Gun Nuts Out Of Control – Murder In Spokane – ‘Man who shot, killed SUV thief charged with 1st degree manslaughter’

Remember – He felt ‘threatened’ – Detectives say that the car was 40 to 60 feet away from Gerlach and going 50 miles per hour at the time.

But remember – we just need more guns.

‘The Prosecutor’s Office relayed the charged Wednesday morning to Gerlach’s attorney’.

‘His attorney released this statement’:

“Mr. Gerlach is disappointed in this charging decision. He is looking forward to resolving this matter in court.”

Maybe…….just maybe Mr. Gerlach should have thought to settle this in court before he shot Brendan Kaluza-Graham in the back of the head that morning.

‘Two major aspects in this case are that Kaluza-Graham was driving away from the scene, and the angle that the bullet went in. Detectives say that the car was 40 to 60 feet away from Gerlach and going 50 miles per hour at the time. Prosecutor Steve Tucker says he does not believe Gerlach was in danger when he chose to fire the shot. He called the shot “1 in 1,000”.

‘Prosecutors are also filing a weapons violation enhancement. Together, if he is convicted, Gerlach will face 8 to 10 years in prison. But if he’s found “not guilty”, the jury will be asked to come back with a second verdict, as to whether what Gerlach did was in self defense’.
@ : http://www.khq.com/story/22452088/man-who-shot-car-theif

SPOKANE, Wash. — ‘The Spokane County Prosecutor said a homeowner involved in a deadly North Spokane shooting will be charged with 1st Degree Manslaughter’.

‘Here is how the law defines 1st Degree Manslaughter’:

“A person is guilty of manslaughter in the first degree when; a. He or she recklessly causes the death of another person.”

‘The charge also included a deadly weapon enhancement’.

 

‘Gerlach shot 25-year-old Brendan Kaluza-Graham while he was stealing Gerlach’s 1997 Chevrolet Suburban’.

‘The police report said Gerlach left his vehicle running in his driveway near Mission and Lee. Gerlach told police he saw the suspect pull out of his driveway. He followed Kaluza-Graham on foot and allegedly saw the suspect raise his arm. Gerlach said he fired when he thought he saw a gun’.

‘The police report said the bullet shot through the SUV window, through a baby seat, through a headrest and finally into Kaluza-Graham’.

‘The suspect died at the scene’.

‘Investigators did not recover any weapons from the car’.
From : http://www.ktvb.com/news/regional/SUV-owner-shoots-kills-thief-is-charged-with-1st-degree-manslaughter-209500821.html

Blog Running – ‘Are Liberals Souring on Politics?

Great, great post by Ed Kilgore over at Wanhington Monthly.

With 1 exception.

Ed concludes with – “But since the same phenomenon doesn’t appear to be occurring on the Right despite the debacle of 2012…”

“Debacle”?

Yes the Republicans lost House seats. Yes the Republicans lost Senate seats. Yes the Republicans lost the White House.

Yet today we have a President and a Senate that can’t even pass 1 piece of legislation that is supported by 90% of Americans.

Looking at the election as a ‘debacle’ for Republicans is actually completley wrong.

What we need to do is deal with what’s in front of us.

The election is over.

Get over it.

The ‘debacle’ is the obstruction by Republicans.

THAT  has to be the Liberal and Moderate messaging.

– – – – – – –

‘There’s a pretty big and alarming fear bouncing around progressive opinion circles that has been forced into the open by reports of a really bad ratings month for MSNBC’:

“maybe liberals are (relatively speaking) souring on politics”!

‘Before anyone says it, no, this apparent progressive media slough of depression cannot be attributed to some Dickmorrisian sudden magical trend to the Right in public opinion: there’s no evidence of it whatsoever in any public opinion research’.

‘It’s hard to attribute it to any decline in the quality or content of progressive political content, either. In the case of MSNBC, the only thing that changed before May was the replacement of Ed Schultz by Chris Hayes, and it’s hard to imagine that displeased large numbers of viewers’.

