Aurora Should Now Start The Gun Conversation

As a nation finds itself a few days removed from the tragic events that took place at an Aurora, Colorado movie theatre, emotions are still raw, hearts are still broken and heads are still unclear and unable to make sense of how a horrifying event such as this could happen.

How could lightning basically strike twice in the same place, after all Aurora is only a few miles removed from another town famous for tragedy and heartache. Even though the Columbine school shootings happened 13 years ago, the scars, both mental and physical are still as fresh for the people who lived through it, and the images of Friday morning bring back terrible memories for those of us who are as far removed from the Rocky Mountain state as possible.

How could doing something as normal as taking in a movie essentially make you a sitting duck for a madman who's life is so troubled and who's mental state is so warped that he sees himself as a movie villain charged with bringing as much pain and destruction as humanly possible.

These are just a couple of questions that will be asked by us, the American People in the coming days, weeks, and months. The problem is those are questions that only a higher power can answer assuming you believe in one. When I personally come across things in life that are unexplainable I'm reminded of a line I heard in a movie once. “God made the world the way it is, We just have to live in it.”

There are questions that we, the American People can ask that should get us direct answers. We should be asking our politicians why do we live in a country where anyone, no matter his or her mental well being can gain access to a gun, and then use that gun to dramatically alter the lives of so many innocent people.

I never thought I would agree with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on anything, the man is perfectly fine with treating any black and brown man in the city like a criminal, with his “Stop and Frisk” policy. Bloomberg struck a chord on Friday though with his initial comments about the Aurora tragedy, basically saying that politicians and in particular the two men vying for the Presidency should give us solutions on America's gun problem.

While Bloomberg's inquisitive nature on the subject is greatly appreciated, he is delusional at best if he thinks we are going to get a straightforward answer out of President Obama and Governor Romney before November 7^th. The fact that both candidates have their respective bases sown up makes it even more important to not alienate the 10 to 15 percent of the electorate that could push them over the finish line by taking on the scolding hot topic of gun control.

That my fellow Americans is to the detriment of us all. President Obama represents a Democratic party that gave up the fight on gun control a long time ago. The President signed legislation into place that makes it legal to carry guns in National Parks, great idea sir. In 2004 the Dems didn't fight to keep in place the assault weapons ban the President Clinton signed into law in 1993. Since then we have seen a shooting rampage on the Virginia Tech Campus, A Congresswoman and several other innocent bystanders including a couple of her aides shot in Arizona, A school shooting in Ohio earlier this year that left 4 students dead and now Aurora.

The fact that Mitt Romney is the classic Howdy Doody candidate being pulled by strings, you can count on him to continue the non negotiable Republican Party stance that any new gun control legislation is bad legislation and is therefore off the table. Romney who already has a problem convincing Republicans that he is a true conservative is not going to take back statements and fiery speeches that he give in front of the National Rifle Association to prove his conservative merit.

By the way that same National Rifle Association has Republicans in Congress scared breathless. It was the NRA who let it be known last month that they were scoring the voting on the House of Representatives contempt vote on Attorney General Eric Holder over “Fast and Furious”. The NRA is not ashamed to let Republicans and Democrats in gun loving states know that if they don't go their way when it comes to gun legislation they will let their constituents know about it.

I am thoroughly convinced that the eradication of gun violence in this country has to be a grass roots undertaking. There are plenty of us, no matter our political leanings who feel as though everyday civilians should not be able to get their hands on military styled weaponry. The fact that this guy was armed like he had access to the Pentagon is absolutely mind boggling. Through in the gas canisters, bulletproof vest and gas mask he got online, and it makes you want to scream.

For those of us who think public safety is as much a God given right as the 2^nd Amendment we need to pressure Presidential candidates, but importantly our local officials to do something about the senseless gunplay that plagues communities as large as Chicago and as small as Aurora.

There is no literal war going on inside the United States like there has been in Syria, Egypt, and Libya.

It is up to us to make sure the NRA and other assault weapon enthusiasts don't continue take us in a direction were that becomes a reality.

