I hate everyone.
Here’s a link to a Dallas Houston (not enough coffee) live feed:
We have failed our children.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Not all heroes wear capes.
Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.
The GOP is a fucking disgrace.
We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.
This really is a full service blog.
Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.
Let’s not be the monsters we hate.
If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.
Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?
The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.
I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.
Fuck these fucking interesting times.
In my day, never was longer.
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.
Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.
The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.
I really should read my own blog.
A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires
Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?
Consistently wrong since 2002
Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.
You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.
It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.
You are here: Home / Another School Shooting: Thoughts and Prayers
LAO
Fuck this piece of shit:
cervantes
Undoubtedly an illegal immigrant.
TaMara (HFG)
@LAO: I hate the GOP most of all.
Gin & Tonic
In transit back to the US after 15 days in Scandinavia, during which time they experienced zero mass shootings. Merica, fuck yeah.
Villago Delenda Est
@LAO: This vile motherfucker needs to pay for his thoughts and prayers.
dmsilev
@LAO: Any God which saw fit to inflict Ted Cruz on the world is, by definition, not a benevolent deity.
Elizabelle
@Gin & Tonic: That happened to me. Woke up in Iceland for flight back to the US of Cray Cray and there’s the news — the Parkland shooting.
Impulse to flee, but there’s work ahead with the midterms.
LAO
@TaMara (HFG): Well, I come to the conclusion that they (the GOP) hate us right back.
@Villago Delenda Est: I just donated to Beto O’Rourke.
Elizabelle
You guys, what do we know about the shooting? WaPost story was very sketchy, just a confirmed gunman and at least 3 shots heard. Reports of injuries but that’s it.
Yarrow
The assistant principal confirms a suspect is in custody.
Spanky
@Elizabelle: CNN article (as updated) sez guy entered an art class after the fire alarm went off and started shooting a shotgun. 1 girl hit in leg is all I’ve sussed.
ETA: They have a pic of three copters landed in the parking lot, so I kinda doubt the one girl was the only victim, sadly.
Bruce K
It’s okay for those without power to offer thoughts and prayers.
Those with power have an obligation to do much more.
LAO
I have no words:
Elizabelle
I fell into such a depression, returning to the US. It’s easier to deal with all the ugliness and malfeasance here from the other side of the pond.
Of having your Nazis safely in history books (as cautionary tales, not exemplars). I think that’s why so many have checked out and checked into Game of Thrones.
But it’s our fight, and we have to win it.
PaulWartenberg
this should be a very simple rule to everyone available to vote this midterms 2018:
RULE: Find out which candidate is taking money from the NRA, and then VOTE AGAINST THAT CANDIDATE TO GET THE GODDAMN NRA OUT OF OUR HALLS OF GOVERNMENT.
Pass this on. To every single American sick of gun violence in our schools, THIS IS THE ONLY WAY. GET. THE GODDAMN. NRA. OUT OF HERE.
El Caganer
Saw something from one of the local news sites claiming the school usually has 3 (!) armed security people on campus. Doesn’t sound like that good-guy-with-a-gun thing worked too well.
Elizabelle
@Spanky: A shotgun. That’s refreshing.
Don’t mean to be flip, but not having an assault weapon keeps the injury count down.
Yarrow
@Elizabelle: Liveblog of updates here.
From KHOU:
Terrible news.
satby
Back from bringing Hershey to the vet and this is the first thing I see.
I hate everyone who continues to enable this obscene gun culture too.
SiubhanDuinne
The Dallas TV live feed linked above has a chyron saying “multiple fatalities.”
Totally agree with everyone about Ted Cruz.
Kenneth Fair
KHOU is the CBS affiliate in Houston, not Dallas. Santa Fe is about 30-45 minutes southeast of Houston, on the way towards Galveston. Santa Fe has another claim to fame: Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe is the 2000 U.S. Supreme Court case in which the Court held that student-led prayer before high school football games violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
SiubhanDuinne
@satby:
Missed you on the early morning thread, but I am thinking good thoughts for Hershey — and despite your worries about him, and this dreadful news from Texas, I do hope you manage to have a good birthday.
Wmurray
FYI, Santa Fe Texas is south of Houston, and KHOU is Houston. Used to live just up the highway.
It’s also the same school district that had an issue with the 1st amendment. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe_Independent_School_District_v._Doe
Just saw @21 got it
SealDeal
KHOU is now reporting 8 fatalities and an explosive device. I’m in Houston and that channel is fairly even keeled with their reporting.
TaMara (HFG)
@Kenneth Fair: Fix’d. Thanks. Not enough coffee yet this a.m.
geg6
Okay, so my dvr hard drive has apparently apparently died. I am not a happy camper.
Oh, and fuck the NRA. Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them.
SiubhanDuinne
@Kenneth Fair:
Saw this just as the comment window on my #20 was closing, so couldn’t make the correction in time. But the call letters alone should have told me it was a Houston station if I’d been paying any attention.
Josie
@Yarrow: These poor kids. I cannot imagine the horror of this.
@satby: How is Hershey doing? I hope the rest of your day is more positive.
LAO
tobie
@Elizabelle: I’m leaving for a six-week stay in Europe at the end of the month. I can’t wait to get out of here. It’s so sad to feel this way about the US. I did make sure to fill out my absentee ballot for the Democratic primary in Maryland. Voting feels like the one concrete thing I can do to save this country.
satby
@Josie: I won’t know for a while. They kept him for some tests. Thank you!
@SiubhanDuinne: and thank you too!
Mike in NC
We need a hell of a lot more coverage of how Russian mobsters infiltrated the NRA to elect Republicans.
Mike in NC
@tobie: We just booked a 15 day European cruise for next year. Cannot happen soon enough!
Mnemosyne
@LAO:
The NRA must be pleased that their propaganda is reaching the right people.
Excuse me while I go and throw up.
JPL
@Mike in NC: Yes we do.
Immanentize
Who will be the first to say, “See? Assault Rifles aren’t the killers, people are!”
Cruz? Ryan? the NRA? Some Jamoke with an assault rifle?
kingweasil
I can hear it now from the NRA…its a little early to politicize a tragedy like this. (or something like it)
D58826
@LAO: But Ted – its to early for even ‘thoughts and prayers’
Skepticat
I’ll be returning to the States for a few months in about a week. Although I’m already immersed in this manure because I work online (and don’t have the self-discipline to avoid reading blogs in between jobs), I’m not looking forward to it. I have never been so overwhelmed and discouraged in my pretty-long life.
LAO
Our feckless leader.
Can’t you feel the empathy?
Immanentize
@D58826:
He did jump the gun on that a bit.
SWMBO
@satby: Please keep us posted. There isn’t much we can do but if sympathy and support count for anything, you know we jackals have your back.
Happy Birthday!
Immanentize
@LAO: God Bless All? WTF? I am glad you are reading these things so I don’t have to.
