From that moment in November of 1969, when former President Richard Nixon asked for a “silent majority” to support his ‘Vietnamization’ effort, utilizing the peace with honor strategy; America’s shotgun wedding to the GOP marriage of silent loyalty and moral obedience was consummated. Between the Nixon and Reagan administrations, Republicans...
Shootings
More conflict, more shootings, and over micro-aggressions. DECATUR, Ga. (NEXSTAR) – A triple shooting at a Georgia grocery store Monday afternoon started with a dispute over a mask and left a cashier dead and both the suspect and a deputy wounded, authorities say. The suspect, 30-year-old Victor Lee Tucker, Jr.,...
Minnesota law enforcement, at its based level exhibits some intersectional issues often represented in fictional culture products like Fargo. Their police forces haven’t learned very much since the death of George Floyd. So many examples of bad faith below:
I’m not even sure what to do with this. I’m gobsmacked. Oh, he was a man, eh? I guess that means it’s okay for the cops to shoot him. What other conclusion can you possibly take from this ribbon of rancid tripe dribbling out the malignant maw of one Sean...
Structural change needs to happen, because in community policing, community should precede policing. The paramilitary trend should not be seen as a burgeoning conflict between armed militias, one more official than the other. We need a de-escalation whose goal is the diametric opposite of the 1/6 insurrection. The problem isn't...
Ending qualified immunity for police officers would certainly fill the gap in insurance company revenues created by universal healthcare in the US. There’s plenty of other liabilities that insurance companies can cover including civilian firearms liability insurance on the model of auto insurance. Forcing individual officers to bear more individual liability...
Ted Cruz continued his “Hey, look! I’m not in Cancun!” tour yesterday, traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border in search of a thatch of reeds that in no way made him look like a serial killer floating freshly harvested bodies down the river on jerry-rigged rafts comprised of peat bog residue and...
Because some Americans just can’t stop being awful long enough for us to digest the last awful thing, the media spin cycle seems to have largely washed away the March 16 Atlanta-area shootings that claimed the lives of eight people, including six women of Asian descent. The massacre further highlighted the kind...
Apparently John (no relation) Kennedy (R-LA) may endorse those sober drivers who run over demonstrators in Oklahoma, because a guy who “went to Oxford” should know something about logical fallacies. x Hours after America's second mass shooting in a week, Sen. John Kennedy downplays the gun problem by noting that...
I wanted to make sure you all saw this: Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet on Wednesday called on the Senate to act in the wake of a mass shooting at a supermarket in his state, asserting in an impassioned speech from the chamber floor that his colleagues have a moral obligation to a generation...
Concealability had nothing to do with Monday’s massacre in Boulder, Colorado, but the details tell us more about the marketability of semi-automatic firearms using high-capacity magazines. Discussing open-carry regulation may have been rendered irrelevant with the death of the police officer although some details will be important: was he carrying his “patrol rifle” and...
More “bad days” ahead. We’re not going to throw up our hands even as social media now shifts to predictable Islamophobia. Notable is that the shooter in Boulder bought his gun on the evening of the Atlanta shootings. A Brady Bill might have stopped him. By the end of February, people around...
I’m not in a jovial mood today. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed … because my bed is still in America. If it straddled the U.S.-Canada border, I might have had a puncher’s chance—but no. I had to wake up here—in the land of the mask-free, gun-obsessed asshole....
Still early and a far too familiar pattern has been repeated today in Boulder, Colorado. 10 are dead including one first responding police officer. More information has yet to be revealed much like the shootings in Atlanta. If only Republicans were as concerned about checking the backgrounds of people who...
So much thick-headed media activity this past week. OTOH Chuck Todd panders to the center again, or perhaps it's the college drop-out demographic. x A @MeetThePress fail today: talking about anti-Asian violence and racism – without any Asians on the panel. I can’t imagine MTP having a discussion about anti-Black...