Prison For Profit Is Alive And Well

When I was growing up my sisters and I watched television religiously. I can remember, around 1984 or so an episode of the now extremely cheesy Diff'rent Strokes.

This episode was deemed “a very special episode” because it dealt with young Arnold Jackson being offered marijuana by a classmate, but more importantly it ended with an appearance by then First Lady Nancy Reagan who offered up her now infamous catchphrase “Just Say No”.

Just like “Where's the beef” from Wendy's and Bartles and Jaymes' “Thank you for your support”, “Just say no” became synonymous with the 1980s, and it also help to usher in the “prison no matter what” culture that now exists here in the United States.

How many people in this country are aware of the fact that in the last three decades the prison population ballooned from 300,000 to over more than two million, that ladies and gentleman gives us the highest incarceration rate in the world, not exactly the thing we want to be remembered for.

The reference to the former First Lady is appropriate because we really have her late husband, former President Ronald Reagan to thank for the spike in these numbers. In 1982 it was the Gipper's White House that gave us another infamous 80s catch pharase “The War on Drugs”, four years later after the tragic death of University of Maryland basketball superstar Len Bias from a cocaine overdose,

the Reagan Administration and politicians on both sides of the aisle demagogued a serious issue for political gain.

To keep the ear of his suburban insulated base Reagan, in response to the crack epidemic proposed what is now called mandatory sentencing (or mandatory minimums). In some states the laws basically breakdown this way, people convicted of possessing five grams of crack, which weighs less than two sugar packets, are automatically sentenced to five years in prison, ten grams of crack ten years, and so on.

Since these sentences are on the books as laws, judges are not given the opportunity to impose their own sentences which would provide more leeway. Under mandatory minimums counseling, probation, and suspended sentences are not even an option.

Now ask yourself, does a seventeen year old kid arrested for possession of crack cocaine deserve to effectively have his life ended for one mistake, albeit a glaring one. Even if the kid does the full five years and is released from the can at around the age of 22, the amount of opposition he will face as a convicted felon on his intergration back into society is an uphill battle to say the least.

Ask any convicted felon how difficult it is to get a job, an apartment, or get into college. America is good at times at paying lipservice to second chances and we wax poetic about everyone making mistakes, but when it comes to those who have done time, more often than not we turn our backs on those principles.

I mentioned earlier the automatic five years for five grams of crack law on the books of most states, one important piece of information that is conveniently left out by most on the right is that the same defendant who is caught selling powder cocaine has to be caught selling 500 grams of cocaine 100 times to receive the same five year sentence.

I am thoroughly convinced that the difference in that law is to incarcerate a large porportion of black and brown men in America's inner cities across this country. Crack was and still is extremely prevalent in large cities around the country, and the majority of possessors of it are ethnic minorities, whereas cocaine was and is seen as a status drug prevalent in America's suburbs, where it's user's and sellers are overwhelmingly white. The same drug with the same affect on the people who use it, yet the punishment for possession of the same drug is heavily skewed. The question is why would any politician from either side of the aisle put in place a law with this kind of disporportionality.

America's dirty little secret is that the “prison for profit” scheme is alive and well. Corrections Corporation of America and the Geo Group are prison's answer to Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers.

With state governments not being able to keep up with the costs of housing thousands of prisoners, especially with the grim economic times, private prisons are ready to step up and assume the states overflow of the convicted. “CCA, one of the leading providers of for-profit prisons in the nation, recently sent letters to 48 states, offering to buy their facilities for a huge chunk of dough — $250 million toward the purchase of state prisons. In a time when the national economy is still limping and state budgets are shrinking, the state of Ohio found CCA’s “Corrections Investment Initiative” was an offer it couldn’t refuse.”

To my knowledge, there are not too many civilized nations around the world that actually allow corporations to profit from locking people up, however in this world where the right wants to privatize everything from our mail to Social Security it's not surprising.

