This is the full "stuff happens" quote from Jeb pic.twitter.com/0CAOnNBf4f
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) October 2, 2015
Old-school WASPs like the Bushes would never throw away a perfectly sound catchphrase just because it’s gotten a little threadbare, a tiny bit battered, a tad worn around the edges…
(CNN context on Rumsfeld’s quote here; TPM‘s transcript of JEB’s full remarks here.)
Gimlet
Spy on all Americans but… “Stuff happens”
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/02/loretta-lynch-reports-killed-by-police
Attorney general Loretta Lynch says the federal government should not require police to report fatal shootings of civilians, sharply diverging from her predecessor Eric Holder’s stance on police killings.
In a conversation with NBC journalist Chuck Todd on a range of criminal justice issues, Lynch said on Thursday that she does not support a federal mandate to report people killed by police.
feebog
Maybe Neil or Marvin is the smart one.
Bex
Yeah, shit happens Jeb!! You’re polling at an awesome 4%.
Jeffro
Don’t forget to post a link to that video of W at the White House correspondents dinner crawling around on the Oval Office carpet looking for looking for weapons of mass destruction…I believe at the time over 1000 American troops had died in Iraq. But hey stuff happens …
Baud
@feebog:
They’ve stayed out of politics, so yes.
NotMax
Blight to Rise.
Omnes Omnibus
@feebog: @Baud: Doro.
Emma
And on top of that, he’s a liar. Ask Michael Schiavo how restrained the son of a sow is.
Alex
“A child drowned in a pool and the impulse is to pass a law that puts fencing around pools. Well it may not change it. Or you have a car accident and the impulse is to pass a law that deals with that unique event. And the cumulative effect of this is, in some cases, you don’t solve the problem by passing the law, and you’re imposing on large numbers of people burdens that make it harder for our economy to grow, make it harder to protect liberty.” -Jeb Bush, explaining his “stuff happens” remark.
In related news, pool fencing laws reduce drowning deaths for small children – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10796742
And Jeb Bush signed a Florida law on pool fencing.
….
As for unique occurrences, I think we can all remember when a Bush reacted to a singular event with emergency legislation and attempts to twist the law to force a specific outcome. Yes, the Terry Schiavo case, when Jeb Bush was Governor of Florida and the legislature swiftly passed “Terri’s Law” and Jeb Bush ordered a feeding tube to be reinserted.
satby
@Jeffro: I had a kid fighting in Iraq right at that moment, and had I been in that fuck’s presence I would have strangled him with my bare hands.
And it’s all just “shit that happens” because stuff like that will never happen to any of them. They don’t mingle with the common people where just anyone could show up to mow people down, their children aren’t in the military, they never will be impoverished by disaster or catastrophic illness. It’s all theoretical to them. Pure sociopathy.
ET
This sort of reminds me of his mother’s “this is working out well” to the Katrina evacuees.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Bex: But, but, BRINKS TRUCKS.
Roger Moore
The sad part is that the Republican push-back is to claim that “stuff happens” is being deprived of context. It’s true that it isn’t being given its full context, but the full context doesn’t make it any better. He’s still treating gun violence as something that just happens and there’s no government role in trying to prevent it.
David Koch
There’s something really wrong with those people.
WaterGirl
@Gimlet:
Wow, that’s depressing. sigh.
jl
And here is a link to the petulant moron’s ‘clarification’. it’s like Will Ferrell jumped into a Bush costume and decided to do his bizarre angry petulance schtick.
Jeb Bush on Oregon Community College Shooting: ‘Stuff Happens’
I took trouble to transcribe, because it shows what a complete asshole this guy is: “No, it wasn’t a mistake.I said exactly what I said. I.. wadda.. why would you… … Explain to me what I said wrong…. [reporter clarifies] …things happen all the time….”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cWMv2fE6TA
So, now I am wondering whether Jeb? drops slowly enough to see 4 percent on his road to below Rand and Huck.
Edit: though Trump’s reaction was about the same as Jeb?’s but sane people expect noxious BS from Trump. Maybe Jeb? will show what a big serious daddy stand-up guy he is whining about getting called on noxious BS when Trump gets away with it.
Baud
@Alex:
Which is why he opposes voter ID laws, right?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore: Sort of like the “naturally occurring rubble” that his brother stood on. It just happened. #HeKeptUsSafe.
David Koch
“stuff happens” didn’t stop ¿Jeb? from passing laws to torture Terri Schiavo and her husband.
Jeffro
@satby: and I would’ve been proud to have been right there with you.
I have been rather surprised lately, reflecting back upon the W years, how much anger I still feel towards that administration for its callous disregard for American lives, not to mention their utter contempt for a functioning representative democracy. Paul Krugman had it right – “the great unraveling” indeed
JPL
Hanlin’s crack pot theories are spreading. It’s no longer just Mother Jones or TPM…
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/03/us/oregon-sheriff-shared-sandy-hook-conspiracy-theory-on-facebook.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=a-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
also.. The Sandy Hook crackpots have always bothered me.
Even though I lived in Ridgefield decades ago, the are is familiar to me.
jl
@Baud: I do note Jeb? ‘politicized’ the tragedy by folding it into his anti-regulatory BS. So, that all might fit. Where’s the outrage about that? What about the children? What will they think?