I have one (political) hope — that this event sinks friggin’ Ted Cruz. The Parkland kids have shown the Santa Fe kids how to move the discussion along….
But, what I know of that area in Texas, we might see more pro-gun statements from the students than we did out of Parkland.
Spanky
@tobie: THANK YOU! We need to keep MD as blue as possible, and living in Confederate Southern MD I can tell you that that’s not the slam dunk some might think.
cain
I can’t believe that asshole had the gall to say thoughts and prayers. Motherfucker.
If they think we need good guys with guns, let’s see how these conservative districts feel when we start increasing property taxes to pay for more armed guards. Let’s see how they enjoy paying more. If they want more guns, let’s see them put their money where their mouth is.
I’m only partially kidding, but it underscores that these assholes only care about their taxes and 2nd amendments. Let’s create a choice between them, let’s see which one they prefer. Goddam. These people.
cain
@LAO:
He acted earlier than usual. The shooter must be someone non-white.
LAO
@Immanentize: It’s like a sickness with me. I can’t help myself.
Parkland kids have started to tweet:
JPL
@LAO: Maybe he’ll stop tweeting about the implanted FBI agent now. .
eclare
@satby: Happy Birthday, and I hope Hershey gets some good news. Days like this everyone needs a critter to hug (or more than one).
LAO
@JPL: probably not. He’s paranoid. Tweeter should never be used by paranoid fucks.
Elmo
@Spanky: I’m in Charles County, right around where the blue starts fading really quickly into pink-red. To my north is reliably blue PG – to my south, there be dragons.
And Amish.
Immanentize
@LAO: I want to make a short audio clip that says, “Trump must go!” but send it out looking like the Yanny/Laurel thing with a vote button:
Trump Must Go/Rump of Goat
VOTE!
LAO
NorthLeft12
@LAO: Is Deadbeat Donald’s comment related to the fact that the shooter was taken alive and not shot dead at the scene?
Really, WTF is wrong with that idiot that he can sound so flip and tone deaf in a short tweet like that. Just shut the eff up already!
LAO
@Immanentize: Do it!!!!!
satby
Repeating from downstairs thread: Thanks everyone for the good wishes for both Hershey and me. He’s at the vets getting some tests done and I am waiting to go get him and hoping whatever’s hurting him is reasonably treatable. That would be a nice birthday present.
Betty Cracker
Despicable Trump-humping shithead shows up at school shooting scene with MAGA hat, American flag and a gun:
I hate these people.
Spanky
@Elmo: I knew you were somewhere close to W’dorf. Don’t know where PK is, but I suspect ChasCo as well. As a het white male I get around pretty well here in Calvert, but don’t know how you guys can deal.
I’ll be real surprised if I don’t go off on some asshole around here eventually. And at 150 lbs and in my mid-60s, that won’t turn out well.
The Ancien Randonneur
@Villago Delenda Est:
Nail him to a cross. Let’s find out if he’s a true believer or a bedwetting sissy.
P.S. Repeal the 2nd.
Shana
@Mike in NC: What are your ports in Europe? What line? We’ve done a few European cruises and are looking for a Spain/Portugal itinerary for next year when Hubby and I both turn 60. Can’t manage 15 days though.
Immanentize
@Betty Cracker: What is wrong with people (OK, Men people)?
The Ancien Randonneur
Real the 2nd.
D58826
Watching the tv coverage of the school shooting today. It is so heartening to see how well we handle this. They have one section of the campus for the media. One section for the survivors. One section for the dead. The ER doctors have a pre-written script for the press conference. Parents are walking their kids thru the mass shooting drill over the phone.
I’m old enough to remember when these types of shootings generate mass confusion. Now they proceed like a NASA missile countdown.
This is only partially snark.
Betty Cracker
@Immanentize: I don’t know, but I kinda hope he accidentally shoots his dick off. What a fucking asshole.
Spanky
El Caganer
@LAO: Hey, at least he didn’t say, “Congratulations!” like he did with the disabled veteran.
The Ancient Randonneur
Repeal the 2nd
Highway Rob
@Betty Cracker: The flag is desecrated by being within ten feet of that asshole.
Barbara
I want to scream.
What can it possibly feel like, to love guns more than your own children?
different-church-lady
Here’s my thought: Fuck these gun humpers and their enablers.
Here’s my prayer: We get them out of power pronto.
Elizabelle
@tobie: Please stay in touch, with us. We can live vicariously through you and lmh36!
Travel abroad is good.
I wonder how many young(ish) Americans are emigrating. Hearing anecdotal stories of peeps securing second passports, if they are so lucky to be eligible. I would love, love, love an EC passport. However, my forbears were here in time to deal with their own “know nothings.”
Tobie: if I may ask, where are you going??
germy
@The Ancient Randonneur:
Maybe it’s time, if they can’t interpret it correctly. Interpreting it correctly means paying attention to “well regulated militia” and all that.
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker:
Orcs. And Trump is Saruman.
Spanky
@LAO: I never thought a group of HS students would be my heroes and one of our best hopes, but here we are.
tobie
@Spanky: I’m in the confederate north of Maryland, Cecil County, which khead once called Ceciltucky. If you’re weighing the gubernatorial options, you might find this endorsement useful. I voted for Rushern Baker because he’s had a lot of government experience and success as Executive for PG County. That he’s really good on public transportation was also a big plus for me.
Spanky
@Elizabelle: So, thanks to you I’ve become a real fan of Barcelona & environs (without ever having been there). Any thoughts on a return, permanent or not?
LAO
And, another GOP asshole heard from:
D58826
I’m old eough to remember when the fire alarm went off you got out of the building to avoid the fire. Now you have to decide whither you want to burn or be shot. sad
Der Fuhrer is making a statement about who God should be with. Only thing he did not mentioned is the NRA.
LAO
@Spanky: The kids (really) are alright.
Immanentize
@Betty Cracker: Somehow your comment about this ass reminded me of Ghost Busters (original):
Stantz: Everything was fine with our system until the power grid was shut off by dickless here.
Peck: …they caused an explosion!
Mayor: Is this true?
Venkman: It is true, this man has no dick
tobie
@Elizabelle: I’ll be in Bonn most of the time for work but will need to take a few trips to Stockholm, Paris, and Zurich–all countries with sensible gun laws. Will report from the road. My heart breaks that we have to see kids gunned down here again and again and again. This is insanity.
different-church-lady
@LAO: And who said virtue signaling was just for liberals?
Betty Cracker
@different-church-lady: Amen to that.
Riley's Enabler
Santa Fe is a rural district, halfway between Houston and Galveston. Lots of farmland, cattle ranches (not the big fancy kind – more like scrub) and low-middle/poor areas. It’s deep, deep red mixed with a large Hispanic population. Not sure they will have the same Parkland reaction – but one can hold out hope. I’m about 35 miles away from Santa Fe. Absolutely heartsick at this.
different-church-lady
@Immanentize:
Yeah, I suppose that gag wouldn’t have made much sense in the remake.
