Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

The lights are all blinking red.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

The revolution will be supervised.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Fight them, without becoming them!

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Bark louder, little dog.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Friday Morning Open Thread: CPAC, Reliable Point’n’Mock Post Topic

Friday Morning Open Thread: CPAC, Reliable Point’n’Mock Post Topic

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Daniel Dale, at Toronto’s The Star:

… For decades, CPAC was a gathering Republicans attended to rail against long-standing conservative villains like overreaching government. In the Donald Trump era, they have largely been superseded by other enemies.

This year’s CPAC still offers moments of old-fashioned conservative orthodoxy. But it is being joined by a large dose of the loose philosophy that might be best called Trumpism.

On Thursday, speakers griped about the FBI. They darkly warned about Muslims. They made fun of transgender people. They held a panel on “fake news.” And, one after the other, they hailed the wondrousness of a year-old era that Vice-President Mike Pence claimed was “the most consequential year in the history of the conservative movement.”

At a gathering normally heavy on Republican legislators, only one, Sen. Ted Cruz, was on the speaker roster. In their place this year were Trump administration officials and Trump-friendly others: Fox News hosts, a Breitbart News editor, campus rabble-rousers fighting “political correctness,” far-right Europeans…

Just as it was a hallmark of Trump rallies, media criticism was a prominent feature of the new CPAC. The first video of the day was a compilation of clips of television anchors admitting errors or being mocked by Trump and Fox personalities as “fake news.”

The first panel was titled “An Affair to Remember: How the Far Left and the Mainstream Media Got in Bed Together.” In a sharp reversal from the usual Republican argument, which holds that cloistered media elites do not leave their northeastern bubble to speak with average Trump supporters in forgotten communities, one speaker, Candace Owens, complained that CNN too frequently interviewed Trump supporters who “had no teeth.”

They wanted to make Trump supporters look “stupid,” she said…

*Not* a heavy lift, lady. Easy enough even for effete coastal BothSiderists!

Reader Interactions

199Comments

  2. 2.

    Baud

    Netroots has a ton of different panels and trainings that are geared toward activists, 

    “How not to get fooled by Putin’s propaganda” might be a good training to have at netroots.

  7. 7.

    Jeffro

    @Baud: also “how to ensure your candidates/nominees are actually members of the Democratic party” would be a good one.

    Maybe “Inside the Tent Pissing Out 101” as well?

  8. 8.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    J.D. Durkin
    ‏✓ @jiveDurkey

    long security line to get into #CPAC2018 where, for the record, firearms are strictly prohibited (photo)

    354 replies 1,877 retweets 3,141 likes

    No guns permitted during NRA lecture on the need for more guns.

  9. 9.

    CarolDuhart2

    @Baud: “So there’s work here, as in seminars and such-that’s boring!” The thought of sitting around watching people pass around papers like in class gives the no-local press the heaves, so Netroots gets none of the coverage that CPAC does. Plus DC location for CPAC.

    And unless you want to invite Bob Avakian, it’s hard to find someone on the left who is as outrageous as Wayne LaPIerre.

  12. 12.

    Waldo

    At a gathering normally heavy on Republican legislators, only one, Sen. Ted Cruz, was on the speaker roster.

    And Ted’s only going to reclaim the distinction of being America’s most loathsome guy name Cruz.

  16. 16.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @Baud:

    Sanders and his former campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, presented a series of self-serving statements that were not accurate, and that track with efforts by Trump and his supporters to undermine the credibility of the Mueller probe.

    ***
    Weaver, who is one of the senator’s closest aides, said repeatedly he wasn’t sure if he should believe the charges.

    “The factual underpinning of that in the indictment is what? Zero,” Weaver said. “I have not seen any evidence of support for Bernie Sanders.” (link)

    #Hoax!

    Funny how Drumpf and Wilmer both are trying to discredit Mueller and bash Clinton. it’s as if they were working for the Russians.

  22. 22.

    Kay

    Samantha Fuentes, who was shot in both legs during the Parkland assault, said she had felt no reassurance during a phone call from the president to her hospital room last week.
    “He said he heard that I was a big fan of his, and then he said, ‘I’m a big fan of yours too.’ I’m pretty sure he made that up,” she said in an interview after being discharged from the hospital. “Talking to the president, I’ve never been so unimpressed by a person in my life. He didn’t make me feel better in the slightest.”

    You know it’s true because it sounds exactly like him.

  24. 24.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: I suspect more than a few got a real kick in the balls when they lost their SALT deductions too. Now they can’t deduct the real estate tax on 2000 acres of bottomland valued at $7500 an acre. Now they can’t deduct the personal property tax on that $500,000 dollar combine or the $125,000 high clearance tractor.

  29. 29.

    MattF

    There can’t be a lefty CPAC– people who haven’t despised the Clintons for the past thirty years aren’t newsworthy.

  30. 30.

    Baud

    Support the Troops (WaPo)

    A Russian oligarch believed to control the Russian mercenaries who attacked U.S. troops and their allies in Syria this month was in close touch with Kremlin and ­Syrian officials in the days and weeks before and after the assault, according to U.S. intelligence reports.


    In intercepted communications in late January, the oligarch, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, told a senior Syrian official that he had “secured permission” from an unspecified Russian minister to move forward with a “fast and strong” initiative that would take place in early February.

    
Prigozhin made front-page headlines last week when he was indicted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III on charges of bankrolling and guiding a long-running Russian scheme to conduct “information warfare” during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

  31. 31.