We need to get rid of seat bell laws, all safety regulations for swimming pools, abandoned wells, junked refrigerators, amusement rides, automobiles, bicycles, 99.999 percent of us are being oppressed because ‘stuff’ happened to some losers in the past. That kind of oppression is destroying individual initiative and our productivity growth.
shell
Didnt he use a similar phrase in defending tax cuts for the wealthy?
“Of course, tax cuts for everybody is going to generate more for people that are paying a lot more. I mean that’s just the way it is.”
What a laid back guy. Just go with the flow, dont sweat the small stuff.
Baud
@jl:
IOKIYAR.
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: At this rate, jeb? may end up at the kid’s table.
David Koch
@WaterGirl: that line is slanted coverage by the guardian.
Here’s what she really said:
Woodrowfan
and as governor Jeb! did in fact sign a law requiring fencing around pools after a kid almost(!) drowned.
jl
@shell: The Jeb? quote on taxes that I saw which we should all memorize, or that we should wait to see in attack adds, should this vile crumb bum ever miraculously get the nomination is
“You gotta let the big dogs eat.”
JPL
@shell: Well he’s taking away the free stuff for the blacks. The whites on food stamps, that use food stamps must be so proud. The majority of subsidies goes to whites so if Bush really wants to make a difference, he needs to take away their stuff.
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: You left out ‘Tort Reform’, only then will we be truly FREE.
Gimlet
@David Koch:
In the Jeb quote above the “reconnect ourselves” was a similar theme.
Elizabelle
Incidentally.
Have we heard anything from brave Sir Wayne LaPierre?
CNN rolled out John Lott this morning, talking about as soon as you had less guns in a community, murders went up. Believe Jamaica was one of the areas he studied.
But after seeing that graphic about 150,000 plus dead from guns since September 11? I don’t see how. John Lott may be full of …
jl
@Woodrowfan: Jeb? is such an inept dumbshit. really amazing. I cannot believe how this guy will stay out of asterisk* territory in the polling.
*the half a dozen or so GOP presidential primary candidates with numbers sol low, it’s too much trouble to list them individually.
Well, another good day IMHO on the GOP presidential campaign trail: more self-inflicted damage.
EditL As I said awhile ago, Jeb? has all the charm of a toilet often used but seldom flushed.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I feel repressed by intellectual property laws. Maybe I’ll make repealing them part of my platform. For FREEDOM!
Roger Moore
@David Koch:
They’re close to the levers of power.
benw
@Roger Moore:
Well, if he’d shrugged and disinterestedly said “stuff happens,” he would have looked like a sociopath. So the full context helps in that he just looks like a callous, hypocritical asshole, instead of full psycho.
eemom
So it IS possible to be stupider than his brother….who’d’a thunk.
jl
@benw: The context makes Jeb? look worse, dementedly griping about the tyranny of safety regulations for swimming pools because some dumb loser kids got drowned sometime. To pretty much any sane person, Jeb?’s context just shows just how callous, nasty and very deeply stupid his thinking is.
Edit: in other words, this is a case where the reactionary fools should get what they want. As many voters as possible should hear the context, and then try not to throw up.
Kay
He’s just bad at this. His anti-regulatory argument opens with a child drowning in a pool?
It doesn’t even matter that it makes no sense and there are hundreds of swimming pool laws designed to prevent that specific tragedy because it’s a horrible thing to say.
A guy
If u want to live in a free society this stuff happens. Just like immigration of Muslim extremists. Btw, anybody notice Joaquin is the only Mexican in the last twenty years to fail to enter america uninvited?
Baud
@Kay:
At least he’s saving us the trouble of surreptitiously recording him like we had to do with Romney.
David Koch
@Gimlet: there’s something wrong with you. She’s echoing none other than Bernie Sanders who says the same thing about reconnection on the stump: “A growing number of communities do not trust the police and police have become disconnected from the communities they are sworn to protect… I think we need to change the tone of police community relations. I was a mayor for eight years. And what instituted in Burlington Vermont was a concept called community policing.” Take your emoprog smears back over to griftwaldstand.
James E Powell
For Republicans, the supreme law of the land: Tough shit, not my problem.
Gimlet
Trey Gowdy: “Benghazi?, Stuff happens”!
gelfling545
@jl:
I expect that’s all on the agenda.
dmsilev
@eemom: I’m beginning to believe that the Bush children are the M.C. Escher of Stupid; each one is stupider than all the others.
SiubhanDuinne
@A guy:
Okay, DougJ, I was willing to play along for a while, but no más.
Gimlet
@David Koch:
there’s something wrong with you…. Take your emoprog smears back over to griftwaldstand. “
For pointing out similarities between Jeb and Lynch about issues they did not want to get involved in?
If you don’t get oversight or track Cops shooting civilians, then the local report is the final word and misfits are not discouraged by punishment when deserved.
Jeffro
@James E Powell: IGMFU – yup
Elizabelle
@A guy: That’s too smart for A Guy.
Concur with Siubhann. Doug J. You owe us drinks next meeting.
Elizabelle
@Gimlet: I’ve noticed a fervent effort to attach the word “integrity” to “Trey Gowdy.” Noticed it a bit on Morning Joe, even before coffee.
Tough sale there.