‘Salon’s Alex Pareene looked at the MSNBC phenomenon the other day, and offered these observations, after noting that the show taking the real pounding in ratings has been Morning Joe, hardly a liberal-magnet’:

“It’s simplistic to say that viewers aren’t watching because the president’s having a bad news cycle. Bad news is often good for ratings. Liberals like to watch Republicans portrayed as big scary meanies when they’re not watching them be presented as inept nutso clowns. There was no such thing as liberal cable news during the Clinton impeachment, but if there had been I guarantee it would’ve been a hit”.

“Maybe — maybe! — some viewers are tuning out because they’re not hearing enough of an unqualified defense of the president and his administration from some of MSNBC’s more left-leaning voices”.

‘Expanding beyond television to the lag in web traffic (which can no longer be attributed to mere post-election fatigue) all of us progressive bloggers have noticed, Digby adds some thoughts’:

“I’m with [P]areene that if the Republicans really get crazy, the audience will come back”.

“Short of that (or something else catastrophic) my impression is that liberals are either bored or disillusioned right now for any number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that a liberal majority has been effectively obstructed and the president seems to be ineffectual”.

“I don’t now what the answer is, but it isn’t that there isn’t a permanent audience. There was until very recently”.

“It’s that the liberal audience is tuning out and one can only assume it’s because they don’t like what they see in our politics”.

‘I’m sure there are other semi-plausible theories, mostly involving a ritual incantation of the words “social media” followed by the unsupported suggestion that cable shows and blogs are so 2008’.

‘But since the same phenomenon doesn’t appear to be occurring on the Right despite the debacle of 2012, it remains a bit of a mystery, and if it doesn’t last, maybe one that can occupy journalism students down the road’.
From : http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_05/are_liberals_souring_on_politi045020.php

 

‘Romney Seeks to Rejoin National Dialogue’ and Quote of the Day’

“Having lost the election, I don’t look at myself as the person best equipped to prescribe where the party should go, going forward.”
— ‘Mitt Romney, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, on offering the Republican party guidance’.

And then……….

“More than half a year after his election loss, Mitt Romney is putting a tentative foot back onto the public stage,” the Wall Street Journal reports’.

‘Romney said that he plans to re-emerge in ways that will “help shape national priorities.”

“As a first step, the former Republican presidential nominee plans to welcome 200 friends and supporters to a three-day summit next week that he will host at a Utah mountain resort. He is considering writing a book and a series of opinion pieces, and has plans to campaign for 2014 candidates. But he is wary of overdoing it.”

‘Said Romney: “I’m not going to be bothering the airwaves with a constant series of speeches.”
From : http://politicalwire.com/archives/2013/05/30/romney_seeks_to_rejoin_national_dialogue.html

‘Fox’s Erick Erickson: It’s ‘Anti-Science’ To Not Believe Men Should ‘Dominate’ Women’

‘FOX (cough) ‘news’ contributor and RedState editor Erick Erickson told host Lou Dobbs that by letting this trend happen, liberals were defying biology’:

“I’m so used to liberals telling conservatives that they’re anti-science. But liberals who defend this and say it is not a bad thing are very anti-science. When you look at biology — when you look at the natural world — the roles of a male and a female in society and in other animals, the male typically is the dominant role. The female, it’s not antithesis, or it’s not competing, it’s a complimentary role.”
From :

What Congress Does – ‘Paul Ryan admits GOP can’t govern without a hostage crisis’

‘Rep. Paul Ryan, the House GOP’s budgetary chieftain, gave a brief but remarkable interview to the Washington Examiner’s David Drucker in which he essentially conceded that Republicans will only negotiate with Democrats over the budget if they can hold the U.S. economy hostage to increase their leverage’.
@ : http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/05/29/paul-ryan-admits-gop-cant-govern-without-a-hostage-crisis/

In the Senate where the Republicans are in the minority, the Republicans are blocking the appointment of conference members unless the Democrats change the budget that was already passed.

