The Commentariat -- October 2, 2015
Internal links removed.
Afternoon Update:
This is fairly hilarious. Laurie Goodstein & Jim Yardley of the New York Times: "The church distanced itself on Friday from the case of [Kim]. Davis, the Rowan County, Ky., clerk who defied a judge's order and refused to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. It said 'the only real audience' Francis gave in Washington was to a former student of his. Contacted by phone, a former student of Francis, Yayo Grassi, said he had been granted a meeting with the pope. Mr. Grassi is an openly gay man living in Washington, and he said he had been accompanied by his partner of 19 years, Iwan Bagus, as well as four friends." Emphasis added. CW: Nice try, Kimmy.
Michael Shear of the New York Times: "Arne Duncan, the secretary of education and a member of President Obama's original cabinet, will step down in December after a long tenure in which he repeatedly challenged the nation's schools to break out of their hidebound ways." CW: Buh-bye.
*****
Joseph Hoyt, et al., of the Washington Post: "A shooter described as a 20-year-old man opened fire on a rural community college campus in Oregon on Thursday morning, killing multiple people and injuring even more. Ellen F. Rosenblum, the Oregon attorney general, said her office believed that 13 people were killed in the shooting and another 20 people were injured." ...
... Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post: "That brings the total of mass shootings this year -- incidents where 4 or more people are killed or injured by gunfire -- to 294." More than the number of days in the year. ...
Liam Stack of the New York Times has a sketchy profile of the gunman Chris Harper Mercer. Hey, he was a young loner who wore military garb, shaved his head, posted a picture of himself with a rifle, admired the Irish Republican Army, hated religion & after years of not speaking to people began yelling at them. Who would have thought he could become a mass murderer? ...
... The Guardian, via Raw Story, has more on Harper-Mercer: "a self-described conservative who loved guns and conspiracy theories."
... Steve M. "... the right will treat this massacre as an assault on Christianity -- and you know whose fault that is." ...
... Despite what you hear on CNN & certified right-wing media, Umpqua Community College is not a "gun-free zone." Judd Legum of Think Progress explains. ...
... The New York Times has updates here. The Oregonian is updating here. ...
Our thoughts and prayers are not enough.... Somehow this has become routine.... Each time this happens I'm going to bring this up. Each time this happens I am going to say we can actually do something about it. -- President Obama, on the Oregon shootings
... President Obama remarks on the shootings & on gun safety legislation:
... Sam Stein & Arthur Delaney of the Huffington Post: "To promote the general welfare, members of Congress have the power to craft laws, pass them and send them to the president for his or her signature. In the wake of instances of gun massacres, however, politicians reliably and reflexively reach for the most casual response possible: condolences of 140 characters or less to nobody in particular. Why even bother? The mass shooting at a community college in Oregon gave us this same rote reaction." Except Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.): "This is on us. Silence from Congress has become quiet endorsement of those whose minds unhinge and veer toward mass violence."
Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "The Obama administration on Thursday unveiled a major new regulation on smog-causing emissions that spew from smokestacks and tailpipes, significantly tightening the current Bush-era standards but falling short of more stringent regulations that public health advocates and environmentalists had urged. The Environmental Protection Agency set the new national standard for ozone, a smog-causing gas that often forms on hot, sunny days when chemical emissions from power plants, factories and vehicles mix in the air, at 70 parts per billion, tightening the current standard of 75 parts per billion set in 2008."
Carl Hulse & Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: "A bipartisan group of influential senators on Thursday proposed a far-reaching plan to cut mandatory prison sentences for nonviolent offenders and promote more early release from federal prisons in what they described as the most important criminal justice reform effort in a generation."
Kelsey Snell of the Washington Post: "The government will reach its borrowing limit around Nov. 5, the Treasury Department said Thursday, setting up what promises be a tense round of negotiations over raising the debt ceiling just as House Republicans transition to a new leadership team with Speaker John Boehner set to step down at the end of the month. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew wrote Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday to inform Congress that the debt limit would need to be increased earlier than under previous estimates."
Julian Hattem, et al., of the Hill: "Republicans are scrambling to contain the damage from House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy's (R-Calif.) remarks about the Benghazi Committee amid a firestorm of criticism. Outgoing Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was forced to defend the Benghazi panel on Thursday after McCarthy -- his presumed successor for the gavel -- linked the success of the investigation to Hillary Clinton's falling poll numbers." ...
