A week ago, our local paper got its mitts on the NRA survey that the gun cartel lobbying group’s mouthpiece here in Florida — Marion Hammer — sends out to candidates running in the state. Hammer was extremely, uh, triggered by the gun safety measures the wingnut super-majority Florida legislature passed earlier this year in the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre. The questions include the following:
1. In our view, completion of this questionnaire and signing your name is giving your word. NRA and USF [Unified Sportsmen of Florida] members as well as other constituents in your district trust you to keep your word. Do you agree that your answers are giving your word and that we expect you to keep it?
2 (c). Do you believe elected officials commit an act of malfeasance if they violate their Oath of Office and support legislation that contains provisions that they believe are unconstitutional?
Gun Granny Hammer has ruled the Florida GOP with an iron fist for decades, so I cannot tell you how delightful it is to see her insert snippy, passive-aggressive queries into her own survey to snipe at Republicans who defied her. Democratic candidates have also made hay of this year’s survey, featuring themselves defacing it or throwing it in the trash. Ha!
Also, a short while ago, The Post reported that the NRA has yanked all of its old legislator grades from its website. Post reporters asked why and got a variety of answers, including “nope, we didn’t change anything” and “it’s just an IT glitch.” An unnamed NRA flack admitted that “our enemies were using that.”
Another NRA flack, Jennifer Baker, did go on the record:
“Our grades are a member service,” she explained. “Our members vote and one of the services that we provide them is to assess — to the best that anyone can — the candidates’ position on the Second Amendment and make a determination what candidates in a very specific election are the best candidates to protect and defend their constitutional rights.” The grades are issued as close to the election as possible in order to have the most relevance to that election.
Pressed on the rationale for the change to the website, Baker first expressed frustration at the question.
“I don’t understand– Why are you asking? What does it matter to you?” she asked. “The grades are not relevant after the election.”
Baker promised to get back to The Post about the rationale behind the change on the NRA site, but then she ghosted, ignoring follow-up emails.
I think it’s pretty obvious why they’re making these changes. The Parkland kids and their allies are shining a bright light, and the roaches are scattering. Good.
Calouste
The NRA seems unaware of the existence of the way back machine.
For attacking gunhumping Goopers (but I repeat myself) it doesn’t really matter if they got an A grade from the NRA now or in 2016.
TenguPhule
Only as long as they can keep that light shining.
The Republicans have every incentive to snuff it out.
They’ve already tried to SWAT one of them.
Mary G
Yeah, the kids are not going away and Moms Demand is gaining members fast and getting a lot of state legislators’ time and attention. I posted in an earlier thread about how the Texas NRA lobbyist was alone in the overflow area because the Moms and kids got there first for a committee meeting and took all the seats. Ha!
Marion is a piece of work. Doesn’t she actually write some of the bills, like stand your ground AKA it’s OK for white people to shoot anyone that scares them?
Looks like they are running scared, if they took the grades off the site. Don’t they know that the internet remembers things?
Mnemosyne
Someone posted this in the previous thread — in Texas, so many activists from MomsDemand showed up for a hearing that they squeezed the NRA lobbyist out into an overflow room. ??
In fact, it says in the replies that so many MomsDemand activists showed up that they had to open a second overflow room after that first one filled up, so she got to be in the overflow room AND be surrounded by people from MomsDemand.
ETA: Aha! It was MaryG.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@TenguPhule:
They can try their terror tactics. These people were already shot at once, they don’t scare easy and if one of them were shot and killed they would only become a martyr.
rikyrah
Trump Administration Launches Effort to Strip Citizenship From Those Suspected of Naturalization Irregularities
By ELLIOT HANNON
The Trump administration is not only doing everything it can to discourage immigration of all sorts, it intends to launch an effort to identify naturalized American citizens it believes cheated the naturalization process and strip them of their American citizenship. The extraordinary process of denaturalizing an American citizen has occurred very rarely, with the Justice Department filing an estimated 300 civil denaturalization cases since 1990. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director L. Francis Cissna, however, told the Associated Press that the agency is ramping up its efforts to identify citizens who, for instance, assumed new identities in order to avoid deportation and claim a green card or citizenship.
Cissna said his agency is hiring several dozen lawyers and immigration officers to review cases of suspected fraud. “We finally have a process in place to get to the bottom of all these bad cases and start denaturalizing people who should not have been naturalized in the first place,” Cissna said. “What we’re looking at, when you boil it all down, is potentially a few thousand cases.”
