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Vivek Murthy

One of the benefits of being a lame duck is that you can vote the way you really want without concern for how it will be viewed by your (soon-to-be-former) constituents. Thus today’s confirmation of dedicated anti-gunner Dr. Vivek Murthy as Surgeon General. The pro-Murthy vote was 51-43, meaning he wouldn’t have been approved without the Democrats having invoked the “nuclear option” allowing the president’s nominations to slip by with a simple majority rather than the former standard of 60 votes . . .

While the confirmation is sure to be trumpeted by the mainstream media and people like Shannon Watts as a defeat for the NRA, in practical terms, the Surgeon General’s view on gun control – or anything else, really – carries virtually no weight at all. Much the same as people like Mark Pryor. Or Mary Landrieu. Or Mark Udall. Or Kay Hagan. Or Mark Begich. Or….

 

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103 COMMENTS

    • Remember when Surgeon Generals were actually highly qualified medical elder statesmen like, say, C. Everett Koop who was a pioneer for some surgical procedures? Now the SG is a two-bit political hack who completed his residency 8 years ago but had the gumption to vocally support Obama and his policies. Just sad.

      • Are you suggesting that this fine specimen of medical proficiency is just another kockknocker for the anti and Obumber campaigns?

        You’d be right! You won the internet!

    • His lack of experience is my biggest concern. He’s been a physician for what, about 15 minutes?

      I guess political orthodoxy outweighs actual experience.

      • I’ve seen this before with really crappy managers. If he appoints people that are even less qualified than himself, Obama will look better by comparison. He just doesn’t want to be the biggest loser in the room.

  4. Well, thanks for setting the precedent Demoturds. Now you may as well not show up for Senate sessions as your votes literally do not matter for at least the next two years. Just wait until we get a conservative in the White House in two years and pack every appointment we can get our hands on with conservatives.

    • And watch them scream foul when it happens, too. Progs see themselves as the absolute endpoint of human cultural evolution, and see their brand of authoritarian collectivism as the inevitable next stage of human development. I don’t think it really occurs to them that their abuse of power could be turned around on them. Did you see Obama’s deer-in-the-headlights reaction when asked why a future Republican President couldn’t simply refuse to enforce capital gains taxes?

  5. Great. Another idiotic appointment by Obama. Perhaps he will spout away more anti-gun garbage and distance the people even further from the Democratic Party. I’d be just fine with a 2 party system. Let the Democratic party die and unmourned death and have Republicans and Independents compete for their best ideas in a limited government.

    Does the SG have any actual power other than the ridiculously obvious warnings on cigarette packages?

    • No.

      And as was pointed out in another blog, his Office staff will grind him into nothing and expel what’s left of him in the same way it did his predecessors. Can you name any of them? I didn’t think so.

        • Clinton’s Surgeons General Joycelyn Elders wanted masturbation taught in school…

          And was gone shortly thereafter…

      • Sure. I remember Richard Carmona, and basically liked him. He came to D.C. with the biggest aspirations. In the first months of his term he called in a bunch of people, including the recently retired USSOCOM Command Surgeon, to brainstorm on health initiatives that would help vets and others, ideas mostly related to weight control and smoking. (He got carried away with the second-hand smoke issue, which subsequent ‘science’ has shown to be a negligible health risk factor). He got chewed up and spit out by Bush 43’s guys. I briefly watched. Sad.

        He should have run for Congress as a Republican from the 8th District in 2006. He probably would have won, beat Giffords….but he got so pissed off he refused, later ran for the Senate as a Democrat…and lost. It’s A Hard Knock Life.

    • I don’t think the Surgeon General even has that. Congress passed a law mandating the label and the language in it. Doesn’t matter who it is or who appointed him, the Surgeon General is an empty suit.

  6. To those commenters who claim that there’s no difference between Republicans and Democrats, I need to ask: Are you out of your freakin’ minds?

    • Establishment Republicans are blaming Ted Cruz for this. Not only is there a big difference between Republicans and Democrats, there is a big difference between Republicans and Republicans.

      • Michael, I am sorry but I am a gun owner and a RINO.
        I am glad people like Cruz are in the debate, but there are many things I fundamentally disagree with when it comes to the far right of our party.

        I also know LOTS of women who are business owners, intelligent, who are inclined to the GOP in almost every way who will and do vote GOP when the candidate is moderate, and will never vote for a GOP candidate on the hard right.

        Look what happened in Virginia.

        • The fact that you think Ted Cruz is “hard right” says it all. Unless you were speaking euphemistically, the RINOs I know are statists who fell that the state, whether benignly or otherwise, should dominate the individual. Since Cruz’s basic political philosophy is opposed to state dominance over the individual, I can easily see how people who feel otherwise might see him in a negative light. If you don’t mind, would you care to tell us what aspects of gun-control you think are reasonable restrictions on gun-ownership?