...Mike Lillis of the Hill: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is threatening to pull Democratic participation from the select committee investigating the 2012 Benghazi attacks in the wake of Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy's (R-Calif.) comments linking the panel to Hillary Clinton's falling poll numbers. Pelosi said McCarthy's comments show the panel is political, 'unethical' and should be dismantled." ...
... ** Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.): "[Thursday], Benghazi Select Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy tried to explain away Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s confession on Fox News that the core Republican goal in establishing the Benghazi Committee was always to damage Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and never to conduct an even-handed search for the facts. As Chairman Gowdy said: 'I would just encourage people to look at what is done as opposed necessarily to what is said.' So, here are the facts about what the Select Committee has done to date." Do read Cummings' list. It's downright comical. Via Paul Waldman. See also Rucker & Costa's piece linked under Presidential Race below.
Kevin Drum: on manly Putin v. weakling Obama: "Like clockwork, every time another country hauls out its military -- the Egyptian airstrikes in Libya, Jordan's airstrikes against ISIS -- American conservatives go wild. Why can't Obama commit to that kind of serious action? But also like clockwork, this routinely ignores the fact that (a) the military action they're admiring is pretty small, and (b) Obama is already doing the same thing on a much bigger scale."
Scott Keyes of Think Progress: "... when ... asked about [President] Obama's plan to give shelter to thousands of refugees, [Rep. Mo] Brooks [R-Ala.] called it 'horrendous' and 'an abdication of responsibility.' 'I think it's an impeachable offense,' the Alabama Republican said. 'But we don't have the votes to even get articles of impeachment out of the House of Representatives or the Judiciary Committee.'... Such rhetoric is having an effect.... Donald Trump initially supported bringing in more Syrian refugees, telling MSNBC, 'It is a huge problem and we should help as much as possible.' However, after uproar on the issue from conservatives over the past month, Trump reversed himself at a town hall this week, saying of Syrian refugees, 'If I win, they're going back.'" ...
... CW: You do wonder why, after President Obama has committed so many "impeachable offenses," the majority-GOP House can't boot the guy. Why, way back in 2010, someone came up with 64 "impeachable offenses." I didn't know stuff a sitting president supposedly did in college or jobs his wife had before he was president were impeachable offenses, but apparently so. See what-all you can learn on the Internets?
Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post: "Despite the cutesy vehicular nickname, [the Cadillac] tax is actually on high-cost health insurance plans (those costing at least $10,200 for a single person and $27,500 for families). It's no wonder that [Hillary] Clinton, like other poll-sensitive or perhaps misguided politicians, has come out against it: This tax, like so many other taxes, has proved hugely unpopular, repelling an unholy alliance of unions, businesses and the public at large.... But here's a fun fact that might help turn the tide: This tax would probably help you get a raise." Rampell explains why.
Guardian: "The United States paved the way for the execution of a convicted serial killer in Virginia on Thursday night when the US supreme court denied his request for a stay and a federal judge separately rejected a concern that the drugs used to put him to death are unsafe. Attorneys for Alfredo Prieto, 49, wanted his execution delayed as they sought more information about the drugs, which were obtained from Texas's prison system, to ensure they will not bring about a painful death."
Samantha Vicent of the Tulsa World: "The Oklahoma Attorney General's Office is seeking a request for an indefinite stay of the state's three upcoming executions." ...
... Jonah Shepp of New York: "In [Richard] Glossip's case, an indefinite stay is welcome but insufficient, according to his supporters, who say abundant evidence suggests he is innocent."
Republicans on the Planned Parenthood Inquisition complained about Cecile Richards' high salary. BUT Margo Sanger-Katz & Claire Miller of the New York Times: "Her pay puts her in the top 1 percent of all earners in the United States. But her salary is actually on the low side when it is compared with executive pay at other large nonprofits. When compared with the pay for hospital executives running nonprofit health care organizations of similar budgets, it is actually well below the norm." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Chris McGreal of the Guardian: "In a lengthy speech to the UN general assembly, punctuated by long pauses in which he glared at delegates after denouncing them as 'obsessively hostile' to Israel, [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu said he hoped the shared threat posed by Tehran and Islamic State would remake the politics of the region. 'Common dangers are clearly bringing Israel and its Arab neighbours closer and as we work together to thwart those dangers, I hope we'll build lasting partnerships,' he said."
Just knowing that the pope is on track with what we're doing and agreeing, you know, it kind of validates everything. -- Kim Davis, to ABC News ...
Or not. ...