While there is certainly a legitimate government interest in not allowing people into the country under assumed identities—previously this effort targeted literal Nazis and suspected war criminals trying to escape prosecution under assumed identities—the potential for the effort to be used as a means of intimidation and to find small discrepancies or errors in an individual’s naturalization paperwork is problematic. The Trump administration says it does not plan on pursuing deportations based on technicalities, but this is also an administration that is savagely separating families at the border as a form of deterrence to would-be undocumented immigrants.
hitchhiker
It’s pretty stunning that the likes of Marion Hammer have been in charge of policy for an entire state.
And even more stunning that a little group of righteous, capable, angry, empathetic, sympathetic teenagers turned out to be the very people who could step up to take her on.
O. Felix Culpa
@TenguPhule:
I missed that. What happened?
Eljai
Well, hell yeah we’re gonna use it. But these assholes never thought an “A” from the NRA would turn out to be noxious.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Of course they’re going to try. One glance at the list of Civil Rights martyrs would make that obvious.
When they had a gun safety rally at my niece’s high school, they got death threats. They did it anyway, because what was the alternative, to let themselves be murdered in their classrooms instead?
TenguPhule
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
You seem to think these Nazis will stop at just one?
rikyrah
@TenguPhule:
They are on the right side…
and, they have the truth on their side..
They are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
Also, they have good advisers.
The Summer Bus Tour was a superb idea.
TenguPhule
@O. Felix Culpa: They went after David Hogg.
Baud
This is good to hear.
rikyrah
@O. Felix Culpa:
Phoned in false threat at David Hogg’s house. Had the SWAT team sent there. Luckily, his family was out of town.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
So Ivanka is being dumped for wife number #4?
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Well, no shit, Sherlock. Take a look at any list of Civil Rights activists and see how many of them were murdered.
The kids and moms know this, and they’re doing it anyway. My niece’s high school got death threats when they had a gun safety rally, but the students insisted on doing it anyway, because what’s the alternative? They’ve already tried letting themselves be gunned down inside their classrooms and nothing changed.
Immanentize
@rikyrah: Jesus. I doubt Melania is on the list to investigate….
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
Which means it does indeed plan to do so.
Roger Moore
The thing the NRA is most afraid of is legislators losing their fear. They’ve been able to maintain their reputation for being deadly to cross primarily because so few Republicans vote against them that they can focus their efforts. That’s not going to work with a mass defection like they faced in Florida. If they try to go after every Republican who voted against them, they risk spreading their forces too thin and looking weak when they fail to collect all the scalps they’re after. If they go after a select few, they’re guaranteed to look weak by letting people cross them without consequences. Either way, they face the real prospect of legislators deciding they’re just another interest group rather than the third rail of Florida politics. Without that kind of fear, their future battles will be that much harder.
lamh36
After Anthony Bourdain’s death, fans and folks who discovered and re-discovered many of Bourdain’s shows, found out that Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown episodes were leaving Netflix on June 16, many asked Netflix to extend the date in reaction to the outpouring and interest in the shows since Bourdain’s death, and Netlflx responded!!
O. Felix Culpa
@TenguPhule: @rikyrah: Thanks for the info. This should be treated like attempted murder.
lamh36
@Mnemosyne: Right…speaking of that.
lowtechcyclist
I liked the “UNANSWERED QUESTIONS will be graded as a response against Second Amendment rights.” Yeah, and they’ll go on your Permanent Record.
Also, “The Oath of Office requires you to place a hand on the Bible* and swear to support, defend, and protect both the U.S. Constitution and the Florida Constitution. That includes the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights. If elected, will you support, defend, and protect those rights?”
*The hell it does. “No religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” – U.S. Constitution, Article VI
Of course, the bullshit emotional game they’re playing here is pretty obvious, and if they feel they’ve got to lay it on with a trowel like this, they must be feeling at least a wee tad nervous.
Mary G
Oh, I hope so:
JDM
That first question. It’s just odd, really poorly worded. Makes the author(s) look a bit lacking in the school larnin’. The rest of it doesn’t help in the making them look even moderately intelligent area.
Paul T
I’m guessing the checks from Russia and the gun nuts aren’t clearing as quickly as they used to. Time to panic when the money isn’t coming in regularly. The NRA is more about money than guns, I think.
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
Evers’ was the first name to come to mind in this context, but there were many others, and even more attempts on peoples’ lives.
But they kept working, and they refused to stop, because they knew there was no way to kill all of them and that more people were joining them every day.
BC in Illinois
@Mary G:
Even in Missouri. Moms Demand can claim a lot of credit, even if it mostly in the form of playing defense and seeing that terrible bills don’t get through. There were several bills in the Mo Leg this year, one of them appropriately named the “Guns Everywhere” bill. (Think bars, churches, daycares, etc.) Every hearing was filled with red-shirted Moms. And nothing made it into law. (The fact that the Guv was corrupt and on his way to being impeached took up time as well, which was all to the good.)