Immanentize
@LAO: I do think the “thoughts and prayers” thing has been roundly repudiated as a valid or caring response. It is now the despicable response of trolls alone.
LAO
@different-church-lady:
Bravo!
satby
@Elizabelle: @Spanky: honestly, the only thing holding me to this country right now is my herd of pets. Otherwise I would expatriate and vote absentee until sanity returns.
If it ever does.
Edit: I may be in an extra bad mood today…
different-church-lady
@Immanentize:
Republican senators, for instance.
Immanentize
@LAO: Yes they are
D58826
rather sad to think that we will have to retro fit our schools with a fire alarm for a real fire and a separate and distinct sounding alarm for active shooter situation.
Aleta
Thanks Tamara.
Riley's Enabler
Stuck in moderation again…I’ve been posting under this nym for years and still stuck every time. Help, pls?
Mike in NC
I got back from an errand a few minutes ago and there was Trump showing his fat ugly face on the TV, getting ready to shed a few crocodile tears before heading out to play golf and maybe have lunch with Wayne LaPierre. I just asked my wife to turn the asshole off. Sickening.
HeleninEire
@Betty Cracker: “kinda?” I am hoping that with all my being.
MJS
@Betty Cracker: He should have been shot on sight by law enforcement, simply for bringing a weapon to the site of a mass shooting. Had he been anything other than white, he would have been.
Immanentize
@D58826: That won’t help — it’s the shooters who pull the fire alarms to get more kids into range.
Omnes Omnibus
@satby: Stubbornness. It’s my country and I am not just going to walk away and let the assholes have it.
WaterGirl
@geg6: If you’re like me and are hundreds of shows behind, losing your DVR is a big fucking deal. So sorry!
D58826
@Immanentize: I realize that. Just frustrating that we have to have active shooter drills. I’m old enough that we had fire drills and air raid drills. Never could figure out how huddling in the hall would protect us from an a-bomb but what ever.
Betty Cracker
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah! They’re the ones who suck! THEY should leave!
SFBayAreaGal
@Omnes Omnibus: Agree 100%. There are so many good people in this country. I and many others will stay and fight.
Brachiator
If I believed in the power of prayer, I would pray that the children and their parents find some peace.
I would also pray that Republicans and gun humpers burn in Hell.
Immanentize
@D58826: We used to say the air raid drills were so they could find our bodies more efficiently (assuming no total wipe-out, of course)
Mike in NC
@Shana: Viking “British Isles Explorer” cruise with visits to London/Greenwich, Dover, Dublin, Liverpool, Belfast, Holyhead (Wales), Invergordon, Loch Ness, Edinburgh, Orkney Islands, Shetland Islands, and Bergen (Norway).
D58826
@Immanentize: makes sense to me.
D58826
Pete Williams is reporting that SOP for the authorities is not to pull the fire alarm because that just give the shooters more targets in the halls. He is also reporting that they have found explosive devices in the school.
Ruckus
@Elizabelle:
In a closed situation one can do a lot of very nasty damage with a shotgun.
Any and all guns can do a lot of damage in a closed situation, which is why those guns should not be allowed in a civilized society. Full stop.
Of course the other discussion is how civilized is our society, which is not fucking much at all and why is half the country trying to be as uncivilized as possible. In a civilized society with over twice as many people as 70 yrs ago, nothing is the same, it just can not be. Just for a bit of info on how different, in 1950 there were 42.6 people/sq mile and in 2010 there were 87.4 people/sq mile.
Anotherlurker
@satby: Same here.
Once my old boy, Buddy, passes on, I’m out of here.
P.S., Buddy is a healthy and beautiful mixed breed, 11 yo., who will be around for quite a while. :-)
WaterGirl
This craziness has to stop.
Spanky
@satby:
You’ve earned it, my dear. But please don’t wallow in it. Step away from the keyboard and take a walk someplace new to you.
randy khan
Sheriff says 8-10 dead, 2 students in custody, per WTOP radio here in D.C.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes agreed. I feel the same way, although I am an American by choice and not by birth.
Ruckus
@NorthLeft12:
There aren’t enough pixels in the entire world to properly answer that question. The easy answer is Every Fucking Thing.
geg6
@WaterGirl:
Lost it all. It is a tragedy. All my shows and movies! And then I have to reprogram it all when the new one comes!
Mary G
I just woke up and want to go back to bed for three years.
randy khan
@D58826:
I was thinking about that recently, and I concluded that the idea was to get us away from the windows in the classrooms and protect us from debris from a bombing. (The latter probably was why they also had us put our coats over our heads – I have really vivid memories of this even though I think the only time I did an air raid drill was in kindergarten.)
That would make sense in a conventional bombing, and maybe on the fringes of a nuclear detonation (which might have been a fair description of my home town), but of course would do you no good at all if you were in the middle of a city.
Alain the site fixer
@WaterGirl: I must give a plug for the cloud DVR from SlingTV.
Spanky
@Immanentize: Circa 1962 or thereabouts we were issued dog tags. I suppose it was to make it easier to identify the charred corpses. That idea kinda faded fast. I suspect it was after they realized there would be no charred corpses with the new nookaler technology.
Who’ll be the first to bring that idea back to simplify identifying active shooter victims?
Duane
People keep thoughting and praying, but the shootings keep happening. It appears God doesn’t care. Too bad nothing else can be done.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: Trying to wrap my head around that guy. Who the hell thinks it’s a good idea to show up armed at the site of shooting, a SCHOOL shooting, I mean, wtf?
trollhattan
@LAO:
Prayers and no thoughts–that’s the most accurate Ted Cruz self-assessment possible.
randy khan
@geg6:
It used to be that you could plug a hard drive into a DVR and back it up, but that changed a while ago, probably because rights holders weren’t happy about the idea of copies of their stuff being made.
In my case, I might be a little bit happy about losing what we’ve got recorded. I despair of ever catching up with a couple of the shows we record, and having a fresh start might be a good thing.
Patricia Kayden
@tobie: Enjoy your trip to Europe!!
Shana
@Mike in NC: Sounds lovely! Thanks.
eric
@geg6: maybe your carrier would be kind enough to give you on demand access to those shows with the new dvr…..just a thought.
randy khan
@Duane:
I’m building a theory that prayers from bad people don’t get answered. I only wish it were true.
Also, I’m reminded of the joke about the guy in the flood who keeps saying God will save him and so turns down help from various people, until finally he drowns. In heaven, he asks God why God didn’t save him, and God says, more or less, I sent all of those people to you, what else did you want?
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
How he took a wrong turn and didn’t end up in Florida shall remain a mystery. Don’t you go changing, Texas.