    Baud

    WaPo

    Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is expected to propose to President Trump that transgender members of the U.S. military be allowed to continue serving despite the president’s call last summer for a ban on all transgender service members, according to two U.S. officials with knowledge of the issue.

  35. 35.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @Kay: Then he told the young girl, “well, you knew what you were signing up for when you enrolled”.

  36. 36.

    Frankensteinbeck

    cpac is built for tv/mass media in a way that netroots isn’t

    Might be connected to

    if a liberal used rhetoric like any of the CPAC speakers do there would be lots of coverage, and not good coverage

    which might be related to

    every year I ask why CPAC gets so much media attention and no liberal equivalent ever did/does and no one has an answer

    because, you know, THE NATIONAL PRESS ARE REPUBLICANS. How much did Obama get lambasted in the press as a divisive influence? CPAC is just saying extreme versions of stuff the pundits believe, so they get treated with kid gloves.

    Pence laments “a time of too much division and too much anger in America”

    “How dare those queers and darkies complain.”

    “An Affair to Remember: How the Far Left and the Mainstream Media Got in Bed Together.”

    The press bending over backwards to ignore their lies and treat them as reasonable isn’t enough. If they don’t get 100% surrender, cooperation, and worship, you must be the enemy.

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
    People say that Sanders learned his lesson and came on board. Forget it. For every good thing he’s done, he’s done twice as much damage. All it takes is occasional comments to keep his followers believing that the primary was stolen and Democrats don’t want to support liberal policies to undo every ‘We need to stop Trump!’ he’s ever said.

    My, I’m grumpy before breakfast.

  37. 37.

    Another Scott

    I was thinking the same thing as Atrios yesterday. And just this morning, I woke up to Morning Edition on NPR going on and on about the latest nonsense from Trump and the Teabaggers.

    Everyone knows that we aren’t going to be arming our public school teachers. It’s a stupid talking point and isn’t going to happen.

    Why does the national press allow itself to be lead around by the Teabaggers and idiots in the GOP every . single . time ? But does it really matter Why?

    Having a LPAC at National Harbor wouldn’t help.

    The national press is wired for Republicans.

    We need to continue to work around the national press. Fewer people are reading newspapers, fewer people are getting their news from TV. We need to be where our voters and potential voters are and talk to them. LaPierre can talk to Mara and Geraldo and Chuck and all the rest of the DC political media stars. Let them think it matters.

    We should continue to be working on the ground, registering voters, listening to them and telling them what we plan to do once the Trumpists are removed from office.

    “… for the times, they are a changin’…”

    Eyes on the prize.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  38. 38.

    Kay

    I was thinking about the Trumpsters and their debts. Manafort, Ivanka and Jared, probably the two boys, etc. Debt can be a way to launder money. One can borrow a big chunk of money on an asset, thereby getting a big chunk of clean money all at once, and then pay back the debt over time with money that came from illegal activities- smaller amounts that are easier to attribute to legitimate sources, over time. The interest on the debt is like a laundering cost.

    Maybe the debt is phony too.

  40. 40.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Yep, it sounds exactly like him. Trump is a terrible person, completely devoid of empathy. It stands to reason he’d offend grieving widows and traumatized children.

    I hope the US women’s hockey team declines a White House visit. Best case scenario would be that Trump would make it about himself and ogle their boobs. He doesn’t know how to act.

  42. 42.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @debbie: I can’t wait until Tesla rolls out its new coal powered roadster. Instead of plugging the car into obsolete electricity, you pour coal into its state of the art steam engine.

  43. 43.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    I want someone to directly confront these dicks and ask them about their genius plan to arm schools in light of that deputy who stood outside the school and did absolutely zero while the shooting went on.

    The only thing that enables a bad guy with a gun is a coward with a gun who does nothing?

  44. 44.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    There is no Trumpism. What you see is Putinism applied to a client state.

  46. 46.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Immanentize: Misery had very little to do with DEM STL DA Kim Gardner’s Grand jury indictment. Grietens is pushing the DEM part very loudly (“PARTISAN PROSECUTION!!!!”) but it is apparent that she has evidence he did in fact transfer the image to another device before erasing it from his phone. That act makes the misdemeanor offense of taking a photo w/o consent a felony.

    I do need to say that Grietens is not much loved in Jeff City by elected DEMs or GOP. He spent his entire campaign and all of his first year in Jeff City trashing everybody and anybody who was there before he as snakes and slime. Now that he needs allies, there is nary a one to be found.

    What’s that old saying about burning bridges and what not?

  49. 49.

    2liberal

    LINK

    armed officer at Florida school “never went in” even as he heard gunfire

    second link

    ER responder sees devasting damage done by assault rifles

    these threads need to get jammed down the throat of every ammosexual in the USA

    IMHO these should have a thread.

  51. 51.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Back when I was conservative, I attended a CPAC. Met Pat Buchanan, Cap Weinberger, some talk radio goons, some TV goons. Sat in the bars at the Crystal City Marriott and heard the stuff they say away from the microphone, watched all the illicit extramarital play stoke up. My exposure to them was my own personal Great Leap Forward driving me toward rejecting the ideology.

    Whatever your negative impressions of CPAC are, exponentiate them – it is FAR WORSE than you think.

  52. 52.