There’s an active Moms group, getting good press (front page pictures and a positive second page article) in Jefferson County, which is quite an accomplishment.
And the very active St Louis Moms group turned out 30-40 people to fill the Council room of a local St Louis County municipality which had been debating on whether to join the (Moms-affiliated) Mayors Against Illegal Guns organization. 30-40 people may not seem like a lot, but if filled the room with red “Moms Demand Action” shirts. And a measure that may have been a 4-3 vote, and was discussed by the council members as a 5-2 vote, ended up passing unanimously. The 2-3 people leaning (and speaking) against it certainly realize that they will be running for re-election. A packed audience at a council meeting gets their attention.
Now, that may only bring the number of Missouri cities on the “Mayors” list from 14 to 15, but momentum is good to have. Especially for then next 146 days.
Frankensteinbeck
@TenguPhule:
Yes. The pattern of the last year is solid. Republicans aren’t brown shirts. They’re whiny, privileged cowards who like to tell each other they’re gestapo. If internet trolling doesn’t stop these kids, one thing they do not have to worry about is a campaign to murder them to shut them up. Republicans are evil, but they’re evil cowards.
Chip Daniels
@Paul T:
It pretty much sounds like they are first and foremost a money laundry for the Russians to the GOP.
trollhattan
@O. Felix Culpa:
They swatted two Parkland kids, so far. Neither at home, thank god.
She missed a great opportunity to claim, “Moochers were using valuable member information for free, so we cut that shit right off.”
Better spokesdrones, please.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
The other side has decided to test this theory.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Have they? Because so far they’re all talk and no action. We’re not seeing anything near the level of bloodshed we did during the Civil Rights Movement.
TenguPhule
@Frankensteinbeck:
They”re evil cowards who are packing the courts to make evil legal.
Cowards are more dangerous then the bold ones because the bold ones are STUPID. The cowards are the ones who survive long enough to learn.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Parkland was February of this year. The first attempts to kill the kids was in June.
BC in Illinois
@Mnemosyne:
Concerning threats:
I commented on a Moms Demand event in outside-of-St-Louis-and-Kansas-City Jefferson County. There were hostile facebook messages encouraging counter-protestors to come, carrying openly.
As a result, the event, which was expected to draw 20 people or so, brought out 50 people. And it was specifically noted that more high school kids came out, BECAUSE of the threats. The kids are all right.
HeleninEire
Can someone re-post the link of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas kids singing at the Tony Awards?
Every time I try to pull it up I get a message that it is not available. Not sure if this is a EU thing or not.
Thanks.
Tokyokie
@Chip Daniels:
And, therefore, to my line of thinking, an interstate criminal organization per the federal RICO statute.
Frankensteinbeck
@TenguPhule:
That does not even slightly describe modern conservatives.
Compared to the violence the Civil Rights protestors faced, this is nonexistent. Yeah, SWATing someone is bad, and the person doing it was probably hoping it would lead to death. It has happened. As campaigns of violent repression to silence a movement go, this isn’t weak tea, it’s lukewarm water. I know things are bad, but your doom predictions are wildly out of scale here.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: Wow. Purging voter rolls, treating refugees and asylum seekers like excrement and now this attempt to strip citizenship. 2020 can’t come fast enough.
Spanky
@TenguPhule: No They tried to dupe the cops into killing them. A totally cowardly thing to do. Not even an iota of the courage needed to abduct and quite personally kill Evers.
Leto
@HeleninEire: I don’t have a link, but it could very well be an EU/regional issue. Perfect time to invest in a cheap VPN service!
lamh36
@HeleninEire: this article has a link
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
You REALLY need to read up on the Civil Rights Movement, because you seem extremely ignorant of what happened and how many people were murdered in cold blood for standing up for their rights.
burnspbesq
@Patricia Kayden:
2020 won’t matter unless we make 2018 matter. All the cliches that coaches spout in locker rooms before championship games are in full force and effect.
This is your time.
You were born for this.
Step up.
Don’t be afraid to make a difference.
Redshift
“Do you understand that your job as a legislator is to to stick to our interpretation of an answer to a questionnaire, not try to respond to events affecting your constituents? And, uh, voters definitely agree with us!”
Yeah, that’s the voice of confidence there…
Mnemosyne
@Spanky:
Evers was gunned down in his driveway, IIRC. Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were kidnapped, tortured, and murdered.
rikyrah
@lamh36:
yeah!!!
thanks for the news.
HeleninEire
@Leto: @lamh36: Thanks to you both.