“Is it summer vacation yet?”
–Every schoolkid in America, 2x more heartfelt than normal.
WaterGirl
@geg6: I’m sorry to hear that. I have Tivo and at least they keep all your season passes, etc online, so you don’t have to start from scratch. Any chance you are using Tivo? Perhaps it might not be as bleak as you fear?
? Martin
We have indeed failed our kids. We had to pull my daughter out of her high school because the constant sexual harassment from the boys was too much. Overall, the bullying situation isn’t bad – the kids are generally quite kind to LGBTs, different religions and ethnicities, and so on, but the sexual harassment stuff is just as bad as ever. At least it was a good run up through middle school.
But we can afford to put her in a private school. This is 1-1 instruction, and what we’ve learned is that most of the kids at the school are there because they were struggling with anxiety/depression. They have an on-duty therapist, and the teachers are really well trained in looking out for the emotional well-being of the students and giving parents feedback. What we’ve learned in the last year is that among her friends, over half have pulled out for similar reasons – and this isn’t isolated to one high school, it’s all over as best as we can tell. There’s no specific suggestion/remedy I’m offering here, just noting that it really does seem like we’ve failed our kids quite badly.
Ruckus
@satby:
Well that’s certainly understandable.
And welcome to my world. One tries to be upbeat but it is hard to get there or stay that way
somemost days.@different-church-lady:
I like your style.
WaterGirl
@Alain the site fixer: I had not heard of that. Interesting.
satby
@Omnes Omnibus: I felt that way too. But I’m older than you, I’ve been fighting this since 1969, and I’m tired and want health care I can rely on. A couple months or years of peace shouldn’t be too much to ask.
Brachiator
@D58826:
We recently had to read some federal brochure about “active shooter situations.” This is a FEMA document and might be easily found online.
One sad thing was reading that first responders are there to look for and identify a possible shooter, not to help the wounded. Cold and efficient, but necessary, I guess.
We will also be adding active shooter drills to our periodic fire drills. This somehow seems insane.
Shana
@randy khan: I just had this bizarre memory pop up of my elementary school handing out food that was nearing its expiration date from the bomb shelter so they could restock. I remember especially these really big and tasty sour ball-type candies. They must have had vitamins and lots of sugar so “nutritious” I guess. This was probably 1967-69. Weird the stuff we just accepted.
trollhattan
@Shana:
I remember the “pilot bread” in cans–kind of satan’s saltines.
Doug R
@LAO: Ted Cruz’s FB page isn’t locked down. I sent a meme of Ralphy Wiggum sending his thoughts and prayers.
Aleta
They cut school funding, cut out art and music and books and supplies, act like schools are not a community good. They encourage people to vote down taxes no matter how well off you are, and the next moment complain about bad schools, teachers who didn’t ‘produce’ a good grade for one’s own child in exchange for the salary. The hell with any other kids or whether they’re hungry. Maybe it follows that we don’t make stopping gun access to save kid’s lives a priority. The Nra answer: arm the children.
Kay
Betsy DeVos
Verified account
I knew they were going to use ‘the commission” to dodge accountability. DeVos isn’t qualified or suited to be Secretary of Education but she’s been a Right wing political operative for 50 years. She knows how this is done. Seat a commission, issue a bunch of stern lectures to public schools, and wash your hands of the whole thing. Number one priority? Protect the guns.
geg6
@WaterGirl:
Nope, Directv. I asked when I called and they said that when I call to finalize the setup when the new one comes, I should ask about retrieving them, but she doubted that everything would be able to be retrieved. If it hadn’t completely died, there would be no problem. But it completely crapped out. For sure I’d have to reprogram. Some of my recorded shows/movies may be retrievable, but probably not all. For instance, the entire series run of Games of Thrones, which I have never watched but plan to binge on during some major down time.
Spanky
@trollhattan:
Ironically it’s the last day of school for the Stoneman Douglas seniors.
Repatriated
@NorthLeft12:
Yanni/Laurel problem.
Far too many people are conditioned to hear it as sincere, because it comes from authority figures they trust and is presented in a framing they themselves use.
We don’t share that trust in those figures or (necessarily) that framing, so we can hear the insincerity.
The resolution is for the trust to break, as it will as their policies continue to fail to prevent the epidemic of tragedy.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Would it be considered mass hysteria that we can plan on how to best deal with a deadly situation as/after it happens but can not deal in any way with how to stop it from happening in the first place by completely misinterpreting a law that was written to control the then current situation in the first place, which was a long time ago and a very different situation?
MomSense
@LAO:
Dear Ted:
Faith without works is dead, mother fucker.
Sincerely,
Someone who has actually read the Christian bible.
schrodingers_cat
@Aleta: Our town just voted for a minor tax increase in the town election that was two weeks ago.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@randy khan:
There were two women who survived the Hiroshima bomb that were within 300 meters of ground zero because they were in the middle of a bank building. .
LAO
@Doug R: Well, it’s not locked, yet.
@MomSense: I wish these phony Christians actual cared.
? Martin
@Brachiator: We do them regularly. I’ve been doing them long enough to have noticed a significant change in tone and approach. It used to be ‘here’s how everyone stays safe’, and it still starts there, but it shifts to what I will paraphrase as ‘Ok, you’re fucked, you’re going to die, here’s how to tie the shooter up long enough to possibly allow police to save your coworkers, or cause them to run out of ammo.’
It’s very reminiscent of the way the military trains soldiers. Soldiers are pawns on a board, and everyone is clear that some of them will need to die for the greater good. What’s infuriating is that our children, who cannot give consent, and who did not sign up for any of this, are the ones being sacrificed so that some dipshit can jerk off to his AR-15.
bemused
@LAO:
Hmm, wonder how gun rights guy who said man with flag and gun on school crime scene was an embarrassment will feel when some time has passed. Will he be ok with a guy bringing a gun and flag to the school grounds in a few weeks, months? Inquiring minds.
Mnemosyne
@opiejeanne:
A guy whose only friends are his guns?
And it’s funny that the people who scream “Get a job!” when people protest on a weekend day think it’s totes normal for that guy to have that much leisure time on a Friday morning.
Until I read that thread, I didn’t realize that there’s some kind of right-wing Freemason conspiracy theory that mass shootings are secretly staged by the Freemasons. I guess we really are going back to the golden oldies.
Repatriated
@Repatriated:
It’s also mirroring what their constituents would think/say, in order to show they have shared values.
The problem is that these figures are not powerless — “thoughts and prayers” are literally the least they can do, while for their constituents, that may really be all they can do.
Lee
My youngest is graduating high school June 2nd. Starting in Oct she will be attending a ‘prep school’ outside of Paris France for a year. I am very relieved she will be there and not here.
My oldest in in college, so I do worry a bit, but not as much.