Carnage could be a permanent condition, but Trump made it a brand. Between April 10, 2020 and January 3, 2021, Donald Trump either tweeted (or retweeted) the term “China Virus” 44 times. Like Trump’s claim of a “bad” flu for COVID, the coincidence was many times worse amid a population experiencing...
Prosecuting hate crime is another thing some prosecutors might not want especially when a Bible Belt jury might want to condone violence against the victimless(sic) crime industry. “Let those pesky feds do it”. As the alleged suspect said, “he was at the end of his rope” because irony runs deep...
Eight people are now dead. Six of those victims are Asian women. “Subject was arrested after a high speed chase and brought into custody unharmed” Eight people, including six Asian women, were killed in shootings at three different massage parlors in Atlanta and Acworth, Georgia, on Tuesday, according to local...
Marjorie Taylor Greene brings the John Birch Society and its conspiracy nonsense back to the foreground, reminding us how the Koch brothers kept the GOP, now GQP always strange. x House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy defends Marjorie Taylor Greene: “Denouncing Q-on, I don't know if I say it right, I...
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the one-woman wrecking ball of the GOP (OK, she’s not the only one, but one of her is enough), has managed to wrangle a spot on the Education Committee, even though she has seriously claimed that various school shootings were hoaxes. (Maybe she thinks the students were...
Lots of manipulation today, but the House always wins even in the case of GameStop. Elizabeth Warren on the GameStop surge on @CNBC:”The billionaires and some hedge funds are yelling because they're not the ones, the only ones, who make money when the manipulation works.” x This is the same...
When California’s deadly and worst wildfire struck the state of California, intense drought provided the fuel necessary when a PG&E Pacific Gas and Electricity sparked the catastrophe. California has a Mediterranean climate, which is particularly vulnerable to our climate crisis. That explanation was too much for the simple-minded QAnon nutballs. To...
When California’s deadly and worst wildfire struck the state of California, intense drought provided the fuel necessary when a PG&E Pacific Gas and Electricity sparked the catastrophe. California has a Mediterranean climate, which is particularly vulnerable to our climate crisis. That explanation was too much for the simple-minded QAnon nutballs. To...
Marchers were beaten into withdrawal, spoiling their first attempt to march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery, Alabama. In the ensuing successful march in 1965 to Montgomery, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered an address that predicted the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Nation’s Capital. To the...
“A 22-year-old self-proclaimed member of the “Boogaloo Bois” movement pleaded guilty on Wednesday to trying to sell weapon parts to Hamas after traveling to Minneapolis amid this summer’s George Floyd protests.” What’s curious is that for these Boogaloo Bois, while domestic terrorism remained the goal, the path had that Iran-Contra...
An even more desperate Trump is on the golf course today, and the polling results are even more baked in. x After accusing Biden of being on drugs and Bloomberg of bribery, calling for the impeachment of a senator, repeating his usual vague insinuations about ballots and his usual vague...
Feral pigs are the crying-wolf excuse for some firearm owners, as though the average hunter needed a modern sporting rifle (semi-auto long gun with large capacity magazine) to defend their home and children against predator species. Then there’s Kenosha’s 17 year-old killer and his AR-15 pattern rifle with 30-round magazine. The...
Trigger-happy extralegal shooting by federal law enforcement. US Marshals fired many rounds into/at him. But surely death squads don’t exist in America. When police last week surrounded Michael Forest Reinoehl, a self-described anti-fascist suspected of fatally shooting a member of a far-right group in Portland, Ore., the wanted man wasn’t obviously...
Like the fantasy airline flights filled with numerous thugs, the delusional election stunts continue. The riff here is on “autonomous zones”. x This is the latest attempt to distract from the fact that COVID-19 has infected over 6 million Americans, killed 185,000 people, and destroyed the American economy. The only anarchy...
‘We’re all safe because of law enforcement’ Trump says in Kenosha where a cop shot a Black man in the back 7 times x Can we just pay to run this as an ad across the country? #Strokeahontas pic.twitter.com/MC6j6oEYW6— MeidasTouch.com (@MeidasTouch) September 1, 2020 How weird is it for Trump,...