I still get “This video is not available” from both of you. I rarely get that. We get everything here. The only thing I can think is that the Tony’s haven’t been on TV here so they are what? Jesus everyone knows who won 3 days later.
But, again thanks to you both.
lamh36
schrodingers_cat
@lamh36: I saw two episodes, the one with President Obama and the one where he was in Punjab.
Tokyokie
@Spanky: Byron De La Beckwith gunned down Medgar Evers as Evers got out of his car in the driveway at his home in Jackson, Miss. Not to say that De La Beckwith wasn’t a coward, just that he didn’t abduct Evers before murdering him.
schrodingers_cat
@burnspbesq: Agreed, worrying about 2020 right now is a distraction.
Tokyokie
@lamh36: That’ll sure give an ironic meaning to the name of the military base in El Paso, Fort Bliss.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@burnspbesq: Clear eyes, full hearts….
Tarragon
@trollhattan:
chris
Glad to see you’re all still here since net neutrality ended yesterday. Guess we’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, who likes musicals? not me but I’m going to make an exception for Michelle Wolf.
Immanentize
@Tarragon: His sister?
Jeffro
@burnspbesq:
So very, very true!
@schrodingers_cat:
Hard not to think about it, but you’re right. And given how Infrastructure Week has given way to Infrastructure Day…with the obstruction report due any day (and hopefully dozens of other charges for Cohen, Don Jr, Jared, to boot)…we do just need to focus on the one check that We the People can put on Clownmandias. 2018 it is!
Mary G
@Tarragon: Cameron Kasky was also swatted. He and his dad were on the road, but other family members were home.
trollhattan
@Tarragon:
Looks like I need to correct myself, three Parkland kids have been targeted with swatting.
ruemara
@rikyrah: I wish my lottery numbers were as accurate as my uncanny ability to know what evil people want to do.
@Patricia Kayden: I think you mean november because if you think you have until 2020, you are living in a very safe space.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
OT but so relevant. As Kay says it’s all just a big kabuki:
Link
rikyrah
Michael Flynn was handed an Israeli intelligence file on Barack Obama on his last day as Trump’s national security adviser https://t.co/Pdl6KtFnaN
— Raw Story (@RawStory) June 12, 2018
lamh36
Uh huh…knew it was gonna happen… Chump finally responding to DeNiro.
FUQ TRUMP!
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1006640689843560448
SiubhanDuinne
@chris:
And today the AT&T-Time Warner merger was approved.
chris
@SiubhanDuinne: I saw that. More MAGA.
ETA And all the commenters are gone? Or on the wrong carrier?
Fleeting Expletive
The SBC is nervous about VP Pence speaking to their convention on Wednesday. Some are worried because the Baptists are having a certain amount of internal upheaval over #me too, and think he’s just a little too identified with the, uh, problems the WH has in that area. And, uh, it’s really not appropriate for a denomination to suddenly be, like, political and shit, so maybe we ought to back away. I wonder how this’ll go down? I have less than zero interest in religion myself but I do love me some squirming among the pews of the very righteous.
Ladyraxterinok
OT — read that VP Pence will speak at the SBC convention in Dallas. SBC announcement contained great praise of Pence. (Saw this notice noted at democraticunderground.)
In recent days the 2 leaders of tbe RW (known as the Conservative Resurgence) takeover of the SBC are in disgrace. Paige Patterson fired as prez of SBC Southwestern Seminary because of covering up 2 rapes (1 when he was prez of SBC Southeastern Seminary and 1 at SWBTS) and failing to report them to police. Paul Pressler charged with several counts of sexual molestation of young men in his Bible groups (events span decades and were an ‘open secret’ in Houston). Paige is charged with covering up for Pressler.
Paige and wife, Paul and wife—the 4 have their portraits in stained glass in the chapel at Southwestern.
Pence and SBC—-match just -‘meant to be’?
VeniceRiley
Such a blatant lie. They would, of course, leave the grades up for donors to check before writing a check.
Roger Moore
@Spanky: @Mnemosyne: @Tokyokie:
An important point is that the boldness of the murderers of civil rights workers was part of the message. They knew they could kill with impunity because enough people in their communities wanted those civil rights workers dead. Even if their names were known, they knew only the boldest prosecutor would bring charges and no jury would convict. That impunity was an essential part of the terror campaign that made Jim Crow work. That contemporary gun nuts aren’t so bold is less because they’re inherently cowards and more because they know they lack the kind of support that would grant them that impunity.
cliosfanboy
@Frankensteinbeck: they may want to be brown shirts but if you “boo!” to them then they’re brown pants…
lamh36
A twitter thread to check out today (and hey maybe even post about?)