Kay
@Baud:
He’s my #1 choice for their nominee. He has to get better. Try, Jeb. At least try.
dogwood
@Kay:
Wingers hate things like pool regulations but they abide by them, because a lawsuit could result in loosing their home and savings. I live in a working/middle class community of 50,000 where pools are common due to the mild weather and exceedingly hot summers. In 40 years I’ve never read or been aware a a single accidental pool drowning. Can’t say the same about accidental shootings. Difference is there’s no real penalty for leaving a loaded gun around the house.
Elizabelle
“Haunted Houses have ghosts. This one just has tricks.” Liking this TCM movie.
And something just went boom outside. Here. Oh oh. To investigate. Sounds like a BIG branch down. And scraped the house.
dmsilev
@Kay: Jeb[*] really is his father’s son.
“Poor George. He can’t help it – he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”
Anne Laurie
@NotMax: Ripe to Rot!
Baud
@Kay:
Me too!
C’mon Brinks Trucks!
? Martin
I think there’s an angle in this gun debate that is being overlooked. Surveys suggest that about 34% of households have guns. There’s 116M households, so 39 million households have guns. But there are 270 million guns in the US, which means we have an average of 7 guns per gun-owning household. Now, I know a number of people that have one gun, including my mom who has our great-something grandfathers Civil War Colt which is theoretically operational. But for each person with 1 gun there’s another person, like our Oregon shooter, with 13 of them to average out.
The problem isn’t quite that people have guns – it’s that some people have really fucking scary guns like assault rifles with extended magazines, and other people have alarmingly many guns with massive amounts of ammunition.
What’s going unsaid is that you don’t need to profile the individual through their health provider, you can quite often profile the individual simply through their gun purchases provided you track them, which is why the right has made it an utterly taboo topic. Simply registering guns would tell us everything we need to know to kick these numbers way the fuck down.
Democrats need to stop supporting the mental health argument because it’s nothing but a honey pot that is designed to distract us from actually working on this. The right knows that we can’t use mental health because of medical privacy which Dems strongly support. We don’t need to know if people are mentally ill, we just need to know that they are buying guns like a mentally ill person.
mclaren
Too much schadenfreud for just one candidate, so here’s a great take on Ted Cruz’s doomed candidacy:
Ted Cruz is toast: It’s not just that he won’t be president — his days in the Senate are numbered, too, salon online, October 1 2015.
None of the current Republican candidates are getting anywhere near the White House. The only question? How long it takes for this self-destruction to filter down to the state-level Republican candidates.
I really think we are witnessing the death of one of the two major political parties in America, notwithstanding that Repubs control most of the state legislatures and governorships. Look at the polls. Those state legislatures and governors are incredibly unpopular right now.
Renie
Where’s RtR to explain all of this to us? Busy out driving BRINK TRUCKS?
A guy
USA today is written to a third grade level. So most of u won’t get this
Ihttp://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/10/02/umpqua-community-college-shooting-oregon-mass-shooting-fbi-statistics-column/73199052/
Jeffro
@? Martin:
Seconded. The NRA and gun nuts don’t want to us to drill down to this kind of analysis, because the answer is actually quite easy to find and is supported by a majority of Americans. I think much of this list of suggestions I made in an earlier thread
– requiring trigger locks
– requiring permanent ownership (no re-sales of any kind)
– having a per-person limit in terms of # of firearms
– banning any sort of large capacity magazines
– requiring a family, friend, doctor, and work reference in order to get a gun (might help address the mental health angle?)
– requiring a firearms safety course before each gun purchase
– making gun dealers and manufacturers liable for as much of the above as possible
– PSAs all over the place for as much of the above as possible
– taxing the snot out of weapons and especially ammunition (you have a right to bear arms; you don’t have a right for it to be cheap)
– once all of the above is in place, having massive gun buybacks/tax credits
would be, too.
Again, totally agree. Dems need to point out how the GOP has blocked the CDC from even collecting data on this…because hard data would totally belie their arguments. This is something that can be addressed, just like smoking, just like drunk driving, just like AIDS, just like needle-sharing, and all the rest…it’s a public health and safety issue.
the Conster
@David Koch:
They’re over-entitled, which makes them stupid and lazy.
Villago Delenda Est
The Jedi say that no one is beyond redemption.
Given the story of Anakin Skywalker, one might tend to favor that view.
But the Jedi have never met the members of the Bush Crime Family.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jeffro: Liability insurance requirements for gun ownership.
Jeffro
@mclaren: Cruz is relatively young, and being in the Senate is a great microphone/platform he wouldn’t otherwise have…look at DeMint.
He’ll stay in for at least another couple of terms, unless, god help us, he extorts his way onto the VP slot and the GOP wins the White House next year. Highly unlikely but you never know what the nominee might stoop to in order to shore up the base, especially this year.
benw
@jl:
lol. I watched the 1:30 clip in the last FP post but that didn’t get to the swimming pool bit. Jeb’s message of hope and opportunity: get rid of regulations! A dead child in every pool!
Jeffro
@Villago Delenda Est: Noted and added.
Mike in NC
@efgoldman: The Bushes have always played by rich folks rules. Remember Poppy at the debate with Clinton, checking his watch every five minutes and sighing? (“Why do I have to prostrate myself in front of these peons?”). Dubya only made campaign stops before carefully screened and selected audiences. Now JEB! shrugs and says “Yo, stuff happens. Whatever, it doesn’t affect my bottom line. Please send a check to my SuperPAC”.
