Given the events of the past week, it is perhaps appropriate to focus down on that a bit.
(Rant mode on)
Perhaps I should welcome you the the US, a place where laws are passed by Republicans to prevent things that aren’t really a thing such as CRT in schools, or transgender athletes. Let’s not forget to reassure you that we also ban the hell outta books. All this happens in the name of “protecting children”. But God forbid that we ever talk about guns because we are “pro-life”.
We do have “solutions” to “guns”. Simply have more guns, armed guards, and proposals to arm teachers. (Yes, really).
We are once again told “there is zero evidence that gun laws work”. That’s true if you just ignore Japan, U.K., Belgium, Canada, Iceland, Romania, Norway, Austria, Argentina, Netherlands, South Korea, Italy, Greece, Chile, France, Spain, Sweden, Singapore, Portugal, Israel, Czechia, Denmark, Taiwan, Switzerland, Poland, Germany, Luxembourg, Malta, Australia, Estonia, Croatia, New Zealand, Ireland, Slovakia, Latvia, Slovenia, San Marino, Andorra, Monaco, Lithuania.
“It’s mental illness caused by lockdowns, its social media”, except every other nation state on the planet has all that. The thing they don’t have is regular school shootings.
Fox news has been promoting lots and lots of “solutions”, with one notable exception – gun control. That one is absent. Their villain of the hour is Beto O’Rourke. His “crime” is that confronted the do-nothing-meaningful fools live on camera as they conducted their performative political theatre and is then labelled “disgusting” for telling them the truth.
The QAnon MAGA folks believe the democrats are part of a satanic cult that sacrifices children. As a stark contract to that fiction here we are in real time watching as once again Republicans literally wash their hands in the blood of yet another set of kids that have been slaughtered to appease their gun fetish.
“They” are coming for your guns, some quip.
Nope, all that is being asked for are some sensible gun regulations.
Rinse and repeat all this insanity each and every single fu*king time.
(Rant mode off)
Yea sorry, I just had to say something, I’m more than a little bit pi**ed about the utter insanity of the political willingness to permit this to keep happening.
Moving on, below you will find my usual selection of some truly bizarre claims that have popped up during the last 7 days. Each is laced with my snarky commentary.
Inevitably the topic of “guns” came up, so let’s start with that.
Gun “Solutions”
Dan Patrick on Fox News: “We need to take hold of our country and we do that through prayer… You cannot change the culture of country without changing the character of the people. You cannot change character without changing a heart and you can’t do that without turning to god…“
- The real challenge is that the people who share his Fundamentalist religious views are largely why we can’t pass reasonable gun safety measures.
- You would have perhaps thought that they should have worked out by now that “thoughts and prayers” don’t actually work, but apparently not.
- Also Ted: a few days later popped up as keynote speaker at the NRA convention to celebrate and worship guns, along with Trump, who mispronounced the names of those that died, then did a little dance at the end.
Sen. Joe Manchin says he would do “anything I can” to move “common sense” gun legislation forward, but still refused to eliminate the filibuster to get gun legislation through the Senate
- Makes notes: filibuster more important than human lives.
GOP congressional candidate Heidi St. John says gun control is pointless because “if someone is bent on injuring another human being, they’re going to find a way to do it. Maybe it’s a knife. Maybe it’s poison gas. Maybe it’s poison in your coffee.”
- Number of mass murders in the US of school kids by coffee poisoning – zero.
- For some strange reason nobody is planning to show up for her “Coffee with your Candidate for Congress” event.
Boebert: When 9/11 happened, we didn’t ban planes
- Indeed yes, absolutely nothing changed with air travel or at airports after 9/11 … right?
- Fact Check: As it happened, the immediate response was to ban and ground all flights – Nothing commercial was in the air. After 9/11 and less than two months later there was the creation of an entire government agency in response, an agency that requires all flyers to show government-issued ID, get screened with full body scanners, etc. Nearly 3,000 people died. That many people die from guns every 25 days.
Marjorie Taylor Greene: I never ever want to be in a situation where the only person with a gun is out of their mind, crazy.
- In other words, she does not want to be left alone with a gun.
- Least you don’t get it, she is not arguing for decent gun regulations, but instead is arguing that everybody needs to be armed.
At the NRA convention, Ted Cruz says the reasons for mass shootings are absent fathers, declining church attendance, social media, and video games.
- Hint for Ted: Every other nation has everything he listed, except mass shootings.
- In his alternative fantasy, the solution would be (1) get rid of millions of mom-only households, (2) force hundreds of millions into church, (3) shut down the internet, AND (4) ban video games. This strike me as something that is a lot harder than just banning assault rifles and doing background checks but WTF do I know.
Then there was also this …
Right-wing Christian conspiracy theorist Derek Gilbert wonders how the Uvalde school shooter managed to be so accurate with his weapon. The only logical answer, Gilbert thinks, is that he was controlled by a demon.