J R in WV
@tobie:
Ahh, so work paying for room and board and airfair, wonderful. I wondered. Elizabelle, what kind of places did you stay in Europe? AirB&B or with friends or what?
I would love to spend a couple of months in EU in spring or fall, trains from place to place with maybe a brief car rental to tour the mountains between Switzerland and Italy. But booked tours are really high! I guess I’ll Google touring in EU for starts.
chris
@geg6: If all else fails someone with a secure computer might google “watch (title here) online.”
Amir Khalid
@opiejeanne:
He’s there to keep a vigil for the guns that the bad people want the government to confiscate.
Kay
There is no good faith explanation for why nothing ever gets done about this. You think about the response to terrorist attacks, heck, the Tylenol tampering case inspired a HUGE federal response, but on JUST THIS ONE issue, no one can respond in any way at all.
There is no credible explanation for that.
Kay
If you could even say “well, everything we tried failed so we’re just hugely incompetent instead of horribly corrupt” but we tried NOTHING.
We didn’t even fail. We just didn’t try at all. Their government won’t even try to help them.
Gelfling545
@Duane:
God is saying “you can fix this yourselves, you Idiots. Stop botheribg me and get to work.” Or so I imagine.
Mnemosyne
@? Martin:
I’m sorry to say that that sounds a lot like my own high school experience 30 years ago, except that we were supposed to just suck it up and ignore the harassment. It’s hard to learn algebra when the guy sitting behind you keeps snapping your bra strap and the teacher won’t let you move to another seat. ?
Brachiator
@? Martin:
The material we read talked about trying to escape quickly or trying to bar a shooter from entering a room, but yeah, it boiled down to “people might die, but the authorities will do what they can to catch a shooter. One sane thing was that this material did not include stupid shit about having a gun and trying to out-shoot someone.
But hell, soldiers in war know that they are in a place where shooting may happen and that presumably trained people can fight back. But you are right, nobody, and nobody’s children signed up for any of this. It is insane and should be unacceptable.
@Ruckus:
Sane people are pushed into a corner, accepting gun violence because the NRA and gun nuts treat the 2nd Amendment as though it is sacred scripture. There’s your mass hysteria, on the part of gun humpers.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
Sure there is: Republicans don’t want to do anything about it, and they control all of the levers of power, including the propaganda outlets.
There is no other credible explanation.
rikyrah
@TaMara (HFG):
Good.
That’s who you should hate
tobie
@J R in WV: If you end up going to Hamburg or Berlin, this site seemed to have good prices for renting furnished flats:
https://www.city-wohnen.de/eng/
Whenever I go to Europe I try to stay in one place as long as possible, so I can have something resembling a normal life. This year for the first time, it feels like a great escape to go to Europe…and frankly the fact that I’m looking at this trip as a great escape is devastating on so many levels. Maybe we all need to recharge our batteries right now. We’re going to have to work our hearts out for the midterms. Today’s a stark reminder that we need to do it for the kids.
TenguPhule
@different-church-lady:
Take that back. Saruman started off with good intentions.
rikyrah
@Kay:
It is Republicans.
Period
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: So going to an all girls school has its advantages.
Mnemosyne
@tobie:
G and I are just going two hours up the coast to Santa Barbara next weekend and I CAN’T FRIGGIN’ WAIT.
TenguPhule
Suspect arrested after firing shots in lobby of Trump-owned Florida golf resort
Trump may decide to skip his club this weekend.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
I was able to fight and win against the girls who tried to bully me (no, seriously, my brothers still brag about it). I didn’t have as much recourse with the guys. ?
TenguPhule
Trump defends ‘animals’ remark, says he’ll always use it
So its official. The Nazis are at the helm.
tobie
@Mnemosyne: You’re right. Escape is a state of mind. Given all your orthopedic issues this year, you definitely deserve some pampering and Santa Barbara is a great place for that. Have fun!
TenguPhule
@Kay:
We did try. Need I remind you how the fucking Republicans killed every single fucking bill submitted or supported by Democrats?
Uncle Cosmo
@Spanky: It’s the primary, Spank. The general election is where we vote to get rid of the few remaining Thugs in MD – & tobie will be back long before then. (Though TBH I see no one with a D after their name who’ll lay a glove on Larry Hogan. Kamenetz might’ve … or we might’ve found out that as many DINOs would turn out to vote against a Jew as to vote against an AA…)
El Caganer
@TenguPhule: Christ, it’s gonna be all of about 30 seconds until the wingnut noise machine is at full blast with “insane Trump-hating DEMORAT!” and our liberal media will harrumph a little bothsidesdoitism.
tobie
@TenguPhule: It would be nice if our supine media would point out the history of calling a minority group “animals.” Shouldn’t be hard to find clips of Goebbels referring to Jews and Sinti and Roma people as vermin.
trollhattan
@Lee:
Mine (sophomore) is going to Barcelona this summer with a soccer team and the spouse is all worked up about her safety due to the more or less constant political demonstrations there. I ask her to imagine being a Spanish parent sending their kid here with our city’s frequent Black Lives Matter demonstrations and our country’s serial school massacres; somehow it’s not helping.
TenguPhule
@tobie:
Every morning the media rises and finds that today is the start of all history.
patroclus
The House voted down the Farm Bill this morning 198-213 because it would have imposed a work requirement on food stamp (SNAP) recipients. All Dems and about 30 Republicans, who also want a vote on DACA voted it down. Speaker Ryan immediately moved to reconsider the vote and the stooge in the chair immediately postponed the vote on reconsideration, so they’ll try again next week. This is a HUGE victory for the Dems – the work requirement would (probably) never have passed the Senate anyway, but one can’t be too sure about this. This means Ryan will have to soften the more egregious parts of the farm bill just to get it passed in the House. Is the worm turning – are at least some Republicans actually trying to soften their image prior to the mid-terms?
Pope Ratzy
Not the only news out of Houston this week about school kids. But this one barely made a blip on the media radar. I’m guess the lack of a blonde white female made the story much less newsworthy.
https://crooksandliars.com/2018/05/young-black-boy-escapes-white-supremacists
TenguPhule
@El Caganer: Yup. Its the opposite of funny how all the shots fired at the bad guys by these random shooters keep missing. But we still get all the blame.
Meanwhile the NRA assholes kill en masse and the media just goes wild.
TenguPhule
@patroclus:
Fuckers. I guarantee this vote is going to be used by the GOP campaigns as “Democrats voted against Farmers!”
Goddamn poison pills.
The Lodger
@D58826: That NASA missile countdown analogy might be more accurate than you think. Santa Fe High School is only about 10 miles from the Johnson Space Center, and I bet a lot of NASA employees have kids in the Santa Fe district.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Riley’s Enabler:
I think FYWP currently does not like an apostrophe in a nym. You could delete that and see how you fare. (Dunno if it is on the list to be fixed.)