    Schlemazel

    @2liberal:
    He probably was carrying a 9MM pistol which, assuming he hit his target – not a safe assumption*, probably would not have brought him down. IF he was wearing body armor it would not have stopped a .223 round from a long gun. Then there is the issue of not hitting innocents. He probably made the right decision.

    *NYPD stats say that in an active shooter situation its officers are 18% accurate. Less than 1 out of 5 rounds fired hits its intended target

  54. 54.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    Ugh. That deputy. He just froze? He did nothing?

    We had a threat from a student this week which was not serious, but will be treated seriously. I asked my son and his friends about the boy who made the threat – they all knew who it was although his name wasn’t released, partly because the boy’s father is posting this entire narrative on Facebook- and they said “everyone has a Johnny story”. Johnny is not his name. They say he does strange and “annoying” things all the time but they clearly do not consider him a threat. Several mentioned that he is “small” which seems to be part of their threat assessment but obviously shouldn’t be as far as shooting.

  55. 55.

    debbie

    @Schlemazel:

    Assuming you’re right (and I strongly object to your conclusion that he was right to do nothing more than listen to the screams of children), then that would not reflect well on the GOP’s insistence that filling schools with “weapons adept” teachers is the best way to go.

  57. 57.

    Betty Cracker

    @Schlemazel: And those stats are for trained cops! I would say it’s insane that Trump & Co. are seriously proposing putting armed people with less training than cops into the schools, but it’s actually perfectly rational if the goal is selling more guns rather than seriously addressing the school shooting issue.

  58. 58.

    Another Scott

    @debbie: They’re already demonizing him.

    I’m assuming the doors were locked, but even if they weren’t, a single guy with a pistol (assuming he had it with him), isn’t going to do much against a guy with an AR-15.

    The officer didn’t run away. Keep that in mind.

    I wasn’t there. I’m not going to judge the guy based on what little I know now.

    The problem is the system as a whole – the availability of guns, the lack of earlier intervention, the impossibility of protecting a campus from a determined attacker – not the actions or inactions of one security officer.

    They’re punching down and trying to save their skins, blaming a guy who wasn’t Superman. Don’t join in.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  62. 62.

    Schlemazel

    @debbie:
    Exactly.

    And by ‘right’ I mean he calculated the odds of stopping the killing versus getting himself killed & came to the conclusion they were not in his favor.

    @Betty Cracker:
    How many teachers would want to carry if they thought about it for a minute? Only the loons. You are in an enclosed space, probably don’t have a clear shot at the target, may very well have innocents in the background. Only the Rambo wankers would think this is a good idea.

  68. 68.

    debbie

    @Another Scott:
    @Schlemazel:

    Wrong. I believe he was the resource officer who was always on the grounds. But, regardless of that, he froze and did nothing. Meanwhile, teachers are expected to spring to action like the “Supermen” they are, regardless of the “odds”? Give me a break.

    I have to get to work; otherwise, I would continue this argument.

  69. 69.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Schlemazel:

    Less than 1 out of 5 rounds fired hits its intended target

    And like somebody said here the other day, every stray bullet comes with a lawyer.

  70. 70.

    Schlemazel

    @debbie:
    What argument? We agree as far as I can tell. You may not like the way I made my case but the conclusion is the same as yours.

  71. 71.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:
    Kay,
    Everything about them is phony. I enjoyed Maddow’s opening segment last night because she was explaining the level of fraud Manafort and Gates were perpetuating. The Money Never Lies, even when the humans do.

  73. 73.

    Schlemazel

    On a happier note (for me at least) I want to leave this here in honor of the US women winning gold in Olympic Ice Hockey.

  75. 75.

    MJS

    @Another Scott: I agree with not punching down, but it may be helpful to know this guy’s background, if only to punch more holes in the idea of arming teachers. Was he a vet? Former law enforcement? What training had he received on the weapon he carried? The more training and experience he had, the more ridiculous Trump’s idea becomes.

  78. 78.

    Schlemazel

    @Baud:
    I am a bad person and I should feel bad.

    HEY! They get decent healthcare, no gun nut mass shootings and reasonable government, we deserve something!

  80. 80.

    Baud

    @Schlemazel: At least now it’s the “rivalry” that the commentators were saying it was. If Canada had won again, I would hesitate to call it that.

  83. 83.

    MomSense

    @Another Scott:

    They keep asking/forcing schools to deal with some of our most difficult social problems – without adequate funding. By the time this all said and done, the plan will be for the art teachers to stock their art carts with extra ammunition and then run around to all the teachers during active shooting to replenish their ammo. Of course the art teachers will have to buy the bullets just like all the other supplies in the art carts.

  85. 85.

    Betty Cracker

    @MJS: From what I’m reading, he was a deputy sheriff. I assume — perhaps naively — they have fairly extensive training on the weapons they carry. Middle and high schools in Florida have had armed school resource officers from the sheriff’s department on campus since I was a kid. Like you said, Trump’s idea (which he got from the daily intelligence briefing on Fox & Friends) is ridiculous. There are already armed people at schools — have been since way before Columbine.

  87. 87.

    Amir Khalid

    I gather that Netroots Nation is a very different animal from CPAC: CPAC is a show featuring conservative celebrities, whereas Netroots Nation is a conference/workshop. (Where and when do American conservatives do their conference/workshop thing?) Should NN become more showlike to try to attract media attention, and would that work with mainstream media people who are averse to covering substance?

  89. 89.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Schlemazel:

    He probably made the right decision.

