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The NRA Gave These 9 Senators Over $22 Million To Vote Down Gun Laws (CHART)
The NRA and their bought-and-paid-for Senators have blood on their hands.
How can not one, but three gun bills fail to pass after two horrific mass shootings in just one week? How can our GOP-run congress remain so cruelly indifferent to our grief and outrage? Since Adam Lanza gunned down 20 first graders, six teachers, and his own mother back in 2012, we’ve clamored for tougher gun laws. Alas, as my Reverb Press colleague Tina Praino aptly puts it, the GOP’s more afraid of the NRA than they are of angry voters or terrorists buying guns.
Money’s a powerful thing, and the gun trade makes lots of it from gun-crazy Americans… Especially when gun sales spike after a mass shooting. No wonder the NRA spends so much on local, state, and national elections to keep their buddies in business. How much? It’s hard to tell. They often give to PACs and groups that endorse their candidates, rather than to their favored ones’ campaigns directly. But Open Secrets (from the Center for Responsive Politics), has amassed a treasure trove of data on the NRA’s political spending that dates all the way back to 1989.
Related: Mitch McConnell: NRA Must Approve New Supreme Court Justice (VIDEO)
Scott Bixby from Mic.Com took a long, hard look at the 50 U.S. Senators — one Democrat and 49 Republicans — who voted against a bill late Thursday evening that would have expanded background checks for guns bought at gun shows and through online vendors. He then pored over the data from the Center for Responsive Politics and came up with some interesting findings: Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) haven’t received a dime in campaign funds from the NRA directly or indirectly through PACs and other groups. But the other 48 Senators have raked in a staggering $27,205,245 — over $27 million dollars — from the NRA over the course of their careers.
To add insult to injury, the NRA spent $14,240,194 — over $14 million — on taking down candidates who oppose background checks. That’s right. Despite the fact that 90 percent of the American people and 74 percent of the NRA’s own members support universal background checks, the NRA spends millions on making sure we wind up with lawmakers who won’t vote for them. And this is just the tip of the iceberg…Imagine how much the NRA spends on all the other pro-gun politicians.
Nine senators alone received over $22 million from the NRA.
The lion’s share of these direct and indirect contributions from the NRA — a total of $22,596,399 — went to just nine senators (for the breakdowns and list of NRA spending on all 48 senators, scroll down to the bottom).
- Mitch McConnell (R-KY): $1,262,189
- Roy Blunt (R-MO): $1,433,952
- Pat Roberts (R-KS): $1,584,153
- Tom Cotton (R-AR): $1,968,714
- David Perdue (R-GA): $1,997,512
- Bill Cassidy (R-LA): $2,867,074
- Joni Ernst (R-IA): $3,124,773
- Cory Gardner (R-CO): $3,939,199
- Thom Tillis (R-NC): $4,418,833
Here’s the chart which shows the NRA’s spending on their nine favorite Senators broken down by direct campaign contributions, independent spending (PACs and other groups), and independent spending against their opponents. For details, move your mouse over the parts of the chart that interest you. As the small and barely-visible slivers of blue show, the NRA pays very little in direct campaign contributions.
http://reverbpress.com/politics/nra-pays-senators-millions/
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Fail: John McCain Blames Obama For Orlando Shooting, Then Tries To Walk It Back (VIDEO)
On rare occasions, Republican Sen. John McCain gets things right. This isn’t one of those occasions. Thursday, he said that President Obama is “directly responsible” for the shooting rampage in an Orlando nightclub that killed 49 people and left dozens wounded.
McCain ‘Didn’t Mean’ To Blame Obama, But He Did Anyway
Then, an hour or so after saying this, McCain tried to walk it back, saying he “misspoke.”
“I did not mean to imply that the president was personally responsible,” he said. “I was referring to President Obama’s national security decisions, not the president himself.”
Yeah, right. Remember, this is the man who once sang–as a joke–“Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.” And picked national embarrassment Sarah Palin as his running mate.
At first McCain (R-AZ) claimed Obama was responsible for the shooting because he allowed the Islamic State to grow in Iraq and Syria during his presidency. Even though there’s plenty of evidence that reports ISIS got its’ start during George W. Bush’s presidency.
Here’s how he actually put it:
“Barack Obama is directly responsible for it, because when he pulled everybody out of Iraq, al-Qaida went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today thanks to Barack Obama’s failures, utter failures, by pulling everybody out of Iraq.
Then he tried to walk it back with this statement, via Twitter:
In the horrific shooting, gunman Omar Mateen murdered 49 people and wounded more than 50. In the midst of the horror, he made phone calls and said he supported the Islamic State. But perhaps what McCain forgot (he is getting older, after all) is that this cruel killer was American born and bred.
And California Rep. Adam Schiff, who’s the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said McCain’s initial remark was a “grievous mistake” and a “gross disservice to the president.” On CNN, Schiff said he wished McCain “would retract it entirely.”
Related: Shit Nobody Asked For – Meet Judge Sarah Palin
But perhaps for McCain, there’s still a bit of sour grapes. After all, he lost to Obama during the 2008 presidential election and he’s been a persistent critic of the president’s foreign policy. McCain is up for re-election to the Senate again, but Democratic contender Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, is hot on his heels.
Kirkpatrick asserted that McCain had crossed “a dangerous line in comments that undermine our commander-in-chief on national security issues—at the very moment the president was in Orlando to comfort victims’ families.”