        • You probably also think Chris Christie is a great guy. Republican leadership is complicit with this administration. Boehner just gave him everything he wanted, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama had his Demorat cronies throw a hissy fit over the budget to trick the less observant conservatives into thinking we won something. That omnibus bill just de-fanged the political outsiders of both parties by letting the parties as a whole receive literally 100x more cash per donor ($7k vs. $777k) than a boat rocker like Cruz or Warren.

    • Not out of our minds, well rounded in this little inconvenient thing called “REALITY”.

      There is no difference.

      Sure, Republicans maybe can give you breaks with your gun rights, but what is the point if the internal surveillance and unwinnable wars overseas continue? What is the point if the war on drugs continues?

      Get my point? good. Your parties are steaming piles of BULLSHIT

      • The wars are only “unwinable” because certain cowards in the Democratic party refuse to deal with a war the way it needs to be dealt with. If we had burned half of Iraq to the ground after turning Afghanistan into a continuous sheet of glass, we would not be dealing with ISIS. We didn’t “win hearts and minds” against the Imperial Japanese and Nazis, we bombed them back to the stone age, burned their major cities to the ground, and glassed major population centers until they were on their knees. That’s how you win a war, none of this touch feely new age garbage about playing nice with people sworn to the destruction of your way of life.

    • It’s not that there’s NO difference. It’s more that there’s not enough difference where it really counts. Read through the cromnibus. Re-arranging deck chairs on the damn Titanic.

  7. Dan, it sure was refreshing, exhilarating in fact, to see Mary Landrieu’s name included in the list you wrote. We worked hard to ensure her retirement to her mansion in D.C.to be a lobbyist for Obamacare.

  8. The fact that this guy had never even managed a hospital. .or was a hospital department head really shows he should not be the surgeon general. No experience at all. Wasn’t he part doctors for obama or something like that.

    • Experience is irrelevant. All that matters is correctness of thought.

      If experience mattered, we wouldn’t have what’s his name in the White House.

      • sure….but also look at past surgeon generals qualifications and past work and compare to this guy’s. then look at him at being the co-founder of a group called and president of doctors for obama.

    • Well, I suppose he’ll fit in when they take the next group photo of Administration leaders. And O’s guys won’t have to work hard to crush him, because O agrees with all his views. But D.C. will crush him. Grab your popcorn.

  11. “The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way, the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed.”
    ― Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
    They come from every avenue.

    • That’s right!

      Incremental intrusions and restrictions. It’s been going on in CA and other anti-gun state governments for years. Restrict here, drive up costs there, increasingly prohibit transfers; voila, de facto, if not de jure confiscation.

      This guy will be another face in an increasingly long line of government sponsored antis who will help generate anti gun propaganda for the Democrats.

      • The conservatives hopefully won’t end up like Solzhenitsyn by participating in the incremental infringements. Beautiful and ironic example of the First amendment, which is just as equal and protected by the Second, since when one BoR ceases to exist, especially in “state ordered constitutional right free zones”, they all do.
        Oh, the irony- A mexican quoting hitler, which was agreed upon by a freedom loving American on a website founded by a gun lovin Jew; wherein debating the positive future choices regarding their liberty that a confirmed communist will make.

  14. I gotta break the NRAs balls on this one. All this time,effort, and money- – mine even– and the guy gets appointed anyway. A mostly hollow victory, sure, but while the ILA was “pounding” congress and begging for more donations, we lost real ground in places like WA.
    Gotta be smarter than this.

      • It was winnable until they put up a competing bill composed of similar numbers. Vote no on 594 and yes on 597? 594 is supported by Sheriffs? People can’t even remember how many reps are in the house or what their district number is. They should have labelled the background check bill for what it was. VOTE NO ON GUN REGISTRATION BILL 594. I’m a fairly politically active guy and I could not tell which bill was which by the 2 signs. That was the NRA’s (and Washington gun owners) failure here, branding.

        • the NRA didn’t put up the competing initiative. that was alan gottlieb’s CCRKBA. the NRA advised against it.

        • Alan Gottlieb likes the idea of UBC’s.

          He made some comment a while back of why wouldn ‘t you want a back ground check on people buying a gun.

    • “Hollow” victory?

      Depends how he’s used by this administration and how much his propaganda is trumpeted by the anti-gun media. Just like how the Libby media is swooning over Warren while giving Cruz short shrift and denigrating his efforts at every turn.