    No, doing nothing is never the right decision. Not a mass shooting but I witnessed a murder/suicide. At the sound of the first shot I was out my back door, looking for the shooter. I had a wife, children, they needed to be protected. Didn’t even bother with a gun, my only instinct was to find out what was going on and to get between the shooter and my family. As it was I came around the corner of my building just in time to see him put the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger.

    It wasn’t much but at least I was there to pick up the broken screaming pieces of their family as they came upon the scene. I’m not going to beat up on the deputy. Nobody knows how they are going to react until they find themselves in the situation and there is a whole spectrum of responses. In this case, he was less than useless. He needs to find another line of work.

  90. 90.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly: Yeah. I’m hesitant to judge on so few facts and because I’ve never been in that position, but when you take on a job like that, doing nothing is not really an option. That doesn’t mean rushing in to confront the shooter is the correct option, however. I prefer to wait to learn what actually happened.

  92. 92.

    Amir Khalid

    @Another Scott:
    I agree. I think this only demonstrates the futility of an armed police presence in schools — a shooter with the advantage of surprise will have done his worst before the armed cop(s) can do anything about it; and even if they were armed to match the bad guy, an enclosed environment with many innocents is a very bad place for a firefight.

  93. 93.

    Thoughtful David

    @Baud: This is Putin showing the world that Trump’s his poodle. Putin wants it known the Russians approved the attack and that Trump won’t do anything about it.

  94. 94.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Betty Cracker:

    Unless he was seconded to SWAT, he wasn’t equipped mentally, physically or skillswise to address this. Regular police training simply doesn’t include this sort of conduct, nor should it. The sort of responses a regular street cop should employ in most situations involve patience and assessment, at least in theory, which they do attempt to train for.

    Another observation – I’ve dealt with some actual SWAT guys. They’re wholly unsuited to regular police work – they develop different reactions and skills that don’t mesh well with ordinary people.

  97. 97.

    Gin & Tonic

    @rikyrah: Unfortunately, Manafort may be a fraud when it comes to money, but his “political” activity has been very real. As his daughter said, his money is blood money. That is not an exaggeration. He has materially assisted some of the worst people in the world in attaining and retaining power, and spending the rest of his natural life in prison would be minor punishment compared to his deeds.

  98. 98.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: The job is to protect children. That doesn’t mean go running in guns a blazing and get shot while shooting innocent people (first rule of First Responder training was “Don’t be a victim!”), but it does mean protect children. You can’t do that by waiting for the shooter to come out the door you are standing by. He HAS to go in. Carefully, yes, prudently, yes, but he HAS to put himself between children and the shooter. He HAS to at least try and find the shooter and ascertain the situation.

    He didn’t do that. He might as well have not been there at all.

  99. 99.

    Joey Maloney

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Whatever your negative impressions of CPAC are, exponentiate them – it is FAR WORSE than you think.

    Whose law is it, that goes something like “it’s worse than you can possibly imagine, even after you’ve taken into account that it’s worse than you can possibly imagine”?

  100. 100.

    Jeffro

    @Kay:

    (via Ms. Fuentes) “Talking to the president, I’ve never been so unimpressed by a person in my life

    Oh, OUCH! The truth hurts.

  102. 102.

    Cermet

    @Schlemazel: And the fart cloud wants teachers to have guns!? What a joke – this proves that the best defense is eliminate all semi-automatic weapons and that includes pistols. Its not only follows the 2nd amendment but would protect countless woman from murder by their husbands/boyfriends and similar murders by passion/alcohol.

  105. 105.

    Jeffro

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Unless he was seconded to SWAT, he wasn’t equipped mentally, physically or skillswise to address this. Regular police training simply doesn’t include this sort of conduct, nor should it. The sort of responses a regular street cop should employ in most situations involve patience and assessment, at least in theory, which they do attempt to train for.

    Actually, regular police training these days does include rushing in to neutralize the shooter as fast as possible. They are training specifically to not wait and get in there as fast as possible if there’s an active shooter.

  106. 106.

    rikyrah

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Nobody is punching down. We are just pointing out that the professional, who was paid for a situation like this, did nothing. It is further proof that the idea of Dolt45 and the NRA is a phucking sham.?

  108. 108.

    Jeffro

    @Thoughtful David:

    This is Putin showing the world that Trump’s his poodle. Putin wants it known the Russians approved the attack and that Trump won’t do anything about it.

    I’m trying to picture what the Rs would be saying if this were in the reverse…that the same hostile foreign power that helped install Hillary also approved a military mission that ended up firing on US military positions…bye-bye, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, we’ll be along to sweep up the ashes…

  110. 110.

    SFAW

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    every ‘We need to stop Trump!’ he’s ever said.

    And that count would be …? Will I need to take off my shoes and socks to count that high? Probably not.

    And does that count exceed the number of times he’s bashed Hillary? No, don’t bother, I can guess the answer.

  111. 111.

    Cermet

    @OzarkHillbilly: So very sorry you had to witness such a tragic event to endure/see – again, why all semi-automatic weapons need to be outlawed. As the saying goes – if you out law guns, only criminal will have guns. That is ideal because your chances of being killed by a family member/lover/fiend is many, many orders of magnitude greater than any criminal harming you. People need to use these facts. Still, I would allow standard old fashion weapons like bolt action rifles and shot guns so, still, would be a lot of domestic murders. But the second amendment dose have a bloody a cost if one believes in hunting. Maybe not worth it.