When you ponder all of the questions and look to the future you can't help but ask yourself how did we get here. We used to be invested in our children's education, now we are invested in locking them up. Kinda backwards isn't it?

Hypocrisy thy name is Karl Rove

There is that old saying, “What's good for the goose is good for the gander.” or as Mitt Romney would put it. “What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander” (once again, could the guy be more out of touch.)

It just so happens that in the Presidential election of 2012 no one is finding that out more than Republicans, and in particular the man who called their shots the entire last decade Karl Rove.

While appearing Sunday on Fox News (where else would he be) Rove accused President Obama's re-election campaign of practicing “gutter politics”.

“The fact of the matter is if the president continues to make this charge — this outrageous charge — that Mitt Romney is guilty of felonious activity and committed a felony, that’s a big mistake, This is gutter politics of the worst Chicago sort.”

For the record, the President's Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter did not refer to Mitt Romney as a felon, she simply stated the fact that lying to the SEC is a felony. The more important part of this whole thing however is if anyone knows anything about “gutter politics” it is Karl Rove.

If you injected him with some sort of truth serum, John McCain would tell you about the kind of gutter politics that Rove, the former chief strategist of the George W. Bush Presidential campaigns engages in. There were rumors during the 2000 Republican primaries that McCain was the “father of an illegitimate black child”

There was very little doubt within political circles were those rumors started, and it played very well for Bush who won South Carolina by 12 points. It also didn't hurt that while it is 2012, culturally South Carolina was and probably will always be stuck in 1962.

While we are counting down Rove's greatest hits, surely we all remember Valerie Plame don't we. In 2003 former CNN contributor and conservative columnist Robert Novak told federal prosecutors that Rove had participated in the outing of Plame, the former CIA agent.

Rove was willing to put an agent's life in danger because her husband former Ambassador Joe Wilson had been vocal about the possibility of W skirting the truth to send our troops into Iraq. This not only speaks to the fact that Rove doesn't have a decent bone in his body, but that he is a terrible American.

As if trashing one American hero wasn't enough, Rove and the Bush campaign were silent while a side group called Swift Vets and POW's for Truth misrepresented Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry over his service in the Vietnam War. Rove was as quiet as a church mouse despite the fact that his guy was hiding and waiting out the war somewhere in Alabama.

Besides being a Fox News mouthpiece this political season Rove is also the money behind two Superpacs that have but one purpose, to defeat the President this fall. Since 2010 Rove's pac's have raised $123 million to take out the President and Democrats in Congress, more money than John McCain spent in his entire 2008 election.

To the President's credit he was quoted as saying that his campaign “will not be apologizing” as Governor Romney called on him to do. This means the possibility of Republicans fighting back with misleading falsehoods about the President are surely on the way, and you can be sure Rove will be at the forefront.

Here is to hoping that in November this clown walks away with nothing to show for that $123 million.

American Jobs Act Is Needed Now

As a result of Mitt Romney not being able to get his story straight about whether he left Bain Capital in

1999 or 2002, there was very little talk this week about how dismal the American economy is.

We all know the numbers by know. Unemployment sits at a robust 8.2% with some of the numbers being higher in other communities. Unemployment amongst African-Americans is a staggering 14.4%. These numbers are usually sighted by conservatives as reason number one President Barack Obama needs to be replaced by Romney in November.

Republicans will tell you that the President doesn't have a plan for fixing what ailes the job market, never mind the fact that the guy has already taken a corvette that was heading towards a brick wall at 90 m.p.h and turned it around by putting in place a stimulus package that created somewhere north of two million jobs and took the unemployment number from 10% to the aforementioned 8.2%

The fact is the President does have a plan and it is called the American Jobs Act. Obama first proposed in September 2011, after Republicans in Congress, particularly the House took the economy hostage by initially refusing to raise the debt ceiling, thus causing a downgrade in our credit rating.

What the President offered to Congress was a nononsense extremely aggressive bill that would put unemployed Americans back to work and keep public sector employees like cops, teachers, and firefighters in their jobs. The bill would be paid for with minimal tax raises on the nations top income earners.