- The weapon is designed to do what it did – nothing supernatural is required at point blank range.
- I’d bet Derek thinks buyers should instead face a mandatory exorcism.
Meanwhile, let’s finish off this section by dropping this here …
Abortion “Solutions”
- You might joke that they will next want to have criminal investigations of miscarriages, but this literally opens the door to exactly that.
- So what comes next, checks of every used tampon and sanitary napkin to make sure that no menses contain fertilized eggs?
- What can I say except to welcome you to Oklahoma where women are now simply breeding stock.
Christian hate-preacher Cameron Hall says abortion should be banned with no exceptions, and doctors who provide abortions should be murdered, and women who have abortions should also be murdered. Doctors, specifically, “need to die hundreds or thousands of times over.”
- But remember, this Talibangelical who is frantically howling for blood is “Pro-Life”.
Christian Nationalism
Greg Lopez, a Republican running for governor of Colorado, said in a debate that he would institute a No Jews, No Muslims, No Atheists rule when it comes to picking a Lt. Governor. Only Christians would be under consideration.
- Hot tip for this guy, “The Handmaids Tale” is not an instruction manual.
- The rest of you are in the clear, he does not appear to be banning Satanists.
- I’d bet that Catholics are also on his “Nope-not-them” list.
Good News Item: Christian nationalist candidate Kandiss Taylor, who ran under the banner of “Jesus, Guns, and Babies”, only got 3.3% of the vote in the primary.
Christian nationalist Oklahoma GOP state senate candidate Jarrin Jackson says members of Congress “are not there to prevent school shootings” but rather to protect the 2nd Amendment and create “a government that reflects biblical values.”
- Yes, he is literally claiming that they are there to prevent abortions that save lives, but they are not there to prevent shootings that only take lives.
- As for “a government that reflects biblical values.”, what does that actually mean? (The bible is pro-slavery).
Truly Bizarre
Right-wing anti-vaccine “expert” Stella Immanuel claims that Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Bill Gates and others are dead and have had their brains downloaded to the internet while their bodies have been replaced by demonic clones.
- She really needs to get her crazy claims right – you don’t “Download” to the internet, you “Upload”. But hey, her lack of understanding of the digital world is not the problem here, it’s her total detachment from reality we should be more worried about.
- You might of course respond by saying, “You just can’t make this shit up”. Actually, yes she can, she is very good at doing just that.
- Some of her other notable claims include: (and I’m not making this up, she has really claimed all this) gynecological illnesses are the result of having sex dreams with succubi and incubi, and receiving demon sperm; and that endometriosis, infertility, miscarriage, and sexually transmitted infections are caused by spirit spouses. Oh, and let’s not forget her claim that space alien DNA is used in medical treatments and that “reptilian spirits” and other extraterrestrials run the U.S. government.
- In other words, this lady is not simply a little bit nutty, she is the entire peanut crop.
Michigan Board of Canvassers votes to not allow 5 of 10 Republican candidates for governor- James Craig, Perry Johnson, Michael Markey, Michael Brown, Donna Brandenburg – on the primary ballot after they did not reach the signature threshold required by the state.
- If you are wondering what happened, then here is the story: These 5 Republicans, who believe the election was rigged in 2020, actually faked signatures on their nominating petitions. Once those blatantly fake entries were removed, what was left put them below the signature threshold.
- What is perhaps alarming is not simply the fraud, but the two Republicans on the Board of Canvassers who very corruptly voted to keep the 5 fraudsters on the ballot.
The False Profit$
- Just after the shooting and thus guy thought, “Yea, that’s the T-Shirt to go with today”.
- Honestly, are you actually surprised. The theme is indeed very much – Jesus, Guns, and babies. (which, as I pointed out earlier above, is apparently not a vote winning move in Georgia where Kandiss Taylor who ran under that banner lost her primary).
- In this case the term “Holy Shit” is not as an expletive, but rather a factual accurate description.
Self-proclaimed “prophet”/QAnon conspiracy theorist Mark Taylor says legislators in DC are intentionally creating food and baby formula shortages as payback for Roe v Wade likely being overturned because they work for Baal “whose food source is the aborted babies.”
- When reached for comment Baal said, “Hey, don’t bring me into this. And besides, my food source is not aborted babies, it’s Camembert and Merlot.”
Statistic of the week
The statistical reveal is this …
- Only a minority want an abortion ban … but that is what is being vigorously pushed for by Republicans
- Very much a majority want background checks for guns … and GOP policy is very much opposed to that and much prefers the regular pulses of slaughter
In other words, what is happening in politics does not represent the majority.
Quote of the week
“Governor Abbott, I have to say something, The time to stop the next shooting is right now and you are doing nothing.”
Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke while confronting Gov. Greg Abbott at a press conference on Wednesday – They simply yelled abuse at him and had the police remove him. O’Rourke was not yelling, but was calmly speaking and did not yell back.