      • I’m not sure whose career is going to be shorter, when it comes to that- the new SG, or the old establishment media. Or Elizabeth Warren, for that matter.

  15. But he’s in a position to be an “opinion influencer”. He can poison the air. Endorse bogus “studies”.
    Remember that these people are fighting a cultural war.

  16. ” the Surgeon General’s view on gun control – or anything else, really – carries virtually no weight at all…”

    I unhappily disagree. Framing guns as a “public health concern” is the next strategy and it will take a lot of effort to be defeated in a best case scenario.

    Look at what they did with seatbelts and cigarettes, for the children’s HEALTH.

    • wtf are you on about?! seat belts and cigarettes are not equivalent to 2A – you don’t have a constitutional right to not wear a seatbelt, and you certainly don’t have a constitutional right to stink up restaurants an workplaces with cigarettes, and the science is very clear that seat belts save lives and cigarettes kill.

      you don’t want to wear seat belts? fine. buy your OWN interstate road system.

      • Listen up…the culture shift from Joe Cool and cowboys on horseback in ads to designated smoking areas more than 8 feet away from any building entrance and smokers almost as second class citizens is the new template for gun control. I’m not saying the will be successful…I’m saying that their tactics have worked before on a slightly different target.

        • Bingo. It’s not all about the legislation, it’s about prepping the political battlefield. That’s what they want to do.

          Maybe they’ll fund some big pseudo-scientific studies and find that guns are harmful and start pushing for insurance to recoup the costs to society. Maybe they’ll roll back the legislation and allow people to sue gun companies again. They failed on the grand federal laws but they’re going to try and nibble at the edges.

      • Aaron, you’re a fool if you think they care about your view of the Constitution. But your view is fundamentally WRONG anyway, because you are asking where one has a right to do something in the Constitution. You need to read your history or, failing that, at least study the 10th Amendment.

        And what I’m “on about”, if you can comprehend it, is that the federal government taking on “health issues” (and holding purse strings) has been an effective way to expand it’s purported authority for decades. I never said it is equal to the 2nd.

      • In that time there was no federal movement on gun control.

        I hope I am wrong but I see this being the next push. There’s a reason congress moved to stop the federal government from funding “health studies” on gun violence, and we’re going to see it.

    • Would there really be no time for confirmations were it not for these two, or is it just a myth bandied about to smear them?

      • There likely would not have been time before winter recess. Ted Cruz delivered this Christmas gift to Harry Reid on a silver platter.

        Thanks Ted!

        • I fail to see how an additional vote freed up enough time for a slew of confirmation hearings. Murthy was not the only confirmation being made. If all else, he stalled it, however Reid would have kept everyone around to stuff these positions before the new congress takes hold. Obama wouldn’t allow anything less.

        • “Reid had a deal with Mitch McConnell to simply let the Senate clock run over the weekend without actually holding a session, then everyone would meet Monday to OK the $1-trlllion spending bill that keeps the government lights on, then everyone would start launching their holiday exits. There would’ve been no time to schedule Monday evening floor votes for Murthy, or other pending Obama nominees, the last time there would be a maximum number of Democrats in attendance.”

          Enter Ted Cruz……

        • So according to the official narrative, because of Cruz and Sessions, Reid broke his agreement with McConnell to wait out the current legislative clock, decided to become productive and confirm some held up nominations which were only possible after he imposed the Senate “nuclear option” in the first place.

          Ok, sure.

  18. I see this as not being a bad thing. What can he do to pass laws based solely on emotion and not verifiable fact? This need for facts will result in studies. These studies will show what we have said over and over- law abiding citizens with guns aren’t the threat that people like Bloomberg say we are, and that “assault rifles” are rarely ever used in crimes, and NFA items are used even less. It will show concealed carry by law abiding citizens isn’t a threat to society, nor is open carry. It will show this and so much more.

    So for me, I personally welcome him to try to convince law makers guns are a threat to public health. The results will be “enlightening”, as was the last report on gun violence commissioned by the government.

    • You forget, we’re dealing with leftists here. Not only are they completely devoid of shame and conscience, they’re pathological liars who are well practiced in creating their own truths.

  19. The Surgeon General position has been reduced to a figurehead that merely pays the patronage bill for various special interests. They don’t actually DO anything anymore. It was sad when certain quarters tried to blame the Ebola crisis on the lack of a surgeon general – as if having one would have changed anything. This cat will be a lame duck figurehead under a lame duck president.

    • A lame duck figurehead who will be receiving $181,500 a year in public money and controlling millions more of our money, which he will give out in grants to Obama’s sycophants and suckups. It’s the political payoff of all time.