It didn't take long for the Republicans to stand in the figurative school house door, as a matter of fact when the President went on national t.v to announce his plan the GOP wouldn't even offer up a rebuttal, a move that was described as “disrespectful” by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The Right which is so afraid to agree to even the smallest tax increase because of Grover Norquist and the Tea Party balked at the chance to pass the bill and put Americans back to work.

The AJA contains elements of job creation that Republicans once proudly touted. In the 1950s it was President Eisenhower a GOP legend who built the interstate highways. Obama's call for $50 billion for new infrastructure programs was not even given any kind of consideration. Even when the President introduced the smaller “Rebuild American Jobs Act”, a slimmed down version of the original It got voted down in the Democratic controlled Senate, thanks to the filibuster and DINO's like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson.

The AJA also called for $35 billion in additional funding to protect the jobs of teachers, policeman, and firefighters. As I have written in the past the shedding of government jobs is the lasting legacy of the “great red wave” of 2010. While the private sector has continued to add jobs under President Obama it is the public sector's struggles that are delaying an economic recovery.

The sad truth is Republicans don't want the economy to get better, which increase the President's re-election chances. They make sure those chances remain as low as possible by continuing to stall public job creation.

It was Romney a few months ago who offered up “The President wants more cops, more teachers, more firefighters, did he not get the message of Wisconsin” quote, and of course who can forget Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's classic line of “Our number on geopolitical goal is to make Barack Obama a one-term President”. Even if it means firefighters in Scranton, Pennsylvania have to have their pay reduced to minimum wage, Republicans are clear on what they have to do, and they don't care who it affects.

Speaker of the House John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor know who they represent, and it ain't the teachers and the fireman, the cops and the construction workers or anybody else inside the 99%. They represent the Charles and David Koch's of the world. The Republican response to the President's bill was their own American Jobs Act of 2011. Introduced by Republican Louie Gohmert the bill called for the full repeal of the Corporate Income Tax, because nobody out there is struggling as bad as America's corporations.

Call me crazy but a party completely fixated on paralyzing job growth and stalling the overall economy shouldn't benefit politically. Let's hope voters keep that in mind come November.

Romney Has A Big Mess in Bain

There will be no burying the lead with a Friday afternoon press release for one Willard Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for President of The United States. You see Mitt will spend his Friday afternoon giving what I call emergency interviews with five television networks about his time spent as CEO of Bain Capital.

On Thursday The Boston Globe released a damaging story about disputes over Romney's exit from Bain. Romney for political purposes has always maintained that he left Bain in February of 1999, however evidence has emerged that Romney really left the company in 2002 to run The Salt Lake City Olympics of that year.

This is important because Romney desperately wants to have his political cake and eat it too. He is gladly eager to take the credit for the jobs that were created by Bain during that time period, yet freely deflects criticism concerning jobs that were outsourced by the company over the same time by saying I was long gone by then.

This would be a much easier tight rope for Mittens to walk if he wasn't a one trick political pony who was running for the highest office in the land. From day one Romney has made his experience in the private sector his calling card for being elected the 45^th President of the United States. Romney has chided President Obama for being a community organizer and not knowing how the real economy works, and he has said all of this while being under the assumption that the President's team should not take a look at that private sector record and expose it for what it really is.

On a Conference call on Thursday, the brilliant Stephanie Cutter a deputy campaign manager for the President summed this whole situation up by saying. “Either Mitt Romney, through his own words and his own signature, was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the S.E.C., which is a felony, or he was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the American people.”

Predictably the Romney campaign responded in outrage, because of their inability to explain their candidates silence on the issue. Matt Rhoades a campaign manager for Romney said “President Obama’s campaign hit a new low today when one of its senior advisers made a reckless and unsubstantiated charge to reporters about Mitt Romney that was so over the top that it calls into question the integrity of their entire campaign,”.