In the House where Republicans are in the majority, Republicans are trying to stop Democrats from asking for votes on specific portions of the budget that was passed.

Republican obstruction vs. Democratic disclosure.

Republicans didn’t get the budget they wanted so are obstructing until it’s changed in the Senate and then don’t want us to see Representatives actually voting on specific portions in the House.

‘Senate rules preclude the budget resolution from being filibustered. To maximize their negotiating position, the Republican minority has used parliamentary procedures to block Murray from appointing conference committee members and proceeding to the bicameral budget talks. In exchange for relenting, Senate Republicans want Democrats to drop their proposal to raise taxes. They also want assurances from Murray that a debt ceiling hike will not be coupled with the budget resolution’.

‘The House minority (Democrats) have minimal power, but the threat of the parliamentary tools it can wield has spooked Republicans and led them to demand a budget agreement with Senate Democrats as a condition for proceeding to a conference committee’.

‘House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., acknowledged in an interview that his decision to seek a pre-conference agreement with Senate Budget Chairman Patty Murray, D-Wash., stems from his desire to block House Democrats from forcing unlimited, daily votes on fiscal matters, as would be their right under House rules if a conference committee failed to conclude within three weeks’.

‘GOP sources concede that House Republicans fear Democrats would force them to take politically difficult votes in the likelihood that the House-Senate conference committee did not reach a deal within 10 legislative days or 20 calendar days’.

‘Votes on “motions to instruct” can be requested on any subject germane to the federal budget, affording the Democrats wide latitude to press the Republicans on myriad thorny issues the GOP would prefer not to weigh in on’.

“The moves I’m making, and the decisions I’m making, are to try and maximize the chance of success in the fall,” Ryan said Thursday during a brief interview with The Washington Examiner. “If we go to conference and it’s a stalemate and we have all these motions to instruct and all of this partisan fighting after 20 days, then we’ll grow farther apart and we’ll make it harder to get an agreement, that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing.”

‘Pre-conference agreements are not unusual, and have been sought by House and Senate leaders in the past to avoid an impasse during negotiations over what are often two diametrically opposed versions of a bill’.

‘But House and Senate Democrats are crying foul over the pre-conference demands being issued by their GOP counterparts — and the fact that they’re being issued at all.

‘Democrats are particularly rankled because the Republicans complained for four years that President Obama and Senate Democrats ignored “regular order” on the budget, and they vowed in January that they were through negotiating with the White House and returning to traditional legislative procedure for approving the fiscal 2014 spending plan and other bills’.

‘Democrats say it’s now the Republicans who are running from “regular order” because they no longer find it politically convenient’.

‘The House Republican budget would cut $4.6 trillion, reforma entitlement programs like Medicare and promises to balance the books in less than a decade. The Senate Democratic budget spends more generously, particularly on social programs, while raising nearly $1 trillion in taxes, although on who would depend on what the Senate Finance Committee decides’.

‘Senate rules preclude the budget resolution from being filibustered. To maximize their negotiating position, the Republican minority has used parliamentary procedures to block Murray from appointing conference committee members and proceeding to the bicameral budget talks. In exchange for relenting, Senate Republicans want Democrats to drop their proposal to raise taxes. They also want assurances from Murray that a debt ceiling hike will not be coupled with the budget resolution’.
From : http://washingtonexaminer.com/gop-pushes-for-pre-conference-agreement-on-2014-budget/article/2530493

 

What Congress Does – ‘Congress Comes Together… To Name Post Offices’

 

 

Republican Darrell Issa – Chairman of Naming Post Offices

By the way, Republican Darrell Issa – he of countless hearings on Benghazi, IRS and AG Eric Holder – is the committee Chairman of all this post office naming……

WASHINGTON — ‘Over the past decade, 20 percent of the legislation Congress has passed has been to name post offices’.

‘The findings are contained in an April 26 report by the Congressional Research Service’.