Elizabelle
@? Martin: That’s so true.
Note that our latest shooter had several guns at home, that he did not even use. He used 4 in the attack.
No wait, per NYTimes:
14 guns. Age 26? Washed out of military, which released him in a month? Interesting.
PS: Mr. Shooter photo with link. He’s wearing what one of my friends would have called “celibacy glasses.”
OT: headline up on NYTimes, a banner:
Maybe they’re holding out for Bernie? Hmmmm.
Mike in NC
@Jeffro: DeMint quit to run Heritage Foundation.
Elizabelle
@benw: I wonder what James Baker III thinks of that.
His young granddaughter drowned in a hot tub, if memory serves. She got caught in a drain. Happened to a few kids.
I bet former Secretary of State Baker is fine with safety regulations.
beltane
Maybe if “stuff” every happened to the Bush family they’s feel differently about thing.
Gimlet
I wonder if Jeb will shrug it off and go back to influence pedaling or like Romney be shocked and depressed if he loses the primary and election?
bemused
@Jeffro:
I’ll never,ever forget that. One of the most appalling and shameful things I’ve ever seen and the president of the US did it. The audience laughing merrily. I was stunned. I don”t remember msm thinking it was a big deal either at the time.
piratedan
I’d like to say “Fuck Jeb Bush, but that implies that someone somewhere might get some pleasure out of it. Instead, I hope the motherfucker ends up broke and alone.
beltane
@Gimlet: Jeb is low energy. He seems indifferent to just about everything.
benw
@Elizabelle: Every sane person thinks there should be reasonable pool safety laws. It’s not entirely clear if Jeb is insane or should just never, ever be let near a live mic.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
Yikes. Hope no serious damage!
beltane
@efgoldman: There are laws prohibiting this in some states. To wingnuts, “freedom” also means the right to freeload by making sure the risk is spread among all homeowners, even the ones who don’t own guns.
Omnes Omnibus
@benw:
Yes.
SiubhanDuinne
@Villago Delenda Est:
Shouldn’t that be “The Jebi”?
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
That truly did make me Laugh Out Loud.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Jeffro:
To pacify the historic collectors, I would be fine saying that they can have more than the limit provided that they certify that the gun is both more than 50 years old and inoperable. I don’t care how many Civil War rifles someone keeps in their attic if the worst they can do is club someone with it.
Baud
@efgoldman:
You can’t prove that.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: Couldn’t see anything. It’s chilly and raining lightly. Out there with a flashlight, but nothing obvious.
Will investigate more tomorrow morning. Happily, no leaking anywhere.
Relieved to hear that Virginia will escape a hit from Joaquin, although some of Norfolk and VA Beach is flooded (probably more by now), and hear that Charleston SC had waist deep water in some places.
Villago Delenda Est
@Elizabelle: We called them “Birth Control glasses” in the Army.
jl
@beltane:
” Jeb is low energy. He seems indifferent to just about everything. ”
If you watch the link I gave on Jeb?’s clarification above, you will see that he is not indifferent to the indignity of having to answer questions from the rabble, the press and other lesser losers. He finds that quite irritating and is unwilling or unable to do anything at all to hide it.
benw
@Omnes Omnibus: @efgoldman: wow, great minds!
bemused
@jl:
I’m reading Sen Amy Klobuchar’s book. She pushed hard for safety rules on pool drain covers. A little girl 6 year old girl from MN got her intestines sucked out by a faulty pool drain. Klobuchar learned that the faulty drain had caused dozens of deaths and serious injuries. The drain cover defect even had a name, pool entrapment. It took a lot of hard work to get a bill passed to require anti-entrapment drain covers on all existing public pools, not the just the initial weak bill that only required better drains on new pools built. Sen Tom Coburn was one blocking the bill. How a former doctor could block something like this is unfathomable.
Villago Delenda Est
@efgoldman: You mean like a compassionate conservative?
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne:
@Villago Delenda Est:
I was shocked when my friend Ian said that about another friend, but you recognize them when you see them!
Villago Delenda Est
@bemused: Because he’s Mammon worshiping scum, that’s why.
Villago Delenda Est
@efgoldman: Unless people are compelled by law to insure themselves, they will not. This is true with automobiles and this is true with guns.
rikyrah
I love the Subaru commercial with the guy and his dog and the bucket list…and, I don’t even have a pet.
https://youtu.be/aerv5xYhz2k
Elizabelle
@bemused: Can you imagine? OMG. (Did John Edwards represent a child who was injured by a pool? Rings a bell …)
beltane
@jl: Soon Jeb will have all the time in the world to be alone with his patrician ego.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: Incidentally, where are you? Are you safely home?
? Martin
@Jeffro:
I wouldn’t even go so far as many of those. I’d simplify it:
+ Guns must be registered similarly to how autos are. Registration needs to be updated regularly just like with your car.
+ Gun owners must be trained and licensed similarly to how auto drivers are. Training and licensure will have a class system. You want to own an assault rifle? You’re going to have to work a lot harder to get it and keep it just like a truck driver, etc.
+ There will be civil rules to challenge licensure. Someone successfully get a restraining order against you, you lose your license and your guns. There would be a civil rule so that relatives/spouses can challenge licensure. This is what Eliot Rogers parents tried to do. This is what so many domestic violence households need.
+ Gun sales require a title transfer that checks licensure and documents registration.