  112. 112.

    Another Scott

    @debbie: I agree with you (and just about everyone else here) that the fact that this officer didn’t prevent the slaughter shows that the idea of having adults with guns in schools to “keep them safe” is wrong.

    I don’t agree with the approach of demonizing this guy.

    The gun nuts are already doing that. They’re telling us that it’s his fault, not the fault of the system and the policies. I don’t agree with that. Our argument needs to be better.

    I assume the officer is a guy who thought his job was to be a presence on the campus, very occasionally break up and diffuse fights between students, and stuff like that. Not be a one (or two) man army to fight off a guy who was hell-bent to slaughter as many as possible.

    If the officer gets demonized then there’s no need to change gun policy, is how they’re hoping to frame the debate.

    Don’t punch down.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  113. 113.

    SFAW

    @rikyrah:

    We are just pointing out that the professional, who was paid for a situation like this, did nothing.

    Well, that’s because there were no unarmed black men/boys looking at him “the wrong way.”

    (But I think Ozark and you are in agreement.)

  116. 116.

    Jager

    @NotMax: My old CEO bought his wife a $125,000 Mercedes G-Wagen. She had it for two days and called him at work, saying “This thing will only go 15 miles and hour!” She had it picked up and hauled to the Mercedes dealer where the service writer took it out of 4 low and sent her on her way.

  117. 117.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @rikyrah: I don’t think anyone here is punching down. I’m just pointing out that Shlemazel said that doing nothing may have been the right thing to do, when doing nothing is not what the man was there for. If doing nothing was the proper response for this situation then having him there was a waste of money. His whole job is to get involved in this situation, to at the very minimum ascertain what is going on and what he might or might not do.

    Doing nothing was not an option for the teachers, it should not have been an option for the deputy.

    Again, nobody knows how they are going to react to such a situation until they come face to face with it, and past performance is no guarantee of future results. My reaction could be entirely different if faced with another gun incident. I certainly do not fault the man for his gut level response but his gut level response made him unsuitable for the job he was doing.

    Asking teachers to do that job is even more unsuitable.

  122. 122.

    Another Scott

    @OzarkHillbilly: As I understand it, he was outside the building by an outside door. He didn’t run away.

    What was the timeline for this attack? 4-6 minutes?

    The plane hit the Pentagon at 9:38 AM on 9/11 – it took until 9:53 AM for CNN to confirm that a plane had impacted it even with reporters on the scene.

    Again, this officer’s job wasn’t to fight off a guy who was determined to slaughter as many as possible. Do we expect school crossing guards to throw their bodies in front of cars that won’t stop?

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  123. 123.

    Immanentize

    @MomSense:
    From the after-action report for the marathon bombing when the second Tsarnaev brother was hiding in a boat:

    Weapons discipline was also an issue during the actions to capture the second suspect who was hiding in a winterized boat parked in a residential backyard.

    One officer fired his weapon without appropriate authority in response to perceived movement in the boat, and surrounding officers followed suit in a round of “contagious fire,” assuming they were being fired on by the suspect.

    Weapons continued to be fired for several seconds until on scene supervisors ordered a ceasefire and
    regained control of the scene. The unauthorized shots created another dangerous crossfire situation.

    Hundreds of rounds were fired. Not only from many angles, but a lot of them were fired upwards at a pretty steep angle with homes behind the line of fire.

    Not one of those bullets hit Tsarnaev in the boat — not one. But they did manage to almost kill another cop.

  128. 128.

    Montanareddog

    The juicetariat should cease and desist from discussing all the reasons why it is stupid to arm teachers. Of course, it is a stupid idea! Self-evidently, blindingly-obviously stupid! It was never intended as a serious proposal (except, perhaps, in Dumbass’s syphilitic synapses). It is just chum in the water thrown by the right to distract from an indefensible position. Don’t fall for it.

  130. 130.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Another Scott:

    Again, this officer’s job wasn’t to fight off a guy who was determined to slaughter as many as possible.

    It was his job to do what he could to save the lives of children. That’s what the teachers did.

  132. 132.

    Leto

    @Another Scott: @OzarkHillbilly: From the Vox article:

    The fundamental problem is that mass shootings are traumatizing, terrifying events. Without potentially dozens or even hundreds of hours in training, most people are not going to be able to control their emotions and survey the scene in time to quickly and properly respond.

    “There’s never enough training,” Coby Briehn, a senior instructor at Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training, told Klepper. “You can never get enough.”

    The US military spends millions and thousands of hours on training individuals how to overcome their own emotions/fears to be able to kill another individual. Police/law enforcement don’t receive half that training. That’s not the sole extent of their job. It’s only one part.

    If doing nothing was the proper response for this situation then having him there was a waste of money. His whole job is to get involved in this situation, to at the very minimum ascertain what is going on and what he might or might not do.

    I feel bad for the guy because he’s in a no-win situation. In this situation he hears shots: is it from multiple gunmen? Where are they coming from (3k sq ft campus)? Do you rush in and potentially get killed, along with potentially killing civilians? Do you radio for backup and wait?

    but his gut level response made him unsuitable for the job he was doing.

    To be blunt, he’s not a fucking Marine who’s job it is to rush headlong into the meat grinder. He’s a cop, not some fantasy Rambo.

    More people need to read this: On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society.