... Pope Walks It Back. Jim Yardley of the New York Times: "Pope Francis' encounter with Kim Davis last week in Washington, which was interpreted by many as a subtle intervention in the United States' same-sex marriage debate, was part of a series of private meetings with dozens of guests and did not amount to an endorsement of her views, the Vatican said on Friday.... 'Pope Francis met with several dozen persons who had been invited by the Nunciature to greet him as he prepared to leave Washington for New York City,' Father [Federico] Lombardi said in the statement, referring to the Vatican's term for its embassy. He added: 'Such brief greetings occur on all papal visits and are due to the pope's characteristic kindness and availability. The only real audience granted by the pope at the Nunciature was with one of his former students and his family.'" ...
... Fred Barbash of the Washington Post describes Lombardi's clarification as "a formal statement." ...
Mugshot of the perp.... CW: This comports with Charles Pierce's theory that conservo-archbishop & papal nuncio Carlo Vigano set up Francis. We discussed this in yesterday's Comments thread after contributor pat highlighted Pierce's post. I predict Francis will find Carlo another job where he won't be doing any nuncioing. ...
... Jay Levine of CBS 2 Chicago: "A highly placed source inside the Vatican claims the Pope was blindsided.... It is a meeting some charge was orchestrated by the man who lived there, the Pope's representative here, Carlo Maria Vigano. Not even the Papal Spokesman Federico Lombardi knew about it ahead of time. Nor did the leadership of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which would have opposed it.... A close advisor to Pope Francis tweeted that the Pope was, in his words, 'exploited' by those who set up what the CBS 2 source says was a 'meeting that never should have taken place.'"
Presidential Race
Philip Rucker & Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "Hillary Rodham Clinton's upcoming appearance before the U.S. House Select Committee on Benghazi ... may have turned into a political gift for Clinton following this week's suggestion by the likely next House speaker, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), that the taxpayer-funded Benghazi investigation was politically motivated. Clinton's allies say his comments will help recast Clinton's scheduled Oct. 22 hearing as a partisan inquisition rather than a fact-finding mission about the attacks in Libya.... With Clinton struggling to gain momentum in the Democratic nominating fight, McCarthy's comments amount to a unifying force for the party to rally to her defense, as well as give her an opening to do what she finds most comfortable: fight back against Republicans." ...
... Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "Hillary Rodham Clinton is scheduled to appear on 'Saturday Night Live' this weekend, the latest -- and highest stakes -- appearance of her current push to show her funny, personable side as the campaign heads into the critical first Democratic debate and she faces headwinds in Iowa and New Hampshire and a potential challenge from Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr." ...
... CW: Unfortunately, Hillary has repeatedly proved that as an actor & comedian, she is more like Al Gore than President Obama. Also too: Amy, maybe you should have mentioned Bernie Sanders by name. He not a "headwind." ...
... Paul Waldman: "... we've passed the point where the [Bernie] Sanders campaign is just a novelty. It doesn't matter whether he’s going to be the nominee or not. He should be getting more (and more comprehensive) coverage than he has gotten up to this point. He may not like all of it, but he's earned it." ...
... Gene Robinson: "Sanders's money haul has to worry Clinton, not just for its size but for the way it was achieved. The vast majority came in small donations -- Sanders's average contribution is less than $25. This means he can keep going back to these same supporters later in the campaign. Far more of Clinton's donors, by contrast, have already maxed out their allowable contributions for the primaries. ...
Who Do That Voodoo that Jeb! Do? They All Do. Paul Krugman: "So Donald Trump has unveiled his tax plan. It would, it turns out, lavish huge cuts on the wealthy while blowing up the deficit. This is in contrast to Jeb Bush's plan, which would lavish huge cuts on the wealthy while blowing up the deficit, and Marco Rubio's plan, which would lavish huge cuts on the wealthy while blowing up the deficit. For what it's worth, it looks as if Trump's plan would make an even bigger hole in the budget than Jeb's. Jeb justifies his plan by claiming that it would double America's rate of growth; The Donald, ahem, trumps this by claiming that he would triple the rate of growth. But really, why sweat the details? It's all voodoo.... But never forget that what it's really about is top-down class warfare."
Mark Salter, former John McCain chief-of-staff & campaign advisor, in Real Clear Politics: "I can't recall any senator who was as nearly universally loathed by his colleagues as [Ted] Cruz.... The heart of colleagues' contempt for him [is] ... belief that he is an imposter. He deliberately sets up conservatives to fail by goading them into empty gestures and self-defeating stunts like shutting down government, which make it harder to persuade more Americans to embrace conservative policies.... And Cruz bets on them to fail. He stokes the anger of grassroots conservatives in the hope that it devours everyone but him. He offers false hope and misinformation as a plan, stands defiantly in the imaginary breach, and scurries to blame others for his singular lack of success." CW: Tell us what you (and McCain) really think, Mark.