Uncle Cosmo
@tobie: That endorsement comes from an entity that seems to think the State of Maryland starts at the DC line & ends at the last Metro stop. Typical DC-suburban Baltimore-can-go-fuck-itself attitude. I live in Baltimore City & I’m good&goddamn sick of how politicians on both sides of the aisle would love to carve out enclaves up to Johns Hopkins (Hospital & Homewood campus), the Walters & BMA, the Inner Horror, Little Italy and the stadiums, then throw up a Berlinesque wall around the rest of the City & tell us to solve our own fucking problems on our own nickel with no tax base worth mentioning.
(ETA: We’re probably stuck with another 4 years of Hogan no matter what – at least 15% [& probably more] of white registered Democrats in this state would crawl over a mile of broken glass to vote against any AA for Governor.)
Peale
@TenguPhule: Good. I’m glad we voted against farmers. Sorry. They broke the deal by sending a bunch of yahoos to Washington to fuck with food stamp recipients. The deal was we would have a farm bill and tie the Food Stamp program to it so that non-farm states had a stake in passing it. So fuck farmers until they join civilization again.
J R in WV
@tobie:
Yeah, but that might offend the head nazi, and then they’d lose their all important access to his lies. Tragic, tragic, if that happened, they would be stuck with nothing but the truth!!! OMG can you imagine??????
tobie
A propos other news developments: the US canceled a joint military exercise with South Korea and Japan involving B52s to placate Kim Jong Un. And yesterday Trump indicated that complete denuclearization is not a US objective afterall. Anyone can see–and especially North Korea–that Trump is so desperate for a “win” that he’ll sell his own country out just to score a point with a domestic audience too dumb to know it’s been sold a lemon.
TenguPhule
@tobie:
Dr. Silverman is going to be so thrilled by this news. //s
TenguPhule
@Peale:
The GOP is trying to get a “both sides fuck the Farmers” theme going. Trump fucked them good and hard with the Trade War and this is an attempt to prevent any backsliding to the Democrats this fall.
Baud
@tobie: I’ll say his for Republicans, they are given much more room to negotiate. Had Obama appeased NK like this, there would have been a five-tan-suit fire in the media.
MisterForkbeard
I have to admit, I can’t read these articles about school shooting any more. As the father of two young kids, this is absolutely terrifying as well as despair-inducing. I can’t fix this shooting, and I can’t make it any better for the people involved. The most i can do is continue to elect Democrats and contribute to causes which can help stop this shit in the future. But I’ve accepted that these horrible things happen and I don’t want to hear about them.
tobie
@Uncle Cosmo: I’ve heard Rushern Baker speak a lot about investments in public transportation to and from Baltimore as the state’s biggest and, right now, most underfunded city, so I think his view is far larger than this one organization’s. He was on WYPR today talking about working with Mayor Pugh of Baltimore, and his running mate Elizabeth Embry is from Baltimore and involved in the community. It was a good interview. You may be right we’re stuck with Hogan. But I don’t see anyone more qualified for the nomination on the Dem side than Baker.
patroclus
@Peale: The Dems (and some Republicans) did not vote against farmers – they voted against a bill crafted by right-wingers to destroy the food stamps program, most of whose recipients are families with dependent children or with disabilities who obviously can not work. It was clearly mean-spirited and its defeat today means that another bill, presumably without the idiotic provisions will pass later this Session. This is easily explainable to voters. Only if the Republicans continue to insist on the destruction of food stamps will a final bill not eventually pass. I agree that this is a good result today.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: The media is Republican.
TenguPhule
JFC, talk about a Friday News Dump.
Warning: Wapo Link.
Trump personally pushed postmaster general to double rates on Amazon, other firms
Fucking Banana Republic where the bananas are the ones in charge.
tobie
@Baud: Too true.
TenguPhule
@patroclus:
I’m sorry, you do remember we’re talking about mid-western common clay voters, yes?
TenguPhule
@patroclus:
I see the fatal flaw in your hypothesis.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: I wish they were. It would be more honest than what they are doing now.
Steeplejack (phone)
@geg6:
Re Game of Thrones: Presumably you have an HBO subscription (to have recorded the episodes in the first place). I have found (Cox Cable here) that HBO is excellent in having many, if not all, of its series available in toto in the “on demand” viewing section. You might check that.
TenguPhule
Christ these assholes.
Ruckus
@TenguPhule:
Those democrats need to point out that what is it 60% of the soybean crop goes to China. Those farmers are not working for Americans, they are working for themselves. And given modern farming of crops like wheat, soybeans and corn, it isn’t anything like the farms of 50 yrs ago. And point out how subsidized those farmers are.
And point out the cost of welfare, which goes to a lot more people than the farmers.
MisterForkbeard
@tobie: I don’t have a problem with this – cancelling the exercise is the *right* thing to do if we’re genuinely interested in diplomacy. Pretending to bomb someone with nukes while negotiations are ongoing is a pretty striking example of aggressive and non-conciliatory behavior.
That said, there’s something to be said that this is a bad move on Trump’s part, given his other statements on the subject. At this point it’s pretty clear that he’ll either take a horrible deal and announce an epic new ‘win’ and the republicans will back him on it… or he’ll set an unattainable goal and then blame NK when it fails, as well as Democrats for some made up reason.
Uncle Cosmo
@randy khan: Actually it would have made sense during the roughly 7-year period when the doctrine was formulated (ca. 1949-56). when the presumption was that the worst the Rooskies could deliver to CONUS was a slightly souped-up Fat Man/Joe 1. Anyone in a well-built structure more than say 1.5 miles from detonation that didn’t immediately catch fire might have ridden it out with Duck & Cover.
Problem was, by 1956 the old CCCP had a delivery system with the range to reach CONUS (Tu-95 “Bear”) with multi-megaton H-bombs. One of those on any population center & we were in kiss-your-ass-goodbye territory.
Mnemosyne
@MisterForkbeard:
My coworker asked me to give her the update because she can’t bear to read beyond the news alert. She has one child, who’s in junior high.
Wild Cat
@Pope Ratzy: Yup. Every news link to today’s GOP/NRA shooting massacre links to a photo of a weeping blonde student.
TenguPhule
Trump Administration to Tie Health Facilities’ Funding to Abortion Restrictions
Warning: FTFNYT Link.
patroclus
@TenguPhule: Your blatant insults of mid-westerners are inappropriate, as are your continual snuff fantasies and your pretended knowledge of each and every issue discussed on this forum. I am tired of your continual efforts to dominate every single discussion of actual issues here. The “fatal flaw” I made was posting in a thread in which you are participating.
Mnemosyne
@MisterForkbeard:
Adam explained the other day that canceling the exercise at this point is going to cost the US millions of dollars and majorly screw up travel for a few hundred people who were going to the exercises. And it’s going to cost our regional allies like Australia and NZ similar amounts to cancel their plans at the last minute.