+ The government will provide a liability pool for claims against gun injuries and deaths. This pool will be paid for exclusively by a floating tax on new gun sales and ammunition. Less payout, less tax. More payout, more tax. This aligns the gun manufacturer incentives with that of the government and public.
There’s no broad bans in these proposals. If you are properly licensed and trained, which escalates from hunting weapons to handguns to assault rifles, you can own big scary guns. If you commit a crime or have a restraining order filed against your or such, you will lose that privilege and the police will come and confiscate your weapons. There will be a record of how many guns people own and what kind they own. Once you have that data, you can later consider whether the number of guns is still material. Perhaps the taxes and licensure knocks that behavior down and solves it automatically. Maybe we decide that owning more guns requires more training/licensure. But we can measure this.
For the hunter or the casual gun owner, this isn’t terribly onerous. You get trained/licensed, which every responsible gun owner will swear is a good idea. You have to prove you are still in possession of the weapon on a regular basis. If you want to transfer ownership, you can do that. You can do it nearly for free, you just can’t do it anonymously. You may face a bit of a tax on that purchase (or buy used and no tax – reuse should be rewarded) and on ammunition, but a modest gun owner won’t face much there. The stockpilers will notice, though, and that’s who we want to notice.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
Provide liability insurance for a dangerous activity? They might but as it would have to probably be a rather expensive rider on a homeowners policy, I’d doubt many companies would be inclined.
Besides if you have all the guns, what do you need insurance for, aren’t the guns insurance enough? I like the folks with 40-100 guns, like they can use them all. It’s a fetish, abet a deadly one.
Elizabelle
Also, a cargo ship is missing at sea. Hoping the souls on board are found, safe and sound.
bemused
@Elizabelle:
Hmm, he may have but I don’t recall.
? Martin
@efgoldman: You’re just wrong there. About 1.5% of New Zealand residents are Jedi.
Chris
@Jeffro:
Incredibly, it feels like the farther I move from the Bush years, the more anger I have towards him and his clique. Probably not surprising given that I was in middle and high school through the worst of his actions and not paying as much attention to politics as I am now, but by the end of his term I hated his stinking guts pretty thoroughly.
But it’s also the way his actions continue to resonate through the present – everything from the permanent police state complete with its Cuban gulag which we’re no closer to shutting down than we were in 2008, to the rise of ISIS last summer. The man’s presidenting days are long gone, but should I live all the way to the 100-year-old mark, I expect the scars he’s inflicted on the world will still be fully visible by then. Hopefully, not all of them.
beltane
@Ruckus: I know someone like that. When he was at work his house got robbed. The thieves stole several guns and his silver hoard.
bemused
@jl:
He absolutely has no clue why he’s getting heat on this and never will. Absolutely a guarantee for more like this coming out of his mouth.
David Koch
Vast Left Wing Conspiracy.
On ABC ¿Jeb? insisted he said nothing wrong and wasn’t referring to the massacre. He demanded a reporter to explain to him what was wrong with what he said. When the reporter did, ¿Jeb? flippantly said, would you feel better if I said “things happens” instead.
Meanwhile #stuffhappens has been the top trending topic on Twitter all day.
¿Jeb? isn’t good at this.
Bobby Thomson
@Gimlet: bullshit in lieu of accountability. I see why she got confirmed.
jl
@bemused: Thanks for the info. But Jeb? has already informed us that this is just ‘stuff happens’ to losers, and misplaced sympathy for these losers produces pesky freedom and innovation destroying regulations oppressing the rest of us.
Some poor design engineer had to waste time futilely redesigning that pool drain, which could not prevent ‘stuff happens’ when they could have spent the time designing neat stuff that would deliver the 4 percent per year economic growth Jeb? has promised and producing more incentivizing doggy treats for the ‘big dogs’.
I don’t want him to get irritated by suggesting he has to explain why this is the right way to look at it, so I’ll just drop the subject. That is my place, being a lesser person.
beltane
@David Koch: Even the media is tiring of Jeb, at least for now.
jl
@David Koch:
” to advance their agenda in wake of tragedy. It’s wrong. ”
Jeb? tweeted that? In the immortal words of Alexander Hamilton, Jeb? is ‘a spectacle both hilarious and disgusting’.
Bobby Thomson
@David Koch: no, she’s not. She’s offering warmed over platitudes as an excuse for avoiding concrete action and accountability.
JG
@? Martin:
We have a winner!!
Davis X. Machina
@bemused:
Slavish fealty to a philosophy or principle unfathomable?
A religion, in other words.
Cheap Jim, formerly Cheap Jim
@Elizabelle: I’m closer to fifty than twenty and thus immune, but I think remarks like “celibacy glasses” probably caused several deaths.
Jeffro
@? Martin:
I hear you, but personally, I want some of these things banned. Cutting down on the number of guns per person and the amount of ammo each gun/magazine can carry will automatically bring down the appeal in general and the death toll during incidents.
But no one needs big scary guns for hunting or self defense. Don’t fall into that trap. We don’t let people privately own M-1 tanks or anti-tank missiles…why would a hunter or homeowner need anything beyond a few hunting rifles or a couple of handguns?
But my understanding is, that’s already the law in most places – police can remove weapons where there is a restraining order. I’m trying to cut down on the mass casualties caused by those for no prior record, and to do that, there needs to be a limit on both number & type of weapons per person, plus a limit on ammo.