  133. 133.

    different-church-lady

    every year I ask why CPAC gets so much media attention and no liberal equivalent ever did/does and no one has an answer

    Because the media loves a circus.

  139. 139.

    sherparick

    Their ideas might be stupid and revolting, and at their core is usually a business model for a great grift, but going back to 1960s, the Conservative Movement had the advertising man’s or woman’s understanding of the motives of the target audience, the mass media, and how to put on a show. Also, starting with Reagan, from highest leadership of the Republican Party would celebrate CPAC and use it to promote their political and ideological agenda.

  141. 141.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Immanentize:

    But they did manage to almost kill another cop.

    That happens a lot more often than they want us to know. There was a recent incident here in STL of a “shootout” on I-55 between cops and a guy *intent* on killing his ex-wife. After a high speed chase in which about 2 dozen cop cars were involved, they stopped his car with spike strips. The guy got out of his car holding a gun, began to raise it and all hell broke loose. Bullets flying everywhere in all directions, 3 or 4 cop cars got shot up and the guy got killed. Turns out he never got a shot off. The cops shot up their own cars.

    ** some doubt as to whether he ever really intended to kill his ex, he said he was going to to several people including his mother, who all had time to call the cops and his ex to warn her as they think he knew they would. So possibly it was just a very elaborate “suicide by cop”. he certainly did everything he could to bring their attentions to him.

  142. 142.

    Schlemazel

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    I do agree that having him there WAS a waste of money. That was my point. He was not equipped to defeat the threat and most likely would have died trying. I do not fault him for doing nothing, not everyone is a hero every day. I have faced danger & know that there were times I ran towards it and times I backed off based on mental calculation made at the spur of the moment. Running in may make you a hero (I don’t feel that way) but in this case he would have been a dead hero. His actions highlight how stupid it is to think a couple of teachers with little to no training & no regular practice in realistic scenarios can make our kids safe.

  143. 143.

    satby

    @Leto: this. By expecting a lone guy in a chaotic situation to rush in and do “something” with his gun, we actually help validate the fantasy that more guns solve the problem of “a bad guy with a gun”. The entire debate is built on a false premise.

  150. 150.

    Immanentize

    @MomSense: Yes on Burlington but we are going to be leaving fast after the competition +- Immp has two papers due and three mid terms next week before Spring break.

    But maybe tonight?

  151. 151.

    Immanentize

    @different-church-lady: Ha. Maybe Bernie will drop by, NOT.

    Last year, the Governor of VT did…. Promoting STEM Ed. Remember when we were talking about the caliber of the education our schools should provide rather than other caliber concerns?

  153. 153.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Leto: I have not said he was supposed to go in and kill the shooter. I have said it was his job to protect children. He didn’t do that. He was unsuited to the job. He did not know he was unsuited for it, could not know he was unsuited for it until he was faced with it.

    I feel very badly for him, he is going to need a lot of help. Might even be suicidal. Probably always going to ask himself whether or not some of those children would still be alive if he had done things differently. And that is a question nobody can answer.

    Not everybody can be a hero. Certainly not me.

  155. 155.

    rikyrah

    Many hope Trump’s white nationalism is a passing GOP anomaly, but when @CPAC invites Marion Le Pen – a leader of Europe’s pro-Russia, anti-Semitic, nationalist movement – to speak after Pence, it’s a sign that Trumpism is the party’s new strategic direction, not a 24-hour flu.

    — Evan McMullin (@Evan_McMullin) February 22, 2018

  156. 156.

    Jeffro

    @Montanareddog: Seconded. It is absurd on its face and we shouldn’t waste any time on it. Dismiss conservative arguments for it in the same manner they would dismiss calls for 100% tax rates, or converting aircraft carriers into floating hookah lounges.

  157. 157.

    rikyrah

    An armed sheriff’s deputy won’t do it, but a kindergarten teacher who is already underpaid should be expected to be weapons experts, and be stocking an A-15 in their classrooms to help NRA client gun sales. What could go wrong. https://t.co/VjKMjXpeUt

    — Amy Siskind (@Amy_Siskind) February 22, 2018

    Also for those of us sending our children to public school, I’m curious why the NRA’s Dana Loesch chose home schooling.

    — Amy Siskind (@Amy_Siskind) February 22, 2018

  159. 159.

    FlipYrWhig

    @rikyrah: Republicans have been running on white nationalism the entirety of Evan McMullin’s life. “New”? It’s been their strategic direction for half a century.

  160. 160.

    Leto

    @satby: Exactly. The research continues to bear out how f’ing ridiculous the idea is that, “only a good guy with a guy, blah blah blah”.

    Another topic people should brush up on (relates to my previous post): flight or fight response. My last drill involving that was pretty accurate: we were having a very large commanders call in our auditorium. About midway through the briefing we had a simulated active shooter drill: security forces guy with an orange rubber ducky fake M16 comes onto the stage, from backstage, and starts “firing away”. Reaction from the military folk? Easily 50% ran. Headed either for the back door, the side door, or the door just off the right of the stage. Another 30-40% just froze. Straight up froze. Some still sitting in their chairs, some ducking behind the folding metal chairs in front of them. The remaining people tried to rush the stage. That was maybe 6 people. Flight or fight.

    What we need to be working on is making sure that both our children, our law enforcement personnel, and our general population never have to worry about that situation in the first place: ban automatic weapons, universal background checks, close the stupid ass loopholes, make sure domestic abusers can never own firearms.

  162. 162.