Citizen Alan
@Spanky:
IIRC, Medgar Evers was assassinated in his own driveway and never abducted. Unless I’m completely misremembering Mississippi history. Which is always possible, I do try to block out as much of my memories of this place as I can
Citizen Alan
@lamh36:
Jesus f****** Christ. Tent cities in Texas in the summer. For children. We’ll be lucky if the death toll isn’t in the thousands.
Immanentize
@lamh36: This is straight out of Arpaio’s playbook. But at least in that case they were convicted criminals….
rikyrah
The Left forced me to become a Trump Supporter.
If you don’t get the ENTIRE phuck Outta Here ? ?
https://twitter.com/owillis/status/1006607385237041154?s=19
gvg
@Mnemosyne: Uh excuse me? Pulse nightclub, the Las Vegas shooting, and one in California. All the kids murdered so far, plus I consider a lot of domestic violence deaths to be related, and Travon and on and on. I don’t know the actual numbers, but we have some significant deaths already. What’s worse is they were happening all along and until recently we acted like this was “normal”.
rikyrah
@lamh36:
Evil Azz Demons ?
Ladyraxterinok
@Mnemosyne: And Reagan opened his 1980 election campaign with a speech praising ‘states’ rights’ in the county where these kidnappings, tortures, murders happened. Pretty loud dogwhistle!!
TenguPhule
@Immanentize:
Uh, actually a lot of them weren’t. Arpaio got sued for that.
rikyrah
@lamh36:
Phuck Dolt45 ?
TenguPhule
Fuck em.
Gelfling 545
@Spanky: I feel reasonably sure that the local cops have a good idea of where the most vocal of the Parkland kids live and are likely to respond accordingly, not wanting to get themselves into the paper for harming one of them.
TenguPhule
Who are they trying to kid now?
rikyrah
@lamh36:
Good thread
Kay
Good letter from Patty Murray to DeVos on the school safety commission:
It’s just such a joke. The June 5th “invitation” to the June 6th event is basically “fuck you, we know you can’t come but we have to publish this”
DeVos is actually on a June tour of Switzerland and the Netherlands right now with her bizarre, giant, “security detail” like anyone knows who the hell the Sec of Education even is- 95% of Americans couldn’t pick her out of a line up, let alone anyone in Switzerland. She’s pretending she’s working again. Her work travel schedule is “places the DeVos family go anyway”.
Immanentize
@TenguPhule:
… “because we now expect and are not surprised by every possible batshit crazy ignorant malign thing to come out of the President’s pie hole.”
Amir Khalid
Donald Trump has had an impact on the World Cup: The BBC reports that Nike has declared it cannot supply football boots to Iran’s national team, because of new American sanctions on Iran.
Jeffro
@TenguPhule: I’ll take the Khans over the Warmbiers any day.
Steve in the ATL
@SiubhanDuinne:
Cubs win World Series
Trump becomes president*
Tater tot poutine invented
Net neutrality ended
AT&T-Time Warner merger approved
How many more seals to break until the apocalypse begins?
Amir Khalid
@Kay:
I’s mystified. Exactly what business does the US Secretary of Education have in Switzerland and The Netherlands?
lamh36
@TenguPhule: Ah…yup…as I predicted… Trump supporters are willing to accept anything and justify anything Chump has done…even if he belittles the treatment of your own son at the hands of a dictator regime to prop up said dictator??
Immanentize
@Amir Khalid: Switzerland is where all her family money is. She is just checking in after the bitcoin hack.
daryljfontaine
R.I.P., Liberal Contrarianism by Michael Bérubé
Money quotes and just a good all-around read.
D
Kay
@Amir Khalid:
They’re lovely in June.
Seriously though, she’s touring the place in her motorcar to get information on their education systems :)
The DeVos have a compound in Florida and they race yachts on the Great Lakes- Michigan. Her work schedule includes “education trips” to these places on long holiday weekends.
Kay
Although they know the chance of a shooting is remote, the cost is SO HIGH for schools that they can’t really evaluate it as a probability. They’ll over-prepare and spend a bundle on this stuff because it’s kids, and if they don’t and the unthinkable happens…
So it will ripple. They’ll waste precious funds on security and preparedness and take those funds out of instruction because they don’t have extra money laying around. They’ll over-discipline and suspend for toy guns because they CANNOT make a mistake. They can’t have any risk tolerance at all- it’s kids. They’re scared to death, schools, and if you were running one you would be too, because all the probability stats in the world won’t matter if it hits.
They;ve evacuated our public school twice this year. Do they know the risk is remote and it’s probably just an idiot 6th grader writing something on the bathroom wall? Yes. Does that matter at all if the risk you’re taking means 20 dead 6th graders? No.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
rikyrah
@Amir Khalid:
No business at all?