I have a feeling that stockpilers are willing to spend themselves into bankruptcy in order to keep feeding their paranoia…it’s not like they’re going to change their behavior unless it is an impossibility to buy more than X weapons or Y amount of ammo. Yes, some will still turn to illegal sources but that’s fine – they’re then vulnerable to police/Fed action when they do.
Bobby Thomson
@Villago Delenda Est: all you need is liability insurance, licensing (with safety exams), and forfeiture for possession without both of the above. Everything else falls into place at that point.
Ruckus
@Chris:
I’m a fair bit older than you and I know that if I were to reach that 100 yrs, those marks he carved into our society will still be there. Along with the 30 or so yrs of crap that preceded him. More’s the shame, many of our citizens believe that he is the greatest president we’ve ever had and that the current one is the worst. So just changing the narrative is going to take a long time, let alone changing and cleaning up the mess he left.
We are going through a profound period of history now, with conservatives whoring themselves out to many of the super rich for what amounts to small fractions of pennies to them for every dollar those super rich get to steal. Not that I think this is really different than most conservatives have always been about. It is just more visible now. As well the beast the conservatives have been building using the “southern strategy” for the last 40 yrs is coming home. The question is, can the nation survive? Does it get a lot worse and if so is there really anything we can do about it? I’m not all filled with a rosy glow about the political/societal future at this time. I’d be thrilled beyond belief to be proven wrong.
Bobby Thomson
@efgoldman: statutes prevent homeowners insurance carriers from increasing rates for gun ownership. But liability insurance should be required. And just like with cars, if you want a lot of them, or ones that tend to get involved in “accidents,” or you’re in a profile tending to fuck up, you pay more. Presumably with a suicide exemption.
PurpleGirl
@Elizabelle: Yes, that was a big case that made him.
Bobby Thomson
@Elizabelle: two. Hunter at the GOS ripped into Tucker Carlson for referring to them as jacuzzi cases.
Bobby Thomson
@? Martin: also reasonable and effective ideas.
Bobby Thomson
@Jeffro: outright bans are just not doable and pushing for them dooms other steps that would do a lot of good.
Duane
Jeffro
@Bobby Thomson: Everything I’ve ever seen says that most Americans are in favor of limiting or banning military-style assault rifles, extended magazines, and massive ammo purchases. It’s also worth laying down as a marker at the start of this debate: we could be talking about taking all guns away, after all (or even going to a slightly milder Australian solution)
Pushing any of these doesn’t have to doom any of the other proposals if we. keep. pushing. It is long past time for the NRA to be the ones to feel the heat, and for all Dems plus sensible Reps to unite about some common sense measures here.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bobby Thomson: The logistics of outright gun bans, with hundreds of millions of them in circulation, are formidable bordering on impossible.
Not gonna happen. Need to find a choke point.
Pocketbooks of ammosexuals is where the choke point is. This is where liability insurance plays into things. Which is why the NRA will fight any such requirement like a cornered wolverine.
rikyrah
@Bobby Thomson:
that’s how I see it too. Pay for liability insurance.
Jeffro
@Villago Delenda Est:
FYI by “bans” I’m not talking about bans of guns themselves, much less confiscations. Unfortunately a lot of things would almost certainly have to be grandfathered into law. But a lot of the points I’ve raised above as well as your liability insurance requirement could be instituted with less trouble and would applicable to all upon signing into law. We can walk and chew gum here…we can get the liability insurance requirement while pushing for limits on ammo, magazines, number and type of weapons, and son on.
AxelFoley
@A guy:
So, is this enough to get this fuckwad banned yet, FPers?
Cervantes
@A guy:
Is there anything you cannot justify with this reasoning?
How about child sacrifice?
Cervantes
@Jeffro:
I’d do all that and more. Question is how.
mclaren
@AxelFoley:
I think it’s useful to get a constant reminder of the stupidity and the cruelty of the far right. Sociopaths like this clown and srv provide an excellent example of what we’re all fighting against. I say let ’em gibber their drivel. The rest of us will merely point at them and laugh.
David Koch
@jl: it’s not like he has a brother who used a tragedy to advance tax cuts and a pnac agenda.
Brachiator
@? Martin: I wouldn’t even go so far as many of those. I’d simplify it:
Chris
@Ruckus:
I’ve speculated more than once that the country is ultimately heading for a Civil War/Great Depression level crisis. I’m not predicting a new war (that one seems unlikely, at least to me), or a new economic crisis (that one less so – more crises seem likely, if not necessarily on that level), specifically. I just think it’ll end up being a breakdown on that level, because given how widespread and extreme the right wing looniness has gotten, and how well implanted it is in the political system and determined to hang onto it, I don’t see how the system doesn’t eventually, well, break, for lack of a more scientific word.
jl
@AxelFoley: Probably best to keep trolls around as object lessons on how stupid comments can get.
Or is ‘guy’ making an argument that since ‘stuff happens’ wrt to immigration as well as guns, we shouldn’t try to control immigration in any way, just as we should not try to control guns in any way?
I don’t know any liberals who take the no immigration laws at all position. But maybe the troll knows of some mythical one rattling around inside his head.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cervantes: He’s Moloch worshiping scum. He probably doesn’t even know what that means.