    Schlemazel

    How would you like to be a black teacher holding a gun during a shooting event when the cops come storming in?

    How would you like to be a cop, storming into a known shooting event, and seeing 3-4, maybe 8-10 people holding guns? Where do you start shooting & when do you stop?

  164. 164.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly: another tid bit from the first gun rage after the marathon bombing:

    In effect, the suspects ended up at the center of a ring of cops on Laurel Street between Dexter and School streets during the 20-minute firefight, and the bullets that were fired at them often hit near the officers on the other side. “Certainly not a good idea,” said Davis. “They see somebody shooting, so they fire at them. That’s their training.”….

    More than a dozen officers suffered minor injuries during the mayhem, but none was believed to have been wounded by the suspects. The only serious wound was suffered by Richard Donohue, a transit cop with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, who was hit in the groin by a police bullet and began to bleed profusely.

  167. 167.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Leto: I recently read of a study where they did the same with CC “armed” students in a class room situation. Somebody comes in and starts “shooting.” Not once did the CC student successfully defend themselves against the shooter. Most ran, a # tried to pull their gun but got tangled up in their clothing, a few dropped their gun and 1 or 2 shot themselves in the leg/foot.

  168. 168.

    Immanentize

    @Cheryl Rofer:
    I agree — the back and forth on who was his attorney was the big clue. I understand it is hard to make a decision so big and maybe even dangerous to yourself (or family) but the indictments, I think, were clarifying for Mr. Gates.

  169. 169.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    So Armalite is in the hands of a Strategic Armory Corps, a holding company run by a ZZ Top beard named Gabriel Araujo. Everything about Strategic Armory is mysterious, and Araujo may be a pseudonym, as I can’t see much on him (plus, it’s the same name of a popular Brazilian footballer).

    Worth looking into to see who really runs its aims.

  170. 170.

    JPL

    @Cheryl Rofer: @Immanentize: The back and forth is interesting. I doubt that Mueller needs Gates to flip Manafort. The emails implicate Manafort’s daughter and son-in-law so that has to provide Mueller the leverage he needs.
    We live in interesting times.

  171. 171.

    Leto

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I have said it was his job to protect children. He didn’t do that. He was unsuited to the job. He did not know he was unsuited for it, could not know he was unsuited for it until he was faced with it.

    So then how do you screen if somebody will rush headlong into the meatgrinder for that? Because that’s the position you’re arguing:

    No, doing nothing is never the right decision

    – OzarkHillbilly February 23, 2018 at 7:48 am

    Define, in your words, how he failed to “protect children” if that didn’t include rushing headlong into the building to go looking for the shooter? Please detail Broward Country Sheriff Dept procedures for dealing with an active shooter in regard to being the lone single responding officer on scene. Do we even know what their procedures are for dealing with an active shooter as the lone officer on scene?

    As always, this is Monday morning quarterbacking at it’s finest.

    Not everybody can be a hero. Certainly not me.

    I don’t want a hero. Hero’s get people killed. I want competent, well trained people who can evaluate a situation and make the appropriate response. Has ANYONE asked what the departments procedures are for dealing with this situation?

  173. 173.

    GregB

    Trump in press gaggle outside of White House.

    Schools need to have “offensive capacity”.

    The dark corridor that he is walking this nation down is getting longer and longer.

  175. 175.

    Leto

    @Schlemazel: One part of our active shooter training that we drill into our peoples head is to stay the fuck down on the ground, otherwise you’re about 99% certain to be shot. Stay on the ground, let the responding personnel come to you and tell you what to do. I don’t even want to think what might happen to a teacher POC, holding a gun, and coming into contact with law enforcement.

    @OzarkHillbilly: I saw the same show. The Vox article has that video too. It’s fantasy Rambo/John Wayne bullshit that’s been fed to us for over 50 years. Actually longer if you consider a lot of the old time Westerns with the lone, law avenging gunman coming to “right the wrongs”. We have a lot of work to do to break that culture of it’s death wish.

  177. 177.

    Peale

    @GregB: offensive? So are they supposed to undertake preemptive strikes against the uneducated rebels who live in the hills?

  182. 182.

    danielx

    Wonder what stories will come out of CPAC this year about attendees caught getting their freak on, one way or another.

  183. 183.

    Montanareddog

    @GregB:

    The dark corridor that he is walking this nation down is getting longer and longer.

    No, it is the right wing in the US (and its political wing, the Republican Party) that is leading the nation down a dark corridor. As in, for example, using guns as a wedge issue even at the cost of children’s lives. Clearly, the more cynical, less intellectually-challenged fascists don’t believe their own BS, otherwise CPAC would not be gun-free.

    Ol’ blubbergut’s problem is that he too dumb to distinguish between ideology and talking points, and that he expresses those talking points so crassly

  184. 184.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Leto:

    I don’t want a hero. Hero’s get people killed. I want competent, well trained people who can evaluate a situation and make the appropriate response.

    That’s funny, SO DO I. In fact, that is what I have repeatedly said. such as here: @OzarkHillbilly:

    His whole job is to get involved in this situation, to at the very minimum ascertain what is going on and what he might or might not do.

    You can’t do that from outside of a fucking building. You HAVE to go in to do that. As I said here @OzarkHillbilly:

    He HAS to go in. Carefully, yes, prudently, yes, but he HAS to put himself between children and the shooter. He HAS to at least try and find the shooter and ascertain the situation.