“It’s difficult to imagine the old John McCain being this reckless with something so serious,” Kirkpatrick said. “John McCain has changed after 33 years in Washington.”
Of course, McCain is going to be 80 in August, so maybe he’s just feeling his age. After all, he may have “forgotten” that the National Rifle Association (NRA) endorsed him during the 2008 presidential campaign, spending $7 million in a failed attempt to beat Obama. And the NRA turned right around and endorsed him in his 2010 Senate race.
Then Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) office called McCain’s comments “unhinged,” and added they are “just the latest proof that Senate Republicans are puppets of Donald Trump.”
“This is the party of Trump,” said a release from Reid’s office. It added there is “no daylight between Senate Republicans and Donald Trump.”
Things have been somewhat contentious between McCain and Trump, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski tweeted this:
In the wake of the shooting, Trump also criticized Obama by saying either he didn’t understand the radical Islamic terrorist threat or he “gets it better than anybody understands.”
“We’re led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he’s got something else in mind,” Trump said, earlier in the week. “And the something else in mind, you know, people can’t believe it, people cannot believe that President Obama is actin the way he acts and can’t even mention the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ There’s something going on—it’s inconceivable. There’s something going on.”
Which sounds like another Trump word salad with “radical Islamic terrorism” thrown into the mix as word salad dressing.
Then Trump couldn’t resist tweeting a link to an article on Breitbart that claimed Obama has supported ISIS indirectly. So of course, Trump used this to back up his claims that Obama may sympathize with terrorists:
That sounds like lovely fodder for the Alex Jones crowd.
McCain, perhaps due to the cavalcade of remarks that followed his dumb statement, made one last-ditch effort to walk it back again:
Now once again, let’s remember that McCain picked Palin as his running mate, and Trump is currently considering her (along with a few others). This means, however, that if Trump wins, we may get stuck with her anyway.
Ugh.
You can watch CNN’s take on McCain’s remarks in the video below.
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Senator Who Has Received More NRA Support Than Anyone Blames Obama For Orlando Shooting
by Aaron Rupar
CREDIT: AP Photo/Ralph Freso
Sen. John McCain
On Thursday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said President Barack Obama is “directly responsible” for the Sunday morning mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando that left 50 dead.
“Barack Obama is directly responsible for it, because when he pulled everybody out of Iraq, al-Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today thanks to Barack Obama’s failures,” McCain said, according to The Guardian. “[Obama] pulled everybody out of Iraq, and I predicted at the time that ISIS would go unchecked, and there would be attacks on the United States of America… It’s a matter of record, so he is directly responsible… The responsibility for it lies with President Barack Obama and his failed policies.”
There’s a good reason why McCain would ignore guns and focus on foreign policy. According to data from the Center of Responsive Politics, no member of Congress has received more direct and indirect support from the National Rifle Association than the $7.7 million that has gone to McCain over the course of his career. In 2008 alone, the NRA spent more than $7.2 million in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat Obama and elect McCain, who was the Republican candidate that cycle.
Though suspected Orlando shooter Omar Mateen pledged loyalty to ISIS during the attack on Pulse nightclub, no evidence has emerged that the American-born gunman was in previous contact with the group. Meanwhile, a former classmate told the Palm Beach Post he believes Mateen was gay, while his ex-wife told the Washington Post he was violent, emotionally troubled, and not particularly religious while the two were together. Mateen was twice investigated by the FBI — once for online comments he made in support of Islamist groups, and the second for connections he had with an Islamic extremist.
Despite all that, Mateen recently legally purchased the Sig Sauer MPX assault rifle he used during the massacre that left 50 dead. He also legally purchased a Glock 17 found on him after he was killed by law enforcement officers.
As McCain’s comments circulated, he attempted to walk them back with a statement where he said he “misspoke.”
I misspoke. I did not mean to imply that the President was personally responsible. I was referring to President Obama’s national security decisions, not the President himself. As I have said, President Obama’s decision to completely withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 led to the rise of ISIL. I and others have long warned that the failure of the President’s policy to deny ISIL safe haven would allow the terrorist organization to inspire, plan, direct or conduct attacks on the United States and Europe as they have done in Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino and now Orlando.
But a reporter who was present when McCain made his comments in a Senate hallway suggested he was trying to do damage control:
McCain’s remarks came just hours after the conclusion of a Democrat-led filibuster demanding the Senate vote on two gun control measures — extending background checks to all gun sales and banning people on the “terror watch list” from buying firearms. But even in the the event those measures pass in the Republican-controlled chamber, neither of them would’ve prevented Mateen from legally purchasing an assault rifle in the days before he went on a deadly rampage. (Update — a proposal offered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) might actually block people like Mateen from buying firearms by broadening the criteria to include being investigated for terrorism during the past five years.)
McCain, who faces a tough reelection fight against Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick, has pledged his support for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. His comments came a day after Trump cited a debunked conspiracy theory to make a case that Obama secretly supports ISIS.
Adam Jentleson, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), wasted no time drawing a connection between McCain and Trump, characterizing the senator’s “unhinged comments” as “just the latest proof that Senate Republicans are puppets of Donald Trump” and adding, “there is no daylight between Senate Republicans and Donald Trump.”
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来源: TJKCB 于 2016-06-17 10:54:39 [档案] [博客] [转至博客] [旧帖] [给我悄悄话] 本文已被阅读：1763 次 (31296 bytes)