We’re dealing with human beings who willingly and obstinately lower themselves into the jungle. Jackals have more dignity.
mclaren
@Cervantes:
Amazing, isn’t it?
This attitude covers an infinity of sadism and incompetence.
The Bush administration ignores FBI’s warnings about terror threats and the 9/11 hijackers kill 3500 people? Hey, shit happens!
The Bushies appoint incompetents to FEMA and thousands die needlessly in Hurricane Katrina? Hey, shit happens!
Cops get drunk and shoot out the window of their police cars, killing random passersby? Hey, shit happens!
So if we eliminate qualifications for doctors and people with no medical knowledge start taking chainsaws to patients in operating rooms, many people will die horribly. But, hey! Shit happens!
America dissolves into a cesspool of corruption and incompetence? Hey, shit happens!
Murderers get hauled in front of a judge — why bother to punish them? Hey, shit happens!
Let’s abandon science and go back to voodoo. We can try to cure diseases with medicine men and draining blood via leeches. It won’t work…but, hey! Shit happens!
Let’s burn all the books in all the libraries, kill everyone who seems like an intellectual, and go back to living in caves in a new Dark Age. Because…hey, shit happens!
mclaren
@Chris:
We’ve already got the Great Depression level crisis. Look around. The economy’s in the toilet despite all the lying statistics. 94% of the gains in the economy since the 2009 global economic meltdown have gone to the top 1%. Almost all the jobs created since 2009 are low-paid junk jobs, and most of them are being taken by recent college grads. That’s an economic death spiral.
As for the civil war part, who knows. But we’re already in the Great Depression level crisis.
jl
@David Koch: True. My point was that Jeb? himself used (‘politicized’) this latest shooting tragedy as an excuse to drag in his very tired and reactionary and stupid positions on safety regulation (namely, there should be almost none).
Frankly, I am tired of the charge of ‘politicization’. It is BS, and it’s BS whether it comes from a conservative attacking liberals or liberals attacking conservatives on an issue.
If a tragedy occurs that could have prevented or ameliorated by some policy, I think that is a good time to talk about the policy issue, and I think most grown-up people can do so in a way that is not offensive, and can know the difference between using the tragedy to start a necessary conversation, and exploiting it for purely partisan political gain.
But ‘politicize’ has become a meaningless BS word to shut someone up.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@rikyrah: Suicide gun deaths outnumber homicides:
Pew reports:
In 2013 there were 33, 363 gun deaths – 21,175 of those were suicides. Vox calls it “the gun problem no one wants to talk about.”
mclaren
@jl:
The North politicized the issue of slavery. Very bad idea. We shouldn’t politicize things.
And while we’re at it, let’s revoke womens’ right to vote. They were just politicizing that issue. And let’s also shut down all our public health systems, because, you know, people who want vaccinations are just politicizing that issue too.
Hey…I’ve got an idea! Let’s abandon democracy altogether. We can go back to beating each other with clubs and raping and killing random travelers whenever the opportunity arises. All this voting and legislation stuff is just politicizing the whole issue of how society should work. We don’t want that awful politicizing stuff, that’s bad.
Brachiator
@jl:
The Onion is all over it.
http://www.theonion.com/article/man-cant-believe-obama-would-use-tragedy-push-anti-51455
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): ^ Too many links; perhaps AL will rescue from moderation. Among the statements, with links was:
Kay
These letters are brutal:
David Koch
Pew Poll Sept 22 – 27
Trump……………..25%
Carson…………….16%
Rubio……………….8%
Fiorina………………8%
Cruz…………………6%
¿Bush?…………….4%
¿Bush? is not good at this.
mclaren
@David Koch:
You’re not getting it.
Jeb is a member of the elite, so it doesn’t matter how stupid or incompetent he is. Everyone adores him because he a member of the elite. Everyone wants to be him because he’s a member of the elite.
You’re still thinking like a foolish progressive, you imagine that facts and reality and policies matter. But all that matters is whether the particular baboon named Jeb is on top of the pack, holding all the banans and beating his chest and bellowing loud enough to cow all the other baboons.
The elite can take great work and destroy it, the elite can take failed work and magnify it, they can take good business and suppress it, they can take dishonest scams and make them thrive, they can crush capable people and promote the incompetent. Everyone wants to be the elite or at least to work for the elite, please them and they will reward you with riches and a good job and lavish praise because imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Jeb will be the Republican nominee. He could kick a pregnant woman in the stomach during one of the debates and the moderaters would praise him for his “refreshing refusal to follow the old tried-and-true hackneyed sound bites of Washington politics.”
jl
Everyone note the date and time!
Cervantes
@David Koch:
Notice that the sampling error for that part of the poll is ± 4.7%.
jl
@Cervantes: true, but the point estimate is the best estimate we have in that poll. It is the most likely value. Pool that with previous polls and you have a definite trend.
Not good new for Jeb? and I am glad he stepped in it again today, and he deserves whatever electoral grief he gets over it.