    And yes, that means putting himself in danger. Sucks, doesn’t it? But it’s part of the job.

    I had a job that had more than a little danger, nobody shooting at me but lots of potential for death and dismemberment. Safe enough as long as I and all my compatriots followed the rules. Every now and again tho, somebody would fuck up and people died, or lost limbs, or ended up with brains that could no longer function just quite right. And every now and again, even tho everything was done right, shit just plain happened. If I had been unable to accept that reality I would not have been a carpenter.

    Anyway, we are done, as you are so obviously incapable of reading EVERYTHING I write and only the bits and pieces with meanings only you can imagine.

  189. 189.

    Leto

    @OzarkHillbilly: Here, lets respond:

    His whole job is to get involved in this situation, to at the very minimum ascertain what is going on and what he might or might not do.

    What was going on: there was a shooter on the grounds

    What he might/might not do: he decided to wait. His judgement call at the time came to that. Are we going to get an interview that details out the entire thought process, including WHAT THE SHERIFFS DEPT GUIDELINES ARE IN REGARD TO AN ACTIVE SHOOTER AND LONE OFFICER ON THE SCENE? Oh, you’re going to keep ignoring that? Ok, moving on.

    He HAS to go in. Carefully, yes, prudently, yes, but he HAS to put himself between children and the shooter. He HAS to at least try and find the shooter and ascertain the situation.

    He couldn’t have gone in “prudently” and “put himself between children and the shooter”. You’re saying you want him to go in cautiously, yet fast enough to go find the shooter. The speed at which the shooter was moving, combined with the fact that the cop didn’t know WTF he was within a building… it was a three story building. Do you understand how long it would take to single handedly clear a three story building? You have to go room by room. Floor by floor. You simply don’t know what you’re talking about.

    As someone who’s been trained in this, as someone who’s job it was to do this, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not cherry picking your words, you’re actively advocating for two thing. And there are times when doing NOTHING/WAITING is just as valuable. It might not be your preferred method, but again MMQB. You’ve yet to answer what the Broward Country Sheriffs Office Dept policy on Active Shooter response is, but as you’re bailing I guess it doesn’t matter.

  191. 191.

    BellyCat

    @Jager:

    My old CEO bought his wife a $125,000 Mercedes G-Wagen. She had it for two days and called him at work, saying “This thing will only go 15 miles and hour!”

    Only $8,333 per mile!

  192. 192.

    gvg

    @Montanareddog: You are crediting them with some strategic sense and smarts. They ARE serious about it and will do it if we don’t stop them because they really are that stupid.

  194. 194.

    Amir Khalid

    @Jeffro:
    One man with a gun in a school is an intuitively appealing idea. Especially for those who see in their mirror The Punisher in waiting. But it’s not a practical solution. I don’t think you’d want a homicidal maniac (or worse, a wannabe) guarding anything. The idea falls apart when you think it through; it is inherently unworkable. But its intuitive appeal keeps it in play.

  195. 195.

    Tenar Arha

    @Betty Cracker: I’ll try and find the link, but I read on Twitter yesterday that someone tried a simulated school shooting where all the teachers were trained & armed. They all died without stopping a thing.

  196. 196.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)

    @rikyrah: Canadian geese are so obnoxious anything to do with them (even if it’s just a name) carries an added nuisance fee.

  197. 197.

    J R in WV

    @Leto:

    In this situation he hears shots: is it from multiple gunmen? Where are they coming from (3k sq ft campus)?

    3K sq ft campus? something bad wrong here, my house is 2×2200 sq ft floors, 4400 sq feet. High school many time larger, probably 300K sq ft…

    Still, your point is a good one, the deputy could have gone in, rambled around holding his sidearm, a lethal mix, and never seen the shooter, who left the campus immediately after the killing spree anyway. Only bad things could have happened around the deputy at that point.

  198. 198.

    J R in WV

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “The # of cops who get shot by other cops is second only to the number of hunters shot by other hunters.”

    This. Why I stopped hunting. Shots flying over my head, in a low gap a flock of turkeys flew right over the low gap, deer hunter opened up on them, out of season, with a rifle.

    Many years ago, around 1978. Worked in a place with its own tiny print shop, older guy ran a little offset press. I had worked in printing,and we chatted off and on, watching the little press spin.

    He was a hunter, and one year he came back to work on Monday a little the worse for wear. He found a badly wounded hunter sitting against a tree, packed the wound, carried him out of the woods, drove to hospital many miles away. Don’t know how he did it all, I couldn’t and I was 30 years y0ounger then he was. Pretty sure he saved the guy’s life.

    I should have quite hunting right them, but was stupid about it…

  199. 199.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    Only slightly related, but West Virginia teachers are striking to protest pay cuts:

    “With starting salaries set at $31,000 a year, union leaders say that after deducting for health care costs, many teachers in the state make less than $15 an hour. Now, the Republican lead state legislature is proposing to give teachers only a 2% raise while drastically increasing healthcare costs so
    high that some teacher’s deductibles would more than triple.”

    Teachers don’t get paid nearly enough considering:

    “I have taught girls that were pregnant that were raped by their fathers,” said Lindsay Armmirante. “We have paid electric bills, we have paid water bills, we have taken kids shopping for clothes. There is nothing that we don’t do for our kids here if they need. So to insult us that we don’t care about our kids its way over the line”.

    https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/feb/22/teacher-walkout-west-virginia-strike-pay-cuts-protest

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