‘In the current Congress, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee — where most post office naming acts originate — has adopted a policy stating that these pieces of legislation should not take up too much time’:

“The consideration of bills designating facilities of the United States Postal Service shall be conducted so as to minimize the time spent on such matters by the committee and the House of Representatives.”

‘The last Congress (112th), which was the most unproductive since at least the 1940s, even managed to move through 46 bills naming post offices, out of 240 total measures passed. (It also passed six bills regarding commemorative coins.)’

‘The numbers are especially striking when compared with those from previous sessions of Congress. According to an analysis compiled by Knight-Mozilla OpenNews Fellow Noah Veltman in January, in the 26 years before the 106th Congress (1999-2000), post office naming bills represented less than 5 percent of all the legislation signed into law’.
From : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/29/congress-post-offices_n_3352711.html

2016 Republicans

IN 2012, the theme was ‘Who Let The Dogs Out’.

In 2016, it may well be ‘Where’s Waldo’?

2012 was a circus for Republicans. With the heady
victory from 2010 mid terms, the doors were wide open
for the fringe.

Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Rick ‘The Dick’ Perry,
Donald Trump.

All of these people at one time or another were polling
30% + while the eventual ‘winner’ Mitt ‘I Lie Therefore
I Am’ Romney couldn’t get above 25% until half way
through the primaries.

That ‘headiness’ has been tempered somewhat by the
election. Republicans lost seats in the Senate, the
House and lost the White House due to what the public
saw as ‘extremism’ from the Republicans.

Republicans, is a 30 day period, ‘rebranded’.

More specificly, they tried (and are trying) to shut the crazies up while falling back on what was working – obstruction.

In Janurary, the Republican House had to pass the increase in the debt ceiling, VAWA and Sandy relief – ALL with Democratic votes.

After that, the House has shut down.

Waiting.

For a leader.

Not unlike the Democrats.

So here’s my list of the crazies and wanna be’s.

Senator Red Cruz.
Rand Paul really, really needs Ted because Ted makes Rand look normal. Ted may. may poll some what high in Iowa Rand is already linking up with his dad’s groups. I haven’t seen any polling but after the last 6 months – I wonder if Ted could be re-elected in Taxas?

Governor Bobby Jindal.
Let’s see, Bob by is stripping his State of social services, trying to shift the tax base to the poor and middle class and also trying to ‘teach’ creationism over science,
No one sees that as a ‘vision’.

Governor Scott Walker.
America isn’t Wisconson. Go back home and wait for another call from as Koch brother(GRINS!).

Representative Paul Ryan.
America sees balancing the budget on the backs of the poor and elderly as un-American.

Former Governor Rick Santorum.
Nope. We just aren’t a ‘Christian’ Nation Rick no matter how much you want to make us one.

The also rans……

Senator Marco Rubio.
He can’t make up his mind if he wants the support of the teabaggers or should he go moderate?
So with each passinbg day, looks like the child who can’t decide which toy to play with.

Former Governor Jeb Bush.
You waited too long. He could have joined with former Governor Jon Huntsman and made a real difference in 2012. Instead he sat on the sidelines and threw the occassional insult.
Go help your son get elected.

The contenders…..

Rand paul.
How could a flame throwing libertarian be a contender in the Republican Party?
Simple.
Being a libertarian, you know the ‘secret’ teabagger hand shake. So with a wink and nod to them, you just don’t say anything too extreme.
You let Ted Cruz do that and it makes you seem like a normal person.
Now with research, the Democrats can tear your libertarism apart for middle America.
So the question becomes – can your fake normal stand up against a Republican who is ‘mad as hell and not going to take it anymore!’

Governor Chris Christie.
Can he wake up the moderate Reagan and Eisenhower Republicans?
If he wins big this November – he can.
With his very public acknowledgment and help from President Obama, combined with a history of statements against the extreme wing of the Republican Party, he sets himnself up as THE Republican that doesn’t want to take apart Government but rather work WITH Democrats for ALL Americans.
Add that to his weight loss and his very forceful personality (needs to be handled so he doesn’t offend) he will ‘look’ Presidential.