TenguPhule
@Steve in the ATL:
What makes you think it hasn’t already started?
Chyron HR
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
“Robert De Niro has BRAIN DAMAGE, so there!” – The President of the United States of America
I can feel America’s greatness made manifest again already.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
She has lots of reasons to be in Switzerland.
Oh, you mean official business.
MisterForkbeard
@rikyrah: I kind of want to read that article, because I have no fucking clue what kind of thought process is going through their minds.
Probably some variant of “Trump does horrible, awful things but the fact that he doesn’t get credit for the 1% of good things he does from the left and that they automatically assume he’s up to no good is making me so annoyed I’m going to support Trump.”
I don’t think it’s a racism thing. It’s a hating liberals thing. Again.
patrick II
@rikyrah:
Maybe they will catch Murdock in their net.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
Meanwhile Our Very Serious People will insist that “Mistakes were made” every time a Republican blows up another part of the world.
I’d suggest swapping the teachers and Republican leaders, but that seems unnecessarily cruel to the kids.
TenguPhule
@Jeffro: So would I.
MisterForkbeard
@TenguPhule: There is a powerful, POWERFUL drive to want to believe your child’s life (and death) meant something. These people are taking one route to that – saying that Trump isn’t so bad and that their child’s death may have helped move things forward somehow. It’s factually incorrect but emotionally it makes a lot of sense.
If I was them and a Trump supporter, I’d note that Otto’s death was a direct result of Trump’s policies and I’d always fault him for that, but that I’m glad his death may have had a silver lining.
WereBear
@TenguPhule: I am just sick reading that. Something is I deeply wrong with Trump voters who can do that.
debbie
@hitchhiker:
I recognize the name, but know nothing about her. Is there anything other than being wealthy that qualifies her to be in charge of policy?
Calouste
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: DeNiro should reply: “At least I have an excuse for being punch-drunk stupid. What about you Donnie Dementia?”
Kay
@TenguPhule:
That’s the difference with guns. They can risk a hallway brawl or a low level drug problem or teen pregnancy. They can take appropriate measures there, weigh upside and downside, etc. They can’t risk a shooting. There will be a whole category of students who got the school punishment equivalent of the death penalty because they said something dumb and people will say “overreaction” but do you want to make that call? If you make a mistake they will DIE. Perhaps many of them. So it will be zero tolerance, with all the problems that come with that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL:
This is a thing?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I see Spanky didn’t learn with Colbert about trading insults with entertainment people.
MomSense
@Steve in the ATL:
Tater tot poutine??
Non!
And fuck the fucking NRA!
trollhattan
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Thinks he is one himself. “Great ratings, I get great ratings.”
TenguPhule
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, its real.
debbie
@MomSense:
Did the puppy show up at work?
SRW1
@Amir Khalid:
DeVos is a Dutch name. As a matter of fact her parents are of Dutch ancestry. Maybe she is researching family roots on tax payers dime.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Well, if he was watching, I hope he didn’t miss the standing ovation those F-Bombs drew.
TenguPhule
@MisterForkbeard:
Except it requires ignoring what actually happened in Singapore.
Republicans don’t live in reality anymore. They’ve decided to live the lie. To the bitter end.
MomSense
@debbie:
No.???? I am assured he will be there tomorrow. I sent Alain some blurry photos so you can all see him. He won’t stop moving long enough to get a good pic of his little face.
Kay
@SRW1:
She pays her own security detail now because she insisted on US marshals and that came out – it was hugely expensive and also just really crazily excessive. A million a month.
It’s kind of amusing to me because you’re right- she’s Dutch- and in parts of Michigan and Ohio “conservative and Dutch” means “frugal and hard working and kind of preachy and sanctimonious about it”. You find out is IS actually possible to be conspicious about being “humble” :)
She is neither frugal nor hard working. I figured she’d pretend but she doesn’t bother.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Kay! Thrilled you are back commenting.
Although am sure the break was restorative.
Mnemosyne
@gvg:
You’re making the same mistake that TP is making of conflating victims of gun violence with gun violence activists being deliberately targeted because of their activism.
It’s the difference between Emmett Till and Medgar Evers. One was an innocent bystander, the other was someone who was murdered specifically because of his beliefs and his work.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
Thanks. I’m going away next week. I’ll probably see the DeVos yachts. Lake Michigan. I saw them last year. The people I was with made sure to tell me, because they knew I would like that :)
They bring me these…gifts. “She has 12 yachts”. This is the gossip I want :)
debbie
@MomSense:
Sweet! They radiate such joy! Though if it was me, I’d get zero work done.
Omnes Omnibus
@TenguPhule: You may be right about the apocalypse after all.
