13 IIII 2022: Who are the crazies in the American gun scene?

From the report on CNN about Frank James, the ‘alleged’ N.Y. subway shooter:“James is suspected of setting off smoke grenades and firing a handgun 33 times on a crowded N train … The motive of the shooting is not yet known.”This man, I think, is an obvious nutcase, and should not be allowed to have a firearm under any circumstances.

From a CNN article by Paul Leblank: 

“Many Americans hold their right to bear arms, enshrined in the US Constitution, as sacrosanct.” 

It can’t be “sacrosanct” because it is a man-given right, and so can be taken away.

But some really do regard gun rights as sacrosanct. 

These people are nutcases.

From the same article by Paul Leblank:

“Underscoring this trend on Tuesday was Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who signed a new lawthat allows eligible residents to carry concealed guns in public without licenses.

I do not know whether Gov. Kemp is a nutcase or simply cunning … probably the latter.

Right-wing politicians enable the firearms industry, at home and abroad, and pander to gun-crazed voters by stretching the so-called “right to bear arms” in ever more novel and absurd ways. We allow these people to remain in office. Are we too nutcases?

12 IIII 2022: Not fake, but mostly not news

Here are some headers from today’s CNN that are true, but can hardly be considered to tell of something new. All are familiar, all quite predictable. Do these mean “the end is near”?  I think I hope so.

“UN warns of rape and sexual violence against women and children in Ukraine” 

 “Eight people were shot and eight others were injured at a Brooklyn subway station this morning”

“Buffalo Police officers who pushed 75-year-old during Black Lives Matter protest cleared of wrongdoing”

Trump-style populism rises in US and Europe as Putin assaults world order”

Attacks on voting rights aren’t slowing down and Black Americans are in the cross hairs, new report finds.”

Adolescent overdose deaths in the United States more than doubled from 2010 to 2021, jumping from 518 to 1,146 deaths annually, according to the study  published in JAMA.”

 “Blizzard conditions with 1 to 3 feet of snow and volatile severe storms, including tornadoes, are on tap today”

Kim Kardashian ‘wasn’t planning on’ a relationship with Pete Davidson”

“I’ve got to be the cleanest, I think I’m the most honest human being, perhaps, that God has ever created,” Trump said.

10 IIII 2022: CNN headlines, with commentary

2 people are dead and 10 hospitalized after Iowa nightclub shooting

An overnight shooting in a residential part of Elgin, Illinois, has left six people injured

Hardly a weekend goes by without an overnight mass shooting. 

brought to you by our “gun rights.”

Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affeck are engaged again 

How many really care about this hyped soap opera?

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich flips endorsement in House race — and then flips it back.

JLo and Ben are not the only flippers. Newt, still somehow running on the fumes from his speakership that ended thirty-five ago, has flipped to align his choice with Donald Trump’s. Two statesmen agree.

Abortion access under renewed threat in Oklahoma and Missouri

These two state legislatures lead the race in all around stupidity, but there are others striving to catch up.

State Department unable to provide a full account of foreign gifts given to Trump and officials

This is not news, but a confirmation of what was long assumed.

9 IIII 2022: Little Master Josh

Josh Hawley, former resident of Missouri, knows that there is no such thing as bad publicity. After pissing himself at the Jackson hearing, he is now trying another stunt to get the attention he so desperately craves. He will block confirmations of high-level appointments to the Dept. of Defense until his complaints and hurt feelings receive some grown-up attention. He is the poor little rich boy who is trying by bad behavior to get the attention he cannot get otherwise. So Josh runs from house to house ringing doorbells, overturning trash cans, turning on sprinklers, and letting air out of tires. 

I used to assume that ivy-league Josh’s puerile persona was mere playacting for the base, but now I’m thinking his melodramatic immaturity is for real.

8 IIII 2022: Republican childishness and antagonism to history

It’s reported that only one Republican senator, Mr. Romney, remained to applaud the confirmation of justice-elect Jackson, while the rest of the Republicans in attendance stampeded out of the room. The great division in our country has many causes, but downright surly childishness is one of them for sure. These Republicans, whose passage into puberty is indicated only by their prurience, are like a gang of boys whose political philosophy is no more sophisticated than “Us good, them bad.” If the future of our country is in the hands of legislators like this, our prospects are pitiable.

My pessimism is reinforced by Republican-controlled state legislatures that are passing one regressive law after another. The Democratic governor of Kentucky, Mr. Andy Beshear, has had to veto a bill passed by the Republican legislature that would ban from Kentucky’s schools honest study and discussion of the role of race in American history. Several Republican legislatures are passing laws like this that sometimes even use the buzzword “critical race theory,” though they obviously have no idea of what “critical race theory” really is. But whether they name “critical race theory” or only imply it, it is clear that what they intend to keep out of the schools is the truth of America’s atrocity-filled history in race relations, our legalized slaughter, deportation, and confinement of native Indians and virtually unending enslavement of kidnapped Africans. But these legislators are like adults determined to keep the children ignorant of horrific features of family history, though for all their efforts, the truth will come out or, if suppressed, will have its horrible effects.

7 IIII 2022: Naw, couldn’t be.

QAnon raises a lot of questions:

When did the Koch Brothers sell their souls to Satan?

Has Marjorie Taylor Greene finally ended her career in slap-stick?

Why does talk about sex-traffickers make Matt Gaetz perspire?

Do “parental rights” extend to sweating your kids for cash?

Do televangelists broadcast encoded QAnon doctrine?

Is “Q” one of Rudy Giuliani’s nicknames?

Were Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz actually thrown out of Mensa?

6 IIII 2022: Bad little boy

Matt Gaetz put on his grown-up clothes and tried to cut a brave figure at the meeting of the House Armed Services Committee. Had he any dignity, he’d have died of embarrassment, and had his Republicans any shame, they’d have shut down up long ago.

He, like so many of them, loves to scream “socialism!” though they do not really understand the term. They call people and things “woke,” a term of their own devising, that is no more nuanced than their “socialism.”

If others felt as free to fire off generalizations as Gaetz and the GOP, maybe some would apply the term “pedophile” to Mr. Gates and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s neologism, “pro-pedophile,” to his Republican coddlers.

6 IIII 2022: Shameless lies

Report on Huffpost begins

Tom Cotton Says Ketanji Brown Jackson Would Have Defended Nazis at Nuremberg.

What a dimbulb is this sleazy Trumpite Tom Cotton. It is bad enough that he is not ashamed to dabble in smear tactics, but perhaps quite fitting that in the course of smearing another, he displays his own shamelessness and foolishness.

Another headline on Huffpost

Russian Media Campaign Falsely Claims Bucha Deaths Are Fakes

Others too must have been struck by the similarity of Russian use of disinformation and out-and-out lies to the use made of them by Donald Trump and the Trumpist Republicans. “Bucha deaths are fakes” and “Trump won the 2020 election.” Both conscious lies, equally shameless. The Russians might be considered to have pioneered Trump embrace of untruth. Lie, lie, and if you get caught, keep telling the lie.