      • I’d do the job for $179,000 even. I’m CPR, First Aid, and EMR trained, and helped deliver a baby on the freeway a few months ago. Also, I wouldn’t give a cent to anti-gun causes. I would consider labels on gun boxes that would say “The Surgeon General has found that proper use of this firearm may save your life when all other measures have failed. Point firearm at violent felon(s) and pull trigger. Repeat until dirtbag ceases violent behavior. Not to be used as a flotation device.”

  20. Where is his grey hair? He had grey hair during his hearings. I swear I have socks older and more qualified than him. No surprise, the two esteemed gentlemen from Virginia voted Yea.

  21. Murthy is one appointment made and he will be replaced if Republicans win the next Presidential election. It’s the others that are not talked about. I don’t know how many of them are Federal Judges but they are appointed for life and that is almost as bad as a Supreme Court appointment. They will control the decisions at the lower courts for a long time.
    Ted Cruz screwed this up seriously. If he had not brought up the idiotic constitutional question to the senate about immigration they would only have had time to work through the budget and left until the new Senate was in charge. He “f’d” this up for his ego and it is not something good for us. The Murthy nomination would not have been brought up nor the judicial nominations. What an idiot in this case.

  24. I don’t know how much he can do in his position, maybe some, maybe not that much. What I like less about it is the vote itself, which is continuing the trend of the Democrats becoming more and more uniformly the party of gun control. Fewer and fewer of the Democratic legislators feel that there’s anything for them in opposing it. Perhaps it’s just life, perhaps it’s an ongoing fallout of the NRA decision to oppose the universal background checks after Sandy Hook. But then, could one really trust Landrieu and Hagan not to expand their vote beyond the UBCs in 2015?

    • The NRA has done a tremendous job of getting people on both sides of the aisle to oppose gun control. I think the resounding defeat of Manchin-Toomey was a testament to that. The fact that they couldn’t even get a gun control law through a Democratic Senate was a triumph for the NRA.

      I think it’s more likely that its Bloomie’s money that’s swaying the Dems. They think they can kiss his butt instead of the NRA’s and they’ll be fine with the voters at home and set themselves up better for national Democratic politics (Presidential runs, Cabinet appointments, ambassadorships, etc.).

      Hopefully the NRA’s victory at Manchin-Toomey isn’t seen as a high-water mark. Malloy’s win and Hickenlooper’s win have me concerned. We’ll see.

      We’ll see.

      • Malloy’s win doesn’t concern me in the least. It’s Connecticut, for crying out loud. Hickenlooper is a bit more disappointing.

    • The republicans may be losing states because of immigration issues but the dems will loose purple states because of guns. It’s some sort of political karma battle that I guess is a result of the two-party system.

      I don’t blame the NRA. Even though I didn’t see UBCs as a big deal in and of themselves there’s no reason to keep giving up ground for nothing to the other side.

      • UBC is useless and expensive and nobody really cares about it because of that. What people object to is the national firearms registry it requires, which I maintain is the only reason it is being pushed. That registry is the holy grail for gun grabbers, finally allowing their wonderful confiscation plans to move forward. The fact that such a registry would be illegal bothers them not at all, and I guarantee there is a record, somewhere, of every 4473 ever filled out, though it has always been illegal to keep them past, what, 72 hours?

  25. Yep Mark Kirk completely lost his mind after the stroke. The very definition of RINO. Typical Illinois a##hole.

  26. One day, I’ll be telling my child to work hard so he can earn respect in life and be rewarded for his competence, experience, and skill.

    Then he’ll look confused, point to a newspaper showing the Dem’s latest nomination, and ask…why?

  28. All I want for Christmas is the first day of 2015.

    If this is the best Barry can come up with for SG it signifies a serious lack of competent candidates and grasping at straws before his change of life.

  29. The mid-term elections were a complete repudiation of Obama and Democrat policies. In the name of FSM why would they double down on such stupidity? This entire election season parallels what happened in 1994. Bill Clinton even warned Democrats very early about using this rhetoric:

    http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/bill-clinton-warns-democrats-against-overreaching-on-gun-debate/

    How many times do you need to get your ass kicked before you realize maybe this isn’t such a good idea?

  30. Manchin voted correctly (Nay) yet Rockafeller did not. He, unlike Manchin, would not accept phone calls or emails since he is leaving office. Without having to face his fellow West Virginians in an election again he turned his back on us.

    It’s worth pointing out that a single republican turned coat and voted Yea (Kirk-IL). Not surprising considering his home state, but still.

    • Without even checking, I have every confidence that both of my senators, including the lame duck one, voted for this guy and that furthermore even the one who isn’t lame duck couldn’t possibly care less what I think.

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