MomSense
@Kay:
She repulses me. That bizarre grin on her face and the blank look in her eyes is unsettling.
She looks like someone who would be an enthusiastic attendee at a witch trial.
Aleta
Meanwhile and far from Florida, the Maine NEA also sent a survey around to candidates running in the state, asking their views on education and policy. Last I heard, all the Dem candidates returned it but not. a. single Repub.
Cause the survey is a trap! Following the people’s will = disobeying the Repub. god; but honest answers = they lose; but their normal practiced lying could = protestors and bad press. Another dirty trick from the Dems and the teachers union.
TenguPhule
@Omnes Omnibus: There’s also a remake of Arachnophobia in the works.
/speculates on spider clowns
SiubhanDuinne
@Steve in the ATL:
Five down, two to go.
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: “A few thousand cases”. This is gonna be millions.
And they’ll go after native-born citizens after that. This is a presidency that began with a guy accusing the former President of faking his own birth.
This is how they keep their permanent majority, by turning voting-eligible citizens into aliens.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@TenguPhule:
You are dead to me. DEAD!
MomSense
@Aleta:
I can’t stand Adam Cote. I betcha he’s a Republican ratfucker.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Matt McIrvin:
Exactly how would they do that? Both parents born in US? That might cause problems for a Donald Trump and all but one of his offspring.
MomSense
@Aleta:
The latest is that LePage is threatening not to certify the primary results because he doesn’t like ranked choice. Asshole.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
IIRC, she’s Dutch and Calvinist, which is a totally different kettle of fish (the Amish/Pennsylvania Dutch are Anabaptists).
The writer/director Paul Schraeder is from the same religious background. You know, the guy who wrote Taxi Driver.
Villago Delenda Est
The NRA (National Russian Association) is a terrorist organization. Treat them accordingly. No quarter.
ruemara
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Just test to see if they’re brown &/or democrats
TenguPhule
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Guilty of being born without white skin. And who carries their US passport on them in their hometown?
Chyron HR
@MomSense:
Kids, if you want some bullshit
Mr. LePage is your man
geg6
@daryljfontaine:
That was a fun piece.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@TenguPhule:
More than you’d think, passport cards are quite popular.
TenguPhule
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
The ones for access to Canada/Mexico only?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@TenguPhule: Yes, it’s proof of citizenship.
JPL
Why is no one talking about the raccoon?
https://twitter.com/timnelson_mpr
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2018/06/12/a-raccoon-is-scaling-the-side-of-a-tall-skyscraper-and-its-incredibly-stressful/?utm_term=.7388957541dd
WhatsMyNym
@Kay: I was going to make fun of her toy boats, but several are made in my neck of the woods. She really needs to buy more!!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JPL: because raccoons are Satan’s foot soldiers
also, my first thought was “rabies”
WereBear
@JPL: IT IS the End Times!
TenguPhule
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I thought those were possums.
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
As you know, I am Whitey McWhiterson, but I’m going to get a passport card when I get my passport. Because you never fucking know these days.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Conversation with son
Me: This is why windows should open
Son: A raccoon is not coming into my office.
I hope the little guy makes it, because he’s come so far. If he does make it to the roof, I have a feeling that there will be lots of folks calling to check on him. They will get the standard answer about raccoons, we released him into the woods.
Bex
@Mnemosyne: Schraeder’s new movie, First Reformedhas gotten great early reviews. Inside baseball:
it’s Calvinism v. Mega Church with a large helping of despair.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
I take your point, but your description of Till as an innocent bystander is wrong. Both men were killed by white racists who believed that black people could be dealt with however white people wanted, especially if it furthered the wretched cause of white supremacy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@TenguPhule: they’re like the CIA– Satan doesn’t acknowledge any affiliation
TenguPhule
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Clown spiders actually pull up on the google.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
One was killed for (allegedly) whistling at a white woman, while the other was deliberately targeted specifically because of his civil rights activism.
It’s the difference between lynching and assassination. The men who murdered Till didn’t care who he was — he was just another N to them. The man who murdered Evers cared deeply about who he was and killed him to try and stop his activism.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
The men who murdered Till and Evers cared deeply that they were murdering black men.
Again, I take your point, but you don’t need to use these examples to support it.
Elizabelle
@JPL: Yes! I am way interested in MPRaccoon. Climb safely, little mammal.
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
I was under the impression that the Pennsylvania “Dutch” were actually the Pennsylvania Deutsche — that is, Germans.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I am getting a distinct feeling that you don’t know who Medgar Evers was. He was not killed essentially at random, as Till was. He was hunted down and assassinated by someone who wanted to stop his work.