For the record Stephanie Cutter never called anyone a felon, nor did she say Mitt Romney broke the law. The Romney campaign really does live in a bubble where any legitimate question asked by the President and his team is an unfair attack. I can question your record at any time Mr. President, but you have to stay away from mind.

Romney also doesn't mind evoking the memory of his late father George Romney, the former Governor of Michigan. He ofter remembers him as a man of principle, who was always willing to do the right thing. Can you imagine the conversation father and son would be having if Sr. was still with us.

George Romney set the standard for Presidential candidates releasing their tax returns, when he released twelve years worth in anticipation of his 1968 run for President. Mitt on the other the hand has only offered up a year and a half continuing to lead to speculation that he is hiding something. The natural thing to do would be release the tax returns, and put all of the questions to rest.

Romney is the epitome of the negative campaigner who complains about negative campaining. Every thing the President has said about Bain up until this point has been legit. Romney meanwhile has offered up some tall tales about the President's record that would make the average fiction writer blush. There is “Obamacare is the largest tax increase in the history of the U.S.” Or “The President said that the stimulus would hold unemployment under 8%” or “Obama apologizes for America all over the world”. Romney never met a lie didn't like including the one about Condolezza Rice being his V.P. For him to complain about the Bain ads is rich, pun intended.

If you injected the Republicans with some sort of truth serum they would tell you there is now some buyer's remorse with Romney. It's almost like they went the Sarah Palin route and didn't vet the guy. Also for Romney, how in the hell can you be running for President the last six years and not close offshore bank accounts and sure up whether or not you left the company that was offshoring jobs at the time you initially said you did.

This whole issue just continues the narrative of Mitt Romney out of touch rich guy. A man who might be a hell of a genius in terms of making money even if it is at the expense of working class Americans. That is why this man shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the White House.

Paterno Legacy Is Jerry Sandusky

What I usually do with this blog is give my latest opinion on the matters that take place in the political

sphere on a daily basis. It usually has to do with the latest Mitt Romney gaffe concerning his tax returns, or President Obama and the Democrats inability to message properly.

I would be remissed if I didn't take this opportunity to respond to the horror that is the child sex abuse scandal at Penn State University that is right out of the pages of the nearest Catholic Church.

Former F.B.I. Director Louis Freeh announced the findings of his seven month investigation into the University on Thursday, and in my mind confirmed a lot of things I had already thought, most notably that legendary Head Football Coach Joe Paterno was up to his neck in misconduct.

Freeh basically said a cover-up of the highest order had taken place at Penn State since initial rumors of then Defensive Coordinator, and now convicted child molestor Jerry Sandusky was involved in having inappropriate conduct with children in 1998 were brought to light.

No one should ever make the mistake of remembering who the biggest villian in this tragedy is, it is that disgusting piece of excrement Sandusky. There will never be a terrible enough punishment for this scumbag, who will most likely die in prison. The old saying goes the cover-up is worse than the actual crime, that is not the case here, but it comes pretty damn close.

Joe Paterno, a college football coaching legend who won over 400 games, 2 National Championships, and graduated countless players from a fine academic institution, was basically the point man in concealing facts surrounding questions about his colleague and friend Sandusky. Paterno had the people who were supposed to be his superiors answering to him in this sordid saga.

In 1998 Penn State campus police investigated a claim by a mother who said her son was molested by Sandusky, when this was made public last year Paterno's first reaction was to say he knew nothing about that claim. The Freeh Investigation shattered Paterno's defense saying that he was well aware of the fact that police were looking into Sandusky.

In 2001, Paterno was told by Graduate Assistant and former PSU Quarterback Mike McQueary that he had witnessed an incident involving Sandusky and a ten year old boy in the locker room shower at the athletic complex on Campus. Paterno's response was to tell McQueary he would take care of it.

After Paterno notified his superiors, they were prepared to go to police with the information that they had, only to be talked out of it by Paterno himself. Allegedly a conversation took place between Paterno and his boss Athletic Director Tim Curley, where Paterno basically said the best thing to do in terms of handling the situation was to tell Sandusky not to bring young boys onto the school's campus anymore. Paterno and Company basically said we don't care if you molest children just don't do it at our workplace.