Update: Ben Carson Still a Bigot. Jonah Shepp: "Given his lower-than-Wikipedia-level understanding of Sharia (Islamic religious law) and how it applies to the everyday life of a practicing Muslim, it's no wonder [Ben Carson] wouldn't support a Muslim president of the United States. So it came as no surprise on Thursday when we learned that he would apply the same religious test to Supreme Court justices.... At [interviewer Hugh Hewitt]'s prodding, Carson also said he would investigate the background of federal judge Abdul Kallon, who was appointed to an Alabama district court in 2009. The U.S. Senate, including both of Alabama's Republican senators, confirmed Kallon unanimously, but apparently that's not good enough for Hugh Hewitt or Ben Carson.... Ben Carson himself could be obeying Sharia at this very moment and not even know it." ...
... CW: The Supreme Court has three Jewish members. Two have been on the Court for decades. But I keep watch, because at any moment they could impose Mosaic Law. First, it will be little things like banning shrimp & cheeseburgers. The next thing you know, you'll have to sacrifice a goat or at least a couple of turtle doves if you're caught wearing a linen-cotton-blend shirt.
Beyond the Beltway
Jim Crow Playbook. Chapter 2: How to Really, Really Make Sure a Voter ID Law Has the Desired Outcome. Tierney Sneed of TPM: "... Alabama has shuttered 31 driver's license offices, many of them in counties with a high proportion of black residents. Coming after the state recently put into effect a tougher voter ID law, the closures will cut off access -- particularly for minorities -- to one of the few types of IDs accepted. According to a tally by AL.com columnist John Archibald, eight of the 10 Alabama counties with the highest percentage of non-white registered voters saw their driver's license offices closed. 'Every single county in which blacks make up more than 75 percent of registered voters will see their driver license office closed. Every one,' Archibald wrote. Archibald also noted that many of the counties where offices were closed also leaned Democrat." ...
... John Archibald: "So roll out the welcome wagon to the Justice Department, and tell the world what it already so desperately wants to hear. That Alabama is exactly what they always thought she was. That Alabama refuses to pay for its own government, and used it as an excuse to keep black people from the polls. That Alabama hasn't changed a bit." ...
... AND, as Charles Pierce reminds us -- Thanks, John Roberts. ...
... PLUS, Steve M.: "A legal challenge to this law[, which is inevitable,] could well wind up in the Supreme Court. If it does, and if President Rubio or Bush or Fiorina or Carson has stacked the bench sufficiently, what Alabama is doing will almost certainly be declared constitutional. That will be an open invitation to the states to pull the same stunt.
Roberto Ferdman of the Washington Post: How asset tests to qualify for food stamps -- like the one recently passed by the nincompoops in Maine's state legislature & signed by Gov. Pepe LePew (RTP) -- keep the impoverished in poverty.
Veronica Rocha & Brittny Majia of the Los Angeles Times: "A fire Wednesday night at a Planned Parenthood facility in Thousand Oaks [northwest of Los Angeles] was determined to be arson, authorities said. Ventura County sheriff's Capt. John Reilly said Thursday someone likely used a rock to shatter a window at the Planned Parenthood facility in the 1200 block of West Hillcrest Drive, then threw gasoline inside the office and ignited it. The attack comes more than six weeks after the office was vandalized, he said."
Nathan Pemberton of New York: "The Stonewall Inn, the Greenwich Village bar 'Where Pride Began' is [now] a designated landmark, the first and only landmark to honor the gay-rights' movement in the city. The designation prevents it from being torn down or forced to renovate, unlike the rest of the relentlessly gentrifying Village these days."
News Ledes
Washington Post: "Russian warplanes have struck targets deep inside the Islamic State's heartland province of Raqqa for the first time, Russia's Defense Ministry said Friday."
AP: "U.S. hiring slowed sharply in September, and job gains for July and August were lower than previously thought, a sour note for a labor market that had been steadily improving. The Labor Department says employers added just 142,000 jobs in September, depressed by job cuts by manufacturers and oil drillers."
Weather Channel: "While Joaquin may go down as one of the more destructive hurricanes on record in the central Bahamas, the odds of the U.S. mainland seeing its first landfalling hurricane in 15 months are now very low as the forecast track continues to trend farther to the east."