The election…..

Hillary wins the Democratic nomination easily. Maybe selects Gov. Patrick Duval as he running mate.

Christie, is a hard fight, wins the Republican nomination.

Rand Paul splits off and tries a third party run.
Gets 10 to 15% of ther vote.

Christie and Hillary fight for the moderate swing voters.

Who wins?

Well now…..that’d be telling…….

Freedom (cough) of the press – ‘N.Y. Times will not attend DOJ session, citing opposition to off-the-record provision’

When the press starts deciding for us what they will and will not cover, it stops being a ‘free press’ and is now propaganda.

The NYT, AP and HuffPo – telling us the news THEY think is fit to print.

Ever hear of ‘Watergate’?

If it weren’t for ‘unnamed sources’ or ‘off the record’ you never would have.

NYT, AP, HuffPo and any other so called ‘news’ agencies that refuse to attend an off the record meeting with AG Eric Holder don’t want to actually ‘report’.

Instead these so called ‘news’ agencies want to promote the story they want told and NOT report the story.

See FOX ‘news.’

Ask New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, look her right in the eye and demand that she do the same with her answer and ask

“Tell me that not one single reporter you employ has ever had an off the record meetring with anyone”.

‘New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson has announced that her paper will not attend an off-the-record session with Attorney General Eric Holder to discuss the Justice Department’s monitoring of reporters’.

“We will not be attending the session at DOJ. It isn’t appropriate for us to attend an off the record meeting with the attorney general. Our Washington bureau is aggressively covering the department’s handling of leak investigations at this time,” Abramson said in a statement’.
From : http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/05/ny-times-will-not-attend-doj-session-citing-opposition-165005.html

 

2016 Democrats

Right now every Democrat should be focused on 2014 Midterms and let the Presidential race sort itself out.

Democrats, traditionally, don’t get excited during mid terms.

Since the only thing stopping the Republicans from just voting strictly on their proposals is the Democratic (laugh) control of the Senate, Democrats really, really need to focus on the Senate as well as the House.

Trending right now, Democrats could lose a net of 4-6 House seats and 2-4 Senate seats in 2014.

If that happens, regardless of who the Republicans nominate for 2016, the excitement and energy with those victories will almost ensure a complete sweep for the Republicans.

But for now, with a President unable to actually complete any legislation……

With the (laugh) Democratic Senate facing a filibuster even on the daily opening prayer……..

And with the House Republicans fighting between themselves….

America and Americans find ourselves in a ship without a rudder and with a huge number of holes.

Democrats 2016

Any Democrat that gets elected will have the same problem that President Obama has now.

Republican obstruction.

Obama has, is and I believe will continue to ‘handle’ it by thinking it will slowly die out and he can get back to governing.

We all know how that is working out…….

There is one person who will ‘handle’ it differently. She’s had a great teacher in Bill as to how to deal with Republican obstruction – such as impeaching him.

Hillary.

I suppose I need to write more then that.

Hillary Clinton.

Still more?

Hillary will energize Democrats more for her then she will Republicans against her.

Add the possibility of being the first woman President?

Priceless.

Add to this that Bill will get back in politics.

A CRUSHING defeat of the ‘new’ Republican Party.

An energized Democratic Party after 8 years of great speeches with little results.

If Hillary doesn’t run, then that opens the door to Elizabeth Warren and though far less likely, Janet Napolitano.

It will also open the door for Biden, Andrew Cuomo, Martin O’Malley and maybe Mark Warner.

Biden will lose to Christie and even Rand Paul. He is just too closely tied to the Obama Administration. Could get a good bounce by selecting Warren as his VP.

Andrew Cuomo is an ass.

O’Malley and Warner just aren’t and don’t’won’t have the time to become ‘household’ names like Christie and Paul.

So it’s Hillary or a Republican WH, House and Senate.

 

Republicans 2014

This will be the constant message from Republicans.

And this, President Obama, is the the price of NOT dealing with what’s in front of you and dealing with it fast.