But, as I told Adam, Trump would never let a little thing like other people’s time and money stand in the way of his self-image.
Baud
@Mnemosyne: They’re only canceling part of the exercise.
Oklahomo
@Mnemosyne: How they square these conspiracies with the fact that the framers of the Sacred Constitution were a bunch of Freemasons is beyond me.
Mary G
Democrats must win in November. Both houses.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: How can you tell that they are not Republicans, they carry their water, all the fucking time. Even for the current Nazi wannabe in the WH.
randy khan
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
That’s fascinating. Of course, a bank probably would be about the best built building in town, but still it’s amazing. (But I bet they didn’t put their coats over their heads. (I mean, leaving aside that it was August and they probably didn’t even have coats with them.))
Rileys Enabler
@Steeplejack (phone): Thank you, I will try that!
TenguPhule
@patroclus:
What made you think the GOP are not going to continue to try to eliminate food stamps?
tobie
@MisterForkbeard: I agree with you. If we had an adult at the helm trying to reach a deal in the interest of the country, such a goodwill gesture might be an important step. However given that we have a sociopathic man-child at the helm whose only interest is in his own self-aggrandizement, one must question the wisdom of the move. As @Mnemosyne: points out, the cost to our allies is great. I’m sure they weren’t consulted about this last-minute change of plans.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: There’s still a difference between the mainstream media and outlets like Fox and Sinclair and Breitbart.
HumboldtBlue
@LAO:
I do, fuck these motherfucking motherfuckers.
? Martin
@TenguPhule: For what it’s worth, California has already filed suit over this. The CA constitution requires that abortion services be provided. We are not subtle about it.
Baud
@? Martin: Must be something else. Can’t file suit before the rule is announced.
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
Even canceling part of it ain’t free.
TenguPhule
@Baud:
True.
FOX doesn’t even pretend to be anything more then a propaganda outlet these days.
Baud
@Mnemosyne: True. I don’t know the specifics. But Adam was talking about why they couldn’t cancel the whole thing. I don’t think he broke it down into parts.
trollhattan
Third-in-a-row douche governor is on it.
Uncle Cosmo
@tobie: Baltimore City AAs are not going to turn out in November for a former PGCo Executive in anywhere near the numbers he’d need, nor will PGCo AAs turn out for Ben Jealous. And that 15% of DINOs out in the boonies would vote against either. And neither City nor PGCo AAs will turn out for a white candidate if Jealous & Baker split the AA primary vote. We’re pretty much stuck with Hogan. Could be a lot worse we could live in Kansas…
TenguPhule
@trollhattan: And of course any gun-control legislation is still completely off the table for him.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@TenguPhule:
Tengu farmers always vote Republican. Who cares?
TenguPhule
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Some of them might not this year, not after Trump got into a pissing match with China, Japan, Canada & Mexico all at the same time. While having them decide to stop voting period would be nice, the narrative of “both sides are equally bad” is corrosive and farmers are an excellent vector for continued misinformation of the public.
japa21
Dems actually voted for farmers, not against them. There is a reason the food stamp program is run through the Department of Agriculture. If the food stamp program is trimmed back like the GOP would like it to be, farmers get hurt, because fewer people would be able to buy their products.
jl
I watched a little bit of the live feed. A reporter seemed to be talking about obvious links of shooter to fascism, Nazism, and right wing totalitarianism. Maybe a break in the polite convention that right wing reactionary terrorism doesn’t exist in this country? I hope so.
Pope Ratzy
And let the NRA talking points be FREEEEE!!!
https://crooksandliars.com/2018/05/fox-news-host-blames-sate-fe-massacre-kids
Of course no one has ever been able to explain to me why the Video Game caused gun violence stops at US Borders.
boatboy_srq
@cervantes: Let’s send them all home. Can we start with the ones who landed at Jamestown? They’ve been here longest.
boatboy_srq
@Pope Ratzy: Because “fill’em full of lead” is actually how the US water supply is handled.
? Martin
@Baud: Sure you can.
This may be common overall, but California has a bit of a proud history of suing before rules go into effect. The reason being that if a rule is announced that goes into effect immediately, you’re a bit late to block its implementation.
Citizen Alan
@TenguPhule:
I can’t even be angry about shitgibbon referring to people as animals. It makes me feel justified in referring to Trump voters and other Republicans as vermin.
? Martin
@jl:
Didn’t you hear? This greek kid was a member of MS-13.
El Caganer
@Baud: Hell, by the time they get to Singapore, Trump will be selling warheads to NK. Via his offshore Trump Thermonuclear, of course.
wkwv
@tobie: Thanks Tobie, I’ve been wanting to ask if anyone here at Ballon Juice had any opinion on the primary race for Maryland governor. It feels like an unusually crowded contest.
Lurker from PG
jl
@El Caganer: The Baud 2020! proposal of sending wedgie instructors to NK is superior all the way around.
Baud
@? Martin:
Googling indicates that’s a different lawsuit challenging an earlier action.
Starfish
I live in a town in Tam’s state that passed a recent assault weapon’s ban ordinance. The ordinance is not even up on the city website yet, and there are people and entities suing us over it already.
When we started to go forward with the ban, many people from out of town showed up open carrying assault rifles. The city council decided to accelerate the process of putting the ban into place once that happened.
Our council members are being harassed on their public Facebook pages now.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: True. MSM is R-lite, like Susan Collins. They like to maintain some plausible deniability.
tobie
@wkwv: You’re welcome. What Jackal doesn’t have a strong opinion? Isn’t that a self-selecting criterion for this blog? It just so happened that I had WYPR on this afternoon as I was eating my lunch and Tom Hall on the show “Midday” was interviewing Rushern Baker, and the interview cemented for me the good things I’d read about him. I like that he was a state delegate before becoming a county executive and would know how to work with the state legislature. @Uncle Cosmo: is right that we’re facing an uphill battle, but I’m not giving up. I didn’t canvass for Anthony Brown four years ago and I really regret that decision.
randy khan
@Uncle Cosmo:
Let’s just say my air raid drill was quite a bit after 1956, but it’s no surprise to me that the protocols weren’t updated. On the other hand, the lack of any more air raid drills after the first one might mean that the local school district figured out there was no reason to bother.
As a complete aside, my house has a bomb shelter in it, built by the original owners probably around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Officially, it was a workshop, but it clearly was built for other purposes. It’s beneath the foyer, the ceiling is held up by steel beams, and there’s a place in the back where the owners kept canned goods, etc. (This has been confirmed by one of our neighbors, who grew up in the house next door.) The husband was CIA, which might explain it.
randy khan
@Uncle Cosmo:
While I agree as a Maryland-adjacent voter (I can practically see it from my house), that Hogan’s probably going to win, I would be wary of saying that one group or another won’t turn out in November. There were dire warnings about turnout in Virginia, too, and everybody showed up.
mad citizen
@Pope Ratzy: I was away for a few hours and skimming the posts and this Zavion Parker kidnapping story is very disturbing. Thanks for posting about it–made me google it. Amazing to me that it hasn’t made national news.