Trumpian legal defense logic would suggest that like the COVID toll, Wendy Rittenhouse helped her kid with his guns but she didn’t get killed, and the death toll from her son’s shooting spree was a lot less than Newtown. Trump claims he’s saved millions of lives even as his inaction and incompetence...
This is really bad and I have no idea why this is not being covered in the media or the front page of Dailykos (really, how many times can you write Breaking: Trump an a**hole). I tried to find what happened with the shootings in Kenosha last night and it...
Imagine, for a moment, if in 2008 Obama campaign manager David Plouffe had coordinated with Wiki Leaks and the Russians to infiltrate and influence the readers of America's social media apparatus. Imagine then, if Mr. Obama was caught on tape regaling his exploits of how he molested women; only to...
GOP Senators took their three weeks off, as the COVID death toll rises, Some left to campaign for re-election, others to disinform in support of IMPOTUS*. And then there’s Trump corrupting USPS in unprecedented election meddling. All the while, even Trump cannot condemn QAnon’s tacit escalation of Trumpian themes. x Which...
BREAKING: Amy McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot who built a formidable campaign war chest, emerged Tuesday as the Democratic nominee to take on Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, fending off a challenge from the left that highlighted the party’s ideological divisions. One week after the primary was conducted, The Associated...
I can’t breathe a long sigh when the two exemplars for bad firearms safety, Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam are revised like the cops in E.T. relegated to brandishing radios. Like Trump at St John’s church, some props don’t work. All that’s left is Porky Pig’s speech disability. “Animators working on the...
Imagine, if world record holder,Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj, running at speeds equaling his world record mile time of 3:43.13, without stopping; did it twice. Wait, wait just to show off his dominance, he ran for another one minute and 34 seconds. I think you would marvel at his stamina, and...
Political Wire has a new story just posted on how Amy Klobuchar this morning explained her actions while she was the county DA (I’m quoting Political Wire because the link is to a tweet that doesn’t give as much information): Said Klobuchar: “When I was county attorney, cases we had...
Updated Friday, May 29, 2020 · 4:36:46 AM +00:00 · Dan K Political Wire, where I found the story this morning, has modified it slightly, saying that “An earlier version of this post linked to a source that may not be credible, although the reporting is similar.” That is...
I have written a little sporadically over the past few weeks, which is not my norm. I love to read but writing gives me pleasure. It has been my dream to build a following of readers and thinkers who would look forward to my printed thoughts and perspectives, not only...
Received this e-mail yesterday from former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords (D. AZ) in support of Jaime Harrison’s (D. SC) U.S. Senate campaign: Jaime Harrison (D. SC) I'm proud to announce that Giffords PAC has endorsed Jaime Harrison for Senate in South Carolina. He is a proven champion on gun safety, and...
The vogue phrase to use about the coronavirus or mass shootings, especially by conservatives, is—let’s not politicize this. If you check a thesaurus a few of the words that substitute for politicizing are—debate, discuss and raise awareness of. Maybe I am so isolated from reality that I have missed something...
Molson-Coors brewery campus had an active shooter situation, now secure. Early reports indicate a workplace shooting where ex-employee carried a .45 pistol. x FIRST ALERT UPDATE: Two law enforcement sources tell WISN the suspect is a former employee who was fired. A police sergeant on the scene said officers are “stabilizing”...
In a plea to get the media to cover something else than the damning impeachment vote, a Denver conservative radio show host, Chuck Bonniwell, literally said on the air that he wished “a nice school shooting” would interrupt the coverage. Right up the road is Columbine High School, site of one of the...
Six-year-old Juan de León Gutiérrez; 8-year-old Felipe Gómez Alonzo; 6-year-old Jakelin Caal Maquin; two additional children a 10-year-old and a 2-year-old, both from Guatemala, have died in the past two years as a result of the Trump administration’s Border Policy. Add to that this week, the confirmation of the May...