Jeffro
@Cervantes: My honest to goodness thought on this is that the President is right: it’s time to politicize this. Get one party as unified as possible on common sense gun control, then push hard on any and every good idea that will limit the number of guns out there, the amount of ammo, the size of magazines, tie the ability to get a gun to some sort of mental health check (think doctors are going to casually sign off on those?), go with the liability insurance requirement noted previously in this thread…nothing will eliminate the danger in a country where the right to bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution and our history (right or wrong). But we can get it way, way down. Look at MADD, look at anti-smoking efforts. It will turn the tide.
the Conster
@Jeffro:
Drunken fatal car crashes was stuff that “just happened” for years and years, until laws were passed with serious sanctions and fines. Drunken fatal car crashes went way down, because we got people off the roads. Insurance is a huge part of this gun control legislation. Mandate that they all have to have insurance for any damage caused by the gun they own. Things would definitely change.
Jeffro
@mclaren:
Are you running for the weekly Bill Kristol trophy? Jeb is the reason Trump’s running, and Trump appears to be winning that argument.
This cycle’s GOP is not going for Jeb!, not in a million years. I still think one of the “establishment” candidates (most likely, Rubio) will squeak through to the nomination. But if the elites are dumb enough to push Jeb! to the convention, there will be an open revolt and a completely fractured party. Rubio puts a fresh (younger, etc etc) face on the same-old, same-old. Bush is not going to get there.
sukabi
@bemused: the audience was primarily the our esteemed White House press corpse, that they thought it was funny should tell you all you need to know.
Jeffro
@the Conster: yeah, and bars fought “dram shop” laws, and lots of places fought the anti-smoking restrictions and higher taxes on tobacco…yet, here we are. It’s do-able. The NRA and its allies only have power if people think there’s no hope of changing the current status quo.
Let them attack the laws. Let nutjobs try to argue that someone shouldn’t have some sort of mental health sign-off (and a waiting period, etc) before being able to buy a gun. Let them argue that they need 2,000 rounds of ammunition, or 13 guns per gun owner. Happy to see what responsible hunters and homeowners think about that, especially if – each and every time – the trade-off is made clear: “You’re ok with Random Citizen X being able to own a small army’s worth of ammunition, and undergo no mental health check, just down the road from your kid’s school?”
Jeffro
@sukabi: They are despicable for laughing (and for going along with so much more) but let’s not forget who started it all and then thought it’d make a hilarious sketch at the dinner. That whole gang really has a lot to answer for.
jl
@Jeffro: I remember reading about that, and looking at the clips (I don’t actually watch those things in real time, too depressing). I found it hard to believe that Dub would do such an awful attempt at a joke, and that the press corps saw nothing objectionable about it.
It will be remembered as a minor sign of the depravity of the times.
chopper
@Alex:
the whole point, jebbie, is that these days mass shootings aren’t fucking ‘unique events’.
patroclus
On the OKC bombing: Clinton – “Those who reap the swords of violence and destruction shall inherit the wind.”
Jeb!: “Stuff happens.”
patroclus
On the bombing of Pearl Harbor: FDR – “With confidence in our armed forces,with the unbounding determination of our people, we shall gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God!”
Jeb!: “Stuff happens.”
patroclus
On the fall of France: Winston Churchill – “We shall fight them on the beaches, and on the landing grounds, on the hills and in the streams…”
Jeb!: “Stuff happens.”
Steeplejack
@patroclus:
That was about the potential invasion of Britain, but forget it, you’re rolling.
Mnemosyne
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Given the fact that fewer and fewer people own guns, but those people own multiple guns, it makes a sick kind of sense that the gun owners are the ones at highest risk of dying. Plus, of course, the fact that hoarding multiple deadly weapons is not exactly a sign of mental health.
Villago Delenda Est
@jl: The scum of the Village are every bit depraved now as they were then
Althea
Well, slap my mama! Who knew?!
Matt McIrvin
@jl: Yes, but it’s an outlier. Most recent polls indicate that Bush is polling somewhere just under 9%:
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-national-gop-primary#!mindate=2015-08-01&estimate=custom
That said, he doesn’t seem to be gaining at all.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne: The current increasing trend in gun deaths is probably really understandable as a general slow increase in suicide rates.
Gun enthusiasts like to use this as an excuse to discount suicides entirely as a reason to oppose mass gun ownership, which brings the number of deaths to consider down by about two thirds. I don’t think that’s right. Guns make suicide really, really easy and bring down the amount of planning required. Make it harder, and you probably increase the chance that some kind of intervention will happen.
More than anything else, firearms suicides are the thing that actually make the United States almost unique: there are only a few countries in the world that have as high a rate of people shooting themselves to death as the US, and none that are much higher. Our overall suicide rate is significantly lower than, for instance, a bunch of Scandinavian countries.
But a lot of those American suicides seem to be of a particular type that would be preventable by breaking the idea that everyone needs a gun in their home for self-defense. Probably the key thing would be a cultural change rather than a law, because I think a lot of these people don’t have any visible markers that would make it feasible to ban them from getting guns.
Matt McIrvin
…Also, guns aside, it’d be nice to get a handle on why suicide is increasing. I’m not sure it’s 100% economic, since young people have the most economic trouble and (despite what you might think from movies) the people who commit suicide the most are actually middle-aged white men, a demographic that is not doing so badly.
But middle-aged white men used to be kings of the world, and are notably perceiving that they’re not any more, which might be significant.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin: Just in case this thread is still open:
It may not just be a matter of perception. Stagnant wages, a declining middle class, increasing unemployment hits this group hard just because of the numbers of individuals in this demographic group.
Also a little statistic on suicide rates:
Comprehensive data is not available for 2014, and who knows what we will see for 2015.