D58826
Listening to all of the talk about the latest school shooting. One of the main threads of discussion involves hardening schools to prevent this type of thing from happening again. It certainly is a legitimate topic for discussion even though I don’t think you want to turn schools into fortresses. And yet off on the side of the video are rows of school buses. So you harden the school but the kids still have to take the school buses twice a day. If you can’t shot up the school then shot up the school bus.
Brachiator
@Pope Ratzy:
Wait. What? Is this “guns don’t kill people, video games kill people?”
D58826
Oh G-d. Gov. of TX is going to start having round table discussions to discuss how to prevent these kinds of shootings from happening again. If ’round table discussions’ solved the problem we would live in the safest country in the world.
Pope Ratzy
@mad citizen: It was Wednesday, minor reporting on Thursday and over taken by the bigger news out of Houston. But imagine the furor if some blonde female 4th grader from a white suburban envclave had been kidnapped by brown people of any religion or ethnicity.
J R in WV
@patroclus:
” The “fatal flaw” I made was posting in a thread in which you are participating.”
Have you hear of cleek and Major^4’s huge invention? It’s called the pie filter, and you type or copy the user nym into the field right below the comment area, and press the ADD button. It asks “are you sure” and you can click yes and never see another comment by TenguFool again. Unless you want to click the tiny, tiny translate button under the pie remarks replacing the arrogant and ignorant comments of the trolls. And TenguFool.
Pope Ratzy
@Brachiator: Appears so, no sense applying logic to the question just reach in the “Bowl of NRA Excuses” pull out the “excuse of the moment” and in full righteous froth stupidly expound why the cause cannot be the guns.
J R in WV
@tobie:
All that was canceled was a B-52 overflight portion of the exercise. Since the B-52 Buffalo has been part of all military strategy for 60 years, they may not need one more run-through.
Mnemosyne
@mad citizen:
Another commenter had a link about it yesterday (Humboldt Blue, maybe?) I didn’t read the story, because I already hate humanity enough already.
Ruckus
@D58826:
You do understand that the gov of TX and lots of other officials don’t really give a shit that this is happening and so will do anything to look like they are trying to solve the problem, as long as nothing changes. So yes a round table is exactly what you should expect to see happen. First because it’s rarely ever an actual round table discussion and second because they don’t want positive change. They are conservatives, they want any change to go only in one direction, backwards, to a time when things were “better.”
Those times never were better of course, but that’s what makes them conservative, their heads are buried in the sands of a previous time. Most likely a time they never could have lived in.
WaterGirl
@geg6: I have 33 unwatched episodes of The Americans, that I definitely plan to watch, so I definitely understand your situation. It sucks.
Waynski
@The Ancien Randonneur:
I’m quite certain he’s the latter.
Ruckus
@wkwv:
Have the same issue with the CA ballot.
27 candidates running for Gov.
31 candidates running for Sen to replace DiFi, and DiFi herself.
And this leads to the first 2 becoming the race for the offices in Nov, called a jungle primary. We get to vote for any political party but with so many running how does anyone make a realistic vote? Voting for the current office holder is how most will probably do it.
Aleta
@schrodingers_cat: Your area sounds like a good one in so many ways, and good people. (I used to live in Montague then Northampton. Miss the music, enlightened movies and all the rest.)
Although… I’ve observed something my liberal and well-off Nhamp friends do with respect to taxes, that in effect reduces their tax amount even as they favor supporting the town and schools with a higher mill rate. (Not criticizing; but an observation. If I were as capable and living a different life, I might too; I can’t say.)
So just in terms of effect: They argue down their appraisals to the town when they can, and it can make quite a difference in their tax $. Being corporate lawyers, they seem to win. They donate to local causes, much of it arts-related, and of course write that off their earnings, as is fair. (They also (used to? still?–not sure) put money into a fund that’s organized as a private foundation, which is money they don’t pay federal (or state?) tax on, even if they don’t donate that fund completely each year.)
I’m not knowledgeable, and this may not be a valid point. And I’m not at all justified to say it’s wrong, cause I don’t know that level of detail. Likewise, I have a few extra-wealthy friends who do all kinds of good w/ their money and time, and they also make tax decisions that are outside my range. (And haggle with local carpenters, which I am judgmental about.)
SgrAstar
@schrodingers_cat: my 20-something nieces refuse to ride on MUNI because the harrassment is so bad. Their mom took them on the bus to see what they were talking about…she was outraged. Men behaving badly are ubiquitous.
TerryC
@bemused: “Hmm, wonder how gun rights guy who said man with flag and gun on school crime scene was an embarrassment will feel when some time has passed. Will he be ok with a guy bringing a gun and flag to the school grounds in a few weeks, months? Inquiring minds.”
Someone has to starting asking these dipshits, “Hey! Are you an NRA member?” And get them on video. Maybe, “Yo! First Amendment! NRA member, right?!” I want to see that meme.
Aleta
@Mnemosyne: Sounds like it’s moot issue now, but if ‘money lost, time lost’ due to rebooking is the issue, wouldn’t we also need to add ‘money saved and human time saved’ from not doing the exercise? Depending on the cost of holding the exercises; and on what percent the US pays for vs Korea’s share.
(Getting snide because I was up all night last night: Isn’t rapid (change in) deployment an advertised goal of our ‘new military’? If (and I can believe it) the cancellation would have been a major disruption, then handling that could become the exercise …) I think I’ll blame the private contractors out of principle.
opiejeanne
@J R in WV: I would like to recommend the Rick Steves Tours. We went on one of his when we visited Italy in 2014 and it was great, can’t say enough good things about it. The guides are very knowledgeable and ours was an American fluent in Italian but we also had a specialist guide for Rome, Venice, and Florence, all fluent and two were dual citizens and raised in both Italy and the US, back and forth with parents’ jobs.
I know there was one tour that year that involved hiking in the Alps and it sounded really good. You do need to be healthy enough to keep up with the guides but I managed. I think I’d already lost about 5 pounds from all the walking we did in Paris in the 10 days before we caught the train to Venice. The Rick Steves Tours are much less crowded than the standard guided tours, limited to 20-25 people. The other groups we saw were mostly 40 people.
https://www.ricksteves.com/tours
J R in WV
@opiejeanne:
Thanks! Wish I could hike in the alps. My goal has diminished to driving a sporty car over some passes in the Alps, maybe stay on mountain side B&Bs.
Aleta
@schrodingers_cat: Absolutely. 1. Girl can focus. 2. No one can say she doesn’t belong in a class or a field of study. 3. Less chance of teacher discrimination (one hopes), since teaching girls is the reason the teacher was hired.