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Reader Comments (8)
Several sources in recent years have claimed that a substantial majority of NRA members support reasonable gun control legislation. So why do the officers and policies of the association not reflect this?
A little Googling this morning turned up that the officers of the NRA are not elected by the general membership. They are elected by a board of directors. Only life members may vote for the board, and only a small fraction of them actually do.
It appears that less than 100 thousand individuals, out of a membership of 4 million, are responsible for determining the leadership and policies of the NRA.
see:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/nra-board-members-selleck-nugent
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/gun-lobby-who-got-elected-the-nra-board
So why are politicians so terrified of the gun lobby at the expense of the vast majority of American voters? A well organized handful of zealots wields an astonishingly disproportionate influence. Can sane people not organize? WTF?
You have a situation of officials at the highest levels (Congressional investigations, for example) alleging that Planned Parenthood murders babies and then profits from the their corpses. And then yet another PP facility gets firebombed. Shocker.
I am beyond sick and tired of supposedly responsible politicians getting away with repeating the same lies against Planned Parenthood, and not even missing a beat of their vitriol when presented with the facts. It's like these conservatives live in a fact free zone. Even if none of these cowards outright calls for acts of violence, they are in fact promoting it with their lies. And they have blood on their hands.
Becoming "numb" to this kind of bloodbath, as Obama stated is, I'm afraid, exactly what is happening in this country. I remember after Columbine we were beside ourselves––a shooting at school? How could this happen? we asked over and over. By the time Sandy Hook took our breath away we were sure SOMETHING would be done on a federal level about gun control. My congressman, Chris Murphy is right:
"This is on us. Silence from Congress has become quiet endorsement of those whose minds unhinge and veer toward mass violence."
Adam Gopnik, in his review of "Black Earth", cites a German soldier's letter to his wife about killing Jewish babies in Belarus:
" During the first try, my hand trembled a bit as I shot, but one gets used to it. By the tenth try I aimed calmly and shot surely at the many women, children and infants...Infants flew in great arcs through the air, and we shot them to pieces in flight."
One gets used to it.
Fear not the imminent imposition of Sharia Law, nor Mosaic Law. Neither dread looming usurpations by Zoroastrian zealots nor scelestic Scientologists.
Bigots like Carson and Hugh Hewitt (tell me again how this guy was considered rational enough to moderate a presidential debate? Oh, wait. It was a Confederate debate. Never mind) and their ilk who are constantly on the lookout for such fantasy crises, elide the very real takeover attempts by fundamentalist Christians.
Never mind the forced establishment of Islamic dietary laws, amputation for shoplifters (attention Winona Ryder and Lindsay Lohan!), nor look for runway models to exchange black dresses for bulky burqas.
Instead, fundamentalist Christians are attacking healthcare for poor women as punishment for having sex outside of marriage, or enjoying recreational sex, and pushing elected officials to ensure that gays and lesbians are forced to continue their existence as second class citizens in spite of the highest court of the land. Fundamentalist Christians are attacking science, research, education, social customs, forcing the closure of health clinics, murdering doctors who perform abortions, and demanding that all Americans, no matter what their beliefs, abide by their interpretation of whichever part of the Bible they choose to cherry pick that day.
Now that really IS an imposition of unwelcome religious control on the American public. How come Fox never reports on that?
Oh, now that I think about it, they DO report on it.
They're all for it.
(Stay tuned: War on Christmas, 2015 edition, is right around the corner...)
Victoria,
Give up wondering how it is that these people can deny facts with impunity. I have. For far too long I was beyond irate that they could spit in the face of unimpeachable facts, propositions that carried immense weight on the side of veracity versus fraud and fantasy, and get away with it.
They don't care about facts. Facts are for non-believers, non Confederates. As Digby pointed out earlier in the week, they are proud of their lies and elevate the biggest liars of their tribe to heroic heights.
All they care about is victory for their side. They believe they are right and everyone else is wrong. Pick your battle. Climate change? Guns? Abortion? Marriage? Education? Civil Rights? Voting Rights? Immigration? Taxation? Economic inequality? They are never wrong. Once you've let that poison dissolve in your system, evading facts and ignoring truth is easy. Who cares if Planned Parenthood doesn't dismember live babies on the table even as the baby pleads for its life prior to mustache twirling liberal doctors pulling out its heart for sale on the open market, as Carly Liarina maintains? Who cares if the videos "proving" this lie are themselves a lie? All that matters is that they are right. No one can take that away from them. So go ahead. Bomb those clinics. Light 'em up. These people obey a "higher power": delusion.