As I said earlier, Sandusky is the real scumbag, but Paterno comes extremely close to matching him. Nevermind the Governor of Pennsylvania or any elected official in the state, Joe Paterno was the most powerful man in the commonwealth. There is also a story that Freeh relates from his investigation where a janitor at the University witnessed Sandusky perfoming oral sex on a young boy, that janitor didn't come forward because of fear that Paterno would have had him fired. If that doesn't scream too much power for the football coach I don't know what does.

I am as big a sports fan as anyone in the country, and like most people I cringe when I hear the latest story about an athlete or a coach who has run afoul of the law. While DUI's and domestic violence should never be taken lightly, they pale in comparison to child molestation and adults taking advantage of society's most defenseless.

In that case Sandusky and Paterno because of his refusal to drop a dime on his lifelong pal are two of the worst individuals who ever graced everyday life let alone the sports world. Their crimes make strip club brawls and steroid use from athletes look extremely small.

Also before the Paterno apologists scream at me for neglecting to mention the 61 years of service the man gave to the school, the endless amounts of money he raised for the school and for charity, and the countless number of players he turned into fine, upstanding gentlemen, save it. All of Paterno's good qualities have been washed away as far as I'm concerned. Jerry Sandusky's victims prove that, especially the ones that could have been saved had Paterno been a man and not a coward.

NAACP Speech Wasn't For The NAACP

After watching the debacle that was Mitt Romney and his laughable speech in front of the NAACP this morning, the one word question that remains on the forefront of my mind is Why?

If you listen to most political pundits, The Republican Party's Presidential nominee was there not to appeal to the African-American constituency that the world's oldest civil rights organization is made of, but to swing voters across the country who aren't comfortable with the GOP being as lilly white as a bottle of aspirin.

If that was indeed the task then Mittens failed spectacularly. Romney basically went into a room full of Barack Obama loving black folks and gave a stump speech that would have drawn a thunderous applause from the Tea Party and all of it's racist idealogues.

The most contentious portion of Romney's speech was when he once again pledged his intention to do away with the President's signature achievement, the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Referring to the law as “Obamacare” was the equivalent of a guy poking a bear with a stick, Romney knew it would draw boos louder than a Lebron James return to Cleveland, nevermind the fact that he didn't call it's original and more aptly titled name “Romneycare.”

There was also no mention of the GOP's all out assault on the voting rights of people of color, the elderly and college students, three core constituency groups that carried the President to victory in 2008. Romney kept his mouth shut about voter I.D., because he knows his chances to win the general election are significantly decreased without it.

Romney, like most Conservatives the few mindless black ones in particular assume that black folks are not politically aware. It is easy for Romney to rattle of the 14.4% number of African-American unemployment and blame the President for it. The fact is it doesn't work, black people know what is in the President's “American Jobs Act”, they know that is contains legislation that would put not only black folks, but all Americans back to work. They also know that the real culprits behind that 14% number are named John Boehner and Eric Cantor. The Republican led House's refusal to pass the AJA

has caused the paralyzation of the economy.

Romney on Wednesday, essentially tried to kill two birds with one stone, He wanted to stick his head in the door of NAACP house just to say he was there, while still appealing to a base that in a lot of ways is still not sure about him. Imagine the uproar from scumbags like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity if Romney had said I don't agree with the need for voter I.D or I disagree with the Affordable Care Act, but people should have access to some form of healthcare, the right would be insensed.

Whether it was envoking his father's memory, a man who actually marched in the Civil Rights Movement or quoting Dr. King which everyone saw coming, Mitt was sure to cover all of his bases, and if that meant taking a few boos from a group of people who weren't going to vote for him anyway so be it. My only hope is that moderate voters who could check the box that says Romney saw this pathetic sideshow really for what it was and walks away from the GOP on election day.

If you are someone who really hates there time being wasted for no reason, Wednesday really wasn't your day!