You really see no difference between murdering someone at random and specifically targeting a person for assassination because of who they are and what they do?
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Oh, Lord, please stop.
Seriously,stop.
Till was not killed at random. He was snatched up. He was mercilessly beaten. He was shot in the head. His body was defiled. Have you seen the photos of his mangled body?
One of the bravest things his family did was to have an open coffin so that the world could see what was done to their 14 year old child.
His brutal murder, and that of Evers was meant to send a message to black people to shut up and submit. The killing and brutalization of black people were political terrorism.
One of the best remembrances of Medgar Evers is to be found in the recent documentary about James Baldwin.
The Lodger
@Amir Khalid: You’re right, but the Pennsylvania “Dutch” and the ethnic Dutch from the Netherlands are two separate populations. Pennsylvania Dutch are mostly Amish and Mennonite and settled in Lancaster and Lebanon, PA and SE Ohio. Dutch Dutch are in the western part of Michigan’s lower peninsula and wherever Kay said. There may be some left in New York, ancestral home of the Rockefellers and Roosevelts. Oddly enough, there are also a lot of people with Dutch ancestry in the valleys of western Oregon. I suspect they came out here for the flat land. Plenty of it here, even though you can see mountains in any direction.
Gvg
@Mnemosyne: it’s both. All democrats running for office get some of the deliberate targeting and have for years. Some even get shot in the head like Giffords. Also many activists or even random people who speak up. Women get targeted a lot on line because they say they are equal.
But the random victims matter too. We have way too high a murder rate. Jim Crow era killed a lot of people, random blacks and some whites too. Something that doesn’t get explained much anymore because it sounds like competing with how bad we had it, whites who were friendly or even just fair to blacks got killed too. That made it harder to win the battles by dividing the righteous. Some of the stuff my dad tells me about are whites testing how far they can be fair without getting killed too. Or raped, my parents knew female white civil rights workers who were raped for the terror impact.
Anyway the gun “rights” fans have moved into that space some time ago. It’s not as bad, but it is there and some of them enjoy that. Most won’t allow themselves to see it. I say that as someone with a loved relative who is adamant guns are important. I think in some ways it’s a hero fantasy.
Matt McIrvin
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Passport cards are also quite expensive, on top of the fee for the regular passport (which is why I didn’t bother getting one when I renewed my passport recently). I wonder if that was a mistake.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Exactly. Till’s family acted bravely and risked their own lives after he was murdered. Mamie Till-Mobely is the hero of that story because of her actions and the risk she took.
Evers risked his own life in the full knowledge that he could be murdered for his actions — and he did them anyway.
The reason I’m getting pissy about this is that it feels like you’re taking Evers’ agency away from him and casting him as a pure victim like Till. Evers chose his path and stood up for what he believed in knowing what the probable end was. And he did it anyway. Evers was not a victim. He was a martyr.
Mnemosyne
@Gvg:
See my response above to Brachiator. I’m uncomfortable saying that an activist who risks his/her own life for what s/he believes and a crime victim are exactly the same, because the first one has agency and the second does not.
The Parkland kids could have chosen to remain victims and stay out of the spotlight, but they decided to step up and try to prevent what happened to them from happening to other people. If they get murdered now, it will be because of their beliefs and their actions, not because of the circumstances they got caught up in. Nobody is threatening to kill the kids who have not come forward.
smedley the uncertain
@Matt McIrvin: 20 Bucks a few years ago…
They do need physical protection for RFID and normal wear confined in a wallet. Mine wore away so badly after a few years it could not be read by Immigration scanners. It was kept inside a gov’t provided envelope in my wallet.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Medgar Evers had his life snatched away from him. Where is the agency in that?
Neither Till nor Evers wanted to die. Neither Till nor Evers deserved to die.
I fundamentally disagree with you, but thank you for taking the time to lay out your thoughts.
J R in WV
@TenguPhule:
I thought so too, but since then I have learned that possums eat ticks, voraciously. So now I have to, well, not love them… but I gotta like them for helping our living environment to be a little more tick-free. Ticks are satan’s bugs!! The Worst!
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Here’s a slightly different metaphor:
An arsonist sets a building on fire. Two people die in the fire — a resident of the building who dies in his bed, and a firefighter who rushed in to try and save the people in the building.
Both of them are dead, but only one of them will be hailed as a hero, because she made a choice to try and help.
That’s why, to me, Mamie Till-Mobeley and Medgar Evans are the heroes of their respective stories. They didn’t have to take the risks that they did, but they made a choice to do so. We are all made up of our choices, both good and bad.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
These are not stories. These are the souls of black folk.
Emmet Till did not live long enough to make bad choices. But he became a symbol of the struggle, and his mother bore witness.