control their minds to let them walk with high powered weapons right into Mexico from US gun stores without being accosted. How do we fight that kind of cleverness?

    Brady Campaign President Paul Helmke blamed America’s gun laws on the illegal flow of U.S. guns into Mexico.

    “Yet as the six-month anniversary of Tucson approaches, we have still seen no change in our nation’s weak or non-existent gun laws,” he said. “We still have no federal law criminalizing gun trafficking, banning assault weapons and magazines or closing the loopholes in our Brady Background Check system that help arm dangerous killers and supply gun traffickers.

    Yes, we should ban scary-looking weapons so that the BATFE isn’t tempted to let gun smugglers abscond to Mexico with their ill-gotten booty. That makes perfect sense.

    Actually it proves more what the NRA and gun owners across the country have been saying – the whole problem isn’t the number and volume of laws, it’s law enforcement’s unwillingness to enforce laws. Smuggling weapons to Mexico is already illegal.

    I mean BATFE had an opportunity to stop thousands of weapons from going to the cartels and they preferred to look the other way under the guise of an “investigation”.

  • Congress to overhaul Federal retirement pay

    Don’t be ridiculous – they’re not overhauling ALL Federal retirement, just military retirement pay. You didn’t expect them to cut the retirement of those fat Federal bureaucrats, did you? Stars & Stripes writes;

    One cut would annually lower the calculated cost-of-living adjustment by an average of one-quarter of a percentage point, which could apply to military and federal civilian retirees, disabled veterans and survivors.

    OK, maybe a little bit it applies to federal employees, but you can bet that Congress’ retirement won’t be affected. If they REALLY want to save money, and since they can make any changes to retirement that they want to change, they should do away with retirement for members of Congress.

    I’m sure the founding fathers would be majorly upset that there’s a retirement plan for Congress since they never intended for public elected service to be a career.

    Do away with Congress’ retirement and we wouldn’t have to institute term limits – they’d limit their terms themselves.

    The second option involves replacing the current system in which a servicemember is eligible for benefits after 20 years of service with a new plan that could provide some retirement benefits for as few as five years of service — with payments not starting until at least age 60 for any servicemembers who do not retire on a full military disability, the article said.

    So you’d have to wait until you’re 60 to get your retirement benefit – and by that time, your purchasing power would be eaten away by about 20 years of inflation.

  • Hippie dirtbag appears in Syria

    NotSoOldMarine sends a link to the story that hippie shitbag, Dennis Kucinich magically appeared in Syria and praised murderous tyrant Bashar al-Assad saying that Assad is “highly loved and appreciated by the Syrians.” Well, maybe the ones who are still alive and not clinging to life in a hospital somewhere.

    But the Ohio Democrat released a statement Tuesday saying he was misquoted by Syrian media.

    Well, no shit, Sherlock, just by being there you give the thug propaganda material.

    Syrian state media quoted Kucinich as saying during the press conference, “President Bashar al-Assad cares so much about what is taking place in Syria, which is evident in his effort towards a new Syria and everybody who meets him can be certain of this.”

    Kucinich isn’t saying who paid for his trip, but I think we all know, don’t we?

    However, the Ohio Congressman did not rush to blame Syrian state-run media, saying in the same statement that the mistranslations were “unfortunate [but] … not a willful intent to mischaracterize my statements or my efforts in the region.”

    Some have pushed back on Kucinich’s explanation for the quotations. Foreign Policy writer David Kenner notes that Kucinich does not speak Arabic, and that since the original Syrian news article was in English, no translation would have been necessary.

    Fuckstick moron.

  • Gallup: Military inspires confidence; Congress not so much

    Gallup took a poll of Americans asking how much confidence they have in 15 national institutions.

    Americans continue to express greater confidence in the military than in 15 other national institutions, with 78% saying they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in it. In addition to the military, a majority of Americans express high esteem for small business and the police. Congress ranks last among these institutions, behind big business and health maintenance organizations.

    Gee, I don’t know why…except that maybe the military does what they say they’ll do and Congress can’t keep their promises. Congress might want to keep that in mind when they’re looking to cut benefits and hike health care costs for military members…they may be joining the ranks of the unemployed next year.

  • Dems blame GOP for stalling economy

    The Democrats in Congress are blaming the Republicans for trying to sabotage the economy for political gain according to leftist Talking Point Memo;

    In a Capitol press conference Wednesday, the Senate’s top Democrats argued that Republicans don’t want to pass measures like a temporary payroll tax holiday for employers because they’ll improve President Obama’s re-election chances.

    “Our Republican colleagues in the House and Senate are driven by putting one man out of work: President Obama,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL).

    The harshest denunciation came from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the man who crafted the Dems’ new “jobs first” message.