So forget about getting upset that facts don't enter into their thinking. They never have. They never will. Remember, The Decider's people said facts only matter to the little people (us). They invent their own reality whenever they "act"! So what if their actions tear apart whole sections of the world and create chaos and death? Pfft. Details.
They're right. And you're not.
Really, it's like dealing with insane people. The problem for us is there's no institution for housing and treating these nuts. They get to vote and run for office and fuck things up beyond belief.
And that's a fact.
"Can sane people not organize?"
D.C. Clark
What a great question. Yes, they can. But they haven't been doing a very good job of it. Look at the organization for civil rights back in the 60's. That was some serious organization, right there. Or the anti-war movement of that and the next decade. Not too shabby, either. They got action. They got it done (well, until the Confederates came along and tried to undo it all).
But those victories demonstrated to the right the need to build up their own organizational infrastructure (see: Memo, the Powell). They've also developed something that liberals used to have but no longer seem to be able to call up: passion. Graham Parker has a thing or two to say about that. It's what you need to keep things going in spite of everything. Too many liberals had that passion damped considerably when they started coming under attack by the Reaganauts and a newly fired up right-leaning media who blamed liberals for everything from chicken pox to rising oil prices. But Confederates have something liberals never had: a delusional belief in their own superiority.
The gun nuts demonstrate this, plus they demonstrate the essential importance of obsession in these fights. These people go to sleep thinking about their guns and wake up hating Obama for a dream they just had about a black Kenyan-Muslim hand reaching under their pillow to grab that loaded Glock.
I've said this many times before but Confederates see things in apocalyptic terms. Most liberals don't. Neither do those so-called moderates, wherever the fuck they are. Everything is a zero sum game to Confederates. There is no possibility of middle ground, no compromise, no prisoners. It's balls to wall for these guys. Progressives don't seem to recognize this. They're the proverbial people who bring a knife to a gun fight. Confederates don't care about "communication problems" or about making nice. It took the president far too long to learn that lesson.
But that doesn't mean all is lost. It does mean that those interested in some form of gun control have to be just as obsessed and just as passionate and they need to work to elect people who feel the same way and never shut up about it. The right instantly responds to gun massacres (like they've already done with the Oregon murders) with the boilerplate about how evil it is to politicize such events right after they happen. That's the BEST time to politicize them. And to keep it going because the next one is right around the corner.
Sane people do have to organize. But they have to pretty much be in-sane about it, because the other side already is.
The bilge barge Bill could find a perfect pursuit in speaking loudly and at length about the voter suppression tactics used by the GOP, followed by "getting out the vote efforts". We could call it "Bill's excellent adventure."The topic isn't nuclear and doesn't have any segue to his sleazy behavior. All the "charisma", that I've always seen as especially oily, could be put to excellent use.
Confederate gun knobbers are really beside themselves over the murders in Oregon.
First, they're claiming that the murderer, Chris Harper-Mercer, is not a conservative (he is), others are saying he's a Muslim Jihadist (he's not as far as anyone can tell), that he's a member of Black Lives Matter (he's not that either), and that the school was chosen because it's that most horrific of things, a Gun Free Zone (it's not). In fact, even though Breitbart and others have been ripping the school and the state for this situation, gun knobbers in Oregon, NRA supporters, are the ones who made sure that there are no gun free zones in Oregon colleges.
Ben Carson weighed in on the shooting and, predictably, according the Confederate script, attacked anyone calling for gun control in the wake of yet another of the hundreds of mass killings this year (294 in the WaPo article linked above) , saying that they just don't know what they're talking about.
“Obviously, that’s (gun control) not the issue. The issue is the mentality of these people.”
Oh, okay. His mental state, right? What was on his mind? What he's been thinking about?
Well, he was a gun lover who enjoyed easy access to deadly weapons (he was carrying a small arsenal including an AR-15 long gun, a favorite of exhibitionistic winger gun nuts), a hate-filled conservative Republican who reveled in violent images and conspiracy theories.
So what can we say about what was in his mind? Sounds very much like he's been drinking the kind of Kool-Aid Carson and his buddies in Right Wing World have been selling for years.
But they'll keep at it until they "prove" that this guy was a second cousin of the president, a liberal Jihadist who loved the ACLU, used to work for ACORN, was a fan of Planned Parenthood, and jerked off to abortion/harvesting videos.
But shhhhh....don't mention gun control.
Or responsibility.