    “We are also open to hiring incentives, perhaps in the form of a payroll tax cut for employers that was floated by the administration…. [T]hat might not be our first choice, that shows how willing we are to work with the Republicans to create jobs. It’s pro-business, it’s a tax cut, and many Republicans have been for it in the past. But now all of a sudden they’re coming out against it,” Schumer said.

    Project much? We all know that the Democrats did their level best to destroy the US economy during 2007 and 2008. They blocked McCain and Bush attempts to rein in Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae to head off the housing bubble.

    Now they say that a payroll tax cut will encourage employers to hire – John Boehner calls it a “gimmick”. I agree – just like releasing a day and a half supply of oil from the strategic oil reserves is a gimmick.

    Short-term duct-tape solutions to complex problems. But then if the Democrats actually solved a problem, they wouldn’t be able to waive it like a bloody shirt during the next election.

  • Wasserman-Schultz: Obama turned the economy around

    Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

    In the event that you missed Meet the Press yesterday, you’re probably still laboring under the misconception that the US economy is in the tank. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz claims otherwise;

    REP. SCHULTZ: Because we were able to, under President Obama’s leadership, turn this economy around. When President Obama took office…

    MR. GREGORY: Whoa, whoa, let me just stop you there. Clearly, the economy has not been turned around. I mean, you just saw those numbers.

    REP. SCHULTZ: It, it certainly–it has…

    MR. GREGORY: Americans don’t believe that’s the case.

    REP. SCHULTZ: Well, we, we were–when President Obama took office, the month before he was inaugurated, the economy was bleeding 750,000 jobs a month, David, and we were not headed in the right direction. Now, I know we–and President Obama has said we have a long way to go. We’d like the pace of recovery to, to, to be picked up. But we have definitely begun to turn the economy around. You, you fast-forward two and a half years later now, and the economy has created 2.1 million private sector jobs, a million of those jobs just in the last six months. We’ve had 15 straight months of job growth.

    Wasserman-Schultz should consult the Bureau of Labor Statistics;

    Nonfarm payroll employment changed little (+54,000) in May, and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 9.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains continued in professional and business services, health care, and mining. Employment levels in other major private-sector industries were little changed, and local government employment continued to decline.

    Gee, I guess that, unlike on the campaign trail, reality doesn’t always match the rhetoric.

  • Weepy Wiener; I lied

    With crocodile tears, Anthony Wiener admitted today that he’s been lying to the entire country for more than a week about sending pictures of “Little Anthony” through his Twitter account – but only after more pictures were uncovered today. He claims that he’s accepting responsibility for his actions, but refuses to resign as his fellow New Yorker Christopher Lee did. Of course the difference between Wiener and Lee is that Lee was a Republican.

    I suppose that Wiener doesn’t realize that every time anyone looks at him, all they’ll see is Little Anthony bulging through his underwear.

    In honesty, though, that’s all I saw when I looked at him before this anyway – a little dickhead.

    If New Yorkers return him to office next year, they’re clearly not interested in being well-represented in Congress. Is he the best person for the job in his district? Is there no one in his district with better judgement than Wiener? The bald-faced lies aside, how can his judgement not be called into question at this point?

    Whether he was unfaithful to his new bride or not, just engaging in this kind of behavior shows weak moral failings. How do people know that he’s not lying with every word? How can we believe he’s contrite about this poor behavior? He’s obviously sorry that he’s been caught – but not so sorry that he couldn’t tell the truth last week when his primary face wasn’t in the picture.

    But there’s an obvious double standard at work here between Wiener and Lee. If he was truly contrite, Wiener would leave public life so we bloggers wouldn’t have to write new punchlines for every time his weaselly face pops up in the news.

    Glen Beck says that Wiener’s judgement should be questioned just because he thinks he’s hot enough that women want naked pictures of him.

  • Weinergate thoughts

    I don’t know if Congressman Anthony Weiner Tweeted a picture of his stuff to the young lady or not. I’m pretty sure he did, because his denials sure sound like a lawyer trying not to answer a question.

    Jon Stewart plays with Weiner;

    Of course, the societal nannies at the Washington Post thought it was a good idea to tell us men that we’re not turning any women on by mailing them pictures of our stuff;

    “We spent six years of research on why women have sex,” Meston says. They compiled 237 reasons. Duty sex. Revenge sex. Pity sex. Bored sex, engaged in because women simply had nothing better to do. “Of the 237 reasons why women have sex,” Meston says, “not one was looking at a man’s genitals.”

    Six years? Seriously? I’ve spent 34 years trying to figure out what turns on just one woman…no answers yet.

    So, completely disregarding the advice of the Post, here’s my contribution to the discussion; my picture of a hairy dick below the jump;
    (more…)